| Trump snubs former EPA chief Pruitt in Tulsa visit Posted: 19 Jun 2020 07:58 AM PDT  When President Trump comes to Tulsa on Saturday for his first campaign event since the coronavirus shutdown, one person won't be there: Tulsa's own Scott Pruitt.
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| Bill to remove Confederate statues from Capitol stalled by Missouri's Blunt Posted: 19 Jun 2020 09:59 AM PDT  The legislation proposed by Sen. Cory Booker would have removed 11 statues honoring men who voluntarily served in the Confederacy from the National Statuary Hall Collection.
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| Nebraska governor: Counties requiring masks ineligible for relief money Posted: 19 Jun 2020 09:36 AM PDT  A spokesman for the governor said that if counties "want CARES Act money, they have to be fully open"
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| 'At a loss about what they're supposed to do': Police take on their own kind of protest Posted: 19 Jun 2020 10:17 AM PDT  As the national movement for police reform and racial justice grows, more police push back, saying the public has painted them with too broad a brush.
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| North Korea prepares to send anti-South leaflets across the border Posted: 19 Jun 2020 06:32 PM PDT  North Korea is gearing up to send propaganda leaflets over its southern border, denouncing North Korean defectors and South Korea, its state media said on Saturday, the latest retaliation for leaflets from the South as bilateral tensions rise. Enraged North Korean people across the country "are actively pushing forward with the preparations for launching a large-scale distribution of leaflets", which are piled as high as a mountain, said state news agency KCNA. "Every action should be met with proper reaction and only when one experiences it oneself, one can feel how offending it is," KCNA said. North Korea has blamed North Korean defectors for launching leaflets across the border and threatened military action. On Tuesday, Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean liaison office to show its displeasure against the defectors and South Korea for not stopping them launching leaflets. A North Korean defector-led group said on Friday it had scrapped a plan to send hundreds of plastic bottles stuffed with rice, medicine and face masks to North Korea by throwing them into the sea near the border on Sunday.
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| Media lauds Biden's 'fiery' message to Trump Posted: 19 Jun 2020 08:03 PM PDT  Raymond Arroyo breaks down Joe Biden's confusing campaign messaging during Friday Follies on 'The Ingraham Angle.'
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| Florida reports record-high spike in coronavirus cases and a 'plunging' median age of infection Posted: 19 Jun 2020 12:48 PM PDT  Despite the surge, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he wouldn't issue a statewide order requiring face masks.
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| Turkish court rules Kurdish leader's jailing violated rights Posted: 18 Jun 2020 11:06 PM PDT  Turkey's Constitutional Court has ruled that the lengthy jailing of a former head of Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party violated his rights, a decision published on Friday showed, but he was not expected to be released due to a separate investigation. Selahattin Demirtas, one of Turkey's best known politicians, has been in jail since November 2016 on terrorism-related charges. Prosecutors then launched a new investigation into him and requested his arrest again after the lifting of the previous detention order.
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| The Navy Is Blaming the Captain It Fired for Accurate COVID-19 Warning Posted: 19 Jun 2020 01:48 PM PDT  Navy Capt. Brett Crozier has been vindicated after warning of a dire coronavirus outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt—just not by the Navy, which on Friday announced that it will not reverse Crozier's firing for the infraction of trying to save his sailors' lives. Instead, the Navy leadership implied that Crozier was responsible for the outbreak that he loudly warned he needed urgent help from the Navy to redress."If Capt. Crozier was still in command today, I would be relieving him," the chief of naval operations, Adm. Mike Gilday, said on Friday. Less than two months ago, Gilday recommended reinstating Crozier. A final report into Crozier's firing, released Friday, accused the Roosevelt commander and his team of being "biased by groupthink, emotion and a loss of perspective as to the real risk at hand"—as well as an insufficient appreciation of how the fleet commander was working tirelessly to aid evacuation from the ship, something Crozier had challenged. The report, written by Gilday's second in command, Adm. Robert Burke, levied the extraordinary claim that Crozier's team "took little to no action within their own span of control to improve the crew's safety."The Navy fired Crozier after his Mar. 30 plea to the Navy to evacuate the aircraft carrier's crew for treatment became public. Crozier had implicitly challenged the Pentagon's approach to the pandemic, which had been to continue as much military activity as possible, under the rationale of maintaining readiness. "Sailors do not need to die," Crozier warned in a letter reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. Acting Navy Secretary Resigns After Calling Capt. Crozier 'Stupid'It was a debacle for the Navy. An initial outbreak afflicting around 100 sailors among the 4,000-strong crew ultimately swelled to 1,273 —including Crozier himself. Yet the acting Navy secretary, Thomas Modly, blamed Crozier for being "too naive or too stupid" to believe his letter wouldn't become public, even flying to Guam to admonish the cashiered captain to a disgusted crew. Within days, Modly quit in disgrace amid public outrage over his comments. One sailor aboard the Roosevelt, Aviation Ordnanceman Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker Jr., died from COVID-19.An internal Navy investigation, completed in late April, recommended Crozier's reinstatement. Yet when Defense Secretary Mark Esper was briefed on it, Esper opted to wait until "receiv[ing] a written copy" before "meet[ing] again with Navy leadership to discuss next steps," Pentagon spokesperson Jonathan Rath Hoffman said on Apr. 24. On Friday afternoon, following a broader investigation, Gilday and Modly's successor, Navy Secretary Kenneth J. Braithwaite, implied variously that Crozier was derelict in his own responsibilities to aid the crew—and even painted him as lethargic in his response. Citing a subsequent investigation, Gilday said that Crozier "should have been more decisive" when the afflicted Roosevelt pulled into Guam, particularly in evacuating sailors into spaces the Navy scrambled to secure ashore. Crozier had been alarmed at the insufficient distance between the beds and pressed for individual hotel rooms for the 4,000-strong crew. The report found that Crozier considered the temporary berthing on Guam "worse than the ship." Gilday said that Crozier was seemingly unaware that negotiations with the Guam authorities for the rooms were underway at the time of his letter. Yet Gilday also conceded that when Crozier's superior at the Navy's Pacific Fleet, Adm. John Aquilino, asked the captain what else he needed, Crozier's response was "to move faster on the hotels." Gilday, who insisted "those wheels were well in motion," said Crozier had not prioritized "safety over comfort," resulting in what he called an "almost paralysis" from Crozier – in short, the same infractions Crozier had levied at the Navy. "I was not impressed with the slow egress off the ship, the lack of a plan to do so, the Seventh Fleet commander's demand for a plan that he didn't receive until the day Crozier got relieved," Gilday said. That commander, Rear Adm. Stuart Baker, will not be promoted until a further investigation occurs. Asked how to reconcile the Navy's investigation with the urgency of Crozier's March 30 letter, Gilday said he didn't "have a good answer." Yet he dodged answering whether the new investigation included an interview with Crozier. Footnotes in the report reference a "statement" Crozier gave to the inquiry on May 15. But Gilday said that Crozier was not being punished for his email, the reason Modly had fired him. The Navy chief also said Crozier had done "a bunch of things right." In addition to Crozier and Baker, Gilday said the commander of the carrier's air wing and the Roosevelt's medical offer would receive administrative reprisal. The report even seems to chide the crew for its famous send-off to the fired Crozier: the sailors were "amassing and then cheering and chanting his name with only a small number wearing masks and with no social distancing." For all the Navy's investigations and re-investigations, Gilday also conceded that the Navy still does not know how the novel coronavirus made it to the ship. He said it's "likely" to have happened during an earlier port visit to Vietnam, though Gilday defended the port visit and said none of the officers responsible for that decision—all of whom, unlike Crozier, are admirals—would face reprimand. In a statement, Hoffman said that Esper "believes the investigation to have been thorough and fair and supports the Navy's decisions based on their findings. We are proud of the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt and am glad that they are back at sea in the western Pacific projecting American power."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| WH press secretary says she'll attend Trump's Tulsa rally, but won't wear a mask Posted: 19 Jun 2020 12:06 PM PDT  Health experts warn that Trump's rally, which will pack nearly 20,000 attendees into Tulsa's Bank of Oklahoma Center, represents a perfect storm for the transmission of COVID-19.
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| Europe scrambles to save Iran nuclear deal as Trump insists key part of accord is scrapped Posted: 19 Jun 2020 09:17 AM PDT  Western European diplomats are working on how to save the Iran nuclear accord in a day of important developments on the issue which saw Tehran censured by the UN nuclear watchdog, and the US reiterate its demand that a key part of the deal is scrapped.Foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany - three signatory states to the agreement - met in Berlin to formulate a strategy for the next crucial months with Iran and its nuclear programme under focus.
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| Muhammad Ali's son said his dad wouldn't have supported Black Lives Matter movement or protests over George Floyd's death Posted: 20 Jun 2020 10:44 AM PDT  "It's not just black lives matter, white lives matter, Chinese lives matter, all lives matter, everybody's life matters," Ali Jr. said.
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| Maryland police chief latest to face reckoning amid protests Posted: 19 Jun 2020 01:06 PM PDT  A Maryland police chief resigned this week within hours of a court filing that portrayed his department, one of the state's largest, as an agency poisoned by a racist culture. A complaint cited by the filing said a Prince George's County police sergeant had a personalized license plate with an acronym for a vulgarity directed at President Barack Obama. A lieutenant derided Black Lives Matter protesters in comments quoted in a New York Times article.
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| Mexican president says he ordered last year's release of 'El Chapo's' son Posted: 19 Jun 2020 05:24 PM PDT  The bungled operation was seen as indisputable evidence that criminal gangs hold the upper hand in Culiacán and across broad swaths of Mexico.
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| 'Stay away': Black Tulsans urge Pence not to visit historic Greenwood neighborhood Posted: 20 Jun 2020 02:29 PM PDT  "They're using this to promote a message that they just don't believe," said one Greenwood resident.
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| Factbox: China's new national security proposals for Hong Kong riddled with uncertainty Posted: 19 Jun 2020 01:29 AM PDT  China's plans to impose new national security laws on Hong Kong are raising widespread fears the legislation could lead to profound changes in the former British colony. WILL MAINLAND CHINA'S POWERFUL SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES BE ABLE TO TAKE ENFORCEMENT ACTION IN THE CITY? The initial resolution of the National People's Congress raises the prospect that officers from such agencies could be based in the city for the first time if needed on national security cases.
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| Police die enforcing Latin America's strictest lockdown as Peru's futile strategy unravels Posted: 19 Jun 2020 01:10 AM PDT  When Peru introduced one of Latin America's strictest lockdowns, national police brigadier David Rodriguez was sent to the streets of Lima to enforce the new guidelines. Just one month later the 55 year-old was struggling to breathe in the police clinic, pleading desperately on social media to be moved to an intensive care unit and for more oxygen. He died shortly after. "They're the ones sent out to protect others from the virus and they end up infected themselves," his daughter Krystell Rodriguez told The Telegraph. According to the country's interior minister, nearly 10,000 police officers have contracted Covid-19 on duty in the country and 170 have died. The numbers not only present a grim picture of Peru's futile fight against Covid-19, but also the tragedy at the heart of the surging crisis in Latin America, the global epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic.
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| Citing 'problems' receiving a ballot, Trump campaign manager acknowledges he didn't vote in '16 Posted: 19 Jun 2020 11:05 PM PDT  Parscale, then a Texas resident, oversaw Trump's digital operation in 2016 and became the campaign manager in 2018.
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| Rayshard Brooks' Final Hour Was a Jarring Panorama of Policing Posted: 19 Jun 2020 05:13 AM PDT  ATLANTA -- From beginning to end, the encounter between Rayshard Brooks and two Atlanta police officers lasted 41 minutes and 17 seconds. For the first 40 minutes, it looked like a textbook example of policing.The officers treated Brooks, 27, with respect. They were cordial as they asked about his night and how much he had had to drink. They calmly guided him through a series of sobriety tests.Then things went dangerously awry, and Brooks became yet another African American man to die at the hands of police.The encounter -- veering from calm to fatal and captured on video from multiple angles -- has become the subject of intense scrutiny. There is vigorous debate over a host of decisions, big and small, that the two officers made last Friday night in a Wendy's parking lot, where Brooks had fallen asleep in the driver's seat in the drive-thru lane."It's at the point where the officer places his hands on him that things go south in a fraction of a second," said Kalfani Ture, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Quinnipiac University who said he had viewed the video footage more than three dozen times. "So you have to pay attention to the minutiae of details -- you have to try to understand decision-making, but you also have to pick out best practices."Understanding what went wrong, he said, is a crucial step in helping police do their jobs better and ease tensions with communities of color.As the officers moved to arrest Brooks, whose Breathalyzer test registered a .108, above the legal limit to drive in Georgia, he bolted from their grasp, hit an officer, grabbed the other's Taser, fired it and took off running.Officer Garrett Rolfe discharged his own Taser and reached for his 9-millimeter Glock handgun as Brooks turned and discharged the stolen Taser again. Rolfe fired, striking Brooks twice in the back.Brooks was 18 feet and 3 inches away when the first shot was fired. Prosecutors said that as Brooks lay dying, Rolfe kicked his bleeding body, and the other officer, Devin Brosnan, stood on his shoulder. Neither offered medical assistance for more than two minutes, prosecutors said.On Wednesday, the Fulton County district attorney, Paul L. Howard Jr., charged Rolfe, who had been fired from the Atlanta Police Department, with 11 criminal counts, including murder and aggravated assault. Brosnan, who is on administrative duty, was charged with three counts, including aggravated assault and violations of oath.The decision to file charges came five days after the fatal encounter, which has led to the resignation of the city's police chief and the mayor's announcement of a series of measures to overhaul how and when police officers use force. The shooting came amid nationwide protests over police brutality and systemic racism that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.President Donald Trump weighed in briefly this week, telling Sean Hannity of Fox News that people should not resist police officers. He also said he hoped Rolfe "gets a fair shake because police have not been treated fairly in our country."Some observers have said the shooting death of Brooks could have been avoided if the two officers, who are white, had declined to arrest him. According to the footage from Brosnan's body camera, Brooks maintained that he had not had more than two drinks that night.But he also made a suggestion: "I can just go home."It seemed like a simple request. "Why didn't they just let him go home?" Brooks' father, Larry Barbine, asked in an interview with The Toledo Blade.Ture, a former law enforcement officer, said he likely would have written a citation but not taken Brooks to jail, particularly given the presence of the coronavirus in many detention facilities."I'd have said, 'Mr. Brooks, I'll offer you a ride wherever you want to go, however, I'm going to take your vehicle keys,' " Ture said. "If I was so concerned I might even tow the vehicle. But I might not even take Mr. Brooks to jail."But other experts said that for decades, police have been told that society wants law enforcement to take a zero-tolerance approach to drunken driving, the No. 1 cause of death on U.S. roadways."Like with so many other social problems, we put officers at the forefront of dealing with DUI," said Seth Stoughton, a former police officer who teaches law at the University of South Carolina. "So it should be no surprise that officers arrest someone for DUI. That's what we've been telling them to do for a long time."Vince Champion, southeast regional director for the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, the Atlanta police union, said there were limits to an officer's discretion.Champion said he once let an inebriated driver walk home a short distance and the man was struck and killed. His supervisor, who had approved the move, was demoted, he said. Such episodes can lead to lawsuits."We've had to go away from trying to be nice," he said.After Brooks went through a field sobriety test and the Breathalyzer test -- both of which came after he was unable to identify which county he was in and gave a seemingly implausible explanation about how he had arrived at the Wendy's -- Rolfe decided to arrest him."All right, I think you've had too much to drink," he said, moving to cuff Brooks, according to the video footage. "Put your hands behind your back for me."In his news conference announcing the criminal charges against the officers, Howard said they had violated the Police Department's policy because Brooks "was never informed he was under arrest for driving under the influence."Verbally notifying people that they are about to be arrested accomplishes multiple goals, experts say. It is a way to show respect and courtesy, which increases public confidence in police. And it is also tactical -- it helps slow the interaction down to eliminate surprises.When people are not told what to expect -- particularly intoxicated people -- they can react in ways that an officer might misinterpret as resisting, when in fact the person is simply startled."In many situations, officers should tell someone what is happening because you don't want the person to react in surprise and the officers to take that surprise as resistance," Stoughton said.When Brooks lurched away from the two officers as they moved to cuff him, they hung on, and the three fell into a heap on the pavement, fighting and struggling.Video footage shows Brooks seizing a Taser from Brosnan and striking Rolfe. In a statement this week, the lawyers representing Brosnan said Brooks used the Taser on their client around this point.After a few moments, Brooks broke free of the officers. As Brooks ran away, Rolfe fired a Taser at him, a violation of department rules that prohibit firing at a fleeing suspect, prosecutors said.Seconds later, mid-stride, Brooks turned and fired the Taser at Rolfe, who was close on his heels.Three gunshots can be heard, and Brooks falls.Howard said that Rolfe, before opening fire, must have known that the Taser that Brooks had taken had already been fired twice -- and that this model of Taser was only capable of two shots.Several policing experts agreed that Rolfe should have known that Brooks was not a deadly threat, but for other reasons.Brooks was running, and it seemed like escaping the situation was his only goal, some experts said. And although Georgia officers are taught that Tasers are a deadly threat because they can disable officers long enough for their guns to be seized, that threat is diminished when a second officer is present as backup.Use of force should be proportional to the threat, the experts said.But whether the officer should have known how many times the Taser had been fired -- or could have reacted quickly enough to that knowledge -- was a separate question."That's a high expectation in the middle of a fight, that an officer is going to know every single fact that we get to see after the fact with an analysis of the video," said Roberto Villaseñor, a former police chief in Tucson, Arizona, and a member of former President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing."There's a lot of things that occur in a dramatic, volatile situation that you might not be aware of," he continued. "You have adrenaline pumping; you've got fear working; you've got the fight-or-flight syndrome going on -- you've got a lot of things that are affecting your perceptions."Noah H. Pines, a lawyer for Rolfe, said in a statement this week that the shooting was justified and that the responsibility was squarely at Brooks' feet."When Mr. Brooks chose to attack two officers, to disarm one of them," Pines said in the statement, "he took their lives, and his own, into his hands. He took the risk that their justified response might be a deadly one."But on CNN on Monday, Stacey Abrams, Georgia's former Democratic candidate for governor, called it "murder.""At no point did he present a danger that warranted his death," she said of Brooks. "And that's what we're talking about. A murder because a man made a mistake, not a mistake that would have cost the police officer his life but a mistake that was caused out of some form of dehumanization of Rayshard Brooks."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Man shouts 'All Lives Matter' at Brooklyn barista in one man 'protest' over poster Posted: 19 Jun 2020 10:25 AM PDT  A man was caught on camera staging a one man All Lives Matter "protest" outside a coffee shop on Friday over a Black Lives Matter sign displayed in their window.Abraham "Avrumy" Knofler was filmed by a bystander outside Burly Coffee in the Bed-Stuy neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York City, on Thursday where he can be heard telling a barista that he was offended by the sign and chanting "All Lives Matter".
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| Navy upholds firing of carrier captain in virus outbreak Posted: 19 Jun 2020 09:36 PM PDT  The two senior commanders on a coronavirus-stricken aircraft carrier didn't "do enough, soon enough," to stem the outbreak, the top U.S. Navy officer said Friday, a stunning reversal that upheld the firing of the ship's captain who had pleaded for faster action to protect the crew. Capt. Brett E. Crozier and Rear Adm. Stuart Baker, commander of the carrier strike group, made serious errors in judgment as they tried to work through an outbreak that sidelined the USS Theodore Roosevelt in Guam for 10 weeks, said Adm. Mike Gilday, the chief of naval operations. The Crozier decision was a surprise since Gilday had recommended that the captain be restored to his command less than two months ago after an initial inquiry.
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| Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, BLM co-founder and other Black leaders on what Juneteenth 2020 means Posted: 19 Jun 2020 11:34 AM PDT  Black leaders explain what Juneteenth means to them amid protests against police brutality.
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| Meet All the Weapons Kim Jong-Un Wishes He Could Get His Hands On Posted: 19 Jun 2020 12:09 PM PDT  Thankfully sanctions will make it harder for him.
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| Mexican anti-discrimination agency chief resigns after censure by president Posted: 19 Jun 2020 10:20 AM PDT  The head of the Mexican government's anti-discrimination agency quit after criticism by President Andres Lopez Manuel Obrador, who on Friday said he would likely appoint an indigenous person in her place. Lopez Obrador chastised National Council for Preventing Discrimination chief Monica Maccise because it organized a "classism and racism in Mexico" event on Wednesday and invited a comedian the president and his wife consider racist. "I think that this event should not have been convened and those who do not share the transformation policy that is being carried out (by the government), in complete freedom can decide not to work for this government," Lopez Obrador said in his morning press conference on Friday.
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| Woman Charged With Burning Philadelphia Police Cars Must Remain In Jail Until Trial Posted: 19 Jun 2020 02:23 PM PDT  Lore Elisabeth Blumenthal is charged with arson.
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| Trump distances himself from Geoffrey Berman firing after AG Barr says president was behind decision Posted: 20 Jun 2020 04:31 PM PDT  But now Trump is distancing himself from the firing of Geoffrey Berman after Attorney General Barr said the president was behind the decision.
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| North Carolina protesters tear down Confederate statue and hang it by the neck from a post Posted: 19 Jun 2020 07:54 PM PDT  Protesters in North Carolina's capital pulled down parts of a Confederate monument Friday on night and hanged one of the toppled statues from a light post. Demonstrators used a strap to pull down two statues of Confederate soldiers that were part of a larger obelisk near the state capitol in downtown Raleigh, news outlets reported. Police officers earlier in the evening had foiled the protesters' previous attempt to use ropes to topple the statues. But after the officers cleared the area, protesters mounted the obelisk and were able to take down the statues. They then dragged the statues down a street and used a rope to hang one of the figures by its neck from a light post. The other statue was dragged to the Wake County courthouse, according to the News & Observer.
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| 6 Trump campaign staffers in Tulsa test positive for COVID-19 Posted: 20 Jun 2020 11:50 AM PDT  The campaign said the staffers were immediately quarantined and will have no contact with rally attendees.
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| EU extends Russian sanctions over Ukraine: Merkel Posted: 19 Jun 2020 06:34 AM PDT  The European Union has agreed to extend punishing sanctions against Russia over the conflict in Ukraine by six months, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday. The measures over Russia's role in the conflict were first imposed after Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine in 2014 and have been renewed every six months ever since. Germany and France have repeatedly sought to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.
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| India-China Himalayan standoff deadly for cashmere herds Posted: 18 Jun 2020 11:15 PM PDT  Antagonisms between Indian and Chinese troops high in the Himalayas are taking a dire toll on traditional goat herds that supply the world's finest, most expensive cashmere. This week, a deadly brawl between Indian and Chinese soldiers caused the deaths of at least 20 Indian soldiers in the Galwan Valley, an achingly beautiful landscape that is part of a border region that has been disputed for decades because of its strategic importance as the world's highest landing ground. The months-long military standoff between the Asian giants is hurting local communities due to the loss of tens of thousands of Himalayan goat kids died because they couldn't reach traditional winter grazing lands, officials and residents said.
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| 'Into The Wild' bus removed from Alaska wilderness Posted: 19 Jun 2020 02:24 AM PDT  Tourists hiking to the remote area to visit the bus were getting into difficulties, officials said.
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| In Cuba, families fear shortages will worsen as coronavirus affects the economy Posted: 19 Jun 2020 12:11 PM PDT  "We cannot choose. We buy whatever appears in the stores," said one Havana resident.
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| Leader of London BLM protests demands meeting with Johnson Posted: 20 Jun 2020 07:05 AM PDT  A leader of Black Lives Matter protests in London demanded a meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday and called on him to replace a political adviser chosen to lead a new commission on racial inequality. "I have been here every day, I am the person that leads 20,000 people every protest," Imarn Ayton, a 29-year-old actress, told Reuters as BLM demonstrators gathered in Hyde Park before their latest march.
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| Tulsa Can’t Opt Out of Trump’s Massive Coronavirus Gamble Posted: 19 Jun 2020 01:24 AM PDT  Amid weeks of civil unrest following the police killing of George Floyd, Oklahoma state Representative Regina Goodwin witnessed a disturbing sight on Wednesday: masses of Donald Trump supporters—some in Confederate gear—lining up blocks from the site of the 1921 race massacre on "Black Wall Street" in Tulsa.Some of the assembled fans, determined to attend the president's first campaign rally in months, sang pro-Trump anthems and told local reporters they set up tents in order to ensure they got good seats inside the nearly 20,000-person arena. After all, it promised to be the largest indoor public gathering in the country since COVID-19 sent a shockwave of lockdowns and quarantines throughout the world."The point is to rally his base, and they are out there on this sidewalk wanting to be the first in line," Goodwin, who serves as chair of the Oklahoma Legislative Black Caucus, told The Daily Beast. "I've seen people out there sleeping with the Confederate flag symbol. Because of the racist elements that he attracts, you're adding fuel to the fire of the racial tensions in Tulsa."But that's not the only problem facing Goodwin's constituents. The state's COVID-19 numbers are "continuing to climb and climb and climb," as she put it, and the rally is likely to be populated by uniquely COVID-19-skeptical hordes amid a surging pandemic that has hit communities of color with horrific force.The Race Massacre Trump Ignored Because America Tries to Hide Its SinsAs of Thursday, Oklahoma had 8,904 cumulative cases of the virus, which had caused 364 deaths. Compared to other states, those numbers were relatively low. But compared to Oklahoma's previous numbers, they amounted to an ominous trend. Authorities reported new record-high case counts in the state at large—and in Tulsa specifically—in recent days. In fact, at least one recent cluster made national news when it forced a 1,600-employee factory for home appliances manufacturer Whirlpool to temporarily shutter. Adding to the concern on Thursday, local authorities reported that a technical error would delay its COVID-19 reporting numbers.Gov. Kevin Stitt reopened Oklahoma's economy on June 1, and Dr. Bruce Dart, the executive director of the Tulsa County Health Department, told The Daily Beast last week that an increasing number of residents have stopped wearing masks or staying home due to "quarantine fatigue." "The state was open too soon and this was predicted, and that's what we're getting," said Goodwin. A plethora of scientific studies and media reports have shown the Black community is being hit disproportionately hard by COVID-19. Meanwhile, many Black Tulsans work in Greenwood, the setting of the 1921 massacre where roughly 300 people were killed, 35 city blocks were burned, more than 800 people injured, and 10,000 Black Tulsans were left without homes. The fact that the neighborhood is mere blocks away from the setting of the rally, which was initially scheduled on Juneteenth—the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the end of slavery in the country—has not escaped anyone's attention. Nor have the epidemiological risks.Local public health authorities all the way up to the top infectious disease experts in the country have sounded the alarm in recent weeks over the risks of Trump's rally. Even the typically party-line hosts of Fox and Friends appeared nervous about it on Thursday morning.Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the public face of the nation's coronavirus response, told The Daily Beast earlier this week that he would not personally be willing to attend the event since he's "in a high-risk category.""Of course not," Fauci said, noting that a good rule of thumb is that "outside is better than inside, no crowd is better than crowd" and "crowd is better than big crowd."Days earlier, Dart, the executive director of the Tulsa County Health Department, urged people not to attend and told The Daily Beast he asked Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum to "postpone the event until it's safe for large crowds to gather indoors." Mayor Bynum's office only responded to a request for comment this week from The Daily Beast by noting that he was "not available," though the event appears to be within the city's control. The arena hosting the rally, the BOK Center, has been closed since March "out of an abundance of caution," according to its official website. And the City of Tulsa website declares that it must grant a permit for any event at the facility, though Bynum has said he did not know about it until after a permit was already given."I'm not positive that everything is safe," Bynum said on Wednesday.Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and an expert on U.S. readiness for pandemics, called the rally "unconscionable"—especially in a state where he described the COVID-19 situation as "not exactly stable.""It's likely that an event like this, at this particular moment, is going to be a super-spreader event," said Redlener, painting a portrait where even one infected attendee could transmit the virus to dozens, who could in turn infect their friends, families, and coworkers. Deadly clusters started by just one asymptomatic or presymptomatic person have been documented all over the country in recent months, in Arkansas, in Chicago, in Washington state, and in New York. In many of those cases, all appropriate precautions were followed, and people still died.To that end, the BOK Center, which is hosting the event, has reportedly hired a private firm to conduct temperature tests, while event staff will pass out masks and hand sanitizer. But attendees will not be required to wear masks—and given the president's own behavior and the cascading culture wars over mask use, it's fair to wonder how many people would willingly oblige.Redlener noted attendance at all is still a gamble, even with protections, and a significant number of people will likely be forced to work at Trump's event."What if just one person dies who had nothing to do with the rally?" asked Redlener. "Is that worth it? It's a very cold calculus that they are taking, and I would do everything in my power if I was a public official to put an end to it."To be clear, like Fauci, the Republican mayor has said he would not be willing to personally attend the rally—but would greet the president beforehand. But in addition to the nearly 20,000 people who can fit inside the BOK Center, an overflow audience is reportedly set to be held in the nearby Cox Business Convention Center, according to The Tulsa World. Trump said this week that more than one million people had requested tickets, though that had not been verified. While at least 100,000 people were expected to attend the related events, it was not yet clear on Thursday how many people would be attending the overflow rally.The Tulsa County Public Health Department declined a request for an interview with The Daily Beast this week but provided the agency's public health recommendations, which note that "any large gathering of people in enclosed spaces where social distancing is difficult to maintain" is cause for concern, and urge residents to avoid such events and to continue to wear masks and practice diligent hand hygiene.Despite the apparent consensus from bipartisan lawmakers, doctors, and public health experts—and an unwillingness from even the city's mayor to attend the dangerous event—the community's best shot at preventing the rally was, for better or worse, in court.Lawyers Clark Brewster and Paul DeMuro filed a writ on Wednesday morning on behalf of four plaintiffs—Greenwood District Limited, the general partners of the neighborhood's Chamber of Commerce, in addition to the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation and two immune-compromised Tulsans—to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, seeking an injunction against the companies holding the rally.The BOK Center is owned by the city and managed by a firm called ASM Global. Doug Thornton, executive vice president for Arena, Stadia and Theaters at ASM Global, said during a Thursday special meeting of the Tulsa Public Facilities Authority that the company was "told at the time by city officials there were no concerns from a public safety standpoint," according to The Tulsa World. A spokesman for the company did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast last week, and voicemails left on Thursday were not immediately returned.The underlying lawsuit was initially filed in Tulsa County District Court, where the petition was denied after a set of COVID-19 cases among workers at the courthouse led to new protective measures, Brewster told The Daily Beast. The suit seeks to force BOK Center management to abide by safety protocols amid the pandemic, including temperature screenings, social distancing, limited seating capacity, and attorneys' fees and costs, The World first reported.Brewster said that he and his co-counsel were set for a Thursday afternoon hearing and were told to expect a ruling on Friday."As a lawyer I would strongly defend [Trump's] right to have that assemblage and the right of free speech for his supporters," Brewster told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. "The problem is that Tulsa has had a sharp escalation in infections. It looks like a hockey stick.""You can't even have a jury trial right now, and this event is going to pack in up to 20,000 people inside the convention center," said Brewster.In an apparent acknowledgement of the rally's danger, the Trump campaign made national headlines in recent weeks after it required people to sign a waiver assuming "all risks related to exposure to COVID-19" and agreeing not to hold the president or the arena responsible for any "illness or injury" before entering the BOK Center. "Nothing prevents them from infecting the rest of us," as Goodwin pointed out. "That doesn't protect those of us who don't want to be infected." "We don't have any waivers that we're obliged to sign," she added.As Brewster put it: "Even if you wanted to attend it and signed a release, that doesn't mean you aren't going to take it to the nursing home where you work.""They're going to hand out masks and hand sanitizer, but we have a reasonable expectation that people in attendance will not be wearing masks," he added. "This isn't about politics. It wouldn't make a difference if this was a Garth Brooks concert. I'd be filing the same injunction."What does make a difference is the cultural moment in which this potentially deadly experiment is taking place.As Goodwin put it, "You've got the COVID-19 virus and the virus of racism, and somehow there seems to be a collision of the two in Tulsa."Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| China Returns Ten Captured Soldiers as Indian Military Weighs Response to Border Clash Posted: 19 Jun 2020 10:32 AM PDT  China returned ten captured soldiers to India on Friday following deadly clashes between the two nations' militaries in the Himalayan border region, the Wall Street Journal reported.Two senior Indian officials told the Journal that China had released the captured soldiers unharmed, although the Indian military refused to publicly confirm or deny the action. India's defense establishment is reportedly weighing a response to the clashes in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed, although such a move has not yet been approved."Nobody is talking of a full-blown war or conflict but China needs to be unequivocally told that India is not a pushover, militarily or otherwise," a source told the Times of India. "It cannot keep on unilaterally changing the status quo in the border areas and nibbling away at our territory."The fight occurred in Ladakh, a region of Kashmir in the Himalayan mountains that is the subject of a long-running territorial dispute between India, China, and Pakistan."Both China and India are going to continue building up their presence on the border," Zack Cooper, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute specializing in China, told National Review. "But China starts in a much stronger position because they have invested in the logistical infrastructure to move in large units much more quickly."The clashes on Monday evening saw Chinese and Indian soldiers fighting with rocks, fists, and clubs wrapped in barbed wire. India reported over 70 injured soldiers in addition to 20 killed, while China has not disclosed if its troops suffered any casualties.Agreements between China and India forbid soldiers manning the border to carry firearms, and there have been no deaths in clashes between the two militaries since 1975. Previous clashes in 1962 led to the Sino-Indian War of that year.Protests against China have flared up across India following the latest confrontation, with demonstrators calling to boycott Chinese goods."There is a lot of anger among Indians after the violent face-off killed our soldiers," Shahnawaz Hussain, a spokesman for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, told the Journal. "We are a responsible nation, but in a democracy people have their rights to express displeasure and anguish."
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| Thiessen: Why are Republicans so bad at picking Supreme Court justices? Posted: 19 Jun 2020 06:23 AM PDT  President Trump promises a new list of conservative Supreme Court contenders after the DACA ruling; Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen reacts.
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| AP Interview: Martin Lee sees end of the Hong Kong he knows Posted: 19 Jun 2020 06:42 AM PDT  The man nicknamed Hong Kong's "Father of Democracy" said that Beijing is trying to take control of the semi-autonomous city with an impending national security law, but that violent protest is not the answer. "This is clearly a pretext for Beijing to assert comprehensive control over Hong Kong, as they said they would six years ago," longtime activist and former lawmaker Martin Lee said in an interview on Friday. The national security law, which could be approved in Beijing this weekend, is aimed at curbing secessionist, subversive, terrorist and foreign interference that Beijing says fueled the monthslong anti-government protests in Hong Kong.
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| Erie police officer emails mayor, reporters with complaints, concerns Posted: 20 Jun 2020 02:18 AM PDT  A veteran Erie Bureau of Police officer defended his profession, criticized journalists and broadly stated that Black people seeking social justice...
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| The U.S. Army's New Marksman Rifle Is One Tough Gun. Here's Why. Posted: 19 Jun 2020 05:30 AM PDT  This month soldiers from the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division became the first combat soldiers to receive the new M110A1 Squad Designated Marksman Rifle (SDMR). The semi-automatic 7.62x51mm weapon was fielded to soldiers in the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team at Fort Stewart, Georgia.
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| Chinese air force approaches Taiwan for fourth time this week, Taiwan's military says Posted: 19 Jun 2020 01:21 AM PDT |
| Imran Farooq: Three convicted for London murder of Pakistan exile Posted: 18 Jun 2020 10:59 PM PDT  A Pakistani court hands down life sentences to three men accused of killing Imran Farooq
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| Trump Jr tells his father that Bin Laden endorsed Biden because it ‘would lead to the destruction of America’ Posted: 19 Jun 2020 07:13 AM PDT  Donald Trump claimed Osama Bin Laden backed Joe Biden's presidential bid and said he was withholding "very interesting" information about aliens in a recorded interview with his eldest son.The president's comments came in a Father's Day-themed interview streamed on the president's election campaign website, with Don Trump Jr, who hosts the podcast, 'Triggered'.
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| Erasing History? Um, History is Full of Torn-Down Monuments Posted: 20 Jun 2020 01:58 AM PDT  In the wake of protests against deeply entrenched racism, statues of slave traders and Confederate leaders are being torn town and toppled both in the U.S. and abroad. The dismantling of Confederate statues in this particular moment are not spontaneous acts of destruction; they follow decades of debate and peaceful protest about the significance and messaging around the public display of symbols of the Confederacy. Some, however, worry that the removal of public monuments will equate to the erasure of our collective history.None of this is anything new. As University of Iowa historian Sarah Bond has written, the practice goes all the way back to antiquity—to the Romans, the ancient Egyptians, and the ancient Assyrians. Moses was so angry about the Israelites building the idolatrous Golden Calf that he broke the two tablets of stone upon which the Ten Commandments were written by God. He then burned the calf to ashes, and made the Israelites drink them. In the realm of politics, as early as 2700 B.C., statues of ancient Near Eastern Kings included inscriptions that cursed anyone who dared to desecrate their image. It was almost a rite of passage for conquering rulers or representatives of new dynasties to try to eliminate loyalty to their predecessors through the erasure of visual reminders of their reign. In the 15th century B.C. the architectural legacy of Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled as regent for her stepson Thutmose III, was systematically dismantled by their successors Thutmose and Amenhotep II. According to Kara Cooney, in her book The Woman who would be King, "Thutmose III's craftsmen were instructed in how best to annihilate these statues… so they could break the link between Hatshepsut and the kingship." This program of rewriting claims to power included removing images of Hatshepsut from monuments, reliefs, statues, and cartouches as well as omitting her name from the official list of Egyptian rulers (including, of course, the one produced by Thutmose III himself).Arguably the most well-known attempts to manipulate public memory are those of the ancient Romans. Government decrees known as damnatio memoriae would attempt to destroy visual depictions of emperors or public figures who were deemed unworthy of being part of the community: their names would be scratched out from inscriptions; their portraits reworked on frescos; and coins bearing their image would effaced. For the Greeks and the Romans, being forgotten was a real risk. In Greek mythology, Achilles chooses between a long happy life of anonymity and a short glorious life that will lead to eternal renown. Being remembered was about immortality. As Harriet Flower has written, damnatio memoriae was the most severe punishment that the Roman legal system could impose upon a person, but it served a kind of positive role. It both eliminated the person from the Roman collective memory while simultaneously allowing that person's family and everyone else to continue life as normal.What's interesting about all of these examples of monumental effacement is just how ineffective they were. Those who were sentenced to historical anonymity were important: generals, senators, and monarchs. The attempted erasure of their memory just draws attention to the absence—we can still see the places where the Emperor Domitian's name was removed. We know about the removal of statues of Pompey, Nero, and Caligula. We know about these ancient figures despite the other powerful individuals and groups that tried to erase them. As Bond puts it, "destroying statues has always happened and we continue to know about these people in the historical record. Thus, it is not 'destroying history'."These efforts took place in a period in which it was possible to imagine erasing someone's name. It took place in a world in which public memorialization was limited to expensive monuments, coins, statues, seals, and texts. It was plausible that an emperor or the senate could eliminate all evidence of a person's existence. If it proved difficult to erase history in the ancient world, then it is impossible to imagine that such things could happen in the present. On the contrary, the internet means that for most of us the far more pressing danger is that we will leave behind us a tangled, uncurated, and, frankly, embarrassing, mass of information that will speak volumes long after we die. The impact and histories of Robert Lee and British slave trader Edward Colston will be preserved without symbolic statues that implicitly celebrate them for accomplishments that are, by definition, racist. The history of their actions will be retold not only because it is impossible to erase them, but also because it is imperative to remember them. It is trite to note the dangers of forgetting our histories, but absolutely no one is advocating for that. On the contrary, those removing their statues want us to improve our understand of the history of racism and scrutinize the conditions under which racism and slavery flourished. What is being negated is the prestige and honor that such statues bequeath on those who profited from and fought for the enslavement of others. This is not to say that all public monuments that are deemed problematic by anyone at all should be destroyed. The destruction of sites of cultural heritage by ISIS is something that correctly shocked and horrified people. But, as Bond has noted, there's also something freeing about destroying statues that symbolize oppression. Few spilled tears when US forces in Baghdad toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos square. When the removal of a statue comes at the behest of an oppressed community it can do important work. In the case of the 2010 removal of Josef Stalin's statue from his childhood home in Gori, Georgia, there was something cathartic about the quiet dismantling of his legacy there. At the time, Georgia's culture minister noted that Stalin had created problems in Georgia that continued into the present. The removal of the statue was about healing those wounds. Many of the statues currently being torn down are not relics of the incredibly short-lived Confederacy at all. Many of these statues were mass produced around the turn of the 20th century, when racist nostalgia wistfully looked back to this period. It's worth asking if these are monuments to anything other than intractable racism. Do they celebrate a period in our history of which we should be ashamed or, even worse, have they always been symbols of the racist glorification of that period by white supremacists?Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| North Korean defectors sometimes struggle to adjust to new life Posted: 20 Jun 2020 10:53 AM PDT  More than 30,000 defectors have escaped through China, some paying thousands of dollars to brokers.
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| Hungry neighbors cook together as virus roils Latin America Posted: 19 Jun 2020 06:04 AM PDT  An hour later, Arango, 43, is using a shovel to stir 30 gallons of sweet oatmeal in a stainless-steel pot over a fire of wood scraps alongside a cinder-block community center in the hills overlooking Peru's capital. Often operating with help from the Catholic Church and private charities, soup kitchens and community pots have become a symbol of the conundrum facing a region where most of the working population labors outside the formal economy. Economic shutdowns have forced poor Peruvians, Argentines and tens of millions of others to fall back on community-based efforts unseen in large numbers since crises like Peru's 1990s civil war or Argentina's financial crash two decades ago.
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