Police in Slovakia are investigating after Peter Sabo, a reporter for the news outlet Aktuality, found a bullet in his mailbox.The threat against Sabo comes just over two years after the February 2018 murder of Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak, who worked for the same outlet.Sabo joined Aktuality a few months after the killing, to help continue Kuciak’s investigations. Sabo had recently reported on international tax fraud and drug crimes.  The outlet condemned the threat in an People gather at Slovak National Uprising square for a rally against corruption and to pay tribute to murdered Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova, March 9, 2018, in Bratislava, Slovakia.Police said an investigation is under way, the International Federation of Journalists reported. The Slovak Minister of the Interior Roman Mikulec and President of Police Milan Lučansk were informed of the threat, Bárdy told the International Press Institute (IPI).  “This kind of intimidation must be taken seriously,” IPI deputy director Scott Griffen said in a FILE – Suspects in the 2018 slaying of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova, are escorted by armed police officers from a courtroom in Pezinok, Slovakia, December 19, 2019.Kuciak had been investigating tax fraud of several businessmen who had connections to Slovak politicians and Kočner. He was shot dead along with his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova, in their home in Velka Maca, a village east of the Slovak capital Bratislava.In the weeks after the murder, protests over corruption and the murder led to a series of high-profile resignations including of the prime minister.  Earlier this year, a court sentenced two people for the murder. Kočner is currently on trial accused of ordering the killing. He denies the charge. In a show of solidarity after the murder, Kuciak’s colleagues helped finish his unfinished work, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) founded the “Kocner Library” – an electronic archive made up of files police collected in their investigation into the businessman that journalists can use to further report on corruption.  
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Belgium’s King Philippe expressed regret Tuesday for 75 years of his country’s exploitative rule in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The king spoke on the African country’s 60th anniversary of independence. “I want to express my deepest regret for these past injuries, the pain of which is regularly revived by the discrimination that is still all too present in our societies,” Philippe wrote in a letter to Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi.  FILE – Belgium’s King Philippe, wearing a face mask, walks down a main shopping street in Brussels, May 10, 2020.The statement is the closest a reigning Belgian monarch has come to an apology. The Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960 after 52 years as a colony and 23 years of brutal private ownership under Leopold II. Millions of Congolese died under Belgian rule, which exploited land and people for rubber, copper, diamonds, gold and other natural resources.  
 
In a statement to the Agence France-Presse news agency, Congo Foreign Minister Marie Ntumba Nzeza said the king’s letter was “balm to the heart of the Congolese people. This is a step forward that will boost friendly relations between our nations.” 
 
A spokesman for Tshisekedi had no comment on the letter. But in a TV address on the eve of independence day, the president said Philippe was “searching, just like me, to strengthen the ties between our two countries without denying our common past, but with the goal of preparing a bright and harmonious future.” 
 
Other Congolese activists and scholars said Philippe’s letter, which did not include an explicit apology or mention Leopold II by name, did not go far enough. “It’s not enough to say, ‘I feel regret,'” Lambert Mende, a spokesman for former Congo President Joseph Kabila, told AFP. “People should be willing to repair the damage in terms of investment and compensation with interest. That’s what we expect from our Belgian partners.” 
 
Some have also called for Belgium to return Congolese artifacts, double down on investigations of colonial violence and issue reparations for 75 years of bloody rule.  A bust of Belgium’s King Leopold II is hoisted off of its plinth by a crane as it’s removed from a park in Ghent, Belgium, June 30, 2020.The Belgium city of Ghent took a statue of Leopold II off public display Tuesday, just hours after Philippe’s letter. The city of Antwerp removed another statue of the ruler earlier this month to repair it after anti-racism protesters defaced it with paint, though a spokesman for the city’s mayor said it probably would not be put back. 
 
Burundi and Rwanda, also former Belgian colonies, will celebrate their independence on July 1.Leslie Bonilla contributed to this report. 
 
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In Russia, a second effort is underway to hold a weeklong national vote to change the country’s constitution. The Kremlin was forced to scuttle an earlier April vote amid the outbreak of the coronavirus. From Moscow, Charles Maynes reports.VIDEOGRAPHER: Ricardo Marquina  
PRODUCER: Henry Hernandez 
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Saying it is not too soon to begin planning for the post-COVID-19 economy, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Tuesday pledged to invest more than $17 billion in the country’s education system and $6.13 billion for infrastructure investment. Speaking at Dudley College of Technology in central Britain, Johnson acknowledged it might seem premature to discuss a post-COVID future in light of recent surges of the virus in the nation and elsewhere in the world. But he maintained that Britons cannot continue to be “prisoners of this crisis.” Comparing his plan to former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs of the 1930’s designed to lift the United States out of the Great Depression, Johnson pledged to “build, build, build” and speed up government plans for new schools, hospitals and road repair. Johnson renewed a campaign pledge to build 40 new hospitals in Britain, with Health Secretary Matt Hancock releasing the list of new buildings in the next few days. He also pledged to continue and step up funding for the National Health Service and “fix the problems of social care that every government has flunked for the past 30 years.” Noting the economic downturn driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnson said, “We must work fast, because we know that people are worried about their jobs and their businesses.” As Johnson spoke of the post-COVID economy, the reality of the pandemic was evident in the British city of Leicester, where a spike in coronavirus infections prompted the government to reinstate a lockdown. All the city’s schools and non-essential shops were forced to close, fewer than two weeks after they had been allowed to reopen. 
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US lawmakers called for an immediate investigation Monday into news reports that Russia had offered bounties to Taliban-backed militants for the deaths of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The White House denied reports U.S. President Donald Trump had been briefed on those bounties, saying they had not been fully verified by the U.S. intelligence community. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more on the fallout in Washington. 
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A Parisian court Monday found former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon guilty of using public money to pay his wife more than $1 million for work she never performed.Fillon was sentenced to five years in prison — three years suspended — and fined more than $423,000. He is also barred from running for public office for 10 years. His wife, Penelope, was convicted as an accomplice. She was given a three-year suspended sentence and was also fined more than $423,000. Both are free pending appeal, which their lawyers say they will do.  ”Naturally, this decision, which is not fair, is going to be appealed. … The ludicrous conditions under which this investigation was triggered, the scandalous conditions in which the discovery was opened, the surprising conditions in which the investigation was then run,” Fillion’s attorney Antonin Levy said. Penelope Fillion’s attorney, Pierre Cornut-Gentille, says prosecutors failed to determine whether her activities were simply traditional help and support a politician’s wife gives her husband.  She said her duties included writing reports about local issues, reading mail, preparing speeches and meeting with voters — work she said allowed her to have a flexible schedule and still raise her children.  Prosecutors argued that there was little evidence that Penelope Fillion ever worked and said her salary was excessive.  Fillion’s lawyers argued that the state cannot interfere with how a politician sets up his office.  The scandal broke shortly before the 2017 French presidential election where Fillon went from being the front-runner to finishing in third place.
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In the wake of the death of George Floyd in police custody in the U.S. city of Minneapolis, the passionate debate has spread to France, sparking protests against alleged police brutality and racism. French policemen rebuke the criticism as unfair.For the past few weeks, protesters in France have been demanding police reforms and the end an alleged police immunity.  Their protests have met strong resistance from the security forces and their unions.  Officers have been organizing counter-protests, throwing their handcuffs on the ground as a sign of anger and what they see as a lack of support by the government.At one of those demonstrations – on the Champs-Elysées in Paris – a French police officer declined to give his name.He believes police officers are stigmatized in France and he feels the need to speak out because, he says, the police are not racist. He says the other big issues that should be addressed are the chokehold technique and what he says is the lack of consideration of police officers. He says that five years ago (during the 2015 Paris attacks) French policemen were considered as heroes and now – he says – they would be nobody.Chokehold banThe chokehold is a controversial technique that the French government wanted to ban in order to show it has zero tolerance for racism and violence among its security forces. Facing a backlash from policemen and women, the authorities have backtracked. Instead, the government has ruled this technique will no longer be taught to police officers and prison staff, but the leadership stopped short of imposing a total ban.Besides this important victory for them, policemen argue that they are being abandoned by the state. Police unions have been organizing frequent rallies to pressure the government.The protests show how difficult it is to carry out a thorough reform of the police sector.But Human rights advocates say the protests show France, and the world, have no choice. Cecile Coudriou, is president of Amnesty International in France. “We think it is a sign that what we really need in France is a global reform, not only one measure or the other but a true revision of the doctrine itself, based on de-escalation because law and enforcement is too often based on repression, use of force before trying to rely on dialogue, communication and de-escalation,” said Coudriou.In a further attempt to quell police officers’ discontent, France said it was widening the testing of tasers. French Interior minister Christophe Castaner pledged unconditional support for the rank and file.He explains that only security forces have the authority to use legitimate force, that it is only they who defend democratic order. That, he says, is the core of their missions and they need to accomplish it with restraint and exemplarity.  Castaner says French policemen should work without fear when they perform their duty according to the rules.A police watchdog in France says it received almost 1,500 complaints against officers last year – half of them for alleged violence.
 
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Some are calling it an historic moment for France’s Greens party, others for the environmental movement in general. The Greens went from controlling just one major French city — Grenoble — to capturing a string of other large and mid-sized towns, including Bordeaux, Lyon, Strasbourg and Besançon.  “What changed this election, the most important idea is ecology,” said Maud Lelievre a spokeswoman for Les Eco Maires, a group of environmentally minded local officials across France. She believes coronavirus and the lockdown helped reshape people’s priorities.   Lelievre said it’s more important for people,  for climate, for biodiversity, for food.    But turnout was low, with just 40% of France’s electorate casting ballots.   Greens party lawmaker Yannick Jadot hailed the victory, saying the environment and solidarity drove the vote. He said he hoped President Emmanuel Macron got the message.  The vote was indeed a blow for President Macron, who faces re-election in two years. His young, centrist Republic on the Move party has yet to gain a strong local foothold. Critics say Macron has failed to deliver on his environmental promises, including fighting climate change.  On Monday, Macron promised nearly $17 billion in new climate-related financing. He is also expected to reshuffle his cabinet in the coming days. That might include ousting his popular prime minister, Edouard Philippe, who scored one of the government’s rare victories in being elected mayor of the northern city of Le Havre.  In Paris, Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo won by a wide margin, with support from the Greens. Hidalgo’s push to make the capital bike and pedestrian friendly has been divisive — but it seems to have paid off.  France’s far right National Rally party scored one major victory, winning control of the southern city of Perpignan.
 
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French President Emmanuel Macron Monday pledged nearly $17 billion in new funding for environmental programs one day after his party was soundly defeated in local elections across France. At a news conference with Citizens’ Climate Council in Paris, Macron said he would move faster on environment-friendly policymaking and that he was ready to call a referendum on revising the constitution to include climate aims if parliament allowed it. Macron was responding to the climate council’s environmental propositions as France’s Green party — officially known as Europe Ecology  – The Greens (EELV) — stunned Macron and France in Sunday’s vote when it won control of large cities including Lyon, Bordeaux and Strasbourg, often in alliance with leftist allies.  The Greens’ victories in towns and cities put Macron under pressure to act on the environment. While supporting many of their proposals, Macron told the climate council he disagreed with its call for a four percent tax on dividends to help finance new greener policies, saying such a levy would discourage investments. He said a bill will be drafted and presented to lawmakers by the end of the summer to advance France’s ecological transition goals. Macron’s ruling party emerged from Sunday’s elections without a single victory in a big city, an outcome that leaves the president without a local power base as he eyes a re-election bid in 2022. Macron set up the Citizens’ Climate Council in the wake of “yellow vest” protests, which erupted over an increase in diesel taxes but turned into a wider rebellion against the president and his pro-business reform agenda.   
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The European Union is edging toward finalizing a list of countries whose citizens will be allowed to enter Europe again in coming days, with Americans almost certain to be excluded in the short term due to the number of U.S. coronavirus cases.
Spain’s foreign minister said that the list — which is likely to be made public Tuesday — could contain 15 countries that are not EU members and whose citizens would be allowed to visit from July 1.
EU envoys in Brussels worked over the weekend to narrow down the exact criteria for countries to be included, mostly centered on their ability to manage the spread of the disease. Importantly, the countries are also expected to drop any travel restrictions they have imposed on European citizens.
The number of confirmed cases in the United States has surged over the past week, and President Donald Trump also suspended the entry of all people from Europe’s ID check-free travel zone in a decree in March, making it highly unlikely that U.S. citizens would qualify.
Infection rates in Brazil, Russia and India are high, too, and their nationals are also unlikely to make the cut.
Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya said the EU is considering whether to accept travelers from China if Beijing lifts restrictions on European citizens. Morocco is another possibility, although its government doesn’t plan to open borders until July 10.
She said she wasn’t aware of pressure from the United States for the EU to reopen travel to its nationals, adding that countries have been chosen according to their coronavirus statistics — whether similar or not to that in the EU — trends of contagion and how reliable their data is.
“This is not an exercise to be nice or unfriendly to other countries, this is an exercise of self-responsibility,” she told Spain’s Cadena SER radio on Monday.
The safe country list would be reviewed every 14 days, with new countries being added and some possibly dropping off, depending on how the spread of the disease is being managed.
More than 15 million Americans are estimated to travel to Europe annually, and any delay would be a further blow to virus-ravaged economies and tourism sectors on both sides of the Atlantic.
Around 10 million Europeans are thought to cross the Atlantic for vacations and business each year.
The 27 EU nations and four other countries that are part of Europe’s “Schengen area” — a 26-nation bloc where goods and people move freely without document checks — appear on track to reopen borders between each other from Wednesday.
Once that happens and the green light is given, restrictions on nonessential travel to Europe from the outside world, which were imposed in March to halt new virus cases from entering, would gradually be lifted.
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When a nine-year old girl, the daughter of an unemployed hotel chambermaid fainted from hunger at a bakery shop on the island Rhodes this week, shockwaves were felt across the country. Several media outlets broke into scheduled programming to report the incident, while leading government ministers were left glued to their television sets, gripped by harrowing tale. Thanassis Stamoulis, president of the association of hotel employees in Rhodes explains. 
 
The young girl was in line, he says, waiting to get some bread. But she collapsed from starvation. This, unfortunately, is the grim reality here on the island of Rhodes, Stamoulis says. But it is just a small example of the human toll this crisis is exacting on society. With its breathtaking vistas, sandy beaches and spectacular medieval architecture, Rhodes has long been a top vacation destination. Last year alone, the island attracted more than two million British, German and American tourists. But today, weeks into Greece’s tourism relaunch, not a single hotel has managed to open, inflicting huge losses and devastating despair across the local community according to Stamoulis. 
 
The scenes that are unravelling here are like we are emerging from a war, he says. Every day people gather at a main square selling their personal possessions to make some money. Rhodes is dead. Almost all shops are closed. There is just no business at all. Everything is dead. 
 
For a country heavily reliant on tourism, such scenes of despair could spell another recession for Greece, just years after it managed to steer out of an exhausting 10-year financial crisis. In a recent report, the country’s central bank said travel revenue was down by 99 percent in April. And this after, travel to Greece had dropped by more than 50 percent between January and March the previous year. The government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis says it is confident that some losses can be recovered with the re-opening of travel. But even Yiannis Retsos, the head of Greece’s Tourism Confederation, the umbrella agency guiding the country’s top industry is pessimistic. 
 
At this point, he said, I’ll be surprised if tourism revenues exceed four to five billion euros. 
 
That’s just a fraction of the nearly 18 billion euros the country raked in from tourism last year, providing jobs to one in five workers here. 
 
From the start of the pandemic, the government injected more than 10 billion euros into the economy to keep businesses operating, mainly in the tourism trade. But that appears to be too little. Finance Minister Christos Staikouras recently announced that the government expected the country to suffer a contraction of 8% of gross domestic product in 2020 with a whopping 16% downturn in the second quarter of the year. Greece had originally expected its economy to grow by nearly three percent this year and workers like the now unemployed chambermaid in Rhodes had hoped for better rather than tougher times. 
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Poland’s presidential election appears headed for a runoff after no candidate appears to have won a majority of votes needed for an outright victory.Exit polls Sunday gave right-wing President Andrzej Duda 42% of the ballots cast and centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski 30% of the votes. Television personality Szymon Holownia had 13%.  Election observers say they do not expect the final results later this week to change, meaning the top two candidates will face off in a second round July 12.Duda’s nationalist Law and Justice Party is hoping to be able to extend its majority in parliament and implement conservative social, judicial and immigration policies that many other in the European Union have criticized as anti-democratic.They include Duda’s pledge to ban gay rights classes in schools. He has called homosexuality worse than communism.  Trzaskowski, of the Civic Platform party, campaigned on promises to preserve the ruling party’s popular welfare programs but said he would block any legislation he says would be unconstitutional. He also says he would restore good relations with the European Union.  The coronavirus outbreak forced a nearly two-month delay in the election.Observers say the postponement hurt Duda who had looked as if he would cruise to a first-round victory. But his popularity in the polls slipped after the Civic Platform party replaced a much less popular candidate with Trzaskowski and other candidates were allowed to get out and campaign more when COVID-19 restrictions were eased.
 
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France President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party received a drubbing Sunday in municipal elections, as the Greens celebrated victories in several big cities after a surge in support.Macron had hoped the elections would help anchor his young party in towns and cities across France, including Paris, ahead of an anticipated 2022 reelection bid.But aides had more recently been playing down expectations, and the sweeping wins by the Greens, who in some cities joined forces with leftist allies, may compel Macron to reshuffle his government to win back disenfranchised left-wing voters.In a rare bright spot for Macron, his prime minister, Edouard Philippe, won his bid to become mayor of the northern port city of Le Havre. Although the French constitution allows Philippe to name someone to act as mayor while he remains prime minister, his win deepens questions over his job as premier.’Green wave’
Exit polls showed the Greens winning in Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux and Strasbourg, building on the momentum created by their strong performance in France in last year’s European Parliament elections.Yannick Jadot, a European Parliament lawmaker from the Europe Ecology – The Greens, hailed an historic victory.”It’s an incredible green wave,” he said.In Paris, the biggest prize of all, the incumbent Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo celebrated victory after a shambolic campaign by Macron’s camp.France’s 35,000 mayors set policy on issues from urban planning to education and the environment. While local factors typically drive voter choices, they give the electorate an opportunity to support or punish a president midmandate.”We have a government that is completely disconnected from reality,” said Naouel, a voter in Paris’ 9th district who said she was backing the center-right opposition candidate.In Perpignan, Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally) claimed victory, the first time the protectionist, anti-EU party has taken control of a town with a population of more than 100,000 people.Reshuffle?In this second round of voting, turnout was low and people wore masks because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The first round was held just days before Macron imposed one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns in mid-March.Turnout was just 40.5%, interior ministry data showed.The weak performance of Macron’s La Republique en Marche will prompt much soul-searching for the president, who in the run-up to the vote said he wanted to reinvent his presidency with two years left in his mandate.Early in his presidency, Macron’s left-wing opponents derided him as a ‘president of the rich’ as he eased taxes on companies and relaxed worker protections as he enacted reforms to liberalize France’s regulation-choked economy.The reforms were bearing fruit: growth was robust among euro zone peers and stubbornly high unemployment was falling.But the past three years have been mired in social unrest and the pandemic’s impact is reversing some of Macron’s hard-fought gains, as disillusion among the leftist faction of his party grows. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday he had never been told about reports that a Russian military intelligence unit was secretly offering bounties to Taliban militants in Afghanistan to kill U.S. soldiers. Trump scoffed at a New York Times report that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded months ago that the Russian unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and covert operations in Europe aimed at destabilizing the West, had carried out the mission in Afghanistan last year and that he had been briefed about it in late March. On Twitter, he said, “Nobody briefed or told me,” Vice President Mike Pence or White House chief of staff Mark Meadows “about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an ‘anonymous source’ by the Fake News @nytimes. Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us.” Nobody briefed or told me, @VP Pence, or Chief of Staff @MarkMeadows about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an “anonymous source” by the Fake News @nytimes. Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2020Twenty American troops were killed in Afghanistan last year, but it was not known which killings might have been linked to the alleged Russian bounties. Critics have accused Trump of often being deferential to Russian President Vladimir Putin during his 3 ½-year term in the White House. But Trump tweeted, “Nobody’s been tougher on Russia than the Trump Administration,” contending that Russia “had a field day” under former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s opponent in the national November presidential election. The U.S. leader challenged the newspaper to “reveal its ‘anonymous’ source. Bet they can’t do it, this ‘person’ probably does not even exist!” The Fake News @ nytimes must reveal its “anonymous” source. Bet they can’t do it, this “person” probably does not even exist! https://t.co/pdg4AjybOG
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2020Hours after Trump’s tweets, his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, expanded on his comments.”The United States receives thousands of intelligence reports a day and they are subject to strict scrutiny,” she said. “While the White House does not routinely comment on alleged intelligence or internal deliberations, the CIA director, national security adviser, and the chief of staff can all confirm that neither the president nor the vice president were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence. This does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence but to the inaccuracy of the New York Times story erroneously suggesting that President Trump was briefed on this matter.”
Both Russia and the Taliban denied the report of the bounties, with Moscow calling them “baseless and anonymous accusations.” The Russian embassy in Washington said the New York Times report had “already led to direct threats” on the lives of employees at Russian embassies in Washington and London.   A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, rejected the report that the insurgents have “any such relations with any intelligence agency” and called the newspaper report an attempt to defame them. “These kinds of deals with the Russian intelligence agency are baseless — our target killings and assassinations were ongoing in years before, and we did it on our own resources,” he said. “That changed after our deal with the Americans, and their lives are secure, and we don’t attack them.” Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the leader of the Taliban delegation, and Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. envoy for peace in Afghanistan, shake hands after signing an agreement at a ceremony in Doha, Qatar, Feb. 29, 2020.Earlier this year, the U.S. and the Taliban signed an “agreement for bringing peace” to Afghanistan after more than 18 years of conflict. The U.S. and NATO allies agreed to withdraw all troops by next year if the militants uphold the deal. Trump said it had been a “long and hard journey” in Afghanistan, but that, “It’s time after all these years to bring our people back home.” Despite Trump’s denial of the alleged bounties, one of the top-ranking Republican lawmakers in Congress, Congresswoman Liz Cheney, voiced concerns about the report. “If reporting about Russian bounties on US forces is true, the White House must explain: 1. Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed?” she said on Twitter.  She asked whether the information was in Trump’s daily presidential briefing. “Who did know and when? What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?” said Cheney, the daughter of former U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney. If reporting about Russian bounties on US forces is true, the White House must explain:
1. Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed? Was the info in the PDB?
2. Who did know and when?
3. What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) June 28, 2020John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who now contends in a new book that the president is unfit to run the country, told CNN that Trump’s tweets about the alleged bounties show that he was not concerned about “the security of our forces,” but “whether he was paying attention” to the intelligence report he supposedly was given.  
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The White House has denied that President Donald Trump was briefed on a reported finding that Russian military intelligence offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. 
 
Neither Trump nor Vice President Mike Pence was briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement, referring to a report on June 26 in The New York Times. 
 
“This does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence but to the inaccuracy of The New York Times story erroneously suggesting that President Trump was briefed on this matter,” she added. 
 
Former Vice President Joe Biden reacted to the report by attacking Trump for his reported failure to take action. 
 
Biden said the shocking revelation — if true — is that Trump “has known about this for months” and had done “worse than nothing.” 
 
Biden, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, said not only has Trump failed to impose any kind of consequences on Russia, he “has continued his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin.” 
 
He promised that if he is elected on November 3, “Putin will be confronted and we’ll impose serious costs on Russia.” 
 
The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence officials concluded months ago that Russian military intelligence offered the bounties to Taliban-linked militants. 
 
The newspaper, citing anonymous U.S. officials briefed on the matter, reported that a secret unit of Russia’s GRU military intelligence linked to assassination attempts in Europe and other activities offered rewards for successful attacks last year. 
 
A spokesman for the Taliban leadership said on June 27 that the group “strongly reject” the allegation. It insisted the Taliban “is not indebted to the beneficence of any intelligence organ or foreign country and neither is the [Taliban leadership] in need of anyone in specifying objectives.” 
 
Spokesmen for the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and the CIA declined to comment on the allegations that were later also reported by The Washington Post. 
 
The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the report. 
 
“This unsophisticated plant clearly illustrates the low intellectual abilities of the propagandists of American intelligence, who instead of inventing something more plausible have to make up this nonsense,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. 
 
The Times claimed the intelligence was based partially on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals. 
 
It said Taliban-linked militants, or “armed criminal elements closely associated with them,” collected some of the money. But it reported that it was not clear whether any of the 20 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan last year are linked to the alleged payments. 
 
The newspaper, citing unidentified officials familiar with the intelligence, said the findings were presented to Trump and discussed by his National Security Council in late March. Officials developed potential responses, starting with a diplomatic complaint to Russia, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the report said. 
 
At least two members of Congress demanded answers. 
 
Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican-South Carolina) said in a tweet it was “imperative” that Congress get to the bottom of the news reports. 
 
Senator Bob Menendez (Democrat-New Jersey) said Congress must act “if Trump refuses to hold Putin accountable for funding terrorism against U.S. troops in Afghanistan.” 
 
Legislation he proposed calling for sanctions against Russia passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in December 2019 and awaits a vote by the full Senate, he said on Twitter, urging Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to “act this week.” 
 
The allegations come as the United States seeks to advance a nascent peace process in Afghanistan after signing a deal with the Taliban in February that could see U.S. troops leave the country next year. 
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Concerns over democratic standards and bread-and-butter issues top the agenda as Poles began voting on Sunday in round one of a tight presidential race that had to be postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.Incumbent Andrzej Duda, 48, is campaigning for reelection in a vote that could determine the future of the right-wing government that supports him.Ten candidates are vying to replace him, but opinion polls show that Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, a liberal from the main Civic Platform (PO) opposition party, will enter a neck-and-neck run-off on July 12.Victory for Trzaskowski, also 48, would deal a heavy blow to the Law and Justice (PiS) government, which has relied on its ally Duda to endorse polarizing legislation, especially judicial reforms.While the PiS insists the changes are needed to weed out judicial corruption, critics and the European Union insist they erode judicial independence and democracy just three decades after Poland shed communism.U.S. President Donald Trump, who regards the populist PiS administration as a key European ally, gave Duda his blessing this week.Trump invited him to the White House on Wednesday as the first foreign leader to visit since the coronavirus pandemic began, just four days ahead of election day.Originally scheduled for May, the ballot was postponed due to the pandemic and a new hybrid system of postal and conventional voting was in place on Sunday in a bid to stem infections.While official figures show over 33,000 confirmed cases and more than 1,400 deaths, the health minister has admitted that there are likely up to 1.6 million undetected cases in Poland, an EU country of 38 million people.Anti-gay rhetoricDuda has promised to defend the governing party’s raft of popular social benefits, including a child allowance and extra pension payments — a key factor behind the populists winning a second term in October’s parliamentary election.Bread-and-butter issues are weighing heavily on voters’ minds as the economic fallout of the pandemic is set to send Poland into its first recession since communism’s demise.”I’m happy. I can’t complain; I get an extra pension payment and children are getting 500 zloty,” Irena, a 63-year-old pensioner, told AFP in the central Polish town of Minsk Mazowiecki.”I’d like this to continue,” she added, declining to provide her surname.Duda has also echoed PiS attacks on LGBT+ rights and Western values, something analysts see as a bid to attract voters backing a far-right candidate.Campaigning with the slogan “Enough is Enough,” Trzaskowski promises to use the experience and contacts he gathered as a former European affairs minister to “fight hard” for a fair slice of the EU’s 2021-27 budget, and to repair tattered ties with Brussels.He has however vowed to keep the PiS’s popular welfare payments.While many see his PO party as a weak and ineffectual opposition, Trzaskowski supporters regard him as a bulwark against the PiS’s drive to reform the courts, something they insist risks destroying any notion of an independent judiciary.”I’m a lawyer and this (PiS justice reforms) affect me directly,” Marek, 60, told AFP in Minsk Mazowiecki, also declining to provide his surname.”It’s as if a blacksmith would go to a watchmaker’s shop and try to put things in order. People might support it, but in the long run these reforms will have to be reversed.”‘Budapest model’?Since winning power in 2015, both Duda and the PiS have in many ways upended Polish politics by stoking tensions with the EU and wielding influence through state-owned companies and public broadcasters.Some analysts view the election as a crucial juncture: a second five-year term for Duda would allow the PiS to make even more controversial changes while defeat could unravel the party’s power.A win for Duda would pave the way to “bolstering ‘Eastern’ tendencies, like the rise of oligarchs… and a drift to the Budapest model (of Hungary’s Viktor Orban) – that’s the danger,” Warsaw University political scientist Anna Materska-Sosowska told AFP.Polling stations opened at 7:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) and will close at 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT) with an exit poll expected as soon as voting ends.      
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France’s ruling party is expected to be handed a stinging rebuke by voters Sunday in the final round of local elections, the first big political test for President Emmanuel Macron since the coronavirus crisis began to ease.The first round controversially went ahead on March 15 just as the epidemic was gaining deadly momentum, but the second phase scheduled for March 22 was put off to June 28 after France went into lockdown.Analysts are expecting the election will underline the failure of Macron’s centrist Republic on the Move (LREM) party — founded by the president ahead of his 2017 election win — to gain a strong foothold at a local level.Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo is predicted to hold on to the key battleground of Paris, with LREM candidate and former health minister Agnes Buzyn well behind after Macron’s original choice pulled out in a sexting scandal.With a death toll fast approaching 30,000, France has been badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic. While most restrictions have now been eased, there is widespread anger at the government over shortages of protective equipment in the early stages of the pandemic.’No anchor’Paris is now buzzing with speculation that if a poor showing by the LREM is confirmed, Macron will take the chance to announce a major cabinet reshuffle.This could include the post of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who in an oddity of French politics is also campaigning to be mayor of the Normandy port city of Le Havre.During the pandemic, the popularity of Philippe, a technocratic and unshowy figure, has risen to a level much higher than that of the president’s low ratings, raising speculation Macron may prefer to see him work full time in his Norman fiefdom.A poll by Harris Interactive Epoka published Friday showed that 44 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of Macron, but 51 percent were positive on Philippe, a jump of 13 points for the premier since the start of the epidemic.”There will not be any significant conquests for LREM,” said Emmanuel Riviere, a pollster who is president of the Kantar Centre on the Future of Europe.”This will deprive the ruling party of a territorial anchor that it could have depended on in future elections,” he said.Greens, left seek successFrance’s next presidential poll will be in 2022 where analysts expect the main challenger for Macron to be far-right leader Marine Le Pen of the National Rally (RN) party.Despite their abysmal performance in the last presidential elections, the Socialists are expected to keep key regional centers.There will also be close attention on performance of the green Europe Ecology — The Greens (EELV) party which as well as seeking to keep the Alpine hub of Grenoble also has its eyes on taking Strasbourg and Lyon.In Marseille, left wing candidate Michele Rubirola wants to cause a major sensation by taking France’s second city from the right after a quarter of a century of control.For Le Pen’s RN, the big prize would be taking the southeastern city of Perpignan, which would be the first time the far-right takes a city of more than 100,000 inhabitants since Toulon in 1995.Over three months after the first round, the vote will take place in 4,820 districts where municipal councils were not elected outright in the previous poll.The only region of France where the vote is not taking place is the overseas territory of Guiana in South America, where the pandemic is still deemed too dangerous to proceed with the vote.With social distancing rules still in place across France, the campaign for the second round has been inevitably low key and a major question will be if the turnout is an improvement on the dismal 44.3 percent recorded in the first round.Wearing a mask will also be obligatory for the 16.5 million people eligible to cast a vote in this round, with polling stations due to open from 0600 GMT. 
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France’s oldest nuclear power plant will shut down on Tuesday after four decades in operation, to the delight of environmental activists who have long warned of contamination risks, but stoking worry for the local economy.The Fessenheim plant, opened in 1977 and already three years over its projected 40-year life span, became a target for anti-nuclear campaigners after the catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima in Japan in 2011.Despite a pledge by then-president Francois Hollande just months after the Fukushima disaster to close Fessenheim — on the Rhine river near France’s eastern border with Germany and Switzerland — it was not until 2018 that his successor Emmanuel Macron gave the final green light.Run by state-owned energy company EDF (Electricite de France), one of Fessenheim’s two reactors was disconnected in February.The second is to be taken offline early Tuesday, but it will be several months before the reactors have cooled enough for the used fuel to be removed.That process should be completed by 2023, and the plant is not expected to be fully dismantled before 2040 at the earliest.”We hope, above all, to be the last victims of this witch hunt against nuclear” energy, Fessenheim union representative Anne Laszlo said ahead of the closure that will see about 150 families depart the tiny Alsatian community of 2,500 inhabitants this summer.More will follow, with only 294 people needed on site for the fuel removal process until 2023, and about 60 after that for the final disassembly.By the end of 2017, Fessenheim had over 1,000 employees and service providers on site.There is no legal limit on the life span of French nuclear power stations, but the EDF had envisaged a 40-year ceiling for all second-generation reactors, which use pressurized water technology.’Island of prosperity’France’s ASN nuclear safety authority has said reactors can be operated beyond 40 years only if ambitious safety improvements are undertaken.In the 1990s and 2000s, several safety failures were reported at Fessenheim, including an electrical fault, cracks in a reactor cover, a chemistry error, water pollution, a fuel leak, and non-lethal radioactive contamination of workers.In 2007, the same year a Swiss study found that seismic risks in the Alsace region had been underestimated during construction, the ASN denounced a “lack of rigor” in EDF’s operation of the plant.Without Fessenheim, France will still have 56 pressurized water reactors at 18 nuclear plants generating some 70 percent of its electricity. Only the United States, with 98, has more reactors, but France is by far the world’s biggest consumer of nuclear energy.In January, the French government said it would shut 12 more reactors nearing or exceeding the 40-year limit by 2035, when nuclear power should represent just 50 percent of the country’s energy mix in favor of renewable sources.At the same time, the EDF is racing to get its first next-generation reactor running by 2022 — 10 years behind schedule — and more may be in the pipeline.Local mayor Claude Brender condemned the closure of the plant, which he says has helped create an “island of prosperity” in an otherwise poor part of Alsace.The government has said workers will be transferred to other EDF sites.’Liberation from nuclear’At their Fessenheim home, engineer Jean-Christophe Rouaud and his wife Cecile, director of the local creche, were packing boxes ahead of moving with their two children to another town where he found work at a nuclear plant.As the end was approaching, “people are afraid to no longer hear the machines running,” Rouaud told AFP, and described a “sense of waste shared by all employees.”Many others will have no option but to leave their families in Alsace and work elsewhere.Restaurant owner Laurent Schwein said the future of auxiliary businesses in the town looked dire.”As restaurateurs, we are entering the unknown. We don’t know how long the dismantling will take,” said Schwein, who is also the president of the local football club which will now close with most of its young players leaving.Fessenheimer Gabriel Weisser is one of few happy about the town’s “liberation from nuclear.””They are defending their professional lives, me my very life,” he said of the plant’s diehard defenders.  
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Centrist politician Micheál Martin became Ireland’s new prime minister Saturday, fusing two longtime rival parties into a coalition four months after an election that upended the status quo.The deal will see Martin’s Fianna Fail govern with Fine Gael — the party of outgoing leader Leo Varadkar — and with the smaller Green Party. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, bitter opponents whose roots lie in opposing sides of the civil war that followed Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom, have never before formed a government together.”I believe civil war politics ended a long time ago in our country, but today civil war politics ends in our parliament,” said Varadkar, who became Ireland’s youngest and first gay prime minister three years ago. “Two great parties coming together with another great party, the Green Party, to offer what this country needs, a stable government for the betterment of our country and for the betterment of our world.”The Dail, the lower house of Ireland’s parliament, elected Martin by a vote of 93-63, with three abstentions. Martin later met with Irish President Michael D Higgins to receive his seal of office.Under the plan approved by the parties’ memberships, Martin became Taoiseach, or prime minister. He will serve until the end of 2022 and then hand the job back to Varadkar.Sinn Fein shut outThe left-wing nationalist party Sinn Fein was shut out of the new government even though an electoral breakthrough saw it win the largest share of the votes in February’s election. Despite coming out ahead, Sinn Fein was unable to assemble enough support to govern.The two centrist parties have long shunned Sinn Fein because of its historic links to the Irish Republican Army and decades of violence in Northern Ireland. But in protracted negotiations further complicated by the COVID-19 outbreak, the two rival centrist parties opted for unity.Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald said Fianna Fail and Fine Gael conspired to exclude her party and the voices of more than half a million people who voted for her party. She called the coalition a “marriage of convenience.””Faced with the prospect of losing their grip on power, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have circled the wagons,” McDonald said.Fianna Fail holds 38 seats in the 160-seat Dail, Sinn Fein has 37 and Fine Gael has 35, while the Greens have 12 seats.Homelessness, housing, healthThe election campaign was dominated by domestic issues. Ireland has a growing homelessness crisis, house prices that have risen faster than incomes and a public health system that hasn’t kept up with demand.Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the country’s problems. Underscoring the changes the virus has wrought, the Dail’s session Saturday was held at the Dublin Convention Centre rather than lawmakers’ permanent chamber to allow for social distancing.  Martin said that dealing with the pandemic would be the centerpiece of his leadership.  “The struggle against the virus is not over,” he said. “We must continue to contain its spread. We must be ready to tackle any new wave, and we must move forward rapidly to secure a recovery to benefit all of our people.”  The son of a former Irish international boxer, Martin, 59, had initially embarked on a career as a secondary school teacher before devoting himself to politics.He’s had a number of roles in more than 30 years of public life, including serving in four Cabinet posts. In his speech, he described being named Taoiseach of a free republic as being the greatest honor one could achieve. He thanked those who voted for him.”Most of all I want to thank my family and my community,” Martin said. “Without them I could have achieved nothing.”
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Several dozen women demonstrated Saturday in support of French police in central Paris, to counter public discontent over the perceived way law enforcement treats minorities.The demonstration of support surfaced as local governments across France attempt to change law enforcement practices and punish officers suspected of racism following the death of African American George Floyd while in the custody of officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota.Police officers and their unions in France accuse governments of blaming police for deep-rooted social ills in an attempt to deflect public anger.Among the women supporting police outside the Paris police headquarters Saturday were wives and partners of officers. One carried a message for Interior Minister Christophe Castaner that read “Respect our Police.”Castaner infuriated police this month when he acknowledged there were cases of racism in the police force and proposed sentences for officers found guilty of “proven suspicions of racism.”Police themselves have been protesting efforts to change their practices and punish them. Hundreds of officers rallied Friday night outside Paris’ Bataclan concert hall, where 90 people were killed in a terrorist attack by Islamist militants in 2015.  Protests erupted around the world following U.S. outrage over the May 25 death of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man. City lawmakers Friday unanimously advanced a proposal that could lead to the dismantling of that city’s police department.
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For a long time, few people in the small Belgian town of Halle paid much attention to the monuments. They were just fixtures in a local park, tributes to great men of the past.But these are very different times, and yesterday’s heroes can be today’s racist villains.And so it was that three weeks ago, a bust of Leopold II, the Belgian king who has been held responsible for the deaths of millions of Congolese, was spattered in red paint, labeled “Murderer,” and later knocked off its pedestal.Nearby, a pale sandstone statue formally known as the “Monument to the Colonial Pioneers” has stood for 93 years. It depicts a naked Congolese boy offering a bowl of fruit in gratitude to Lt. Gen. Baron Alphonse Jacques de Dixmude, a Belgian soldier accused of atrocities in Africa.These monuments, and others across Europe, are coming under scrutiny as never before, no longer a collective blind spot on the moral conscience of the public. Protests sweeping the world that followed the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed last month by Minneapolis police, are focusing attention on Europe’s colonial past and racism of the present.Eric Baranyanka, right, and his foster mother Emma Monsaert look at a photo of Eric as a young boy in Lembeek, Belgium, June 22, 2020.Eric Baranyanka, a 60-year-old musician who came to Halle as a refugee from Belgium’s African colony of Burundi when was 3, said he has always found the statue of Jacques “humiliating.””I had this pride being who I was. It was in complete contradiction with that statue,” he said.But Halle Mayor Marc Snoeck appears to be more representative of his citizenry. He said he “never really noticed” the monuments until an anti-colonial group raised awareness of them a dozen years ago in the town of 40,000 people about 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of Brussels.”I’m part of an older generation and I heard precious little during my studies about colonialism, the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo,” said the 66-year-old Snoeck, noting he was taught about how Europeans brought civilization, not exploitation and death, to the heart of Africa.A statue of former Belgian King Leopold II has been vandalized, in the park of the Africa Museum, in Tervuren, near Brussels, Belgium, June 9, 2020.Statues of Leopold, who reigned from 1865 to 1909, have been defaced in a half-dozen cities, including Antwerp, where one was burned and had to be removed for repairs. It’s unclear if it will ever come back.But Leopold is hardly the only focus. Snoeck found it remarkable that protesters have not targeted the statue of Jacques, which he called “possibly even worse.”The mayor said the statue is known locally as “The White Negro,” because of the hue of the sandstone depicting the Congolese youth offering the fruit to the colonial-era Belgian who condoned or was responsible for murders, rapes and maiming workers in the Congo Free State.Baranyanka was lovingly raised by a white foster family in Halle and said he never experienced prejudice until after he had been in Belgium for about a decade.His 98-year-old foster mother Emma Monsaert recalls others in town asking her if she was really going to take in a Black youth in the 1960s: “I said, ‘Why not, it is a child after all.'”But at school, Baranyanka found out how others felt about race.One teacher poured salt on his head, he recalled, saying it would make it whiter. When he wanted a part in a school play of the 17th century fairy tale “Puss in Boots,” he was denied a role, with a teacher telling him: “Mr. Baranyanka, in those days there were no Blacks in Europe.”He counts himself lucky to have had a close circle of friends that survives to this day. As a teenager, he often talked to them about the monuments, his African roots and Leopold’s legacy.A statue of Belgium’s King Leopold II is smeared with red paint and graffiti in Brussels, June 10, 2020. King Leopold II is now increasingly seen as a stain on the nation.”They understood, and they were grateful I explained it,” he said.On Tuesday, Congo celebrates 60 years of independence from Belgium. The city of Ghent will remove a statue of Leopold to mark the anniversary and perhaps take a healing step forward.  Eunice Yahuma, a local leader of a group called Belgian Youth Against Racism and the youth division of the Christian Democrats, knows about Belgium’s troubled history.”Many people don’t know the story, because it is not being told. Somehow they know, ‘Let’s not discuss this, because it is grim history,'” said Yahuma, who has Congolese roots. “It is only now that we have this debate that people start looking into this.”The spirit of the times is different, she said.”Black people used to be less vocal. They felt the pain, but they didn’t discuss it. Now, youth is very outspoken and we give our opinion,” Yahuma added.History teachers like 24-year-old Andries Devogel are trying to infuse their lessons with the context of colonialism.”Within the next decade, they will be expecting us to stress the impact of colonialism on current-day society, that colonialism and racism are inextricably linked,” Devogel said. “Is contemporary racism not the consequence of a colonial vision? How can you exploit a people if you are not convinced of their second-class status?”The colonial era brought riches to Belgium, and the city of Halle benefited, building a rail yard that brought jobs. Native son Franz Colruyt started a business that grew into the supermarket giant Colruyt Group with 30,000 employees — one of them Baranyanka’s foster father.A man walks with his shopping bags past the Monument for the Congo Pioneers in Halle, Belgium, June 24, 2020. In Halle, a small trading town of 40,000, as across much of Europe, the tide is turning and a new consciousness is taking shape.Halle has escaped the violence seen in other cities from the protests, and officials would rather focus attention on its Gothic church, the Basilica of St. Martin, as well as its famous fields of bluebells and Geuze beer.Baranyanka, who will soon stage a musical show of his life called “De Zwette,” — “The Black One,” returned recently to the park and the monuments.Despite the hostility and humiliation he felt as a youngster, he didn’t consider their destruction as the way to go.”Vandalism produces nothing, perhaps only the opposite effect. And you see that suddenly such racism surges again,” he said. “It breeds polarization again. This thing of ‘us against them.'”Devogel, the teacher, says it is the task of education “to let kids get in touch with history.””Otherwise, it will remain a copper bust without meaning,” he said of the Leopold II monument. “And you will never realize why, for all these people, it is so deeply insulting.” 
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European Union countries failed to settle on Friday on a final “safe list” of countries whose residents could travel to the bloc from July, with the United States, Brazil and Russia set to be excluded.Ambassadors from the 27 EU members convened from Friday afternoon to establish criteria for granting quarantine-free access from next Wednesday.A redrawn text of 10-20 countries was put to them, but many said they needed to consult first with their governments, diplomats said. The list did not include the United States, Brazil or Russia, one diplomat said.Discussions were continuing overnight, with the EU countries expected to give informal replies by Saturday evening, people familiar with the matter said.U.S. passengers may be allowed to travel if they meet certain conditions such as passing temperature checks, two U.S. officials said.The European Commission had advised that the bloc first lift internal border controls and then gradually open up to outsiders. However, the first step has not gone according to plan.Greece is mandating coronavirus tests for arrivals from a range of EU countries, including France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, with self-isolation until results are known.The Czech Republic has said it will not allow in tourists from Portugal, Sweden and part of Poland.There is broad agreement that the bloc should only open up to those with a similar or better epidemiological situation, but there are questions about how to assess a country’s handling of the epidemic and the reliability of data.A number of countries, such as Tanzania, Turkmenistan and Laos have no reported cases in the past two weeks, according to EU agency, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).Based on ECDC data for the two weeks to Thursday, a range of countries are clearly in a worse situation than the European Union.They include the United States, Mexico, Brazil and much of Latin America, Russia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia.Despite pressure from U.S. airlines and unions, the White House has not committed to mandating fresh air travel safety measures in the wake of the pandemic. Discussions between airlines and government officials including Vice President Mike Pence on Friday over temperature checks ended without an agreement.In a statement, Pence’s office said the parties also discussed “the best path forward for allowing Americans to safely travel internationally again.”The Commission has suggested the western Balkans countries — Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia — should be admitted.However, according to the ECDC data, the number of cases in Bosnia and North Macedonia could be too high. 
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U.S. intelligence has concluded that the Russian military offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan to kill American troops and other coalition forces, The New York Times reported Friday.Citing officials briefed on the matter, the Times said the United States determined months ago that a Russian military intelligence unit linked to assassination attempts in Europe had offered rewards for successful attacks last year.Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the newspaper said.The White House, the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined requests from Reuters for comment on the Times report.President Donald Trump has been briefed on the intelligence finding, the Times said. It said the White House had yet to authorize any steps against Russia in response to the bounties.Of the 20 Americans killed in combat in 2019, the Times said, it was not clear which deaths were under suspicion.After nearly 20 years of fighting the Taliban, the United States is looking for a way to extricate itself from Afghanistan and to achieve peace between the U.S.-backed government and the militant group, which controls swaths of the country.On February 29, the United States and the Taliban struck a deal that called for a phased U.S. troop withdrawal.U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan is down to nearly 8,600, well ahead of a schedule agreed with the Taliban, in part because of concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, U.S. and NATO officials said in late May.
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A campaign to topple statues of slave owners and Confederate heroes across the United States has extended in California to monuments honoring icons of the region’s Spanish colonial history, much to the distress of the Spanish Embassy in Washington.“We deeply regret the destruction of the statue of Saint Junipero Serra in San Francisco today, and would like to offer a reminder of his great efforts in support of indigenous communities,” the embassy A graffiti reading “racist” is seen on a statue of Fray Junipero Serra in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, June 22, 2020.The statue of Serra, a founder of 18th-century California missions, was one of several monuments vandalized during an overnight rampage in the park June 20.Similar attacks have occurred across the United States amid a wave of public revulsion over the May 25 death of George Floyd, an African American, while in custody of white police officers in Minneapolis. But the San Francisco protesters appear to have been indiscriminate in their targets.Cervantes, GrantFigures defaced or knocked from their pedestals included those of the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes as well as American heroes Francis Scott Key, author of  the U.S. national anthem, and General Ulysses S. Grant, who contributed to the end of slavery in the United States by defeating the South in the 1861-65 Civil War.It was all too much for the Spanish Embassy, which declared that “defending the Spanish legacy in the U.S. is a priority” and called for “the memory of our rich shared history [to] be protected.”The embassy’s tweets generated more than 15,000 reactions — remarkable given that the response to its Twitter postings is often logged in double digits — with most of the comments either defending or criticizing Serra.The Franciscan friar, who was canonized as a saint by Pope Francis in 2015, made it his life’s mission to Christianize Indigenous populations in the Americas during the 1700s. Statues of the priest can be found along the Pacific Coast in California and Mexico.“As an American who was raised in California during an era when schools taught the complexities of history, let me apologize for the wanton destruction of these statues,” said one message posted to the embassy’s Twitter feed.(1/4) We deeply regret the destruction of the statue of Saint Junípero Serra in San Francisco today, and would like to offer a reminder of his great efforts in support of indigenous communities.
Thread ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/qJOmsjorjS
— Embassy of Spain USA (@SpainInTheUSA) June 20, 2020But another respondent wrote, “Junipero Serra was responsible for a system of enslavement that decimated California native communities, his recent canonization was a shameful cover up of genocide, and the day we take down every public statue of him can’t come soon enough.”Junípero Serra was responsible for a system of enslavement that decimated California native communities, his recent canonization was a shameful cover up of genocide, and the day we take down every public statue of him can’t come soon enough https://t.co/SeBtMu2PgJ
— Rebecca Pierce #BlackShabbat (@aptly_engineerd) June 21, 2020A self-identified historian pointed out that the friar’s legacy has been controversial for some time, noting that Indigenous groups in California waged a campaign in 2018 that led Stanford University to rename its postal address to delete the priest’s name.. @Stanford erased Serra’s name from the campus, condemning the violence and abuse of indigenous peoples in the mission system https://t.co/lBtCWf9RTk
— Dr Kristie Flannery (@thehistoriann) June 21, 2020While the anger over Serra has historical roots, the damage to the bust of Cervantes — Spain’s most famous literary figure and author of the novel Don Quixote — was more puzzling.“Don Quixote and Sancho Panza — and for what?” one resident asked a reporter from a local television station. In the book, Sancho Panza is Don Quixote’s sidekick.Spain’s responseIn response, the Spanish Embassy is vowing to intensify “educational efforts in order for the reality of our shared history to be better known and understood,” while “always ensuring that we do not interfere with the domestic debates that are currently taking place” in the United States.The embassy has already posted a slide show on its official Twitter page featuring some of Washington’s most prominent tributes to Spanish history in the Americas.The virtual tour is led by Ambassador Santiago Cabanas, who appears in one slide next to a statue of Bernardo de Galvez, a Spanish commander who aided the American Revolution and later was granted honorary citizenship in the United States.Also featured is another statue of Serra, this one ensconced in the Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol, the building where Congress meets.
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