Fun4U: May 2020

Sunday, 31 May 2020

New report alleges killings, mass detentions in Ethiopia

A new report by the rights group Amnesty International accuses Ethiopia’s security forces of extrajudicial killings and mass detentions even as the country’s reformist prime minister was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The report issued Friday says security forces killed at least 25 people in 2019 in the East Guji and West Guji zones of the restive Oromia region amid suspicions of supporting a rebel group, the Oromo Liberation Army, and a once-exiled opposition group. The government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who was awarded the peace prize in December for sweeping political reforms and restoring ties with neighboring Eritrea after two decades of hostilities, acknowledged that “the reform process has at times experienced bumps” but called the report “a one-sided snapshot security analysis that fails to appropriately capture the broader political trajectory and security developments."

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A partygoer who attended the now-infamous Lake of the Ozarks pool party has tested positive for COVID-19, meaning hundreds could have been exposed

The individual began showing symptoms on Sunday and was likely "incubating illness and possibly infectious at the time of the visit."

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The Papers: Testing 'disgrace' and public's 'broken trust'

Britain's test and trace policy and Dominic Cummings' lockdown trip dominate Sunday's papers.

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In pictures: Peru's most catastrophic natural disaster

On 31 May 1970 an earthquake struck in Peru, triggering a landslide and leading to the deaths of 70,000.

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George Floyd: ‘As a black American I am terrified’

After the death of George Floyd, young African-Americans in Minneapolis say they are scared for their safety.

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Coronavirus: The self-isolation choir with worldwide members

This weekend thousands of people will gather as an online choir to perform Handel’s Messiah.

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In the middle of the Pacific with nowhere to land

A group of performers were halfway across the ocean in a 75ft boat when the pandemic erupted - leaving them with nowhere to go.

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My Money: 'Our alternative quarantine holiday'

Alyssa Hulme from Utah in the US takes us through her weekly spending during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Coronavirus: 'I'm high risk but made a full recovery'

Positive stories from people considered at high risk who have made a full recovery from coronavirus.

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FBI's top lawyer, Dana Boente, ousted amid Fox News criticism for role in Flynn investigation

Boente was asked to resign on Friday and two sources familiar with the decision to dismiss him said it came from high levels of the Justice Department rather than directly from FBI Director Christopher Wray.

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SpaceX crowds came in droves despite downpours, tornado warning, pandemic

The crowd launched early, even though the SpaceX Crew Dragon didn't rise from Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39A as scheduled.

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Biden demands justice in George Floyd death

Former Vice President Joe Biden on Friday called for justice in the death of a black man in Minneapolis police custody that has inspired days-long, citywide protests.

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Rudy Giuliani calls for resignations of mayor of Minneapolis, governor of Minnesota

Don't elect progressive Democrats if you want to be safe, says former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on 'Hannity.'

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SpaceX rocket lifts off on historic private crewed flight

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying two veteran NASA astronauts lifted off on Saturday on an historic first private crewed flight into space. The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket with astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley aboard blasted off smoothly in a cloud of orange flames and smoke from Launch Pad 39A at Florida's Kennedy Space Center for the 19-hour voyage to the International Space Station.

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Will Trump dispute the 2020 election results? His tweets this week suggest so

Trump’s attack on mail-in ballots raise the possibility that, if he loses in November, he would reject the validity of the voteUnhinged as it may be for the president to accuse, without a scintilla of evidence, a morning television host of murder, that particular conspiracy theory was not the most disturbing accusation to issue from Trump’s Twitter feed this week. No, that prize goes to his tweet from 26 May, claiming:> There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed … This will be a Rigged Election. No way!The president’s defamation of Joe Scarborough is no more than an extreme version of something we have seen throughout Trump’s tenure in office: his ability to deflect attention from one colossal misstep by simply committing a fresh outrage. The fact that even a handful of Republicans have expressed mild regret at Trump’s bizarre accusation only underscores that it has served its instrumental purpose. For the moment, the news cycle is consumed not with the fact that 100,000 Americans have died in a pandemic that the White House recklessly insisted posed no threat; instead, all attention is riveted on the spectacle of a sitting president accusing an opponent in the “lame stream media” of homicide. Trump’s attack on mail-in ballots, by contrast, is far more ominous. Here, the president is defaming not an individual but the integrity of our electoral process, confidence in which is a key to a stable democratic order. And the purpose of this attack is not distraction but pointedly political. The politics of disenfranchisement has emerged as a staple of Republican electoral strategy, and the reasons for targeting mail-in ballots are not hard to divine. The bulk of such ballots are cast in urban areas, where Democratic voters predominate, and as the nation continues to grapple with the Covid-19 outbreak, we can expect millions of urban voters to cast mail-in ballots in November as a hedge against the obvious health risks that come with in-person voting. Trump’s tweets serve, then, the politics of voter suppression. But that is only one aspect of the dark logic behind the tweets. Far more alarmingly, Trump’s attack on the reliability of mail-in votes establishes the groundwork for a radical refusal to acknowledge electoral defeat. In contrast to ballots cast in-person on 3 November, mail-in ballots often cannot be fully counted until several days after the election. This means that in a very tight race, the results announced on election day may be no more than provisional; and second, because of the demographic patterns I mentioned above, the full counting of ballots may well swing the outcome in the favor of Democratic candidates. The 2018 Arizona senatorial race witnessed a particularly dramatic case of this effect, dubbed the “blue shift” by election law expert Ned Foley. On election day, Martha McSally, the Republican candidate, enjoyed a 15,000-vote lead over her Democratic rival, Kyrsten Sinema. By the time the state’s canvassing had ended, however, McSally found herself defeated by Sinema by some 56,000 votes – a swing of 71,000 thousand votes. Trump is more than familiar with the phenomenon of blue shift. Also in 2018, when the senatorial race in Florida saw Republican Rick Scott’s lead over Bill Nelson shrink from over 56,000 on election day to an uncomfortable 10,000 by the time the state completed its canvass, Trump had urgently tweeted:> The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott…in that large numbers of ballots showed up from nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged. An honest vote count is no longer possible—ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night! Recall that in 2016, Trump’s margin of victory over Hillary Clinton was a combined 70,000 votes in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. It is more than possible that Trump could narrowly capture these states on 3 November, only to see his victory vanish as mail-in ballots are tallied in the days following the election. His tweet from Tuesday tells us how he would respond to such a loss. He will reject it as a product of fraud. That is an eventuality – or even a certainty – that the nation must prepare itself for. * Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Electoral Meltdown in 2020, published by Twelve/Hachette on 19 May. Douglas holds the James J Grosfeld chair in law, jurisprudence and social thought, at Amherst College, Massachusetts, and is also a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US.

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Ai Weiwei says new security law is the end of Hong Kong

Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei believes the newly passed national security law for Hong Kong augurs the end for the semi-autonomous city. Ai was arrested at Beijing's airport in April 2011 and held for 81 days without explanation during a wider crackdown on dissent that coincided with the international ferment of the Arab Spring. In an interview with The Associated Press, Ai said he identifies with Hong Kong’s democracy movement and has been working on a documentary about protests that began a year ago, at times erupting into tear gas-shrouded combat between police and demonstrators.

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Letters to the Editor: People who insist on going to church should quarantine themselves

One's right to attend church ends at the tip of another person's nose. People who flout social distancing rules by going to church should quarantine.

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Trump's 'looting' and 'shooting' remark draws outrage from all sides

Trump attempted to walk back his comments on Friday afternoon but not before receiving condemnation from a far-right group and a pop star.

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U.S. CDC reports total of 1,737,950 coronavirus cases, 102,785 deaths

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by the new coronavirus, as of 4 p.m. EDT on May 29 versus its previous report released on Friday. The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

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SpaceX heading for ISS on historic private crewed flight

A SpaceX rocket carrying two veteran NASA astronauts was headed for the International Space Station on Saturday on the first ever crewed flight by a private company, ushering in a new era in space travel. The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket with astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley aboard blasted off flawlessly in a cloud of bright orange flame and smoke from Florida's Kennedy Space Center for the 19-hour voyage to the orbiting space station. "Let's light this candle," Hurley, the spacecraft mission commander, told SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California, before liftoff at 3:22 pm (1922 GMT) from NASA's fabled Launch Pad 39A.

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Warrant: Police find remains of second child in yard

The remains of a second child that belonged to a Tennessee couple facing abuse charges have been found buried in a yard, court records said. A search warrant affidavit says police recovered the remains of a boy from a Knox County property where Michael and Shirley Gray lived until about 2016, news outlets reported on Friday. Police began searching the property after finding the body of a girl buried under a barn at the Gray's current home in nearby Roane County.

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Twitter flags Trump tweet on Minneapolis protests for 'glorifying violence'

The social media platform added a warning to his tweet encouraging violence against unarmed civilians protesting the death of George Floyd.

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'If you say you can't breathe, you're breathing': A Mississippi mayor defended the officer who stood on George Floyd's neck

Petal, Mississippi, Mayor Hal Marx tweeted Floyd likely "died of overdose or heart attack" and that Minneapolis police are being "crucified."

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Saturday, 30 May 2020

Why India must battle the shame of period stain

Award-winning photographer Niraj Gera takes on stigma surrounding menstruation in India.

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Photos of mass graves in Brazil show the stark toll of the coronavirus, as experts predict that it will surpass 125,000 deaths by August

Despite the growing number of coronavirus cases and deaths in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro has refused to impose a lockdown.

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Team Biden on Klobuchar: ‘We Need to Avoid Her’

In recent weeks, Sen. Amy Klobuchar has positioned herself as a leading contender in the race to join former Vice President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket. But growing civil unrest in her home state of Minnesota in response to the death of an unarmed black man at the hands of a white police officer—and renewed scrutiny of her record as the top prosecutor in the state’s largest county—appears to have severely hampered her ambition to be the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee.“Vertiginous,” a campaign adviser said in a one-word text, describing Klobuchar’s fall in the rankings of potential running mates.The three-term senator’s drop has been so swift that a planned Minnesota digital event with Dr. Jill Biden and coronavirus first-responders scheduled for Friday was pulled, according to a source familiar with the campaign’s deliberations, “partly because we need to avoid her.” According to a Biden campaign official, all of Dr. Biden’s virtual events on Friday were canceled “because of George Floyd’s tragic killing and the events that followed” and the “decision had nothing to do with the fundraiser Dr. Biden was scheduled to participate in with Sen. Klobuchar.” Still, top figures in Bidenworld couldn’t help but remark on the convergence of events in Minnesota at a pivotal moment for Klobuchar. “This is very tough timing for Amy Klobuchar, who I respect so much,” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), who was instrumental to Biden’s victory in the first-in-the-South primary, said in a phone call with reporters on Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported. “The timing is tough.”The death of George Floyd—a 46-year-old black man who appeared to suffocate as now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck for at least eight minutes—has ignited days of protests in the Twin Cities, as demonstrators have called for Chauvin and three other since-fired police officers to be charged with Floyd’s death. On Thursday night, protesters set a police station on fire while chanting “I can’t breathe,” the same words Floyd spoke repeatedly as Chauvin kneeled on his neck as a bystander recorded the episode on their phone. On Friday, Chauvin was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter for his role in Floyd’s death.As Minnesota’s governor has called in the National Guard to quell the uprising and President Donald Trump has called for the “shooting” of looters who have damaged private property during the protests, criminal justice advocates have pointed to Klobuchar’s seven-year tenure as Hennepin County attorney, when she declined to bring charges against numerous police officers who had been accused of police brutality. Instead, she preferred the use of grand juries to weigh charges, a process that usually obscured proceedings and tended to favor police.Recent anger at Klobuchar has focused on a shooting of a civilian involving Chauvin in October 2006, months before Klobuchar would leave the Hennepin County Attorney’s office for the U.S. Senate. On social media Thursday night, progressives seized on reports that Klobuchar declined to prosecute Chauvin in the case. Her successor, Mike Freeman, issued a statement Friday saying he, not Klobuchar, was responsible for Chauvin’s prosecution, which resulted in a grand jury declining to charge the officer. Klobuchar’s Prosecutor Past Could Haunt Her Presidential BidAppearing on MSNBC Friday, Klobuchar hit back against those reports, saying “this idea that I somehow declined a case, which has been reported on some news blogs and then sent out on the Internet, against this officer is absolutely false.” She also bristled at questions from Andrea Mitchell about whether she should drop out of contention for the VP nod. “This is Joe Biden’s decision,” Klobuchar said. “He will make that decision. He’ll decide who he’s considering.”Klobuchar has been under consideration for the running-mate role practically since she dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Biden in early March. That endorsement kickstarted a coalescing behind the former vice president of nearly all of his former rivals for the nomination, helping Biden regain frontrunner status after a series of blistering losses in early-voting states; he openly credited Klobuchar with his surprise win in Minnesota’s primary. Klobuchar has since been a visible surrogate for Biden’s campaign, hosting million-dollar fundraisers and appearing with other campaign surrogates regularly. Those anxiously waiting on Biden’s decision—particularly Democrats of color—see the unrest in Minnesota clearly impacting Klobuchar’s case to be the strongest possible companion for the former vice president. “I do think the past couple of days adds several more layers of complications for a potential Amy Klobuchar pick,” said Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina-based Democratic strategist. “The events that are happening around us also tend to fertilize the soil more for an African-American woman to be planted and nurtured as the VP pick.”“I don’t think we can afford to have really any division or confusion, anger or frustration, within the party,” said Seawright.Rashad Robinson, executive director for the civil rights advocacy group Color of Change, has been critical of Klobuchar’s record when she was running. He didn’t say Klobuchar should not be considered as a nominee but told The Daily Beast her explanations this week of her record prosecuting police brutality cases have been “far too cute” and “have seemed to avoid responsibility at a time when we know DAs were not doing their jobs.” “To look us in the eyes and pretend we don’t know what’s happening,” said Robinson, “is a disappointment.”Meanwhile, at a “Women for Biden” fundraiser on Friday afternoon, Jill Biden appeared alongside Rep. Val Demings of Florida, a former Orlando police chief and another contender for the vice presidential slot. Demings, a favorite of Jill Biden’s who has been increasingly mentioned as a potential running mate, said during the event that the nation’s police officers must “take a serious look at ourselves as law enforcement agencies, not just Minnesota but throughout the nation.”Perhaps Klobuchar’s greatest weakness as a presidential candidate—and as a vice presidential candidate—stems from her inability to reach and win over voters of color.The senator’s years as a big-city prosecutor in the tough-on-crime 1990s and 2000s heavily influenced that struggle, as scrutiny on her record revealed very little to like for a Democratic primary electorate more attuned than ever to issues of race and criminal justice.Those issues ended up literally punctuating Klobuchar’s presidential bid: the day before she dropped out of the race, on March 1, protesters overtook a Twin Cities rally for her campaign as they chanted for justice for a man named Myron Burrell. In 2003, Burrell—a teenager accused of murder—was aggressively prosecuted by Klobuchar’s office, and was sentenced to life in prison. A February investigation by the Associated Press, however, revealed that the case against Burrell was built on shaky evidence. After the story broke, the Hennepin County Attorney’s office began a review process—which Klobuchar supported—but the revelation outraged criminal justice reform advocates, some of whom called on the senator to drop out of the presidential race.Over her yearlong presidential candidacy, Klobuchar frequently found herself explaining these aspects of her record and trying to persuade Democratic voters that she’d approach things differently now. But that didn’t translate into increased support from black voters: a January Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that 62 percent of black Democratic primary voters didn’t know who Klobuchar was or had no opinion of her. The amount of support she got from black voters was represented by an asterisk—unmeasurable. In South Carolina, the primary’s barometer for black support, Klobuchar notched 3.2 percent of the overall vote, lagging behind leading candidates. Exit polls found that just 1 percent of black voters—who made up more than half of the primary electorate—backed Klobuchar.In responding to the unrest in Minnesota, a low point even in her home state’s long history of racial tension, Klobuchar has appeared animated by criticisms of her record and of her past outreach to voters of color. The senator’s response to the Floyd killing was quick: She called for an investigation into it and declared “Justice must be served for this man, justice must be served for our community, and justice must be served for our country.” But she took criticism from activists for the statement’s phrasing; for example, it didn’t state explicitly that he had been killed by a police officer.On MSNBC Friday from Minneapolis, Klobuchar was more direct. “Anyone that watched that video of George Floyd’s life literally evaporating in front of our eyes as he’s trying to breathe while that police officer had a knee on his neck, is something that’s etched in the minds of everyone in our state and everyone in our country,” she said. In that interview, Klobuchar also took pains to note that she was busy on the ground meeting with civil rights leaders in Minneapolis, mentioning in particular the Rev. Al Sharpton, in a show of stepped-up outreach to the black community. The New York Times reported that the head of the Minneapolis NAACP—which had called for Klobuchar to exit the presidential race over the Burrell news—received a surprise call from the senator to talk about Floyd’s death. Biden, of course, has faced pressure from progressive and minority groups to select a person of color as his running mate, reflecting how essential voters of color—a core constituency of the Democratic Party—are to Biden’s chances to defeat Trump in November. Biden, said Color of Change’s Robinson, will “have to explain to the public why he thought, in this moment, that Sen. Klobuchar was the best candidate” to run with him, if he continues to consider her.In livestreamed remarks on Friday, the person whom Klobuchar has said will make the ultimate decision about her future on the ticket told viewers that the unrest in Minneapolis “will require those of us who sit in positions of influence to finally deal with the abuse of power.”“With our complacency, with our silence, we are complicit in perpetuating these cycles of violence,” Biden said. “Nothing about this will be easy or comfortable. But if we simply allow this wound to scab over once more, without treating the underlying injury, we will never truly heal.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Double murder suspect arrested after multistate manhunt

The manhunt for the 23-year-old college senior had spanned Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

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Nissan to close Indonesia, Spain auto plants after losses

Yokohama-based Nissan’s chief executive, Makoto Uchida, said Thursday that its European production will be centered at its British plant in Sunderland. Manufacturing now based in Indonesia will move to Thailand, as the Japanese automaker cuts global production by 20%. Nissan Motor Co. reported a 671.2 billion yen, or $6.2 billion, loss for the fiscal year that ended in March, its first annual loss since 2009, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

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In broadside against China, Trump moves toward ending Hong Kong privileges

President Donald Trump on Friday ordered his administration to begin the process of eliminating special U.S. treatment for Hong Kong to punish China, but stopped short of calling an immediate end to privileges that have helped the territory remain a global financial center. In making the announcement, Trump used some of his toughest rhetoric yet against China, saying Beijing had broken its word over Hong Kong's autonomy by moving to impose new national security legislation and the territory no longer warranted U.S. economic privileges. At a White House news conference, Trump called this a tragedy for the people of Hong Kong, China and the world, having already attacked Beijing over the coronavirus pandemic, which began in China.

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Moscow is painting over the Russian markings on its jet fighters and sending them to fight a proxy war against Turkey in Libya

The Russian government has consistently denied directly intervening in the Libyan conflict. The photos show otherwise.

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Coronavirus: GPs not told when patients removed from 'shielding lists'

This has caused confusion and anxiety among extremely vulnerable people staying at home.

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Coronavirus: Renters struggle most with pandemic costs, report says

Private renters are struggling with housing costs more than mortgage-payers, new research suggests.

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The Papers: Weekend lockdown warnings and 'border farce'

Concerns over the public sticking to rules ahead of restrictions being lifted dominate Saturday's papers.

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Germany's Merkel rejects Trump invite to attend G7 summit in Washington: Politico

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has refused to accept U.S. President Donald Trump's invitation to attend an envisaged summit of the Group of Seven (G7) in the United States, Politico reported on Friday.

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Trump cutting U.S. ties with World Health Organization over virus

The United States will end its relationship with the World Health Organization over the body's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday, accusing the U.N. agency of becoming a puppet of China.

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White House encourages hydroxychloroquine use for coronavirus again

Speaking during a press briefing on Thursday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany strongly endorsed the “prophylactic” use of hydroxychloroquine: that is, to prevent contracting the coronavirus.

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Ex-officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck charged with murder

The suspect's knee was on his neck for more than 8 1/2 minutes, including 2 1/2 minutes after he had passed out, according to a criminal complaint.

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Can you contract coronavirus from a surface or object?

The CDC says that it may be possible to contract COVID-19 by coming in contact with a surface or object that has the virus on it, but you're much more likely to get the coronavirus through person-to-person transmission.

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Fox News Star Geraldo Rivera Unloads on Trump: ‘What Is This, 6th Grade?!’

Geraldo Rivera delivered one of the harshest condemnations of Donald Trump ever aired on Fox News Friday afternoon when he appeared on The Five and took the president to task for threatening Minneapolis protesters with violence.After first criticizing Democrats for “studiously avoiding” the looting and vandalism by “anarchists” in that city following the police killing of George Floyd, Rivera pivoted to attack Trump directly. “But the other thing is, the president, in these tweets, ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts,’ c’mon!” Rivera said, referring to the tweet that Twitter hid from Trump’s timeline because it broke its rules on “glorifying violence.” “What is this, 6th grade?” he asked. “You don’t put gasoline on the fire. That’s not calming anybody. Who are you daring?” Rivera mocked the idea that any demonstrators would stop what they’re doing because Donald Trump tweeted that they might get shot. “That’s not going to happen!” he exclaimed. “All he does is diminish himself.” Rivera, who has at times both admitted that Trump is a “racist” and called him a “civil rights leader,” went on to say that he “laments” the “recklessness of his tempestuous nature when it comes to Twitter.” In response to Trump’s accusations that Twitter is trying to censor him, the pundit called on the president to “self-censor himself.” Trump attempted to walk back his incendiary comments in a pair of tweets on Friday, claiming that he was just worried about the safety of the protesters. “It’s very simple, nobody should have any problem with this other than the haters, and those looking to cause trouble on social media,” the president wrote, adding, “Honor the memory of George Floyd!” ‘Fox & Friends’ Confronts Kayleigh McEnany With Chris Wallace CriticismRead 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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Joshua Wong: Hong Kong Cannot Prosper Without Autonomy

The prosperity of Hong Kong is based on its autonomy, not Beijing’s dictatorship, writes Hong Kong activists Joshua Wong and Glacier Kwong.

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One chart shows a noticeable correlation between how late a country started its coronavirus lockdown and the number of excess deaths

Analysis from the Financial Times has shown that the number of excess deaths correlates to when a country decided to lock down.

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Florida governor asks court to stay felon voting ruling

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis gave notice on Friday that he will appeal a federal judge's decision on voting rights for felons, while asking for a stay on the ruling that appeared to clear the way for hundreds of thousands of citizens to vote in a crucial 2020 state. The law in question, introduced by the state's Republican-controlled Senate last year, requires convicted felons in Florida to pay any court costs, fines, fees and restitution to victims before their right to vote could be restored. Opponents argue the law goes against the wishes of Florida voters who approved an amendment to the state's constitution in 2018 to grant voting rights to felons who served their time and were not convicted of murder or sex crimes.

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Double murder suspect arrested after multistate manhunt

The manhunt for the 23-year-old college senior had spanned Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

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Police officers around the country sound off on Minneapolis policing that led to George Floyd death

Law enforcement officials around the country are publicly condemning the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who was seen on video gasping for breath as a white officer held him down with a knee on his neck for close to eight minutes.

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Exclusive: U.S. warns governments, firms against aiding Iran fuel shipments to Venezuela - envoy

Seeking to deter further shipments of Iranian fuel to Venezuela, the Trump administration has quietly warned foreign governments, seaports, shipping companies and insurers that they could face stiff U.S. sanctions if they aid the tanker flotilla, the U.S. envoy on Venezuela told Reuters on Friday. Elliott Abrams, Washington’s special representative on Venezuela, said the pressure campaign targeting heavily sanctioned U.S. foes Iran and Venezuela was being waged “to be sure everyone recognizes this would be a very dangerous transaction to assist.”

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41 million jobs lost; homebound gear up to get out, way out

Following are developments Thursday related to the national and global response, the work place and the spread of the virus. — American Airlines will cut its 17,000 management and support staff by 30%, about 5,100 jobs.

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Friday, 29 May 2020

Why India must battle the shame of period stain

Award-winning photographer Niraj Gera takes on stigma surrounding menstruation in India.

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Mitt Romney calls out ‘vile’ Donald Trump murder accusations against ‘psycho’ Joe Scarborough

“Never Trumper” Mitt Romney stepped in to defend his friend and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough on Wednesday after the president renewed his Twitter feud against the MSNBC host.The Utah senator called the accusations vile and baseless after Donald Trump escalated his campaign against “psycho Joe” over the death of a former staffer Lori Klausutis, who died in Mr Scarborough’s office when he was a Florida congressman, also empathising with Klausutis’ husband.

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Russia slams 'dangerous' US foreign policy moves

Russia said on Thursday the United States was acting in a dngerous and unpredictable way, after Washington withdrew from a key military treaty and moved to ramp up pressure on Iran. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova made the comments after Washington announced it would end sanctions waivers for nations that remain in a nuclear accord signed with Iran.

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