Rajaai Bourhan is trying to make a life for himself in Spain.Two years ago, he and several other journalists were trapped in southern Syria, as forces loyal to President Bashar Assad moved to take the region. They had a choice: Stay and risk arrest or death or leave in search of safety. Thanks to the help of international organizations, including the press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists and the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, 11 journalists were able to flee to Europe last May. “It’s like traveling from planet to planet,” Bourhan told VOA. “Everybody’s nice, as well as smiling. It’s very different from my home.”The Syrians’ experiences are shared in a documentary, “The Last Journalists in Syria,” that CPJ broadcast on June 17.The documentary recounts how CPJ worked with United Nations ambassadors and several countries to find a way to bring the journalists and their families to safety. Bourhan said he was happy to be safe but that he’s had trouble finding a job – an issue that is common for refugee journalists.  Only a third of journalists forced to flee are able to continue their work in a new country, Ignacio Miguel Delgado Culebras, the Middle East and North Africa Representative for CPJ, who helped with the relocation of the journalists, told VOA.He attributed that to factors including language and a lack of connections to news outlets.In the Syrians’ case, the Spanish journalism advocacy organization porCausa connected those who settled in Spain to other journalists in the country and found them a place to live, the group’s journalism coordinator Jose Bautista told VOA.“We try to make their lives a little bit easy,” Bautista said. “They’re already our friends, they’re like brothers.”Delgado said that since relocating, most have had work published in Spanish news outlets or other publications, including The Independent. CPJ is working with Global Voices, an international journalism collective, to run a workshop with the journalists this month to help with decisions about their careers.Bourhan acknowledged the difficulties in staying in journalism, including low pay and having to learn Spanish in a short amount of time. At the moment, he is not working full time — something he attributed in part to the coronavirus pandemic — and he said some of the other journalists have had to wash dishes to earn money.“It’s very hard for a journalist to survive here in Spain,” he said.He and the other journalists experienced many challenges in Syria. They watched as forces led by Assad bombed buildings and killed civilians. They posted videos and updates from their social media pages and were threatened with arrest and murder, one of the journalists, Moussa al-Jamaat, said in CPJ’s documentary.Syria in one of the most dangerous countries in the world for the media, with at least 137 journalists killed there since the start of the civil war in 2011, according to CPJ. Now in Spain, the journalists have greater protections. They remain committed to continue telling the stories of what is happening in Syria. Some have freelanced for large publications. “I didn’t just come to Europe to indulge life,” journalist Mohammad Shubaat said in the documentary, translated from Arabic. “My purpose here is to convey the real events unfolding in Syria through our social networks, Spanish TV, newspapers — by any means that we can convey our voice and our pain and the pain of our people.”Bourhan said he is also committed to informing others about what is happening in Syria. When he lived there, he freelanced for The Intercept. Now, he continues to read news from Syria every day and hasn’t given up on reporting. “Journalism is still my world,” he told VOA. “I really couldn’t get out of Syria mentally. My mind’s still in Syria.”CPJ’s Delgado said he was impressed with how quickly the journalists integrated into Spanish society and by their commitment to journalism.“This human quality that they have, it’s amazing. The desire to continue to learn, to develop their skills,” Delgado said. “I’m still in awe by what they have done not only in Syria, taking the risk of being a journalist, which is not easy. But also, now in Spain in a whole different context.”PorCausa’s Bautista said: “At the beginning, I thought they would learn a lot from us today. Today, I think we learned much more from them,” he said. “I am super proud of the way they are fighting such a difficult situation.”
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European governments are working with the United States on plans to overhaul the World Health Organization, a top health official for a European country said, signaling that Europe shares some of the concerns that led Washington to say it would quit.The European health official, who spoke on condition of anonymity while discussing initiatives that are not public, said Britain, France, Germany and Italy were discussing WHO reforms with the United States at the technical level.The aim, the official said, was to ensure WHO’s independence, an apparent reference to allegations that the body was too close to China during its initial response to the coronavirus crisis early this year.”We are discussing ways to separate WHO’s emergency management mechanism from any single country influence,” said the official.Reforms would involve changing the WHO’s funding system to make it more long-term, the official said. The WHO now operates on a two-year budget, which “could hurt WHO’s independence” if it has to raise funds from donor countries in the middle of an emergency, the official said.U.S. President Donald Trump has accused the WHO of being too close to China and announced plans to quit and withdraw funding.European countries have occasionally called for reform of the WHO but have generally shielded the organization from the most intense criticism by Washington. In public the European position has usually been that any reform should come only after an evaluation of the response to the coronavirus crisis.Evaluation and reformBut minutes of a videoconference of EU health ministers last week suggested European countries were taking a stronger line and also seeking more European influence at the WHO in future.The German and French ministers told their colleagues “an evaluation and reform of the WHO was needed,” the minutes said.That was stronger wording than in a resolution last month which the EU drafted, and which was adopted by all 192 WHO member countries. That resolution called for an evaluation of the response to the coronavirus crisis, but it stopped short of calling for reforms.The German and French ministers also told their colleagues, “The EU and its MS (member states) should play a bigger role at the global level,” the minutes showed.A spokesperson for the German health ministry said Berlin sought stronger engagement with the WHO ahead of Germany taking over the EU presidency on July 1.A German government source told Reuters the aim of the intervention at the health ministers’ meeting was to encourage debate among EU member states about how to reform the WHO. Asked whether Germany was now pushing for quicker changes, instead of waiting until after the crisis, the official said: “Reforms of international organizations normally take years, not months.”A French health ministry spokesman also said the WHO would be on the agenda of Germany’s presidency of the EU, and Paris would work on it with Berlin. France backed WHO reform, but changes should follow the evaluation of the organization’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis, he said.A British government spokesperson said Britain worked with organizations including the WHO “to encourage and support transparency, efficiency and good management.”The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the WHO did not respond to requests for comment.The WHO drew criticism for public praise of China’s efforts to combat the new coronavirus in the early days of the crisis, even as evidence emerged that Chinese officials had silenced whistleblowers.The EU and its governments funded around 11 percent of the WHO’s $5.6 billion budget in the 2018-19 period, and the United States provided more than 15 percent. China covered just 0.2 percent. 
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Dame Vera Lynn, the woman whose voice boosted British spirits during the darkest days of World War Two, has died at 103.Her family did not give a cause of death when it announced her passing Thursday in East Sussex.Along with Winston Churchill’s, Lynn’s was the most recognized and renowned British voice of World War Two.She was known as the “Forces’ Sweetheart,” serenading Allied soldiers and the British people with such sentimental but optimistic ballads as “We’ll Meet Again,” “The White Cliffs of Dover” and “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”FILE – Singing star Vera Lynn tries on a lampshade in London, Nov. 30, 1961.She also hosted “Sincerely Yours,” a hugely popular BBC radio show during the war that included messages to British soldiers and sailors overseas and songs she sang at their request.Lynn also toured army camps, entertaining British troops in person.”What they needed was a contact from home,” she said. “I entertained audiences from 2,000 to 6,000. And the boys would just come out of the jungle and sit there for hours waiting until we arrived and then slip back in once we’d left.”Her popularity endured after the war.A decade before the Beatles, her 1952 recording of “Auf Wiedersehen Sweetheart” made her the first British singer to top the American record charts.She also found renewed fame when director Stanley Kubrick played her vintage recording of “We’ll Meet Again” near the end of his 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove.”Long after she retired, a 2009 compilation album, “We’ll Meet Again — The Very Best of Vera Lynn,” was a top-selling recording in Britain.Prime Minister Boris Johnson said her “charm and magical voice entranced and uplifted our country in some of our darkest hours. Her voice will live on to lift the hearts of generations to come.”Buckingham Palace said Queen Elizabeth plans to send a personal note of condolence to Lynn’s family. Sir Paul McCartney tweeted that he is “so sad to hear of her passing but at the same time so glad to have met her and experienced first-hand her warm, fun-loving personality. Her voice will sing in my heart forever.”Sir Cliff Richard recalled performing with Lynn on the 50th anniversary of VE Day in 1995, calling her “a great singer, a patriotic woman and a genuine icon.” 
 
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In Istanbul, a 36-year-old woman is a one-person traveling medical unit treating some of Turkey’s most vulnerable refugees at a time when, for many people, hospitals are not an option. Some refugees do not have their papers in order. Others cannot afford care or fear getting the coronavirus at a hospital. In Istanbul, VOA’s Heather Murdock reports about one woman’s mission to do good.Camera: Heather Murdock   Contributor: Shadi Turk 
 
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The Russian government has lifted a ban on Telegram two years after it announced attempts to restrict access to the encrypted instant-messaging app, the country’s communications regulator said Thursday.“As agreed with the Prosecutor General’s office, Roskomnadzor withdraws the demand to restrict access to the Telegram messenger,” the federal communications watchdog said in a statement.Roskomnadzor began blocking the popular app in accordance with a 2018 court order that demanded the messaging service be restricted because of its alleged use by Islamic State terrorists.Pavel Durov, the app’s Russian-born founder, was ordered to hand over the app’s encryption codes but refused, citing violations of user privacy.But even top-tier officials such as Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov continued using the app after its developers adjusted the code to slip past Roskomnadzor’s cybersecurity barriers.Its widespread use has continued, and even coronavirus task force operations in many Russian regions use Telegram for daily updates.Roskomnadzor on Thursday said it was prepared to lift restrictions because Durov, who has been living in self-imposed exile since 2014, was prepared to cooperate with Russian government counterterrorism efforts to combat extremism on the platform.Islamic State terrorists behind the November 2015 Paris attacks, which claimed 130 lives, used the app’s public channels to spread propaganda and other related content. The app shut the channels down after the attack.Telegram’s developers say that they have since increased their ability to spot and delete extremist content on the app without compromising user privacy.The Kremlin took note of Roskomnadzor’s decision and the reasoning for it, the Tass news agency reported, quoting Kremlin spokesman Peskov.Founded in 2013, Telegram now has an estimated 30 million users in Russia — nearly 20% of the population.Some information for this report came from AP and Reuters.
 
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A new coronavirus outbreak in Beijing saw a decline in daily cases Thursday while the United States increased pressure on China’s leaders to reveal what they know about the pandemic.
The outbreak first detected at a wholesale market in the capital last week has infected at least 158 people in China’s biggest resurgence since the initial outbreak was brought under control in March. The city reported 21 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, down from 31 on Wednesday.
City officials said close contacts of market workers, visitors and other connections were being traced to locate all possible cases as quickly as possible, with testing and prevention measures being taken.
At a meeting in Hawaii with a top Chinese diplomat, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged China to reveal all it knows about the pandemic.
Pompeo “stressed the need for full transparency and information sharing to combat the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and prevent future outbreaks,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement about his meeting with the Communist Party’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi.
Pompeo has joined President Donald Trump in criticizing China’s response to the outbreak, including giving credence to a theory that the virus may have emerged from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan.
The World Health Organization last month bowed to calls from most of its member states to investigate how it managed the response to the virus, but the evaluation would stop short of looking into the origins of the virus. China maintains that controlling the virus’s spread should be given priority.
China is also being called on to relieve the virus’ financial consequences in Africa.  
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed Chinese leader Xi Jinping during an online China-Africa summit. He reminded China that African nations are seeking significant debt relief as they battle the pandemic.  
African nations have called for a two-year suspension of debt payments and other relief that would allow them to focus resources on the health crisis. But China, Africa’s biggest creditor, has not indicated it will offer a sweeping solution and experts say it will focus instead on bilateral arrangements with countries.
Ramaphosa urged China to offer more relief or propose alternatives, warning that “the worst is still to come” for Africa in the pandemic.  
Xi in his speech said he hopes the international community, “especially developed countries and multilateral financial institutions, will act more forcefully on debt relief and suspension for Africa.”
The virus has infected more than 8.3 million people since it emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. More than 448,000 people have died from COVID-19, according to a Johns Hopkins tally of official data. Both numbers are believed to be deeply undercounted due to limited testing and other factors.
The United States has the most cases and deaths by far, with 2.1 million people infected and more than 117,000 dead. Americans have wrestled with deep emotional divides between those who support lockdowns and restrictions like wearing masks to stop the spread of the virus and those who believe such measures infringe on personal freedoms.
Other countries were confronting politicized debates and growing infections.
India recorded its highest one-day increase of 12,281 cases, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi rejected imposing a new lockdown, saying the country has to think about further unlocking the economy.  
Turkish authorities made masks mandatory in three major cities following an uptick in cases since the country allowed the reopening of many businesses.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was hospitalized with COVID-19 and pneumonia as the country struggles under the pandemic’s strain and cases rise sharply in the capital. Mexico’s cases continued to increase at near-record levels with few signs of a decrease, even as the economy starts reopening.
More than a week after New Zealand declared itself virus-free, the country has confirmed three new cases. The South Pacific country appears to have eliminated community transmission of the virus, but officials confirmed a man arriving from Pakistan tested positive after earlier confirming cases in two women returning from Britain.
While air travel is a concern about transmission of the virus as economies reopen, two Australian universities are planning a charter flight for likely the first foreign students to return to Australian campuses.  
Australian National University and Canberra University expect to fly 350 students from Singapore in late July. The students would go into hotel quarantine on arrival.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison supported the universities’ plan, which would be a pilot program for reopening Australia’s lucrative education sector.
“I’m looking to get our economy as close as back to normal as we possibly can and to push the envelope in every possible area,” Morrison told reporters.
But China, which is Australia’s largest source of foreign students, providing 200,000 last year, has warned its citizens to stay away from the country because of the risk of pandemic-related racism. China opposes Australia’s calls for an independent investigation into the origins of and responses to the pandemic.
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A Serbian opposition leader whose group is boycotting the country’s parliamentary election says taking part in the vote amid the coronaviorus pandemic and without free media in the Balkan country would only legitimize what he called a “hoax vote.”
Dragan Djilas, the leader of the pro-boycott Union for Serbia coalition, told The Associated Press that Sunday’s vote is being held despite health risks and a lack of democratic standards for the campaign.
Most of the main opposition parties will boycott the vote because of what they say is Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s iron grip on the country’s media and the electoral process, as well as potential coronavirus infection hazards at voting stations.
The boycott means Vucic’s right-wing Serbian Progressive party will emerge as an overwhelming winner and continue its eight years of political dominance. Vucic and his allies have denounced the boycott, saying it includes parties that would not get enough votes even to make it into Serbia’s 250-seat parliament. All the seats are up for grabs. Vucic’s party now has by far the most seats in parliament with 104. The next are his allied Socialists with 22.
Although Serbia is facing a spike in new coronavirus cases, the populist leader claims the virus spread is under control and that masks will be made available for voters at polling stations.
 
Serbia went from having very strict lockdown measures to a near-total lifting of the government’s emergency rules in early June. Opponents say Vucic eased the restrictions so he could hold the election, which originally was scheduled for April and cancelled because of the pandemic, in order to cement his grip on power.
“At the start the COVID-19 pandemic, our president said all will be OK if we take a shot of brandy every day,” Djilas said Wednesday in an interview. “And then he introduced the toughest possible lockdown measures, including an 84-hour curfew. Those older than 65 were kept indoors for 35 days.”
“Then the measures were lifted as if nothing has happened. It’s unbelievable,” he said.
Serbia is now seeing an infection spike after mass gatherings were allowed without people being instructed to keep social distance or wear masks.  
On June 1, Serbia had 18 new virus cases. On Wednesday, there were 96. Many peg the surge to the mass gatherings that have been allowed, including a soccer match in Belgrade that was attended by 20,000 people — the largest gathering in Europe in recent months. Other nations such as Germany, Spain, Italy and Britain have had soccer clubs play in empty stadiums.
“What led to the boycott by most of the opposition is the fact that we in reality have no elections,” Djilas said. “For democratic elections, you have to have conditions for people to hear something different and freely express themselves.”
“Not a single of those conditions has been met,” said Djilas, who is a frequent target of smear campaigns by the pro-government tabloids. “Media is not only closed for us, but it is used to attack people who think differently.”
In its annual report published in April, human rights watchdog Freedom House listed Serbia among “hybrid regimes” in which power is based on authoritarianism and can no longer be considered a democratic state. Serbian officials have vehemently rejected the report, saying it’s based on wrong research and criteria.
European Parliament members Tanja Fajon and Vladimir Bilcik, who before the vote tried to negotiate election conditions between Vucic and the opposition, said in a statement they are saddened by the boycott and urged voters to follow health and security measures on election day.
Djilas said in Serbia there will be no change without pressure on Vucic from the West.
“We don’t expect them to topple Vucic, we only want them to create conditions for free and fair elections.”
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Four countries were elected to two-year terms on the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday in the first major vote held at the world body amid the coronavirus pandemic.India, Ireland, Mexico and Norway will join the council on January 1 for the rotating term. But a decision on who will occupy a seat representing Africa will go to a second round of voting Thursday, as neither of the contenders, Kenya and Djibouti, captured the necessary two-thirds majority.The vote was held in a sparsely populated General Assembly Hall. In mid-March, the United Nations essentially shut down its New York headquarters as the coronavirus spread across the metropolis. The city began its very limited first phase of reopening June 8, but that does not include large gatherings like the hundreds of diplomats who would normally flock to the building to cast their votes.At the assembly hall on Wednesday, life in a COVID-19 world was on full display. Diplomats wearing face masks came one by one to fill in their secret ballots, deposit them and leave. Instead of everyone gathering and casting votes simultaneously, the process took much of the day. There were no people socializing, no goodie bags from candidate countries and definitely no kisses on the cheek.In the final months and weeks leading up to the vote, there were none of the parties and special events that candidate countries love to put on to raise their profiles and garner votes.Council seats are allocated according to regional blocs. In the group known as “Western Europe and Others,” Canada, Ireland and Norway were contesting two available seats.With a two-thirds majority of 128 votes needed, Ireland and Norway both squeaked by with 128 and 130 votes respectively. For a second consecutive time, Canada lost its bid for a seat. But it garnered 108 votes, putting it within respectable reach of that needed majority.Ireland’s win means the European Union will hold three seats on the 15-nation council.“The race between Canada, Ireland and Norway has felt a little surreal for all involved,” said Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group. “All three are well-established friends of the United Nations, and they have sometimes struggled to distinguish themselves from one another. The irony is that all three states would happily vote for each other under any other circumstances.”Mexico was the candidate from the Latin America and the Caribbean bloc, and India for Asia-Pacific. Both ran uncontested and won overwhelming majorities.Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, welcomed his country’s 187 votes on Twitter, saying, “Great recognition to our country around the world. Congratulations!!!!”Tengo el honor de informar que México ha sido electo por 187 votos miembro del Consejo de Seguridad de la Organizacion de las Naciones Unidas. Gran reconocimiento a nuestro país en todo el mundo. Enhorabuena!!!!— Marcelo Ebrard C. (@m_ebrard) June 17, 2020Just a day before the vote, a clash between Indian and Chinese troops along a remote Himalayan border in Eastern Ladakh left 20 Indian soldiers dead.“India may see its term in the council as an opportunity to push back against China, which has been insisting on council debates over New Delhi’s behavior in Kashmir,” Gowan said. “After the tensions in Ladakh, Indian-Chinese relations in the council could be sparky.”Member States elect India to the non-permanent seat of the Security Council for the term 2021-22 with overwhelming support.India gets 184 out of the 192 valid votes polled. pic.twitter.com/Vd43CN41cY— India at UN, NY (@IndiaUNNewYork) June 17, 2020It was the race between East African nations Djibouti and Kenya that gave the day some unexpected drama. Kenya received 113 votes, Djibouti 78 – neither sufficient to achieve the two-thirds majority of 128. A second round of voting will take place Thursday morning.The newly elected countries will replace exiting council members Belgium, Dominican Republic, Germany, Indonesia and South Africa. They will join current nonpermanent members Estonia, Niger, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Tunisia and Vietnam, and permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
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Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said Wednesday that he would welcome any efforts by Washington to use its influence on Turkey to help fashion a truce in Libya, where Ankara and Moscow are backing opposing sides and appear to be at increasing odds.Turkey dismissed last week an Egyptian-backed cease-fire offered on behalf of General Khalifa Haftar. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu scoffed that the general only wanted a truce because he was now losing on the battlefield. He said that as far as Ankara was concerned, the cease-fire initiative, broached by Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, another Haftar backer, was “stillborn.”The Moscow-backed renegade warlord’s eastern-based forces last month had to lift their 14-month siege of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, following a massive, game-changing increase in military support by Turkey for the internationally recognized Government of National Accord, or GNA.Lavrov and Russia’s defense minister canceled on short notice a planned visit Sunday to Turkey to try to thrash out a cease-fire deal. Some Western diplomats interpret Lavrov’s appeal to Washington, an about-turn by Russia’s foreign minister, who in the past has criticized any Western involvement in Libya, as a sign of mounting exasperation in Moscow over the reversal of Haftar’s fortunes on the battlefield.FILE – Libyan militia commander General Khalifa Haftar, top center, listens to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, bottom center, during their meeting in Moscow, Russia, Aug. 14, 2017.The GNA is now threatening to move into Haftar’s eastern territory, and it is pressing home an assault on the coastal city of Sirte, located between Tripoli and Benghazi, the general’s stronghold.As the Libyan conflict rages, more foreign actors have been drawn into the fighting between the U.N.-recognized government of Fayez al-Sarraj and forces loyal to Haftar, who has the backing of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as Russia and to a lesser extent France.But Russia and Turkey have emerged as the key arbiters in Libya — much as they have in Syria — with reputation, clout, and potential oil and commercial deals at stake.Balancing actForging postwar futures for either country that balance the interests of both Moscow and Ankara is proving highly elusive — and is not being helped by the capricious nature of their clients in both countries.In Libya’s case, Moscow is thought to have doubted the wisdom of Haftar’s decision to launch a military offensive on Tripoli.The latest phase of the long-running turmoil in Libya that followed the 2011 ouster of then-dictator Moammar Gadhafi has seen accusations of grave human rights violations leveled against both sides.The United Nations raised the alarm Tuesday about the mistreatment of a large group of Egyptian migrant workers in Libya by GNA forces after graphic footage emerged on social media showing militiamen abusing scores of the workers captured in the western city of Tarhuna, 90 kilometers from Tripoli.A member of security forces affiliated with the Libyan Government of National Accord’s Interior Ministry stands at the reported site of a mass grave in Tarhuna, about 65 kilometers southeast of Tripoli, June 11, 2020.Last week, 11 grisly mass graves also were discovered in Tarhuna, following the withdrawal from the town by Haftar’s forces, including an estimated 2,500 Russian mercenaries deployed in Libya by the Kremlin-tied Wagner Group. More than 150 bodies, including women and children, were exhumed, prompting widespread calls for the United Nations to instruct the International Criminal Court to investigate.Analysts say it is unclear what Russia considers a territorial red line, which if crossed could see Moscow upping the military ante and dispatching more “mercenaries” to Libya to match Turkey’s mercenaries recruited from rebel militias in northern Syria. “Where is the line, the line Moscow won’t tolerate the GNA crossing? Is it Sirte? It isn’t clear,” said Sergey Sukhankin, an analyst at the Jamestown Foundation, a think tank in Washington.’Frozen conflict’Speaking during a round-table discussion hosted by the Jamestown Foundation on the prospects of peace in Libya, Sukhankin said, “Russia is not interested in an ultimate victory of either side” in Libya, including a win for Haftar. “If either [warring] party gains a military victory in Libya, Russia could be sidelined or marginalized,” he said.Moscow’s interest is in a “frozen conflict,” he and other observers said, which would allow it to remain a “meaningful player” in a partitioned Libya.But the GNA appears keen to press home its military advantage, and al-Serraj has talked of the importance to fight “for the whole of the homeland.”Smelling the chance of victory, it may be impossible for the GNA to resist the temptation to go farther east than Sirte, according to Jalel Harchaoui, an analyst at the Clingendael Institute, an international affairs policy group in The Hague. “The Turkish military command feels it has the momentum,” he said.FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the Kremlin in Moscow on March 5, 2020.That risks a rupture between Moscow and Ankara. Both have been careful in the past to contain their rivalries in Syria and Libya within an adversarial partnership. Harchaoui said that with Russia and Turkey, “what we have are two states that indeed are acting as rivals in various spaces, whether it is Syria or Libya, but, at the same time, they are too realistic to forget that the connections that link them are vulnerable.” They avoid full-blown enmity, oscillating between “clear, visible coordination” and “slippages, incidents and accidents.”When it comes to coordination to avoid mishaps, analysts and Western diplomats highlight the withdrawal from Tarhuna last month by roughly 2,000 Russian fighters, a key militia in Haftar’s army, and their redeployment to the nearby town of Bani Walid. They were unmolested as they moved by Turkish drones and GNA militiamen and their Syrian mercenaries.New US-Turkish era?Lavrov’s appeal Wednesday to Washington for assistance in negotiating a cease-fire in Libya came just days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump. The Turkish leader said they agreed on “some issues” related to Libya. “A new era between Turkey and the U.S. may start after our phone call,” Erdogan said in an interview with the state broadcaster TRT, without offering any details.The risks of escalation as fighting rages around Sirte are mounting, diplomats say, especially if GNA seeks to occupy oilfields east of Sirte, or tries to capture an airbase at Jufra.  According to U.S. Africa Command officers, Russia last month dispatched to Libya a dozen advanced MiG-29 warplanes from an air base in Russia. Africom officials said the planes transited through Syria, where they were repainted to hide their Russian markings.
 
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When European Union leaders meet virtually for a summit Friday, a familiar duo will again grab the spotlight.COVID-19, which has battered European economies, is also giving a new boost to Europe’s traditional economic engines, France and Germany, and possibly the so-far underwhelming relationship between their leaders.German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have found common cause in pushing for a massive coronavirus recovery plan for the 27-member bloc — one that flouts Germany’s traditional budgetary orthodoxy and puts Berlin at odds with other frugal states.But whether the newfound unity opens a new chapter for the two countries to power other joint European initiatives is less certain. Key hurdles still face the coronavirus rescue package, framed in an $843 billion proposal of grants and loans the European Commission unveiled last month.“I think we can look ahead to a big dogfight,” said Daniel Gros, director of the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, or CEPS, of the opposition facing the package.Still, Gros added of member states, “They will have to come together — that’s quite clear.”FILE – Members of the European Council are seen on the screen during a video conference call at the Elysee Palace in Paris, March 26, 2020.Germany’s EU presidency: Brexit and budgetFriday’s summit is a key marker in other ways. Next month, Europe’s biggest economic power, Germany, takes over the rotating six-month EU presidency that will also tackle thorny Brexit negotiations. On the menu, too, will be discussions about the bloc’s next seven-year budget running through 2027.It comes as Merkel, the EU’s longest-serving leader, prepares to leave office next year.Tara Varma, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Paris office, believes Merkel is looking toward her legacy.”She knows she has a massive, critical role to play,” Varma said, particularly on establishing European health sovereignty, after the pandemic found the bloc heavily dependent on medical imports from China and India. “She sees the necessity for the EU to be able to protect itself and its citizens.”But the immediate task Friday may be finding consensus on money.Europe’s “Frugal Four,” who generally oppose big spending — Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria — have reiterated their concerns about the commission’s COVID-19 bailout plan, aimed primarily at helping more economically strapped southern countries.“How can it suddenly be responsible to spend €500billion [$562 billion] in borrowed money and to send the bill into the future?” they wrote in a letter published in the Financial Times this week, noting European taxpayers would have to shoulder the burden.The four have instead called for loans, rather than grants that would not have to be paid back.Germany has traditionally shared such spending concerns. But last month, Merkel joined Macron in proposing a $562 billion recovery plan for the bloc, which was rolled into the commission’s broader proposal.FILE – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks during a news conference after a videoconference with EU leaders at the European Council building in Brussels, April 23, 2020.Announcing it last month, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — Merkel’s former defense minister — called the plan “Europe’s moment,” that would see the bloc recovering from the pandemic together, rather than “accepting a union of haves and have-nots.”Visiting Germany earlier this month, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire offered a broader take.“We are seeing a turning point in Franco-German relations,” Le Maire told Der Spiegel in an interview, sketching other areas for potential joint initiatives, including industrial projects.Analyst Varma is also hopeful about a reboot.“At the beginning of the relationship, there were expectations on both sides that weren’t met,” Varma said of Merkel and Macron, who took office in 2017.Macron had big ideas for Europe; Merkel was weakened by a divided coalition.“He was expecting her to meet him halfway and build this Franco-German moment,” Varma added. “And from the German side, there were different expectations.”Old disagreementsBerlin has not shared Macron’s push for closer EU fiscal and defense integration. But this week, Bloomberg reported the two countries are now pushing for tighter European defense ties.The call is backdropped by U.S. President Donald Trump’s confirmation of plans to withdraw 9,500 American troops from Germany, which he has criticized for failing to spend enough on defense.FILE – A convoy of U.S. troops, a part of NATO’s reinforcement of its eastern flank, drive from Germany to Orzysz in northeast Poland, March 28, 2017.“Germany used to look at the U.S. and the transatlantic relationship for security issues,” Varma said. “And I think we’re seeing a shift here, too.”“Germany is now coming to terms that it will need the EU to protect not only its economic interests but its security interests,” she said “which is a position France has been holding for a long time.”But other analysts believe the current unity over the COVID-19 rescue package may be a one-off.  “Macron is overwhelmed by his domestic concerns,” said Gros of the CEPS policy center. “And Merkel knows there’s only so far she can take Germany along” in other EU areas.  John Springford, deputy director for the London-based Centre for European Reform policy institute, is similarly skeptical.“There’s a realization she’s nearing the end of her term and wants to have been a chancellor that has made Europe stronger,” Springford said of Merkel.“And so, there’s a kind of happy marriage of interests now between her and Macron,” he added of the rescue fund, “which is why we’ve ended up with something that’s actually pretty ambitious.”
 
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Participants in a debate Wednesday at the U.N. Human Rights Council on systemic racism have called for an independent investigation into the death of African American George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.The council meeting began with a moment of silence for all the victims of racial injustice.  In opening the debate, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said merely condemning expressions and acts of racism was not enough to alleviate generations of suffering resulting from racial injustice.Speaking by teleconference from New York, she said the debate was taking place as marches for racial justice and equality take place around the world.’Enough’Mohammed said the “most recent trigger” for the protests was the Floyd case, “but the violence spans history and borders alike, across the globe. Today, people are saying, loudly and movingly, ‘Enough.’ The United Nations has a duty to respond to the anguish that has been felt by so many for so long.”In Geneva, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet deplored the death of Floyd and said it had come to symbolize the systemic racism that harms millions of people of African descent.“It has brought to a head the outrage of people who feel they are neither adequately served, nor adequately heard, by their governments,” Bachelet said. “It has brought to their feet millions of allies — people who are now beginning to acknowledge the realities of systemic discrimination suffered by others, and to join their demand that every person in their countries be treated with equality, fairness and respect.”Delegates confer during a debate on human rights violations and systematic racism at the 43rd session of the Human Rights Council, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, June 17, 2020.Floyd’s brother gave an emotional address to the council by teleconference from his home in Houston. Philonise Floyd described his family’s anguish while watching the last moments of his brother’s life.“You in the United Nations are your brothers’ and sisters’ keepers in America, and you have the power to help us get justice for my brother George Floyd,” he said. “I am asking you to help him. I am asking you to help me. I am asking you to help us — black people in America.”In advance of the debate, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva Andrew Bremberg issued a statement affirming Washington’s commitment to addressing racial discrimination and injustices stemming from that.In alluding to the death of George Floyd, he said President Donald Trump had condemned the brutal actions of the police involved and was implementing police reforms. He cited the steps as an example of government transparency and responsiveness in holding violators accountable for their actions.
 
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They are nurses and doctors, artists, students, construction workers, government employees; black, brown and white; young and old.  Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets in big cities and tiny towns in every U.S. state – and even around the world – to protest the killing of George Floyd, who died after a police officer pressed his knee into his neck as he pleaded for air.  They say they are protesting police brutality, but also the systematic racism non-white Americans have experienced since the country’s birth. Many say they marched so that one day, when their children asked what they did at this historic moment, they will be able to say they stood up for justice despite all risks.  Most say they do not support the violence, fires and burglaries that consumed some of the demonstrations, but some understand it: these are desperate acts by desperate people who have been screaming for change for generations into a world unwilling to hear them.  Yet suddenly, for a moment at least, everyone seems to be paying attention.  About half of American adults now say police violence against the public is a “very” or “extremely” serious problem, up from about a third as recently as September last year, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Only about 3 in 10 said the same in July 2015, just a few months after Freddie Gray, a black man, died in police custody in Baltimore.Some demonstrators describe losing friends and family to police bullets, and what it feels like to fear the very people sworn to protect you. Their white counterparts say they could no longer let their black neighbors carry this burden alone.  Some describe institutional racism as a pandemic as cruel and deadly as the coronavirus. One white nurse from Oregon who traveled to New York City to work in a COVID unit saw up close how minorities are dying disproportionately from the disease because of underlying health conditions wrought by generational poverty and lack of health care. So after four days working in the ICU, she spent her day off with protesters in the streets of Brooklyn.  The stories of these protesters, several of them told here, are thundering across the country, forcing a reckoning with racism.  THEY'RE SCARED OF US'  Lavel White was a junior in high school, living in public housing in a predominantly black, historically impoverished neighborhood in Louisville, when he turned on the news and saw that a police officer was acquitted for shooting a young black man in the back.  Next time, he thought, it might be me.  The 2004 killing of 19-year-old Michael Newby propelled White to activism. He is now a documentary filmmaker and a community outreach coordinator for the Louisville mayor's office.  Still, he knows that if he got pulled over and made a wrong move, he could die.  He's had his own frightening run-ins with police, treated like a criminal for a broken taillight and another time in a case of mistaken identity. There are the smaller slights, too, like white women clutching their purses when he passes them on the street.  "They fear people's black skin. They're scared of us. They see every black male as a thug, as a criminal," he said. "The vigilantes, the cops. People keep killing us and it's got to stop."  He's been at the protests in his neighborhood almost every night, and worries his neighbors will live with the trauma the rest of their lives: the military truck on city streets, the tear gas, the boom of flashbangs, soldiers with assault rifles, police in riot gear.  He and his wife have a 2-year-old daughter and a son, born just three months ago.  "Just because of the color of his skin, he's going to be set back by the oppression of 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow Laws and injustice, inequalities, racism, he's going to have to walk and live that life," he said.  They want him to grow up tough enough to stand up for his rights and his community.  So they named him Brave.  FATHER FORGIVE THEM’   
Once, when George Jefferson was a college student in California, he rolled up to a party with several friends just as people rushed to leave. Sirens blared.”I hear, ‘Get out of the car,’ and so I swing my door open. I look to my left and there is the barrel of a gun pointed in my face,” said Jefferson, who is 28 and now a fourth-grade teacher in Kansas City, Missouri. “And I am like cold sweating, it’s not visible, but I feel it. My heart is racing. He said, ‘I said don’t get out of the car.’ And at that point I realized I misheard this cop.”He was let off with a stern warning to follow police instructions. But his unease grew after another encounter with police soon afterward, in which a friend was pulled over and forced to sit on the curb. Police said the car’s tag was expired; his friend argued. The advice they got was to file a complaint.”But that didn’t address the feelings and dehumanization that came with it,” Jefferson recalled. His experiences led him to protest, teach his students about race, demand change.In his classroom, he has posted pictures of unrest in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, where Michael Brown’s death at the hands of a white officer in 2014 sparked intense protests. He has asked students for their observations, and assigned books, like “One Crazy Summer,” which is set in Oakland, California, in 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.Fred Hampton was one of two Black Panther Party leaders killed in a 1969 police raid in Illinois; in February, Jefferson had his face tattooed on his arm. He plans to add to another tattoo — a line from scripture, Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”  It is a reminder to fight for equality.”That,” he said, “is a life worth living.”THERE ARE OTHER WAYS TO PROTEST' 
Even at 36, Jahmal Cole recites the pledge from his preschool graduation: "We the class of 1988, determined to be our best at whatever we say or do, will share a smile and lend a hand to our neighbor ...""It really became the mission statement of my life," says Cole, the founder of a Chicago organization called My Block, My Hood, My City.  He has started a relief fund for small business in low-income neighborhoods damaged in protests. Youth in his organization's mentoring program are helping with the cleanup, sweeping up glass and erasing graffiti.  He'll march. He'll shout and express his anger. But he draws the line at destruction.  "We got residents who gotta go 20 minutes away to get some milk right now," he tells a crowd assembled for a peace rally and food give-away in Chicago's largely African American Chatham neighborhood. Its commercial district was hard hit by looting.  Members of the multiracial crowd nod and clap. Many of them know this man. They've heard his constant push for neighbors to work together to make change.  Cole wants his neighbors to organize.. "Ain't no structure in the gangs, and that's why there's all this shooting. Ain't no structure to the protests, and that's why there's all this looting," he wrote in a column published recently in the Chicago Tribune.  And he wants to build on the momentum. "I want to make sure we're protesting by calling our local officials … by going to the school board," he tells the crowd. "There are other ways to protest."  YOUTH ARE IMPATIENT NOW’ 
Growing up as a black Muslim in the racially and religiously homogeneous state of Utah, Daud Mumin always knew he was treated differently.  He vividly remembers his 15th birthday, when his mother, an immigrant from Somalia, was pulled over for speeding — a routine traffic stop that turned into an hour-long interrogation, spoiling his special dinner.  And he recalls the question that none of his white classmates were asked on the first day of AP French in his junior year: “Are you in the right class?”  The Black Lives Matter movement gave Mumin a place where he felt at home, and the protests around the world since Floyd’s death give him hope that change is coming.  “It’s beautiful to see such large and consistent outcomes and turnouts in these protests,” said Mumin, a 19-year-old college sophomore double majoring in justice studies and communication. “When I was 14 years old, I never thought a world like this would exist.”  But that doesn’t mean he’s not angry and impatient. He wants to see the movement lead to defunding of police departments. His Twitter handle, “Daud hates cops,” shows his resentment.  He said protesters shouldn’t go into demonstrations intentionally trying to cause violence, but also can’t sit back and wait for the government to make things better.  “What is it going to take for us to finally crumble these oppressive systems? If peace is not the answer, then violence has to be,” Mumin said. “America has finally had enough of waiting for action to be taken. The youth are not tired. The youth are impatient now. I think we’re done waiting around and sitting around for justice to come about.”  I FEEL RAGE'   
Becca Cooper traveled from Oregon to New York in early April, taking leave from her job as a critical care flight nurse to help combat the coronavirus pandemic seizing the city.  She walked into an unfair fight -- one afflicting certain communities more than others.  "In the last seven weeks, I've had three white patients," she said. "I'm pretty sure that New York isn't less than 1% white."  "We all read in the newspaper that COVID is disproportionately affecting communities of color. It is so in your face in the ICU."  The experience has highlighted for Cooper frustrations with the health care system -- "I see it every day, and it's devastating." It also fueled her disgust when she watched video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck.  That anger is what brought this white nurse into the streets of Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy neighborhood last week, where she marched with hundreds of protesters in her light blue medical scrubs.  "I feel rage," she said. "I feel sadness. I feel frustration. I feel disbelief. I became a nurse to save as many lives as possible. I would like to believe that someone who chose to be a law officer, a police officer, would have the same feeling.  "I feel so frustrated. I'm not out here working every day to save as many lives as possible so that police officers can choose to take those lives."  SWEDEN IN SOLIDARITY’   
Aysha Jones lives a world away from the Minneapolis street where George Floyd died — more than 4,200 miles, 6,800 kilometres, in Sweden. But she felt she had to protest.”I became involved out of pure frustration, and the wish to see myself, my kids, my fellow black brothers and sisters around the world having a better life, being equal, being seen as who we are humans,” said Jones, who was born in Gambia.  Her experience with racism was that of a first-generation outsider — she remembers classmates throwing burnt Swedish meatballs at her, considering her worth nothing more.  Many black people who live in Sweden are recent immigrants from Africa – the nation had very few people of color until the past 50 years. Sweden ranks high on equality indexes and prides itself on liberal migration policies, but Jones says bigotry is far from vanquished.”We have had politicians here in Sweden who normally never acknowledge the fact that racism is a structural problem, it is a pandemic just as much as COVID-19,” she said. “Our politicians have the audacity normally to just push it off and say, ‘No, it doesn’t happen here, it happens over there.’ Wherever over there is.”  The nation has strict rules regarding public gatherings amid the COVID-19 pandemic, so Jones helped launch digital protests.  Jones urged people to join a virtual demonstration anchored by a small group of activists and speakers in front of the U.S. embassy in Stockholm, inundating the embassy’s Facebook page with a photo of the Black Lives Matter logo and the words “Sweden in Solidarity.”More than 6,000 people watched the live video stream and over 60,000 participated in the protest in one way or another; in the following days, thousands took to the streets in protest.  Jones, who works full-time and has three young children, is pleased that Black Lives Matter protests have sparked widespread discussions online and in Swedish media, but warns that words alone aren’t enough.  She wants changes in how police are recruited and trained. She wants better laws, and better efforts to ensure the laws are upheld.  “You know, with money comes power,” Jones said. “And that’s something that is being kept from black people, is something that has been kept from black people in centuries. So there is so much to touch upon.”  IT'S EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO ME'   
Indigenous Australian Wendy Brookman was incensed with Prime Minister Scott Morrison's reaction to the violent clashes on U.S. streets following George Floyd's death with the comment."Thank goodness," he said, "we live in Australia."The 37-year-old mother of five joined 2,000 people in a peaceful protest in the Australian capital Canberra because she wants police brutality and the high incarceration rate among Aboriginal people put on Australian governments' agenda.It's disrespectful for families who have had to bury loved ones to hear the government gloss over the country's problems, she said.  Indigenous Australians account for 2% of the nation's adult population and 27% of the prison population."Being a mother of five children, it's extremely important for me to make sure that my children are given the same rights as any other child growing up in this day and age," said Brookman, a teacher and women's gym owner.Tens of thousands of demonstrators have joined largely peaceful anti-racism rallies in all of Australia's major cities since Floyd's death. One focus: an Australian police officer charged with murder in the shooting death of a 19-year-old Aboriginal man in November.  The officer, Zachary Rolfe, has pleaded not guilty and said he was defending himself, and has been released on bail to live with family in Canberra. Brookman believes he will be acquitted due to Australia's poor record of convicting police over indigenous homicides."That's unacceptable that we know that he's not going to get convicted," she said. "It's imperative that this is a discussion that's spoken about and not hushed away."STOP KILLING MY FRIENDS’   
Protesting is a passion in Siggy Buchbinder’s family. Her father took part in demonstrations against the Vietnam war in the 1960s, then brought her to her first one in 2003, protesting military action in Iraq. She went on march for women’s rights.  These demonstrations feel different, she said. There are so many young people. The momentum, she said, is building for change.”I think people need to stay in the streets. I think it was working and I think it will continue to work,” Buchbinder said. “Now is not the time to let up. Now is the time to go even harder.”  Even among the many white New Yorkers who joined demonstrations following Floyd’s death, Buchbinder, 27, stands out. She is nearly 6 feet tall and looked even bigger with her arms raised high, holding a sign that read “Stop killing my friends.”  Buchbinder was one of four white graduates in her high school class of 172 in 2011, and says many of her friends are people of color: “It would be wrong to not stand and fight with them.”  She doesn’t lead chants, believing the speaking should be left to black protesters. Nor was she concerned about the curfew that was in effect most of the week. Fear of what the police might do has always been something her friends had to worry about much more than she did.  “I think my friends have always been kind of nervous of the cops,” Buchbinder said. “I think growing up they don’t mess with the cops. They don’t get into situations where they could be in trouble.”  SUPPORTING OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR'   
Around the time George Floyd died, Eileen Huang was asked to write a poem about Chinese people in the U.S. to commemorate a new documentary about Asian Americans on PBS.  What came out, instead, was a searing 1,600-word letter from the incoming Yale university junior to her immigrant elders, pleading with them to understand the massive debt owed to African American civil rights leaders, beseeching them to join a global movement to fight anti-black racism.  "We Asian Americans have long perpetuated anti-Black statements and stereotypes," Huang wrote. "I grew up hearing relatives, family friends, and even my parents make subtle, even explicitly racist comments about the Black community. ... The message was clear: We are the model minority —doctors, lawyers, quiet and obedient overachievers. We have little to do with other people of color; we will even side with White Americans to degrade them."  Huang, 20, grew up in the small and largely white New Jersey township of Holmdel. The oldest of three children born to engineers who moved to the U.S. in the 1990s, she wasn't taught much about the history of black people in America.  It wasn't until college that she learned of the 1982 beating death of Vincent Chin by two white men who thought Chin was Japanese. The men were convicted of manslaughter but sentenced to probation; the judge said the men weren't the kind of people to go to jail.  African American leaders, notably the Rev. Jesse Jackson, marched with Chin's anguished mother, seeking justice.  Huang came to realize Asian Americans owe "everything" to the black Americans who spearheaded the civil rights movement, which led to an end to racist terms like "Oriental" and housing policies that kept them out of white neighborhoods.  "We did not gain the freedom to become comfortablemodel minorities’ by virtue of being better or hardworking, but from years of struggle and support from other marginalized communities,” she wrote.  Her outrage over Floyd’s death pushed her to a protest in Newark, then another in Asbury Park, where a terrified Huang and others faced off with armed police officers in riot gear.  Her letter, posted to a website aimed at Chinese speakers in the U.S., has sparked passionate responses, including many that accuse her of being a traitor and of unfairly painting Chinese in a negative light.  “I’ve also just gotten very sweet (messages) from people saying, ‘My grandmother read this, my Chinese-can’t-speak-English grandmother read this, and she was really touched by it and now she’s supporting Black Lives Matter,'” she says.  I KNEEL WITH Y'ALL'   
The Brooklyn intersection was crammed with thousands of demonstrators, a massive rally to protest police brutality just days after George Floyd died. Police were mixed in with the crowd.  "We implore you! Please!" a protester says with a bullhorn, talking directly to the officers. "Take a knee in solidarity with us."  Assistant Chief Jeff Maddrey did, and so did a line of officers with him. The crowd lit up in a chorus of cheers as he spoke into the bullhorn.  "Real talk," he said to the crowd. "I respect your right to protest. All I'm asking is for you to do it with peace. I kneel with y'all because I don't agree with what happened. Listen, y'all are my brothers and sisters."  Maddrey, who is black, is a veteran officer now in charge of the NYPD's Brooklyn North division, which encompasses a large, diverse swath of the borough. It has seen widespread unrest in the weeks since Floyd's death; the Brooklyn native blames generations of inequality and tension within law enforcement and the community.  "The reason I took a knee was to start bringing about peace and unity and healing between members of the police department and members of the community," he said.  Maddrey said he thinks the NYPD should use this as an opportunity to meet with black community leaders and improve relations.  "I think we just need to increase our positive contacts where, you know, young men, young black men, people of, you know, of all communities to feel safe with their police department," he said.  He stopped short, however, of suggesting specific changes in police training and policy.  "There are things, a lot of things, that the police department can push over to other agencies and should push over to other agencies. And if they take away certain responsibilities that we don't have to do anymore and they're going to fund another agency to do that, then me, personally, I'm not against it," he said.  FINALLY PEOPLE SEEM TO UNDERSTAND’   
Ashley Quinones started protesting months ago. Since her husband was shot and killed by police in Minnesota last September, she’s been to city council meetings and state commissions. She’s protested on street corners, once shutting down streets and a light rail line.  Sometimes others joined her, but mostly she did it by herself. She is no longer alone.  “Finally,” she said. “I’ve been out here for nine months by myself. Now finally people seem to understand what our families are going through.”  Her husband, 30-year-old Brian Quinones-Rosario, who was Puerto Rican, was chased by police for driving erratically. He was shot and killed by officers seconds after getting out of his car; he was carrying a kitchen knife, and officers said he lunged at them.  Authorities alleged he was suicidal and provoked the police to shoot him, The Associated Press previously reported. His wife denies it, and says he was calm in the moments before the shooting. In February, the Hennepin county attorney declined to file charges against the officers and said their use of deadly force was “necessary, proportional, and objectively reasonable.”  But Quinones, who has filed a lawsuit against the cities involved, said they failed to follow their protocol and reacted out of fear, instead of deescalating the situation.  “They are afraid of black and brown bodies,” she said.  “George Floyd is the face of thousands of murders. People are not burning the city down over just George Floyd. He is the straw that broke the camel’s back and opened up the eyes of people who weren’t paying attention to the thousands before him.”  She wants her husband’s case reopened and re-examined, and she believes every other police killing should be, too. She said her white friends now cannot look away: “Now, you see it. What are you going to do about it?”  Since the nationwide protests have erupted, she has joined every day. She was a guest speaker at 15 events in a single week. She had been laid off from a car rental company during the shutdown caused by COVID-19. Now she’s devoting every minute of her life to this cause — even, she said, if it consumes her and she loses everything.  “I will be a homeless, car-less, jobless protester if that’s what it takes because I’m not accepting it. I haven’t accepted it and I’m not accepting it,” she said. “They ruined my life. Overnight everything was gone, and now I have to live with what someone else says my life is.”  EVERYONE THAT I LOVE IS BLACK' 
Tachianna Charpenter grew up in Duquette, Minnesota, a town of less than 100 souls in the mostly white northern region of the state. Charpenter, who is mixed race, said she constantly encountered racism as the only black child in her school.  "As a kid, I vividly remember just coming back from school all the time crying and asking my mom to dye my hair blonde," she said. "I thought that if I had blonde hair, like a lot of the girls in my class, they would be nicer to me."  Classmates would touch her hair to "see if I could feel it." They'd talk about wanting to date a black woman when they got older — "not a black girl like Tachi, a real black girl."  There was the student who whispered "I hate black people" when she was around. And another who spit on her in the fifth grade.  Charpenter moved to St. Paul to start her education at Hamline University in 2017. There, she learned the vocabulary to describe her experiences growing up, words like "microaggressions" and "implicit bias."  In recent weeks, she joined demonstrators in Minneapolis in the wake of Floyd's death. She felt compelled, "first and foremost because I'm black, and everyone that I love is black."  She's 21 now, a special education teaching assistant, and she said she is fighting to ensure that her students will not grow up to protest — and be tear-gassed — for the same issues."Now as an adult and being aware of these things, I intentionally go out of my way to challenge those narratives," she said. "Especially because some of those people see me and say that they look up to me, so I'm hoping that my actions cause them to challenge what they're thinking about."  STILL CRYING THE TEARS OF EMMETT TILL’ 
Growing up black in Napoleonville, Louisiana, known as “Plantation Country,” Janae Jamison attended a predominately white private school. She felt stifled with a fear of not being accepted.  Attending a historically black college helped her find her “voice” — one she says she’s using not just for George Floyd, but for the many black men and women who have been murdered because of their race.And that brought her to rally among the thousands who gathered around Jackson Square in the New Orleans’ French Quarter.  “It’s 401 years of oppression that has led me here,” said Jamison, 30. “It’s 246 years of slavery that has led me here. It’s 89 years of segregation that have led me here. And from 1954 until this day, and 66 years past post-segregation and a black man still has less rights than actual animal. That within the dark of night, it’s still OK for a black man to be racially profiled. … And many black women as well.  “I look at Sandra Bland, and I see myself. I look at Breonna Taylor. I see myself. Atatiana Jefferson – I see myself. So, it’s very important that we say their names and that people realize that it’s just not George Floyd that we are fighting for. We are still crying the tears of Emmett Till. “`BLACK POWER … EXISTS EVERYWHERE’  Nedu Anigbogu’s parents wanted more for their children, and so they immigrated from Nigeria in the 1990s. They raised Nedu and his two older brothers in the San Francisco suburb of El Cerrito.  Today his father is a lawyer and his mother is preparing to take the bar exam. Nedu, now 20, is majoring in cognitive science and plans to work in artificial intelligence.  He recalls his mother taking him and his brothers aside after Trayvon Martin, an African American teen, was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in 2012. She warned them that people will treat them differently, because of their race.  “At first I felt confusion,” he said. “Then there was sad acceptance.”  Anigbogu wants convictions for the police who killed Floyd, as well as Breonna Taylor, an African American emergency medical technician who was fatally shot by Louisville Metro Police while asleep in her own home. He wants better police training. He wants to end the legal doctrine of qualified immunity that shields police officers from lawsuits.  The incoming senior at the University of California, Berkeley had signed petitions and donated money to the family of George Floyd, but he felt a duty to protest in person. So on June 3, he joined what would become a 10,000-person march through San Francisco’s Mission District.  Someone gave him a horse to ride, so he did.  “To see a black queen on a horse, a black king on a horse, that you’re showing you are rising above it all and that black power exists, and it exists everywhere,” Anigbogu said.  – By Janie Har 
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A huge banner emblazoned with the face of the Spanish prime minister covered the entire side of a block of flats in Madrid. Bearing more than a passing resemblance to George Orwell’s Big Brother, the image of Pedro Sánchez ordered citizens: Obey! FILE – A demonstrator holds a sign depicting Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez and Deputy PM Pablo Iglesias during a drive-in protest organied by Spain’s far-right party Vox against the government’s handling of COVID-19, May 23, 2020.It was the most eye-catching of many posters and flags criticizing Spain’s left-wing government during recent street demonstrations in cities nationwide. In apparent defiance of lockdown rules that made social distancing mandatory, thousands openly marched in the Spanish capital then in demonstrations that sprung up in other cities. Supporters of right-wing parties were rebelling over the way the Socialist government had imposed a state of emergency on a country unaccustomed to being told what to do. The conservative People’s Party and far-right Vox party asserted that the government used the excuse COVID-19 to ride roughshod the rights enshrined in Spain’s 1978 constitution, the first since democracy returned after the death of longtime ruler General Francisco Franco three years before. 
One of the nations worst hit by COVID-19, Spain in March imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe to contain the epidemic. Some 47 million Spaniards could only leave their homes to buy food, for medical help or for essential work.As Spain prepared to end the state of emergency on June 21, critics said questions remain over how the minority government ran the country in the face of extraordinary circumstances. Police officers ask people to refrain from sitting on the beach in Barcelona, Spain, as sunbathing and recreational swimming are still not allowed, May 20, 2020.Vox has appealed to the country’s constitutional court, claiming the government breached Spaniards’ right to free movement, a basic right under the constitution.“They are using the state of emergency to limit people’s rights,” Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, the Vox parliamentary spokesman, told VOA in an interview. “We supported the government at first, but now we are appealing to the constitutional court saying the government has limited people’s rights to move around the country during the state of emergency,” he said. “We want to make sure this never happens again.” FILE – Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is seen on TV screens next to a hand sanitizer during a news conference at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, June 14, 2020. (Javier Barbancho/Pool via Reuters)In fiery exchanges between Sanchez and opposition parties in the Spanish parliament, the prime minister defended the strict lockdown. “Without the state of emergency, hundreds of thousands of people would have died in Spain,” Sanchez told MPs in a debate earlier this month. A spokeswoman for the government said: “The state of emergency, which is a constitutional mechanism, allows the government to restrain the movement of people. This has been key to control the epidemic.” FILE – Coffins with the bodies of victims of coronavirus are stored waiting for burial or cremation at the Collserola morgue in Barcelona, Spain, April 2, 2020.Javier Arbós, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Barcelona, said two fundamental rights were at stake. “The state of emergency is designed to preserve one of the fundamental rights enshrined in the Spanish constitution — the right to life,” he told VOA in an  interview. “However, Vox has appealed to the constitutional court, saying that this breaks another fundamental right in the constitution — the right to free movement. The court must decide if the law is right to impede movement in order to preserve the right to life.” “It is a libertarian argument which is important not just in Spain, but there are similarities to the arguments of President Bolsonaro in Brazil and President Trump in the United States.” On another front, the government faced criticism when then Justice Minister Dolores Delgado was named as state prosecutor in January. The move raised eyebrows among critics because a senior Socialist Cabinet minister had taken up a key position in the judiciary, which is supposedly non-political. Then in May, a senior police officer was sacked during an investigation into the decision by the Spanish government to allow demonstrations (marking International Women’s Day on March 8 and other political rallies) before imposing a state of emergency. Days before, on March 2, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, an EU body, warned that large gatherings should be avoided as coronavirus cases mounted. Spain’s interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, dismissed the head of the Civil Guard command in Madrid, Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos, citing “loss of trust.” The sacking came after the Civil Guard, Spain’s national police, sent a report to a judge about how the government dealt with warnings about allowing 177 public gatherings in the run up to the lockdown. The police report, leaked to Spanish media, concluded that “from 5th March, 2020, there should not have been any demonstrations” due to the health crisis. A judge later decided there was no case, but dismissal of the senior officer prompted a furious political row with right-wing parties that argued it was politically motivated. Grande-Marlaska denied the sacking was politically motivated. Pablo Simón, a politics professor at Carlos III University in Madrid, said the case reflected badly on the government. “It is not that the minister cannot sack a police officer, but the government should take more care about their image. The minister could have sacked the officer before or after the investigation but not during an investigation,” he said. “To do this during a state of emergency was reproachable.”   
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Turkey on Monday reiterated its opposition to U.S. sanctions on neighboring Iran, saying the coronavirus pandemic has shown that the world needs greater cooperation and solidarity.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu made the comments in Istanbul during a joint news conference with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is the first dignitary to visit Turkey since its outbreak began in March.
“Iran’s stability and peace is important for us,” Cavusoglu said. “We oppose unilateral sanctions. In fact, the pandemic has taught us that the world needs greater cooperation and solidarity.”
Zarif said the U.S. had “tightened the sanctions in order to damage the Iranian economy during the pandemic.” He thanked Turkey for its support.
President Donald Trump imposed heavy sanctions on Iran after he withdrew the United States from Iran’s nuclear agreement with world powers in May 2018. American officials contend Iran is working to obtain nuclear-capable missiles, which the Iranians deny.
Meanwhile, the ministers said the two countries were working toward reopening their border for travelers and plan to restart flights between Turkey and Iran on August 1.  
The border was closed after the coronavirus outbreak, which hit Iran particularly hard. It has since been reopened for trade only.
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Paris police blamed violent fringe groups for hijacking a peaceful protest by health workers in central Paris on Tuesday, where at least one car was overturned and projectiles were hurled at police lines. 
 
The unrest broke out as thousands of doctors, paramedics and nursing home carers, many dressed in their scrubs and white blouses, had been protesting near the health ministry for better wages and working conditions. 
 
Paris police said anarchist protesters known as “black bloc” were attacking its officers. Several were seen in video footage pushing an overturned car into the middle of a cobbled avenue as others threw missiles at the police. 
 
“Violent individuals do not belong in a peaceful demonstration,” the Paris police prefecture said in a Tweet. 
 
Tear gas swirled over the Invalides esplanade. Some protesters threw glass bottles and stones at the riot police who formed up along one side of the park. Firefighters extinguished one rubbish bin that had been set alight. 
 
At least 16 arrests were made, police said. 
 
The head of the Paris emergency room workers association told BFM TV the protest had been stolen from them: “It’s disgusting,” Patrick Pelloux said. 
 
Health care workers say the coronavirus crisis has laid bare strains that threaten to break public healthcare in France. 
 
Even before the pandemic, health workers participated in nationwide labor unrest late last year. President Emmanuel Macron’s government unveiled emergency plans in November for the sector, including a promise to take on some debt of hospitals, raise health spending and provide bonuses for nurses. 
 
“Our hospitals run like machines, it’s as if we’re workers. We’re no longer there to care,” said one protester who said she earned 1,450 euros a month after 10 years in the job. 
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British scientists announced Tuesday a major coronavirus breakthrough, saying a cheap, readily-available steroid can prevent deaths from COVID-19. Scientists from Britain’s University of Oxford say in a trial the drug dexamethasone reduced death rates by 35% for patients on ventilators, and by 20% for less immediately critical patients needing oxygen.   
   
Peter Horby, the academic leading the trial, told a Downing Street press conference, “what we saw was really quite remarkable.”  
   
Standing by his side, Prime Minister Boris Johnson lauded the trial, hailing it as the “biggest breakthrough yet” in treating COVID-19.  
   
“I am proud of these British scientists, backed by UK government funding, who have led the first, robust clinical trial anywhere in the world to find a coronavirus treatment proven to reduce the risk of death,” Horby said. Johnson added, “we have taken steps to ensure we have enough supplies, even in the event of a second peak.”  Britain’s Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty attends a remote press conference to update the nation on the COVID-19 pandemic, inside 10 Downing Street in central London on June 10, 2020.The country’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said it is “the most important trial result for COVID-19 so far.” Scientists across the globe have been racing to find treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, which has sickened more than 8 million people and killed more than 430,000.  
   
Dexamethasone is a generic steroid that’s been used for 60 years to reduce inflammation from a range of other conditions, including arthritis and asthma. It is low-cost — in many parts of the world costing just a dollar for a dosage course. Oxford University scientists tested it as part of a collective effort across the world by commercial labs, pharmaceutical companies and universities to existing drugs to see if any can work for the coronavirus.  
   
It is “the only drug that’s so far shown to reduce mortality — and it reduces it significantly,” said Horby.Martin Landray, a colleague, said: “It will save lives, and it will do so at a remarkably low cost.”In the Oxford’s study 2,104 patients were given the drug and 4,321 weren’t with the outcomes being compared. The university enrolled over 11,500 patients overall to test existing drugs, making it by far the biggest clinical trial in the world.  
   
The scientists said for patients on mechanical ventilation, it can reduce the risk of death from 40% to 28%. And for those being given supplemental needing oxygen, it can reduce fatalities from 25 to 20%. The Oxford scientists say if dexamethasone had been used sooner in Britain, it could have saved about 5,000 of the more than 40,000 Britons who so far have died of COVID-19.  
   
They say hospital patients should be given it without delay but cautioned it doesn’t seem to help people with milder coronavirus symptoms and who are not having breathing problems.  
   
“The survival benefit is clear and large in those patients who are sick enough to require oxygen treatment, so dexamethasone should now become standard of care in these patients,” said Horby, professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health.  
   
The only other drug proven so far to show some benefits with severely ill patients is remdesivir, an anti-viral drug created to fight Ebola, which can reduce the duration of bad coronavirus symptoms from 15 to 11 days.Oxford’s findings have not yet been peer-reviewed and the researchers are “now working to publish the full details as soon as possible.”     
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Workers are preparing the Eiffel Tower for reopening next week, after the coronavirus pandemic led to the iconic Paris landmark’s longest closure since World War Two. France’s tourism industry is opening back up, but the 324-meter tall wrought-iron tower won’t immediately welcome visitors the way it did before the country went into lockdown in March. Only limited numbers of people will be allowed in when the Eiffel Tower opens again on June 25. Elevators to the top will be out of service, at least at first, and only the first and second floors will be accessible to the public. “At first, only visits by the stairs will be available,” Victoria Klahr, the spokeswoman for the tower’s management, said Tuesday.  Everyone over 11 years old will be required to wear face masks, and crowd control measures will be in place. “We are optimistic that visitor numbers will pick up, even if it will likely be local tourists who visit the monument in the first weeks,” Klahr said. The tower’s director told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he hopes access will be back to normal by August. A stringent cleaning operation is in place and will continue daily from next week. “There is a new protocol,” said Eiffel Tower hygiene consultant Alain Miralles. “The day cleaning teams will be able to clean all the points of contact every two hours, from the opening of the site to its closing.”Visitor stairs are demarcated with social distancing stickers during a presentation of the security measures at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, June 16, 2020. The Eiffel Tower will partially reopen on June 25.Tourists planning trips to the City of Light are advised to book tickets to visit the Eiffel Tower online once the ticket office reopens Thursday. Paris tourism officials have expressed muted optimism about the city’s reemergence as a travel destination. Since confinement measures were imposed in March, tourism levels have dropped by about 80% compared with the same month in previous years, they said. “To visit Paris now is quite exceptional, as we of course don’t have many visitors and we don’t expect this summer to be at the same level as previous ones,” Corinne Menegaux, the director of Paris’s businesses and tourism office, told The AP. Hotel owners are also keen to welcome visitors again, if realistic about the challenges ahead – and the competition among European countries to draw tourists back in the coronavirus era.  “Everyone is Europe is looking to draw the European clientele. The Italians want to bring in the French, the Germans want to attract the Danes,” said Serge Cachan, president of France’s Astotel Group. He pointed out the plexiglass protections in the reception area of one of his hotels and arrows to ensure social distancing. He welcomed the French president’s Sunday decision to let Paris restaurants reopen earlier than planned. “Without restaurants, there is no conviviality, there is no tourism, there are no clients in hotels,” he said in an interview.  
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Throughout France, long-dead slave traders live on in French port cities like Nantes, Bordeaux and La Rochelle, where streets bear their names. Statues and schools still bear the monikers of Joseph Gallieni, a military commander who quelled rebellions in former colonies, and Jules Ferry, who is lauded for founding the secular school system, but who also believed in superior races.  Here, as in Europe’s other former colonial powers, police violence, #BlackLivesMatter protests and toppled Confederate monuments in the United States are sparking attacks on colonial-era relics and soul searching in France –including how the country should move forward.  Some, including former socialist Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, want the names of at least some controversial historical figures to be scrubbed from streets and monuments, or to at least add contextual plaques. Others believe doing so offers a dishonest take on history — and still others claim today’s French should not have to apologize for their forebears.  “With the slavery debate again out in the open in the U.S., it seems to me that militant groups are taking the opportunity to open it in France,” said historian Nicole Bacharan.  “Despite very different pasts, both countries are confronted with the key question of ‘do we have the right or not to revisit history?’” Bacharan added. “And I think we do.”  National conversation If questions about France’s colonial and slave trading legacy are not new, they have catapulted into the national conversation in recent days, amid swelling protests against police violence and accusations of discrimination against minorities.FILE – A demonstrator clenches her fist as she stands on a statue on the Place de la Republique during a rally against racism in Paris, June 9, 2020.Last week, activists tried to steal a 19th century African pole from Paris’ Quai Branly Museum, with the apparent intent of returning it to Africa.  And even before George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, protesters in the French overseas territory of Martinique attacked a pair of statues of 19th century abolitionist Victor Schoelcher – who was also a staunch supporter of colonialism.  More recently, ex-prime minister Ayrault waded into the debate, calling buildings named after 17th century French statesman Jean-Baptiste Colbert to be rebaptized.  “Maybe we should say he wasn’t just a great economy minister, but also the minister of colonialism and the minister of the Black Code,” Ayrault said in an interview with French radio, referring to the code that regulated conditions for slavery in former French colonies.  But Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron flatly rejected editing or obscuring the colonial-era monikers.  “The Republic will not wipe away any trace or any name from its history,” Macron said in a televised address. “It will not forget any of its works. It will not take down any of its statues but lucidly look at our history and our memory together.”  The debates and protests are mirrored in other European countries with colonial pasts.  In Belgium, protesters burned and daubed in blood red a statue of King Leopold II, who oversaw the brutal rule of the then-Belgian Congo, which he treated as his personal property.  Leopold’s grand-niece, Princess Esmeralda, has called for an official Belgian apology on colonization.  In Britain, where protesters toppled a slave trader statue in Bristol, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the country cannot “edit or censor history.” Yet Johnson has also sparked anger, including in Africa, for downplaying Britain’s past and role in the slave trade, as a member of parliament in 2002.   Yet both countries, along with the Netherlands and soon, Germany, have national museums dedicated to their colonial histories. France does not. FILE – The statue of French statesman Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who served as Finance minister from 1661 until his death in 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV, sits in front of the French National Assembly in Paris, June 10, 2020.Addressing France’s past  Still, perhaps more than many of his French predecessors, President Macron has taken steps to address France’s colonial past. As presidential candidate in 2017, he sparked controversy for calling France’s colonization of Algeria a “crime against humanity.” More recently, he announced France would return looted artifacts to former African colonies that request them. “I belong to a generation which was not that of colonization,” Macron said in a visit to Abidjan last December, following an announcement that another colonial symbol — the West African CFA franc currency — would be transformed into the Eco. But now, Macron’s thumbs down to removing colonial-era names from edifices and streets has sparked sharp divisions.  “He’s shutting the discussion,” said Karfa Diallo, the Senegalese head of Bordeaux-based association of Memoires et Partages (Memories and Sharing), which has fought for greater awareness of the city’s darker legacy as a former slave trading port. “The government is absent from the debate. It doesn’t realize the … anger that’s mounting worldwide.”  On the other side of the debate, former far-right lawmaker Marion Marechal rejected any links to the colonial past in the recent deaths of African American Floyd and Frenchman Adama Traore, who was killed in police custody in 2016. “I don’t have to apologize as a white French woman,” she tweeted recently.  For others, remembering the past, with all its blemishes, is essential.  “Removing names from roads for the symbolism in some cases is important,” said prominent historian Pascale Blanchard in an interview with France Info radio. But others should be left alone, Blanchard said, with explanatory plaques added instead.  “We can’t make history without a trace, without patrimony, without an archive,” he said.   
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The U.N. General Assembly will hold its first major vote Wednesday since the coronavirus pandemic forced United Nations headquarters to essentially shut down in mid-March. Member states will hold an election for five seats on the powerful 15-member Security Council.  The annual event normally draws hundreds of diplomats to the assembly hall in a collegial atmosphere, where candidate countries hand out small treat bags with national goodies to promote their candidacy, capping off months of campaigning and parties to raise their profiles. FILE – Flags fly outside the United Nations headquarters in New York.U.N. headquarters is in the heart of New York City, which has been one of the hardest-hit places globally by COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The complex closed in mid-March to all but a few hundred essential personnel who could not perform their duties from home. Since then, the secretary-general has held virtual news conferences, the Security Council has taken its public meetings online, and the United Nations, like many individuals and businesses, has had to navigate an evolving reality, which included the cancellation of events promoting candidacies. “The pandemic initially upset the candidates’ campaign plans in March and April, but they have got back to lobbying via phone and Zoom as the vote approaches,” said Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group and a longtime U.N. watcher. ”Justin Trudeau and other leaders have been popping up in webinars and placing calls to wavering leaders.” FILE – Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, speaks at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Feb. 14, 2020.Trudeau is Canada’s prime minister, and his government is running in a tight race with Ireland and Norway for two available seats in the regional group dedicated to Western Europe “and others.” Canada lost its last bid for a seat in 2010 and has a lot on the line. Both Ireland and Norway are popular contenders. The European Union’s 27-strong bloc will be behind Ireland, especially as it seeks to maintain its influence on the council. With permanent council member Britain now no longer part of the bloc, it has lost one influential seat and could see its current hold on four seats cut in half as Belgium and Germany complete their two-year terms and exit the council at the end of the year, leaving France and Estonia. Norway is not an EU member but has a solid reputation in multilateral diplomacy and conflict resolution. “Norway is a strong candidate, and has emphasized diplomatic experience mediating in Colombia, Venezuela and the Middle East,” Gowan noted. In the other contested race, Djibouti and Kenya are competing for a single seat in the African Group. Typically, the African bloc rotates seats among its sub-regions and presents one agreed-upon candidate. This year it is East Africa’s turn, but there was initially a lack of consensus on who should run. Kenya subsequently received the endorsement of the African Union’s Permanent Representatives Council, but Djibouti has challenged the PRC’s authority to make the endorsement and has continued with its bid. Mexico is the candidate from the Latin America and the Caribbean bloc, and India for Asia-Pacific. Both are running uncontested. Member states cast secret ballots and candidate countries must win a two-thirds majority of votes to succeed, even if running unopposed. The current General Assembly president will oversee the proceedings. Diplomats will also vote simultaneously for members of the social and economic council and to approve the uncontested bid for the next president of the General Assembly. On Wednesday, diplomats will vote in person during designated time slots in the assembly hall to respect social distancing and guidelines prohibiting large gatherings. Several rounds of voting are often needed to settle contested races. “The new voting process will be quite onerous, and diplomats will not be happy if they have to troop in and out of headquarters for repeated rounds of ballots,” Gowan predicted. The countries running for the Security Council are looking to replace exiting members Belgium, Dominican Republic, Germany, Indonesia and South Africa. The winners will take up their two-year terms on Jan. 1, 2021.  
 
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Researchers in England say they have the first evidence that a drug can improve COVID-19 survival: A cheap, widely available steroid called dexamethasone reduced deaths by up to one third in severely ill hospitalized patients.  
Results were announced Tuesday and researchers said they would publish them soon. The study is a large, strict test that randomly assigned 2,104 patients to get the drug and compared them with 4,321 patients getting only usual care.
The drug was given either orally or through an IV. After 28 days, it had reduced deaths by 35% in patients who needed treatment with breathing machines and by 20% in those only needing supplemental oxygen. It did not appear to help less ill patients.
“This is an extremely welcome result,” one study leader, Peter Horby of the University of Oxford, said in a statement. “The survival benefit is clear and large in those patients who are sick enough to require oxygen treatment, so dexamethasone should now become standard of care in these patients. Dexamethasone is inexpensive, on the shelf, and can be used immediately to save lives worldwide.”
Even though the drug only helps in severe cases, “countless lives will be saved globally,” said Nick Cammack of Wellcome, a British charity that supports science research.
“Dexamethasone must now be rolled out and accessed by thousands of critically ill patients around the world,” said Cammack, who had no role in the study. “It is highly affordable, easy to make, can be scaled up quickly and only needs a small dosage.”
Steroid drugs reduce inflammation, which sometimes develops in COVID-19 patients as the immune system overreacts to fight the infection. This overreaction can prove fatal, so doctors have been testing steroids and other anti-inflammatory drugs in such patients. The World Health Organization advises against using steroids earlier in the course of illness because they can slow the time until patients clear the virus.  
Researchers estimated that the drug would prevent one death for every eight patients treated while on breathing machines and one for every 25 patients on extra oxygen alone.
This is the same study that earlier this month showed the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine was not working against the coronavirus. The study enrolled more than 11,000 patients in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who were given either standard of care or that plus one of several treatments: dexamethasone; the HIV combo drug lopinavir-ritonavir, the antibiotic azithromycin; the anti-inflammatory drug tocilizumab; or plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 that contains antibodies to fight the virus.
Research is continuing on the other treatments. The research is funded by government health agencies in the United Kingdom and private donors including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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During Europe’s migrant crisis of 2015, European Union member states promised to accept 160,000 asylum seekers in two years, of which the Spanish government pledged to receive nearly 18,000.  Five years later, Spain has given asylum to only two thousand people — held back in part by opposition from some Spaniards who say the kingdom already has too many migrants — many of them from Africa. Alfonso Beato filed this report from Barcelona, narrated by Jonathan Spier.Camera: Alfonso BeatoProduced by: Jon Spier 
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The ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests that have erupted across the world in recent weeks have reinvigorated demands in Europe for statues of slave traders and colonial figures to be removed. A memorial to Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University is the focal point of protests in Britain. As VOA’s Henry Ridgwell reports from London, racial tensions are resurfacing as counter-protestors also take to the streets.Camera: Henry Ridgwell
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Less than a week after France banned police chokeholds, the government responded to growing officer discontent by announcing it would test stun guns for wider use, adding to the ranks of European law enforcement agencies that have recently adopted the weapons that many in the U.S. equate with excess police violence.
For Johny Louise, it felt as though the 22 seconds of Taser pulses that led to his son’s death counted for nothing.  
“They need more death so that one day they understand, but it will be more pointless deaths and sufferings for families,” Louise said.  
Gendarmes in Orléans responding to a drunken brawl tried to arrest his son, Loïc. One of the officers, Noham Cardoso, fired his Taser for the first time, hitting Loïc Louise in the chest with the twin darts and jolting him for a full 17 seconds, rather than the usual 5-second cycle, then hitting him again less than a minute later with another 5 seconds, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press. Loïc Louis, who was black, passed out and was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
Cardoso was charged last year with involuntary homicide in the Nov. 3, 2013, death. He has said Loïc Louise was aggressive and appeared ready to attack.
The officer’s lawyer, Ludovic de Villèle, can’t fathom why France would replace an immobilization technique with a weapon. He said it would make more sense to invent another technique to replace the banned chokehold.  
“It’s a bad sign to say, ‘You can’t strangle, but here are Tasers for you to use,'” de Villèle said.  
But Tasers, or other stun guns, are increasingly the weapon of choice for European law enforcement as they have been for years in the United States. In Atlanta, just hours after the French announcement on Friday, a seemingly routine sobriety check outside a Wendy’s restaurant ended in gunshots after Rayshard Brooks grabbed a Taser from officers and ran.  
The killing of the 27-year-old black man in an encounter with two white officers late Friday rekindled fiery protests in Atlanta and prompted the police chief’s resignation. One of the officers was fired.  
Axon, the company that makes Tasers, has made a big push outside the United States in recent years and agencies in the Netherlands and Italy recently expanded use of stun guns, following the path of Britain, where use has increased steadily since they were introduced in 2003.
Stun guns are in limited but increasing use in France already. The number of discharges increased from 1,400 in 2017 to 2,349 in 2019. According to the French police oversight agency, stun guns killed one person last year and three suffered severe injuries. After France said it would abandon the chokehold last week, police across the country staged scattered protests, saying they felt abandoned by the government.  
Police in England and Wales discharged Tasers 2,700 times over the 12 months ending in March 2019, according to government statistics, which also showed black people were more likely than white ones to have stun guns used on them.
Britain’s Independent Office for Police Conduct said last month that there were growing concerns “about its disproportionate use against black men and those with mental health issues.”
British rapper Wretch 32 posted video last week of his 62-year-old father being hit by a Taser in his London home during a police raid in April. The Metropolitan Police force said a review found no indication of misconduct, but London Mayor Sadiq Khan called for an urgent investigation by the police watchdog.
According to Amnesty International, at least 18 people in Britain have died after a stun gun was discharged on them by police, but in many cases it was not determined that the weapon caused the death. The human rights group has said at least 500 people died after being hit by stun guns between 2001 and 2012 in the United States.
Italy’s government approved using Tasers in January after a two-year trial and opened a bidding process to purchase nearly 4,500 stun guns to be divided among various law enforcement agencies. Police chief Franco Gabrielli said in March that the next phase would involve a period of training and “operational experimentation” in a half-dozen cities.
“The administration is certainly attentive to guaranteeing that the security of our personnel is first, obviously without causing damage to the people who might find themselves on the other side,” Gabrielli told reporters outside a Genoa hospital where he had gone to visit two police officers who were recovering after being injured in a shootout.
The Netherlands began issuing stun guns to police in 2017 and is training 17,000 of the force’s 40,000 officers. But far fewer of the weapons are on order and they will not be part of an officer’s standard equipment.
There are about 15,000 stun guns in France, which has a total police and gendarme force of around 240,000. In the United States, by contrast, more than three-quarters of officers carry the weapons as standard issue, according to William Terrill, a professor of criminal justice at Arizona State University. Axon says it has standing relationships with 95% of American law enforcement agencies.
Terrill said training must come before widespread distribution of Tasers, which are sold as a way to protect officers from aggressive suspects while avoiding deadly force.
“It’s almost asking a police department to make an unfair choice in many respects,” he said. “By articulating it that way, it’s almost saying I value my officers’ safety more than the community’s safety.”
For Loïc Louise’s family, from the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, it was a weapon used far too easily on someone with dark skin.
His father does not believe all gendarmes are racist but “some use their uniform to do whatever they please,” said Johny Louise. “And my son paid for it.” 
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Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday ordered two Czech diplomats to leave the country in a quid pro quo response to Prague’s expulsion of Russian diplomats amid tensions rooted in differences over history.The ministry said it summoned the Czech ambassador Monday to announce the move, saying the two diplomats must leave Russia by Wednesday.Earlier this month, the Czech government ordered two Russian diplomats to leave the country. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the nation’s spy agency has discovered that one of them had spread false information about a Russian assassin arriving to allegedly target Czech politicians.The alleged assassination plot surfaced in April when a magazine reported that Czech intelligence services suspected that a Russian who arrived in Prague on a diplomatic passport was sent to poison Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib and Prague 6 district mayor Ondrej Kolar with a potent toxin.  Kolar, Hrib and the mayor of Prague’s Reporyje district, Pavel Novotny, all consequently received police protection.Moscow has dismissed the allegation as baseless. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ridiculed the claims published in the magazine, saying the notion that Czech authorities spotted a Russian man equipped with ricin and let him through didn’t make sense.The three politicians had been involved in actions that previously angered Russia.  In February, a Prague square in front of the Russian Embassy was renamed after slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, with Hrib unveiling the new nameplate.  In April, Kolar’s district removed a statue of Soviet World War II commander Ivan Konev, whose armies completed the liberation of Prague from Nazi occupation. The statue’s removal caused outrage in Russia, which has angrily lashed out at any attempts to diminish the nation’s decisive role in defeating the Nazis.Novotny provoked Moscow’s ire with plans to build a monument to the soldiers of Gen. Andrei Vlasov’s army. Over 300 of them died when they helped the Czech uprising against Nazi rule and contributed to Prague’s liberation. Their role is controversial for Russia, however, because they previously fought against the Red Army alongside Nazi troops. 
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