| HSBC denies reports that it 'fabricated evidence' on Huawei Posted: 25 Jul 2020 05:18 PM PDT  London-based HSBC bank has denied Chinese media reports that it had "framed" telecom giant Huawei or "fabricated evidence" that led to the arrest of a top company official. Washington's investigations into Huawei -- for allegedly violating US sanctions on Iran -- started before the bank's involvement with the company in late 2016, the lender said Saturday in its first public comments on Huawei's legal battle in North America. "HSBC has no malice against Huawei, nor has it framed Huawei," the bank said in a statement posted on the Chinese messaging app WeChat.
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| Mnuchin: Virus aid package soon, $1,200 checks by August Posted: 25 Jul 2020 04:51 PM PDT  Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Saturday that Republicans were set to roll out the next COVID-19 aid package Monday and assured there was backing from the White House after he and President Donald Trump's top aide met to salvage the $1 trillion proposal that had floundered just days before. Mnuchin told reporters at the Capitol that extending an expiring unemployment benefit — but reducing it substantially — was a top priority for Trump. "We're prepared to move quickly," Mnuchin said after he and Mark Meadows, the president's acting chief of staff, spent several hours with GOP staff at the Capitol.
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| Viewpoint from Sudan - where black people are called slaves Posted: 25 Jul 2020 04:19 PM PDT  The use of racial slurs in Sudan shows how deeply entrenched racism is there, writes Zeinab Mohammed Salih.
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| Competing protesters converge on Breonna Taylor's hometown Posted: 25 Jul 2020 02:32 PM PDT  Hundreds of armed, predominantly Black, activists demanded justice for Breonna Taylor during peaceful demonstrations Saturday in her Kentucky hometown that drew counter-protesters from a white militia group. Police closed streets and set up barricades to keep the two groups apart as tensions remained on edge in Louisville, where protests have flared for months over the death of Taylor, a Black woman killed when police busted into her apartment in March. Earlier in the day, three people were accidentally shot at a park where Black activists had gathered, police said.
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| California man charged with smuggling mosaic from Syria Posted: 25 Jul 2020 02:30 PM PDT |
| Tear gas fired again; Portland protest standoff continues Posted: 25 Jul 2020 01:39 PM PDT  Federal agents again repeatedly fired tear gas to break up rowdy protests in Portland, Oregon, that continued into the early morning Saturday as demonstrations that have happened every night for two months showed no signs of letting up. Authorities say six federal officers were injured and one person was arrested. Demonstrations have happened in Oregon's largest city nightly since George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis in May. President Donald Trump said he sent federal agents to Portland to halt the unrest but state and local officials say they are making the situation worse.
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| Sinclair delays interview containing Fauci Covid-19 conspiracy theory Posted: 25 Jul 2020 01:08 PM PDT  * 'Plandemic' researcher claims expert created the coronavirus * Company says it is 'incredibly aware' of pandemic dangersSinclair Television said on Saturday it would delay airing an interview with a conspiracy theorist who claims baselessly that Dr Anthony Fauci, the country's top infectious disease expert, created the coronavirus behind the current pandemic.Dr Judy Mikovits, a former research scientist, is behind the widely discredited Plandemic video, which makes a string of false and outlandish claims including that any coronavirus vaccine will kill millions and that beaches should not be closed because the sand and ocean will somehow treat Covid-19.Fauci is the 79-year-old director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He has served six presidents, but Donald Trump has sought to keep him off television, called him "alarmist" and frequently undermined his work.The US is in the grip of a worsening coronavirus outbreak in which more than 4.1m cases have been recorded and more than 145,000 people have died.Mikovits' lawyer, Larry Klayman, was also interviewed on Sinclair's America This Week with the former Fox News host Eric Bolling. Footage was posted online.According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors far-right groups in the US, Klayman, the founder of the Judicial Watch, is "a pathologically litigious attorney and professional gadfly notorious for suing everyone from Iran's supreme leader to his own mother".On Bolling's show, Klayman and Mikovits said they planned to sue Fauci because, Mikovits claimed, in the last decade the doctor "manufactured" and shipped coronaviruses to Wuhan, China, the origin of the pandemic.Before Sinclair announced its delay, Bolling told CNN he did not "know of any video [Mikovits] was in prior to or after appearing on my show" and said: "Frankly, I was shocked when she made the accusation."The host also said he had questioned Mikovits' claim, which onscreen he called "hefty", and had added Dr Nicole Saphier, a Fox News contributor, to the show in order to provide balance."I asked our producers to add Saphier to the show for the express purpose of debunking the conspiracy theory," Bolling said. "I believe viewers see that I did not and do not endorse [Mikovits'] theory."Saphier said it was "highly unlikely" Fauci made the coronavirus. But she also said it was possible the virus was made in a laboratory.Leading Trump allies have pushed that claim as the administration seeks to blame China for the pandemic. Experts say the disease originated in a wet market, where live wild animals are sold for food.Speaking to the Guardian in May, Professor Eric Oliver, a University of Chicago political scientist and author of Enchanted America: How Intuition and Reason Divide Our Politics, said medical conspiracy theories were the most widely circulated and believed."This sort of contagious disease that's invisible makes people extremely apprehensive," he said, adding that the coronavirus pandemic is "a profoundly displacing event and the uncertainty and anxiety it has generated in health, the economy and politics are just really deep."Some people are primed to seek out some sort of simple answer to very complex political and health issues and into that void conspiracy theories rush right in."Sinclair offers a considerable platform, through TV stations across the US.The company's links to the Trump administration have come under scrutiny, for example when in 2018 local news anchors were instructed to read an identical script criticising "fake" news stories.Its chairman, David D Smith, has said that in 2016 he told Trump: "We are here to deliver your message."In a statement on Saturday, the company said: "We are incredibly aware of the dangers of Covid-19 and our stations across 81 markets have remained steadfast in covering their communities with a focus on safety and adherence to local protocols and regulations nationwide."After further review, we have decided to delay this episode's airing. We will spend the coming days bringing together other viewpoints and provide additional context. All stations have been notified not to air this and will instead be re-airing last week's episode in its place."
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| Israelis continue protests against PM's handling of pandemic Posted: 25 Jul 2020 01:04 PM PDT  Thousands of Israelis held several demonstrations across the country against their prime minister Saturday, with the main protest taking place in Jerusalem outside the official residence of Benjamin Netanyahu. The protests have been going on for the past few weeks, sparked by what critics see as a government failure to handle the coronavirus crisis after initially keeping the threat of the virus at bay. Corruption charges against Netanyahu have further fueled the demonstrations.
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| Amid virus, uncertainty, parents decide how to school kids Posted: 25 Jul 2020 10:56 AM PDT  Joshua Claybourn is leaning toward sending his kindergarten daughter to in-person classes at a private school next month. Holly Davis' sixth-grade daughter will learn online, though the family has not yet decided what to do for school for a teenage daughter who requires special accommodations for hearing problems and dyslexia and another who's starting college. As they decide how their children will learn this fall amid the coronavirus pandemic, parents are anxiously weighing the benefits of in-person instruction against the risks that schools could shut their doors again or that their children could contract the virus and pass it on.
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| German cruise ship sets sail, hopes short trip thwarts virus Posted: 25 Jul 2020 10:37 AM PDT  A German cruise ship is gingerly testing the water amid the coronavirus pandemic, setting sail for the first time since the industry was shut down months ago and using strict precautions to keep passengers and crew as safe as possible. The TUI cruise ship "Mein Schiff 2" — literally "My Ship 2" — set sail for a weekend cruise in the North Sea late Friday night, the dpa news agency reported. Occupancy was limited to 60% so passengers could keep their distance from one another, but even that level was not reached.
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| Iranian passenger flight incident a grim echo of U.S. downing of airliner in 1988 Posted: 25 Jul 2020 10:13 AM PDT  The downing of Iran Air flight 655 "continues to be a national trauma for many Iranians," Arshin Adib-Moghaddam told NBC News.
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| Women reflect on sexist slur that often goes unpunished Posted: 25 Jul 2020 09:59 AM PDT  "I'd say, maybe 25 times?" estimates Ellen Gerstein, who spent years in technology publishing, a fairly male-dominated field, before becoming a pharmaceutical executive. In fact, Gerstein says, use of the word as a slur against women has come to feel so unfortunately routine that her own memories of it tend to blur together — unlike, say, the time 20 years ago when a male colleague asked her who she'd "lap danced" to push a project ahead. "I thought, listening to her, 'Wow, you're 100% right,'" says Gerstein, now 52.
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| Fight for police-free schools has been years in the making Posted: 25 Jul 2020 09:06 AM PDT  The group of protesters started out small, just a handful of students who told officials at school board meetings why they wanted police out of Madison, Wisconsin, schools. The move may seem sudden, but it follows years of well-organized, student-driven action.
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| Portland struggles with liberal identity under nation's gaze Posted: 25 Jul 2020 08:58 AM PDT  Images broadcast worldwide of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler getting tear-gassed alongside protesters made him an overnight standard-bearer for the growing movement against President Donald Trump's use of federal agents to tamp down violence in U.S. cities. For many Portland residents, however, the moment felt ironic and hypocritical. Before federal agents arrived in the liberal city, local police repeatedly used tear gas on protesters, and Wheeler — who is also the police commissioner — is increasingly unpopular with those who feel he couldn't, or wouldn't, control officers.
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| For racial justice protests, US taps tactical border squads Posted: 25 Jul 2020 07:19 AM PDT  They are the most highly trained members of the Border Patrol, agents who confront drug traffickers along the U.S.-Mexico border and track down dangerous fugitives in rugged terrain. One day this past week, they were in a far different setting — a city park in Portland, Oregon, looking for two people suspected of throwing rocks and bottles at officers guarding the downtown federal courthouse. Beyond the debate over whether the federal response to the Portland protests encroaches on local authority, another question arises: whether the Department of Homeland Security, with its specialized national security focus, is the right agency for the job.
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| The FBI Pledged to Keep a Source Anonymous. Trump Allies Aided His Unmasking. Posted: 25 Jul 2020 07:07 AM PDT  WASHINGTON -- Not long after the early 2017 publication of a notorious dossier about President Donald Trump jolted Washington, an expert in Russian politics told the FBI he had been one of its key sources, drawing on his contacts to deliver information that would make up some of the most salacious and unproven assertions in the document.The FBI had approached the expert, a man named Igor Danchenko, as it vetted the dossier's claims. He agreed to tell investigators what he knew with an important condition, people familiar with the matter said -- that the FBI keep his identity secret so he could protect himself, his sources and his family and friends in Russia.But his hope of remaining anonymous evaporated last week after Attorney General William Barr directed the FBI to declassify a redacted report about its three-day interview of Danchenko in 2017 and hand it over to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Graham promptly made the interview summary public while calling the entire Russia investigation "corrupt."The report blacked out Danchenko's name and other identifying information. But within two days, a post on a newly created blog titled "I Found the Primary Subsource" identified him, citing clues left visible in the FBI document. A pseudonymous Twitter account created in May then promoted the existence of the blog. And the next day, RT, the Kremlin-owned, English-language news and propaganda outlet, published an article amplifying Danchenko's identification.The decision by Justice Department and FBI leaders to divulge such a report was highly unusual and created the risk it would help identify a person who had confidentially provided information to agents, even if officials did not intend to provide such a road map. The move comes at a time when Barr, who is to testify before lawmakers Tuesday, has repeatedly been accused of abusing his powers to help Trump politically.Former law enforcement officials said the outing will make it harder for FBI agents to gain the trust of people they need to cooperate in future and unrelated investigations."These things have to remain very closely held because you put witnesses at risk," said James W. McJunkin, a former FBI assistant director for counterterrorism. "To release sensitive information unnecessarily that could jeopardize someone's life is egregious."A lawyer for Danchenko, Mark E. Schamel, said that because his client's name had already been exposed, he would not ask The New York Times to withhold it. He acknowledged that "Igor Danchenko has been identified as one of the sources who provided data and analysis" to Christopher Steele, the British former spy who compiled the dossier and whose last name has become shorthand for it.Danchenko's identity is noteworthy because it further calls into question the credibility of the dossier. By turning to Danchenko as his primary source to gather possible dirt on Trump involving Russia, Steele was relying not on someone with a history of working with Russian intelligence operatives or bringing to light their covert activities but instead a researcher focused on analyzing business and political risks in Russia.Spokespeople at both the FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment. An email sent to an address listed on the blog was not returned.Trump's supporters on Capitol Hill have long sought access to Justice Department and FBI documents about the Russia investigation. The FBI director, Christopher A. Wray, told lawmakers in late 2017 that the bureau was wary of turning over records related to its effort to verify the Steele dossier to Congress. "We are dealing with very, very dicey questions of sources and methods, which is the lifeblood of foreign intelligence and our liaison relationships with our foreign partners," he said.But since his confirmation early last year, Barr and other Trump appointees have approved a wave of extraordinary declassifications that the president's allies, including Graham, have used to attack the Russia inquiry.Graham said he had asked the FBI to declassify the interview report after it was described in an inspector general report last year because he wanted the public to read it. He stressed that he did not know the identity of Steele's source and said he did not know whether the FBI released identifying information it should have protected, saying the bureau had appeared to be "painstaking" in redacting such details."I don't know how he was exposed," Graham said in an interview Friday. "I didn't see anything in the memo exposing who he was. I mean, you can believe these websites if you want to -- I don't know. I know this: It's important for the country to understand what happened here."In addition to their political implications, the documents have at times revealed the closely held secrets that Wray feared jeopardizing: sources of information and the methods used for gathering it.Transcripts of recordings released in April resulted in the identification of a confidential FBI informant who had agree to wear a wire when talking to George Papadopoulos, a former Trump adviser who was convicted of lying to the FBI. Other released transcripts of a Russian diplomat's conversations with former national security adviser Michael Flynn revealed that the bureau was able to monitor the phone line of the Russian Embassy in Washington even before a call connected with Flynn's voicemail.The unmaskings from the release of the FBI report have already spiraled beyond Danchenko. Building on the knowledge of his identity, another Twitter user named a likely source for Danchenko. Online sleuths were trying to identify others from his network who were cited but not named in the Steele dossier.The release of Danchenko's interview summary likely put him and other sources in Russia's sights, said Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee."Under Attorney General Barr, the levers of the Department of Justice continue to be weaponized in defense of the president's political agenda, even at the expense of national security," said Warner, who did not confirm that Danchenko was Steele's primary source or discuss his committee's own investigation into Russian election interference. "I'm deeply concerned by this release. There is no doubt that the Russians are poring over it to see if they can identify this individual or other sources."Danchenko also cooperated with the intelligence committee on condition of confidentiality, according to two people familiar with its investigation.Some posts on the blog that revealed Danchenko's name are dated before Graham released the interview report, but the Twitter user who promoted the blog said he or she had backdated the posts to change their order.Born in Ukraine, Danchenko, 42, is a Russian-trained lawyer who earned degrees at the University of Louisville and Georgetown University, according to LinkedIn. He was a senior research analyst from 2005 to 2010 at the Brookings Institution, where he co-wrote a research paper showing that, as a student, President Vladimir Putin of Russia appeared to have plagiarized part of his dissertation.According to his interview with the FBI, Steele contacted Danchenko around March 2016 and assigned him to ask people he knew in Russia and Ukraine about connections, including any ties to corruption, between a pro-Russian government in Ukraine and veteran Republican strategist Paul Manafort. Steele did not explain why, but Manafort joined the Trump campaign around that time and was later promoted to its chair. He was convicted in 2018 of tax and bank fraud and other charges that grew out of the Russia investigation.Steele later expanded Danchenko's assignment to look for any compromising information about Trump.By Jan. 13, 2017, the FBI had identified Danchenko, who soon agreed to answer investigators' questions in exchange for immunity.The FBI told a court it found Danchenko "truthful and cooperative," according to the report by the Justice Department inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, although a supervisory FBI intelligence analyst said Danchenko may have minimized aspects of what he told Steele.Graham said he wanted the public to be able to see for itself how the interview report "clearly shows that the dossier was not reliable and they continued to use it anyway."Danchenko did nothing wrong in accepting a paid assignment to gather allegations about Trump's ties to Russia and conveying them to Steele's research firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, said Schamel, who attended his client's FBI debriefings but whose name was redacted from the report about them."Mr. Danchenko is a highly respected senior research analyst; he is neither an author nor editor for any of the final reports produced by Orbis," Schamel said. "Mr. Danchenko stands by his data analysis and research and will leave it to others to evaluate and interpret any broader story with regard to Orbis' final report."The Steele dossier was deeply flawed. For example, it included a claim that Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen had met with a Russian intelligence officer in Prague to discuss collusion with the campaign. The report by the special counsel who took over the Russia investigation, Robert Mueller, found that Cohen never traveled to Prague.And Danchenko's statements to the FBI contradicted parts of the dossier, suggesting that Steele may have exaggerated the soundness of other allegations, making what Danchenko portrayed as rumor and speculation sound more solid.The Steele dossier played no role in the FBI's opening of the Russia investigation in July 2016, and Mueller did not rely on it for his report.But its flaws have taken on outsized political significance, as Trump's allies have sought to conflate it with the larger effort to understand Russia's covert efforts to tilt the 2016 election in his favor and whether any Trump campaign associates conspired in that effort. Mueller laid out extensive details about Russia's covert operation and contacts with Trump campaign associates, but found insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy charges.The dossier did play an important role in a narrow part of the FBI's early Russia investigation: the wiretapping of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser with close ties to Russian officials, which began in October 2016 and was extended three times in 2017. The Justice Department's applications for court orders authorizing the wiretap relied in part on information from the dossier in making the case that investigators had reason to believe that Page might be working with Russians.Page was never charged, and Mueller's report only briefly discussed him. Horowitz scathingly portrayed the wiretap applications as riddled with errors and omissions.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Kyrgyzstan's rights activist Azimzhan Askarov dies at 69 Posted: 25 Jul 2020 06:54 AM PDT  Azimzhan Askarov, a human rights defender in Kyrgyzstan who was serving a life term on charges of involvement in ethnic violence that were widely criticized as trumped-up, has died in a prison clinic. The U. N. Human Rights Committee and leading international human rights organizations have repeatedly urged the Central Asian nation's authorities to release Askarov, noting his deteriorating health. Kyrgyzstan's state penitentiary service said Askarov died Saturday in a prison clinic, a day after he was hospitalized with pneumonia.
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| California, Florida, Texas lose House seats with Trump order Posted: 25 Jul 2020 06:53 AM PDT  If President Donald Trump succeeds in getting immigrants in the country illegally excluded from being counted in the redrawing of U.S. House districts, California, Florida and Texas would end up with one less congressional seat each than if every resident were counted, according to an analysis by a think tank. Without that population, California would lose two seats instead of one, Florida would gain one seat instead of two and Texas would gain two seats instead of three, according to the analysis by Pew Research Center. Additionally, the Pew analysis shows Alabama, Minnesota and Ohio would each keep a congressional seat they most likely would have lost during the process of divvying up congressional seats by state known as apportionment, which takes place after the U.S. Census Bureau completes its once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident.
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| AP FACT CHECK: A more measured Trump doesn't mean accurate Posted: 25 Jul 2020 06:38 AM PDT  President Donald Trump in recent days suddenly acknowledged the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic and edged away from some of his most audacious falsehoods about it. Trump minimized the potential risk to children and those around them as he advocated reopening schools. All this while Trump canceled Republican National Convention events in Jacksonville, Florida, bowing to the reality that many Republicans were reluctant to go a state where the virus has been out of control.
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| Forty years ago, the Shah of Iran died in exile Posted: 25 Jul 2020 06:19 AM PDT  On July 27, 1980, the former Shah of Iran died of cancer while in exile in Cairo, 17 months after being driven out by his country's Islamic Revolution. The once-venerated Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had fled Iran in January 1979 in the face of an uprising on the streets, after a reign of 37 years in which he dreamt of making his country the fifth world power by 2000.
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| Brazil's Bolsonaro says he tested negative for coronavirus Posted: 25 Jul 2020 05:39 AM PDT  Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said Saturday that he had tested negative for the new coronavirus, based on a fourth test since he said July 7 that he had the virus. "Good morning everyone," Bolsonaro wrote on Facebook after reporting that the test was "negative." Bolsonaro also posted a photo of himself with a box of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, although it has not been proven effective against the virus.
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| Black Catholics' history: Will US Catholic schools teach it? Posted: 25 Jul 2020 05:08 AM PDT  The history of Black Catholics in the U.S. is a dramatic mix of struggles and breakthroughs, but it has been largely ignored in the curriculum of Catholic schools. Amid the national tumult over racial injustice, there are high-level calls for the schools to teach more about the church's past links to slavery and segregation, and how Black Catholics persevered nonetheless. In the archdioceses of Chicago and New Orleans, top leaders are encouraging their schools to place a new emphasis on teaching about racial justice, as well as the history of Black Catholics.
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| Global Calcium Hypochlorite Industry Posted: 25 Jul 2020 04:23 AM PDT |
| Global Cash-in Transit Bags Industry Posted: 25 Jul 2020 03:03 AM PDT |
| America is coming apart. Europe is coming together. Posted: 25 Jul 2020 03:00 AM PDT  Why do some societies, like some couples, fall apart under pressure, while others band together? If a crisis brings them together, will that make them stronger in the future? And if they come apart, is that a sign that they should never have been together in the first place?This week's exemplar for "banding together" is the European Union, whose leaders agreed to extraordinary new measures to promote a broad economic recovery in the wake of the novel coronavirus. The agreement represents an about-face from the stance the EU took in the wake of the financial crisis of the last decade, which emphasized austerity rather than stimulus. More importantly it broke two key structural taboos: the European Commission will, for the first time, be authorized to borrow significant sums of money; and a large portion of that sum will be disbursed to member governments in the form of grants.Those structural changes set a precedent that could be a foundation for a much stabler European governmental edifice. A key problem with the setup of the EU has been that it is a monetary union with no comparably unified fiscal policy. As a consequence, in times of recession, member states are constrained (much as individual American states are) by their inability to print money or to run up unlimited debt — but they had no equivalent to the federal government to turn to for fiscal assistance. Now, they do.Moreover, because the debt is being incurred at the level of the European Commission, the agreement creates pressure for further fiscal integration — particularly in the form of Europe-level taxation. If the EC wants to avoid endless squabbling among member states about how to share the burden of repayment, it will need the authority to levy taxes on its own. And that's the kind of authority of which states are built. The deal may not have been a "Hamiltonian moment" — there are many hedges included to placate northern-European member states who were reluctant to write blank checks to Italy and Spain — but it is a meaningful step down Hamilton's road.This is a notable turnaround, not only from the response to the financial crisis but from the situation only four months ago. At that time, some commentators (including myself) wondered whether the manifest lack of intra-European solidarity on display in the face of the virus — only 21 percent of Italians felt at the time that membership in the EU was beneficial — might not deal the Union its final death blow. How did things change so much so quickly?The simple answer is that France and Germany were in broad agreement on what needed to be done, and that when the two giants of the EU agree it is difficult to build a blocking coalition. One might also say that even the most reluctant member states understood that this is a time when, if they did not hang together, they would surely hang separately.But, in fact, they did not all hang together. One key member, the U.K., had formally walked out only in January, just as the viral storm was breaking.That departure was not irrelevant — and may even have been dispositive. The U.K. was a large and strong European member state particularly disposed to guard its own sovereignty, and hence to resist efforts toward ever-deeper union. Had it been in the room, the historic deal would have been much less-likely to happen. But it's possible that the deal would never even have been on the table because, with the U.K. in the EU taking stances congenial to the German financial class, Germany's own political calculus might not have shifted as it did. Merkel might have inclined less toward unity with France, and more towards the "frugal" states like Austria and the Netherlands, much as Germany did during the aftermath of the financial crisis.In the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, I argued that while leaving was a very risky move for Britain, it was almost certainly a good one for the future of the EU as an institution. This is the first event that suggests that view might have been correct. And it suggests a lesson: that if you want a political union to succeed, its major components need to agree on the essential nature and purpose of that union. Papering over fundamental differences may work in normal times, but in a crisis they can tear the union apart. And restoring that sense of common purpose may require reducing rather than expanding the union's scope.Which brings me to the union that seems to be coming apart: our own.The primary characteristic of the American response to the coronavirus has been its disjointedness, indeed, the lack of any national policy to speak of. Individual states have been responsible for setting up their own testing infrastructure and contact-tracing apparatus, setting their own policies with regard to non-pharmaceutical interventions from lockdowns to mandatory masking, and even placed in competition with one another for personal protective equipment. Our federal system does give the states substantial authority and responsibility in these areas — but it does not require the federal government to be as derelict as it has been in either building essential common infrastructure or promoting an agreed upon set of best practices. It certainly doesn't require the federal government to use its leverage punitively, refusing, for example, to provide necessary funding to facilitate the opening of schools, and then threatening districts that don't open with financial ruin.Much of the failure at the center of national power can be laid at the feet of President Trump, who has evinced a complete lack of interest in wielding that power to achieve meaningful collective goals, even those he ostensibly favors (like building a wall with Mexico). But Trump is interested in using power for pure assertion of prerogative, as he has demonstrated through his abuse of the pardon power and, most recently, by sending federal agents to Portland in response to ongoing protests and damage to federal property. The purpose of his intervention, as my colleague Damon Linker has noted, is precisely to create the very chaos that he claims to want to quell, on the theory that public disorder ultimately helps the candidate promising a strong hand. But it is also intended to demonstrate a willingness to use force against those who, in the view of his core supporters, deserve such treatment.The consequences to national cohesion of this approach to federal governance — neglect coupled with brutality — are likely to be felt long after this administration has ended. A progressive prosecutor in Pennsylvania is already on record as saying he will order the arrest of federal agents if they break the law in his jurisdiction, as they did in Oregon. Even if he never has to make good on that threat, a line has been drawn, and the prospect of direct confrontation between state and federal authorities in some future contingency is real. Meanwhile, states (such as in the northeast) that banded together to combat the coronavirus, and that are now requiring visitors from the rest of the country to quarantine upon entry, will undoubtedly find new ways to work together without waiting for the federal government. The more successful they are, the less it will seem worth it to spend the energy trying to work with parts of the country that see things too differently. It is not only other countries that have reason never to trust America again; our own citizens have every reason to doubt whether an evanescent national majority can truly be counted on.Joe Biden's presidential campaign is substantially premised on the notion that such a majority would not be evanescent. Trump has finally united the center of the country against him, and a decisive repudiation will restore Americans' faith in the possibility of collective action. The first part may prove true in November, but I wonder about the second, and not only because I remember how quickly the overwhelming Democratic majority of a dozen years ago curdled into endless partisan trench warfare. The main Democratic answer to how to avoid a repeat, after all, involves a willingness to break some norms of their own, but the centrifugal forces of American political life cannot be arrested by manipulating the composition of the Senate or packing the Supreme Court, however theoretically justified those moves might be.Is there any alternative? One piece of advice you'll often hear in couple's therapy is to take the possibility of a breakup seriously, not as a threat but as an option. People who feel trapped don't make the best negotiators. But once the possibility of an exit is real, rather than a desired fantasy, its costs and possible benefits can be more rationally weighed against other options, including renegotiating the terms of the relationship.In that spirit, perhaps it behooves all of us who are appalled by the Trump years, and by what has happened to the party he purports to lead, to devote at least some of our energy to thinking outside the box. How much do we actually want our states and cities to depend on the federal government, versus how much freedom do we want to chart our own course? Do we want the battle against climate change to depend on which party controls the EPA — or do we want California to be able to use its economic clout to muscle the rest of the country along? Even less-realistic fantasies of separation could prove constructive. Calls for a Calexit — or a Texit — right now are little more than tantrum threats. If they became more realistic, though, they could concentrate the mind wonderfully. Or they could reveal a reciprocal willingness to let go that would be foolish to ignore.It would be far better if we managed to come together. But if we can't, it's worth asking ourselves not only how to seize precarious control of the levers of national power, but where power can be held securely, where the center still might hold, and what economic and political arrangements might enable those areas best to thrive. As for those who seem to be motivated primarily by spite towards their foes, where they constitute a majority, it might be worth thinking about how to let them go their own way, rather than clutch them ever tighter in an ever more imperfect union.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com Jared Kushner has reportedly refused to aid the House GOP's election wing Longtime TV host Regis Philbin dies at 88 The coming Republican power grab on the Supreme Court
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| Iranian judiciary says passengers on 'harassed' airliner can sue U.S. in Iran courts Posted: 25 Jul 2020 02:51 AM PDT |
| Massive protest against governor's arrest challenges Kremlin Posted: 25 Jul 2020 02:36 AM PDT  Tens of thousands of people marched Saturday across Russia's Far East city of Khabarovsk on the border with China to protest the arrest of the regional governor on murder charges, continuing a two-week wave of protests that has challenged the Kremlin. Sergei Furgal has been in a Moscow jail since his arrest on July 9, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has named an acting successor. Protesters in Khabarovsk see the charges against Furgal as unsubstantiated and demand that he stand trial at home.
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| US officials switch to calling China's Xi Jinping 'general secretary' instead of 'president' Posted: 25 Jul 2020 02:30 AM PDT  Two years ago, during Mike Pompeo's first months on the job as US secretary of state, his public mentions of Chinese President Xi Jinping were cordial.He was "honoured" to attend a working dinner with Xi in Buenos Aires; he thanked Xi for his role in "bringing North Korea to the negotiating table"; and he spoke gratefully of a "productive meeting with President Xi" during a visit to Beijing.But today, with US-China relations in free fall, not only has the tone of Pompeo's public statements regarding Xi soured considerably, his appellation of choice has also changed.To top US officials, most notably Pompeo, Xi is now no longer the "Chinese president", but the "general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)", a sign, say analysts, of efforts by the administration to delegitimise Xi's rule, drive a wedge between party and populace and evoke loaded connotations with the Cold War-era.Xi holds three official titles: head of state (guojia zhuxi, literally "state chairman"), chairman of the central military commission, and general secretary of the CCP. Though none of those translate directly to "president", and despite the fact that official Chinese missives and state media reports almost always lead with Xi's party title, the English-speaking world has by and large favoured "president".For 2018 and most of 2019, so did Pompeo. But over the past several weeks he has entirely abandoned that term in favour of "general secretary", coinciding with a barrage of actions the Trump administration has taken against Beijing on matters ranging from Xinjiang and Hong Kong to Huawei and the South China Sea.In a week in which the administration ordered Beijing to close its consulate in Houston, Pompeo's declaration on Thursday that "General Secretary Xi Jinping is a true believer in a bankrupt totalitarian ideology" marked the 15th time he has used the party title this month.Pompeo is not alone in adopting the new appellation. In a month-long, coordinated series of speeches hammering China on all fronts, other top officials " FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General William Barr and National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien " have all followed suit.The administration's "shift to using 'general secretary' should be seen as very deliberate," said Alison Szalwinski, vice-president of research at the National Bureau of Asian Research and an expert on US policy toward China. "They want to draw a distinction between the leader of a representative government and one that is autocratic and authoritarian."The State Department did not respond to a request to explain the recent change in US officials' descriptions of Xi, saying only in a statement that "the People's Republic of China is an authoritarian regime run by the Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping is the General Secretary of the Party."A US government official who was not authorised to speak publicly described the shift as an effort to speak "plainly about each issue, so that there's no sugarcoating, there's no self-delusional approach towards what the CCP is".The move by the executive branch gives the highest profile platform yet to a debate over nomenclature that had, until now, taken place largely among academics, foreign policy experts and some US lawmakers."There comes a point when the simple truth is he's not president in the liberal democracy sense of [a] president who is elected and enjoys the political support of civil society and the population," said Robin Cleveland, chair of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC)."He is an authoritarian dictator that sits atop a self-serving party," she added. "So words matter."Set up by Congress to advise lawmakers on the national security implications of the two countries' economic ties, the USCC declared in its last annual report that it would no longer call Xi "president" but "general secretary", which it called "the title by which he derives his authority."The alignment of the USCC and the executive branch on the matter marks just one of the ways that the panel, once considered significantly more hawkish than the mainstream, is now representative of the growing appetite in Washington for a tough response to Xi's government."I'm glad that others are reinforcing the authoritarian nature of his leadership," Cleveland said of the administration's linguistic shift.Among the developments that have fuelled US perceptions of an increasingly hardline rule under Xi were his removal of term limits; the treatment of ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang; the imposition of a sweeping national security law over Hong Kong; and Xi's campaign to strengthen party supervision over all elements of civil society, including the news media."To the extent that you are seeing the 'partification' of every apparatus and every organisation, there is a difference [from previous leaders] in terms of the elevation of his own self-importance," said Cleveland.As that "partification" has continued apace, so too have the Trump administration's efforts to portray the will of the CCP as separate from " and counter to " the will of the Chinese people, a strategy that analysts said likely contributed to the decision to frame Xi as head of the party and not a head of state."It is designed to distinguish China " its history, culture and people " from the People's Republic of China and the Communist Party," said Elizabeth Economy, Asia studies director at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations."To the extent possible, the White House would like to deliver the impression that it is supportive of the Chinese people, just not the Communist Party," said Economy.US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticised Chinese leadership in his address at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, on Thursday. Photo: Reuters alt=US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticised Chinese leadership in his address at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, on Thursday. Photo: ReutersThat strategy was apparent in May, when deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger delivered a speech trumpeting the power of "democratic populism" to either keep a "remote and self-interested" governing class in check or throw them "overboard". In an unmistakable effort to appeal directly to the Chinese people, Pottinger gave the address in Mandarin.Pompeo sought to further drive the wedge between the governors and the governed on Thursday, declaring during an address on China policy that "Communists always lie, but the biggest lie is that the Chinese Communist Party speaks for 1.4 billion people who are surveilled, oppressed and scared to speak out."Analysts said it was no coincidence that the administration's onslaught against the CCP and Xi has come as doubts grow about China's ability to fulfil the terms of a trade deal signed in January.Although administration officials insist the deal remains intact, China's purchases of US goods are currently far below projected targets, and White House trade adviser and vociferous China hawk Peter Navarro said recently that trust between the two countries was now non-existent."The collapse of the phase one trade deal, which was weak to begin with but is now further undermined by the pandemic, has eroded the standing of pro-China trade advisers and officials" in US President Donald Trump's administration, said Szalwinski."The idea that maybe there'll be a purchase agreement that is meaningful " all of that is completely in the background now," said the government official. "That's completely repudiated."That in turn, the official said, has given more latitude to the "side of the administration that says: 'No, we need to stand up for human rights'."Pompeo, for instance, used the term "concentration camps" for the first time publicly on Thursday to describe China's mass internment facilities in the country's northwest, becoming the highest ranking US official to adopt the term.By contrast, in the middle of trade negotiations two years ago, Trump had encouraged Xi to go ahead with the camps, according to an account by former national security adviser John Bolton. Trump's administration also held off on sanctions against Beijing officials over the facilities " which China describes as vocational training centres " for fear of jeopardising the trade talks, a fact he later openly acknowledged in an interview with Axios.Though Trump has not yet joined the ranks of officials adopting the term "general secretary" to describe Xi, he has stopped referring to him as a "friend" and said recently that he had no interest in speaking with his Chinese counterpart.Regardless of any personal affinity for Xi, as Trump's polls drop ahead of the November presidential election, "China becomes a convenient domestic tool for shifting blame and attention elsewhere," said Szalwinski.And when it comes to the term "general secretary", the White House is "betting" that it will carry with it "negative connotations from the period of the Soviet Union", said Economy.Regarding its reception in Beijing, however, observers said the new language in itself was not likely to ruffle many feathers, though it would serve as a useful barometer of Washington's intentions."I don't think they're worried about what we call him," said Cleveland, stressing that Beijing's primary concerns were about the various punitive measures coinciding with the hardening language."The name is parallel," she said, with global concerns about China's "increasing assertion of authority".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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| Berkeley Nuke Prof’s Side Gig: Far-Right Serbian Activist Posted: 25 Jul 2020 02:19 AM PDT  A prominent nuclear engineering professor in California with influence over millions of dollars in federal research funds is also a prominent player in Dveri, a far right-wing party in Serbia that publicly supports a convicted war criminal, among other extremist stances.Jasmina Vujic has been on the faculty at the University of California Berkeley since 1992. She formerly served as chair of UC Berkeley's nuclear engineering department, and is the founding director of the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, a key hub for nuclear security research and training, where she directs 50 affiliated faculty members and hundreds of researchers from eight universities across the country.In recent years, Vujic has occupied positions on the Berkeley admissions and diversity committees, and she helps dish out at least $10 million in research funds at the multi-university research center, which is underwritten by the U.S. Department of Energy.She's also a longtime, prominent member of Dveri, having served as the Serbian far-right party's vice president for three years, according to Serbian-language media accounts, interviews and social media postings. She regularly appears at its political events in her home country, has fundraised and lobbied for the group, and has appeared alongside some of the most controversial figures in Serbia's recent history.Experts say Dveri's ascension to parliament and formal politics, even in a country governed by a right-wing party, are representative of a broader acceptance of previously unacceptable ideological stances throughout Europe.But Vujic's involvement in the group has raised alarm among some colleagues and peers in the nuclear engineering field because it is a foreign political entity that opposes long-established U.S. policies in the Balkans. Vujic's affiliations with Dveri prompted at least one individual to report her affiliations to the Department of Energy as a potential security concern last year, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. The Disturbing Ties Between Philly Cops and Far-Right Proud BoysAn open letter to UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ was also published online last year, raising Vujic's involvement with Dveri and the party's extremist views. Still, no official action has been taken by the university. There is no indication that Vujic's beliefs and political convictions have influenced her decision-making at UC Berkeley or her treatment of people who may be part of the groups Dveri loathes. But three people familiar with Vujic's academic work and involvement with Dveri said her role in a party with an aggressive stance towards past Serbian atrocities during the 1990s dissolution of Yugoslavia, and virulently anti-LGBTQ positions has raised discomfort on campus.Vujic did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story. In response to queries from The Daily Beast, University of California Berkeley spokesman Dan Moguloff said that Chancellor Christ's office had not received letters about Professor Vujic's activities. "The activities as described, if true, are outside the scope of the professor's employment with the university," Moguloff said. The Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment. But Berkeley sources couldn't help but wonder whether the professor's ties to the far right could—or should—impact their ability to receive security clearances and funding from the Department of Energy. "It's really alarming for someone who is in a position to shape the next generation of nuclear security scholars to hold such extremist views," said one of the individuals, who requested anonymity for fear of professional retaliation. In applications for clearance, DOE requests information about a person's associations, past or present, with anyone associated with an extremist ideology or organization, as well as involvement with foreign political parties. In this context, experts say that Vujic's involvement with a political party at least ideologically linked to a nuclear power (Russia) hostile to American strategic interests is a major red flag from a counter-intelligence perspective. "It's the kind of thing that if it didn't come up in a clearance review, there'd be a problem with the process," said Alex Wellerstein, a professor of science and technology studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology. "The group that she's affiliated with sounds especially distasteful."However, Wellerstein said the Department of Energy might still grant her a security clearance, or not view her political affiliations to be of concern if she didn't have access to particularly sensitive information. Steven Aftergood, the director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, said dual citizens like Vujic are routinely vetted for their overseas contacts and political affiliations as part of the security review process."It's not automatically disqualifying—it is possible for people who hold dual citizenship to obtain a clearance. But it involves an additional layer of review, in particular from a counter-intelligence perspective," said Aftergood. Such scrutiny typically drills down on the political leanings and allegiance of the person in question, and whether there is a possibility they would use their position to work against the interests of the United States.Born in the Serbian city of Loznica in 1953, Vujic completed her initial education in nuclear engineering at the University of Belgrade before beginning a nuclear science doctorate at the University of Michigan in the mid-1980s. After graduating in 1989, she worked on reactor analysis at the Argonne National Laboratory for three years before joining UC Berkeley's faculty in 1992, where she specializes in reactor design and security.Although she has lived in the U.S. for the better part of three decades, Vujic has kept strong ties to her home country, including its fractious internal politics.Archives of Dveri's website show Vujic served as the party's vice president from 2016 until January 2019. She previously occupied a position on Dveri's political council, where her responsibilities included outreach to the Serbian diaspora, and fundraising.Dveri got its start in 1999 as a publication issued by Bosko Obradovic, who now serves as Dveri's leader. It coalesced into a formal political party in 2011, and, riding a wave of xenophobic sentiment prompted by the 2015 global migration crisis, won its first seats in Serbia's parliament in 2016.The party is part of a resurgent right-wing movement throughout European politics. For instance, members of Dveri have recently met with Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), the German far-right party, to discuss political coordination and common ground.Dveri not only opposes NATO—a popular stance in Serbia given NATO's role in the 1999 bombing of Belgrade—but also membership in the European Union, instead favoring a pro-Russian position shared by the current government."They showed how a far-right mouthpiece organization could become legitimate and gain seats in parliament," said Valery Perry, a senior associate at the advocacy and research group Democratization Policy Council in Sarajevo, who studies extremism in the Balkans. "The genocide denial, the denial at what happened at Srebrenica are core tenets of their beliefs." Almost exactly 25 years ago, some 8,000 Muslims were slaughtered in Srebrenica, in July 1995, by Bosnian Serbs.But Dveri openly celebrates the more controversial figures in Serbia's recent past, including General Ratko Mladic, who commanded the Serbian military during the Yugoslav wars and was convicted by an international tribunal for war crimes related to the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre. Dveri has also tried to rehabilitate the image of the Chetniks, the Serbian military detachments that collaborated with Hitler's occupying army during World War II and committed acts of terrorism against neighboring Croat and Bosnian communities.A pair of tweets posted to Dveri's official Twitter accounts illustrate the party's position towards Mladic. One features a photo of Mladic alongside American General Wesley Clark, accompanied by a caption reading "which one is the war criminal?" A second tweet includes a photo of a saluting, uniformed Mladic accompanied by the phrase "Fighting ISIL since 1992," drawing an oblique comparison between the Bosnian Muslims Mladic massacred and the contemporary jihadist movement. "They're very open and explicit about their support for Serbian ultra-nationalist heroes of the 1990s like Mladic—there's no attempt made to obscure that part of their identity," said Jasmin Mujanovic, a professor at Elon University in North Carolina who recently published a book about contemporary Balkan politics.Dveri is also "extremely anti-LGBTQ and distinguished themselves by taking on that sort of family-first language, playing up the Serbian Orthodox, traditionalist position," Mujanovic added.Dozens of people were injured during the 2010 Belgrade Pride parade when right-wing groups—including Dveri—violently disrupted the event and engaged in running battles with police. In 2011, threats of violence from Dveri and other far-right extremist organizations prompted the Serbian Interior Ministry to ban the annual Belgrade Pride parade for the following three years over security concerns. Last year, police again clashed with far right, homophobic demonstrators during Belgrade Pride.Sacha Baron Cohen Pulls Epic Prank on Far-Right Militia EventVujic appears to embrace many of the party's positions. In 2011, she signed a petition issued by Dveri opposing the 2011 Belgrade Pride Parade, which was noted in a report by the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. The petition stated that Dveri regarded "the march of gay activists as the most direct nullification of the basic values of our society and the beginning of a definite destruction of the Serbian family," and overtly hinted at the possibility of violence if it was allowed to proceed.That same year, in a video posted to YouTube, speaking in Serbo-Croat, Vujic urged young people "whose energy hasn't been tapped into" to join Dveri, stating she supports the party because it backs traditional families and morals, and because it opposes the independence of Kosovo from Serbia. Vujic also said she opposed Serbia's ascension to the European Union and a 2015 resolution passed by the Serbian parliament acknowledging the Srebrenica massacre.Vujic has also publicly appeared with controversial figures from Serbia's past. In March 2014, she appeared at an event alongside fellow Dveri member Vesna Kalabic, the granddaughter of a prominent Chetnik commander and the head of the Ravnogorsk movement, which openly advocates genocide against Croats and Bosnians. According to press reports, Vujic and Kalabic vowed to do "everything that [Vladimir] Putin did in Russia" if elected.And in 2013, she accepted the Order of the Republika Srpska with Golden Wreath from Milorad Dodik, the president of the Serbian region of Bosnia and Herzegovina who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for interfering with the Dayton Accords, the 1995 international agreement that brought an end to hostilities in Bosnia. Like many in Dveri and the broader Serbian right-wing universe, Dodik refuses to accept the Srebrenica massacre as an act of genocide and openly admires Radovan Karadzic, the former Serbian Republic president who was found guilty of war crimes by an international tribunal and imprisoned for life.Vujic also participated in private seminars seeking to attract investment to the Serbian Republic in Bosnia, according to Serbian media reports: A former Dveri member publicly claimed that Vujic accompanied Dveri president Bosko Obradovic on an American tour to try and raise funds from the Serbian diaspora.In a public letter in April 2019, Dr. Emir Ramic, a Canadian academic of Bosnian ancestry, called on the UC Berkeley chancellor's office to re-examine Vujic's tenure and work at UC Berkeley."[H]er activities and the activities of the organizations she actively leads and supports has disturbed many American Bosnians who survived the Serbian aggression and genocide," Ramic's letter reads.The letter continued, "We are astounded by the knowledge that a world-renowned expert in nuclear engineering such as Dr. Vujic is actively engaged in financing and lobbying activities of the extreme and nationalistic Serbian movements that have committed great crimes both in World War II, and in the aggression and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina."Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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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| China turns a blind eye as North Korea evades sanctions Posted: 25 Jul 2020 02:00 AM PDT  After a brief lull due to the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korea is carrying out large-scale smuggling operations off the coast of China in violation of U.N. sanctions, importing oil and selling coal and sand to keep its economy afloat, according to experts and current and former Western officials. Much of the sanctions-busting operations rely on front companies registered in China and take place within China's heavily patrolled territorial waters, where Chinese radar and coast guard vessels closely track commercial shipping traffic, experts said. China has made major investments in its navy and coast guard in recent years, and it seems improbable that Beijing is not able to detect or prevent the North Korean shipments that often employ large barges, said Neil Watts, who served on a U.N. panel investigating North Korea's sanctions violations.
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| China turns a blind eye as North Korea evades sanctions Posted: 25 Jul 2020 02:00 AM PDT  North Korea relies on front-companies registered in China to export coal and sand and import oil in violation of U.N. sanctions.
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| Global Diabetic Shoes Industry Posted: 25 Jul 2020 01:23 AM PDT |
| Female priests now outnumber male ones in Church of Sweden Posted: 25 Jul 2020 12:58 AM PDT  The Church of Sweden has more female than male priests for the first time, according to numbers released this month, a sign of huge strides for gender equality since women were first allowed to be ordained in 1960. The Lutheran institution, which was the official Swedish state church until 2000, now counts 1,533 women serving as priests and 1,527 men. "It's a mirror of the society, in a way," the Rev. Elisabeth Oberg Hansen said after giving a sermon in a small church in Stockholm.
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| Global Electronic Grade Hydrofluoric Acid Industry Posted: 25 Jul 2020 12:43 AM PDT |
| Thousands protest against Kremlin in Russian far east for third weekend Posted: 25 Jul 2020 12:20 AM PDT |
| Thousands protest against Kremlin in Russian far east for third weekend Posted: 25 Jul 2020 12:20 AM PDT |
| Gazans defy taboos to rescue, neuter stray animals Posted: 25 Jul 2020 12:06 AM PDT  In the impoverished Gaza Strip, where most people struggle to make ends meet amid a crippling blockade, the suffering of stray dogs and cats often goes unnoticed. Said el-Er, who founded the territory's only animal rescue organization in 2006, has been trying to change that. It goes against taboos in the conservative Palestinian territory, where feral dogs and cats are widely seen as pests and many view spaying and neutering as forbidden by Islam.
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| Nikki Haley's 'Groveling' Claim About Donald Trump Leaves People Bewildered Posted: 25 Jul 2020 12:01 AM PDT  The former U.N. ambassador's spin on Trump's decision to cancel part of the RNC because of the coronavirus raised more than a few eyebrows.
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| Pregnant women at risk of death in Kenya's COVID-19 curfew Posted: 24 Jul 2020 11:48 PM PDT  Veronica Atieno remembers feeling her way through the dark alleys between the shacks that make up Nairobi's slums, picking her way past raw sewage and rusty, razor-sharp metal roofing with trepidation. With time running out, her only option was to reach the home of a traditional birth attendant nearby, Atieno said. Kenya already had one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world, and though data are not yet available on the effects of the new curfew, experts believe the number of women and babies who die in childbirth has increased significantly since it was imposed mid-March.
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| America 'staring down the barrel of martial law', Oregon senator warns Posted: 24 Jul 2020 11:00 PM PDT  * Ron Wyden says Portland tactics threaten democracy * Senator Jeff Merkley deplores 'military-style assault' * Former Ice head: Trump is using agents as his 'goon squad'America is "staring down the barrel of martial law" as it approaches the presidential election, a US senator from Oregon has warned as Donald Trump cracks down on protests in Portland, the state's biggest city.In interviews with the Guardian, Democrat Ron Wyden said the federal government's authoritarian tactics in Portland and other cities posed an "enormous" threat to democracy, while his fellow senator Jeff Merkley described it as "an all-out assault in military-style fashion".In the early hours of Saturday, thousands of protesters gathered again outside the federal courthouse in the city, shooting fireworks at the building as teargas, dispensed by US agents, lingered above. Protesters and agents used leaf blowers to try to redirect the gas. At around 2.30am, agents marched down the street, clearing protesters with gas at close range. They also extinguished a fire outside the courthouse.The independent watchdogs for the US justice and homeland security departments said on Thursday they were launching investigations into the use of force by federal agents, including instances of unidentified officers in camouflage gear snatching demonstrators off the streets and spiriting them away in unmarked vehicles.Portland mapBut Trump this week announced a "surge" of federal law enforcement to Chicago and Albuquerque, in addition to a contingent already in Kansas City. The move fuelled critics' suspicions that the president was stressing a "law and order" campaign theme at the expense of civil liberties.Wyden said in a statement: "The violent tactics deployed by Donald Trump and his paramilitary forces against peaceful protesters are those of a fascist regime, not a democratic nation."Speaking by phone, he said: "Unless America draws a line in the sand right now, I think we could be staring down the barrel of martial law in the middle of a presidential election."Military control of government was last imposed in the US in 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In current circumstances it would entail "trashing the constitution and trashing people's individual rights", Wyden warned.The senator recalled a conversation with a legal adviser for the head of national intelligence."I asked him again and again what was the constitutional justification for what the Trump administration is doing in my home town and he completely ducked the questions and several times said, 'Well, I just want to extend my best wishes to your constituents.'"After I heard him say it several times, I said my constituents don't want your best wishes. They want to know when you're going to stop trashing their constitutional rights."The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, began a briefing on Friday with a selectively edited video depicting protests, flames, graffiti and chaos in Portland."The Trump administration will not stand by and allow anarchy in our streets," she said. "Law and order will prevail."Trump has falsely accused his election rival, Joe Biden, of pledging to "defund the police" so violent crime will flourish. Democrats condemn Trump for a made-for-TV attempt to distract both from Black Lives Matter protests and his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, now killing more than 1,000 Americans a day."I wish the president would fight the coronavirus half as hard as he attacks my home town," Wyden said. "I think he's setting up an us-against-them kind of strategy. He's trying to create his narrative that my constituents, who are peaceful protesters, are basically anarchists, sympathisers of anarchists and, as he does so often, just fabricate it."Trump knows that his [coronavirus] strategy has been an unmitigated disaster. The coronavirus is spiking in various places and he's trying to play to rightwing media and play to his base and see if he can kind of create a narrative that gives him some traction."The Portland deployment, Operation Diligent Valor, involves 114 officers from homeland security and the US Marshals Service, according to court documents. Local officials say their heavy-handed approach, including teargas and flash grenades, has merely enflamed demonstrations against police brutality and racial injustice. The justice department-led Operation Legend involves more than 200 agents each in Kansas City and Chicago as well as 35 in Albuquerque. It is targeted at violent crime.Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, has vowed to resist the federal intervention.> It's very clear what the president is trying to do is incite violence and then display that violence in campaign ads> > Senator Jeff Merkley"We're not going to allow the unconstitutional, state-sanctioned lawlessness we saw brought to Portland here in Chicago," she said on Thursday.Merkley offered words of advice."I would say that you probably don't believe that these federal forces will attack protesters if the protesters are peaceful and you will be wrong because that's exactly what they're doing in Portland," he told the Guardian."This is an all-out assault in military-style fashion on a peaceful-style protest. The way to handle graffiti is put up a fence or come out and ask people to stop doing it, not to attack a peaceful protest but that's exactly what happened. It's very clear what the president is trying to do is incite violence and then display that violence in campaign ads. And I say this because that's exactly what he's doing right now. This is not some theory."The senator added: "This is just an absolute assault on people's civil rights to speak and to assemble."Merkley argued that with past targets such as Islamic State and undocumented migrants losing their potency, Trump has settled on African Americans in inner cities to be his latest scapegoats."I think it's also important to note the president we've always known has this intense authoritarian streak," he said. "He loved and had so much affection for the leader of North Korea, Putin in Russia. Just admiration for some of the tactics in the Philippines with Duterte and Erdoğan in Turkey, by the crown prince in Saudi Arabia."On Friday the United Nations warned against the use of excessive force against demonstrators and media."Peaceful demonstrations that have been taking place in cities in the US, such as Portland, really must be able to continue," UN human rights office spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell told reporters.
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| Virus-weary Texas hit by Category 1 Hurricane Hanna Posted: 24 Jul 2020 10:54 PM PDT  Hurricane Hanna roared ashore onto the Texas Gulf Coast as a Category 1 storm on Saturday, bringing winds that lashed the shoreline with rain and storm surge, and even threatening to bring possible tornadoes to a part of the country trying to cope with a spike in coronavirus cases. The first landfall happened at around 5 p.m. about 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of Port Mansfield, which is about 130 miles (209 km) south of Corpus Christi and about 70 miles (113 km) north of Brownsville. The second landfall took place at around 6:15 p.m. in eastern Kenedy County, about 15 miles (24 km) north-northwest of Port Mansfield.
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| Global Grease Cartridges Industry Posted: 24 Jul 2020 10:23 PM PDT |
| Australia rejects Beijing's South China Sea claims, backing US Posted: 24 Jul 2020 10:22 PM PDT  Australia has rejected Beijing's territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea in a formal declaration to the United Nations, aligning itself more closely with Washington in the escalating row. In a statement filed on Thursday, Australia said there was "no legal basis" to several disputed Chinese claims in the sea including those related to the construction of artificial islands on small shoals and reefs. "Australia rejects China's claim to 'historic rights' or 'maritime rights and interests' as established in the 'long course of historical practice' in the South China Sea," the declaration read.
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| Federal agents use tear gas to clear rowdy Portland protest Posted: 24 Jul 2020 10:12 PM PDT  Thousands of protesters gathered outside the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, into the early hours Saturday, shooting fireworks at the building as plumes of tear gas dispensed by U.S. agents, lingered above. The demonstration went until federal agents entered the crowd around 2:30 a.m. and marched in a line down the street, clearing remaining protesters with tear gas at close range. Portland has been roiled by nightly protests for two months following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
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| French infections rise, Spain cracks down on nightclubs Posted: 24 Jul 2020 09:24 PM PDT  France's coronavirus infection rate crept higher Saturday and Spain cracked down on nightlife but German authorities were confident enough to send a cruise ship out to sea with 1,200 passengers for a weekend test of how the cruise industry can begin to resume. French health authorities said the closely watched "R" gauge is now up to 1.3, suggesting that infected people are contaminating 1.3 other people on average. France's daily new infections are also rising — up to 1,130 on Friday.
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| Trump plays on fears in play for the suburbs Posted: 24 Jul 2020 09:10 PM PDT  President Donald Trump this week sent a message to "The Suburban Housewives of America," and in a single tweet summed up his strategy for shoring up support in communities critical to his reelection chances: Scare them. In tweets, campaign ads and new policies, Trump is trying to win over suburbanites by promising to protect their "beautiful" neighborhoods from the racial unrest that has gripped some U.S. cities this summer. "I think he's just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks," said Linda Abate, an unemployed bartender in this working-class suburb about a 45-minute drive from Philadelphia.
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| Civil rights icon John Lewis remembered in his hometown Posted: 24 Jul 2020 09:10 PM PDT  Civil rights icon and longtime Georgia congressman John Lewis was remembered Saturday — in the rural Alabama county where his story began — as a humble man who sprang from his family's farm with a vision that "good trouble" could change the world. The morning service in the city of Troy in rural Pike County was held at Troy University, where Lewis would often playfully remind the chancellor that he was denied admission in 1957 because he was Black, and where decades later he was awarded an honorary doctorate. Lewis, who became a civil rights icon and a longtime Georgia congressman, died July 17 at the age of 80.
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| Sudan armed group attacks Darfur village, killing at least 7 Posted: 24 Jul 2020 06:41 PM PDT |
| As tide turns, retailers that resisted masks relent Posted: 24 Jul 2020 06:33 PM PDT  When the parent of Southern grocery chain Winn-Dixie said that it wasn't going to require customers to wear masks to protect against the spread of the coronavirus, the response was brutal, with some loyal patrons vowing on social media never to shop there again. Days later, Winn-Dixie reversed course and said that it would mandate masks in states or localities that had no requirement. The about-face on Monday followed another highly-publicized reversal last month by AMC.
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| US sued over expulsion of migrant children detained in hotel Posted: 24 Jul 2020 06:23 PM PDT  Legal groups sued the U.S. government Friday to try to stop the expulsion of children detained in hotel rooms by the Trump administration under an emergency declaration citing the coronavirus. The owners of the Hampton Inn & Suites in McAllen, Texas, said Friday night that they ended any reservations on rooms used to detain minors. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also confirmed that all children had been taken away from the hotel, two days after The Associated Press reported that it was one of three hotels used nearly 200 times for detention of children as young as 1.
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