Saudi-led coalition in Yemen says it destroyed missile targeting Saudi Arabia

Hong Kong: City of two masks faces a new crisis

A year after the protests began, amid a pandemic, Hong Kong faces another existential crisis. Will it survive?

Washington protesters sue Donald Trump and other officials over violent clearing for photo op

A number of protesters are suing Donald Trump and other officials over their treatment during a George Floyd demonstration at Lafayette Square in Washington on 1 June.The protesters have filed the suit, reported by Politico, alongside the Washington DC chapter of Black Lives Matter, alleging that their forced clearance from the area while peacefully protesting violated their constitutional rights.

Police converge at Paris' Arc de Triomphe to protest government line

Egypt accuses Ethiopia of holding it "hostage" in Nile dam talks

Egypt said Saturday that tripartite talks with Ethiopia and Sudan over a controversial mega-dam on the River Nile were deadlocked because of Addis Ababa's "intransigence". The Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD) has been a source of tension in the Nile River basin ever since Ethiopia broke ground on it nearly a decade ago.

Brazil overtakes UK to have second highest Covid-19 death toll in the world

Brazil on Friday overtook the UK to claim the second-highest coronavirus death toll in the world, behind the United States. The country’s health ministry recorded 909 deaths in the past 24 hours, putting the total at 41,828, ahead of the UK's 41,481. Unlike the UK, Latin America's biggest economy remains far off flattening its coronavirus infection curve, with experts warning a peak of daily deaths may not arrive until August. Observers believe the actual number of cases in Brazil could be far higher than the confirmed figure of 828,810. Gravediggers are working 12-hour shifts in a race to keep up with the toll, while images showing lines upon lines of empty graves waiting to be filled have shocked the world.

Canada indigenous chief Allan Adam battered during arrest

A violent arrest and police custody deaths have ignited anti-police brutality protests across Canada.

AP PHOTOS: Venezuelan migrants make long trek back home

A severe economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic has dashed the dreams of countless Venezuelans who fled their crisis-torn country in what had been one of the largest mass migrations anywhere in recent years. Now Colombia migration authorities estimate nearly 75,000 have made the journey back, traveling tiring miles by foot and bus. Many are arriving at the border crossing in the city of Cucuta only to find they will have to wait longer: Authorities in Venezuela allow only a few hundred to enter and just on three days a week.

Does Fauci wear a mask when he goes running?

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a dedicated runner, answers a question at the center of his two passions: Does he wear a mask when going for a run?

U.S. appeals court skeptical of bid by ex-Trump adviser Flynn to end criminal case

A U.S. appeals court on Friday appeared skeptical of the Justice Department's unprecedented effort to drop a criminal case against President Donald Trump's former adviser Michael Flynn, signaling no quick end to the politically charged prosecution. U.S. Circuit Judge Karen Henderson, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, said the lower-court judge overseeing the case was not a "rubber stamp" and there was nothing wrong with U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan hearing arguments about whether to let the Justice Department drop the case.

Voter registration is soaring, but impact on November is unclear

One group, Voter Participation Center, is seeing a 250% increase in online voter registration applications.

A Black Man Was Found Hanging From a Tree, and a Community Demands Answers

By BY MICHAEL LEVENSON AND JENNY GROSS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3hoLgaQ

U.S.'s Pompeo to meet China's top diplomat in Hawaii seeking to ease tensions: media

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will meet China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Hawaii, trying to ease tensions between the world's two largest economies over various issues, according to media reports. Pompeo was planning the trip "quietly" and the arrangements were not yet finalized, Politico said. The U.S. State Department and the Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

New virus cases raise fears in Chinese capital, markets closed

Beijing closed two markets on Friday and delayed the return of primary school students after three fresh coronavirus cases emerged in the capital -- the first after two months of no infections in the city. The majority of cases in recent months have been overseas nationals tested as they return home. The two latest patients are employees of the China Meat Research Centre, city officials said at a daily press conference.

Appeals court appears unlikely to stop Flynn case

Flynn's lawyers are seeking order directing a federal district judge to let the Department of Justice drop the case.

Trump may be stuck with awkwardly worded GOP platform

President Donald Trump said Friday he wants “a new and updated” Republican Party platform after the Republican National Committee voted this week to carry over the 2016 document. The trouble began with a fight between Trump and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper over coronavirus restrictions in Charlotte, the host city for the Republican National Convention. Cooper, a Democrat, rejected Trump’s demand to hold the convention without social distancing measures, so Republicans decided to move the renomination acceptance speech to Jacksonville, Florida.

Fresh China cluster raises fears for pandemic control

Lockdowns were imposed in parts of Beijing on Saturday to try and prevent the spread of a new coronavirus cluster, highlighting the challenges that lie ahead even for places where outbreaks are under control. It has fuelled fears of a resurgence in local transmissions in China, where the outbreak curve has been months ahead of the rest of the world, and comes as many European nations move to further lift their own lockdowns. The pandemic is still surging elsewhere, particularly in Latin America, with Brazil claiming the unenviable position of having the second-highest virus death toll behind the United States.

Far-right demonstrators gather in London to 'protect' statues

'Winston Churchill, he's one of our own,' chanted right-wing demonstrators near the former prime minister's statue, which was sprayed with graffiti by anti-racism protesters last weekend.

The woman who said she was fired from the Florida Health Department for refusing to alter coronavirus statistics is now publishing data on her own

Rebekah Jones was fired for "repeated course of insubordination" according to the state, though she said it was for refusing to alter COVID-19 data.

Minneapolis police officers condemn former colleague Derek Chauvin charged with killing George Floyd in open letter

More than a dozen members of the Minneapolis police department have condemned their former colleague Derek Chauvin in an open letter on the death of George Floyd.Fourteen officers signed the letter on Thursday which is addressed to “everyone -- but especially Minneapolis citizens”, following the killing of Floyd on 25 May.

Brazilian Amazon deforestation hits new record in May

Deforestation continued to surge in the Brazilian Amazon last month, according to official figures released Friday, showing it was the worst May and worst first five months of the year on record. "We are facing a scenario of total catastrophe for the Amazon," Mariana Napolitano, scientific director at the World Wildlife Fund's Brazil office, said in a statement. A total of 829 square kilometers (320 square miles) in the Brazilian Amazon, 14 times the area of Manhattan, was lost to deforestation in May, according to satellite data from Brazil's National Space Research Institute (INPE).

Kelly Loeffler’s Fundraising Committee Takes the Prize for Tone Deafness

As Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) proclaims her exoneration from allegations of insider trading, she’s simultaneously building a campaign fundraising system that imagines her campaign as a Wall Street-style investment opportunity.The Georgia Republican is offering donors and fundraisers benefit packages to support her re-election bid. Those packages come in three tiers: investor, shareholder, and board member.That’s according to a fundraising brochure obtained by The Daily Beast, which also details each of the benefits that donors can expect from membership in what Loeffler’s campaign refers to as a “co-investor program” and has dubbed its “executive council.”Loeffler Turns Over Coronavirus Stock Sale Docs to FedsIt’s common for campaigns to award such honorifics to their top donors and fundraisers. But the terms that the Loeffler campaign has chosen for its tiered donor honorees now carry some additional political baggage. Though the Justice Department chose to drop its investigation into Loeffler over her and her husband’s stock trades before the coronavirus pandemic caused the market to crash this year, the timing and size of her trades has been an albatross around the neck of her re-election effort According to the brochure laying out the various levels of “executive council” membership, an individual must donate $1,500 and a political action committee $5,000 if they are to qualify for the “investors” title. Alternatively they can raise $15,000 for the campaign. To achieve “shareholders” status, an individual must give $2,800 and a PAC $7,500, or raise $30,000 for the campaign. The top tier, “board member” is reserved for max-out donors—$5,600 for individuals and $10,000 for PACs—or those who raise $50,000 for the campaign.The donations come with access. All executive council members get access to quarterly breakfasts and monthly conference calls with the campaign, according to the brochure, as well as a thank-you event for donors. Shareholders and board members also get invites to a PAC retreat and a more exclusive quarterly reception. And board members alone get to go to the campaign’s holiday party in December and “other special events throughout the year.”One of those other events is scheduled for this September and will feature Loeffler and a to-be-announced “special guest.” The event will take place after 18 holes of golf at a donor retreat at the tiny Sea Island Beach Club on the Georgia coast, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by The Daily Beast.That retreat will cost individual donors $2,800 and PACs $5,000 to attend, with contributions benefiting the Loeffler Victory Committee, a joint fundraising account benefiting Loeffler’s campaign and her leadership PAC. But only executive council board members get access to that exclusive “19th hole” event.Kelly Loeffler Tries to Turn Coronavirus Into a Political AssetLoeffler is doling out these donor perks despite having already loaned $10 million to her own campaign. The Senate’s wealthiest member, she has said she’ll personally spend twice that to win re-election in November.The task became significantly more difficult in March, when The Daily Beast reported that Loeffler and her husband, New York Stock Exchange chairman Jeff Sprecher, had sold millions of dollars in stock in the weeks after Loeffler attended a closed-door Senate briefing on the novel coronavirus.Loeffler has vehemently and consistently denied that she used any information gleaned through her official duties to inform her stock trades, which she says are handled entirely by a third-party investment adviser. Loeffler and Sprecher nevertheless agreed in April to liquidate their individual stock holdings in order to head off the controversy. They also turned over documents related to those stock sales to the Federal Bureau of Investigation as it probed insider trading allegations against multiple Senators. The Justice Department announced last month that it was dropping its investigation into Loeffler while continuing to look into similar allegations leveled at Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.)Since then, Loeffler has triumphantly declared total vindication, attacking critics and media outlets—including The Daily Beast—in statements to the press and in a barrage of television ads attempting to shore up her political standing.Loeffler is facing off in a special election in November against 20 opponents of both parties, with her most formidable challenge coming from Republican Rep. Doug Collins. The most recent poll, conducted last month, showed Loeffler trailing not just Collins but also two Democrats in that “jungle-style” race.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.

Outrage over police brutality has finally convinced Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM to rule out selling facial recognition tech to law enforcement. Here's what's going on.

Although activists have been campaigning for the companies to do this for years, the Black Lives Matter movement appears to have tipped the scale.

Graduating West Point Cadets Isolate for Two Weeks Ahead of Trump Speech

By BY ERIC SCHMITT AND MICHAEL D. SHEAR from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3cTRTP7

Calls for Change Run Into Realities of Governing in Minnesota

By BY JACK HEALY AND NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROUGHS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2UG5ovn

Pentagon Denies Spying on Americans Protesting Police Killings

By BY ERIC SCHMITT from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3hpEj9F

Mexico reports record tally of 5,222 new coronavirus cases

Mexico's health ministry reported a record 5,222 new confirmed coronavirus infections along with 504 additional fatalities on Friday, bringing the total in the country to 139,196 cases and 16,448 deaths.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/2MUBEH2

Venezuela supreme court to swear in new electoral council leaders, government says

Venezuela's supreme court will swear in new leaders of the nation's electoral council in a ceremony on Friday evening, the information ministry said in an email announcing the event.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/2XWpnrP

One-fifth of Britain's coronavirus patients were infected in hospitals: Telegraph

About one in five of Britain's patients with COVID-19 caught the disease while in hospital, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported, citing papers by government scientists.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/2MTwFWW

France to lift border controls for EU travellers on June 15

France will lift restrictions at its borders for EU travellers on June 15, the French Interior and Foreign ministries said in a statement on Friday.

from Reuters: World News https://ift.tt/3hplL9u

Seattle Police Chief: ‘We’re Not Able to Get to’ 911 Calls for ‘Rape, Robbery’ in Autonomous Zone

The head of the Seattle’s Police Department told officers in a video address on Thursday that the decision to abandon the city’s Third Precinct to activists was “not my decision,” and has prevented the department from responding to emergency calls in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.Police Chief Carmen Best, who joined Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan at a news conference Thursday afternoon, revealed that “ultimately the city had other plans for the building and relented to public pressure.”“You should know, leaving the precinct was not my decision,” Best told her fellow officers. “You fought for days to protect it. I asked you to stand on that line. Day in and day out, to be pelted with projectiles, to be screamed at, threatened and in some cases hurt. Then to have a change of course nearly two weeks in, it seems like an insult to you and our community.”On Wednesday, the Seattle Police Department said it would try to reopen the East Precinct, and Best was able to visit the location on Thursday. “Our calls for service have more than tripled,” she told reporters. “These are responses to emergency calls — rapes, robberies, and all sorts of violent acts that have been occurring in the area that we’re not able to get to.”At the press conference with Durkan, who claimed the occupants of the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) were engaging in an act of “patriotism,” Best remained noncommittal on a when police might return to the area, but explained that the evacuation had come after reports that the precinct could be burned down.“We were asked to do an operational plan, in case we needed to leave," Best said, not saying who exactly gave the order to withdraw. "We got an update that there was the potential for fire — of course if the precinct goes down in fire, the whole block could potentially burn up."Best also clarified that her department had not received “any formal reports” of CHAZ occupants extorting businesses, after saying in the video address that police had heard of “armed people” in the area “demanding payment from business owners in exchange for protection.”Michael Solan, the head of Seattle’s police union, also slammed the decision to leave the precinct, calling it “the closest I’ve seen to our country becoming a lawless state.”“Where is the safety of the reasonable community of the city of Seattle? To me, that is absolutely appalling, and I am embarrassed being a Seattle resident to even talk about this,” Solan told Tucker Carlson.

New data suggest Russia may have a lot more COVID deaths than it says

Government data show Moscow had thousands more coronavirus-linked deaths than officially counted, as WHO calls Russia's numbers "difficult to understand."

Trump says he will 'do other things' if he loses 2020 election

U.S. President Donald Trump said he will go on to other things if he loses the Nov. 3 election, after Democratic opponent Joe Biden said the Republican might cheat and refuse to leave the White House. As the race between Trump and Biden heats up ahead of the election, the two have increasingly asserted that the other side intends to cheat their way to victory. Biden, who is leading Trump in most national polls, earlier this week said his greatest concern was that Trump would try to "steal" the election, though the former vice president did not elaborate on how he thought Trump might cheat.

UAE warns annexation would upend any normalisation with Israel

The Emirati ambassador to Washington warned Friday that annexation by the Jewish state of parts of the West Bank would jeopardise any warming of Arab-Israeli ties. "Annexation will certainly and immediately upend Israeli aspirations for improved security, economic and cultural ties with the Arab world and with the UAE," Yousef al-Otaiba wrote in a rare op-ed by an Emirati official in Israel's top-selling daily Yediot Aharonot.

Zoom's crackdown on Chinese dissidents shows the price tech companies pay to operate in authoritarian countries

Zoom admitted to closing user accounts and meetings at the Chinese government's behest, and suggested it would continue doing so.

EU finally accepts there will be no extension to Brexit transition period

There will not be an extension to the Brexit transition period, the European Commission said on Friday, before warning Britain it must now get ready to police the border in the Irish Sea. Michael Gove told Maros Sefcovic, a commission vice-president, that Britain would not ask for a delay to the period beyond the end of the year in a meeting of the joint committee on the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster "couldn't be clearer" in his formal notice to the commission, Mr Sefcovic told reporters in Brussels, "he explained this was the promise that was given to the British citizens in the electoral campaign". "[He] was very clear, unequivocal on the fact that the UK is not going to seek the extension and because this was the last joint committee before the deadline expires we take this decision as a definitive one," said Mr Sefcovic. "Therefore, we are pleading for acceleration of work on all fronts." “We have informed the EU [on Friday] that we will not extend the Transition Period. The moment for extension has now passed,” Mr Gove said. The EU has always said it is open to negotiating an extension, especially because of the impact of coronavirus on the already tight deadline, despite Downing Street's repeated vow it would never ask for a delay. "We must now progress on substance," tweeted Michel Barnier as it was confirmed the end of June deadline for extension would expire without a request. The UK and EU agreed a programme of intensified negotiations in July before Monday's meeting of Boris Johnson and three presidents of the major EU institutions. Failure to strike a trade deal by the end of the year will mean the UK and EU trading on less lucrative WTO terms and with tariffs on goods, which experts warn will compound the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Mr Sefcovic demanded more details from the UK Government over how it planned to enforce the new customs arrangements in Northern Ireland after the end of the transition period at the end of the year. A UK command paper was long on aspiration but short on detail, he said.

Mnuchin considering additional direct payments in next coronavirus aid bill

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday he would consider more direct payments to individuals in the next phase of coronavirus rescue legislation. He added that funds should also be targeted to help sectors that are struggling to reopen, including hospitality and tourism.

Amid pandemic, scores of US Catholic schools face closure

Catholic schools have faced tough times for years, but the pace of closures is accelerating dramatically amid economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, sparking heartbreak and anger in scores of affected communities. “It’s not a pretty picture right now,” said Sister Dale McDonald, public policy director of the National Catholic Educational Association, which says about 100 schools have announced in recent weeks that they won’t reopen this fall. Most of the closures are occurring at the elementary level, but also on the list are a number of venerable and beloved high schools including some that produced some famous alumni.

Biden says military would help oust Trump if he loses election but refuses to leave

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said he worries President Donald Trump will try to "steal" the November election but he is confident soldiers would escort Trump from the White House if he loses and does not recognize the result. "It's my greatest concern, my single greatest concern: This president is going to try to steal this election," Biden said in an interview broadcast late on Wednesday on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." Biden did not specify how he thought Trump, a Republican, might cheat.

Chicago's police union president says officers who kneel with Black Lives Matter protesters could be kicked out of the organization

John Catanzara, the new president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police said it's not the "time or place" to be kneeling with protesters.