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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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During Europe’s migrant crisis of 2015, European Union member states promised to accept 160,000 asylum seekers in two years, of which the Spanish government pledged to receive nearly 18,000.  Five years later, Spain has given asylum to only two thousand people — held back in part by opposition from some Spaniards who say the kingdom already has too many migrants — many of them from Africa. Alfonso Beato filed this report from Barcelona, narrated by Jonathan Spier.Camera: Alfonso BeatoProduced by: Jon Spier 
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Dozens of Mexico City police officers demanding better working conditions held a protest march, where they called on the city’s mayor stop criminalizing their work. Members of the city’s prosecutor’s office joined the demonstration in front of city hall Monday. Some of the police accuse Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum of standing up more for the people who promote uprisings and violence than she does the police.  Police officer and demonstrator Jose Alberto Peñaloza Saturnino said, officers feel powerless not being able to stop them. Police also are calling for the release of officers involved in the beating of a young girl during a march in Mexico City. The mayor said no formal complaint has been made to the government and that she will back police not linked to corruption or abuse. 
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The ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests that have erupted across the world in recent weeks have reinvigorated demands in Europe for statues of slave traders and colonial figures to be removed. A memorial to Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University is the focal point of protests in Britain. As VOA’s Henry Ridgwell reports from London, racial tensions are resurfacing as counter-protestors also take to the streets.Camera: Henry Ridgwell
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Less than a week after France banned police chokeholds, the government responded to growing officer discontent by announcing it would test stun guns for wider use, adding to the ranks of European law enforcement agencies that have recently adopted the weapons that many in the U.S. equate with excess police violence.
For Johny Louise, it felt as though the 22 seconds of Taser pulses that led to his son’s death counted for nothing.  
“They need more death so that one day they understand, but it will be more pointless deaths and sufferings for families,” Louise said.  
Gendarmes in Orléans responding to a drunken brawl tried to arrest his son, Loïc. One of the officers, Noham Cardoso, fired his Taser for the first time, hitting Loïc Louise in the chest with the twin darts and jolting him for a full 17 seconds, rather than the usual 5-second cycle, then hitting him again less than a minute later with another 5 seconds, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press. Loïc Louis, who was black, passed out and was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
Cardoso was charged last year with involuntary homicide in the Nov. 3, 2013, death. He has said Loïc Louise was aggressive and appeared ready to attack.
The officer’s lawyer, Ludovic de Villèle, can’t fathom why France would replace an immobilization technique with a weapon. He said it would make more sense to invent another technique to replace the banned chokehold.  
“It’s a bad sign to say, ‘You can’t strangle, but here are Tasers for you to use,'” de Villèle said.  
But Tasers, or other stun guns, are increasingly the weapon of choice for European law enforcement as they have been for years in the United States. In Atlanta, just hours after the French announcement on Friday, a seemingly routine sobriety check outside a Wendy’s restaurant ended in gunshots after Rayshard Brooks grabbed a Taser from officers and ran.  
The killing of the 27-year-old black man in an encounter with two white officers late Friday rekindled fiery protests in Atlanta and prompted the police chief’s resignation. One of the officers was fired.  
Axon, the company that makes Tasers, has made a big push outside the United States in recent years and agencies in the Netherlands and Italy recently expanded use of stun guns, following the path of Britain, where use has increased steadily since they were introduced in 2003.
Stun guns are in limited but increasing use in France already. The number of discharges increased from 1,400 in 2017 to 2,349 in 2019. According to the French police oversight agency, stun guns killed one person last year and three suffered severe injuries. After France said it would abandon the chokehold last week, police across the country staged scattered protests, saying they felt abandoned by the government.  
Police in England and Wales discharged Tasers 2,700 times over the 12 months ending in March 2019, according to government statistics, which also showed black people were more likely than white ones to have stun guns used on them.
Britain’s Independent Office for Police Conduct said last month that there were growing concerns “about its disproportionate use against black men and those with mental health issues.”
British rapper Wretch 32 posted video last week of his 62-year-old father being hit by a Taser in his London home during a police raid in April. The Metropolitan Police force said a review found no indication of misconduct, but London Mayor Sadiq Khan called for an urgent investigation by the police watchdog.
According to Amnesty International, at least 18 people in Britain have died after a stun gun was discharged on them by police, but in many cases it was not determined that the weapon caused the death. The human rights group has said at least 500 people died after being hit by stun guns between 2001 and 2012 in the United States.
Italy’s government approved using Tasers in January after a two-year trial and opened a bidding process to purchase nearly 4,500 stun guns to be divided among various law enforcement agencies. Police chief Franco Gabrielli said in March that the next phase would involve a period of training and “operational experimentation” in a half-dozen cities.
“The administration is certainly attentive to guaranteeing that the security of our personnel is first, obviously without causing damage to the people who might find themselves on the other side,” Gabrielli told reporters outside a Genoa hospital where he had gone to visit two police officers who were recovering after being injured in a shootout.
The Netherlands began issuing stun guns to police in 2017 and is training 17,000 of the force’s 40,000 officers. But far fewer of the weapons are on order and they will not be part of an officer’s standard equipment.
There are about 15,000 stun guns in France, which has a total police and gendarme force of around 240,000. In the United States, by contrast, more than three-quarters of officers carry the weapons as standard issue, according to William Terrill, a professor of criminal justice at Arizona State University. Axon says it has standing relationships with 95% of American law enforcement agencies.
Terrill said training must come before widespread distribution of Tasers, which are sold as a way to protect officers from aggressive suspects while avoiding deadly force.
“It’s almost asking a police department to make an unfair choice in many respects,” he said. “By articulating it that way, it’s almost saying I value my officers’ safety more than the community’s safety.”
For Loïc Louise’s family, from the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, it was a weapon used far too easily on someone with dark skin.
His father does not believe all gendarmes are racist but “some use their uniform to do whatever they please,” said Johny Louise. “And my son paid for it.” 
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Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday ordered two Czech diplomats to leave the country in a quid pro quo response to Prague’s expulsion of Russian diplomats amid tensions rooted in differences over history.The ministry said it summoned the Czech ambassador Monday to announce the move, saying the two diplomats must leave Russia by Wednesday.Earlier this month, the Czech government ordered two Russian diplomats to leave the country. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the nation’s spy agency has discovered that one of them had spread false information about a Russian assassin arriving to allegedly target Czech politicians.The alleged assassination plot surfaced in April when a magazine reported that Czech intelligence services suspected that a Russian who arrived in Prague on a diplomatic passport was sent to poison Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib and Prague 6 district mayor Ondrej Kolar with a potent toxin.  Kolar, Hrib and the mayor of Prague’s Reporyje district, Pavel Novotny, all consequently received police protection.Moscow has dismissed the allegation as baseless. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ridiculed the claims published in the magazine, saying the notion that Czech authorities spotted a Russian man equipped with ricin and let him through didn’t make sense.The three politicians had been involved in actions that previously angered Russia.  In February, a Prague square in front of the Russian Embassy was renamed after slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, with Hrib unveiling the new nameplate.  In April, Kolar’s district removed a statue of Soviet World War II commander Ivan Konev, whose armies completed the liberation of Prague from Nazi occupation. The statue’s removal caused outrage in Russia, which has angrily lashed out at any attempts to diminish the nation’s decisive role in defeating the Nazis.Novotny provoked Moscow’s ire with plans to build a monument to the soldiers of Gen. Andrei Vlasov’s army. Over 300 of them died when they helped the Czech uprising against Nazi rule and contributed to Prague’s liberation. Their role is controversial for Russia, however, because they previously fought against the Red Army alongside Nazi troops. 
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Paris is rediscovering its joie de vivre, as cafes and restaurants reopen for the first time since the fast-spreading coronavirus forced them to close their doors on March 14. Many customers seemed to shrug off masks and social distancing as they streamed back to their neighborhood bistros for a morning espresso or a three-course lunch Monday, free to resume their lifestyles by a surprise announcement from the French president himself. “We will rediscover … the art of living, our taste for freedom,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address to the nation Sunday night, citing progress in fighting the virus. “We will rediscover France.” After two months of being totally shut down as part of France’s strict virus lockdown measures, restaurants outside the Paris region opened earlier this month. Since June 2, Paris cafes have been allowed to serve people outside but not open their doors. Before Macron’s speech, the full reopening wasn’t expected until later this month. People have lunch at the restaurant Les Ambassades in Paris, on June 15, 2020, as cafes and restaurants are allowed to serve customers inside, as well as on terraces.At the Café Des Anges in the heart of the Bastille neighborhood of Paris, customers seemed happy to reconnect and talked about the need to remain careful — yet almost no one wore a mask. France has the world’s fifth-highest recorded toll from the virus, at 29,410 dead. “It’s like a renaissance, but with caution,” said customer Marie-Elisabeth Vilaine. The reopening Monday caught many restaurant owners off guard — just like the abrupt closure three months ago, when the prime minister announced at 8 p.m. on a Saturday that all the country’s restaurants had to shut down by midnight.  Paris seemed especially depressing as restaurants, the lifeblood of the city, stood shuttered, chairs stacked against the windows, menus gathering dust. Waiters work at the terrace of a cafe in Paris, on June 15, 2020, one day after French president announced the reopening of dining rooms of Parisian cafes and restaurants, starting today.After three months of losses, some restaurateurs fear it will take a long time for business to come back. Some French restaurants are experimenting with plastic barriers and air-filtration systems to soothe fears. The risk of a second wave of infections remains real, notably after new virus clusters in some countries and U.S. states were traced back to reopened restaurants or other sites. Cafe des Anges manager Virgile Grunberg — who makes his staff wear masks — said he’s lost hundreds of thousands of euros because of the closure, but has hope for a recovery because he has a loyal clientele. “People have missed this, because they come in every morning before work, have a little coffee and a discussion,” he told The Associated Press. “It’s part of Paris.” But he acknowledged that “it’s very hard to get people who are sitting at the bar to respect social distancing … if they want to be together, it’s going to be hard to prevent them from doing so.”  One essential ingredient is still absent from French streets: tourists. Wervicq-Sud Mayor David Heiremans (France) (L), French State Secretary Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne (2L), and Wervik Mayor Youro Casier (Belgium) (C) are pictured during the symbolic reopening of the border between Belgium and France, on June 15, 2020.France threw open its borders to other European countries Monday, as did several of its neighbors, in hopes of luring some visitors back. But tourists from the U.S., Asia and other continents won’t be allowed back until at least July 1, and French authorities could re-impose restrictions in the case of new infections.  British tourists, so close just across the Channel, face a 14-day quarantine when they enter France now. Paris cafe customer Thierry Lanternier welcomed the further easing of virus rules, saying, “Let’s just hope it lasts.”   
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Asian markets plummeted Monday due to growing fears that a second wave of coronavirus cases will prompt a new round of government lockdowns. Tokyo’s Nikkei index lost 3.4% at its closing bell, with both the Hang Seng in Hong Kong and Sydney’s S&P/ASX indices both down 2.1% in late afternoon trading.   Elsewhere in Asia, Seoul’s KOSPI index had lost a staggering 4.7%, while the Sensex in Mumbai was down 2.1% and Taiwan’s TSEC index was down 1%.   European markets are also getting off on the wrong foot Monday.  London’s FTSE index is off 2%, while both the CAC-40 in Paris and the DAX index in Frankfurt are trending  down 2.5%. Oil markets are also taking a beating Monday, with U.S. crude selling at $34.71 per barrel, down 4.2%, and Brent crude, the international benchmark, down $37.53 per barrel, down 3.1%. In stock futures trading, the Dow Jones plunged 800 points, or 3.1%, the S&P 500 was down 2.7%, and the Nasdaq is 2.2% lower.   After sustaining historic losses as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold and brought the global economy to a virtual standstill earlier this year, global markets have rallied since March as governments imposed emergency stimulus measures and steadily reopened their economies as the spread of the virus appeared to subside. 
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The statue of Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill in London’s Parliament Square is now boarded up.  In the Dorset town of Poole on England’s southern coast police are mounting a 24-hour guard on a statue commemorating Robert Baden Powell, the founder of the Scouts movement and briefly an admirer Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf, once describing it as a “wonderful book.” In east London last week, just days before ugly clashes erupted in the British capital between far right activists and supporters of Black Lives Matters, workmen hastily removed a statue memorializing Robert Milligan, an eighteenth-century merchant, who on his death owned 526 slaves laboring on sugar plantations in Jamaica. Anti-racist campaigners in Britain have a burgeoning hit list of statues they want removed, triggering a new front in a culture war that risks future violent street tussles.  Most Britons pay little heed when rushing past monuments lionizing some of the great men of Britain’s past — from national leaders like Churchill to grand merchants and city fathers like Milligan.  William Shakespeare, the country’s great playwright and poet, once described public statuary as “unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.” He bragged that his words would outlast statues of great men, mocking, “Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme.” He may be right.  Britain’s public statues — many erected at the height of the British empire between 1830 to 1914 — have become a tumultuous flashpoint, which on Saturday spilled violently on to the streets of London in running skirmishes between bottle-throwing far right agitators, baton-wielding police and Black Lives Matters protesters, all under the watchful eye of Admiral Horatio Nelson from atop his column in Trafalgar Square.  Nelson, the preeminent British admiral during the Napoleonic era, himself once wrote in defense of the Jamaican slave trade. Anger at the past Far right activists said they had come to protect statues in the capital from being toppled — as happened during anti-racist protests earlier this month to a monument in Bristol commemorating Edward Colston. Jubilant protesters dragged Colston’s bronze statue from its plinth and chucked it in the harbor, in scenes more reminiscent of the 2003 toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or the removal of monuments to Lenin and Stalin witnessed at the end of the Soviet era.   In a dramatic gesture mirroring what happened to Floyd, one protester placed his knee on Colston’s bronze throat before the statute was rolled to the harbor wall.FILE – The statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston falls into the water after protesters pulled it down during a protest against racial inequality, in Bristol, Britain, June 7, 2020.A 17th century merchant and great municipal benefactor, who founded schools and alms-houses in Bristol, Colston’s wealth was derived from the transatlantic slave trade. His trading company is estimated to have transported around 84,000 African men, women and children, with 19,000 dying on the ships transporting them from the coast of Africa to the plantations of the Caribbean and the Americas.For supporters of Black Lives Matters, galvanized by protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd, a black man who was suffocated by a white policeman in Minneapolis in Minnesota on May 25, the statues are terrible reminders of a dark imperial past Britain refuses to fully acknowledge.  Until it does, they say, racial inequality and prejudice will persist.  The statues to men like Colston and Milligan are hurtful, they say, and offensive to the descendants of slaves in the city of Bristol. “The crowd who saw to it that Colston fell were of all races, but some were the descendants of the enslaved black and brown Bristolians whose ancestors were chained to the decks of Colston’s ships,” historian David Olusoga wrote in the Guardian. He added: “Whatever is said over the next few days, this was not an attack on history. This is history. It is one of those rare historic moments whose arrival means things can never go back to how they were.” For others, a matter of pride For self-declared patriots, the statues representing the past should be celebrated — and defended.  Paul Golding, leader of Britain First, a far-right group, told Saturday the ranks of his supporters, some drawn from from the fan clubs of professional soccer teams: “I’m here today because for two consecutive weekends our monuments and memorials have been trashed by left-wing thugs. We’re here today with one pure mission: to defend our memorials.”  Hundreds of people also turned out in other British cities, including Glasgow, Belfast and Newcastle, claiming to safeguard historic statues and war memorials from harm. Dennis Smith, who turned out to protect statues, told reporters, “If it wasn’t for people like Winston Churchill, we wouldn’t be here today speaking English. We would be speaking German and there wouldn’t be any black people around either.”  A week ago Churchill’s monument in Parliament Square was vandalized with a protester daubing on it that Britain’s wartime leader “was a racist.”Police officers stand in front of the Winston Churchill statue during a rally in Parliament Square in London, Tuesday, June 9, 2020. The rally is to commemorate George Floyd whose private funeral takes place in the US on Tuesday.Historical revisionism British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted Friday that defacing the statue was “absurd and shameful,” adding that Churchill “was a hero, and he fully deserves his memorial.” He added: “We cannot now try to edit or censor our past. We cannot pretend to have a different history. The statues in our cities and towns were put up by previous generations.”  He noted: “They had different perspectives, different understandings of right and wrong. But those statues teach us about our past, with all its faults.” Johnson and his ministers are now talking about introducing legislation that would make it a criminal offense to desecrate historic and war memorials with a maximum ten-year prison sentence. That might help to safeguard the monuments, but it is unlikely to silence the debate about some of them, which is featuring not just activists but journalists, politicians, historians, and Oxford and Cambridge colleges, too, in heated exchanges about their future and how best to teach history. “Pulling down statues is nothing new, nor is the changing of street names and even those of cities and countries,” says historian James Holland. Writing for Sky News, he said: “It has happened time and again through history. Most of us in the West cheered when the swastikas were blown up in 1945, or when the statues of Lenin and Stalin were pulled down, or even that of Saddam Hussein.” The comparison, though, with Nazi and Communist leaders incurs the wrath of others. They acknowledge there are some clear-cut cases like the slave-traders Colston and Millington, which should have been consigned long ago to museums, but statue-defenders say the criticism of other historical figures lacks nuance and that arguments for the removal of their statues risks editing and censoring the past.  On Saturday Chris Patten, the chancellor of the University of Oxford, defended the statue of Cecil Rhodes on the facade of Oriel College, telling students who are campaigning for its removal they should be prepared to embrace freedom of thought or “think about being educated elsewhere.”  He said that they are simplifying the facts about Rhodes. A British mining magnate and politician in southern Africa in the late nineteenth century, Rhodes was an ardent advocate of British imperialism, describing the Anglo-Saxon race as “the first race in the world.” His defenders point out that he created Oxford’s famous Rhodes Scholarships, requiring that “no student shall be qualified or disqualified for election to a Scholarship on grounds of his race.” The focus on Rhodes is unfortunate, Patten said, noting that Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president after the end of apartheid, endorsed the Rhodes scholarships. “There is something facile and narcissistic about parading your moral superiority over someone who died more than a century ago simply because he upheld the values of his own age, according to newspaper columnist Daniel Hannan, who concedes Rhodes was not a saint.  Winston Churchill’s grandson, Nicholas Soames, says the vandalism of his grandfather’s statue was “sad to see.” He acknowledges Churchill’s views of black people, Indians and women’s rights are “unpalatable to many people nowadays,” but he notes his grandfather came of age in a “different era” and “at the end of the day, Churchill saved this country. He was one of the greatest leaders this country has ever seen. He was a great defender of liberty and democracy.”  His legacy should be assessed “as a whole,” he says. For some who are sympathetic to the call for statue removals, there is danger in moving too fast and of failing to appreciate that most historical figures were flawed personalities.  Times columnist Janice Turner says previous generations did not think too hard about the sources of Britain’s historical mercantile wealth. “Today’s young are citizens of a diverse Britain, more likely to have a friend of another race. For white teenagers now, descendants of slaves sit next to them in class, score for their football team,” she says.  But she warned that while “the youthful fire of demonstrators can achieve real change” they should “pause for reflection before the far right exploit it.” A culture war, she fears, “threatens to become a street battle. Which is what a nihilist minority on each side want.” 
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Monday sees more reopenings in France, Britain, Greece and other locations, while China is reimposing some coronavirus restrictions after dozens of new cases in Beijing. Restaurant owners in Paris are able join those in the rest of the country by opening their doors for patrons to eat inside.  Travelers from other European countries can also travel to France again as countries open their borders to travelers from other parts of the continent. “We must relaunch our economy,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. In Britain, non-essential shops are opening again Monday, as are places of worship for individual prayer, and recreation sites such as drive-in movie theaters and zoos.  People will still need to observe social distancing rules and the government is advising the use of facemasks when people are inside. On Britain’s public transit, Monday brought new orders for mandatory face coverings. Greece opened the international airport in is second largest city, Thessaloniki, to EU travelers, and the country’s museums reopened after a three-month shutdown.People visit the Pnyx Hill in Athens overlooking the ancient Acropolis on May 29, 2020 as Greece eases lockdown measures taken to curb the spread of the COVID-19 (the novel coronavirus).China reported 49 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, the majority linked to a wholesale market in Beijing, prompting authorities to reimpose some social isolation restrictions and suspend plans to restart some classes. Many areas around the world have struggled with the decision about when and how quickly to relax measures put in place to slow the spread of the virus that has infected 7.9 million people worldwide and killed at least 433,000. The governor of New York state, the hardest-hit area of the United States, expressed his concerns Sunday about complaints local authorities and businesses are not properly enforcing restrictions, leading to large gatherings with poor social distancing and few people wearing masks. “If you have large gatherings of people who are not socially distanced, who are not wearing masks, you will have an increased spread in the virus,” Cuomo said.  “It may not come for a period of time, but it will come. And once it comes, it’s too late. Now you’re back up in a spike situation and it’s going to take you weeks of extraordinary effort to bring it down.” Turkey’s health minister also expressed concerns about his country’s efforts, saying Turkey is “moving away from the target” with more than 1,500 new confirmed cases in one day.  It was the highest such figure for Turkey since June 3. 
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During the coming week, the U.N. Human Rights Council will be faced with many important issues left hanging when its 43rd session was suspended in March because of COVID-19.  The meeting, which opens Monday, will employ a so-called hybrid approach, with a mix of both real and virtual presentations.To ensure the safety of participants during this time of coronavirus, U.N. officials say social distancing measures will be strictly enforced.  Delegations will have a reduced number of representatives attending the session and hundreds of side events by nongovernmental organizations will not take place on U.N. premises.Presentation of reports and interactive dialogues on human rights issues will involve experts who are either physically present or speaking by video conference.  Countries that will come under review include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Ukraine, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Central African Republic.One of the highlights of the weeklong meeting will be an urgent debate on institutionalized racism in the United States underlined by the killing of African American George Floyd while in police custody.Geneva director of Human Rights Watch John Fisher calls this a moment of reckoning for the United States.  He said the event will likely be used by some countries to advance their own agendas.“We are also very concerned that China is seeking to exploit this moment of global chaos and the disarray within the U.S. to crack down on rights and freedoms in Hong Kong … And, we are calling upon states to take this moment to bring more attention to Hong Kong, as I mentioned.  We feel this is a time when China will be watching the international response, and, if that response is muted, will feel emboldened to go even further down the track,” he said.A year ago, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callemard, presented her report on the killing of Saudi columnist for the Washington Post Jamal Khashoggi, which she claimed was by agents of the Saudi government.  While this issue is not formally on the council agenda, Fisher believes it should be given renewed attention.“In addition to, of course the murder of Khashoggi, while a number of women human rights defenders have been released from prison, a number remain.  There are still allegations of torture.  They still face criminal charges …There continues to be use of the death penalty, flogging, a crackdown on dissent, new waves of arrests,” he said. At the end of the week, the council will take action on decisions and the adoption of more than 40 resolutions.  They include recommendations on improving human rights in countries such as Libya, Iran, Nicaragua, South Sudan, and Myanmar. 
  
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After more than a year of thinly-veiled threats to start pulling U.S. troops out of Germany unless Berlin increases its defense spending, President Donald Trump appears to be proceeding with a hardball approach, planning to cut the U.S. military contingent by more than 25%.About 34,500 American troops are stationed in Germany — 50,000 including civilian Department of Defense employees — and the plan Trump reportedly signed off on last week envisions reducing active-duty personnel to 25,000 by September, with further cuts possible.But as details of the still-unannounced plan trickle out, there’s growing concerns it will do more to harm the U.S.’s own global military readiness and the NATO alliance than punish Germany.The decision was not discussed with Germany or other NATO members, and Congress was not officially informed — prompting a letter from 22 Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee urging a rethink.“The threats posed by Russia have not lessened, and we believe that signs of a weakened U.S. commitment to NATO will encourage further Russian aggression and opportunism,” Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas wrote in a letter to Trump with his colleagues. Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, slammed Trump’s move as “another favor” to Russian President Vladimir Putin.But Richard Grenell, who resigned as U.S. ambassador to Germany two weeks ago, told Germany’s Bild newspaper that “nobody should be surprised that Donald Trump is withdrawing troops.”Grenell, who declined to comment for this article, said he and others had been pushing for Germany to increase its defense spending and had talked about troop withdrawals since last summer.“Donald Trump was very clear we want to bring troops home,” he said, adding: “there’s still going to be 25,000 American troops in Germany.”The suggestion that removing troops will punish Germany, however, overlooks the fact that American troops are no longer primarily there for the country’s defense, said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who commanded U.S. Army Europe from 2014 until 2017.Gone are the days when hundreds of thousands of American troops were ready to fight in the streets of Berlin or rush into the strategic Fulda Gap, through which Soviet armor was poised to push into West Germany during the Cold War.“The troops and capabilities that the U.S. has deployed in Europe are not there to specifically defend Germany, they are part of our contribution to overall collective stability and security in Europe,” said Hodges, now a strategic expert with the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington-based institute.American facilities include Ramstein Air Base, a critical hub for operations in the Mideast and Africa and headquarters to the U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Africa; the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, which has saved the lives of countless Americans wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan; and the Stuttgart headquarters of both the U.S. European Command and the U.S. Africa Command. There’s also the Wiesbaden headquarters of U.S. Army Europe, the Spangdahlem F-16 fighter base and the Grafenwoehr Training Area, NATO’s largest training facility in Europe.Hodges said the facilities are a critical part of America’s global military footprint.“What’s lost in all this is the benefit to the United States of having forward deployed capabilities that we can use not only for deterrence … but for employment elsewhere,” he said. “The base in Ramstein is not there for the U.S. to defend Europe. It’s there as a forward base for us to be able to fly into Africa, the Middle East.”Trump indicated last summer that he was thinking of moving some troops from Germany to Poland, telling Poland’s President Andrzej Duda during an Oval Office meeting: “Germany is not living up to what they’re supposed to be doing with respect to NATO, and Poland is.”Duda has been trying to woo more American forces, even suggesting Poland would contribute over $2 billion to create a permanent U.S. base — which he said could be named “Fort Trump.” In the current plan, at least some Germany-based troops are expected to be shifted to Poland.Following Trump’s comments last June, U.S. Ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher tweeted Aug. 8 that “Poland meets its 2% of GDP spending obligation towards NATO. Germany does not. We would welcome American troops in Germany to come to Poland.”Grenell then tweeted: “it is offensive to assume that the U.S. taxpayers will continue to pay for more than 50,000 Americans in #Germany, but the Germans get to spend their surplus on #domestic programs.”In response, Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated Germany’s commitment to “work toward” the 2% NATO defense spending benchmark — a goal it hopes to meet in 2031.“There is a lot invested here, and I think that we, in very friendly talks, will naturally always continue to heartily welcome these American soldiers, and there are also good reasons for them to be stationed here,” she said.NATO members agreed at a 2014 summit to “aim to move toward” spending 2% of GDP on defense. Since then, the year Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, overall NATO defense spending has grown annually.Since his election in 2016, Trump has pushed for the 2% as a hard target, and repeatedly singled out Germany as a major offender, though many others are also below the goal.NATO figures put Germany’s estimated defense spending for 2019 at 1.4%, and Poland’s at 2%. In dollar terms, however, Germany committed nearly $54 billion last year — NATO’s third-largest budget after the U.S. and Britain — while Poland spent slightly less than $12 billion.Germany does need to spend more, Hodges said, but U.S. and NATO interests would be better served if Washington pushed Berlin to spend on broader military needs, like transportation infrastructure, cyber protection and air defense, that would be easier for Merkel’s government to justify to a largely pacifist population.“We don’t need more German tanks, we need more German trains,” he said. “Why not be a little bit more strategic and think about what the alliance really needs from Germany?” 
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Ports remain closed in Italy, but the end of lockdown measures, combined with favorable weather conditions, have authorities concerned that a new wave of immigrant arrivals is imminent. Intelligence sources have said more than 20,000 migrants are ready to depart from North Africa.Arrivals of migrants on Italian shores never really stopped during the months of lockdown imposed because of the coronavirus, but ports were closed as Italy declared them unsafe, and NGO vessels stopped patrolling the Mediterranean because of the emergency. Nonetheless, according to the Italian Interior Ministry, more than 6,000 migrants have already reached Italy this year compared to 2,000 for all of last year.Now, with the numbers of new coronavirus infections decreasing day by day and no longer such a concern, fears are mounting that the number of migrants that will soon take to the seas for Italy from North Africa will increase dramatically. Good weather and calm seas during the summer will also make it easier for traffickers to make the crossings.Charity vessels have resumed patrolling the Mediterranean to try to provide assistance to migrants in difficulty. The Mare Jonio ship of the Italian NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans set sail this week from the Sicilian port of Trapani on its eighth mission.The Mare Jonio’s spokesperson said the vessel was headed to the central Mediterranean to monitor and denounce the violations of human rights that continue to take place. She added that they know they will be encountering war refugees and victims of torture who are left to die at sea.In the latest tragedy at sea, the bodies of more than 60 dead African migrants were recovered this week after their vessel sank after leaving Tunisia and heading to Italy. The United Nations Refugee Agency says that so far this year the number of sea departures from Tunisia to Europe has increased fourfold.
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Saturday said the opposition would not recognize a “false” electoral body named by the government-friendly supreme court, while his allies pledged to extend the term of the current legislature.An extension past the January 2021 end date would allow Guaido, who is recognized by dozens of countries as Venezuela’s rightful leader due to his position as president of the opposition-held National Assembly, to remain in the role even if the opposition boycotts parliamentary elections due by the end of the year.“We do not recognize any false national electoral council,” Guaido told reporters during a virtual news conference.Venezuela’s constitution grants the power to appoint members of the national electoral council to congress, but the Supreme Court — widely viewed as loyal to President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government — on Friday named its own board after ruling the legislature had failed to do so.Opposition leaders denounced the move as an attempt to rig the election, and some prominent Guaido allies said in response the current legislature should extend its term.“The current legitimate National Assembly will continue as long as no valid constitutional electoral process to substitute it has been held,” Henry Ramos, a senior lawmaker from the large Democratic Action block, wrote on Twitter on Friday night.Asked about a possible extension of the legislature’s term, Guaido said his priority was ousting Maduro before the end of the year, and that the National Assembly would move forward with naming its own electoral rectors.“For us, 2021 is very far away,” he said.Venezuela’s information ministry did not respond to a request for comment.The court’s decision to name its own council has raised the likelihood that opposition parties would boycott the parliamentary election as they did Maduro’s reelection in 2018. 
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Two and a half million residents. Four confirmed coronavirus deaths.As coronavirus cases surge in Latin America, the Colombian city of Medellin is defying expectations and managing to keep numbers remarkably low.Months into the pandemic, there are just 741 confirmed cases citywide and only 10 patients hospitalized in ICUs with COVID-19. The metropolis recently went five weeks without a single COVID-19 death.“Medellin can be considered a best-case scenario,” said Dr. Carlos Espinal, director of Florida International University’s Global Health Consortium.In theory, that shouldn’t be the case. The city is dense, home to many poor residents who will go hungry if they quarantine for too long and connected by a congested public transportation system. All these factors have made the virus especially hard to contain in Latin America.How has Medellin, so far, defied the odds?City officials and epidemiologists credit early preparation, a novel app that connected needy residents with food and cash while also collecting important data that later helped track cases, and a medical system that has moved rapidly to treat the sick before they fall critically ill.Mayor Daniel Quintero’s critics fear the immense data being collected on citizens amounts to a severe invasion of privacy, but even they admit that it has proven effective in containing COVID-19.“It’s impossible to fight the virus without information,” Quintero, 39, said. “We’d have deaths in the hundreds if we hadn’t made these decisions.”Quintero, Medellin’s youngest mayor ever, is an engineer by training who began holding COVID-19 prep meetings in January, weeks after taking office. The virus was a blip on the radar for most Latin American governments back then. Some thought he was absurd for worrying about a virus raging in China.In this June 9, 2020, photo, a nurse measures the body temperature of a shopper at the El Tesoro mall, amid the new coronavirus pandemic, in Medellin, Colombia.Medellin did many of the things other cities would try in the weeks ahead, but it had some built-in advantages. Its international airport receives far fewer travelers from abroad than bigger cities like Bogota. That made tracking passengers landing from hot spots like Spain and the U.S. easier. It also has what is considered one of the best public health systems in Latin America.Quintero said he knew that in order for many residents to quarantine, they’d need food and cash. Using his tech background, he led the city in launching Medellin Me Cuida (Medellin Takes Care of Me), an app offering aid to those who signed up and requested help.The response has been enormous: 1.3 million families – some 3.25 million people in total – from Medellin and surrounding areas registered.The aid was key for Maritza Alvarez, who lives with six elderly relatives, two of whom are street vendors. Since signing up, she said they’ve gotten packages of food three times and two cash transfers. That has allowed them to mostly stay indoors instead of going out to earn money and buy food.The app also asks questions such as who users live with, if they have COVID-19 symptoms and what preexisting health conditions they suffer. That information has proven key in identifying cases, but it has also raised concerns.Two cases have been filed in court challenging Medellin’s assertion that downloading and registering with the app is voluntary, noting that businesses and employees are being asked to sign up in order to restart work. A judge ruled in favor of one complainant, agreeing that not all the information requested should be obligatory. Others are concerned about what the data might be used for once the pandemic is over.“Technology is an important tool in controlling the virus,” Daniel Duque, a councilman, wrote in a recent blog post. “But the pandemic shouldn’t be an excuse for governments to turn into a Big Brother that watches and controls everything.”In an interview with The Associated Press, Quintero brushed such concerns aside.“They’re partly right. Medellin is the city in Latin America with the most information on its citizens,” he said via Zoom from his headquarters, brightly lit screens with charts and maps behind him. “But the question of our intentions in how we use this data can’t be doubted.”In Medellin, medical workers test anyone suspected of having COVID-19 at their home. Those who test positive are given a free oximeter. If their blood oxygen levels dip, nurses bring oxygen to their homes. Those who don’t improve are taken to the hospital.The app has proven key in quickly tracking down those who may have had contact with someone who tests positive. Medellin does about 40 coronavirus tests for each case diagnosed, a number over double the nationwide average, officials said.Though Medellin’s per million testing rate is low, several epidemiologists said they believe the city’s more targeted testing is proving effective. Colombian scientists estimate that for each COVID-19 death there are at least 100 more cases. That means in Medellin, which has had four deaths, there should be at least 400 infected people. The city has currently identified about 300 cases on top of that amount.In this June 8, 2020 photo, an El Tesoro mall employee uses his mobile to scan a customer’s app to verify he is registered for entry, in Medellin, Colombia, June 8, 2020.Bogota, by contrast, has reported at least 339 coronavirus deaths but has only detected around 14,500 cases, suggesting that despite more testing per million people, they still haven’t found many of the existing cases.Still, confirmed coronavirus cases in Medellin have increased from around five to 16 per day since the city reopened its economy in May. Police officers are using newly developed software to scan ID cards of citizens boarding buses and entering malls to ensure they have permission to be out and about.“We are entering a new phase now,” said Dr. Juan Carlos Cataño, an epidemiologist with the Antioquia Foundation for Epidemiology. “We hope to count on a health system that is sufficiently prepared.”Like much of Latin America, Medellin found it difficult to equip hospitals with more ICU beds. Global prices for ventilators skyrocketed at the start of the pandemic and supply dried up. Medellin initially had 332; today it has 453. In an emergency scenario, the city plans to utilize ventilators made at a university in Medellin.Current projections indicate the city will reach peak caseload in July or October.The challenge for Medellin will now be to convince citizens to continue abiding by safety measures like wearing face masks and social distancing. In some poor neighborhoods, local activists say they’ve encountered skepticism about the virus.“People think it’s a lie, that COVID-19 is a government invention,” said Gustavo Lainez, a community leader. “Misinformation is a huge factor.”Still, he said all but perhaps 2 percent of the 140,000 people who live in the area where he works have agreed to sign up for Medellin Me Cuida.Over the last two decades, Medellin has undergone an urban transformation, leaving behind the days marred by the violence of Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel and boosting education, libraries, parks and other civic projects. But the virus has brought new hurdles. Unemployment in the metro area is now at 17.3 percent, the highest in 18 years.Locals believe their reputation for discipline and industriousness will carry them through another difficult chapter in Colombia’s history.“We feel supported,” said Alvarez, the beneficiary of food packages. “I never thought big data would help me.” 
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Ukrainian officials on Saturday said they were offered $5 million in bribes to end a probe into energy company Burisma’s founder, but said there was no connection to former board member Hunter Biden, whose father is running for the U.S. presidency.The Ukrainian company was thrust into the global spotlight last year in the impeachment inquiry into whether U.S. President Donald Trump improperly pressured Kyiv into opening a case against former Vice President Joe Biden, his rival in the November election race, and Biden’s son.Artem Sytnyk, head of Ukraine’s national anti-corruption bureau (NABU), said three people had been detained, including one current and former tax official, over the bribe offer.The money was the largest cash bribe ever seized in the country, NABU said. It was put on display during a press briefing, brought by masked men in see-through plastic bags.Founder now abroadBurisma said in a statement it had nothing to do with the matter. It did not respond to a request for comment from the company’s founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, a former ecology minister now living abroad.“Let’s put an end to this once and for all. Biden Jr. and Biden Sr. do not appear in this particular proceeding,” Nazar Kholodnytsky, head of anti-corruption investigations at the prosecution service, told Saturday’s briefing.The bribe related to a case of embezzling state money given to a bank, officials said. Some $5 million was offered to anti-corruption officials and a further $1 million was intended for an official acting as a middleman, Sytnyk said.The suspects were in a hurry to pay the bribe because they wanted to end the case against Zlochevsky in time for his birthday on Sunday, “to close the criminal proceedings and ensure the return of Mr. Zlochevsky to Ukraine,” he said.No evidence of Biden wrongdoing foundThe country’s former prosecutor general told Reuters in June that an audit he commissioned while in office of thousands of old case files had found no evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden while he worked for Burisma.Hunter Biden joined Burisma in 2014, one of several high-profile names to join what the private company said was an attempt to strengthen corporate governance.His role has been attacked as corrupt without evidence by Trump and congressional Republicans in Washington. The Bidens deny any wrongdoing, and Democrats said Trump was trying to help his re-election prospects.
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Some members of Poland’s government on Friday denied a Reuters report saying talks over a U.S.-Polish defense deal known as Fort Trump were crumbling amid disputes over how to fund the deployment of additional U.S troops and where to garrison them.“This is fake news,” Krzysztof Szczerski, a top aide to the Polish president, told public radio on Friday.The U.S. ambassador to Poland, Georgette Mosbacher, reacting on Twitter to the report, said negotiations remained on track.“President Trump @POTUS & @Prezydentpl Duda’s vision for increased US presence in Poland will be even greater than originally outlined. Announcement coming soon.”Mosbacher and the U.S. Embassy in Poland were not immediately available for comment to elaborate on the timing of the announcement and what the new plans would look like.A U.S. State Department spokesperson said in an email to Reuters on Saturday that talks were productive and on track.A spokesperson for Reuters said the company stood behind its reporting which accurately reflected the situation at the time.Reuters was unable on Friday to determine what fresh efforts, if any, had been made since Wednesday’s report to advance the negotiations and resolve major outstanding issues such as funding.A year ago, Polish President Andrzej Duda and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed that an additional 1,000 U.S. troops would be stationed in Poland. Six locations were shortlisted for the troops when Vice President Mike Pence visited Warsaw in September.The Reuters report published on Wednesday cited government officials in Washington and Warsaw saying they still could not agree where the troops should be stationed, and how much of the multibillion-dollar deployment Warsaw should fund.In that story, Polish deputy foreign minister Pawel Jablonski told Reuters complex issues remained to be ironed out. “There’s the question of financing, of the placement, of legal rights, under what principles these soldiers will function here,” he said.“I do think we will come to a final decision, but this will still take some time.”But Poland’s defense minister said the deal was going ahead.“We are currently agreeing the last details and discussions are taking place in a good atmosphere,” Mariusz Blaszczak said in a tweet on Thursday. 
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Chanting “We are culture,” matadores and bullfighting supporters demonstrated on Saturday across Spain, seeking government support for the sector after the coronavirus pandemic halted its season.Major festivals such as Sevilla’s April Fair and Pamplona’s San Fermin in July have been canceled, and bulls have been sent from ranches straight to the slaughterhouse. The shutdown could deal a fatal blow to a controversial spectacle that has struggled for survival in recent decades.“The COVID-19 crisis has had an enormous impact … It has reduced almost by 100 percent the scheduled events for the year and all the families that live off bullfighting have been too affected,” said Juan de Castilla, 25, a Colombian bullfighter at a protest in the central city of Guadalajara.There were also protests on Saturday in Seville, Madrid and Barcelona, among other cities.Several hundred masked people marched in Guadalajara, waving Spanish flags with bull figures and holding banners in support of the traditionally emblematic Spanish spectacle.The Spanish government has allowed bullfights to resume but with only half occupancy and a limit of 800 attendees in regions with lesser lockdown restrictions.“We have come to proclaim that the bullfighting world is important for society, Spain and Guadalajara,” said Jesus Romero, 58.He said bullfights, also known as “corridas,” should resume soon since Spain is gradually lifting its lockdown — one of the strictest in Europe. The country has now contained the coronavirus spread, which has killed over 27,000 people.Although the big festivals still draw crowds, public interest in bullfighting has dwindled considerably.Over 56 percent of people were against bullfighting, 24.7 percent in favor and 18.9 percent indifferent in a poll published last year by news website El Espanol. Support was significantly higher among conservative voters, it showed. 
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The French praised the altruism of their prized textile and luxury goods companies when production facilities got diverted from churning out the latest fashions to making cloth masks designed to protect the general public from the coronavirus.Now, the companies that helped France avoid a feared shortage of virus-filtering face wear for everyday use say they need help unloading a surplus of 20 million masks. They asked the French government for assistance promoting and finding buyers for the unsold output of the industry’s national effort.Hundreds of textile and clothing manufacturers answered the government’s call for millions of masks superior to homemade versions. President Emmanuel Macron last month sported a military-tested model embroidered with the tri-color national flag to advertise the “Made in France” masks.Yet within weeks, demand dried up for the domestically produced masks that sold for a few euros at supermarkets and pharmacies or were available in bulk for free distribution by businesses and local governments. Manufacturers and the government acknowledged that many suppliers and consumers still opted for cheaper disposable face masks from Asia.“We are faced with a lot of competition” from countries with lower labor costs, said Thomas Delise, owner of Chanteclair, the knitwear manufacturer behind the mask Macron wore during a school visit last month.In this June 12, 2020 photo, director Thomas Delise gestures in Chanteclair Hosiery, a French knitwear clothing manufacturer in Saint Pouange, east of Paris, that began making masks to combat the spread of the coronavirus.In an interview with The Associated Press at his factory southeast of Paris, he called for trade barriers to large imports, and coordination within Europe to buy Europe-made masks.Guillaume Gibault, founder of trendy underwear brand Le Slip Francais (The French Brief), sees the slump as a marketing and distribution problem. The washable, specially engineered masks produced by his company and others saw “a very strong and immediate demand” before the excess accessories piled up in warehouses and factories.“Not everyone necessarily knew about what was available around them, and the public didn’t necessarily know where or what to buy,” he told French public radio service RFI.Some textile companies complained that the French government was slow to validate their masks as effective in filtering out small particles, which slowed their ability to get to market before people were allowed to start emerging from their homes and needed masks in stores or on public transportation.A group of industry representatives got time with two junior government ministers this week to discuss the surplus masks, as well as broader concerns about the health of fashion, textiles and luxury goods makers amid the economic fallout of the pandemic and in the long term.After the meeting, the ministers pledged the government’s help to spread the word to distributors, local governments and other potential customers about the environmental and employment benefits of the French masks and finding buyers at home and abroad for the surplus stock.In this June 12, 2020 photo, an employee walks by fabric cut to produce face protection masks in Chanteclair Hosiery, a French knitwear clothing manufacturer, in Saint Pouange, east of Paris.Agnes Pannier-Runacher, state secretary to France’s economy minister, told French broadcaster RTL that the government’s objective “is to convince large buyers to switch from single-use masks to reusable washable textile masks.” Gibault and French Textile Industry Union President Yves Dubief agreed to lead the mission.“In a few weeks, the French textile industry has managed to mobilize and redirect its productive apparatus on our territory in order to provide the French durable textile masks with guaranteed filtration in sufficient quantities,” Pannier-Runacher said. “This impressive effort is to be commended. It must now be long term and be given support.”The French Textile Industry Union was the first to sound the alarm in early June on this problem of surplus.“The demand was such that no one had anticipated such a brutal halt. But in the textile industry, once launched, production does not stop with a snap of the fingers,” Dubief told French magazine Challenges.Some French companies were disgruntled because it was the French government that urged many of them to get into mask-making and to increase capacity so the country would produce 5 million masks a day that could be sold or given to the general public, local governments and corporations by mid-May.The mask surplus is especially painful because France was so short of any kind of masks early in the pandemic that some nursing home and medical staff had no face protection at all. Those mask shortages are central to several lawsuits against the government of a country that has seen nearly 30,000 virus deaths.The French government said this week that part of the joint industry-government mission will be to help cloth mask-makers adjust “production capacities to collective needs in masks over the next few months.”At his textile factory, Delise said: “We don’t know how the pandemic will evolve. We don’t know which instructions the government will give, we don’t know what kind of equipment the professionals will want. So today, yes, we have a surplus stock of 600,000 masks and it obviously has an impact on my company.” 
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Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, one of the world’s oldest and largest, is open for business after being closed for 70 days as part of Turkey’s COVID lockdown. The reopening early this month is an important symbolic step in what the government calls its normalization efforts, a move that cannot come soon enough for the 30,000 people working at the bazaar. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.Producer: Rod James. Videographer: Berke Bas.
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Paris riot police fired tear gas Saturday to disperse a largely peaceful but unauthorized protest of police brutality and entrenched racism, as France’s minorities increasingly push back against a national doctrine of colorblindness that has failed to eradicate discrimination.In London, far-right activists and soccer rowdies scuffled with police while trying to “guard” historical monuments that have been targeted recently by anti-racism protesters for their links to slavery and British colonialism.The events in the two European capitals reflected the global emotion unleashed by the death of George Floyd in the United States and the ensuing reckoning with racial injustice and historical wrongs. In both cities, protesters defied restrictions on public gatherings imposed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.Myriam Boicoulin, 31, who was born in the French Caribbean island of Martinique, said she marched in Paris on Saturday because she “wants to be heard.””The fact of being visible is enormous,” Boicoulin said. As a black woman living in mainland France, she said, “I’m constantly obliged to adapt, to make compromises, not make waves — to be almost white, in fact.””It’s the first time people see us,” she told The Associated Press. “Let us breathe.”The Paris march in Paris was led by supporters of Adama Traore, a  French black man who died in police custody in 2016 in circumstances that remain unclear despite four years of back-and-forth autopsies. No one has been charged in the case.”We are are all demanding the same thing – fair justice for everyone,” Traore’s sister Assa told the rally.  Angry shouts rose from the racially diverse crowd as a small group of white extreme-right activists climbed a building overlooking the protest and unfurled a huge banner denouncing “anti-white racism.”Building residents then reached out of their windows and tore part of the banner down, one raising his fist in victory. Officers prevented people attending the main rally from approaching the counter-demonstrators, but didn’t detain the far-right activists until two hours later, further angering the crowd below.Riot police then fired tear gas and charged unruly members of the main protest, urging them to disperse. The crowd initially planned to march through the city, but police decided to block them from moving, citing coronavirus concerns.Similar protests were also held Saturday in cities around France, from Rouen in Normandy in the northwest to Marseille on the Mediterranean.Some demonstrators were encouraged that the French government responded to the past couple of weeks of Floyd-inspired protests by banning police chokeholds and launching investigations of racist comments in private Facebook and Whatsapp groups for police.In London, a Black Lives Matter group called off a demonstration scheduled for Saturday, saying the presence of counter-protesters who also planned to demonstrate would make it unsafe.  Some protesters still gathered at Hyde Park to denounce racism while hundreds of far-right activists demonstrated, despite strict police restrictions and warnings to stay home to contain the coronavirus.Many from the far-right camp gathered around a statue of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Cenotaph war memorial, which were both boarded up to guard against vandalism. Officials put protective panels around the monuments amid fears that far-right activists would seek confrontations with anti-racism protesters under the guise of protecting statues.Some activists threw bottles and cans at officers, while others tried to push through police barriers. Riot police on horses pushed the crowd back. The protesters, who appeared to be mostly white men, chanted “England” and sang the national anthem.”I am extremely fed up with the way that the authorities have allowed two consecutive weekends of vandalism against our national monuments,” Paul Golding, leader of the far-right group Britain First, told the Press Association.Monuments around the world have become flash points in demonstrations against racism and police violence after the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed a knee to his neck.In Britain, the protests have triggered a national debate about the legacy of empire and its role in the slave trade. A statue of slave trader Edward Colston was hauled from its plinth by protesters in the city of Bristol on Sunday and dumped in the harbor. In London, Churchill’s statue was daubed with the words “was a racist.”Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted Friday that while Churchill “sometimes expressed opinions that were and are unacceptable to us today,” he was a hero and “we cannot now try to edit or censor our past.” Churchill, whose first term spanned 1940-45, has long been revered for his leadership during World War II.  ___Hui reported from London. Angela Charlton and Boubkar Benzabat in Paris contributed. 
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