French President Emmanuel Macron Monday pledged nearly $17 billion in new funding for environmental programs one day after his party was soundly defeated in local elections across France. At a news conference with Citizens’ Climate Council in Paris, Macron said he would move faster on environment-friendly policymaking and that he was ready to call a referendum on revising the constitution to include climate aims if parliament allowed it. Macron was responding to the climate council’s environmental propositions as France’s Green party — officially known as Europe Ecology  – The Greens (EELV) — stunned Macron and France in Sunday’s vote when it won control of large cities including Lyon, Bordeaux and Strasbourg, often in alliance with leftist allies.  The Greens’ victories in towns and cities put Macron under pressure to act on the environment. While supporting many of their proposals, Macron told the climate council he disagreed with its call for a four percent tax on dividends to help finance new greener policies, saying such a levy would discourage investments. He said a bill will be drafted and presented to lawmakers by the end of the summer to advance France’s ecological transition goals. Macron’s ruling party emerged from Sunday’s elections without a single victory in a big city, an outcome that leaves the president without a local power base as he eyes a re-election bid in 2022. Macron set up the Citizens’ Climate Council in the wake of “yellow vest” protests, which erupted over an increase in diesel taxes but turned into a wider rebellion against the president and his pro-business reform agenda.   
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The European Union is edging toward finalizing a list of countries whose citizens will be allowed to enter Europe again in coming days, with Americans almost certain to be excluded in the short term due to the number of U.S. coronavirus cases.
Spain’s foreign minister said that the list — which is likely to be made public Tuesday — could contain 15 countries that are not EU members and whose citizens would be allowed to visit from July 1.
EU envoys in Brussels worked over the weekend to narrow down the exact criteria for countries to be included, mostly centered on their ability to manage the spread of the disease. Importantly, the countries are also expected to drop any travel restrictions they have imposed on European citizens.
The number of confirmed cases in the United States has surged over the past week, and President Donald Trump also suspended the entry of all people from Europe’s ID check-free travel zone in a decree in March, making it highly unlikely that U.S. citizens would qualify.
Infection rates in Brazil, Russia and India are high, too, and their nationals are also unlikely to make the cut.
Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya said the EU is considering whether to accept travelers from China if Beijing lifts restrictions on European citizens. Morocco is another possibility, although its government doesn’t plan to open borders until July 10.
She said she wasn’t aware of pressure from the United States for the EU to reopen travel to its nationals, adding that countries have been chosen according to their coronavirus statistics — whether similar or not to that in the EU — trends of contagion and how reliable their data is.
“This is not an exercise to be nice or unfriendly to other countries, this is an exercise of self-responsibility,” she told Spain’s Cadena SER radio on Monday.
The safe country list would be reviewed every 14 days, with new countries being added and some possibly dropping off, depending on how the spread of the disease is being managed.
More than 15 million Americans are estimated to travel to Europe annually, and any delay would be a further blow to virus-ravaged economies and tourism sectors on both sides of the Atlantic.
Around 10 million Europeans are thought to cross the Atlantic for vacations and business each year.
The 27 EU nations and four other countries that are part of Europe’s “Schengen area” — a 26-nation bloc where goods and people move freely without document checks — appear on track to reopen borders between each other from Wednesday.
Once that happens and the green light is given, restrictions on nonessential travel to Europe from the outside world, which were imposed in March to halt new virus cases from entering, would gradually be lifted.
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For months, experts have warned of a potential nightmare scenario: After overwhelming health systems in some of the world’s wealthiest regions, the coronavirus gains a foothold in poor or war-torn countries ill-equipped to contain it and sweeps through the population. Now some of those fears are being realized. In southern Yemen, health workers are leaving their posts en masse because of a lack of protective equipment, and some hospitals are turning away patients struggling to breathe. In Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region, where there is little testing capacity, a mysterious illness resembling COVID-19 is spreading through camps for the internally displaced. FILE – people enquire about their relatives from a health worker at a COVID designated hospital in New Delhi, India, June 10, 2020.Cases are soaring in India and Pakistan, together home to more than 1.5 billion people and where authorities say nationwide lockdowns are no longer an option because of high poverty. Latin America
In Latin America, Brazil has a confirmed caseload and death count second only to the United States, and its leader is unwilling to take steps to stem the spread of the virus. Alarming escalations are unfolding in Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Panama, even after they imposed early lockdowns. The first reports of disarray are also emerging from hospitals in South Africa, which has its continent’s most developed economy. Sick patients are lying on beds in corridors as one hospital runs out of space. At another, an emergency morgue was needed to hold more than 700 bodies. “We are reaping the whirlwind now,” said Francois Venter, a South African health expert at the University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg. Worldwide, there are 10 million confirmed cases and over 500,000 reported deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University of government reports. Experts say both those numbers are serious undercounts of the true toll of the pandemic, due to limited testing and missed mild cases. FILE – A student is screened as schools begin to reopen after the coronavirus disease lockdown in Langa township in Cape Town, South Africa, June 8, 2020.Africa
South Africa has more than a third of Africa’s confirmed cases of COVID-19. It’s ahead of other African countries in the pandemic timeline and approaching its peak. If its facilities break under the strain, it will be a grim forewarning because South Africa’s health system is reputed to be the continent’s best. Most poor countries took action early on. Some, like Uganda, which already had a sophisticated detection system built up during its yearslong battle with viral hemorrhagic fever, have thus far been arguably more successful than the U.S. and other wealthy countries in battling coronavirus. But since the beginning of the pandemic, poor and conflict-ravaged countries have generally been at a major disadvantage, and they remain so. The global scramble for protective equipment sent prices soaring. Testing kits have also been hard to come by. Tracking and quarantining patients requires large numbers of health workers. “It’s all a domino effect,” said Kate White, head of emergencies for Doctors Without Borders. “Whenever you have countries that are economically not as well off as others, then they will be adversely affected.” Global health experts say testing is key, but months into the pandemic, few developing countries can keep carrying out the tens of thousands of tests every week that are needed to detect and contain outbreaks. “The majority of the places that we work in are not able to have that level of testing capacity, and that’s the level that you need to be able to get things really under control,” White said. South Africa leads Africa in testing, but an initially promising program has now been overrun in Cape Town, which alone has more reported cases than any other African country except Egypt. Critical shortages of kits have forced city officials to abandon testing anyone for under 55 unless they have a serious health condition or are in a hospital. Venter said a Cape Town-like surge could easily play out next in “the big cities of Nigeria, Congo, Kenya,” and they “do not have the health resources that we do.” Lockdowns are likely the most effective safeguard, but they have exacted a heavy toll even on middle-class families in Europe and North America and are economically devastating in developing countries. India
India’s lockdown, the world’s largest, caused countless migrant workers in major cities to lose their jobs overnight. Fearing hunger, thousands took to the highways by foot to return to their home villages, and many were killed in traffic accidents or died from dehydration. The government has since set up quarantine facilities and now provides special rail service to get people home safely, but there are concerns the migration has already spread the virus to India’s rural areas, where the health infrastructure is even weaker. Poverty has also accelerated the pandemic in Latin America, where millions with informal jobs had to go out and keep working, and then returned to crowded homes where they spread the virus to relatives. FILE – Portraits of people who died of the COVID-19, are seen inside the Cathedral, in Lima, Peru, June 13, 2020.Peru’s strict three-month lockdown failed to contain its outbreak, and it now has the world’s sixth-highest number of cases in a population of 32 million, according to Johns Hopkins. Intensive care units are nearly 88% occupied, and the virus shows no sign of slowing. “Hospitals are on the verge of collapse,” said epidemiologist Ciro Maguiña, a professor of medicine at Cayetano Heredia University in the capital, Lima. Aid groups have tried to help, but they have faced their own struggles. Doctors Without Borders says the price it pays for masks went up threefold at one point and is still higher than normal. The group also faces obstacles in transporting medical supplies to remote areas as international and domestic flights have been drastically reduced. And as wealthy donor countries struggle with their own outbreaks, there are concerns they will cut back on humanitarian aid. Mired in civil war for the past five years, Yemen was already home to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis before the virus hit. Now the Houthi rebels are suppressing all information about an outbreak in the north, and the health system in the government-controlled south is collapsing. “Coronavirus has invaded our homes, our cities, our countryside,” said Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Azraqi, an internal medicine specialist and former hospital director in the city of Taiz, which is split between the rival forces. He estimates that 90% of Yemeni patients die at home. “Our hospital doesn’t have any doctors, only a few nurses and administrators. There is effectively no medical treatment.”   
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When a nine-year old girl, the daughter of an unemployed hotel chambermaid fainted from hunger at a bakery shop on the island Rhodes this week, shockwaves were felt across the country. Several media outlets broke into scheduled programming to report the incident, while leading government ministers were left glued to their television sets, gripped by harrowing tale. Thanassis Stamoulis, president of the association of hotel employees in Rhodes explains. 
 
The young girl was in line, he says, waiting to get some bread. But she collapsed from starvation. This, unfortunately, is the grim reality here on the island of Rhodes, Stamoulis says. But it is just a small example of the human toll this crisis is exacting on society. With its breathtaking vistas, sandy beaches and spectacular medieval architecture, Rhodes has long been a top vacation destination. Last year alone, the island attracted more than two million British, German and American tourists. But today, weeks into Greece’s tourism relaunch, not a single hotel has managed to open, inflicting huge losses and devastating despair across the local community according to Stamoulis. 
 
The scenes that are unravelling here are like we are emerging from a war, he says. Every day people gather at a main square selling their personal possessions to make some money. Rhodes is dead. Almost all shops are closed. There is just no business at all. Everything is dead. 
 
For a country heavily reliant on tourism, such scenes of despair could spell another recession for Greece, just years after it managed to steer out of an exhausting 10-year financial crisis. In a recent report, the country’s central bank said travel revenue was down by 99 percent in April. And this after, travel to Greece had dropped by more than 50 percent between January and March the previous year. The government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis says it is confident that some losses can be recovered with the re-opening of travel. But even Yiannis Retsos, the head of Greece’s Tourism Confederation, the umbrella agency guiding the country’s top industry is pessimistic. 
 
At this point, he said, I’ll be surprised if tourism revenues exceed four to five billion euros. 
 
That’s just a fraction of the nearly 18 billion euros the country raked in from tourism last year, providing jobs to one in five workers here. 
 
From the start of the pandemic, the government injected more than 10 billion euros into the economy to keep businesses operating, mainly in the tourism trade. But that appears to be too little. Finance Minister Christos Staikouras recently announced that the government expected the country to suffer a contraction of 8% of gross domestic product in 2020 with a whopping 16% downturn in the second quarter of the year. Greece had originally expected its economy to grow by nearly three percent this year and workers like the now unemployed chambermaid in Rhodes had hoped for better rather than tougher times. 
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Poland’s presidential election appears headed for a runoff after no candidate appears to have won a majority of votes needed for an outright victory.Exit polls Sunday gave right-wing President Andrzej Duda 42% of the ballots cast and centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski 30% of the votes. Television personality Szymon Holownia had 13%.  Election observers say they do not expect the final results later this week to change, meaning the top two candidates will face off in a second round July 12.Duda’s nationalist Law and Justice Party is hoping to be able to extend its majority in parliament and implement conservative social, judicial and immigration policies that many other in the European Union have criticized as anti-democratic.They include Duda’s pledge to ban gay rights classes in schools. He has called homosexuality worse than communism.  Trzaskowski, of the Civic Platform party, campaigned on promises to preserve the ruling party’s popular welfare programs but said he would block any legislation he says would be unconstitutional. He also says he would restore good relations with the European Union.  The coronavirus outbreak forced a nearly two-month delay in the election.Observers say the postponement hurt Duda who had looked as if he would cruise to a first-round victory. But his popularity in the polls slipped after the Civic Platform party replaced a much less popular candidate with Trzaskowski and other candidates were allowed to get out and campaign more when COVID-19 restrictions were eased.
 
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France President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party received a drubbing Sunday in municipal elections, as the Greens celebrated victories in several big cities after a surge in support.Macron had hoped the elections would help anchor his young party in towns and cities across France, including Paris, ahead of an anticipated 2022 reelection bid.But aides had more recently been playing down expectations, and the sweeping wins by the Greens, who in some cities joined forces with leftist allies, may compel Macron to reshuffle his government to win back disenfranchised left-wing voters.In a rare bright spot for Macron, his prime minister, Edouard Philippe, won his bid to become mayor of the northern port city of Le Havre. Although the French constitution allows Philippe to name someone to act as mayor while he remains prime minister, his win deepens questions over his job as premier.’Green wave’
Exit polls showed the Greens winning in Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux and Strasbourg, building on the momentum created by their strong performance in France in last year’s European Parliament elections.Yannick Jadot, a European Parliament lawmaker from the Europe Ecology – The Greens, hailed an historic victory.”It’s an incredible green wave,” he said.In Paris, the biggest prize of all, the incumbent Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo celebrated victory after a shambolic campaign by Macron’s camp.France’s 35,000 mayors set policy on issues from urban planning to education and the environment. While local factors typically drive voter choices, they give the electorate an opportunity to support or punish a president midmandate.”We have a government that is completely disconnected from reality,” said Naouel, a voter in Paris’ 9th district who said she was backing the center-right opposition candidate.In Perpignan, Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally) claimed victory, the first time the protectionist, anti-EU party has taken control of a town with a population of more than 100,000 people.Reshuffle?In this second round of voting, turnout was low and people wore masks because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The first round was held just days before Macron imposed one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns in mid-March.Turnout was just 40.5%, interior ministry data showed.The weak performance of Macron’s La Republique en Marche will prompt much soul-searching for the president, who in the run-up to the vote said he wanted to reinvent his presidency with two years left in his mandate.Early in his presidency, Macron’s left-wing opponents derided him as a ‘president of the rich’ as he eased taxes on companies and relaxed worker protections as he enacted reforms to liberalize France’s regulation-choked economy.The reforms were bearing fruit: growth was robust among euro zone peers and stubbornly high unemployment was falling.But the past three years have been mired in social unrest and the pandemic’s impact is reversing some of Macron’s hard-fought gains, as disillusion among the leftist faction of his party grows. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday he had never been told about reports that a Russian military intelligence unit was secretly offering bounties to Taliban militants in Afghanistan to kill U.S. soldiers. Trump scoffed at a New York Times report that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded months ago that the Russian unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and covert operations in Europe aimed at destabilizing the West, had carried out the mission in Afghanistan last year and that he had been briefed about it in late March. On Twitter, he said, “Nobody briefed or told me,” Vice President Mike Pence or White House chief of staff Mark Meadows “about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an ‘anonymous source’ by the Fake News @nytimes. Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us.” Nobody briefed or told me, @VP Pence, or Chief of Staff @MarkMeadows about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an “anonymous source” by the Fake News @nytimes. Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2020Twenty American troops were killed in Afghanistan last year, but it was not known which killings might have been linked to the alleged Russian bounties. Critics have accused Trump of often being deferential to Russian President Vladimir Putin during his 3 ½-year term in the White House. But Trump tweeted, “Nobody’s been tougher on Russia than the Trump Administration,” contending that Russia “had a field day” under former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s opponent in the national November presidential election. The U.S. leader challenged the newspaper to “reveal its ‘anonymous’ source. Bet they can’t do it, this ‘person’ probably does not even exist!” The Fake News @ nytimes must reveal its “anonymous” source. Bet they can’t do it, this “person” probably does not even exist! https://t.co/pdg4AjybOG
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2020Hours after Trump’s tweets, his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, expanded on his comments.”The United States receives thousands of intelligence reports a day and they are subject to strict scrutiny,” she said. “While the White House does not routinely comment on alleged intelligence or internal deliberations, the CIA director, national security adviser, and the chief of staff can all confirm that neither the president nor the vice president were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence. This does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence but to the inaccuracy of the New York Times story erroneously suggesting that President Trump was briefed on this matter.”
Both Russia and the Taliban denied the report of the bounties, with Moscow calling them “baseless and anonymous accusations.” The Russian embassy in Washington said the New York Times report had “already led to direct threats” on the lives of employees at Russian embassies in Washington and London.   A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, rejected the report that the insurgents have “any such relations with any intelligence agency” and called the newspaper report an attempt to defame them. “These kinds of deals with the Russian intelligence agency are baseless — our target killings and assassinations were ongoing in years before, and we did it on our own resources,” he said. “That changed after our deal with the Americans, and their lives are secure, and we don’t attack them.” Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the leader of the Taliban delegation, and Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. envoy for peace in Afghanistan, shake hands after signing an agreement at a ceremony in Doha, Qatar, Feb. 29, 2020.Earlier this year, the U.S. and the Taliban signed an “agreement for bringing peace” to Afghanistan after more than 18 years of conflict. The U.S. and NATO allies agreed to withdraw all troops by next year if the militants uphold the deal. Trump said it had been a “long and hard journey” in Afghanistan, but that, “It’s time after all these years to bring our people back home.” Despite Trump’s denial of the alleged bounties, one of the top-ranking Republican lawmakers in Congress, Congresswoman Liz Cheney, voiced concerns about the report. “If reporting about Russian bounties on US forces is true, the White House must explain: 1. Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed?” she said on Twitter.  She asked whether the information was in Trump’s daily presidential briefing. “Who did know and when? What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?” said Cheney, the daughter of former U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney. If reporting about Russian bounties on US forces is true, the White House must explain:
1. Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed? Was the info in the PDB?
2. Who did know and when?
3. What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) June 28, 2020John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who now contends in a new book that the president is unfit to run the country, told CNN that Trump’s tweets about the alleged bounties show that he was not concerned about “the security of our forces,” but “whether he was paying attention” to the intelligence report he supposedly was given.  
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The White House has denied that President Donald Trump was briefed on a reported finding that Russian military intelligence offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. 
 
Neither Trump nor Vice President Mike Pence was briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement, referring to a report on June 26 in The New York Times. 
 
“This does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence but to the inaccuracy of The New York Times story erroneously suggesting that President Trump was briefed on this matter,” she added. 
 
Former Vice President Joe Biden reacted to the report by attacking Trump for his reported failure to take action. 
 
Biden said the shocking revelation — if true — is that Trump “has known about this for months” and had done “worse than nothing.” 
 
Biden, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, said not only has Trump failed to impose any kind of consequences on Russia, he “has continued his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin.” 
 
He promised that if he is elected on November 3, “Putin will be confronted and we’ll impose serious costs on Russia.” 
 
The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence officials concluded months ago that Russian military intelligence offered the bounties to Taliban-linked militants. 
 
The newspaper, citing anonymous U.S. officials briefed on the matter, reported that a secret unit of Russia’s GRU military intelligence linked to assassination attempts in Europe and other activities offered rewards for successful attacks last year. 
 
A spokesman for the Taliban leadership said on June 27 that the group “strongly reject” the allegation. It insisted the Taliban “is not indebted to the beneficence of any intelligence organ or foreign country and neither is the [Taliban leadership] in need of anyone in specifying objectives.” 
 
Spokesmen for the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and the CIA declined to comment on the allegations that were later also reported by The Washington Post. 
 
The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the report. 
 
“This unsophisticated plant clearly illustrates the low intellectual abilities of the propagandists of American intelligence, who instead of inventing something more plausible have to make up this nonsense,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. 
 
The Times claimed the intelligence was based partially on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals. 
 
It said Taliban-linked militants, or “armed criminal elements closely associated with them,” collected some of the money. But it reported that it was not clear whether any of the 20 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan last year are linked to the alleged payments. 
 
The newspaper, citing unidentified officials familiar with the intelligence, said the findings were presented to Trump and discussed by his National Security Council in late March. Officials developed potential responses, starting with a diplomatic complaint to Russia, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the report said. 
 
At least two members of Congress demanded answers. 
 
Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican-South Carolina) said in a tweet it was “imperative” that Congress get to the bottom of the news reports. 
 
Senator Bob Menendez (Democrat-New Jersey) said Congress must act “if Trump refuses to hold Putin accountable for funding terrorism against U.S. troops in Afghanistan.” 
 
Legislation he proposed calling for sanctions against Russia passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in December 2019 and awaits a vote by the full Senate, he said on Twitter, urging Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to “act this week.” 
 
The allegations come as the United States seeks to advance a nascent peace process in Afghanistan after signing a deal with the Taliban in February that could see U.S. troops leave the country next year. 
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Concerns over democratic standards and bread-and-butter issues top the agenda as Poles began voting on Sunday in round one of a tight presidential race that had to be postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.Incumbent Andrzej Duda, 48, is campaigning for reelection in a vote that could determine the future of the right-wing government that supports him.Ten candidates are vying to replace him, but opinion polls show that Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, a liberal from the main Civic Platform (PO) opposition party, will enter a neck-and-neck run-off on July 12.Victory for Trzaskowski, also 48, would deal a heavy blow to the Law and Justice (PiS) government, which has relied on its ally Duda to endorse polarizing legislation, especially judicial reforms.While the PiS insists the changes are needed to weed out judicial corruption, critics and the European Union insist they erode judicial independence and democracy just three decades after Poland shed communism.U.S. President Donald Trump, who regards the populist PiS administration as a key European ally, gave Duda his blessing this week.Trump invited him to the White House on Wednesday as the first foreign leader to visit since the coronavirus pandemic began, just four days ahead of election day.Originally scheduled for May, the ballot was postponed due to the pandemic and a new hybrid system of postal and conventional voting was in place on Sunday in a bid to stem infections.While official figures show over 33,000 confirmed cases and more than 1,400 deaths, the health minister has admitted that there are likely up to 1.6 million undetected cases in Poland, an EU country of 38 million people.Anti-gay rhetoricDuda has promised to defend the governing party’s raft of popular social benefits, including a child allowance and extra pension payments — a key factor behind the populists winning a second term in October’s parliamentary election.Bread-and-butter issues are weighing heavily on voters’ minds as the economic fallout of the pandemic is set to send Poland into its first recession since communism’s demise.”I’m happy. I can’t complain; I get an extra pension payment and children are getting 500 zloty,” Irena, a 63-year-old pensioner, told AFP in the central Polish town of Minsk Mazowiecki.”I’d like this to continue,” she added, declining to provide her surname.Duda has also echoed PiS attacks on LGBT+ rights and Western values, something analysts see as a bid to attract voters backing a far-right candidate.Campaigning with the slogan “Enough is Enough,” Trzaskowski promises to use the experience and contacts he gathered as a former European affairs minister to “fight hard” for a fair slice of the EU’s 2021-27 budget, and to repair tattered ties with Brussels.He has however vowed to keep the PiS’s popular welfare payments.While many see his PO party as a weak and ineffectual opposition, Trzaskowski supporters regard him as a bulwark against the PiS’s drive to reform the courts, something they insist risks destroying any notion of an independent judiciary.”I’m a lawyer and this (PiS justice reforms) affect me directly,” Marek, 60, told AFP in Minsk Mazowiecki, also declining to provide his surname.”It’s as if a blacksmith would go to a watchmaker’s shop and try to put things in order. People might support it, but in the long run these reforms will have to be reversed.”‘Budapest model’?Since winning power in 2015, both Duda and the PiS have in many ways upended Polish politics by stoking tensions with the EU and wielding influence through state-owned companies and public broadcasters.Some analysts view the election as a crucial juncture: a second five-year term for Duda would allow the PiS to make even more controversial changes while defeat could unravel the party’s power.A win for Duda would pave the way to “bolstering ‘Eastern’ tendencies, like the rise of oligarchs… and a drift to the Budapest model (of Hungary’s Viktor Orban) – that’s the danger,” Warsaw University political scientist Anna Materska-Sosowska told AFP.Polling stations opened at 7:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) and will close at 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT) with an exit poll expected as soon as voting ends.      
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France’s ruling party is expected to be handed a stinging rebuke by voters Sunday in the final round of local elections, the first big political test for President Emmanuel Macron since the coronavirus crisis began to ease.The first round controversially went ahead on March 15 just as the epidemic was gaining deadly momentum, but the second phase scheduled for March 22 was put off to June 28 after France went into lockdown.Analysts are expecting the election will underline the failure of Macron’s centrist Republic on the Move (LREM) party — founded by the president ahead of his 2017 election win — to gain a strong foothold at a local level.Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo is predicted to hold on to the key battleground of Paris, with LREM candidate and former health minister Agnes Buzyn well behind after Macron’s original choice pulled out in a sexting scandal.With a death toll fast approaching 30,000, France has been badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic. While most restrictions have now been eased, there is widespread anger at the government over shortages of protective equipment in the early stages of the pandemic.’No anchor’Paris is now buzzing with speculation that if a poor showing by the LREM is confirmed, Macron will take the chance to announce a major cabinet reshuffle.This could include the post of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who in an oddity of French politics is also campaigning to be mayor of the Normandy port city of Le Havre.During the pandemic, the popularity of Philippe, a technocratic and unshowy figure, has risen to a level much higher than that of the president’s low ratings, raising speculation Macron may prefer to see him work full time in his Norman fiefdom.A poll by Harris Interactive Epoka published Friday showed that 44 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of Macron, but 51 percent were positive on Philippe, a jump of 13 points for the premier since the start of the epidemic.”There will not be any significant conquests for LREM,” said Emmanuel Riviere, a pollster who is president of the Kantar Centre on the Future of Europe.”This will deprive the ruling party of a territorial anchor that it could have depended on in future elections,” he said.Greens, left seek successFrance’s next presidential poll will be in 2022 where analysts expect the main challenger for Macron to be far-right leader Marine Le Pen of the National Rally (RN) party.Despite their abysmal performance in the last presidential elections, the Socialists are expected to keep key regional centers.There will also be close attention on performance of the green Europe Ecology — The Greens (EELV) party which as well as seeking to keep the Alpine hub of Grenoble also has its eyes on taking Strasbourg and Lyon.In Marseille, left wing candidate Michele Rubirola wants to cause a major sensation by taking France’s second city from the right after a quarter of a century of control.For Le Pen’s RN, the big prize would be taking the southeastern city of Perpignan, which would be the first time the far-right takes a city of more than 100,000 inhabitants since Toulon in 1995.Over three months after the first round, the vote will take place in 4,820 districts where municipal councils were not elected outright in the previous poll.The only region of France where the vote is not taking place is the overseas territory of Guiana in South America, where the pandemic is still deemed too dangerous to proceed with the vote.With social distancing rules still in place across France, the campaign for the second round has been inevitably low key and a major question will be if the turnout is an improvement on the dismal 44.3 percent recorded in the first round.Wearing a mask will also be obligatory for the 16.5 million people eligible to cast a vote in this round, with polling stations due to open from 0600 GMT. 
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France’s oldest nuclear power plant will shut down on Tuesday after four decades in operation, to the delight of environmental activists who have long warned of contamination risks, but stoking worry for the local economy.The Fessenheim plant, opened in 1977 and already three years over its projected 40-year life span, became a target for anti-nuclear campaigners after the catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima in Japan in 2011.Despite a pledge by then-president Francois Hollande just months after the Fukushima disaster to close Fessenheim — on the Rhine river near France’s eastern border with Germany and Switzerland — it was not until 2018 that his successor Emmanuel Macron gave the final green light.Run by state-owned energy company EDF (Electricite de France), one of Fessenheim’s two reactors was disconnected in February.The second is to be taken offline early Tuesday, but it will be several months before the reactors have cooled enough for the used fuel to be removed.That process should be completed by 2023, and the plant is not expected to be fully dismantled before 2040 at the earliest.”We hope, above all, to be the last victims of this witch hunt against nuclear” energy, Fessenheim union representative Anne Laszlo said ahead of the closure that will see about 150 families depart the tiny Alsatian community of 2,500 inhabitants this summer.More will follow, with only 294 people needed on site for the fuel removal process until 2023, and about 60 after that for the final disassembly.By the end of 2017, Fessenheim had over 1,000 employees and service providers on site.There is no legal limit on the life span of French nuclear power stations, but the EDF had envisaged a 40-year ceiling for all second-generation reactors, which use pressurized water technology.’Island of prosperity’France’s ASN nuclear safety authority has said reactors can be operated beyond 40 years only if ambitious safety improvements are undertaken.In the 1990s and 2000s, several safety failures were reported at Fessenheim, including an electrical fault, cracks in a reactor cover, a chemistry error, water pollution, a fuel leak, and non-lethal radioactive contamination of workers.In 2007, the same year a Swiss study found that seismic risks in the Alsace region had been underestimated during construction, the ASN denounced a “lack of rigor” in EDF’s operation of the plant.Without Fessenheim, France will still have 56 pressurized water reactors at 18 nuclear plants generating some 70 percent of its electricity. Only the United States, with 98, has more reactors, but France is by far the world’s biggest consumer of nuclear energy.In January, the French government said it would shut 12 more reactors nearing or exceeding the 40-year limit by 2035, when nuclear power should represent just 50 percent of the country’s energy mix in favor of renewable sources.At the same time, the EDF is racing to get its first next-generation reactor running by 2022 — 10 years behind schedule — and more may be in the pipeline.Local mayor Claude Brender condemned the closure of the plant, which he says has helped create an “island of prosperity” in an otherwise poor part of Alsace.The government has said workers will be transferred to other EDF sites.’Liberation from nuclear’At their Fessenheim home, engineer Jean-Christophe Rouaud and his wife Cecile, director of the local creche, were packing boxes ahead of moving with their two children to another town where he found work at a nuclear plant.As the end was approaching, “people are afraid to no longer hear the machines running,” Rouaud told AFP, and described a “sense of waste shared by all employees.”Many others will have no option but to leave their families in Alsace and work elsewhere.Restaurant owner Laurent Schwein said the future of auxiliary businesses in the town looked dire.”As restaurateurs, we are entering the unknown. We don’t know how long the dismantling will take,” said Schwein, who is also the president of the local football club which will now close with most of its young players leaving.Fessenheimer Gabriel Weisser is one of few happy about the town’s “liberation from nuclear.””They are defending their professional lives, me my very life,” he said of the plant’s diehard defenders.  
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Centrist politician Micheál Martin became Ireland’s new prime minister Saturday, fusing two longtime rival parties into a coalition four months after an election that upended the status quo.The deal will see Martin’s Fianna Fail govern with Fine Gael — the party of outgoing leader Leo Varadkar — and with the smaller Green Party. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, bitter opponents whose roots lie in opposing sides of the civil war that followed Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom, have never before formed a government together.”I believe civil war politics ended a long time ago in our country, but today civil war politics ends in our parliament,” said Varadkar, who became Ireland’s youngest and first gay prime minister three years ago. “Two great parties coming together with another great party, the Green Party, to offer what this country needs, a stable government for the betterment of our country and for the betterment of our world.”The Dail, the lower house of Ireland’s parliament, elected Martin by a vote of 93-63, with three abstentions. Martin later met with Irish President Michael D Higgins to receive his seal of office.Under the plan approved by the parties’ memberships, Martin became Taoiseach, or prime minister. He will serve until the end of 2022 and then hand the job back to Varadkar.Sinn Fein shut outThe left-wing nationalist party Sinn Fein was shut out of the new government even though an electoral breakthrough saw it win the largest share of the votes in February’s election. Despite coming out ahead, Sinn Fein was unable to assemble enough support to govern.The two centrist parties have long shunned Sinn Fein because of its historic links to the Irish Republican Army and decades of violence in Northern Ireland. But in protracted negotiations further complicated by the COVID-19 outbreak, the two rival centrist parties opted for unity.Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald said Fianna Fail and Fine Gael conspired to exclude her party and the voices of more than half a million people who voted for her party. She called the coalition a “marriage of convenience.””Faced with the prospect of losing their grip on power, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have circled the wagons,” McDonald said.Fianna Fail holds 38 seats in the 160-seat Dail, Sinn Fein has 37 and Fine Gael has 35, while the Greens have 12 seats.Homelessness, housing, healthThe election campaign was dominated by domestic issues. Ireland has a growing homelessness crisis, house prices that have risen faster than incomes and a public health system that hasn’t kept up with demand.Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the country’s problems. Underscoring the changes the virus has wrought, the Dail’s session Saturday was held at the Dublin Convention Centre rather than lawmakers’ permanent chamber to allow for social distancing.  Martin said that dealing with the pandemic would be the centerpiece of his leadership.  “The struggle against the virus is not over,” he said. “We must continue to contain its spread. We must be ready to tackle any new wave, and we must move forward rapidly to secure a recovery to benefit all of our people.”  The son of a former Irish international boxer, Martin, 59, had initially embarked on a career as a secondary school teacher before devoting himself to politics.He’s had a number of roles in more than 30 years of public life, including serving in four Cabinet posts. In his speech, he described being named Taoiseach of a free republic as being the greatest honor one could achieve. He thanked those who voted for him.”Most of all I want to thank my family and my community,” Martin said. “Without them I could have achieved nothing.”
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Several dozen women demonstrated Saturday in support of French police in central Paris, to counter public discontent over the perceived way law enforcement treats minorities.The demonstration of support surfaced as local governments across France attempt to change law enforcement practices and punish officers suspected of racism following the death of African American George Floyd while in the custody of officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota.Police officers and their unions in France accuse governments of blaming police for deep-rooted social ills in an attempt to deflect public anger.Among the women supporting police outside the Paris police headquarters Saturday were wives and partners of officers. One carried a message for Interior Minister Christophe Castaner that read “Respect our Police.”Castaner infuriated police this month when he acknowledged there were cases of racism in the police force and proposed sentences for officers found guilty of “proven suspicions of racism.”Police themselves have been protesting efforts to change their practices and punish them. Hundreds of officers rallied Friday night outside Paris’ Bataclan concert hall, where 90 people were killed in a terrorist attack by Islamist militants in 2015.  Protests erupted around the world following U.S. outrage over the May 25 death of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man. City lawmakers Friday unanimously advanced a proposal that could lead to the dismantling of that city’s police department.
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For a long time, few people in the small Belgian town of Halle paid much attention to the monuments. They were just fixtures in a local park, tributes to great men of the past.But these are very different times, and yesterday’s heroes can be today’s racist villains.And so it was that three weeks ago, a bust of Leopold II, the Belgian king who has been held responsible for the deaths of millions of Congolese, was spattered in red paint, labeled “Murderer,” and later knocked off its pedestal.Nearby, a pale sandstone statue formally known as the “Monument to the Colonial Pioneers” has stood for 93 years. It depicts a naked Congolese boy offering a bowl of fruit in gratitude to Lt. Gen. Baron Alphonse Jacques de Dixmude, a Belgian soldier accused of atrocities in Africa.These monuments, and others across Europe, are coming under scrutiny as never before, no longer a collective blind spot on the moral conscience of the public. Protests sweeping the world that followed the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed last month by Minneapolis police, are focusing attention on Europe’s colonial past and racism of the present.Eric Baranyanka, right, and his foster mother Emma Monsaert look at a photo of Eric as a young boy in Lembeek, Belgium, June 22, 2020.Eric Baranyanka, a 60-year-old musician who came to Halle as a refugee from Belgium’s African colony of Burundi when was 3, said he has always found the statue of Jacques “humiliating.””I had this pride being who I was. It was in complete contradiction with that statue,” he said.But Halle Mayor Marc Snoeck appears to be more representative of his citizenry. He said he “never really noticed” the monuments until an anti-colonial group raised awareness of them a dozen years ago in the town of 40,000 people about 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of Brussels.”I’m part of an older generation and I heard precious little during my studies about colonialism, the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo,” said the 66-year-old Snoeck, noting he was taught about how Europeans brought civilization, not exploitation and death, to the heart of Africa.A statue of former Belgian King Leopold II has been vandalized, in the park of the Africa Museum, in Tervuren, near Brussels, Belgium, June 9, 2020.Statues of Leopold, who reigned from 1865 to 1909, have been defaced in a half-dozen cities, including Antwerp, where one was burned and had to be removed for repairs. It’s unclear if it will ever come back.But Leopold is hardly the only focus. Snoeck found it remarkable that protesters have not targeted the statue of Jacques, which he called “possibly even worse.”The mayor said the statue is known locally as “The White Negro,” because of the hue of the sandstone depicting the Congolese youth offering the fruit to the colonial-era Belgian who condoned or was responsible for murders, rapes and maiming workers in the Congo Free State.Baranyanka was lovingly raised by a white foster family in Halle and said he never experienced prejudice until after he had been in Belgium for about a decade.His 98-year-old foster mother Emma Monsaert recalls others in town asking her if she was really going to take in a Black youth in the 1960s: “I said, ‘Why not, it is a child after all.'”But at school, Baranyanka found out how others felt about race.One teacher poured salt on his head, he recalled, saying it would make it whiter. When he wanted a part in a school play of the 17th century fairy tale “Puss in Boots,” he was denied a role, with a teacher telling him: “Mr. Baranyanka, in those days there were no Blacks in Europe.”He counts himself lucky to have had a close circle of friends that survives to this day. As a teenager, he often talked to them about the monuments, his African roots and Leopold’s legacy.A statue of Belgium’s King Leopold II is smeared with red paint and graffiti in Brussels, June 10, 2020. King Leopold II is now increasingly seen as a stain on the nation.”They understood, and they were grateful I explained it,” he said.On Tuesday, Congo celebrates 60 years of independence from Belgium. The city of Ghent will remove a statue of Leopold to mark the anniversary and perhaps take a healing step forward.  Eunice Yahuma, a local leader of a group called Belgian Youth Against Racism and the youth division of the Christian Democrats, knows about Belgium’s troubled history.”Many people don’t know the story, because it is not being told. Somehow they know, ‘Let’s not discuss this, because it is grim history,'” said Yahuma, who has Congolese roots. “It is only now that we have this debate that people start looking into this.”The spirit of the times is different, she said.”Black people used to be less vocal. They felt the pain, but they didn’t discuss it. Now, youth is very outspoken and we give our opinion,” Yahuma added.History teachers like 24-year-old Andries Devogel are trying to infuse their lessons with the context of colonialism.”Within the next decade, they will be expecting us to stress the impact of colonialism on current-day society, that colonialism and racism are inextricably linked,” Devogel said. “Is contemporary racism not the consequence of a colonial vision? How can you exploit a people if you are not convinced of their second-class status?”The colonial era brought riches to Belgium, and the city of Halle benefited, building a rail yard that brought jobs. Native son Franz Colruyt started a business that grew into the supermarket giant Colruyt Group with 30,000 employees — one of them Baranyanka’s foster father.A man walks with his shopping bags past the Monument for the Congo Pioneers in Halle, Belgium, June 24, 2020. In Halle, a small trading town of 40,000, as across much of Europe, the tide is turning and a new consciousness is taking shape.Halle has escaped the violence seen in other cities from the protests, and officials would rather focus attention on its Gothic church, the Basilica of St. Martin, as well as its famous fields of bluebells and Geuze beer.Baranyanka, who will soon stage a musical show of his life called “De Zwette,” — “The Black One,” returned recently to the park and the monuments.Despite the hostility and humiliation he felt as a youngster, he didn’t consider their destruction as the way to go.”Vandalism produces nothing, perhaps only the opposite effect. And you see that suddenly such racism surges again,” he said. “It breeds polarization again. This thing of ‘us against them.'”Devogel, the teacher, says it is the task of education “to let kids get in touch with history.””Otherwise, it will remain a copper bust without meaning,” he said of the Leopold II monument. “And you will never realize why, for all these people, it is so deeply insulting.” 
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European Union countries failed to settle on Friday on a final “safe list” of countries whose residents could travel to the bloc from July, with the United States, Brazil and Russia set to be excluded.Ambassadors from the 27 EU members convened from Friday afternoon to establish criteria for granting quarantine-free access from next Wednesday.A redrawn text of 10-20 countries was put to them, but many said they needed to consult first with their governments, diplomats said. The list did not include the United States, Brazil or Russia, one diplomat said.Discussions were continuing overnight, with the EU countries expected to give informal replies by Saturday evening, people familiar with the matter said.U.S. passengers may be allowed to travel if they meet certain conditions such as passing temperature checks, two U.S. officials said.The European Commission had advised that the bloc first lift internal border controls and then gradually open up to outsiders. However, the first step has not gone according to plan.Greece is mandating coronavirus tests for arrivals from a range of EU countries, including France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, with self-isolation until results are known.The Czech Republic has said it will not allow in tourists from Portugal, Sweden and part of Poland.There is broad agreement that the bloc should only open up to those with a similar or better epidemiological situation, but there are questions about how to assess a country’s handling of the epidemic and the reliability of data.A number of countries, such as Tanzania, Turkmenistan and Laos have no reported cases in the past two weeks, according to EU agency, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).Based on ECDC data for the two weeks to Thursday, a range of countries are clearly in a worse situation than the European Union.They include the United States, Mexico, Brazil and much of Latin America, Russia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia.Despite pressure from U.S. airlines and unions, the White House has not committed to mandating fresh air travel safety measures in the wake of the pandemic. Discussions between airlines and government officials including Vice President Mike Pence on Friday over temperature checks ended without an agreement.In a statement, Pence’s office said the parties also discussed “the best path forward for allowing Americans to safely travel internationally again.”The Commission has suggested the western Balkans countries — Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia — should be admitted.However, according to the ECDC data, the number of cases in Bosnia and North Macedonia could be too high. 
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Seven Colombian soldiers have pleaded guilty in a closed hearing to the gang rape of a 13-year-old Indigenous girl.According to a report in The New York Times, a military spokeswoman said the military would not provide lawyers for the men because the charges did not have any “relation to their work as soldiers.”The Guardian reports the men could receive prison sentences of between 16 and 30 years.The girl, a member of the Embera community, was found Monday after going missing from her home.Human rights activist Aida Quilcue said, ”We know that this is not an isolated issue.”Colombia’s military has a long history of abuse against women and Indigenous people.“Colombia must be merciless with sexual abusers of minors, adolescents and women,” Marta Lucia Ramirez, the country’s first female vice president, posted on Twitter.   
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U.S. intelligence has concluded that the Russian military offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan to kill American troops and other coalition forces, The New York Times reported Friday.Citing officials briefed on the matter, the Times said the United States determined months ago that a Russian military intelligence unit linked to assassination attempts in Europe had offered rewards for successful attacks last year.Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the newspaper said.The White House, the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined requests from Reuters for comment on the Times report.President Donald Trump has been briefed on the intelligence finding, the Times said. It said the White House had yet to authorize any steps against Russia in response to the bounties.Of the 20 Americans killed in combat in 2019, the Times said, it was not clear which deaths were under suspicion.After nearly 20 years of fighting the Taliban, the United States is looking for a way to extricate itself from Afghanistan and to achieve peace between the U.S.-backed government and the militant group, which controls swaths of the country.On February 29, the United States and the Taliban struck a deal that called for a phased U.S. troop withdrawal.U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan is down to nearly 8,600, well ahead of a schedule agreed with the Taliban, in part because of concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, U.S. and NATO officials said in late May.
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A campaign to topple statues of slave owners and Confederate heroes across the United States has extended in California to monuments honoring icons of the region’s Spanish colonial history, much to the distress of the Spanish Embassy in Washington.“We deeply regret the destruction of the statue of Saint Junipero Serra in San Francisco today, and would like to offer a reminder of his great efforts in support of indigenous communities,” the embassy A graffiti reading “racist” is seen on a statue of Fray Junipero Serra in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, June 22, 2020.The statue of Serra, a founder of 18th-century California missions, was one of several monuments vandalized during an overnight rampage in the park June 20.Similar attacks have occurred across the United States amid a wave of public revulsion over the May 25 death of George Floyd, an African American, while in custody of white police officers in Minneapolis. But the San Francisco protesters appear to have been indiscriminate in their targets.Cervantes, GrantFigures defaced or knocked from their pedestals included those of the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes as well as American heroes Francis Scott Key, author of  the U.S. national anthem, and General Ulysses S. Grant, who contributed to the end of slavery in the United States by defeating the South in the 1861-65 Civil War.It was all too much for the Spanish Embassy, which declared that “defending the Spanish legacy in the U.S. is a priority” and called for “the memory of our rich shared history [to] be protected.”The embassy’s tweets generated more than 15,000 reactions — remarkable given that the response to its Twitter postings is often logged in double digits — with most of the comments either defending or criticizing Serra.The Franciscan friar, who was canonized as a saint by Pope Francis in 2015, made it his life’s mission to Christianize Indigenous populations in the Americas during the 1700s. Statues of the priest can be found along the Pacific Coast in California and Mexico.“As an American who was raised in California during an era when schools taught the complexities of history, let me apologize for the wanton destruction of these statues,” said one message posted to the embassy’s Twitter feed.(1/4) We deeply regret the destruction of the statue of Saint Junípero Serra in San Francisco today, and would like to offer a reminder of his great efforts in support of indigenous communities.
Thread ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/qJOmsjorjS
— Embassy of Spain USA (@SpainInTheUSA) June 20, 2020But another respondent wrote, “Junipero Serra was responsible for a system of enslavement that decimated California native communities, his recent canonization was a shameful cover up of genocide, and the day we take down every public statue of him can’t come soon enough.”Junípero Serra was responsible for a system of enslavement that decimated California native communities, his recent canonization was a shameful cover up of genocide, and the day we take down every public statue of him can’t come soon enough https://t.co/SeBtMu2PgJ
— Rebecca Pierce #BlackShabbat (@aptly_engineerd) June 21, 2020A self-identified historian pointed out that the friar’s legacy has been controversial for some time, noting that Indigenous groups in California waged a campaign in 2018 that led Stanford University to rename its postal address to delete the priest’s name.. @Stanford erased Serra’s name from the campus, condemning the violence and abuse of indigenous peoples in the mission system https://t.co/lBtCWf9RTk
— Dr Kristie Flannery (@thehistoriann) June 21, 2020While the anger over Serra has historical roots, the damage to the bust of Cervantes — Spain’s most famous literary figure and author of the novel Don Quixote — was more puzzling.“Don Quixote and Sancho Panza — and for what?” one resident asked a reporter from a local television station. In the book, Sancho Panza is Don Quixote’s sidekick.Spain’s responseIn response, the Spanish Embassy is vowing to intensify “educational efforts in order for the reality of our shared history to be better known and understood,” while “always ensuring that we do not interfere with the domestic debates that are currently taking place” in the United States.The embassy has already posted a slide show on its official Twitter page featuring some of Washington’s most prominent tributes to Spanish history in the Americas.The virtual tour is led by Ambassador Santiago Cabanas, who appears in one slide next to a statue of Bernardo de Galvez, a Spanish commander who aided the American Revolution and later was granted honorary citizenship in the United States.Also featured is another statue of Serra, this one ensconced in the Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol, the building where Congress meets.
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A Moscow court on Friday convicted acclaimed Russian theater and film director Kirill Serebrennikov of fraud, in a long-running case that critics have slammed as fabricated.The judge ruled that Serebrennikov, 50, and two co-defendants were guilty of misappropriating 129 million rubles ($2 million) of state funds that financed a theatrical project.”Serebrennikov, [Yury] Itin and [Konstantin] Malobrodsky carried out actions directed at personal enrichment” and acted as a group to mislead employees of the culture ministry, Judge Olesya Mendeleyeva said, according to an AFP correspondent in the court.A fourth defendant in the case, Sofia Apfelbaum, was “unaware” of the fraud, the judge said.The prosecution earlier this week asked the court to give Serebrennikov a six-year prison sentence, but the judge can take a long time to reach sentencing.Serebrennikov, who heads one of Moscow’s top theater venues, the Gogol Center, was arrested in 2017 and the case against him nearly fell apart last year when a judge handed it back to the prosecution because of “inconsistencies.”It restarted with a new judge, and the amount of the alleged fraud was revised from 133 million rubles to 129 million rubles.The judge on Friday backed claims by the prosecution that Serebrennikov orchestrated theft of state money allocated to the Platforma project he ran between 2011 and 2014.Serebrennikov and his co-defendants insisted they were innocent. The director this week called the accusations that he stole the money “laughable.”
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A massive dust cloud that originated in Africa’s Sahara desert has arrived in the coastal towns and beach resorts of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.The Sahara dust cloud traveled three thousands of kilometers from North Africa before reaching the Caribbean and now Mexico.Antonio Ladino, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Atmospheric Sciences Center is urging people to wear face masks to prevent nose and throat irritations. He also said high concentrations of dust ingested can be very dangerous.Weather experts say the heavy dust will hover over Mexico and the southeastern United States, including Florida until the middle of next week.The presence of the dust cloud in Florida could be especially problematic because the state is experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases.  People with preexisting conditions, who are already urged to restrict travel because of the coronavirus, are encouraged to avoid outdoor activities when the dust turns the skies hazy.Health authorities say the dust can be especially harmful to people with respiratory and heart illnesses. 
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Mexico City’s chief of police was shot and injured in an assassination attempt early Friday morning when gunmen set upon him in an upscale neighborhood of the capital, killing two of his bodyguards, authorities said. Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said on Twitter that public security chief Omar Garcia Harfuch was “out of danger” following the attack at around 6.30 a.m., which shocked residents of the Lomas de Chapultepec area of the city. Police officers arrive at the area where a shooting took place in Mexico City, Mexico, June 26, 2020.An unspecified number of people had died, Sheinbaum added, without giving details. A Mexico City official said two of Garcia’s police escorts were killed in the incident and that the police chief sustained three bullet wounds. Separately, Ernestina Godoy, attorney general of Mexico City, said 12 people had been arrested. Speaking at a regular government news conference, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attributed the outbreak of violence to the work of local officials to establish order in the city. People react near the area where a shooting took place in Mexico City, Mexico, June 26, 2020.Residents said heavy gunfire rang out for several minutes during the attack in Lomas de Chapultepec, which is home to many wealthy residents and the location of ambassadorial residences. Police converged on the area in the west of the city, which is rarely troubled by the violence that in recent years has afflicted many parts of the country, particularly poorer ones. Television images showed dozens of police cordoning off a main road in the area. Mexican broadcaster Televisa said at least two police were injured in the incident.  
 
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The governor of a southern Italian region insisted on Friday that seasonal Bulgarian crop pickers who live in an apartment complex with dozens of COVID-19 cases must stay inside for 15 days, not even emerging for food.  
Wearing a mask to discourage virus spread, Campania Gov. Vincenzo De Luca told reporters that the national civil protection agency should deliver groceries to the estimated 700 occupants of the apartments in Mondragone, a seaside town about 50 kilometers (32 miles) northwest of Naples.
The complex must be kept in “rigorous isolation,” De Luca said. That means that for 15 days, “nobody leaves and nobody enters” the apartments, where some 50 cases have been confirmed.
The south has been spared the high numbers of coronavirus cases that have ravaged northern Italy.
Known for his particularly hard line on anti-contagion measures throughout the nationwide coronavirus outbreak this year, De Luca has vowed to lock down all of Mondragone, population 30,000, if the number of cases at the hot spot reach 100.  
“Have I been clear? I’m used to speaking clearly,” De Luca told RAI state TV.
The apartment complex was put under lockdown earlier in the week, and all of its residents were ordered to be tested for the virus, after a handful of cases surfaced.
The Campania region has requested police reinforcements to impose the quarantine on the complex. De Luca said the Interior Ministry had authorized an army contingent.
The apartment residents have balked at staying indoors in these hot, steamy summer days. Tensions flared on Thursday, with Italians in the streets jeering at the Bulgarian residents of the apartment complex.  
The Bulgarians are currently harvesting string beans and other vegetables at farms near Mondragone.
During the pandemic, Campania has registered some 4,660 COVID-19 cases and 431 deaths, a small fraction of the nationwide cases and deaths.
In Italy’s north, in the area of Bologna, another outbreak triggered concern by health authorities. Italian news reports said 64 workers at courier services, most of them with one company, have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days. So far, 370 people, including the delivery workers and their families, have been tested. Nearly all of the positive cases are without symptoms and only two have been hospitalized, Corriere della Sera daily reported. 
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