Month: June 2020

It’s been a frequent Trump administration talking point on the recent spike in COVID-19 infections: Don’t worry, only a small sliver of U.S. counties is at greater risk.
 
In offering this reassurance, Vice President Mike Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar have said that only 3% or 4% of counties in the country are seeing a surge in cases. Focus on the “encouraging signs,” Pence told senators last week.
But they and other administration officials are skirting a key fact: More than 20% of Americans live in those relatively few counties.The White House has repeatedly cited the low county tally, and Pence reaffirmed the point in a televised interview Sunday. He argued that states, not the federal government, should take the lead with reopening guidelines because virus outbreaks are happening in about “4% of all the counties in this country.”  
Azar asserted Friday only 3% of counties represent “hot spots” that are “very concerning.”
The emphasis on a percentage of counties makes for a misleading portrayal of the virus threat.
The White House provided The Associated Press with the full list of U.S. counties that reported increases in COVID-19 cases as of Friday. It showed 137 of the 3,142 counties in the U.S. that were under a higher alert — indeed, about 4% at the time.
But measured by population, those counties represent a vastly higher share — over 1 in 5 people in the U.S.
Altogether there are 68.3 million people living in those 137 counties, while there is a total U.S. population  of 322.9 million. That means 21.1% of U.S. residents actually live in a virus “hot spot.”
In recent weeks, the U.S. has entered a dangerous new phase of the coronavirus with big Sun Belt states showing thousands of new cases a day. Texas and Florida reversed course on parts of their reopening and clamped down on bars last week as the daily number of confirmed infections in the U.S. surged to all-time highs.
Speaking about the coronavirus threat Friday, White House coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx explained that counties large and small are being tracked by the White House task force, and that anyone living in a virus hot spot should take the necessary precautions, including social distancing and wearing a mask.
Citing increases particularly in the under-40 age group, Birx stressed that much more testing is needed because that’s the age group most likely to be infected without showing symptoms and to be “spreading the virus unbeknownst to them.”
The population figures, both county level and national, come from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey five-year estimates for 2018, the latest available.
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Netflix will donate $100 million to financial institutions and organizations that directly support Black communities in the United States, the company announced Tuesday in a blog post.The streaming giant will start its $100 million commitment, consisting of 2% of the company’s cash holdings, with a $35 million contribution.Twenty-five million dollars will be moved to a newly established fund, the Black Economic Development Initiative, which will allocate money to Black financial institutions serving low to moderate-income communities and Black community development corporations in the U.S.Ten million dollars will be allocated to the Hope Credit Union to drive economic opportunity in underserved communities in the Deep South.“We believe bringing more capital to these communities can make a meaningful difference for the people and businesses in them,” the blog post said.To be silent is to be complicit.
Black lives matter.
We have a platform, and we have a duty to our Black members, employees, creators and talent to speak up.
— Netflix (@netflix) May 30, 2020Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, also revealed in early June their plans to donate $120 million toward student scholarships at historically Black colleges and universities.Netflix’s announcement joins the wave of other $100 million commitments by big companies such as Apple, YouTube and Walmart toward racial equity initiatives.“We plan to redirect even more of our cash to Black-led and focused institutions as we grow, and we hope others will do the same,” Netflix said. 
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Better-than-expected economic numbers from China Tuesday helped Asian markets rebound from Monday’s staggering losses.  Tokyo’s Nikkei index gained 1.3% Tuesday, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was up 0.5% and the Shanghai’s Composite index finished 0.7% higher.   The S&P/ASX index in Sydney earned 1.4%, with Seoul’s KOSPI index up 0.7% and the TSEC in Taiwan up 0.6%.  Mumbai’s Sensex was trading 0.5% in late afternoon trading.   China’s monthly survey of factory managers, the purchasing managers index, was 50.9 for June, just above the mark that separates expansion and contraction.  Investors also reacted positively to Monday’s report of a stronger-than-expected U.S. housing market in the face of a rising number of COVID-19 cases across the United States, which led to a strong closing for Wall Street. But the situation is much different in Europe, with the FTSE index in London down one percent, the CAC-40 in Paris down 0.5%, and the DAX index in Frankfurt is trading 0.3% lower.   In oil markets, U.S. crude is selling at $39.32 per barrel, down 0.9% per barrel, while the international standard, Brent crude, is selling at $41.52 per barrel, down 0.4%.   And the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq are all trending negatively, indicating a slow opening on Wall Street Tuesday. 
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Eight Republican lawmakers attended a White House briefing about explosive allegations that Russia secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American troops in Afghanistan — intelligence the White House insisted the president himself had not been fully read in on.  
Members of Congress in both parties called for additional information and consequences for Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, and eight Democrats were to be briefed on the matter Tuesday morning, a day after the Republicans’ briefing. Still, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted Trump had not been briefed on the findings because they hadn’t been verified.  
The White House seemed to be setting an unusually high bar for bringing the information to Trump, since it is rare for intelligence to be confirmed without a shadow of doubt before it is presented to senior government decision-makers. McEnany declined to say why a different standard of confidence in the intelligence applied to briefing lawmakers than bringing the information to the president.
Republicans who were in the briefing Monday expressed alarm about Russia’s activities in Afghanistan.
Rep. Michael McCaul, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger were in the briefing led by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and national security adviser Robert O’Brien. McCaul and Kinzinger said in a statement that lawmakers were told “there is an ongoing review to determine the accuracy of these reports.”
“If the intelligence review process verifies the reports, we strongly encourage the Administration to take swift and serious action to hold the Putin regime accountable,” they said.
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said, “After today’s briefing with senior White House officials, we remain concerned about Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces.”
Senators reviewed classified documents related to the allegations Monday evening. The information they received was not previously known, according to one aide who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
On CNN, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed the timing of the Democratic briefing but said “it’s no substitute for what they owe the Congress of the United States.” She said that “this is as serious as it gets.”
She speculated that Trump wasn’t briefed “because they know it makes him very unhappy, and all roads for him, as you know, lead to Putin. And would he tell Putin what they knew?”
The intelligence assessments came amid Trump’s push to withdraw the U.S. from Afghanistan. They suggested Russia was making overtures to militants as the U.S. and the Taliban held talks to end the long-running war. The assessment was first reported by The New York Times, then confirmed to The Associated Press by American intelligence officials and two others with knowledge of the matter.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn told reporters Monday, “I don’t think it’s should be a surprise to anybody that the Taliban’s been trying to kill Americans and that the Russians have been encouraging that, if not providing means to make that happen.”
He added: “Intelligence committees have been briefed on that for months. so has Nancy Pelosi, so has (Democratic Senate leader) Chuck Schumer. So, this is, this is a more leaks and partisanship.”
While Russian meddling in Afghanistan isn’t new, officials said Russian operatives became more aggressive in their desire to contract with the Taliban and members of the Haqqani Network, a militant group aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan and designated a foreign terrorist organization in 2012.  
The intelligence community has been investigating an April 2019 attack on an American convoy that killed three U.S. Marines after a car rigged with explosives detonated near their armored vehicles as they traveled back to Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military installation in Afghanistan, officials told the AP.  
Three other U.S. service members were wounded in the attack, along with an Afghan contractor. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter. The officials the AP spoke to also said they were looking closely at insider attacks — sometimes called “green-on-blue” attacks — from 2019 to determine if they are also linked to Russian bounties.
One official said the administration discussed several potential responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step.
Intelligence officials told the AP that the White House first became aware of alleged Russian bounties in early 2019 — a year earlier than had been previously reported. The assessments were included in one of Trump’s written daily briefings at the time, and then-national security adviser John Bolton told colleagues he had briefed Trump on the matter. Bolton declined to comment, and the White House did not respond to questions on the matter.  
The intelligence officials and others with knowledge of the matter insisted on anonymity to discuss the highly sensitive matter.
The White House National Security Council wouldn’t confirm the assessments but said the U.S. receives thousands of intelligence reports daily that are subject to strict scrutiny.
Trump’s Democratic general election rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, used an online fundraiser Monday to hammer the president for a “betrayal” of American troops in favor of “an embarrassing campaign of deferring and debasing himself before Putin.”
“I’m disgusted,” Biden told donors, as he recalled his late son Beau’s military service. Families of service members, Biden said, “should never, ever have to worry they’ll face a threat like this: the commander in chief turning a blind eye.”
Asked about the reports on the alleged bounties, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, “These claims are lies.”
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The novel coronavirus is spreading too fast and across too many places in the United States to bring it under control, a top expert said Monday as some states set records for new cases every day.  “We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it’s very discouraging,” Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told The Journal of the American Medical Association.  Dr. Schuchat called the surge in new cases just “the beginning,” and said new cases are not being rapidly identified and isolated with proper contact tracing.  “I think there was a lot of wishful thinking around the country that, hey it’s summer. Everything’s going to be fine. We’re over this and we are not even beginning to be over this. There are a lot of worrisome factors about the last week or so,” she said. A patient returns his testing sample at a self-collection COVID-19 testing site, Monday, June 29, 2020, in Houston. COVID-19 cases continue to surge across Texas.Dr. Schuchat appealed to people to wear masks, practice social distancing and not to expect any kind of relief until there’s a vaccine.  The city of Jacksonville, Florida, where the Republican Party will hold its convention in August, said Monday it will require masks for all public locations.  State officials have also halted alcohol consumption at bars because of what Governor Ron DeSantis called “widespread noncompliance.”        New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday that indoor dining will not resume as planned this week because of the threat of the virus.  The Trump administration has said only 4% of U.S. counties has seen a jump in new coronavirus cases. But according to the Associated Press, more than 20% of the U.S. population lives in those counties. Arizona, California, Florida and Texas are among the states that have seen the biggest spike in new cases.  President Donald Trump, with members of the president’s coronavirus task force, listens as Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC at the White House, Feb. 26, 2020The United States is expected to be on the European Union’s list of countries whose citizens are barred from traveling there because of COVID-19.  Diplomats say Brazil, India and Russia are also expected to be on the list because of their high number of cases.  “This is not an exercise to be nice or unfriendly to other countries, this is an exercise of self-responsibility,” Spain’s foreign minister, Arancha Gonzalez Laya, told Spanish radio.   EU diplomats say the list will be revised every 14 days.  President Donald Trump suspended most European travelers from entering the United States in March.   Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the worst of the coronavirus outbreak is over in Canada but urged citizens to stay alert.  “After a very challenging spring things are continuing to move in the right direction,” Trudeau said Monday. “What the situation we’re seeing in the United States and elsewhere highlights for us is that even as our economy is reopening, we need to make sure we are continuing to remain vigilant.”   Non-essential border crossings between the United States and Canada are set to expire on July 21. But it is unclear how Canada will react if the surge in cases in the United States continues.  Canadian-based Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group filed for bankruptcy protection Monday after the coronavirus pandemic forced it to cancel shows and lay off about 95% of its performers and staff.   In New York, Broadway theaters that first closed in March because of the coronavirus outbreak will now remain shut through the end of the year.   The shutdown has meant temporarily closing 31 plays and musicals, and putting as many as 100,000 actors, musicians, dancers, stagehands, and other theater professionals out of work. 
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Abortion opponents vented their disappointment and fury on Monday after the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision to strike down a Louisiana law that would have curbed abortion access. The ruling delivered a defeat to anti-abortion activists but could intensify interest in the November election among religious conservatives who are a key part of Trump’s base. Some top religious conservative backers of President Donald Trump noted pointedly that both justices he named to the high court dissented from Monday’s decision, portraying it as an argument to ensure Trump has another term in office to potentially tap more conservative nominees.  The Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life and a member of Trump’s Catholic voter outreach effort, said the president’s “two appointees voted the right way” in supporting Louisiana’s ability to require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.  “Once again this ruling underscores the importance of elections,” Pavone said in a statement. “We need a solid pro-life majority on the Supreme Court to uphold the rights of women and the unborn.”  Johnnie Moore, an evangelical adviser to the Trump administration, said the decision could help motivate anti-abortion activists to vote to reelect the president to give him a third chance to put a nominee on the Supreme Court. “Conservatives know they are on the 1-yard line,” Moore tweeted. “Enthusiasm is already unprecedented, evangelical turnout will be too.” FILE – U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts listens as President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address, January 30, 2018. Roberts sided with the majority in Monday’s Supreme Court ruling on abortion but did not sign onto their opinion.The Trump campaign also invoked the decision to appeal to voters in a statement from deputy communications director Ali Pardo. “This case underscores the importance of re-electing President Trump, who has a record of appointing conservative judges, rather than Joe Biden, who will appoint radical, activist judges who will legislate from the courts,” Pardo said. Some right-leaning abortion foes — including at least three congressional Republicans — responded to the decision by criticizing Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush. Roberts concurred with the court’s four more liberal justices while not signing onto their opinion in the case. “Chief Justice Roberts is at it again with his political gamesmanship,” Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tweeted. “This time he has sided with abortion extremists who care more about providing abortion on demand than protecting women’s health.” “Americans hoping for justice for women and unborn babies were let down again today by John Roberts,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said in a statement. “What’s next, Chief Justice Roberts? Our Second Amendment rights?” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, tweeted. But Roberts’ move to stand apart from his more liberal colleagues, contextualizing his vote as one to protect the court’s past precedent, left other religious conservatives vowing to rededicate themselves to their fight to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established abortion rights. Anti-abortion protesters wait outside the Supreme Court for a decision, June 29, 2020. in Washington.”This case was about whether the state has the right to ensure that abortionists who take women’s money also provide for their safety,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a prominent pro-Trump evangelical ally, said in a statement, adding that “I do look forward to the day when the Supreme Court will correct the gross injustice of the Roe v. Wade decision that has led to the killing of tens of millions of unborn babies.” Russell Moore, president of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, defended Louisiana’s abortion law as “placing the most minimal restrictions possible on an abortion industry that insists on laissez-faire for itself and its profits.”  “Nonetheless, we will continue to seek an America where vulnerable persons, including unborn children and their mothers, are seen as precious, not disposable,” said Moore, who leads the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. The chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas, said in a statement that Catholics would “grieve this decision” but would “continue to pray and fight for justice for mothers and children.” O. Carter Snead, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement that Roberts’ positioning in the decision was “cold comfort” on an otherwise “sad day.” Support for rescinding Roe remains strong among evangelical Protestants. Sixty-one percent of them said they wanted to see the court fully overturn the decision in a survey conducted last year by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. That survey found support for overturning Roe at 28% among Catholics and 42% among Protestants generally. The court’s abortion ruling on Monday follows its 6-3 decision earlier this month that found a central provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shields LGBT people from employment discrimination. Religious conservatives also openly lamented that decision, while noting that potential faith-based exemptions could be carved out.  
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The Trump administration says it has locked down nearly the entire supply of one of the only available anti-COVID-19 drugs from the manufacturer for the next several months. That raises questions about access to one of the few treatments available for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, for much of the rest of the world. Remdesivir is the first drug shown to help patients with COVID-19, though its impact is modest. Hospitalized patients given the drug recovered four days faster than those given a placebo. FILE – Vials of the drug remdesivir are seen at a hospital in Germany, April 8, 2020.FILE – Gilead Sciences pharmaceutical company is seen during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in La Verne, California.The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, the drug pricing watchdog, said Gilead’s price is “reasonable,” provided the drug ultimately shows it can save lives.Gilead donated the first 1.5 million doses worldwide. The United States received more than 900,000, according to health news website Stat. “The U.S. was certainly at the front of the line for the donated remdesivir,” said Brook Baker, professor of law at Northeastern University and a senior policy analyst for Health Global Access Project. “Now, we find out that the U.S. is wholly at the front of the line for all the additional half-million doses to be produced between now and basically the end of September.” “There’s no way to explain this than to say, well, somehow between the U.S. government and Gilead, they have collusively agreed that for whatever reason, Americans come first,” he added. Gilead says it is ramping up production and aims to have 2 million treatment courses available by December, up from 190,000 at the end of June.   “We are doing everything we can to accelerate manufacturing timelines and quantities of remdesivir to meet the growing demand for emergency use of the medicine from around the world,” the company said in a statement. The company said it has “multiple manufacturing partners in North America, Europe and Asia” that are “capable of producing large volumes of remdesivir at the fastest pace feasible,” but did not provide details or answer requests for comment.The global pandemic so far has claimed more than 500,000 lives and infected more than 10 million people worldwide, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.  The World Health Organization and a number of public-private partnerships are aiming to make access to COVID-19 countermeasures equitable around the world.The U.S. government has put billions of dollars into research and development of COVID-19 treatments, vaccines and diagnostics.  “Rich countries have more money to spend on research and development,” Baker said. “Does that mean that only rich people get medicine? That’s highly problematic in a moral, ethical sense.”  
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The White House is on the defensive about President Donald Trump not being briefed on reports that a Russian military intelligence unit offered bounties to Taliban militants in Afghanistan to kill U.S. soldiers.  “It was not verified,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Monday when reporters asked why the president was not told of the information. “There were dissenting opinions within the intelligence community,” she added. The White House did conduct a Monday afternoon briefing for eight House Republicans about the matter amid bipartisan calls by members of Congress for transparency.   House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to give the full 435-member House of Representatives a briefing on the issue.  “Congress needs to know what the intelligence community knows about this significant threat to American troops and our allies and what options are available to hold Russia accountable,” Pelosi said in a statement.  
 FILE – House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill, April 12, 2018.In the Senate, the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said he wants all 100 senators briefed by the heads of the CIA and the director of national intelligence.  “We need to know whether or not President Trump was told this information, and if so, when,” Schumer said in a statement.  Trump tweeted Sunday he was not briefed.  FILE – U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks in Washington, March 22, 2020.”Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP,” the president said on Twitter, referencing Vice President Mike Pence.  The New York Times was the first to report that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded months ago that the Russian unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and covert operations in Europe aimed at destabilizing the West, had carried out the mission in Afghanistan last year and that he had been briefed about it in late March.  According to The Washington Post, U.S. forces suffered 28 deaths from 2018 to 2020. An additional number of service members also died in attacks by members of the Afghan security forces, which may have been infiltrated by the Taliban, the newspaper reported.  The intelligence originated with U.S. Special Operations forces in Afghanistan and was verified by the CIA, the Post said.  According to a former National Security Council spokesman, Ned Price, “Only infrequently would the president be briefed on raw, uncorroborated intelligence” but according to the reports that is not the case with this information “gleaned from site exploration in Afghanistan, corroborated by detainee briefings and further corroborated by broader all-source collection and analysis.” Price was among those who provided then-President Barack Obama with his daily intelligence briefing. Price also noted to VOA that various senior administration officials, including Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy for Afghanistan reconciliation, “had staked out positions on how to respond to Russia. If this truly were raw, uncorroborated reporting, there wouldn’t have been high-level policy discussions regarding a response.”  Both Russia and the Taliban deny the reports of the bounties, with the Kremlin calling them “baseless and anonymous accusations.”Reaction from TalibanA spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, rejected the report that the insurgents have “any such relations with any intelligence agency” and called the newspaper report an attempt to defame them.   FILE – Members of a Taliban negotiating team enter the venue hosting U.S.-Taliban talks in the Qatari capital Doha, Aug. 29, 2019.”These kinds of deals with the Russian intelligence agency are baseless — our target killings and assassinations were ongoing in years before, and we did it on our own resources,” he said. “That changed after our deal with the Americans, and their lives are secure, and we don’t attack them.”   Earlier this year, the United States and Taliban signed an “agreement for bringing peace” to Afghanistan after more than 18 years of conflict. The U.S. and NATO allies have agreed to withdraw all troops by next year if the militants uphold the deal.  A former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, Mick Mulroy, terms as disturbing the reports about Moscow paying a bounty to the Taliban, noting Russia is deemed an enemy of the United States in the U.S. national security strategy.   “We do not want a war with Russia and we do not want to start killing each other’s soldier, but there are some actions you can’t accept,” Mulroy, also a former CIA paramilitary officer, and currently an ABC News national security analyst, told VOA. “If we have solid evidence that this is being done and our forces are being killed, the gloves should be hitting the floor.” VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
 
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Police in Seattle say a shooting early Monday in Seattle’s self-declared occupied protest zone in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood has left one man dead and a 14-year-old boy wounded. The Seattle Police Department responded to multiple reports of shots fired at about 3 a.m. near 12th Avenue and Pike Street. Police said callers reported several unidentified people had fired shots into a white Jeep that had been at or near one of the barriers of the protest zone. Susan Gregg, a spokeswoman at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center, reported that one man who was admitted following the shooting had died. Police said the second victim, a 14-year-old male, was hospitalized with gunshot injuries. No suspects have been publicly identified. Police said they were investigating the incident, but while searching the Jeep for evidence discovered that the crime scene had been “disturbed.” Police say this is the second fatal shooting in the area, which has come to be known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, or CHOP. It was established June 8 by demonstrators protesting police brutality and the killing of George Floyd after the Seattle Police Department vacated the East Precinct there. Speaking to reporters at the scene Monday, Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best said, “Enough is enough,” and said it was time for the protesters to leave the area for the sake of public safety. She said the two fatal shootings and multiple injuries over the past week and a half demonstrate the situation is “dangerous and unacceptable.” 
 
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As members of Congress called for an investigation, President Donald Trump said Sunday he was not briefed on reports that a Russian military intelligence unit offered bounties to Taliban militants in Afghanistan to kill U.S. soldiers because U.S. intelligence officials did not deem them credible.“Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP,” Trump said, referencing Vice President Mike Pence.Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP. Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!! https://t.co/cowOmP7T1S
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) FILE – Chair of the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he expects the Trump administration to “take such allegations seriously.”“Imperative Congress get to the bottom of recent media reports that Russian GRU units in Afghanistan have offered to pay the Taliban to kill American soldiers with the goal of pushing America out of the region,” Graham tweeted late Sunday.Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand demanded a congressional investigation into the scope of the bounty program, including who was paid, how much money was involved, and identifying any Americans who were killed as a result.  She also wants to know when Trump and other administration officials learned about it, as well as if any members of Congress were aware of the program.“I believe that when we ask our service members and their families to take risks and make sacrifices for the United States, it is with the understanding that we will do anything we can to mitigate those risks and honor those sacrifices,” Gillibrand said.  “President Trump appears to have utterly failed to uphold his end of the bargain. Through thorough investigation, oversight, and accountability measures, we can still keep ours.”The New York TimesFILE – White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington.White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Sunday the New York Times inaccurately suggested Trump was briefed on the intelligence in the paper’s report.”The United States receives thousands of intelligence reports a day and they are subject to strict scrutiny,” she said. “While the White House does not routinely comment on alleged intelligence or internal deliberations, the CIA director, national security adviser, and the chief of staff can all confirm that neither the president nor the vice president were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence.”Both Russia and the Taliban denied the report of the bounties, with Moscow calling them “baseless and anonymous accusations.” The Russian embassy in Washington said the New York Times report had “already led to direct threats” on the lives of employees at Russian embassies in Washington and London.   A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, rejected the report that the insurgents have “any such relations with any intelligence agency” and called the newspaper report an attempt to defame them. “These kinds of deals with the Russian intelligence agency are baseless — our target killings and assassinations were ongoing in years before, and we did it on our own resources,” he said. “That changed after our deal with the Americans, and their lives are secure, and we don’t attack them.” Earlier this year, the U.S. and the Taliban signed an “agreement for bringing peace” to Afghanistan after more than 18 years of conflict. The U.S. and NATO allies agreed to withdraw all troops by next year if the militants uphold the deal. 
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The Trump administration is set to resume federal executions for the first time in 17 years after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a legal challenge from four convicted murderers.The high court refused to hear the inmates’ argument that federal executions must adhere to the lethal injection protocols used in the states where each is set to be executed.   The decision clears the way for executions of federal inmates to resume as early as July 13.    The four federal inmates scheduled to be executed in July and August were convicted of murdering children decades ago.    The first inmate set for execution, Daniel Lewis Lee was convicted in 1999 of murdering a family of three, including an eight-year-old girl three years earlier.Three other inmates, including two convicted of raping and murdering young girls, are scheduled to be executed later in July and August.The last federal execution in the United States took place in 2003 when Gulf War veteran Louis Jones Jr. was put to death for the kidnapping and murder of a 19-year-old soldier.The Justice Department last year announced plans to execute five federal inmates after the Bureau of Prisons adopted a lethal injection protocol used by several states.   However, legal challenges delayed the executions.In announcing the planned executions earlier this month, Attorney General William Barr, a fervent advocate of capital punishment, said that the government owes it “to the victims of these horrific crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”There are currently 62 federal death-row inmates in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
 
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Communities of color in Boston are disproportionately affected by evictions in the city, with some of the highest rates in Black communities, according to a new report released Sunday.  Seventy percent of market-rate eviction filings occur in neighborhoods where a majority of residents are people of color, though only about half of rental housing is in these neighborhoods, according to three years of data by MIT researchers and a housing justice organization. The problem has only been exasperated by the coronavirus, which saw a spike in eviction filings before the state issued a moratorium in April. Almost 80% of those suspended cases were in communities of color.  “The COVID crisis acts as an accelerator. It exposes the fault lines in our housing system,” said Lisa Owens, the executive director City Life/Vida, whose group helped produce the report. “This is what you get when you don’t address generations of systemic racism.”  The racial disparity in Boston evictions is part of a nationwide trend and mirrors findings in cities across the country and in Washington state. Much of the research has found that the racial composition of a neighborhood is the most important factor in predicting neighborhood eviction rates, even more than poverty and other neighborhood characteristics.   “The Boston study really reflects what we found in Richmond as well as other urban regions in Virginia,” Ben Teresa, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor who has studied eviction rates and co-directs an eviction lab, said. “When we start looking at it in these different places, I’ve seen that race continues to be one of the most, if not the most important, factors in high eviction rates.”  Boston has other characteristics that increase eviction risks especially in communities of color. It has one of the country’s most expensive rental markets, a shortage of affordable housing and a history of segregation and racial discrimination. Neighborhoods, like Roxbury and Dorchester, Mattapan, have some of highest rates of poverty in Boston.  “The results are very troubling,” said Justin Steil, an associate professor of law and urban planning at MIT who authored the report with MIT researcher David Robinson.    “It suggest that above and beyond income, housing cost measures that race continues to play a significant role in evictions,” he said. “We see white supremacy and anti-blackness functioning in the housing markets as well as other areas of social life.”  Housing advocates said the high rates of evictions in these communities only adds the challenges already facing families. Many of those evicted, according to the report, often cannot finding stable housing, are driven into worse neighborhoods and can end up homeless.  To combat evictions in these communities, the report calls for a number of reforms including limits on annual rent increases and expanding legal representation for low-income tenants in housing court — only 8% have legal representation compared to 85% for landlords.  The city of Boston has set aside $8 million in federal funds to help renters affected by the coronavirus and last year came out with a plan to reduce evictions by a third in the next five years and build more affordable housing. It also created a program to provide rental assistance to low-income tenants, including homeless families.  “The City of Boston tracks eviction data every year and the data has clearly shown that evictions rates are higher in affordable housing and neighborhoods of color,” Sheila Dillon, the chief of housing for the city, said in a statement. “The Walsh administration is committed to reducing the number of evictions in Boston and has put forth a plan to guide this work.”    But housing advocates said more needs to be done and they are focusing efforts on a bill that is expected to be introduced Tuesday and would help renters impacted by the coronavirus. It would ban evictions for a year after the moratorium lifts later this summer and freeze rents at pre-coronavirus levels among other things. There is also a separate push for lifting a ban on rent control.    “Legislators that say the care about racial justice, that they say they are on the side of Black Lives Matter, can prove that is true by working for immediate COVID-19 recovery and long-term housing stability,” Owens said.  
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Governments were stepping up testing and warily considering their next moves Monday as the number of newly confirmed coronavirus cases surges in many countries. India reported 20,000 new cases Monday, while the U.S. confirmed more than 40,000 new infections for the third straight day.
As infections rise in the northern hemisphere, many governments are stepping up testing and mulling more aggressive moves such as renewed lockdowns to stem fresh outbreaks.  
India’s 20,000 new infections was a new daily record. Several states reimposed partial or full lockdowns after the total number of cases jumped by nearly 100,000 in one week to 548,318.  
While some states have tightened precautions, in the worst-affected regions of Maharashtra, which includes India’s financial capital, Mumbai, and Delhi, home to the federal capital of New Delhi, most restrictions have been eased, with restaurants, shopping malls and parks reopened, and public buses and shared-ride services back on the roads.
The United States, the worst affected country, reported 42,600 newly confirmed infections as of Saturday, with the total surpassing 2.5 million, or about a quarter of all of the more than 10 million confirmed cases worldwide, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say the actual numbers, both in the U.S. and globally, are likely to be far higher due to the large number of apparently asymptomatic cases and issues with testing.
Beaches were closing and beer was going untapped as Florida, Texas and other states backpedaled on their pandemic reopenings, ordering mandatory use of masks in public places and closing down restaurants and bars in hopes of stemming a resurgence in cases.  
Nearly 8.3 million out of about 21 million have undergone testing in recent weeks in the Chinese capital after an outbreak centered on a wholesale market. The country had 12 new cases Monday, including seven in Beijing, down by more than half from the day before, the National Health Commission reported.
South Korean authorities reported 47 new cases as they struggled to curb outbreaks that have spread from Seoul to other regions.
 
Widespread testing and contact tracing helped South Korea contain its initial outbreak in which it was finding hundreds of new cases a day in late February and early March. Most of those cases were in the area surrounding the city of Daegu, where many were linked to a single church congregation with thousands of members.
Tracing recent transmissions in the Seoul metropolitan area, home to about about half of the country’s 51 million people, has proved to be more difficult.  
South Korean health officials have said they are preparing to implement stronger social distancing measures — including banning all gatherings of more than 10 people, shutting schools, halting professional sports, and restricting operations of non-essential businesses — if the daily increase in infections doubles more than two times in a week.  
Health authorities are using what they describe as a world-first saliva test for the coronavirus in Australia’s second-largest city, Melbourne in the state of Victoria, where the disease is spreading at an alarming rate.
Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said Monday that 75 people had tested positive in the state in the latest 24 hours, bringing the total number to 2,099.
Brett Sutton, Victoria’s chief health officer, said the outbreak could surge out of control as pandemic restrictions ease elsewhere in Australia.
“l think it’s a genuine challenge now. I think we’re right at the edge in terms of being able to manage it,” Sutton said.
In the Philippines, a Southeast Asian coronavirus hotspot with more than 35,000 confirmed infections, local officials were under fire for allowing a street parade and dance during a weekend religious festival to honor St. John the Baptist despite quarantine prohibitions against public gatherings.  
Performers in native wear and face masks danced during the night procession, which drew a large crowd in Basak village on Cebu, in the central Philippines.  
Restrictions have been eased in many places to help salvage the ailing Philippine economy, but Cebu resumed a strict lockdown this month after new cases spiked.  
Some governments are pushing ahead with reopening travel, particularly between countries where outbreaks of the virus appear to be contained, though the changing landscape of the pandemic suggests the process will be complicated and subject to change.  
The European Union is preparing a list of 15 countries whose nationals will be allowed to visit the bloc beginning Wednesday, Spain’s foreign minister, Arancha Gonzalez Laya, told the Cadena SER radio network.  
The resurgence of cases in the U.S. means Americans may not be on that list. Gonzalez Laya said countries will be chosen according to their coronavirus status and the reliability of their data.  
“This is not an exercise to be nice or unfriendly to other countries, this is an exercise of self-responsibility,” she said. She confirmed that Spain will reopen its borders with Portugal despite rising infections there.
 
Travelers at Frankfurt airport, Germany’s biggest and a major intercontinental hub, will be able to get an on-site coronavirus test before jetting off after the airport, German carrier Lufthansa and medical research company Centogene open a walk-in testing center Monday.
Fast-track tests providing results within two to three hours will cost 139 euros ($156). Regular tests with results available within six to twelve hours — recommended for travelers who can get tested the day before departure — cost 59 euros ($52).
Meanwhile, civil aviation authorities in the United Arab Emirates announced they have suspended all flights to Pakistan until a “special laboratory” can be set up to conduct coronavirus tests for people traveling from the country to the UAE.
The UAE’s state-run WAM news agency issued a statement late Sunday from the country’s General Civil Aviation Authority announcing the decision.
Pakistan resumed international travel earlier this month even as critics said the airport precautions were limited and ineffective. Last week, Pakistani media reported 27 passengers traveling from Pakistan arrived in Hong Kong and tested positive for COVID-19. The passengers had transited through the UAE.
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JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI — Mississippi lawmakers voted Sunday to surrender the Confederate battle emblem from their state flag, triggering raucous applause and cheers more than a century after white supremacist legislators adopted the design a generation after the South lost the Civil War.Mississippi’s House and Senate voted in quick succession Sunday afternoon to retire the flag, each chamber drawing broad bipartisan support for the historic decision. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has said he will sign the bill, and the state flag would lose its official status as soon as he signs the measure. He did not immediately signal when the signing would take place.The state had faced mounting pressure to change its flag during the past month amid international protests against racial injustice in the United States. Loud applause erupted as lawmakers hugged each other in the Senate with final passage. Even those on the opposite side of the issue also hugged as an emotional day of debate drew to a close.  A commission would design a new flag that cannot include the Confederate symbol and that must have the words “In God We Trust.” Voters will be asked to approve the new design in the Nov. 3 election. If they reject it, the commission will set a different design using the same guidelines, and that would be sent to voters later.Mississippi has a 38% Black population — and the last state flag that incorporates the emblem that’s widely seen as racist.Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn, who is white, has pushed for five years to change the flag, saying that the Confederate symbol is offensive. The House passed the bill 91-23 Sunday afternoon, and the Senate passed it 37-14 later.”How sweet it is to celebrate this on the Lord’s day,” Gunn said. “Many prayed to Him to bring us to this day. He has answered.”Debate over changing the flag has arisen before, and in recent years an increasing number of cities and all the state’s public universities have taken it down on their own. But the issue has never garnered enough support in the conservative Republican-dominated Legislature or with recent governors.That dynamic changed in a matter of weeks as an extraordinary and diverse coalition of political, business, religious groups and sports leaders pushed to change the flag.At a Black Lives Matter protest outside the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion in early June, thousands cheered as an organizer said the state needs to divorce itself from all Confederate symbols.Religious groups — including the large and influential Mississippi Baptist Convention — said erasing the rebel emblem from the state flag is a moral imperative.Business groups said the banner hinders economic development in one of the poorest states in the nation.In a sports-crazy culture, the biggest blow might have happened when college sports leagues said Mississippi could lose postseason events if it continued flying the Confederate-themed flag. Nearly four dozen of Mississippi’s university athletic directors and coaches came to the Capitol to lobby for change.”We need something that fulfills the purpose of being a state flag and that everybody in the state has a reason to be proud of,” said Mike Leach, football coach at Mississippi State University.Many people who wanted to keep the emblem on the Mississippi flag said they see it as a symbol of heritage.Legislators put the Confederate emblem on the upper left corner of Mississippi flag in 1894, as whites were squelching political power that African Americans gained after the Civil War.The battle emblem is a red field topped by a blue X with 13 white stars. The Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups have waved the rebel flag for decades. Georgia put the battle emblem prominently on its state flag in 1956, during a backlash to the civil rights movement. That state removed the symbol from its banner in 2001.The Mississippi Supreme Court found in 2000 that when the state updated its laws in 1906, portions dealing with the flag were not included. That meant the banner lacked official status. The Democratic governor in 2000, Ronnie Musgrove, appointed a commission to decide the flag’s future. It held hearings across the state that grew ugly as people shouted at each other about the flag.After that, legislators opted not to set a flag design themselves. They put the issue on a 2001 statewide ballot, and people voted to keep the flag. An alternate proposal would have replaced the Confederate corner with a blue field topped by a cluster of white stars representing Mississippi as the 20th state.Democratic state Sen. Derrick Simmons of Greenville, who is African American, said the state deserves a flag that will make all people proud. “Today is a history-making day in the state of Mississippi,” Simmons told colleagues before the Senate voted for passage. “Let’s vote today for the Mississippi of tomorrow.” 
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Coronavirus infections are continuing to surge in the United States.  Not since March has there been a spike like the numbers reported in June. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from Washington on how lawmakers, along with state and federal officials, are reacting to the grim news.
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A month after George Floyd, an African American man, died in police custody in Minnesota, protests against police brutality and for wider racial justice have spread not only across the U.S. but throughout the world. VOA’s Esha Sarai looks at the sustained momentum behind these uprisings.
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Republicans and Democrats have been appealing to older voters, especially those 65 and older, as polls show Democrat Joe Biden is gaining ground against President Donald Trump with this key voting group.The contest for seniors is likely to play out in battleground states with large populations of retired people, such as Florida and Arizona, says Thomas Volgy of the University of Arizona. Volgy, a political scientist, is a former Democratic mayor of Tucson, in a state that Trump won by just under four percent.One in five eligible voters in Arizona is a senior, according to state and federal statistics, and “even more importantly,” said Volgy, “people over 65 tend to turn out in larger numbers than any other group.”That gives them a disproportionate impact here and in other states, and both parties know this.  At a White House roundtable on seniors on June 15, Trump affirmed his “iron-clad commitment” to protecting the nation’s elders.  In late May, he announced a cap on insulin prices, citing seniors as a key group helped by the measure.A leading pro-Biden group called American Bridge has launched a $20 million, 10-week ad campaign aimed at seniors in states that Trump narrowly won four years ago: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
Supporters of President Donald Trump cheer as he arrives on stage to speak to a campaign rally at the BOK Center, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.Polls show an average 10-point overall lead for Biden, who’s now at roughly 50 percent among all demographics in national polling.“When a challenger reaches the 50 percent point,” says analyst Volgy, “losing the election becomes very, very difficult for him. And from all accounts, it looks like Biden has now reached the 50 percent point.”Still, a lot could change in coming months, and the polls in 2016, which put Clinton in the lead, got the election wrong.Both campaigns have learned their lessons from that presidential vote and are now targeting seniors, a crucial demographic in the state-by-state contest that helped propel Trump to victory the last time. 
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Muriel Bowser’s national profile had never been higher, thanks to a Twitter beef with President Donald Trump and a renewed push to turn the nation’s capital into the 51st state. Now Washington’s mayor must pull off a public juggling act as the city budget becomes a battleground for the country’s debate on overhauling law enforcement.   An activist collective led by Black Lives Matter is trying to capitalize on shifting public opinion, and the demands include major cuts in funding for the Metropolitan Police Department. The District of Columbia Council had indicated it would push for up to $15 million in cuts, but Bowser is defending her 2021 budget proposal, which includes a 3.3% increase in police money.   With conservatives painting her as a radical riot-supporter, Bowser must thread this needle with both Black Lives Matter and the White House watching her every move. It’s a similar dilemma to that faced by other urban mayors of protest hot spots who must balance competing pressures without alienating either the activists or the police. In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti has faced criticism for not going far enough on law enforcement changes while the police union has called him “unstable.” In Atlanta, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is dealing with mass police no-shows over her handling of police violence cases.   Bowser is also finding herself one of the public faces of Washington’s quest to be a state. The House of Representatives on Friday, voting largely along party lines, approved a bill to grant statehood. It was the first time a chamber of Congress had approved such a measure.   But there is insurmountable opposition in the GOP-controlled Senate, where Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., singled out Bowser out on Thursday as a reason that Washington cannot be trusted with statehood. He called her “a left wing politician… who frequently takes the side of rioters against law enforcement.”   Cotton lumped Bowser in with the late Marion Barry, a former mayor who was caught on video smoking crack cocaine in a 1990 FBI sting. Barry, who died in 2014, remains a beloved figure in many parts of the district and he emerged from federal prison to serve additional terms as both a mayor and a councilman. A statue of him was erected in front of the D.C. government administration building in 2018.   “Would you trust Mayor Bowser to keep Washington safe if she were given the powers of a governor? Would you trust Marion Barry,” Cotton asked.   Granting the predominantly Democratic city statehood would likely increase the party’s numbers in Congress. And that’s what led Trump to tell The New York Post last month that “DC will never be a state.”   “That’ll never happen unless we have some very, very stupid Republicans around that I don’t think you do,” he said.   In the early days of the protests, Bowser publicly sided with the demonstrators as Trump usurped local authority and called in a massive federal security response. Bowser responded by renaming the protest epicenter, within sight of the White House, as Black Lives Matter Plaza. She also commissioned a mural with Black Lives Matter painted on 16th Street across from the White House in yellow letters large enough to be seen from space.   For Trump and his supporters, Bowser may as well have declared herself a dues-paying member of the movement’s local chapter. But that chapter didn’t feel the same, immediately dismissing it as “a performative distraction” from true policy changes.   “It’s a stunt. It was always a stunt,” said activist Joella Roberts. “We don’t need a street sign to tell us we matter. We’re here in the streets because we already know we matter.”   April Goggans, a core organizer with Black Lives Matter DC, rejected Bowser’s moves as “taking advantage of national attention,” and added, “She would never even say the words ‘Black Lives Matter’ until recently.”   Bowser acknowledged that mistrust even as she ordered the changes.   “Black Lives Matter is very critical of police. They’re critical of me,” Bowser said, not long after hanging the new street sign. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t see them and support the things that will make our community safe.”   The street mural in particular became the subject of a cat-and-mouse game that underscores the complexities of Bowser’s position.   The original mural also bore a yellow outline of the D.C. flag — two horizontal lines topped by three stars. Within days, activists had erased the stars to create the appearance of an equal sign and added their own message, turning the mural into “Black Lives Matter=Defund The Police.”   Clearly not wanting to antagonize the street activists, Bowser’s government has allowed the “Defund the Police” addition to remain. But city crews did repaint the stars on the D.C. flag image.   Now that struggle moves into the district’s decision-making corridors as Bowser finds herself caught between the D.C. Council, street pressure from a resurgent activist community and her own police department.   Relations between the City Council and the police are already fragile thanks to legislation that was quickly and unanimously passed on June 9. It prohibits police from using tear gas or riot gear to break up protests, bans the use of choke-holds, strengthens disciplinary procedures and speeds up the release of body camera footage and names of officers involved in fatal shootings.   Both Bowser and the police chief, Peter Newsham, were critical of the move, saying lawmakers reacted rashly to public pressure and did not consider enough input before passing the measure. A local TV station obtained a recording of Newsham telling fellow officers that the department felt “completely abandoned” by the D.C. Council.   A new showdown is looming over the 2021 budget. Council member Charles Allen, head of the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, said the committee received 15,000 calls, messages and video testimonials before a budget hearing this month — an exponential increase in interest from previous years. A draft report from the committee reportedly includes up to $15 million in proposed cuts to the police budget.   Bowser on Thursday said that she hadn’t read the police funding proposal yet and would wait until the Council formally submitted its proposed changes to her. She insisted that her 3.3% increase — bringing the total police budget up to $533 million — was the correct assessment of what was needed to keep the city safe.   “We sent them the budget that we need,” she said.   Goggans, the local Black Lives Matter organizer, dismissed the budget dispute as a facade, saying that the proposed cuts amount to far less than they seem.  “There’s not a compromise to made on our side. That just can’t happen,” Goggans said. “We’re going to keep putting up a massive amount of pressure and escalating our tactics and intensity.” 
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Twenty-year-old Eileen Huang is an English major at Yale University. Growing up in a Chinese immigrant family in a small town in New Jersey, racism in the United States was a topic she rarely discussed with her parents.    But earlier this month, her open letter, Wally Ng, a member of the Guardian Angels, patrols with other members in Chinatown during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York City, New York, U.S., May 16, 2020.A younger generation of Chinese Americans like Huang has started to talk about racism with their immigrant parents. Huang was one of the first ones who spoke up publicly.   “I really couldn’t get that image out of my mind,” Huang said, referring to Floyd’s death after a police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes. “So I was just moved to write this letter. I really couldn’t stay silent about these protests.”    In her open letter, she expressed her disappointment at the indifference shown by the Chinese community after Floyd’s death and encouraged people to actively understand the history of minorities in the U.S. The letter was signed by more than 20 Chinese and Asian students.   In the letter she wrote: “What has happened to George Floyd has happened to Chinese miners in the 1800s and Vincent Chin, and will continue to happen to us and all minorities unless we let go of our silence, which has never protected us, and never will.”   Vincent Chin was the victim of a racial hate crime in the 1980s. At that time, the auto industry in Detroit, America’s Motor City, was struggling in the face of competition from Japan.    On June 19, 1982, a white father and son killed Chinese American Vincent Chin with a baseball bat in a parking lot, claiming that someone like him had caused the father and son to lose their jobs. In the end, the father and son were fined $3,000 but spent no time in jail.   Huang’s parents came to the U.S. as PhD and master’s students in the early 1990s. At the time, the couple encountered episodes of discrimination, but didn’t show much concern as their top priority was to create a good living environment for their children.   “In fact, we don’t have the knowledge that our children have about the history of Chinese Americans, African Americans in the U.S. We didn’t pay much attention to it,” said Huang’s mother, who didn’t want to reveal her name. “A lot of parents should really look at the history of the country that they emigrated to, some things about society.”   Huang hopes her action in writing the letter will spur a discussion that will help Chinese immigrants to fill that gap. Huang’s open letter received a lot of support but also provoked a heated online debate within the Chinese community. Some argued that Chinese Americans are not as indifferent as Huang described because they also participated in the civil rights movement fighting for equality. Others insisted that differences between African Americans and Chinese Americans — both economically and socially — were due to behavioral differences — arguing that African Americans don’t work as hard.   One of Huang’s supporters — Kalos Chu, a student at Harvard University — argued that such claims are narrow minded.   “As hard-working as Chinese Americans are, I think it would be presumptuous to claim hard work as an exclusively Chinese cultural value,” Chu wrote in a response to Huang’s letter. “I think it would be narrow-minded to think that Black people don’t want to send their kids to good schools, don’t want good lives for their families, or don’t want to be self-reliant as well.”   After Huang’s open letter was published, she and her parents had more conversations about racism, and together they discussed their previous anti-Black sentiments and began to read more to make up for their lack of knowledge.   Not long ago, Huang’s parents joined her and participated in a protest against police violence.  Her father said, “The vast majority of the protesters were peaceful. The protesters were composed of people of all races… The reaction of the mainstream society really surprised me.”   Huang also has started writing articles about social issues in the U.S. including stories about police and the justice system as well as affirmative action. “I just think it’s really important for elders and older generations to hear from the people they’ve raised,” she said.  Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report. 
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A man drove into a distribution center and started shooting at people Saturday, killing an employee and wounding four others before he was killed by police, authorities said.The shooting by the 31-year-old man with a semiautomatic weapon started about 3:30 p.m. at the Walmart distribution center south of Red Bluff, Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston said in a news conference.Tehama County Sheriff’s Office deputies have determined the shooter circled the parking lot four times before crashing into the building and opening fire with a semiautomatic long gun, Johnston said.Red Bluff police officers shot the suspected shooter at the distribution center, the KHSL TV station reported.The suspect has a history with the workplace, Johnston said. The identity of the suspected shooter is being withheld pending notification of relatives.The employee who was killed is Martin Haro-Lozano of Oroville, California, Johnston said.The two dead people and the four injured ones were taken to St. Elizabeth Community Hospital in Red Bluff, spokeswoman Allison Hendrickson told The Associated Press. She declined to provide more details.There also was a fire at the distribution center, authorities said. There were about 200 workers inside the facility, some of whom locked themselves in a room, employees at the center told the KHSL TV station.The suspect was described as being in a white vehicle, The Sacramento Bee reported.The suspect was shot in the chest about 3:45 p.m., dispatchers told the newspaper.Scott Thammakhanty, an employee at the facility’s receiving center, said he heard the shooter fire from a semiautomatic weapon.“It went on and on — I don’t even know how many times he fired,” Thammakhanty said. “I just know it was a lot.”Thammakhanty and others started running for their lives, and he saw people lying on the ground as he went, he said.Fellow employee Franklin Lister, 51, told The New York Times he had just started work when a coworker ran down the hallway shouting: “Active gunfire! Active shooter!”Vince Krick told The Record-Searchlight that his wife and son work at the facility. They weren’t hurt, but Krick was waiting at the distribution center to be reunited with them.“It was real crazy, because, you know, you can’t do nothing,” Krick said.Krick was on the way to pick up his wife when he saw the flames, he said. His wife texted that she was OK, but told him not to come to the front entrance, the newspaper reported.Walmart spokesman Scott Pope told The Record-Searchlight that the company is “aware of the situation” and working with law enforcement.“We don’t have any additional information to share at this time,” Pope said.Red Bluff is a city of about 14,000 people about 210 kilometers north of Sacramento, California.             
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Pilots and test crew members from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing Co aim to kick off a certification test campaign for the 737 MAX on Monday, expected to last at least three days, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.The flight test is a pivotal moment in Boeing’s worst-ever corporate crisis, long since compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic that has slashed air travel and jet demand.The grounding of the fast-selling 737 MAX in March 2019 after crashes killed 346 people in Ethiopia and Indonesia triggered hundreds of lawsuits, investigations by Congress and the Department of Justice and cut off a key source of Boeing’s cash.After a preflight briefing over several hours, the crew will board a 737 MAX 7 outfitted with special test equipment at Boeing Field near Seattle, one of the people said.The crew will run methodically scripted mid-air scenarios such as steep-banking turns, progressing to more extreme maneuvers on a route primarily over Washington state.The flight plan could include touch-and-go landings at the eastern Washington airport in Moses Lake, and a path over the Pacific Ocean coastline, adjusting the course as needed for weather conditions and other factors, one of the people said.Pilots will also intentionally trigger the reprogrammed stall-prevention software known as MCAS faulted in both crashes, and will likely perform a full aerodynamic stall, the people said.The tests are meant to ensure that new protections Boeing added to the MCAS flight control system are robust enough to prevent the scenario pilots encountered in both crash flights, when they were unable to counteract the system and grappled with several factors like “stick shaker” column vibrations and other warnings, one of the people said.Boeing and the FAA declined to comment.Boeing has wrestled for months with painstaking software system upgrades, wiring changes, documentation, and dress rehearsals. That includes hundreds of hours inside a 737 MAX flight simulator at Boeing’s Longacres facility in Renton, Washington, and hundreds of hours in the air on the same 737 MAX 7 test airplane without FAA officials on board.At least one of those practice flights included the same testing parameters expected on Monday, one of the people said.After the flights, FAA officials in Washington and the Seattle-area will analyze reams of digital and paperwork flight test data to assess the jetliners’ airworthiness.Likely weeks later, after the data is analyzed and training protocols are firmed up, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson, a former F-15 fighter pilot who has promised that the 737 MAX will not be approved until he has personally signed off on it, will board the same plane to make his assessments, two of the people said.If all goes well, the FAA would then need to approve new pilot training procedures, among other reviews, and would not likely approve the plane’s ungrounding until September, the people said.That means the jet is on a path to resume U.S. commercial service before year-end, though the process has been plagued by delays for more than a year. 
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A U.S. judge found a Chinese professor guilty of economic espionage, stealing trade secrets and conspiracy following a four-day trial that ended Friday.Hao Zhang, 41, a professor at China’s Tianjin University, was arrested in May 2015 after he landed at Los Angeles International Airport on his way to a conference. Zhang was accused of stealing and selling American secrets to the Chinese government and military through a shell company in the Cayman Islands.According to a statement by the Department of Justice, from 2010 to 2015, Zhang conspired to and did steal trade secrets from two companies: Avago, a global developer of analog and optoelectronics components based in California and Singapore, and Skyworks, his former employer, a leader in analog semiconductor technology based in Massachusetts.U.S. District Judge Edward Davila found Zhang guilty of the three counts after a bench trial in a San Jose, California, courtroom.“Today’s guilty verdict on all counts is an important step in holding accountable an individual who robbed his U.S. employer of trade secrets and sought to replicate the company’s technology and replace its market share,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers in a statement released by the Department of Justice.CrackdownThe case was brought as the United States seeks to crack down on Chinese theft of intellectual property. Beijing has consistently refused to acknowledge any such behavior.In January, acclaimed Harvard scientist Charles Lieber was arrested for lying about ties to China. Lieber, the chair of Harvard ‘s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, was charged with one count of making a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement. Two Chinese nationals were also charged in the case.Zhang went to work for Skyworks after earning his doctorate in electrical engineering in 2006 at the University of Southern California, where he met alleged co-conspirator Wei Pang.Pang went on to work at Avago and, according to prosecutors, both returned to China in 2009 to teach at Tianjin University, a premier technical school. Zhang is still listed in the staff directory of Tianjin University’s School of Precision Instrument and Opto-Electronics Engineering.In September 2011, Zhang and Pang co-founded ROFS Microsystem, whose website says it is “China’s First FBAR (film bulk acoustic resonators) manufacturer.” The company says its main products, filter chips, are widely viewed as the core component in modern wireless communication, 5G, internet and artificial intelligence.The FBAR processes that Zhang and his co-conspirators stole took Avago more than 20 years of research and development to build, according to the DOJ statement.Zhang, who was released on a $500,000 bond, is scheduled to be sentenced on August 31.  He faces up to 15 years in prison for economic espionage and 10 years for theft of trade secrets.
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Since mid-March, a U.S.-based coalition has tracked more than 2,100 anti-Asian hate incidents, a troubling figure that Asian American advocates say is being fueled in part by political rhetoric against China during the coronavirus pandemic.While racial slurs and other forms of verbal harassment constituted the vast majority of the incidents, nearly eight percent involved physical assaults, businesses barring Asian Americans from entering their establishments due to misplaced coronavirus fears, and attackers coughing and spitting on victims, according to STOP AAPI Hate, an anti-Asian hate tracker.
 
In one incident in March, a group of African American teenagers on a commuter rail in San Francisco used their backpacks to attack a mask-wearing Asian American, saying he had COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
 Chinese Americans Confront Racism While Helping Battle COVID-19 Chinese Americans raise funds for medical supplies despite rising racial threats In another occurrence in April, a stranger threw a large rock through the atrium window of a Chinese American family’s house in Santa Rosa, California. The house had Chinese writing along the front door as a blessing for good health and harmony.
 
“These are first-hand accounts where individuals are describing harrowing and traumatizing experiences, including what is being said to them when they’re being attacked,” said Cynthia Choi, co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, one of the coalition partners.Asian Americans have been targeted before during public health crises, as was the case during the 2003 SARS epidemic. The latest wave of anti-Asian hate comes at a time of heightened tensions over the pandemic fueled by the anti-China rhetoric of President Donald Trump and other politicians. Trump, who initially praised China for its handling of the crisis, subsequently blamed China’s leader Xi Jinping for waiting weeks to report the outbreak in Wuhan to the World Health Organization and covering up the severity of the problem.
 
Trump has repeatedly referred to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” and “kung-flu,” terms that Asian American advocates say are derogatory and have exacerbated the scapegoating of Americans of Asian descent.
 
Trump disputes that those and other terms are racist.  White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who several weeks ago criticized the phrase kung-flu as “highly offensive,” and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany both said this week that the president used the term merely to highlight that the virus originated in China.
 
But Asian American leaders say the meaning is not lost on their fast-growing community.
 
“Those are terms meant to be humiliating,” said Gene Wu, a Chinese American Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives.  
 Bill Tung, a Democratic state assemblyman in California, said the rhetoric has had a direct impact on the surge in anti-Asian harassment and hate crimes.  
 
“You see leaders express words that really give license to other people to express those same sentiments and also to act on them,” Tung said.
 
In a recent report examining the link between political rhetoric and anti-Asian bias, STOP AAPI Hate, the Asian American coalition, found that reports of anti-Asian discrimination spiked after Trump repeatedly used the term “Chinese virus.”
 
While the vast majority of the 2,100-plus incidents recorded by STOP AAPI Hate do not rise to the level of a hate crime as defined by statute, more than 100 do, according to legal experts.  
 Asian Celebs Work to Combat Racist Attacks Amid Pandemic The FBI reports there has been an uptick in hate crimes and harassment against Asian Americans since the outbreak of COVID-19, which first appeared in Wuhan, China, late last yearThis surge in anti-Asian hate crime comes at a time when most American cities are reporting an overall decline in other categories of bias attacks, according to Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at the California State University.The FBI defines a hate crime as a criminal offense motivated by bias against the victim’s race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity  
 
California, home to the nation’s largest Asian American population, has been particularly hard hit. In Los Angeles, police recorded 30 anti-Asian hate crimes through April 30, compared to a total of four for all of 2019, according to police data compiled by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
 
In San Francisco, there were five anti-Asian hate crimes through March 31, compared to six for all of last year, according to police data.  
 
Other major cities have reported far fewer cases of anti-Asian hate crimes.  In New York City, police recorded just two incidents through May 17, compared with three for last year. In April, an Asian American woman in Brooklyn, New York, suffered second degree burns after a man poured acid on her.
 Hate Crimes Soar in Major US CitiesJewish community has been most frequent target of hate crimes amid resurgence in anti-Semitism, according the report by Center for the Study of Hate and ExtremismOne of the most horrific anti-Asian hate crimes came in March when a teenager stabbed an Asian American man and his two young children at a supermarket in Midland, Texas.  The suspect reportedly carried out the attack “because he thought the family was Chinese and infecting people with the coronavirus.”“In the cities where anti-Asian hate crimes increased, they increased significantly to the extent that there were almost as much anti-Asian hate crime as we had for all of last year or significantly more,” Levin said.
 
The surge in the crimes has not been limited to the U.S. From Melbourne, Australia, to Vancouver, Canada, Asian American communities have reported a surge in discrimination, harassment and assault.
 
In Vancouver, billed as the “most Asian city outside Asia,” there were 20 anti-Asian hate crimes through April 29, up from 12 for all of last year.  London, another major city with a large Asian population, had 267 anti-Asian attacks, compared with 375 for all of last year.
 
“This is a global pandemic of hate,” said Helen Zia, a prominent Chinese American civil rights activist and author.  
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For a moment, Congress had a chance to act on a policing overhaul, mobilized by a national trauma and overwhelming public support. Those efforts have stalled now and seem unlikely to be revived in an election year.  It’s latest example of how partisanship and polarization on Capitol Hill have hamstrung Congress’ ability to meet the moment and respond meaningfully to public opinion.  Major changes in policing policy appear likely to join gun control and immigration as social issues where even with Americans’ overwhelming support, their elected representatives are unable or unwilling to go along, especially when President Donald Trump is indifferent or opposed.”In this moment, as it was with gun violence and immigration reform, we don’t know where the president really is,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who weeks ago was expressing skepticism weeks ago about a breakthrough. “If this were the first time we were in this situation, I’d be more hopeful,” he said then.  Rep. Karen Bass joined by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other House Democrats spaced for social distancing, speaks during a news conference on the House East Front Steps on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 25, 2020.The bipartisan outcry over the deaths of George Floyd and other Black Americans appeared to be a chance for Congress to reshape its reputation. Polls showed nearly all Americans in a favor of some measure of change to the criminal justice system, and both chambers moved quickly to draft legislation.  There were common elements in the House Democratic proposal and the Senate Republican bill, including a national database of use-of-force incidents by law enforcement and restrictions on police chokeholds. But efforts to bridge the divides bogged down in a predictable fight over process and exposed again how little trust there is between the Senate’s leaders, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.McConnell said Democrats refused to take him at his word that he was willing to negotiate over the final bill, and he pitched a supposedly fair and freewheeling floor debate. Schumer and other Democrats saw little that was genuine in McConnell’s overtures, noting that during his tenure as GOP leader, the sharp-elbowed Kentucky Republican has permitted almost no open floor debate on legislation.  The swift rise and fall of prospects for the police bill showed how lawmakers are often driven more by the views of their parties’ hard-liners than overall public opinion.  “The incentive structure is misaligned for compromise. That’s the reality of it. Members are more likely to be rewarded electorally for representing their base primary voters than for reaching out to voters in the middle,” said Michael Steel, who was a top aide to former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. “The giants of yesteryear are remembered as such because voters rewarded them for successfully legislating. And that just seems to be less and less the case.”Public support for some kind of policing overhaul after Floyd’s death is overwhelming. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll shows 29% of Americans say the criminal justice system needs a complete overhaul, 40% say it needs major changes and 25% say it needs minor changes.Democrats Accuse Attorney General Barr of Political Meddling in US Justice SystemWilliam Barr is the ‘president’s fixer,’ said Jerrold Nadler, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary CommitteeThere are other high-profile examples where public support has been unable to overcome partisanship in Congress — most notably on gun control. An AP-NORC survey from March 2019 found 83% of Americans in favor of a federal law requiring background checks on all potential gun buyers. Trump has also supported the idea.But gun control legislation has gone nowhere in Washington.The parties have also failed to make progress in overhauling immigration laws, despite broad public support. The most overwhelmingly popular measure — granting legal protections to young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children — has gotten caught in the fray, with hundreds of thousands of such “Dreamer” immigrants caught in legal limbo.  This gridlock has been exacerbated by Trump’s reputation on Capitol Hill as an unreliable negotiating partner on major issues. On policing, he spoke generally about supporting legislation but exerted little political capital when the process hit a roadblock.  “To do really hard things you always need a president leaning in and engaged,” said Brendan Buck, a top aide to former Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., during Trump’s first two years in office. “And on the really hard things he has not shown a willingness to get engaged.”The police debate also suffered from the realities of the political calendar. With the Congressional Black Caucus, progressive activists and the civil rights community all calling the Republican bill too weak to be salvaged, some Democrats saw little incentive to give ground now when they might be able to get more if their party has sweeping successes in the November elections, now just over four months away.  “Why cut a bad deal now when you could potentially be in the driver’s seat to write a real bill that effects real change in just a few months?” said Matt House, a former Schumer aide.  Some veteran lawmakers have found ways to navigate the fierce partisanship on Capitol Hill.  GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and the committee’s top Democrat, Patty Murray of Washington, have shepherded a major education policy rewrite and legislation to combat opioids through a McConnell-led Senate. They did so by building sweeping consensus among lawmakers in both parties before committee or floor action.  Murray said in an interview that there was little attempt to do that kind of behind-the-scenes work on policing.”This didn’t even smell like an attempt to get something done,” Murray said. “The feeling that you want to accomplish something, that you want to get something done … is a very different feeling than we saw with policing reform.”
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European Union countries failed to settle on Friday on a final “safe list” of countries whose residents could travel to the bloc from July, with the United States, Brazil and Russia set to be excluded.Ambassadors from the 27 EU members convened from Friday afternoon to establish criteria for granting quarantine-free access from next Wednesday.A redrawn text of 10-20 countries was put to them, but many said they needed to consult first with their governments, diplomats said. The list did not include the United States, Brazil or Russia, one diplomat said.Discussions were continuing overnight, with the EU countries expected to give informal replies by Saturday evening, people familiar with the matter said.U.S. passengers may be allowed to travel if they meet certain conditions such as passing temperature checks, two U.S. officials said.The European Commission had advised that the bloc first lift internal border controls and then gradually open up to outsiders. However, the first step has not gone according to plan.Greece is mandating coronavirus tests for arrivals from a range of EU countries, including France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, with self-isolation until results are known.The Czech Republic has said it will not allow in tourists from Portugal, Sweden and part of Poland.There is broad agreement that the bloc should only open up to those with a similar or better epidemiological situation, but there are questions about how to assess a country’s handling of the epidemic and the reliability of data.A number of countries, such as Tanzania, Turkmenistan and Laos have no reported cases in the past two weeks, according to EU agency, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).Based on ECDC data for the two weeks to Thursday, a range of countries are clearly in a worse situation than the European Union.They include the United States, Mexico, Brazil and much of Latin America, Russia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia.Despite pressure from U.S. airlines and unions, the White House has not committed to mandating fresh air travel safety measures in the wake of the pandemic. Discussions between airlines and government officials including Vice President Mike Pence on Friday over temperature checks ended without an agreement.In a statement, Pence’s office said the parties also discussed “the best path forward for allowing Americans to safely travel internationally again.”The Commission has suggested the western Balkans countries — Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia — should be admitted.However, according to the ECDC data, the number of cases in Bosnia and North Macedonia could be too high. 
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People in the deserts of Arizona flee to the White Mountains when the triple-digit heat is too much to bear, cooling off in the forest a few hours away. That worries a Native American tribe that calls the area home, as coronavirus infections and temperatures have both spiked in one of the hardest-hit states.  The White Mountain Apache Tribe is taking some of the most drastic actions in Arizona to protect its 13,500 residents, more than one-eighth of whom have already tested positive for COVID-19. It’s taking cues from severe measures imposed by other tribes nationwide, including the Navajo Nation, which has curtailed an outbreak that once made it a national hot spot.  Those living on the White Mountain Apache Tribe’s reservation in northeastern Arizona face the risk of fines and other penalties if they venture beyond their own yards this weekend. A two-week shelter-in-place order will follow. The tribe’s Fort Apache Reservation also is closed to the summertime visitors who flock to the area to fish, hike and camp among ponderosa pines.The tribe’s confirmed infections and 20 deaths as of Friday make the reservation one of the hardest-hit places in a state that’s recording over 3,000 cases a day and running short on hospital space.”COVID has just turned our world upside down,” White Mountain Apache Chairwoman Gwendena Lee-Gatewood said.The tribe also is ordering homeless people who test positive for the virus to quarantine at the tribe’s casino-hotel — now closed to visitors — and is banning the sale and use of alcohol for the rest of the year. Lee-Gatewood hopes it will help keep people safe if they get lax about social distancing and other measures when they’re drinking.The tribe’s strict steps come as Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has declined to impose new restrictions on businesses like other states where confirmed cases are surging. Fellow Republican governors in Texas and Florida cracked down on bars Friday.  Ducey, who lifted a stay-at-home order in mid-May, has now paused further efforts to reopen the economy and allowed cities to require face coverings, without bowing to pressure for a statewide mandate.Lee-Gatewood said the White Mountain Apache Tribe took that into consideration, along with the typical summer crowds, when deciding how to target the pandemic on its land.”We’re seeing these visitors not paying attention to social distancing and wearing masks, and the governor had a real relaxed attitude about all of that in reopening the businesses back up,” she said.Elsewhere in Arizona, officials on the Havasupai reservation deep in a gorge off the Grand Canyon warned river rafters they would be detained if they stepped foot on land the tribe traditionally uses but isn’t part of its formal reservation. Known worldwide for its towering blue-green waterfalls, the reservation has been shut down for months and has no reported COVID-19 cases.  “We are left to take aggressive action to maintain the safety of our tribal members and the future of the Havasupai Tribe,” Chairwoman Evangeline Kissoon wrote in a notice to river guides.After talking with Grand Canyon National Park, the tribe said it would station law enforcement at its boundary with the park, miles from the Colorado River shore.The nearby Navajo Nation, the nation’s largest Native American reservation that spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, has attributed a slowdown in infections to a daily curfew it’s had in place for months, a shutdown of government offices and tourist sites, weekend lockdowns and a mask requirement.On tribal land elsewhere, residents of the tiny Alaska Native village of Napaskiak are being advised to stay home until July 5, leaving only for medical needs or quick runs to the grocery store. A health care corporation that serves the village and dozens of other rural communities pointed to a “strong likelihood” of community spread.In Montana, tribal leaders on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation said this week that they closed their boundary with popular Glacier National Park for the tourism season to protect their residents.The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota has kept up roadblocks since March despite criticism from the state’s governor. Tribal Chairman Harold Frazier said this week that the tribe took the step because it realized it had to protect its people.”All we have is ourselves,” he said.In Arizona, the White Mountain Apache Tribe said people can travel on a highway through its land, but they can’t stop along the way. Tribal police also are considering checkpoints, and a COVID-19 testing blitz is planned.”There’s frustration, there’s impatience, there’s a lot of things,” tribal Councilman Jerold Altaha said in a video. “But remember, we are doing the best we can, we are doing everything we can to help you.”They’re looking to prevent more people from dying, like Apache elder Timothy Clawson Sr., 91. He married his sweetheart under a tree on the reservation and spent his life in the White Mountains, working as a rancher and at a sawmill.Lee-Gatewood, the tribal chairwoman, recalled their last conversation. Clawson called earlier this month and said, “Well, chairwoman, I’m at the hospital, and they told me I have this virus. They treated me, and the doctors said I wouldn’t leave here, and I’m calling to say my goodbyes.”Lee-Gatewood said Clawson told her that he was proud of her.”You’re a tough cowboy,” she responded. “I’ll keep you in my prayers.”The next day, Lee-Gatewood got a text from Clawson’s granddaughter: He had died. 
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