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Confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths have been soaring in Latin America, including Brazil and Mexico.  But the region faces another obstacle: lockdowns have already taken a massive toll on its very large informal economy as laborers, street vendors and domestic workers struggle to survive through the shutdown.  Megan Janetsky reports from Medellín, Colombia.Camera: Megan Janetsky  Produced by:  Barry Unger  
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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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When Rafaela Matos saw police helicopters over her favela and heard gunshots, she fell to her knees and asked God to protect her son, João Pedro. Then she called the boy to make sure he was OK.  
“Be calm,” João Pedro wrote back, explaining that he was at his aunt’s house and everything was fine, Rafaela told The Associated Press. Minutes after he sent the message, police burst in and shot the 14-year-old in the stomach with a high-caliber rifle at close range.  
João Pedro Matos Pinto was one of more than 600 people killed by police in the state of Rio de Janeiro in the first months of this year. That’s almost double the number of people killed by police over the same period in the entire U.S., which has 20 times Rio’s population. Like João Pedro, most of those killed in Rio were black or biracial and lived in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, or favelas.WATCH:  Which countries spend the most on policing?Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 3 MB480p | 4 MB540p | 5 MB720p | 11 MB1080p | 20 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioAs the Black Lives Matter movement brings hundreds of thousands to the streets around the world, demonstrators outraged by João Pedro’s death one month ago have been organizing the largest anti-police brutality demonstrations in years on the streets of Rio.
Still, the protests are nowhere near the size and public impact of other countries. To protesters, their struggle to gain momentum in the country where more than half the population is black or biracial, with a police violence problem that far overshadows other nations, is evidence of the depth of racism and complacence.
“They kill teenager after teenager in their homes every day. We’re here because we need to be,” 19-year-old civil engineering student João Gabriel Moreira said at a June 10 protest in Duque de Caxias, a poor city in the Rio metropolitan area. He said he had never protested anything before this year.
“Kill a young black man in a favela, it’s seen as normal — he must be a drug dealer,” Moreira said. “Racism has always been veiled in Brazil. That’s why so few of us are here. If Brazil had racial consciousness, this street would be filled.”
Rio de Janeiro police initially said they were pursuing a criminal in a joint operation by civil, military and federal police officers when they shot João Pedro on May 18. There was no sign of illegal activity at the house in the Salgueiro complex of favelas, according to Eduardo Benones, a federal prosecutor investigating the operation.
João Pedro’s father, Neilton Pinto, was serving up fish at a bayside kiosk when he heard the choppers. By the time he reached the scene, police had already taken the teen’s body away, he said, sitting beside Rafaela for an interview just before the one-month anniversary of the incident.
Police never took João Pedro to a hospital and his family began a frantic search. Rafaela, 36, received a glimmer of hope when she saw on her phone that her son’s WhatsApp was active.
“Hi … ,” she wrote. “Hi … Hi … Hi … Talk to me …”
No response came from whomever was using João Pedro’s phone. But a campaign swept across social media and his body was tracked down the next day, inside a police forensic institute.  
“Good people live in the favela, people with families, who plan on growing in this life,” Neilton, 40, said. “I’m sure if this were in wealthy areas, police wouldn’t act this way, breaking down the house of someone good.”  
Benones’ investigation seeks to hold the Brazilian state responsible for João Pedro’s death, alleging it occurred in the context of institutional racism. All depositions and eyewitness accounts Benones has reviewed indicate João Pedro and others present posed no threat to officers on the scene, he said.  
“Why didn’t police directors or whoever see that we’re in a pandemic, so obviously a place that’s already densely populated would be even more densely populated with kids? That’s predictable,” Benones said. “You can’t say it’s racism of that police officer, but a practice of police forces not taking care when dealing with the black population. And if something happens, it’s seen as collateral damage.”  
Rio police killed a record 1,814 people in 2019, according to official data — triple the number five years earlier. The 2020 death toll is on track for a repeat.  
Both President Jair Bolsonaro and Rio state Gov. Wilson Witzel won election in 2018 with campaigns that emphasized law and order, and both have said police should be able to kill criminals with almost no legal constraints.  
At a June 11 protest in Niteroi, another city in Rio’s metro area, Bruna Mozer told how her son Marcos gave up on school and fell in with drug traffickers in his favela. Even though he surrendered when police found him with a walkie-talkie in 2018, officers executed him, she said. Marcos would have been 18 this year.  
“Every day more mothers, victims of state violence, join our groups,” said Mozer.  
Rio’s civil police said in an e-mailed statement that it is investigating the circumstances surrounding João Pedro’s death and that three officers have been suspended. Rio’s military police didn’t respond to multiple requests seeking comment.  
Brazil’s Supreme Court on June 5 banned police operations in favelas until the coronavirus pandemic ends, in response to outrage over João Pedro’s death.  
His life had been divided between home, school, church and the mall, his father said. He got good grades and wanted to study law. He told his dad he would make him proud.
When Neilton lost his job, João Pedro entered public school, only to find it lacking teachers and classes. Rafaela got him into the private school where she teaches.  
His parents said they never talked to João Pedro about racism. Nor did they ever participate in protests, but they joined one on June 7. Rafaela said hearing João Pedro’s name become a rallying cry has lightened their emotional load a bit.  
“I never participated in events against racism or policing, never got involved with those things. Today we’re living something we didn’t expect, something that arrives and knocks on the door,” Rafaela said. “With this repercussion, we saw João Pedro wasn’t the first, and he also wasn’t the last.” 
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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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The president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, is said to be in good condition after being admitted to a military hospital for pneumonia on Wednesday, a day after revealing he and his wife had tested positive for COVID-19. A health agency spokesman said Wednesday that Hernández was receiving intravenous medicine. Hernandez said late Tuesday, his wife had not showing any symptoms. The president said he began feeling discomfort over weekend. The health agency spokesman said two presidential aides also tested positive for the coronavirus, but their status was not immediately clear. President Hernandez’s health challenge comes as some hospitals in Honduras are being strained by the rise in coronavirus cases, which the country confirmed has reached 10,000 infections and 330 deaths. The World Health Organization considers Latin America the new epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 1.5 million coronavirus cases and more than 70,000 deaths linked to the disease. 
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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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Colombian President Ivan Duque said he will use the full force of the military to bring to justice the drug gang that killed at least six soldiers and wounded eight of them during an ambush, near the country’s jungle region.Authorities said Wednesday’s attack on the army unit occurred as soldiers were conducting an offensive against drug trafficking in a rural area known as San Juan de Lozada, Caqueta.Duque called the fallen soldiers “heroes.”Separately, Duque on Wednesday hailed a new United Nations report that showed a 9 percent decrease in the illegal coca leaf plantations in Colombia in 2019 from the previous year.Still, Colombia remains the world’s largest cocaine producer. 
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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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China’s capital imposed new coronavirus restrictions Wednesday to try to control a new outbreak, while Brazil reported a record daily increase in confirmed cases and the number of deaths in the United States surpassed those the country suffered in World War One.  Among the steps taken in Beijing were canceling dozens of domestic flights, requiring stricter social distancing efforts and making those entering some residential areas undergo temperature checks and registration.  There have been at least 137 new cases in Beijing since late last week linked to a wholesale food center.    Brazilian health officials reported Tuesday 34,918 new confirmed cases during a 24-hour period.  The country now has more than 900,000 total cases, trailing only the United States.  Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has dismissed the severity of the virus while urging businesses to reopen.  His Chief of Staff Walter Braga Netto said Tuesday, “There is a crisis, we sympathize with bereaved families, but it is managed.”  “Brazil has 23% of all cases and 21% of all deaths in our region, and we are not seeing transmission slowing down,” Pan American Health Organization Director Carissa Etienne said in a briefing Tuesday.  “That is, the cases in almost all countries in Latin America, and a few in the Caribbean, are rising”  Peru has also been hit hard by the coronavirus, reporting Tuesday its death toll had surpassed 7,000 people.  And in Honduras, President Juan Orlando Hernandez announced late Tuesday that he has been diagnosed with COVID-19.Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez Alvarado addresses the 74th session of the U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 25, 2019.The United States has more than 2.1 million confirmed cases and about 117,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics.  New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Wednesday she assigned a top military leader to oversee “all quarantine and managed isolation facilities” after two citizens who arrived from Britain to visit a sick relative were allowed to leave quarantine without being tested, and later tested positive.  The development came more than three weeks after the country’s previous positive test, and the prime minister said she could not allow New Zealand to squander the gains it has made in stopping the spread of the virus.  “This case represents an unacceptable failure of the system,” Ardern told reporters.  “It should never have happened, and it cannot be repeated.”    As work continues in numerous labs around the world toward the creation of a coronavirus vaccine, the World Health Organization on Tuesday welcomed initial clinical results that showed the drug dexamethasone can help treat those who are critically ill with COVID-19.    A University of Oxford team gave the drug to more than 2,000 critically ill COVID-19 patients, and reported that among those who were so sick they needed a ventilator to breath the drug reduced deaths by 35 percent.    Patients who needed less help, only oxygen to help them breathe better, the drug reduced deaths by about 20 percent.  The researchers reported no benefit from the drug for patients who were mildly sick. Spain, which at 27,000 has the sixth most COVID-19 deaths in the world, will honor its victims with a state ceremony on July 16.  Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced the plan to lawmakers Wednesday, saying officials European Union and World Health Organization would attend. 
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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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Venezuela’s Supreme Court has removed the leadership of two political parties opposed to Socialist President Nicolas Maduro and replaced them with politicians reportedly tied to Maduro months ahead of legislative elections. The court installed lawmaker Jose Brito as head of the Justice First party on Tuesday, a day after expelling the leadership of the Democratic Action party and replacing it with long-time party activist Bernabe Gutierrez.  The Democratic Action party issued a statement Tuesday that it had expelled Gutierrez for conspiring “with different factions   of the Nicolas Maduro regime.” Brito was expelled from Justice First back in December following accusations that he was involved in an influence peddling scandal.   The action by the Supreme Court, widely believed by many to be friendly to President Maduro, follows an earlier decision to name members of the National Electoral Council, ignoring a constitutional mandate that places that responsibility with the National Assembly. Opposition leader Juan Guaido, who heads the National Assembly, said last Saturday it would not recognize the “false” electoral authority.   Maduro has overseen a six-year economic crisis in Venezuela. More than 50 countries, including the United States, have indicated their support for opposition leader Guaido as the country’s rightful leader after a disputed election in 2018, but Maduro maintains control of Venezuela’s military.  The elections will be held later this year, but no date has been set.   
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Brazil reported nearly 35,000 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday the same day a top government official declared the outbreak there was under control.  The 34,918 total for Tuesday is the highest daily number reported so far in the South American country. Brazil, the world’s No. 2 coronavirus hotspot after the United States, is fast approaching 1 million cases. Experts say the true number is likely higher due to patchy testing. Brazil also registered 1,282 COVID-19 deaths since its last update on Monday, the Health Ministry said, bringing confirmed fatalities in the country to 45,241. Brazil trails only the United States for the most cases overall. As of Tuesday, more than 2 millions Americans have been infected by the virus, and more than 116, 125 have died, according to Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, wearing a face mask amid the new coronavirus pandemic, stands amid supporters taking pictures with cell phones as he leaves his official residence of Alvorada palace in Brasilia, May 25, 2020.Doctors at Britain’s Imperial College London say they will start testing a coronavirus vaccine this week. Three hundred healthy people will be given shots. The vaccine uses synthetic parts of a genetic code based on the coronavirus. The body’s own cells will then make copies of a protein that scientists hope will trigger an immune response. French President Emmanuel Macron Tuesday toured a Sanofi laboratory – the company that caused an uproar in France last month after it said it would put the United States first in line for its COVID-19 vaccine because of the money the U.S. invested in vaccine research.  Sanofi later backed down from that statement and promised to make the vaccine available to everyone when it’s ready. Macron announced the government would invest 200 million euros, or more than $225 million, to help French laboratories develop a vaccine so France is less dependent on foreign companies for vaccines and other medicines. Macron said coronavirus vaccines should be thought of as a “common good” for humanity and not dependent on who can pay. Meanwhile, France is about to reopen the one symbol that says “This is Paris” above all others – the Eiffel Tower. Tickets to the tower go on sale Thursday and officials expect to reopen to tourists next week. The tower has been closed to visitors since March, but the top of the tower will still be off-limits for now. The elevators will remain out of service and visitors will be allowed to climb the stairs only as high as the second floor.  The director of the tower says he hopes the entire structure can be reopened by August.  
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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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The World Food Program is appealing for international solidarity — and funding — to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America from also becoming a hunger pandemic.     Confirmed coronavirus infections have risen to around 1.6 million in Latin America, turning the region into the new epicenter of the pandemic.  The WFP said Latin American countries are suffering from both a health crisis and a food crisis. A WFP food assessment in Latin America and the Caribbean last year estimated that eleven million people in the region would be food insecure in 2020.  Because of COVID-19, WFP now projects that number will rise to 14 million people who will be threatened with severe food shortages this year. United Nations World Food Program Director for Latin American and the Caribbean, Miguel Barreto, answers questions during a press conference in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on Aug. 21, 2015.WFP regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Miguel Barreto, said climate shocks, insecurity and displacement, as well as mass unemployment due to COVID-19 lockdown measures make the region extremely vulnerable.   “So. now with COVID-19, the situation is, of course, deteriorating further,” Barreto said. “This is a time for, of course, solidarity and to come together and the time is really now.  We need to act quickly to prevent this crisis to become what my director called a hunger pandemic.Barreto said international financial institutions, governments, UN and non-governmental organizations must join forces to protect the most vulnerable populations from a potentially devastating fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. He cites Haiti, the so-called Dry Corridor in Central America, and the migrant situation in South America as the region’s three hotspots.  He tells VOA that WFP needs $400 million to respond to these emergencies, but understands it faces stiff competition from other financial requests worldwide.  “For instance, in Latin America is that we do not have conflicts,” Barreto said.  “So, these emergencies are not visible.  But what we are looking now is that the impact of the COVID beyond the health area is now surpassing the capacity of the government to respond to other situations like food insecurities.”     Haiti currently has some 700,000 people who are facing food shortages.  WFP expects that number to jump to 1.6 million in the coming months.   Extreme weather conditions have afflicted 2.2 million people in the Dry Corridor of Central America.  WFP reports many people in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua have lost their crops due to drought.  Now, they have to contend with torrential rains and flooding. The U.N. food agency reports many migrants in South America affected by COVID-19 lockdown measures are unprotected by government social protection programs.  It says thousands of migrants who fled economic hardship in Venezuela and went to Colombia are returning home because they cannot find work and are unable to feed themselves. 
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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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