Foreign news
Mutinous soldiers in the West African nation of Guinea detained President Alpha Conde on Sunday after hours of heavy gunfire rang out near the presidential palace in the capital, then announced on state television that the government had been dissolved in an apparent coup d’etat.
The country’s borders were closed and its constitution was declared invalid in the announcement read aloud on state television by army Col. Mamadi Doumbouya, who told Guineans: “The duty of a soldier is to save the country.”
“We will no longer entrust politics to one man. We will entrust it to the people,” said Doumbouya, draped in a Guinean flag with about a half dozen other soldiers flanked at his side.
It was not immediately known, though, how much support Doumbouya had within the military or whether other soldiers loyal to the president of more than a decade might attempt to wrest back control.
The junta later announced plans to replace Guinea’s governors with regional commanders at an event Monday and warned: “Any refusal to appear will be considered rebellion” against the country’s new military leaders.
The West African regional bloc known as ECOWAS quickly condemned the developments, threatening sanctions if Conde was not immediately released. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted that he strongly condemned “any takeover of the government by force of the gun.”
The U.S. State Department warned against violence and urged authorities in Guinea to avoid “extra-constitutional” actions that “will only erode Guinea’s prospects for peace, stability, and prosperity.” Spokesman Ned Price added in a statement that the junta’s “actions could limit the ability of the United States and Guinea’s other international partners to support the country.”
Conde’s whereabouts had been unknown for hours after the intense fighting Sunday in downtown Conakry until a video emerged showing the 83-year-old leader tired and disheveled in military custody.
The junta later released a statement saying Conde was in contact with his doctors. But they gave no timeline for releasing him other than to do say: “Everything will be fine. When the time comes, we will issue a statement.”
Conde, in power for more than a decade, had seen his popularity plummet since he sought a third term last year, saying that term limits did not apply to him. Sunday’s dramatic developments underscored how dissent had mounted within the military as well.
Doumbouya, who had been the commander of the army’s special forces unit, called on other soldiers “to put themselves on the side of the people” and stay in their barracks. The army colonel said he was acting in the best interests of the nation, citing a lack of economic progress by leaders since the country gained independence from France in 1958.
“If you see the state of our roads, if you see the state of our hospitals, you realize that after 72 years, it’s time to wake up,” he said. “We have to wake up.”
Observers, though say the tensions between Guinea’s president and the army colonel stemmed from a recent proposal to cut some military salaries.
On Sunday morning, heavy gunfire broke out near the presidential palace and went on for hours, sparking fears in a nation that already has seen multiple coups and presidential assassination attempts. The Defense Ministry initially claimed that the attack had been repelled by security forces, but uncertainty grew when there was no subsequent sign of Conde on state television or radio.
The developments that followed closely mirrored other military coup d’etats in West Africa: The army colonel and his colleagues seized control of the airwaves, professing their commitment to democratic values and announcing their name: The National Committee for Rally and Development.
It was a dramatic setback for Guinea, where many had hoped the country had turned the page on military power grabs.
Conde’s 2010 election victory — the country’s first democratic vote ever — was supposed to be a fresh start for a country that had been mired by decades of corrupt, authoritarian rule and political turmoil. In the years since, though, opponents said Conde too failed to improve the lives of Guineans, most of whom live in poverty despite the country’s vast mineral riches of bauxite and gold.
The year after his first election he narrowly survived an assassination attempt after gunmen surrounded his home overnight and pounded his bedroom with rockets. Rocket-propelled grenades landed inside the compound and one of his bodyguards was killed.
Violent street demonstrations broke out last year after Conde organized a referendum to modify the constitution. The unrest intensified after he won the October election, and the opposition said dozens were killed during the crisis.
In neighboring Senegal, which has a large diaspora of Guineans who opposed Conde, news of his political demise was met with relief.
“President Alpha Conde deserves to be deposed. He stubbornly tried to run for a third term when he had no right to do so,” said Malick Diallo, a young Guinean shopkeeper in the suburbs of Dakar.
“We know that a coup d’etat is not good,” said Mamadou Saliou Diallo, another Guinean living in Senegal. “A president must be elected by democratic vote. But we have no choice. We have a president who is too old, who no longer makes Guineans dream and who does not want to leave power.”
Guinea has had a long history of political instability. In 1984, Lansana Conte took control of the country after the first post-independence leader died. He remained in power for a quarter century until his death in 2008, accused of siphoning off state coffers to enrich his family and friends.
The country’s second coup soon followed, putting army Capt. Moussa “Dadis” Camara in charge. During his rule, security forces opened fire on demonstrators at a stadium in Conakry who were protesting his plans to run for president. Human rights groups have said more than 150 people were killed and at least 100 women were raped. Camara later went into exile after surviving an assassination attempt, and a transitional government organized the landmark 2010 election won by Conde.
AP
The Taliban called on Afghanistan’s imams to urge unity when they hold their first Friday prayers since the Islamist group seized control of the country, as protests against the takeover spread to more cities on Thursday, including the capital, Kabul.
Several people were killed when Taliban militants fired on a crowd in the eastern city of Asadabad, a witness said. Another witness reported gunshots near a rally in Kabul, but they appeared to be Taliban firing into the air.
On the day Afghanistan celebrates its independence from British control in 1919, a social media video showed a crowd of men and women in Kabul waving black, red and green national flags.
“Our flag, our identity,” they shouted.
At some protests elsewhere, media reported people tearing down the Taliban’s white flag.
A Taliban spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Some demonstrations were small, but combined with the desperate scramble of thousands of people seeking to flee the country they underline the challenge the Taliban face in governing
Kabul has been largely calm, but 12 people have been killed in and around the airport, NATO and Taliban officials said.
The U.S. military said more than 5,200 American troops were guarding Kabul airport, where multiple gates to the facility are now open, while U.S. fighter jets were flying over the city to ensure security for the evacuation operation for diplomats and civilians including some Afghan citizens.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said 6,000 "fully processed" people were currently at the Kabul airport and would soon be boarding planes. A source told Reuters that White House officials told a congressional briefing that the United States already had evacuated 6,741 people, including 1,792 American citizens and legal permanent residents.
The Taliban swiftly conquered Afghanistan as U.S. and other foreign troops withdrew, surprising even their own leaders and leaving power vacuums in many places.
The Taliban urged unity ahead of Friday prayers, calling on imams to persuade people not to leave Afghanistan.
Since seizing Kabul on Sunday, the Taliban have presented a more moderate face, saying they want peace, will not take revenge against old enemies and will respect the rights of women within the framework of Islamic law.
When in power from 1996-2001, they severely restricted women’s rights, staged public executions and blew up ancient Buddhist statues. They were ousted in a 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
BLACKLIST
A report by a Norwegian intelligence group said the Taliban had begun rounding up Afghans on a blacklist of people linked to Afghanistan's previous administration or U.S.-led forces that supported it. Complaints by some Afghan journalists have cast doubt on assurances that independent media would be allowed.
A U.S. lawmaker said the Taliban were using files from Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, to identify Afghans who worked for the United States.
“They are methodically ramping up efforts to round those folks up,” said Representative Jason Crow, who has been leading efforts in the U.S. Congress to accelerate the evacuation of American-affiliated Afghans. “I’ve had people send me pictures of Taliban outside their apartment complexes, searching for them.”
Crow voiced concern that the U.S. government may end the evacuation operation on Aug. 31, leaving more than 100,000 at-risk Afghans and family members in danger of Taliban reprisals.
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn said they had moved to secure the accounts of Afghan citizens to protect them from being targeted amid the Taliban’s takeover.
It was unclear if the Asadabad casualties resulted from Taliban firing or from a stampede.
“Hundreds of people came out on the streets,” witness Mohammed Salim said. “At first I was scared and didn’t want to go, but when I saw one of my neighbours joined in, I took out the flag I have at home. Several people were killed and injured in the stampede and firing by the Taliban.”
Protests flared in the city of Jalalabad and in Paktia province, also in the east.
First Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who said on Tuesday he was the “legitimate caretaker president” after President Ashraf Ghani fled, wrote on Twitter: “Salute those who carry the national flag and thus stand for dignity of the nation.”
Ahmad Massoud, son of guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed by suspected al Qaeda militants in 2001, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that he is "ready to follow in my father's footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban."
LIMITED LEVERAGE
U.S. President Joe Biden said the Taliban must decide if they want international recognition.
“Do they want to be recognized by the international community as being a legitimate government? I’m not sure they do,” Biden said in TV interview.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an interview with NBC News that the United States is “laser-focused” on “the potential for a terrorist attack” by a group like Islamic State amid the evacuation.
“We will get any American who wants to get to the airport and who we get in contact with who says: ‘I want to get out and get on a plane,’ we will make that happen,” Sullivan said.
About two dozen U.S. diplomats in Afghanistan sent an internal cable last month warning Secretary of State Antony Blinken of the potential fall of Kabul to the Taliban as U.S. troops withdrew from the country, The Wall Street Journal reported.
G7 foreign ministers called for a united international response to prevent the crisis from worsening, in comments echoed by countries including Russia. China said the world should support, not pressure, Afghanistan.
A Taliban official said they could not be blamed for the chaos at Kabul airport. In one scene captured on social media, a small girl was hoisted over the airport's perimeter wall and handed to a U.S. soldier.
Under a pact negotiated by former President Donald Trump’s administration, the United States agreed to withdraw its forces in exchange for a Taliban guarantee not to attack departing foreign forces or let Afghanistan be used for terrorist attacks.
Reuters
Israel established relations on Saturday with Bhutan, a majority-Buddhist nation neighbouring India, as it looks to continue to expand its diplomatic links internationally.
Israel’s accord with the Himalayan country did not appear to be related to its budding ties under U.S.-sponsored accords with Arab and Muslim countries, though Israeli officials sought to portray it as evidence of its growing acceptance abroad.
The agreement follows several years of secret contacts between Israel and Bhutan with the aim of establishing relations, Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“Israel’s circle of recognition is growing and expanding,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said. “The establishment of relations between us and the Kingdom of Bhutan will serve as another milestone in deepening Israel’s ties in Asia.”
Bhutan relied on India for guidance on its foreign and defence policy until a friendship treaty was revised in 2007. It maintains diplomatic relations with around 53 countries.
A signing ceremony was held between the Israeli and Bhutanese ambassadors to India on Saturday at the Israeli embassy in New Delhi, a joint press release posted on the Bhutanese foreign ministry’s website said.
“The establishment of diplomatic relations (will) create new avenues for cooperation between the two countries in water management, technology, human resource development, agricultural sciences and other areas of mutual benefit,” it said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the agreement, adding there had been contacts with other countries which wanted to establish relations.
Israel and Morocco on Thursday agreed to normalise ties in a deal brokered with U.S. help, making it the fourth Arab country after the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past four months.
Reuters
An unarmed black man was shot in the back seven times by a white police officer in the presence of his three children in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The Police officers were called to the scene of the incident because of a domestic dispute in the neighbourhood. They responded but it ended with one of them shooting the black father on Sunday, August 23rd around 5pm.
The man identified as 29 year-old Jacob Blake, was airlifted to a Milwaukee hospital, where he is currently in a critical condition.
The shooting in Kenosha caused residents to gather and confront the officer at the scene on Sunday night.
The video of the shooting quickly went viral, which instigated riots and protest.
To manage the situation, the County of Kenosha declared a state of emergency and enforced a curfew until 7am on Monday Morning.
A video posted on social media shows a large group of protesters gathered outside a police station in Kenosha chanting “Black Lives Matter” and other slogans condemning the police.
Some protesters smashed the windows of several police squad vehicles.
Several videos of protesters’ actions have been posted on social media. A video shows a Kenosha police officer falling to the ground after eye witnesses say that he was struck with a brick.
In another video, a row of protestors are seen matching towards a line of officers clad in riot gear.
A dump truck that was parked at an intersection to prevent vehicles from driving towards the police station was set on fire.
In the viral video, Jacob Blake is seen walking around his car parked on the street and three police officers walking behind him in a form of confrontation.
While he was attempting to enter his car, a police officer grabbed his shirt and fired into the car seven times.
Eye witnesses reported that blake’s three children were inside the car.
Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney who represents George Floyd’s family, posted the video of the shooting on his twitter account and noted that the shooting took place right in front of Blake’s three children.
His tweet reads,
“They saw a cop shoot their father,
“They will be traumatized forever. We cannot let officers violate their duty to PROTECT us. Our kids deserve better!!”
Several witnesses said that Blake tried to break up a fight between two women outside a nearby home, according to Kenosha News.
See the video of the shooting below;
Mali’s president announced his resignation late Tuesday, just hours after armed soldiers seized him from his home in a dramatic power grab following months of protests demanding his ouster.
The news of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s departure was met with jubilation by anti-government demonstrators and alarm by former colonial ruler France, and other allies and foreign nations.
Speaking on national broadcaster ORTM just before midnight, a distressed Keita, wearing a mask amid the Covid-19 pandemic, said his resignation — three years before his final term was due to end — was effective immediately.
A banner across the bottom of the television screen referred to him as the “outgoing president.”
“I wish no blood to be shed to keep me in power,” Keita said.
“I have decided to step down from office.”
He also announced that his government and the National Assembly would be dissolved, certain to further the country’s turmoil amid an eight-year Islamic insurgency and the growing coronavirus pandemic.
Keita, who was democratically elected in 2013 and reelected five years later, was left with few choices after the mutinous soldiers seized weapons from the armory in the garrison town of Kati and then advanced on the capital of Bamako.
They took Prime Minister Boubou Cisse into custody along with the president. There was no immediate comment Wednesday from the troops, who hailed from the same military barracks where a coup was launched more than eight years ago, allowing the Islamic insurgency to take hold amid a power vacuum.
The political upheaval unfolded months after disputed legislative elections. And it also came as support for Keita tumbled amid criticism of his government’s handling of the insurgency, which has engulfed a country once praised as a model of democracy in the region.
The military has taken a beating over the past year from Islamic State and al-Qaida-linked groups.
A wave of particularly deadly attacks in the north in 2019 prompted the government to close its most vulnerable outposts as part of a reorganization aimed at stemming the losses.
Tuesday’s developments were condemned by the African Union, the United States, and the regional bloc known as ECOWAS, which had been trying to mediate Mali’s political crisis.
Former colonizer France and the United Nations, which has maintained a peacekeeping mission in Mali since 2013, also expressed alarm ahead of Keita’s speech.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sought “the immediate restoration of constitutional order and rule of law,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
But news of Keita’s detention was met with celebration throughout the capital by anti-government protesters who first took to the streets back in June to demand that the president step down.
“All the Malian people are tired — we have had enough,” one demonstrator said.
The detention was a dramatic change of fortune for Keita, who seven years earlier emerged from a field of more than two dozen candidates to win Mali’s first democratic post-coup election in a landslide with more than 77% of the vote.
Regional mediators from ECOWAS, though, had failed in recent weeks to bridge the impasse between Keita’s government and opposition leaders, creating mounting anxiety about another military-led change of power.
Then on Tuesday, soldiers in Kati took weapons from the armory at the barracks and detained senior military officers.
Anti-government protesters immediately cheered the soldiers’ actions, and some set fire to a building that belongs to Mali’s justice minister in the capital. Cisse urged the soldiers to put down their arms.
“There is no problem whose solution cannot be found through dialogue,” he said in a statement.
But the wheels already were in motion — armed men began detaining people in Bamako too, including the country’s finance minister, Abdoulaye Daffe.
Keita, who tried to meet protesters’ demands through a series of concessions, has enjoyed broad support from France and other Western allies.
He also was believed to have widespread backing among high-ranking military officials, underscoring a divide between army leadership and unpredictable rank-and-file soldiers.
Tuesday marked a repeat of the events leading up to the 2012 coup, which unleashed years of chaos in Mali when the ensuing power vacuum allowed Islamic extremists to seize control of northern towns.
Ultimately a French-led military operation ousted the jihadists, but they merely regrouped and expanded their reach during Keita’s presidency into central Mali.
Keita’s political downfall closely mirrors that of his predecessor: Amadou Toumani Toure who was forced out of the presidency in 2012 after a series of punishing military defeats.
That time, the attacks were carried out by ethnic Tuareg separatist rebels. This time, Mali’s military has sometimes seemed powerless to stop extremists linked to al-Qaida and IS.
Back in 2012, the mutiny erupted at the Kati military camp as rank-and-file soldiers began rioting and then broke into the camp’s armory. After grabbing weapons, they later headed for the seat of government under the leadership of Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo.
Sanogo was later forced to hand over power to a civilian transitional government, which then organized the election Keita won.
Mediators this time around have urged Keita to share power in a unity government. He even said he was open to redoing disputed legislative elections. But those overtures were swiftly rejected by opposition leaders who said they would not stop short of Keita’s ouster.
AP
Throughout January, the World Health Organization publicly praised China for what it called a speedy response to the new coronavirus. It repeatedly thanked the Chinese government for sharing the genetic map of the virus “immediately,” and said its work and commitment to transparency were “very impressive, and beyond words.”
But behind the scenes, it was a much different story, one of significant delays by China and considerable frustration among WHO officials over not getting the information they needed to fight the spread of the deadly virus, The Associated Press has found.
Despite the plaudits, China in fact sat on releasing the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for more than a week after three different government labs had fully decoded the information. Tight controls on information and competition within the Chinese public health system were to blame, according to dozens of interviews and internal documents.
Chinese government labs only released the genome after another lab published it ahead of authorities on a virologist website on Jan. 11. Even then, China stalled for at least two weeks more on providing WHO with detailed data on patients and cases, according to recordings of internal meetings held by the U.N. health agency through January — all at a time when the outbreak arguably might have been dramatically slowed.
WHO officials were lauding China in public because they wanted to coax more information out of the government, the recordings obtained by the AP suggest. Privately, they complained in meetings the week of Jan. 6 that China was not sharing enough data to assess how effectively the virus spread between people or what risk it posed to the rest of the world, costing valuable time.
“We’re going on very minimal information,” said American epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove, now WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, in one internal meeting. “It’s clearly not enough for you to do proper planning.”
“We’re currently at the stage where yes, they’re giving it to us 15 minutes before it appears on CCTV,” said WHO’s top official in China, Gauden Galea, referring to the state-owned China Central Television, in another meeting.
The story behind the early response to the virus comes at a time when the U.N. health agency is under siege, and has agreed to an independent probe of how the pandemic was handled globally. After repeatedly praising the Chinese response early on, U.S. President Donald Trump has blasted WHO in recent weeks for allegedly colluding with China to hide the extent of the coronavirus crisis. He cut ties with the organization on Friday, jeopardizing the approximately $450 million the U.S. gives every year as WHO’s biggest single donor.
In the meantime, Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed to pitch in $2 billion over the next two years to fight the coronavirus, saying China has always provided information to WHO and the world “in a most timely fashion.”
The new information does not support the narrative of either the U.S. or China, but instead portrays an agency now stuck in the middle that was urgently trying to solicit more data despite limits to its own authority. Although international law obliges countries to report information to WHO that could have an impact on public health, the U.N. agency has no enforcement powers and cannot independently investigate epidemics within countries. Instead, it must rely on the cooperation of member states.
The recordings suggest that rather than colluding with China, as Trump declared, WHO was kept in the dark as China gave it the minimal information required by law. However, the agency did try to portray China in the best light, likely as a means to secure more information. And WHO experts genuinely thought Chinese scientists had done “a very good job” in detecting and decoding the virus, despite the lack of transparency from Chinese officials.
WHO staffers debated how to press China for gene sequences and detailed patient data without angering authorities, worried about losing access and getting Chinese scientists into trouble. Under international law, WHO is required to quickly share information and alerts with member countries about an evolving crisis. Galea noted WHO could not indulge China’s wish to sign off on information before telling other countries because “that is not respectful of our responsibilities.”
In the second week of January, WHO’s chief of emergencies, Michael Ryan, told colleagues it was time to “shift gears” and apply more pressure on China, fearing a repeat of the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that started in China in 2002 and killed nearly 800 people worldwide.
“This is exactly the same scenario, endlessly trying to get updates from China about what was going on,” he said. “WHO barely got out of that one with its neck intact given the issues that arose around transparency in southern China.”
Ryan said the best way to “protect China” was for WHO to do its own independent analysis with data from the Chinese government, because otherwise the spread of the virus between people would be in question and “other countries will take action accordingly.” Ryan also noted that China was not cooperating in the same way some other countries had in the past.
“This would not happen in Congo and did not happen in Congo and other places,” he said, probably referring to the Ebola outbreak that began there in 2018. “We need to see the data…..It’s absolutely important at this point.”
The delay in the release of the genome stalled the recognition of its spread to other countries, along with the global development of tests, drugs and vaccines. The lack of detailed patient data also made it harder to determine how quickly the virus was spreading — a critical question in stopping it.
Between the day the full genome was first decoded by a government lab on Jan. 2 and the day WHO declared a global emergency on Jan. 30, the outbreak spread by a factor of 100 to 200 times, according to retrospective infection data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus has now infected over 6 million people worldwide and killed more than 375,000.
“It’s obvious that we could have saved more lives and avoided many, many deaths if China and the WHO had acted faster,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
However, Mokdad and other experts also noted that if WHO had been more confrontational with China, it could have triggered a far worse situation of not getting any information at all.
If WHO had pushed too hard, it could even have been kicked out of China, said Adam Kamradt-Scott, a global health professor at the University of Sydney. But he added that a delay of just a few days in releasing genetic sequences can be critical in an outbreak. And he noted that as Beijing’s lack of transparency becomes even clearer, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s continued defense of China is problematic.
“It’s definitely damaged WHO’s credibility,” said Kamradt-Scott. “Did he go too far? I think the evidence on that is clear….it has led to so many questions about the relationship between China and WHO. It is perhaps a cautionary tale.”
WHO and its officials named in this story declined to answer questions asked by The Associated Press without audio or written transcripts of the recorded meetings, which the AP was unable to supply to protect its sources.
“Our leadership and staff have worked night and day in compliance with the organization’s rules and regulations to support and share information with all Member States equally, and engage in frank and forthright conversations with governments at all levels,” a WHO statement said.
China’s National Health Commission and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no comment. But in the past few months, China has repeatedly defended its actions, and many other countries — including the U.S. — have responded to the virus with even longer delays of weeks and even months.
“Since the beginning of the outbreak, we have been continuously sharing information on the epidemic with the WHO and the international community in an open, transparent and responsible manner,” said Liu Mingzhu, an official with the National Health Commission’s International Department, at a press conference on May 15.
AP
The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday.
“In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,” said Alberto Zangrillo, head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy’s coronavirus contagion.
“The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago,” he told RAI television.
Italy has the third highest death toll in the world from Covid-19, with 33,415 people dying since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21. It has the sixth highest global tally of cases at 233,019.
However new infections and fatalities have fallen steadily in May and the country is unwinding some of the most rigid lockdown restrictions introduced anywhere on the continent.
Zangrillo said some experts were too alarmist about the prospect of a second wave of infections and politicians needed to take into account the new reality.
“We’ve got to get back to being a normal country,” he said. “Someone has to take responsibility for terrorizing the country.”
The government urged caution, saying it was far too soon to claim victory.
“Pending scientific evidence to support the thesis that the virus has disappeared ... I would invite those who say they are sure of it not to confuse Italians,” Sandra Zampa, an undersecretary at the health ministry, said in a statement.
“We should instead invite Italians to maintain the maximum caution, maintain physical distancing, avoid large groups, to frequently wash their hands and to wear masks.”
A second doctor from northern Italy told the national ANSA news agency that he was also seeing the coronavirus weaken.
“The strength the virus had two months ago is not the same strength it has today,” said Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at the San Martino hospital in the city of Genoa.
“It is clear that today the Covid-19 disease is different.”
Reuters
Protesters took to the streets across America again Sunday, with violence flaring in pockets of largely peaceful demonstrations fueled by the killings of black people at the hands of police.
A truck driver — apparently deliberately — drove into demonstrators in Minneapolis nearly a week after George Floyd died there after pleading for air as an officer pressed a knee into his neck.
Protests sprang up from Boston to San Francisco, with people stealing from stores in broad daylight in Philadelphia, cities across California and elsewhere.
In Minneapolis, the tanker truck sped into a peaceful crowd of thousands on a closed highway, but no one appeared to have been hit, authorities said.
The Minnesota State Patrol tweeted that the driver was apparently trying to provoke protesters and was arrested.
Protesters swarmed the truck and jumped on the hood, even as it kept moving. Police then came in force to clear the highway in the city where violence erupted after the death last week of Floyd, who was black.
The protests quickly spread to dozens of cities large and small, and have lasted for days. The officer who pressed his knee onto Floyd’s neck for several minutes has been charged with murder, but protesters demand the other three officers at the scene be prosecuted. All four were fired.
“We’re not done,” said Darnella Wade, organizer for Black Lives Matter in neighboring St. Paul, where thousands gathered peacefully in front of the state Capitol.
“They sent us the military, and we only asked them for arrests.”
Minnesota’s governor brought in thousands of National Guard soldiers to help quell violence that had damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings in Minneapolis over days of protests.
The immense deployment appeared to have worked Saturday night, when there was comparatively little destruction.
On Sunday, in a display of force, long lines of state patrolmen and National Guard soldiers were lined up in front of the Capitol, facing the demonstrators, with perhaps a dozen military-style armored vehicles behind them.
For a second day, the protests reached to the White House, where chants could be heard from around 1,000 demonstrators just across the street in Lafayette Park as they faced police in riot gear behind barricades. The scene was defiant but peaceful, though police used flash bangs to stop another group from reaching the park.
As the protests grew, President Donald Trump retweeted conservative commentator Buck Sexton who called for “overwhelming force.”
Outside the White House, Gabrielle Labrosse-Ellis, 30, from Maryland, held a sign that said, “Humanize black lives.”
“This is unacceptable. This is the last straw,” she said. “It has to be.”
Labrosse-Ellis said she planned to leave before dark because she feared a repeat of the violence that occurred Saturday night.
Across America, demonstrators called again for an end to police violence and many joined police in pleading for an end to the looting. Many also joined police in pleading for a stop to fires, vandalism and theft, saying it weakened calls for justice and reform.
“They keep killing our people,” said Mahira Louis, 15, who marched with her mother and several hundred others through downtown Boston. “I’m so sick and tired of it.”
Disgust over generations of racism in a country founded by slaveholders combined with a string of recent racially charged killings to stoke the anger. Adding to that was angst from months of lockdowns brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately hurt communities of color, not only in terms of infections but in job losses and economic stress.
The droves of people congregating for demonstrations threatened to trigger new outbreaks, a fact overshadowed by the boiling tensions.
“Maybe this country will get the memo that we are sick of police murdering unarmed black men,” said Lex Scott, founder of Black Lives Matter Utah. “Maybe the next time a white police officer decides to pull the trigger, he will picture cities burning.”
The scale of the protests, sweeping from coast to coast and unfolding on a single night, rivaled the historic demonstrations of the civil rights and Vietnam War eras.
Curfews were imposed in major cities around the U.S., including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. About 5,000 National Guard soldiers and airmen were activated in 15 states and Washington, D.C.
But still trouble flared.
There was looting on both ends of California, with video in San Jose showing several people in hoods and masks fleeing a Macy’s department store with large bags, while people in Long Beach carried away armloads of clothing and other goods from the smashed windows of stores at a shopping mall after curfew. As police moved in to try to restore order, some protesters ran in to confront the thieves and condemn them for undercutting the message of the demonstration.
In tweets Sunday, Trump blamed anarchists and the media for fueling the violence. Attorney General William Barr pointed a finger at “far left extremist” groups. Police chiefs and politicians accused outsiders of coming in and causing the problems.
At the Minneapolis intersection where Floyd was killed, people gathered with brooms and flowers, saying it was important to protect what they called a “sacred space.” The intersection was blocked with the traffic cones while a ring of flowers was laid out.
Among those descending on Minneapolis was Michael Brown Sr., the father of Michael Brown, whose killing by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, set off unrest in 2014.
“I understand what this family is feeling. I understand what this community is feeling,” he said.
In Indianapolis, two people were reported dead in bursts of downtown violence, adding to deaths reported in Detroit and Minneapolis in recent days.
Buildings around the U.S. were defaced with spray-painted messages, from the facade of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York to the historic Hay-Adams hotel near the White House. Some of Floyd’s gasped last words — “I can’t breathe” — were repeated, alongside anti-police messages.
AP
The senseless and completely unjustified killing of George Floyd – an unarmed black man – by a white police officer in Minneapolis last Monday should shock the conscience of America.
While I understand the frustration and anger, I do not condone the violence spreading across this country in response to Floyd’s horrific killing. Rioting tearing apart Minneapolis and cities coast-to-coast will never lead to anything but more suffering. Those who are committing crimes are distracting us from the even larger group of people who are peacefully demonstrating.
But we cannot shrug off Floyd’s killing – along with the killings of so many other black Americans throughout our nation’s history and up through today.
How many more black people must die, and how many more times will statements of sympathy have to be issued? How many times will protests have to occur? How many more committees will have to be formed until America admits that racism is still a problem in this country?
Racism in America is a fatal wound. Every time another incident occurs we put a Band-Aid on it, but the Band-Aid keeps falling off. Band-Aids are not enough to ever stitch this country back together.
The arrest of fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on Friday on charges of manslaughter and third-degree murder is a welcome step, but it is just a Band-Aid.
Chauvin is seen on cellphone video kneeling on Floyd’s neck as Floyd lay on the pavement handcuffed and helpless. Other officers with Chauvin did nothing as they watched Floyd die, and should face justice for their inexcusable inaction.
During my 70 years on this Earth I have lived through the civil rights movement, I have seen the highs and lows of this country, I have seen America’s goodness, and I have seen its hatred.
There is no other country like ours in the world – nothing compares to its greatness. But the issue of racism is
America’s Achilles’ heel. It has been embedded into our culture for 400 years, since the first Africans were seized from their homes on the other side of the world and brought to colonial America in chains and enslaved.
The racism experienced by black Americans is not a political issue and to anyone who tries to use it as one, on the left or the right, I say shame on you. No longer should our communities be pieces in a grand chess game.
The promise of the Declaration of Independence that we are all created equal applies to people of every race. This is not about politics – it is about morality.
This country’s founding principles have created a system for injustices to come to light. They are designed to enable the human flourishing of all America’s citizens.
Let’s use those principles to guide us. It’s time America takes responsibility and expands human flourishing to all of its citizens – not just the majority of them.
Americans must speak up and reject the racism and division in their own communities. There has always been a remnant outside the black community fighting for racial equality. It can no longer be just a remnant. Racial equality is something that every one of us, regardless of skin color, must work toward on a daily basis.
Individually, we can make a difference by promoting peace and prosperity for all people, knowing that life is better for everyone when we as Americans succeed together.
It will take courage to speak up, but it is the only way we can overcome racism and the problems plaguing our nation.
Simple acts like starting a dialogue with a neighbor or teaching your children the difference between right and wrong can have a profound impact now and for generations to come.
Nothing can bring George Floyd back to life. But if his horrific and needless death proves to be a turning point to make Americans finally end the ugly racism that stains our nation’s history and afflicts us like a cancer of the soul, he will leave behind a legacy we sorely need.
Fox News
South Africa will allow domestic air travel for business purposes only from June 1 as the country further eases Coronavirus lockdown regulations, the transport minister said on Saturday.
The country has been largely shut since a nationwide lockdown began in late March. South Africa has reported 29,240 cases of the new Coronavirus, with 611 deaths.
From next month, Africa’s most industrialised economy will allow most economic sectors including mining and manufacturing to fully resume operations and has also allowed the sale of alcohol but for home consumption.
“As the country moves to level 3, with more industries resuming operations, learners returning to school, the transport sector must be responsive to enable mobility of both workers and learners,” Minister of Transport, Mr Fikile Mbalula said in a televised briefing.
“In doing so, we must maintain a delicate balance between enabling mobility and arresting the spread of the virus.”
The resumption of domestic flights will be rolled out in three phases, with only four airports allowed to be opened under phase one, he added.
Separately, in an earlier briefing, Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Mr Nathi Mthethwa said professional teams and individual athletes who participate in contact and non-contact sport, including rugby and football can start training from Monday under strict social distancing rules.
He said it was important for all training to resume so that athletes could stay in shape for when contact sports resume matches.
The regulations will also allow professional non-contact sports to host sports events without spectators. The minister has yet to publish the regulations, which will name the permitted sporting codes.
The government has also decided to open some parts of the tourism sector such as restaurants, tour operators, public and private game farms and accommodation for business travel earlier than previously indicated to save jobs and sustain the industry.
The past two months of the lockdown have been difficult for the tourism sector, with almost 600,000 jobs at risk if the sector does not operate by September, Minister of Tourism, Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane said in a briefing late on Saturday.
The tourism department will provide additional financial relief of 30 million rand ($1.71 million) for tourist guides over a period of two to three months, Kubayi-Ngubane said.
Reuters
More...
The private rocket company SpaceX has sent two Nasa astronauts into orbit.
It's the first time since the retirement of the shuttles nine years ago that an American crew has made the journey from US territory.
Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken are not only trialling a new capsule system, they are also initiating a new business model for Nasa.
The agency will no longer own the vehicles it uses but merely purchase the "taxi" service offered by SpaceX.
It's hoped companies other than tech billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX outfit will come in to expand the market. The aerospace giant Boeing already has a contract with Nasa to do so.
Mr Musk himself said he was overcome with emotion watching his hardware take the astronauts to orbit.
"I think this is something that should get people right in the heart, of anyone that has the spirit of exploration. And the US is the distillation of the spirit of exploration," he told reporters.
The new capability the CEO is offering will end the reliance of Nasa on Russian rockets and capsules to get its people to the International Space Station (ISS).
It was a point picked up on by President Donald Trump, who came to Florida to watch the launch.
"Past leaders put the US at the mercy of foreign nations to send our astronauts into orbit. Not anymore," he said. "Today we once again proudly launched American astronauts on American rockets - the best in the world - from right here on American soil."
Hurley's and Behnken's Dragon ship left Earth atop its Falcon-9 rocket precisely on time - at 15:22 EDT (19:22 GMT / 20:22 BST).
Meteorologists had forecast only a 50:50 chance of favourable conditions around Florida's Kennedy Space Center at lift-off, but, as luck would have it, the weather window stayed open and the SpaceX controllers grabbed their opportunity.
The Falcon soared off the spaceport's famous 39A pad to head northeast out over the Atlantic. After two-and-a-half minutes, the lower-stage of the vehicle had separated to return to a drone ship at sea. And after a further six minutes, the crew were safely inserted into orbit.
Hurley and Behnken are set to arrive at the ISS on Sunday.
They'll use some of the intervening hours to test equipment and procedures in their capsule, including doing some manual flying.
Although the Dragon capsule is a fully automated vehicle capable of finding its own way to the ISS, the crew needs to prepare for all eventualities and that means knowing exactly how the ship will behave in their hands.
Uniquely, the Dragon has no control stick; all flight commands must be entered via a touchscreen panel.
One of their first tasks in orbit was simply to name their ship - in the tradition of past US spacefarers, all the way back to the Mercury programme. Radioing down to Earth, they announced it would be called Endeavour.
Doug Hurley said: "We chose Endeavour for a few reasons: One, because of this incredible endeavour that Nasa, SpaceX and the US have been on since the end of the shuttle programme back in 2011. The other reason is a little more personal to Bob and I. We both had our first flights on shuttle Endeavour and it just meant so much to us to carry on that name."
Endeavour was the ship commanded by British explorer James Cook on his voyage to Australia in the late 18th Century.
Hurley's and Behnken's stay at the ISS is not known currently, but is likely to be somewhere between one and four months.
Assuming their return to a splashdown in the Atlantic is as smooth as the launch, Nasa and SpaceX will move directly into the full terms of their new relationship.
The company has a $2.6bn (£2.1bn) contract with the agency to fly six operational crew missions to the ISS.
The first of these should occur at the end August, or very soon after; and will see four astronauts climb aboard a Dragon rather than just the two we saw on this occasion.
Saturday's launch went ahead against the background of the coronavirus crisis.
Crowds were encouraged not to assemble near the Kennedy complex, and Nasa itself severely limited the number of guests invited on to the spaceport.
As for the astronauts, they would ordinarily observe a quarantine before flight. But again Nasa reduced the number of people the men could come into contact with in the weeks running up to launch, and those that had to get close were instructed to wear masks.
For SpaceX, Saturday marked another significant milestone for the company which was founded just 18 years ago.
The firm has upended the launcher industry with its reusable vehicles and is now pioneering a new market-driven approach to human spaceflight.
It hasn't all been plain sailing - as evidenced by a spectacular explosion at the firm's prototyping facility in Boca Chica, Texas, on Friday. But the company has routinely proved naysayers wrong, and Nasa believes its relationship with Elon Musk will save billion of dollars that can be diverted to the more complex task of getting people back to the Moon and then to Mars.
"We want to establish a commercial environment in low-Earth orbit so that we can focus on the hard job of exploring beyond our home planet, to establish a sustained presence on the Moon and get to Mars to establish a presence there," said Bob Cabana, the director at Kennedy. "We can't do that if we're locked here in low-Earth orbit, and commercial crew - that's the beginning of a whole new era of spaceflight."
BBC
People arriving in the UK must self-isolate for 14 days from 8 June to help slow the spread of coronavirus, the government has said.
Travellers will need to tell the government where they will quarantine, with enforcement through random spot checks and £1,000 fines in England.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said the measure would "reduce the risk of cases crossing our border".
Lorry drivers, seasonal farm workers, and coronavirus medics will be exempted.
The requirement will also not apply to those travelling from the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
If a person does not have suitable accommodation to go to, they will be required to stay in "facilities arranged by the government" at the person's own expense, according to Border Force chief Paul Lincoln.
According to the Home Office, the new policy will be in place across the UK, although how it is enforced in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be determined by the devolved administrations.
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said discussions would take place with Police Scotland to work out how the policy will be implemented.
'Not shutting down'
Ms Patel told the daily Downing Street briefing the measures were not the same as completely shutting the UK border to visitors.
"We are not shutting down completely. We are not closing our borders," she said.
And asked about the prospect of foreign holidays this summer, she added: "This is absolutely not about booking holidays. We want to avoid a second wave and that is absolutely vital."
So-called "air bridges" - agreements with countries that have low infection rates allowing tourists to travel without quarantining - will not be in place initially, the government said.
The new measure, previously announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, will be reviewed every three weeks once it is introduced.
But airlines have said a quarantine requirement would "effectively kill air travel" - and one airport boss described the plans as a "blunt tool".
The government currently recommends international travel only when absolutely necessary, and nobody should travel if they display any coronavirus symptoms.
What does the new system involve?
Passengers arriving in the UK will be required to fill out an online locator contact form - providing details of where they will spend their 14 days in self-isolation.
The Home Office said the proposed accommodation will need to meet necessary requirements, such as a hotel or a private address with friends or family.
There will be a fine of £100 for failure to complete the form, and the Border Force will have the power to refuse entry to non-UK citizens who do not comply with the new regulations.
New arrivals will be told they may be contacted at any time during their quarantine and, in England, may be visited by public health authorities conducting spot checks.
They will be told to avoid public transport and travel to their accommodation by car "where possible", and not to go out to buy food or other essentials "where they can rely on others".
In England, a breach of self-isolation would be punishable by a £1,000 fixed penalty notice, or prosecution and an unlimited fine for persistent offenders.
Why now?
Analysis by Helen Catt, political correspondent
The big question being asked about quarantine is: why now?
The government argues that it simply wouldn't have made enough of a difference while the virus was spreading widely within the UK.
But it hasn't, so far, fully explained why such a blanket measure was not introduced much earlier in the outbreak, before the virus took hold.
People returning from Wuhan city and Hubei province in China were put into isolation for 14 days from late January.
Later, those returning from Italy were told to self-isolate.
But the measure was not extended to travellers from every country.
There are also questions about how this will work in practice and what it will mean for the travel industry, which is already suffering huge losses.
The Home Office has published a full list of exemptions to the new requirements.
The list includes road haulage and freight workers, medical professionals travelling to fight Covid-19, and seasonal farm workers who will self-isolate where they are working.
The home secretary said the new measures aim to "keep the transmission rate down and prevent a devastating second wave".
She added: "I fully expect the majority of people will do the right thing and abide by these measures. But we will take enforcement action against the minority of people who endanger the safety of others."
Labour's shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said the party supported the new measures "but is clear they are no substitute for a long-term, well thought through approach".
The number of people who have died with coronavirus in the UK has reached 36,393 - a rise of 351 on Thursday's figure.
Meanwhile, the government's scientific advice group Sage published the key evidence on safety and the impact of reopening schools.
At the daily briefing, government chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance said children were at "low risk, not zero risk" from coronavirus and that reopening schools would push up infection rates.
It came as teachers' union leaders said they remained unconvinced it will be safe to reopen primary schools in England on 1 June.
BBC
New research shows that universal mask-wearing may help slow the spread of Covid-19.
New York City, with a population of about 8.4 million, has had over 28,000 coronavirus deaths as of May 18. Meanwhile, Hong Kong has officially recorded only four Covid-19 deaths, despite having 7.5 million residents.
One reason that could help explain the stark disparity: In Hong Kong, nearly everyone wears a face mask in public.
If any city in the world was likely to experience the worst effects of the coronavirus, Hong Kong would have been a top candidate. The urban area is densely populated and heavily reliant on packed public-transit systems, and it has very few open spaces. Moreover, a high-speed train connects Hong Kong to Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus originated.
Hong Kong, it seemed, was doomed.
But almost as soon as the outbreak first began in the city, millions of residents started wearing masks in public. One local told the Los Angeles Times that the government didn’t have to say anything before 99 percent of the population put them on.
Experts now say widespread mask usage appears to be a major reason, perhaps even the primary one, why the city hasn’t been devastated by the disease.
“If not for universal masking once we depart from our home every day, plus hand hygiene, Hong Kong would be like Italy long ago,” K.Y. Yuen, a Hong Kong microbiologist advising the government, told the Wall Street Journal last month.
In one way, the ubiquity of Hong Kong’s masks is rather ironic.
Starting last spring, pro-democracy activists took to the streets of Hong Kong to protest a set of laws that would give mainland China — which isn’t supposed to have full control over the city until 2047 — more power over Hong Kong. To protect themselves from police tear gas and avoid the city-state’s ubiquitous surveillance cameras, millions of protesters donned masks.
In an effort to quash the movement last October, Hong Kong’s China-backed government banned the wearing of face masks in public. The hope was that forcing demonstrators to show their faces would make them stay home instead.
Just a few months later, the coronavirus happened.
As the coronavirus first hit the city, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lamfumbled her response, not wearing a mask during a press conference and, eventually, wearing one incorrectly in public. She also asked government employees not to wear masks.
By April, public health experts in Hong Kong were calling on the government to not only repeal the mask ban but also to mandate the wearing of masks in public as a means of curbing the coronavirus’s spread.
But by then, almost everyone was already wearing them, ban be damned. Indeed, the fact that the government seemed to advocate against masks may have helped make them more popular. Almost in protest, residents started wearing masks in large numbers and helping the most vulnerable communities obtain them.
Hong Kong’s numerous experiences with deadly pandemics also played a role.
The city has faced pandemics before, including the 1968 flu, which began in Hong Kong and killed about 1 million people worldwide. When SARS came to Hong Kong from mainland China in 2003, residents took it seriously and nearly everyone wore a mask. Partly as a result, the city lost only 300 people during that crisis.
Experts say that instilled a sense among the people of Hong Kong that masks are vital to thwarting a pandemic. That sense was reignited when the coronavirus hit. Now they’re everywhere.
“Not wearing masks in Hong Kong is like not wearing pants nowadays,” Alex Lam, a Hong Kong lawyer, told the Wall Street Journal in April.
As the Journal also noted, some taxi cabs and shops won’t let people inside unless they wear a mask. Someone walking around the city without a mask on invites harsh looks from passersby and even verbal reprimands. Even the public address system on Hong Kong’s metro asks riders to wear masks at all times.
Despite Hong Kong’s mask ban officially remaining in place, some of the government’s health officials now praise the citizenry for organically putting the coverings on without being told to do so.
Such praise makes sense, as the latest research indicates that near-universal mask-wearing is critical to fighting the coronavirus.
Masks look like an increasingly important way to curb Covid-19’s spread
It’s worth noting that Hong Kong also implemented a strong testing, tracing, and isolation program, in addition to strengthening travel rules and closing bars at the end of March. Those moves, perhaps just as much as masks, have helped keep Hong Kong’s coronavirus death toll low.
But the masks, research shows, are still very important.
In April, researchers from University of Hong Kong and University of Maryland found that masks stopped sick people from spreading Covid-19.
“A mask could catch a lot of the virus a sick person would otherwise be breathing or coughing out,” Ben Cowling, the head of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health and a co-author of the study, told the Wall Street Journal at the time. “Wearing them at least provides some protection for others.”
On May 13, Vox’s Matthew Yglesias also pointed out that in April, researchers at University of Hong Kong and in Europe calculated that if 80 percent of a population can be persuaded to don masks, transmission levels would be cut to one-twelfth of what you’d have in a mask-less society. However, that study has yet to be peer-reviewed.
On Sunday, another team from University of Hong Kong determined that the benefits of face masks were massive. Using 52 hamsters in cages, the team found that non-contact transmission dropped by around 75 percent when masks were present. “The findings implied to the world and the public is that the effectiveness of mask-wearing against the coronavirus pandemic is huge,” Dr. Yuen Kwok-yungtold reporters.
It does appear, then, that masks are one of the top reasons why the coronavirus situation in Hong Kong isn’t so dire. One wonders whether the rising number of cases and deaths in the US would be lower if Americans similarly adopted such widespread mask-wearing habits.
Vox
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to cut ties with China over its role in the spread of the coronavirus, as the global death toll from the disease topped 300,000.
Trump made the threat in a TV interview that aired on Thursday night.
He spoke as his country registered more than 86,000 deaths linked to COVID-19 — the highest toll of any nation.
His country also has 1,450,000 infections, a third of all known global infections.
“I’m very disappointed in China. I will tell you that right now,” Trump said.
Asked how the United States might choose to retaliate against what he has dubbed the “Plague from China”, Trump said: “We could cut off the whole relationship”.
In the interview, Trump again accused Beijing of concealing the true scale of the problem after the virus emerged in Wuhan late last year.
The US and China are the world’s two largest economies, doing hundreds of billions of dollars of mutually beneficial trade every year.
Nevertheless, the US president is keen to make Beijing the bogeyman in an election year when gloomy news has become par for the course.
New figures showed a further three million job losses, taking the newly unemployed to 36.5 million — more than 10 percent of the US population.
As Trump spoke, his own coronavirus pandemic leadership came under scrutiny.
Rick Bright, the man formerly charged with developing a vaccine in the U.S. told lawmakers Trump government has no “master plan” to fight the pandemic.
He said the Trump administration is unprepared to distribute enough vaccines to immunize millions of Americans.
“We don’t have a single point of leadership right now for this response,” said Bright, who was removed by Trump from his job last month.