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Russia has seen a record rise in coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, according to government figures reported Sunday.  The daily rise of 10,633 new cases is the highest since the beginning of the outbreak in the country and brings the total of cases to almost 135,000. On Sunday, 58 more people in Russia were reported dead, bringing the death toll from coronavirus-linked cases to 1,280. The death rate is still lower than in the United States, Italy and some other countries.Russia’s Tass news agency reports that 4.1 million coronavirus tests have been administered so far, 174,000 in the last official report issued Sunday.  Earlier in the week Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin tested positive for the coronavirus, the highest Russian official who has been diagnosed with COVID-19.Tailor Yalcine of Boulard Retouche prepares face protective masks in cotton sewn in his shop at the Daguerre district in Paris, Sunday, May 3, 2020 as a nationwide confinement continue to counter the COVID-19.Meanwhile France reports that the number of new cases is flattening and has declined in three of the hardest hit regions. The total number of new cases reported Sunday was less than 300 and the total of new deaths was 135, compared to April 7 when the number of new cases was close to 9,000 and the death toll was more than 14,000. France is one of the most affected European countries with a total of nearly 170,000 COVID-19 cases and close to 25,000 deaths. The government has extended health emergency for two more months, until the end of July.About a half of European Union countries will begin relaxing coronavirus measures starting Monday after weeks of shutdowns which have brought down their economies. Italy and Spain, Europe’s most affected countries, are among them. On Sunday, both reported the lowest daily death tolls in weeks.   British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the only head of state to have had COVID-19, is expected to announce a plan to reopen his country next week after declaring that the number of new cases is flattening in the country. Britain has had close to 187,000 COVID cases and the coronavirus has killed close to 29,000.Sweden also announced a drop in new infections. The European country has raised eyebrows with its liberal coronavirus policy, keeping its schools and restaurants open throughout the outbreak. On Sunday it said that one infected person on average passes the infection to less than one person, which means the pandemic is in decline.  Sweden has had more than 22,000 cases and nearly 2,700 deaths, which is more than double the numbers of Denmark and Norway put together.European leaders have announced plans to establish an international organization to  fight the coronavirus. The group wants to raise $8 billion in an online pledging campaign to finance finding a COVID-19 vaccine and treatment.  A man wearing a protective gear mourns next to the body of his father who died from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at a graveyard in New Delhi, India, May 2, 2020.Another campaign is seeking to raise funds to stop the spread of coronavirus in India. International stars including Mick Jagger, Will Smith, Kate Bosworth and Jack Black joined Bollywood celebrities in the 4-hour-long “iFor India” concert livestreamed Sunday on Facebook to help COVID-19 relief in the second most populous Asian country. India reported a daily record of 2,600 new cases on Saturday, despite tough shutdown measures. The country now has more than 42,500 COVID-19 cases with close to 1,400 deaths, despite the government’s tough restrictions aimed at stopping the outbreak.The number of new cases grew sharply in Bangladesh in the past 24 hours, with 665 new cases reported on Sunday.China, the continent’s most populous country, where the virus was first recorded in December, reported only two new cases since Saturday.  Monsignor Kieran Harrington, Vicar for Communications for the Diocese of Brooklyn, prays over the body of the Rev. Jorge Ortiz-Garay in the Brooklyn borough of New York as they prepare to transport his body to JFK International Airport, May 3, 2020.The United States has about 1,200.000 cases, with close to 69,000 deaths so far.  On Friday, the country saw the highest number of coronavirus-related deaths – 2909 within 24 hours, according to the World Health Organization. It also recorded 34,000 new cases, the highest daily total since April 24. More than 1,000 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours.  In South America, Brazil and Peru are experiencing a spike in new cases.Close to 3.5 million cases of COVID-19 and about nearly 250,000 resulting deaths have been confirmed and reported around the world.
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While millions of people took advantage of easing coronavirus lockdowns to enjoy spring weather, some of the world’s most populous countries reported worrisome new peaks in infections Sunday, including India, which saw its biggest single-day jump yet.Second in population only to China, India reported more than 2,600 new infections. In Russia, new cases exceeded 10,000 for the first time. The confirmed death toll in Britain climbed near that of Italy, the epicenter of Europe’s outbreak, even though the U.K. population is younger than Italy’s and Britain had more time to prepare before the pandemic hit.A woman wearing a home made face shield and mask walks a dog in Piccadilly Circus, central London, Sunday, May 3, 2020.The United States continues to see tens of thousands of new infections each day, with more than 1,400 additional deaths reported Saturday.Health experts have warned of a potential second wave of infections unless testing is expanded dramatically once the lockdowns are relaxed. But pressure to reopen keeps building after the weeks-long shutdown of businesses worldwide plunged the global economy into its deepest slump since the 1930s and wiped out millions of jobs.China, which reported only two new cases, saw a surge in visitors to newly reopened tourist spots after domestic travel restrictions were loosened ahead of a five-day holiday that runs through Tuesday. Nearly 1.7 million people visited Beijing parks on the first two days of the holiday, and Shanghai’s main tourist spots welcomed more than 1 million visitors, according to Chinese media. Many spots limited daily visitors to 30% of capacity.On the eve of Italy’s first steps toward easing restrictions, the Health Ministry reported 174 COVID deaths in the 24-hour period ending Sunday evening — the lowest day-to-day number since the national lockdown began on March 10. Parks and public gardens were set to reopen on Monday.In Spain, many ventured outside for the first time since the country’s lockdown began March 14, but social distancing rules remained in place. Masks are mandatory starting Monday on public transit.In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under pressure to reveal how the country will lift its lockdown. The restrictions are due to last through Thursday, but with hundreds of deaths still being reported daily — twice as many recently as Italy or Spain — it’s unclear how the country can safely loosen the restrictions.The 55-year-old Johnson, who spent three nights in intensive care while being treated for COVID-19, told The Sun newspaper that he knew his doctors were preparing for the worst.”It was a tough old moment, I won’t deny it,” he said. “They had a strategy to deal with a ‘death of Stalin’-type scenario” if he succumbed to the virus.Another potentially troubling sign emerged in Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul, where a third of the 500 people selected in random test came up positive for the virus.In the U.S., New Jersey reopened state parks, though several had to turn people away after reaching a 50% limit in their parking lots. Margie Roebuck and her husband were among the first on the sand at Island Beach State Park.”Forty-six days in the house was enough,” she said.Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx expressed concern about protests by armed and mostly maskless crowds demanding an end to stay-at-home orders and a full reboot of the economy. President Donald Trump has encouraged people to “liberate” their states.”It’s devastatingly worrisome to me personally, because if they go home and infect their grandmother or their grandfather … they will feel guilty for the rest of our lives,” she said. “So we need to protect each other at the same time we’re voicing our discontent.”If restrictions are lifted too soon, the virus could come back in “small waves in various places around the country,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.”Nothing has changed in the underlying dynamics of this virus,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that his state would join with six others to create a regional supply chain for masks, gowns, ventilators, testing supplies and other equipment for fighting the disease.”It will make us more competitive in the international marketplace, and I believe it will save taxpayers money,” Cuomo said.  Meanwhile, the divide in the United States between those who want lockdowns to end and those who want to move more cautiously extended to Congress.The Republican-majority  Senate will reopen Monday in Washington. The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is staying shuttered. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to convene 100 senators gives Trump, a Republican, the imagery he wants of America getting back to work, despite the risks.Doctors attend to a patient inside the intensive care unit for people infected with the new coronavirus, at a hospital in Moscow, Russia, May 2, 2020.Elsewhere, Russia’s latest tally of infections was nearly double the new cases reported a week ago. More than half of Russia’s new cases were in Moscow, where concern is rising about whether the capital’s medical facilities will be overwhelmed.Indian air force helicopters showered flower petals on hospitals in several cities to thank doctors, nurses and police at the forefront of the battle against the pandemic.  The country’s number of confirmed cases neared 40,000 as the population of 1.3 billion marked the 40th day of a nationwide lockdown. The official death toll reached 1,323.And in Mexico City, where authorities expect infections to peak next week, workers will turn the Hernandez Rodriguez Formula 1 racecourse into a temporary hospital for COVID-19 patients. The paddocks and suites along the front straightaway will have eight hospital modules with 24 beds each. The pits will be used as offices for consultations.The virus has infected 3.5 million people and killed more than 246,000 worldwide, including more than 66,000 dead in the United States, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.  All the numbers are considered to be undercounts, due to testing issues, the problems of counting deaths in a pandemic and deliberate concealment by some governments. 
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Should the NHL restart its 2019-20 season, players on Canadian teams who have been out of the country likely would need to quarantine before they can rejoin their teammates, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sunday.”I think it’s a question we’ll have to look into,” Trudeau said in a press briefing. “Certainly at a strict minimum, anyone who arrives from another country will have to follow all the rules of quarantine in an extremely strict manner, but we’re not there yet in our discussions with the NHL.”
 
He continued: “We recognize that it’s a possibility, but it depends on an enormous amount of things, and I don’t want to speculate on this until there’s more discussion.”
 
The season was halted on March 12, one day after the NBA suspended play when Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz was diagnosed with the coronavirus. At least eight NHL players have been diagnosed with COVID-19 — five of them from the Ottawa Senators.
 
The NHL is hoping to finish the 2019-20 season and award the Stanley Cup, while deputy commissioner Bill Daly said in a radio interview on Friday that Edmonton is among the cities under consideration should the league decide to use centralized locations for games. Toronto is another city reportedly in consideration to be a “hockey pod.”
 
Daly also said frequent testing for COVID-19 would be required for play to resume, provided that ample tests are available and that the general public would not be deprived of tests.
 
“We’re going to need to have access to testing, and we’re going to make it a point that we’re not accessing testing, even in a private way, if testing availability is an issue in the community,” Daly told 630 CHED in Edmonton. “We will not test asymptomatic players ahead of symptomatic people who are unable to get tested. It’s just something we will not do.” 
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Venezuelan officials said Sunday they foiled an attack by boats through the port city of La Guaira. Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said the would-be attackers, whom he referred to as “mercenary terrorists”, came from neighboring Colombia and were quickly repelled by Venezuelan forces. “They tried to carry out an invasion by sea, a group of terrorist mercenaries from Colombia, in order to commit terrorist acts in the country, murdering leaders of the revolutionary government,” Reverol said in a televised address Sunday. He said there were “some casualties” but did not specify how many attackers there were, who they were, or what weapons and boats they used. President Nicolas Maduro’s government frequently accuses political adversaries of trying to overthrow his government. Socialist critics have dismissed the accusations as an excuse to detain Maduro’s opponents. Maduro has overseen a six-year economic crisis in Venezuela. More than fifty countries, including the United States, have indicated their support for opposition leader Juan Guaido after a disputed election in 2018, but Maduro maintains control of the country’s military.  
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Thousands of desperate migrants are trapped in limbo and even at risk of death without food, water or shelter in scorching deserts and at sea, as governments close off borders and ports in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.Migrants have been dropped by the truckload in the Sahara or bused to Mexico’s border with Guatemala and beyond. Others are drifting in the Mediterranean after European and Libyan authorities declared their ports unsafe. And around 100 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are believed to have died in the Bay of Bengal, as country after country pushed them back out to sea.Many governments say that a public health crisis requires extraordinary measures. However, these measures are just the latest steps taken to clamp down on migrants.“They just dumped us,” said Fanny Jacqueline Ortiz, a 37-year-old Honduran who was abandoned March 26 with her two young daughters at the lonely  El Ceibo  border crossing with Guatemala, expelled first by the U.S. and then by Mexico.___This story was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.___Since the aftermath of World War II, international and some national laws have protected refugees and asylum-seekers. Nations have the right to close themselves off for national security, but cannot forcibly return migrants to danger, according to Dr.  Violeta Moreno-Lax, professor of migration law at Queen Mary University of London.Yet that is exactly what is happening.“The pandemic provides the perfect excuse,” said Moreno-Lax.The desert deportations have been happening for years in North Africa and beyond, and Europe has been deadlocked on how to handle migration on the Mediterranean since the 2015 migration crisis. In the United States, President Donald Trump made migration a central issue of his winning 2016 campaign.But this year, coronavirus has shifted the dynamic and allowed governments to crack down even harder, even as the desperation of those on the move remains unchanged.In the United States, Trump is using a little-known 1944 public health law to set aside decades-old American immigration law. Nearly 10,000 Mexicans and Central Americans were “expelled” to Mexico less than three weeks after the new rules took effect March 21, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. U.S. authorities say the decision was not about immigration but about public health.Mexico then pushes the migrants further south. Mexico denies that it leaves migrants to fend for themselves, saying it coordinates with their home governments.Migrants have also been left stranded in similarly makeshift conditions in the Sahara Desert, after being expelled from Algeria and Libya.Groups of dozens are walking 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 10 miles) through the desert from a no-man’s-land called Point Zero to the dusty frontier village of Assamaka in neighboring Niger. There, new arrivals remain in makeshift quarantine for 14 days.More than 2,300 foreign migrants are stranded in Niger, unable to return home or go anywhere else, according to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration.In Libya, the migrant detention center in Kufra expelled nearly 900 men and women from April 11 to 15, taking them by truck or bus across hundreds of miles of sand and leaving them either in a remote town in Chad or at a Sahara border post in Sudan, according to Lt. Mohamed Ali al-Fadil, the center’s director. Hundreds more came the following week.Al-Fadil said the center is “deporting more people faster than ever before.” He said the expulsions are an attempt to shield migrants from the coronavirus.Yet the large groups of migrants forced out are in danger not only of the coronavirus but of midday temperatures that can rise to 50 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) this time of year.Hundreds of other migrants are stuck at sea in the Mediterranean and the Bay of Bengal.The Mediterranean has been unpatrolled by rescue boats for two weeks. The last two such vessels are lashed together off the coast of Italy along with a ferry holding 180 migrants rescued in April, all of them in a 14-day waterborne quarantine.The boats will ultimately dock. But no country has agreed to take in the migrants, who will stay on the ferry until their fate is decided. Any others who try to leave Libya’s squalid coastal detention centers or cramped smuggler’s warehouses will face an equally uncertain future, either pushed back to Libya or adrift at sea.Half a world away, hundreds of Rohingya refugees are also stranded at sea in the Bay of Bengal. Weeks ago, they boarded at least two fishing trawlers, and are now marooned off the coast of Bangladesh.Fishermen spotted the boats on April 20, and the United Nations refugee agency said they may have been at sea for weeks without enough food and water. A group of 29 made it to an island in southern Bangladesh on Saturday. The aid group Médecins Sans Frontières said survivors on another boat that ultimately made it to shore estimated around 100 had died waiting.The Bangladeshi government said it cannot sustain more refugees and still keep a handle on the coronavirus crisis. Malaysia has also denied entry to several other boats, each with dozens on board.In her tiny bamboo home in the Rohingya refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, Rahima Khatun has been sleepless since losing contact with her daughter, who went to sea with her grandchildren more than 50 days ago to join her son-in-law in Malaysia.Khatun is not sure which boat they are on but she has heard about the stranded trawlers.“If I had wings I would fly and go see where they are,” Khatun said. “They are not being allowed to enter either Bangladesh or Malaysia – just floating in the middle with no one to help them out.”  
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European leaders are establishing an international medical organization to mount a united battle against the coronavirus.In their announcement in The Independent, a British newspaper, they said they are following in the footsteps of “Louis Pasteur, one of the world’s greatest scientists and a mastermind behind vaccines and breakthroughs which have saved millions of lives spanning three centuries.”“Our aim is simple,” the group said, about its goal of raising $8 billion Monday in an online pledging campaign to finance finding a COVID-19 vaccine and treatment.The leaders listed as being responsible for The Independent article are: Giuseppe Conte, prime minister of Italy; Emmanuel Macron, president of France; Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany; Charles Michel, president of the European Council; Erna Solberg, prime minister of Norway; and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.“We will all put our own pledges on the table and we are glad to be joined by partners from the world over,” they said. “We support the WHO and we are delighted to join forces with experienced organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.”U.S. President Donald Trump has suspended payments to the World Health Organization, saying that WHO did not act swiftly enough in alerting the world about the deadly virus.The European leaders said, “Every single euro or dollar that we raise together will be channeled primarily through recognized global health organizations such as CEPI, Gavi, the Vaccines Alliance, the Global Fund and Unitaid into developing and deploying as quickly as possible, for as many as possible the diagnostics, treatments and vaccines that will help the world overcome the pandemic.”“If we can develop a vaccine that is produced by the world, for the whole world, this will be a unique global public good of the 21st century,” the alliance said. “Together with our partners, we commit to making it available, accessible and affordable to all.”There are more than 3.4 million global cases of COVID-19 worldwide, and nearly 244,000 deaths.
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A Bolivian air force plane crashed in the Amazonian region shortly after takeoff Saturday afternoon, killing all those on board.The victims on the twin-engine propeller plane included four Spanish nationals and the two-man crew, an air force captain and lieutenant.The Spaniards were en route to catch a flight back to Spain, the Bolivian Defense Ministry said in a statement.The plane went down in a marshy area on the outskirts of the northeastern city of Trinidad, the statement said.The aircraft was also carrying coronavirus test samples to the city of Santa Cruz.
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A riot broke out Saturday at a prison in the city of Manaus in Brazil’s Amazon state, as inmates protested the suspension of all visits to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.The inmates at the Puraquequara facility held prison guards hostage for more than five hours before authorities brought the situation under control and freed the guards, the state’s public security secretary said in a statement.While inmates took to the roof of the facility, people outside the penitentiary were holding signs in Portuguese reading “Peace, Peace. They just want to be treated with respect” and “They’re already paying for their offenses.”A group of family members, some wearing masks, held a sign saying “Social reintegration? In these conditions it’s not possible.”Relatives said visits at the Puraquequara prison were suspended in mid-March. Rumors that the coronavirus had begun to spread there have been circulating on social media for weeks.Brazil has reported at least 92,000 cases of COVID-19 infections as of Saturday. About 6,500 people have succumbed to the virus.
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With the coronavirus having closed nightclubs across the world, comedians are still managing to get the laughs from people on a pandemic lockdowns all over the world.   VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports on Hollywood’s Laugh Factory and The Stand comedy club in Edinburgh. And she looks at a Japanese comedian who stormed the world with his hit  ‘Pineapple-pen,’ is back with a new message: Wash your hands!
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Iran on Saturday denounced recent U.S. allegations that it was providing covert aid to help Venezuela overcome gas shortages as “baseless” without directly addressing them.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week said “multiple aircraft” belonging to Iran’s Mahan Air had transferred “unknown support” to Venezuela’s government. He called for a halt to the flights and for other countries to bar overflights by Mahan Air.  The Associated Press reported last month that Mahan Air was delivering key chemical components used for producing gasoline to help revive an aging refinery in the South American country, which is in the grip of a severe economic crisis.Venezuela has been suffering from widespread gasoline shortages despite having the world’s largest oil reserves.Both Iran and Venezuela are under heavy U.S. sanctions, and have had close relations for the last two decades.Iran’s Foreign Ministry tweeted that the “baseless comments were made in order to prepare the ground for mounting U.S. pressure on the Venezuelan government.”Another statement said the U.S. intended to “obstruct the Venezuelan government’s plan for reviving the country’s refineries.” The statements did not directly address the allegations or elaborate on the nature of the cooperation between the two countries.The Trump administration is pursuing a “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at ousting Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, and considers opposition leader Juan Guaido as the nation’s legitimate leader. The U.S. and a coalition of nearly 60 nations say Maduro clings to power following a 2018 election that critics consider a sham because the most popular opposition politicians were banned from running.The Trump administration imposed heavy sanctions on Iran after withdrawing from Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
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The death toll from a prison riot in western Venezuela has risen to at least 47, with 75 wounded, an opposition politician and prisoners’ rights group said Saturday.”At the moment we have been able to confirm 47 dead and 75 wounded,” deputy Maria Beatriz Martinez, elected from Portuguesa state where the Los Llanos prison is located, told AFP.The Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP) rights group also gave the same tally.The initial toll Friday from the riot at the prison in the city of Guanare was 17 dead and nine wounded.
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Inmates at a prison in Manaus, a Brazilian city deep in the Amazon that has been hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak, have taken seven prison guards hostage, the local prison authority told Reuters on Saturday, underlining the endemic violence that has plagued the region’s jails in recent years.The reason for the rebellion at the Puraquequara Penitentiary was not immediately clear, but local television stations cited a video allegedly recorded by an unidentified inmate, who complained of sweltering heat and a lack of electricity in the prison.In a statement, the prison authority in the state of Amazonas, where Manaus is located, said the prisoners were demanding the presence of the press and human rights groups. They had no information on possible deaths.The rebellion came as the coronavirus outbreak has overwhelmed public services in Manaus, with authorities burying victims in mass graves and warning residents of a shortage soon of coffins.Violence is rife in Brazil’s prisons, where organized crime groups often exercise de facto control. Overcrowding is also common, and rights groups call conditions medieval, with food scarce and cells so packed that prisoners have no space to lie down.In January 2017, almost 150 prisoners were killed as organized crime groups battled each other in several prisons in north and northeastern Brazil. In one particularly violent incident in Manaus, 57 inmates were killed, some of whom were decapitated and thrown over prison walls.Last year, over 50 inmates were strangled or stabbed to death as rival gangs battled each other in four separate Manaus jails.Various police units have been deployed and were already beginning negotiations as of Saturday morning, the Amazonas secretary of prisons said in its statement.
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An earthquake struck the Greek island of Crete Saturday.
 
There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the afternoon temblor, centered in the Mediterranean Sea.
 
The European Mediterranean Seismological Center reported the quake was of a 6.0 magnitude at a depth of 10 kilometers.
 
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake registered a preliminary magnitude of 6.6 at a depth of 17 kilometers.
 
The German Research Center for Geosciences also reported a preliminary magnitude of 6.6.
 
The quake rocked the island as Greece again confronts the possibility of a deep recession while it grapples with the coronavirus pandemic.
 
Ten years ago, the country was plunged into one of the world’s worst economic crisis in decades.  
 
The economy has since shown signs of recovery, as its gross domestic product grew 1.9% last year and the jobless rate fell more than 10 points over the previous year to 17.3%.
 
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Spaniards spent time outside near their homes Saturday as Spain is starting to reopen after weeks of lockdown triggered by one of Europe’s most deadly coronavirus outbreaks.Parks and gardens are still closed in the capital Madrid, and law enforcement personnel are still keeping people from entering many open spaces for leisure or exercise.
 
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has issued a four-phase plan for easing restrictions to get the country back to “a new normal” following the COVID-19 outbreak.There will be at least two weeks between each phase, as authorities monitor the situation to assess possible adverse consequences of the reopening.As the first phase began Saturday, walks outside for exercise were allowed mornings between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. and in the evening from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. local time.People in capital expressed relief at their partially regained freedoms.”I feel great. There are very strong restrictions, but it is what it is. We have to follow the instructions from health ministry because they know more than us. This feeling of freedom is great. When this gets better, all of us feel even better,” said Manuel Garcia, a 52-year-old trader.”Well, I came to do some exercise, firstly just to walk because it is going to be hard to start straight away running after so much time, but I feel good,” said Angela Arroyo, a 60-year-old teacher, also a Madrid resident.Spain, the second hardest hit country in Europe after Italy, has reported more than 210,000 coronavirus infections and over 24,000 deaths. 
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Former rebel fighter-turned-president Ramzan Kadyrov has made it clear that independent journalism will not be tolerated in Chechnya: a message that appears to come with the Kremlin’s blessing.Irritated at criticism of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kadyrov in mid-April threatened Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s few remaining independent media outlets that still covers Chechnya, and its reporter Elena Milashina.“If you want us to commit a crime and become criminals, then just say so. Someone will take on this burden, responsibility, and will be punished according to the law, serve time in prison and be released,” Kadyrov said in comments shared on social media.It wasn’t the first time Novaya Gazeta or Milashina have been threatened. In February, Milashina was beaten while in Grozny, and both she and her colleagues have been threatened repeatedly. Six of the paper’s journalists have been killed because of their work, including prominent reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in 2006.But Kadyrov’s latest threat still shocked the paper’s editor and sparked a wave of condemnation, with the U.S. Helsinki Commission, the European Union and the Council of Europe, and international human rights organizations demanding that Moscow take action and offer protection to Novaya Gazeta and Milashina.The Kremlin’s response was to dismiss the threat as “nothing unusual.”“There is nothing forbidden or illegal in this,” Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on April 16, adding that the Kremlin did not consider it necessary to publicly respond to Kadyrov’s threats against Novaya Gazeta or to provide state protection for Milashina.Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor also ordered Novaya Gazeta to remove the article. The news website complied.Chechnya: History of media violenceThe Kremlin assessment that this was “nothing unusual” is close to the truth.Kadyrov, who fought against the Russian army at age 18, has ruled the autonomous republic for 13 years. From the start, his government has harassed journalists and human rights activists. And his critics have been attacked, publicly humiliated or even killed.In 2015, Chechen blogger Adam Dikayev criticized Kadyrov for working out in his gym while the song “My best friend is President Putin” played. A few days later Dikayev appeared in a video shared on social media. The blogger was on a treadmill, half-naked and apologizing for his comments.Five years later, residents of Chechnya rarely risk discussing their leadership on social media, and the few journalists who travel to the republic for work can face violence.More recently, in February attackers beat Milashina and lawyer Marina Dubrovina in the capital, Grozny.They were in the city to report on a lawsuit filed against Chechen vlogger Islam Nukhanov, who used YouTube videos to discuss the luxurious lifestyle of Kadyrov’s relatives and inner circle.The attackers filmed their actions, Milashina said, to report back to those who ordered the attack.The journalist reported the attack to police, who said they were investigating.Quitting not an optionThe threats and attack were nothing new for Milashina, who leads Novaya Gazeta’s special projects unit.In 2017, when Novaya Gazeta released her investigation into Chechnya’s repression of the LGBT community, she had to leave Russia because of threats.Milashina told VOA that the only way to ensure the safety of journalists is with solidarity of the media.“Extreme measures taken against journalists, when you kill them, lead to emergence of another journalist, who would keep doing the same,” she said. “The only protection for journalists amid the inaction of authorities is to keep working. Only this would protect us, nothing else would.”Milashina, who has been awarded several prizes, including the U.S. State Department’s International Women of Courage Award, said she has moments of despair.“I have already given up a thousand times, because, frankly, I rarely can boast of any successes there — when I manage to save someone, get someone out [of prison].”She said she did not expect the Russian government to protect her from Kadyrov, because the Kremlin has given the Chechen leader free rein.“Kadyrov is efficient from the Kremlin’s point of view. The Kremlin needs Chechnya to be suppressed, with people who are afraid of [authorities],” she said. “Of course, they handed him a blank check to act with locals without limitations, and neither security forces nor authorities would be punished for overreaching.”Milashina ruled out the possibility of stopping reporting on Chechnya, saying, “Can I abandon the region where 1.5 million people live, who actually do not have a chance to be heard? This is not an option.”Coverage of Chechnya will continueMilashina is not the first Novaya Gazeta staff member to be attacked or threatened for their work.Dmitry Muratov, the paper’s editor-in-chief, still remembers Politkovskaya, who covered human rights violations and the Chechen war.In 2006, Politkovskaya was found shot dead in her Moscow apartment building. Six people have been convicted for their role in her murder.Muratov said he was surprised by the bluntness of Kadyrov’s latest threats.“Like everyone, I was surprised by the frankness, utter sincerity he described with the algorithm we already know about: ‘We’ll kill her, serve some time in jail, having it on our conscience,’ ” he told VOA.“Of course, I was surprised. Still, he is a civil servant, moreover, police general and the head of the region, and he allows himself to say such things,” Muratov said.Muratov noted the willingness of some Chechen authorities to mitigate the attack on the newspaper.“I told Kadyrov’s spokesman that they have the right to answer: the party that felt hurt or unfairly accused of anything has this right even in pre-trial order. And two or three days later, we received a letter from them that we published. I would very much like to consider the conflict settled on this.”He ruled out stopping coverage of the region.“Since Chechnya is the territory of the Russian Federation, and we are a federal media and work throughout Russia, we naturally will continue to cover Chechnya,” he said. “A totalitarian enclave in an authoritarian country.”Sometimes, as in the case of the trial of Oyub Titiev, head of the Chechen branch of the Memorial Human Rights Center, attention is so great that authorities do not impede the work of journalists.Dozens of visiting journalists were allowed into the Titiev trial; TV cameras stood in a line at the Grozny City Hotel.But it was an isolated case. Kadyrov has declared journalists and human rights defenders to be enemies of the nation, Tatyana Lokshina, program director for Russia at Human Rights Watch, said.“Many people remember Kadyrov’s public statements, that the republic will be closed for the human rights defenders after the Titiev trial is over,” she said. “And by ‘human rights defenders’ he also meant all those journalists who are not personally loyal to him.”Lokshina said that in Chechnya, “the concept of freedom of the press does not apply.”“In terms of human rights, Chechnya flouts international law, as well as the Russian constitution. There’s only one law, notoriously known as ‘Ramzan said so,’ ” Lokshina said.Cruel but populist leaderRussian President Vladimir Putin installed Kadyrov, son of assassinated leader Akhmad Kadyrov, as president of Chechnya in 2007. Under his presidency, the region has been relatively stable after two brutal wars, but rights groups have criticized him for serious human rights abuses.Kadyrov is rarely interviewed by Western media. But Gregory Feifer, executive director of the Institute of Current World Affairs in Washington and a former correspondent for RFE/RL, had a chance to interview the leader in 2009.[Editor’s note: Reporter Danila Galperovich, who wrote this story, and Feifer interviewed Kadyrov for RFE/RL in 2009.]“When we recorded the interview with him, not even a month had passed after the murder of Natalya Estemirova, human rights activist. The whole atmosphere of this interview was surreal: after many hours of waiting for the interview, it was scheduled for 2 a.m., and it took place in his huge residence with a personal zoo,” Feifer told VOA.“Kadyrov played pool when we entered his palace and behaved like a frat boy — he sang and cheered himself up with screams. In general, he behaved quite eccentrically, as a person who is slightly out of his mind or prone to emotional outbursts,” Feifer said.He added that Kadyrov demands loyalty from everyone, but also talks about concerns for his people and said in the interview that he had to live in a mansion for security reasons.“Kadyrov is openly cruel, inhuman, and at the same time he is a populist leader. There is much talk that Kadyrov ‘won the Chechen war,’ that he receives money from Moscow, while de facto having real independence from Moscow in exchange for loyalty to Putin. This is partly true, but this is not a problem for Putin. In fact, this is what Putin wants,” Feifer said.However, the more that human rights are violated in Chechnya, the more attention is drawn to Kadyrov from the international community.Since 2013, the U.S. Treasury has imposed sanctions under the Magnitsky Act on Kadyrov and 11 others for human rights violations in the region. The act penalizes human rights abusers by freezing their assets and blocking them from entering or doing business in the U.S.Recently, U.S. lawmakers called on the State Department to remind Middle East countries with ties to Kadyrov that these links could be subject to U.S. sanctions.U.S. Representative Tom Malinowski, who initiated this appeal, told VOA, “The signal to President Putin should be the following: If you act alongside this man, if you use him, then you become an accomplice.”This story originated in the Russian Service of Voice of America. 
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A Pakistan journalist living in exile in Sweden who has been missing since March has been found dead, police said Friday.”His body was found on April 23 in the Fyris river outside Uppsala,” police spokesman Jonas Eronen told AFP.Sajid Hussain, from the troubled southwestern province of Baluchistan, was working part-time as a professor in Uppsala, about 60 kilometers north of Stockholm, when he went missing on March 2.He was also the chief editor of the Baluchistan Times, an online magazine he had set up, in which he wrote about drug trafficking, forced disappearances and a long-running insurgency.”The autopsy has dispelled some of the suspicion that he was the victim of a crime,” Eronen said.The police spokesman added that while a crime could not be completely ruled out, Hussain’s death could equally have been the result of an accident or suicide.”As long as a crime cannot be excluded, there remains the risk that his death is linked to his work as a journalist,” Erik Halkjaer, head of the Swedish branch of Reporters without Borders (RSF), told AFP.According to the RSF, Hussain was last seen getting onto a train for Uppsala in Stockholm.Hussain came to Sweden in 2017 and secured political asylum in 2019.The Pakistan foreign ministry declined to comment when asked about Hussain by AFP.
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In Brazil’s bustling Amazon city of Manaus, so many people have died within days in the coronavirus pandemic that coffins had to be stacked on top of each other in long, hastily dug trenches in a city cemetery. Some despairing relatives reluctantly chose cremation for loved ones to avoid burying them in those common graves. Now, with Brazil emerging as Latin America’s coronavirus epicenter with more than 6,000 deaths, even the coffins are running out in Manaus. The national funeral home association has pleaded for an urgent airlift of coffins from Sao Paulo, 2,700 kilometers (1,700 miles) away, because Manaus has no paved roads connecting it to the rest of the country.  The city of about 2 million people carved from the jungle has been overwhelmed by death in part because it’s the main site where those from remote Amazon communities can get medical services, according to Lourival Panhozzi, president of the Brazilian Association of Funeral Service Providers. As of April 30, Brazil’s Health Ministry said that there were over 5,200 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Amazonas state and 425 deaths, although there are concerns that inadequate testing for the virus has meant that the numbers may be much higher. A funeral worker wearing protection gear prepares a coffin to remove the body of Raimundo Costa do Nascimento, 86, who died at home amid the new coronavirus pandemic in Sao Jorge, Manaus, Brazil, April 30, 2020.Before the outbreak, the city of Manaus, the capital of the state, was recording an average of 20 to 35 deaths a day, according to the mayor. Now, it is recording at least 130 a day, data from the state’s health secretary show. People in the region also have been widely ignoring isolation measures.  There also are signs in the much larger cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo that suggest authorities may not be able to handle a huge increase in the death toll. A field of fresh graves that was dismissed in April by President Jair Bolsonaro as excessive has since been filled.  Latin America’s grimmest scenes occurred last month in Ecuador’s city of Guayaquil, where residents said they had to leave bodies on the street after morgues, cemeteries and funeral homes were overwhelmed. Many in Brazil fear the rising deaths will hit hardest in the favelas, the vast neighborhoods of the poor that are well-known in Rio and Sao Paulo but which also exist in most big Brazilian cities and even in smaller ones. “There is a great fear that uncontrolled contamination will happen there,” said Panhozzi, whose group represents Brazil’s 13,400 private funeral companies. In Rio’s Complexo do Alemao cluster of favelas, the body of Luiz Carlos da Rocha, 36, lay untouched for more than 12 hours Tuesday. Relatives didn’t know why he died but said he had epilepsy. The state’s military police, which normally picks up bodies found outside, no longer does so for nonviolent deaths, said an officer at the scene who would not give his name. He said without elaborating that the policy change was due to the coronavirus. The military police press office did not respond to requests for comment. FILE – Relatives mourn at the site of a mass burial at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery, in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil, April 21, 2020.The next day at Rio’s Hospital Salgado Filho in a lower-middle class neighborhood, Clovis de Castro, whose ailing sister Genina had just died, found himself helping out in the hospital’s morgue. He waited six hours to sort out death certificate paperwork in what he described as a chaotic scene in the morgue, with grieving relatives arriving to identify bodies and only one worker available to move corpses. At one point, he was asked to lend a hand. “I had to help a person to put a body in a coffin,” de Castro said, adding that the experience made him “realize that people need help, the hospital needs help, the country needs help.” De Castro left with a death certificate saying his sister’s cause of death was undetermined. He was angry that no autopsy was conducted that might have confirmed his suspicion she died of COVID-19 or complications from the disease. “Why hide this stuff?” he asked. Sao Paulo director of ambulance services Francis Fuji blamed a recent surge of deaths in homes on coronavirus patients who were discharged from hospitals with mild symptoms, only to have their conditions deteriorate rapidly. FILE – Health professionals hold up photos of people they say were their colleagues who died of COVID-19, as they protest outside “Pronto Socorro 28 de Agosto” Hospital, in Manaus, Brazil, April 27, 2020.Paramedics don’t have the training to identify COVID-19 as a cause of death, he said, and many relatives have lied about their loved ones’ symptoms to avoid the corpses being handled as though they were contagious. “They think that if they get that diagnosis, then their loved one will be removed in a sealed plastic bag, they’ll never see him or her again, and they won’t even have a funeral,” Fuji said. Authorities in Sao Paulo dug hundreds of graves last month in anticipation of a rise in deaths. Bolsonaro has likened the coronavirus to “a little flu” and insists that sweeping state measures to close all but essential business are more damaging than the illness. On April 2, he questioned whether photos by The Associated Press of the new graves were “fake news” or “sensationalism.” By Thursday, all those graves were filled with the dead, as were dozens of other new ones, according to images by the AP photographer who took the original photos and revisited the site on Sao Paulo’s eastern region. Refrigerated trucks to hold overflows of bodies are now seen outside hospitals and cemeteries.  In Manaus early Thursday, Raimundo Costa do Nascimento, 86, died of pneumonia in his home. Funeral workers were so swamped that his relatives had to wait 10 hours for someone to retrieve his body. A week after Panhozzi’s association appealed for the coffins for Manaus, he said the request is still being considered. “That won’t work,” he said. “I need it now.”  
 
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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Friday a ban on assault-style weapons following the slaying of 22 people in the worst mass shooting in the country’s history.In his announcement broadcast on Canadian television, Trudeau said the ban applied to 11 categories of assault rifles and other weapons, saying they “were designed for one purpose and one purpose only:  to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time. There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada.”He said the ban would take effect immediately.The action followed last month’s shooting rampage in Nova Scotia. While government officials said the move had been planned for some time and was not a direct response to that incident, Trudeau mentioned the victims, who included a police officer, in his remarks.“Their families deserve more than thoughts and prayers,” he said, “Canadians deserve more than thoughts and prayers.”Officials said the ban would apply to about 125,000 weapons.
 
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Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Friday the country will have the capacity to test 12,000 people for COVID-19 by the middle of the month.Speaking at her regular coronavirus briefing in Edinburgh, Sturgeon said Scotland had exceeded its target for testing, and currently has the capacity to conduct 8,350 tests per day in its labs.Testing is considered crucial in getting coronavirus under control, as it allows cases to be identified and isolated.Sturgeon also confirmed 40 additional deaths from coronavirus from Thursday to Friday, bringing Scotland’s COVID-19 death toll to 1,515.The first minister also reported that 2,659 patients who had tested positive and been admitted to the hospital have been discharged.  Scotland has reported 11,654 positive cases of the coronavirus. 
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The establishment of one-man rule in the heart of Europe has enraged civil libertarians and Hungary’s opposition leaders, who accuse Viktor Orbán of manipulating the coronavirus pandemic to establish what’s effectively an elective dictatorship. Pressure is mounting on the European Union to take action against Hungary for passing sweeping emergency measures that will allow populist leader Orbán to rule by decree indefinitely. Orbán insists the measure is only temporary. And his foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, told CNN that it was “unfair” to say the rule-by-decree measure amounts to a threat to the country’s democracy. Although there’s no deadline on Orbán’s enhanced authority, he said, the parliament can remove his new powers when the virus subsides.”There are many fake news and lies spread about Hungary based on this new law,” Szijjártó said.  Orbán’s foes doubt his good faith. They say his emergency measure fits into a disturbing pattern from Ankara to Beijing and Caracas to Moscow, with authoritarian-minded leaders using the pandemic to consolidate or expand their power.A man sits on a road in Budapest during a demonstration to protest the Hungarian government and its measures to respond to the novel coronavirus pandemic, April 20, 2020.In Hungary’s case, the emergency coronavirus measure cancels the country’s elections, allows eight-year prison sentences for anyone breaking quarantine and gives Orbán  the power to shut down media outlets that spread what is deemed “fake news.””Parliament can, technically vote to end this extra power,” Umut Korkut, a politics professor at Scotland’s Glasgow Caledonian University wrote in a recent commentary. “But Orbán’s party Fidesz has a two-thirds majority. The Constitutional Court can investigate the legality of any governmental decrees Orbán produces, but again, he has made sure it is packed full of judges chosen by his party. It has been a long time since the court last voted against the government.””The legislation therefore effectively delivers the country to Orbán in full, without any checks and balances,” Korkut wrote.Since Orbán’s re-election in 2010, civil libertarians have denounced him for initiating a concerted erosion of democratic checks and balances. They include curbing judicial independence, politicizing the civil service and interfering in media and civil society.”He moved quickly to consolidate power now because the public health crisis provides the perfect opportunity to take advantage of Hungarians’ sense of vulnerability, fear, and anger,” according to Markos Kounalakis, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank on the campus of Stanford University in California. The Hungarian leader has remained undeterred in his shaping of what he likes to call an “illiberal democracy.” His political message has been that national sovereignty is being undermined by globalization, and nation states and their traditional cultures and lifestyles are being weakened by bankers and Eurocrats.Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seen on a laptop screen in a flat in Budapest as he makes an April 9, 2020, announcement that the government extended the partial curfew for an indefinite time in Budapest.Orbán has at various times cited Russia, Turkey and China as useful models for Hungary and opposed Western sanctions on Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea. The European Commission, which has clashed with Orbán before over rule-of-law issues, said it was monitoring developments in Hungary and may now need to take action against Hungary. A spokesman said the commission was carrying out a ”mapping exercise” of member states to examine whether any laws adopted during the crisis comply with EU and international laws.  ”There is particular concern about the case of Hungary, and I can tell you that we will not hesitate to take further action if this is deemed necessary,” said the spokesman, who requested anonymity to speak frankly at a briefing.Donald Tusk, the former European Council president who now heads the largest political grouping in the European Parliament, the center-right European People’s Party, said it should consider expelling Orbán’s Fidesz party as a member once the coronavirus crisis ends.The Fidesz party was suspended last year from the main pan-European center-right alliance as controversy flared over alleged rule-of-law violations in Hungary.”Making use of the pandemic to build a permanent state of emergency is politically dangerous, and morally unacceptable,” Tusk said. As the vote passed on the emergency legislation, Orbán assured the national assembly: “When this emergency ends, we will give back all powers, without exception.” He added: “Changing our lives is now unavoidable. Everyone has to leave their comfort zone. This law gives the government the power and means to defend Hungary.”But Norbert Röttgen, head of the German Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee and a candidate in the race to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor, also condemned the law, writing on Twitter that it “effectively eliminates opposition” and was a breach of basic principles the EU “cannot accept.”Legally the EU could suspend Hungary’s membership of the bloc until it decides Hungary is in compliance. That would require the backing of all member states, however. The EU could also withhold funding and subsidies, which amount to 6   percent of Hungary’s gross domestic product. That, too, needs unanimous consent.There are doubts whether the commission will act decisively, despite mounting pressure. Last week, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, a center-left political group in the European Parliament, issued a statement saying ”Orbán has crossed all red lines” and that ”Hungary is becoming the first dictatorship in the EU.” The parliament’s president David Sassoli has called for ”swift action.” The commission’s formal response, however, has not gone beyond the rhetorical stage. The threats contain no suggestion of possible economic punishment. Brussels has ducked taking sharp action before against Hungary over rule-of-law breaches.The European Commission is the executive arm of the EU and makes recommendations to the heads of national governments. All EU member states are supposed to observe rule-of-law standards and separation of powers. In 2017, for example, the commission brought a case in the European Court of Justice against Poland over laws that allegedly politicized the judiciary.In the past, Orbán has had the support of like-minded nationalist leaders in neighboring states in Central Europe — although this time they have also expressed disapproval at what they see as an over-reach. Othmar Karas, a lawmaker and member of Austria’s ruling conservative OVP party, which has been supportive of Orbán in the past, told reporters that the emergency measure “puts Orbán on the path” of authoritarianism.But Orbán’s defenders say actions under Hungary’s emergency legislation can be struck down both by parliament and the constitutional court, the country’s top tribunal.John O’Sullivan, a former adviser to Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and the president of the Danube Institute, a pro-Orbán think tank based in the Hungarian capital Budapest, says Orbán’s action is no different from other Western leaders during the coronavirus crisis.Writing in the National Review, the U.S. political magazine, he says: “Macron is already ruling by decree, and both Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel are doing the same in effect, through primary and secondary legislation.”Orbán made his name as a young anti-Communist dissident delivering a fiery anti-Russian speech at the 1989 reburial of Imre Nagy, leader of the Hungarian revolt of 1956 against the Soviet Union. But since the 2008 financial crash he has morphed from a libertarian leader into a populist conservative.Last year, Freedom House, a U.S.-based watchdog group, described Hungary as only “partly free,” the first time in history it withheld the designation “free” from an EU member state. It accused the Fidesz-led government of having “moved to institute policies that hamper the operations of opposition groups, journalists, universities, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) whose perspectives it finds unfavorable.”One punitive step the EU could take, said Renata Uitz of the Comparative Constitutional Law program at the Central European University in Vienna, is to block Hungary from accessing a €861 million fund set up to assist with the pandemic.  ”Conditioning access to EU funds based on member states’ respect for the founding values of the European Union has never been more urgent – and has never been more achievable,” Uitz said. “Otherwise,” she said, “the Union will continue to support a regime that has already demonstrated its commitment to abusing the unlimited emergency powers it arrogated.”
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Well-known Mexican protest singer Oscar Chavez has died at the age of 85, one of the latest casualties of the coronavirus pandemic.Mexico Cultural Secretary Alejandra Frausto confirmed Chavez’s death Thursday, just two days after he was admitted the hospital Tuesday, with symptoms of COVID-19.Frausto posted a tweet which said Chavez was worthy of his life’s journey. She also expressed condolences to his family and those who joined in the campaign for personal rights through songs.Chavez last performed in public in 2019.Mexico has confirmed 19,224 coronavirus cases and 1,859 deaths. 
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Argentinians staged loud protests in Buenos Aires on Thursday evening, banging pots from balconies in a show of opposition to the government’s release of prisoners to slow the spread of the coronavirus.The protests across the capital were promoted by lawmakers critical of the government of President Alberto Fernández.Since Monday, more than 1,000 prisoners have been released in Argentina after Fernández said the government should consider granting house arrest to inmates who are at risk of contracting COVID-19.A week ago, the first confirmed COVID-19 cases inside an Argentine prison included prisoners and guards.Shortly afterwards, local media say prisoners at Devoto prison in Buenos Aires set fires, demanding the release of some prisoners over fears of contracting the coronavirus.Argentina has confirmed at least 4,415 COVID-19 cases and 215 deaths linked to the virus. 
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Street performers in Mexico City marched through the Mexican capital Thursday to showcase their request for the government’s financial help after being sidelined for more than a month by restrictions aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus.The performers dressed as superheroes and clowns made their pitch before a supportive audience as Mexico celebrated Children’s Day.Jose Amado Villegas, a professional clown, made an affectionate appeal for public  support in getting the government to act on their behalf, saying to all the children who did not see clowns in their schools, who did not see clowns in parks, who did not see clowns at the national level, “we are here to give joy to all children.”There was no immediate government response to the street performers’ appeal.Meantime, the performers could be heading into tougher days ahead, with health authorities anticipating the month of May to be the most difficult in the pandemic for Mexico, possibly reducing their chances of resuming their livelihoods.So far, Mexico has reported 19,224 COVID-19 cases and 1,859 deaths. 
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A man armed with an assault rifle was arrested after opening fire outside the Cuban Embassy in Washington early Thursday, his bullets tearing holes into the walls and pillars near the front entrance in what authorities suspect was a hate crime.The gunfire broke out around 2 a.m. outside the embassy in northwest Washington. Metropolitan Police Department officers were called to the scene after neighbors reported hearing gunshots, authorities said. No injuries were reported.Officers found the man, Alexander Alazo, 42, of Aubrey, Texas, armed with an assault rifle, and they and took him into custody without incident, police said.A police report obtained by The Associated Press describes the shooting as a “suspected hate crime” and says Alazo “knowingly discharged multiple rounds from an AK-47 rifle into the Cuban Embassy.” But the report also says Alazo’s motivation is unknown.Officers recovered the rifle, ammunition and a white powdery substance that was found in a small baggie after Alazo’s arrest, according to the report.Alazo was arrested on charges of possessing an unregistered firearm and ammunition, assault with intent to kill and possessing a high-capacity magazine, a U.S. Secret Service spokeswoman said.Alazo remained in custody Thursday. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he had a lawyer.Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that embassy staff members were “safe and protected” but that the shooting caused “material damage” to the building. Photos showed large holes left in the building’s facade near the front door and in pillars outside the building.The Cuban government didn’t know the suspect’s potential motives, the statement said, adding that the State Department was aware of the incident.”It is the obligation of States to adopt appropriate steps to protect the premises of diplomatic missions accredited to their country against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity,” the statement said.Photos from the scene posted to social media showed a group of police officers outside the embassy after the shooting and investigators searching through an SUV parked there. Other images showed investigators surveying the damage in front of the ornate embassy in Washington’s Adams-Morgan neighborhood, including a bullet hole in a window over the front door and damage to a flagpole and a column flanking a statue of Cuban independence hero José Martí.Officers from the Metropolitan Police Department and the Secret Service were investigating. 
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