| Republican lawmakers accused of hiding positive COVID-19 test result from Democrats, who call it 'immoral' Posted: 28 May 2020 11:54 AM PDT  Democratic lawmakers in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives are demanding answers after learning that one of their Republican colleagues tested positive for COVID-19, shared that information with GOP leadership, but never informed them.
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| White House encourages hydroxychloroquine use for coronavirus again Posted: 28 May 2020 02:03 PM PDT  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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| Caution on China from EU, West's 'soft underbelly' Posted: 29 May 2020 09:44 AM PDT  After a video conference with 27 foreign ministers, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed "grave concern" but he could threaten no sanctions and said planning for an EU-China summit would continue. In fact, Borrell said, only one of the European countries even raised the possibly of sanctions -- a diplomatic source told AFP this was Sweden -- and he said European investment in China was not in question.
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| Why the officers fired for the George Floyd killing could ultimately get their jobs back Posted: 28 May 2020 07:19 AM PDT  Officers in the US are frequently rehired after termination for misconduct – and it increases the likelihood of abuse and killings by police, experts sayThe four Minneapolis officers involved in the killing of George Floyd were swiftly fired after footage of his death went viral.But that doesn't mean they're permanently losing their badges. Officers in the US are frequently rehired after their termination for misconduct, a problem that experts say increases the likelihood of abuse and killings by police.Despite the decision on Tuesday to fire the policeman who knelt on Floyd's neck for nine minutes, along with three other officers at the scene, it's uncertain if the officers will face long-term repercussions. On the contrary, some civil rights advocates warn the men could ultimately avoid legal and financial consequences, continue working in other police departments or even win back their positions.That's how policing works across America, researchers and activists said, and it's a process that can drag victims' families through years of court proceedings and media attention, with minimal relief at the end. > The officers are afforded every opportunity to clear their name and regain everything they lost> > Adanté Pointer"The officers are afforded every opportunity to clear their name and regain everything they lost – their reputation, their status and their jobs," said Adanté Pointer, a California lawyer who represents police brutality victims. "The family has to endure disappointment after disappointment."Floyd's death on Monday, now under FBI investigation, was the latest example of a black American dying at the hands of a white police officer.Footage captured Derek Chauvin, an officer, kneeling on top of Floyd, 46, as he lay on the ground shouting "I cannot breathe" and "Don't kill me!" until he became motionless. Bystanders pleaded for Chauvin to stop. Police were responding to a call of a possible forged check, and authorities on Wednesday identified the other terminated officers as Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J Alexander Kueng.The footage sparked widespread condemnation and massive protests marked by rubber bullets and teargas. Minneapolis' mayor, Jacob Frey, has said the "officer failed in the most basic human sense". Floyd's family has called for murder charges, though in the US prosecution and conviction of officers is rare, since the law gives officers wide latitude to kill, and prosecutors often have close ties with police.Prompt termination is also uncommon – and often doesn't last. Officers can appeal firings, typically supported by powerful police unions. The outcome is frequently decided by arbiters in secretive hearings. A recent analysis by a local Minnesota paper, the Pioneer Press, found arbiters reversed 46% of police terminations in the last five years. Police chiefs across the US have publicly complained that the process forces them to put officers back on the street after firing them for egregious conduct such as unjustified killings, sexual abuse and lying.When officers are rehired, "it says they have a license to kill", said Cat Brooks, an activist in Oakland, where transit police killed Oscar Grant in 2009. "If they killed this time, they've often killed before or have a history of problematic use of force." In one Bay Area city with high rates of police violence, there are numerous officers who have been involved in more than one fatal shooting of a civilian. If the fired officers in Minneapolis don't win their jobs back, "I think they'll quietly be invited to work in other law enforcement departments", Brooks predicted. Some police departments also knowingly hire officers who were fired in other jurisdictions, said Roger Goldman, an emeritus law professor at Saint Louis University and expert on police licensing. That's often because the departments are located in smaller cities with tight budgets and can pay a lower salary to an officer who was terminated. "They are so strapped for cash, so they hire you," Goldman said. The Cleveland officer who was fired after fatally shooting 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014 was hired by a small Ohio village police department four years later. His new employer defended the decision, noting the officer was never charged.The Louisiana officer who killed Alton Sterling in 2016 as he was selling CDs outside a convenience store was eventually fired in 2018. But last year, the city reached a settlement with the officer that retracted the firing and allowed him to resign. "It's really devastating. You took someone's life," Quinyetta McMillon, the mother of Sterling's son, said in an interview this week. The long process of trying to get justice "impacted us really badly – emotionally, physically, mentally, it was draining", she said, adding that it was painful to think of the obstacles Floyd's family will face moving forward, even with the terminations. If fired officers were barred from serving as police, "it would help save a lot of lives", McMillon said.Sometimes police chiefs unknowingly hire officers with misconduct histories because of laws that allow officers to keep disciplinary records secret. Other times, they aren't running thorough background checks, or they determine an officer's record would not be a liability, said Ben Grunwald, a Duke University law professor.In a study Grunwald co-authored last month for the Yale Law Journal, he and another researcher found that an average of roughly 1,100 officers working in Florida each year have previously been fired. They tended to move to agencies with fewer resources and slightly larger communities of color. The fired officers were also twice as likely to be fired a second time compared to officers who have never been fired. The consequences of this rehiring are severe, said L Chris Stewart, a civil rights attorney based in Atlanta. "If you don't fear losing your job and you know you have all these different immunities that will protect you, you know you will get away with [misconduct]." He said it was hard not to think of this dynamic when watching the video of the Minneapolis killing where the officer ignored Floyd's cries for help. An attorney for Chauvin did not respond to a request for comment, and the other officers could not be reached. Some advocates have pushed for a publicly accessible national database that documents officers' disciplinary histories, which could help prevent re-hirings that endanger the public. "You can look up what a doctor has done, what a realtor has done, what you and I have done as members of the public, but you have no way to look into the background of a person with a badge and a gun," said Pointer.Marc McCoy, whose brother Willie McCoy was killed by police in Vallejo, California last year, said it was hard when the family learned that the officers involved had previously killed other civilians and been the subject of excessive force complaints. "These laws that you think will lead to the officers' arrest are actually there to protect them," he said.
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| Long Island serial killer victim IDed 2 decades later Posted: 28 May 2020 11:13 AM PDT  A woman whose skeletal remains were found along a suburban New York beach highway, in an area where body parts of 10 other people had been strewn, was identified as a Philadelphia escort who went missing two decades ago, police said Thursday. Suffolk County police said the woman previously known as "Jane Doe No. 6" was identified through genetic genealogy technology as Valerie Mack, who also went by Melissa Taylor and was last seen in 2000 near Atlantic City, New Jersey. Determining the victim's identity has brought clarity to a long-running Long Island mystery that attracted national headlines, was featured on true-crime TV shows and was the subject of a recent Netflix film, Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart said.
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| Coronavirus quietly started spreading as early as January, CDC says Posted: 29 May 2020 10:35 AM PDT  By early February, there was "cryptic circulation" of the virus.
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| Can you contract coronavirus from a surface or object? Posted: 29 May 2020 03:48 PM PDT  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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| Greece to open airports to arrivals from 29 countries from June 15 Posted: 29 May 2020 07:42 AM PDT  Greece said Friday it would reopen its airports in Athens and Thessaloniki to arrivals from 29 countries from June 15, the start of the tourist season. Visitors would be allowed to fly into Greece from 16 EU countries, including Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Czech Republic, Baltic countries, Cyprus and Malta, the tourism ministry said in a statement. Outside the European Union, holidaymakers from Switzerland, Norway, and neighbouring Balkan countries such as Albania, Serbia and North Macedonia will be allowed to land at Greece's main airports from June 15.
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| City of Moscow revises up its coronavirus death toll for April after criticism Posted: 29 May 2020 05:34 AM PDT  The city of Moscow has issued a revised version of its coronavirus death toll for April after criticism of its initial figures, more than doubling the original tally by using what it said was an alternative counting method. The city initially reported 636 coronavirus-related deaths for April, a figure many times lower than other comparable cities with similar outbreaks. In its revised version, Moscow's Health Department said in a statement that the toll was 1,561 when it included 756 people diagnosed with the coronavirus who died of other causes and 169 people suspected of having the virus despite testing negative.
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| Defense secretary says coronavirus vaccine will be available within months, but experts skeptical Posted: 28 May 2020 01:30 PM PDT  Pentagon leaders expressed strong confidence Thursday that a coronavirus vaccine will be available by January, and possibly as early as this fall — claims that were met with skepticism by scientific experts.
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| Welp, SpaceX's Starship Prototype Just Blew Up Posted: 29 May 2020 01:52 PM PDT  Rocketry is hard.
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| Five UK mercenaries offered $150,000 each to fly helicopters for Gen Haftar in Libya, say UN Posted: 28 May 2020 09:18 AM PDT  Five British mercenaries involved in an operation to fly assault helicopters for Libya's renegade General Khalifa Haftar were offered bounties of up to $150,000 each for their role in the daring plot which went awry. The men, comprised of former Royal Marines and RAF personnel, were among 20 foreign mercenaries who traveled to Libya last June in an operation to pilot assault helicopters and speed boats to intercept Turkish ships ferrying weapons to Haftar's opponents – the UN-backed government in Tripoli. A source with knowledge of the secret UN report which revealed the plot told The Daily Telegraph that the men involved were believed on sums of "$30,000 to $50,000 a month, or $20,000 to $40,000 per month depending on whether you were pilot or aircrewman". "It was a three-month contract". The Telegraph can reveal that the UN investigation concluded that the operation was led by Steven Lodge, a former South African Air Force officer who also served in the British military. Mr. Lodge, who now resides in Scotland, is a director of Umbra Aviation, a South-Africa based company that has recently supplied helicopters to the Government of Mozambique, where the country is battling a jihadist insurgency in its restive north. Speaking to The Telegraph over the phone, Mr. Lodge flatly denied the chronicle of events detailed in the UN report. "All the info is incorrect - the whole facts behind the whole thing," he said.
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| Hong Kong on borrowed time as China pushes for more control Posted: 29 May 2020 06:00 AM PDT  Hong Kong has been living on borrowed time ever since the British made it a colony nearly 180 years ago, and all the more so after Beijing took control in 1997 and granted it autonomous status. China's passage of a national security law for the city is the latest sign that the 50-year "one country, two systems" arrangement that allowed Hong Kong to keep its own legal, financial and trade regimes is perishable. China's communist leaders have been preparing for decades to take full control of the glittering capitalist oasis, while building up their own trade and financial centers to take Hong Kong's place.
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| Minneapolis mayor responds after night of protests and violence in wake of George Floyd's death Posted: 28 May 2020 11:23 AM PDT  At a press conference on Thursday, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said protests and unrest after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man seen on video pinned to the ground by the neck while being arrested by a white police officer, were the result of "built-up anger and sadness" in the black community over the past 400 years.
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| IKEA manager in Poland charged for firing worker over anti-gay comments Posted: 28 May 2020 11:27 AM PDT  The manager was charged with religious discrimination for firing an employee who called homosexuality "an abomination" on the company's internal website.
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| Twitter fact-checked a Chinese government spokesman after he suggested the US brought COVID-19 to Wuhan Posted: 28 May 2020 04:23 AM PDT  Twitter applied the label to the tweets after being questioned by the New York Post over a potential double standard, The Post reports.
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| 'If you say you can't breathe, you're breathing': A Mississippi mayor who defended the officer who stood on George Floyd's neck has been asked to resign Posted: 29 May 2020 10:57 AM PDT  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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| Ethiopian army ‘shot man dead because phone rang’ - Amnesty Posted: 29 May 2020 07:28 AM PDT  It was one of several incidents in a crackdown in Oromia in 2019, Amnesty International says.
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| ‘Whatever It Takes’: Chaos Surges Across the Country Posted: 29 May 2020 05:34 PM PDT  MINNEAPOLIS—Hours after a now-fired Minneapolis cop was charged with murder in the death of 46-year-old George Floyd on Friday, protests exploded in major U.S. cities across the country, with demonstrators demanding that all police officers involved be brought to justice—fast.In New York City, where dozens were arrested in Manhattan a day earlier, hundreds of people swarmed to meet police officers outside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Around 7:30 p.m., cops unleashed pepper spray on the chanting crowd.In Atlanta, thousands of demonstrators marched to protest Floyd's death, a largely peaceful gathering until clashes with police erupted outside CNN Center.Pepper spray was used there, too, and as the standoff grew more tense, demonstrators climbed up on the CNN sign and defaced it. Videos from the scene also showed protesters apparently smashing up empty police vehicles and setting them on fire. In Boston, police holding wooden bats stood guard outside the Roxbury station as hundreds of protesters took to the streets. And in Houston, hours after a peaceful rally, tension was in the air—with a police car being vandalized and shoving matches breaking out.Protesters in Houston also blocked an entrance ramp to Interstate 45, marched on U.S. 59, and reportedly chased away a woman spotted carrying a rifle near City Hall. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo was later quoted by ABC 13 saying he intends to arrest the woman for attempting to start a riot. Even the White House was on edge amid protests, as the Secret Service briefly imposed a lockdown late Friday when demonstrations broke out nearby. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, the National Guard was out in force and curfews were set to take effect in hopes of quelling days of sprawling, destructive unrest. Rubber bullets were used and warning shots were fired by the Guard in Minneapolis shortly before 8 p.m. But activists were resolute that one set of criminal charges wasn't even close to enough. After all, three other cops were fired in connection with Floyd's death on Monday."I don't plan on entertaining any curfew," 33-year-old Joseph Bennett of St. Paul told The Daily Beast. "Ideally, things shouldn't go down like this. But justice hasn't been fully served yet."The looting, fire, that's what gets things heard," he added. "Whatever it takes."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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| Britain pushing US to form 5G club of nations to cut out Huawei Posted: 29 May 2020 10:15 AM PDT  Britain said Friday it was pushing the United States to form a club of 10 nations that could develop its own 5G technology and reduce dependence on China's controversial telecoms giant Huawei. The issue is expected to feature at a G7 summit that US President Donald Trump will host next month against the backdrop of a fierce confrontation with China that has been exacerbated by a global blame game over the spread of the novel coronavirus. Britain has allowed the Chinese global leader in 5G technology to build up to 35 percent of the infrastructure necessary to roll out its new speedy data network.
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| Officials cite mistakes as CDC removes coronavirus guidance Posted: 29 May 2020 02:32 PM PDT  U.S. health officials removed some coronavirus reopening tips for religious organizations only hours after posting them late last week, deleting guidance that discouraged choir gatherings and the use of shared communion cups. A federal health official on Friday said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted a version of the guidance on May 22 that had not been cleared by White House officials. The initial guidance posted last week contained most of the same advice that was in a draft drawn up by the CDC more than a month ago and then shelved for weeks by administration officials.
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| China plans to extend curbs on international flights until June 30: U.S. embassy Posted: 29 May 2020 01:54 AM PDT  Chinese civil aviation authorities plan to extend until June 30 their curbs on international flights to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the U.S. embassy in Beijing said in a travel advisory on Friday. China has drastically cut such flights since March to allay concerns over infections brought by arriving passengers. A so-called "Five One" policy allows mainland carriers to fly just one flight a week on one route to any country and foreign airlines to operate just one flight a week to China.
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| Joshua Wong: Hong Kong Cannot Prosper Without Autonomy Posted: 29 May 2020 07:13 AM PDT  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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| Declassified calls show Flynn discussing sanctions with Russian envoy Posted: 29 May 2020 02:11 PM PDT  Incoming DNI John Ratcliffe released the already declassified call summaries on Friday.
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| Peter Manfredonia, the 23-year-old college student suspected of double murder, has been captured after a weeklong, multi-state manhunt Posted: 28 May 2020 05:05 AM PDT  Peter Manfredonia had been on the run since last Friday. He is suspected of killing two men and kidnapping one woman.
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| Joe Biden says he will announce running mate by August Posted: 28 May 2020 04:03 PM PDT  Prominent pollster pushed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to select Elizabeth Warren; Peter Doocy reports.
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| Burundi first lady hospitalised in Nairobi: government sources Posted: 29 May 2020 07:28 AM PDT  Burundi's first lady was in hospital in Nairobi on Friday, after being flown in on a late-night medical flight, according to sources at the airport and in the presidency. First lady Denise Bucumi was flown out of Burundi on a Pilatus plane by the AMREF air ambulance service, according to a source at the Melchior Airport in Bujumbura. A high-ranking government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that Bucumi had gone to Nairobi "for treatment as she caught the coronavirus".
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| Cockpit voice recorder of crashed Pakistani plane recovered Posted: 28 May 2020 06:43 AM PDT  The cockpit voice recorder of the Pakistani airliner that crashed last week was found on Thursday, six days after the passenger plane went down in a crowded neighborhood near the airport in the city of Karachi, killing 97 people on board. The other part of the black box, a flight data recorder, was recovered within hours of the crash. There were only two survivors of the Airbus A320 crash, which was carrying 91 passengers and eight crew members.
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| Will Trump dispute the 2020 election results? His tweets this week suggest so Posted: 29 May 2020 03:34 AM PDT  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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| U.S. high court rejects church challenge to Illinois pandemic rules Posted: 29 May 2020 04:22 PM PDT  The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a challenge to Illinois' restrictions on religious services during the coronavirus pandemic, noting that the state had lifted the limits in question. Two churches in Illinois had asked the court to exempt them from Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker's ban on religious worship services of more than 10 people, arguing that it infringed on the constitutionally protected free exercise of religion.
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| Mississippi mayor under fire over comments on George Floyd's death Posted: 28 May 2020 07:36 AM PDT  Mayor Hal Marx of Petal, Mississippi, said he "didn't see anything unreasonable" in the video of George Floyd's arrest. "If you can talk, you can breathe."
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| Don Lemon Erupts: ‘No One Wants to Hear From the Birther-In-Chief’ on George Floyd Posted: 28 May 2020 06:42 PM PDT  CNN anchor Don Lemon unloaded on President Donald Trump after the Justice Department said Thursday that the president was "actively monitoring" the investigation of four Minneapolis police officers over the death of an unarmed black man, exclaiming that nobody "wants to hear from the Birther-in-Chief."During a press conference late Thursday afternoon, local and federal investigators insisted that they "can't rush" bringing charges for the death of George Floyd, who was pronounced dead after an officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes. With protests raging across the country, U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald said the investigation was a "top priority" for the feds before adding that Trump and Attorney General William Barr were paying high attention to the case.Moments after the presser wrapped up, Lemon blew up over MacDonald invoking the president in this particular situation, bringing up a number of incidents Trump has been involved in over the years that have widely been seen as racist."I know she has a tough job, but guess what, as long as we are being honest right now, nobody wants to hear from the White House or the attorney general right now," Lemon exclaimed. "No one wants to hear from the man who wanted the death penalty to come back for the Central Park Five.""No one wants to hear from the man who says that the former president was not born in this country," the CNN anchor continued, in something of a call-and-response fashion. "No one wants to hear from the man who said there are 'very fine people on both sides.' Do you understand what I am saying?""No one wants to hear from the person that they perceive as contributing to situations like this in this society," Lemon kept going. "Not directly, but allowing people like that to think they can get away from this. No one wants to hear from the Birther-in-Chief, from the 'sons of bitches'-calling person, who says that athletes are kneeling for this very reason."After scolding federal investigators for seemingly having more urgency in telling protesters to calm down than investigating police brutality, Lemon concluded by expressing some solidarity with demonstrators amid the increasingly violent clashes."I understand the anger of the people upset in Minneapolis, Minnesota," he said. "I don't condone the actions. I don't understand the actions, but I understand the anger."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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| Paralysed deaf-mute teenager attempts to rob Brazil jewellery shop holding gun with his feet Posted: 28 May 2020 03:20 PM PDT  A paralysed, deaf and mute teenager in Brazil, allegedly attempted to rob a jewellery store, using a fake gun he aimed with his feet.The incident took place on Monday afternoon, in Canela, Rio Grande Sul, according to the Daily Mail.
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| Indian monkeys snatch coronavirus samples Posted: 29 May 2020 06:05 AM PDT  Monkeys mobbed an Indian health worker and made off with coronavirus test blood samples, spreading fears that the stealing simians could spread the pandemic in the local area. Indian authorities often have to grapple with primates snatching food and even mobile phones. After making off with the three samples earlier this week in Meerut, near the capital New Delhi, the monkeys scampered up nearby trees and one then tried to chew its plunder.
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| Analysis: With a new law for Hong Kong, Beijing makes clear sovereignty is its bottom line Posted: 28 May 2020 09:30 AM PDT  Beijing's bottom line is sovereignty. Hong Kong is a 'purely internal affair that allows no foreign interference,' Chinese government spokesman says.
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| 41 million jobs lost; homebound gear up to get out, way out Posted: 28 May 2020 07:43 AM PDT  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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| More than £3 million in drugs and cash seized in biggest Government-backed assault on county lines gangs Posted: 28 May 2020 12:31 PM PDT  Cash and drugs worth £3 million have been seized by police in the biggest operation against county lines gangs backed by a dedicated Government fund. The campaign - by four forces - saw police make more than 650 arrests, close nearly 140 "deal" lines supplying drugs from cities to suburban and rural towns and seize more than 100 weapons including guns and knives. Some 140 children being exploited by the gangs were also safeguarded in the raids conducted over five months from November to March this year. Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, said: "I am determined to roll up county lines drugs gangs and stop them from terrorising our towns and exploiting our children. "I have seen first-hand the important work the police are doing to tackle county lines, and these impressive results show just how much of an impact our investment is having." The "surge" operations - British Transport Police, the Metropolitan Police, Merseyside Police and West Midlands Police -were funded by £5 million from the Government's £25 million package to tackle county lines. The Met and Merseyside forces closed 131 lines, while the British Transport police made the most arrests at 276 as drug couriers were caught on their way to and from the county drug dealerships. Merseyside seized £1.5 million class A drugs, thought to be predominantly cocaine. Andy Cooke, Merseyside Police Chief Constable, said: "It is vital that we keep up this relentless level of activity targeting criminals and protecting the young and vulnerable who they groom to do their dirty work. "Those responsible for these County Lines bring misery to our local communities through their drug dealing." Met deputy assistant commissioner Graham McNulty, national lead for county lines, said: "This issue is not being tackled in isolation. Dedicated teams in forces across the nation are identifying lines, locating those running them and dismantling their operation entirely. "This work will not cease – it will increase and intensify over the coming months."
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| Third Asian giant 'murder' hornet found in Washington state Posted: 29 May 2020 03:20 PM PDT |
| One of the coldest places on Earth is experiencing a record-breaking heat wave Posted: 29 May 2020 09:46 AM PDT  Heat wave sparks concerns about devastating wildfire season and melting permafrost.
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| Flynn Asked Russian for Alliance Against ‘Radical Islamists’ on Infamous Phone Call Posted: 29 May 2020 03:14 PM PDT  When Donald Trump's national security adviser-designate made his fateful phone calls with the Russian ambassador, the conversations that set in motion his downfall had a goal behind them. Drawing closer to the rival power that interfered in the 2016 election didn't occur for its own sake, transcripts declassified on Friday show, but to create a new Mideast partnership against what retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn saw as "radical Islam." "You know that the strategic goal is stability in the Middle East," the transcripts show Flynn pressing upon Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 23, 2016. "We will not achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other against this radical Islamist crowd. Period. I am very adamant about that." Flynn would later plead guilty – and, later still, seek to reverse his plea – for lying to the FBI in January 2017 about the discussions of U.S. sanctions on Russia that he had with Kislyak on that day and others. But the calls, declassified by former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell and released under the auspices of confirmed successor John Ratcliffe, confirm an overlooked aspect of the Trump team's early outreach to Moscow. The reason why Flynn was keen for Moscow to tamp down its response to the Obama administration's final round of sanctions was to advance a longstanding desire on Flynn's behalf to unite the two nations against a dark vision of Islam that Flynn had come to hold. First on the agenda would be to come to terms on Syria, where both nations had deployed their militaries. It was something Flynn wanted the Pentagon to explore – and something that would lead to an encounter in the Seychelles between an infamous mercenary and the head of a sanctioned Russian fund. John Gleeson Got John Gotti. Now He's Taking on Michael Flynn.Flynn has never particularly hid that he saw Russia as a means to the end of confronting what he variously refers to as "radical Islam," "radical Islamist terror," and "radical Islamic terror." This was Flynn's takeaway after his post-9/11 tenure as the intelligence chief for the Joint Special Operations Command, which made him an instrumental figure in the war on terror. To many of Flynn's military and intelligence contemporaries, that is a hysterical and dangerous view of one of the world's major religions. At the Republican National Convention in 2016, he told Dana Priest of the Washington Post, "That's really where I'm at with Russia. We have a problem with radical Islamism and I actually think that we could work together with them against this enemy. They have a worse problem than we do." He would later put it in harsher terms, comparing Islam to a "malignant cancer" and calling it a "political ideology" that "hides behind this notion of being a religion."On the phone with Flynn in December 2016 – something surreptitiously intercepted by the FBI as a matter of course for the Russian ambassador's conversations – Kislyak saw the leverage Flynn's perspective provided.Talking about Obama's sanctions, which included the expulsion of Russian diplomatic and intelligence personnel, Kislyak told Flynn that the sanctions seemed to indicate the U.S. was unwilling to work together against "terrorist threats." Kislyak added that he viewed Obama sanctions as aimed "not only against Russia, but also against the president elect." Flynn, urging Kislyak to convince Vladimir Putin to take a restrained approach to the sanctions, reiterated: "We definitely have a common enemy. You have a problem with it. We have a problem with it in this country and we definitely have a problem with it in the Middle East."But Flynn's vision of the U.S. and Russia as natural allies against "Islam" overlooked much. Russia was aligned with Iran, to which it had sold powerful anti-aircraft defenses, while Flynn's brief tenure famously put Iran "on notice" that the Trump administration would be aggressive against Tehran. Nor were the Russians concerned about ISIS in Syria. Their concerns were the survival of their client, Bashar Assad, and the transcripts indicate that Kislyak saw in Flynn's outreach an opportunity to get Washington to acquiesce to Assad's continued rule. Their plan came to a head in a Dec. 29, 2016 call. According to the newly declassified transcripts, Kislyak tells Flynn that although Russia wants to work with the new administration on coordinating in the Middle East, it would stand back to wait and see what the Trump team proposed as policy."We had ... significant reservations about the idea of adopting now the principles for the Middle East … that our American colleagues are pushing for. So we are not going to support it to - in the quartet, or in the Security Council. And we have conveyed to our American colleagues," Kislyak tells Flynn on the call. "So in the spirit of full transparency I was asked to inform you as well."But Kislyak offered a way forward: He tells Flynn that Russia's Middle East advisors would be willing to work with a team of "specialists" from the U.S. on discussing new policies and ways to work together. But it would have to happen before the inauguration."Our specialist[s] on the Middle East say that they are very much interested in working with your specialists on these issues and if you're available - not you personally, but your specialists - are available even before the … President Elect ... has his inauguration on the twentieth. We are perfectly available," Kislyak says. "But also, something more specific, we, … as you might have seen, are trying to help... the peace process in Syria."Two weeks later, Erik Prince, the former founder of Blackwater and an active contractor throughout the Middle East region, flew to the remote Seychelles island. In his testimony with Congress in 2018 during the Russia investigation, Prince told lawmakers that he had a chance meeting with a Russian banker. He said he didn't know who he was and that he did not fly to the island to meet him. Mueller Exposes Erik Prince's Lies About His Rendezvous with a Top RussianBut Robert Mueller's report on that investigation showed Prince lied about much of his interactions with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russiand Direct Investment Fund, one of Moscow's sovereign wealth funds. Dmitriev and Prince met in the Seychelles on January 11, 2017, at the Four Seasons Hotel in a bar overlooking the Indian Ocean. George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who advised the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates, was also present. The two discussed cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in the Middle East, particularly in Syria.The Daily Beast previously obtained a memo Dmitriev sent after the meeting summarizing portions of his Seychelles conversation. The memo listed four potential areas of cooperation and called for an action plan to improve U.S.-Russian relations over a one year period.The first bullet point proposed the U.S. and Russia work together on "military coordination and joint actions in Syria against ISIS." It's an idea that appealed to some of the most important players in the early Trump administration; Mike Flynn, Trump's first and famously Kremlin-friendly national security adviser, pushed to expand U.S.-Russian military communications in Syria, a move that may have been illegal and which the Pentagon strenuously resisted as folly. The idea, according to the memo, was to set up a "joint special forces mission where together the U.S. and Russia take out a key ISIS person or place or frees an area then announces it after." Prince, for his part, has publicly supported the prospect of closer U.S.-Russia cooperation on counterterrorism.'You Keep Telling Me That': How Michael Flynn Kissed Up to Russia's AmbassadorThe day after Prince meets Dmitriev in the Seychelles, Flynn speaks with Kislyak on the phone again, according to the transcripts. Kislyak inquires about whether Flynn had assembled a team to send to Astana, Kazakhstan to meet with the Russians about Syria. The U.S. never ended up sending a team. It's unclear why.All this would cost Flynn much. First, in February, he lost his job as national security adviser after he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about what his conversations with Kislyak concerned. Later, he would come under prosecution for his lies to the FBI – something Trump and his allies portray as getting railroaded by an out of control FBI and Robert Mueller, which has now led to the transcript's declassification. It's the center of an ongoing legal battle, as a federal judge is resisting the Justice Department's extraordinary decision to drop charges against a man who has pleaded guilty. And all of that has drifted far from the original geopolitical – in Flynn's view, even civilizational – rationale behind Flynn's secret colloquy with Kislyak. 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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| Minneapolis bus drivers are refusing to help police transport protesters to jail Posted: 29 May 2020 06:30 AM PDT  As tensions between police and protesters in Minneapolis reached a boiling point following the death of George Floyd, the city's bus drivers have made it abundantly clear which side they're on. The driver's union, ATU Local 1005, issued a statement of solidarity on Thursday, with some of its drivers going as far as to refuse to use their buses to help law enforcement transport protesters to jail."As a transit worker and union member, I refuse to transport my class and radical youth," one Minneapolis bus driver, Adam Burch, told the labor publication Payday. "An injury to one is an injury to all. The police murdered George Floyd and the protest against is completely justified and should continue until their demands are met."The union shared Burch's sentiment. "This system has failed all of us in the working class, from the coronavirus to the economic crisis we are facing," their statement read. "But the system has failed people of color and black Americans and black youth more than anyone else."The union added:> In ATU we have a saying: "NOT ONE MORE" when dealing with driver assaults, which in some cases have led to members being murdered while doing their job. We say "NOT ONE MORE" [to the] execution of a black life by the hands of the police. NOT ONE MORE! JUSTICE FOR GEORGE FLOYD! [ATU Local 1005]Payday notes that "it would be illegal for [the union] to call for a wildcat strike," though their statement makes the drivers' opinion heard. Meanwhile, transit workers have also launched a group called "Union Members for JusticeForGeorgeFloyd," assembling those who "are willing to do what we can to ensure our labor is not used to help the Minneapolis Police Department shut down calls for justice."More stories from theweek.com Amy Klobuchar didn't prosecute officer at center of George Floyd's death Minnesota governor says Trump's Minneapolis tweets are 'just not helpful' 'A riot is the language of the unheard,' Martin Luther King Jr. explained 53 years ago
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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 Posted: 27 May 2020 07:51 PM PDT  Despite the growing number of coronavirus cases and deaths in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro has refused to impose a lockdown.
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| Texas Children's Hospital treating several children with inflammatory illness linked to COVID-19 Posted: 28 May 2020 07:28 PM PDT  Some of the children are reportedly in critical condition. Though the illness itself isn't contagious, but could be deadly if left untreated.
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| India quarterly growth worst in two decades as lockdown bites Posted: 29 May 2020 07:50 AM PDT  India's economy grew at its slowest pace in at least two decades last quarter, government data showed Friday, with warnings of far worse to come as it grapples with the fallout of the world's largest coronavirus lockdown. The figures beat even gloomier forecasts, with Bloomberg News predicting growth would slow to just 1.6 percent, but analysts are bracing for a severe contraction in the current quarter after manufacturing, services and consumer spending came to a grinding halt. The shutdown is widely expected to plunge the country into recession, with Goldman Sachs predicting a 45 percent contraction in the April-June quarter from the previous year.
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| Partygoer at Missouri's Lake of Ozarks positive for COVID-19 Posted: 29 May 2020 04:55 PM PDT |
