Big Time News Blog: 06/04/20

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Dr. Tom Frieden: Don’t Blame the C.D.C.

By Unknown Author from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2MuWBI7

How to Do Reparations Right

By BY DAVID BROOKS from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/3gVPA16

New York Must Protect Protesters

By BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/3dAbvbT

Scenes from George Floyd’s memorial in Minneapolis today.

By BY THE NEW YORK TIMES from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2U93C5S

Lo que sabemos sobre el coronavirus

By BY THE NEW YORK TIMES from NYT en Español https://ift.tt/2z8VCdM

US suspends flights by Chinese airlines in new spat with Beijing

Washington on Wednesday ordered the suspension of all flights by Chinese airlines into and out of the United States after Beijing failed to allow American carriers to resume services to China. The US action, which takes effect June 16 but could be implemented sooner if President Donald Trump orders it, applied to seven Chinese civilian carriers, although only four currently are running service to US cities including Air China and China Eastern Airlines, the Department of Transportation (DOT) said. US air carriers sharply reduced or suspended service to China amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The 2020 hurricane season already broke a record, and it's only day 3

Tropical Storm Cristobal, the earliest-ever third named storm in the Atlantic, has made landfall in Mexico and is turning toward the US Gulf Coast.

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Lawsuit aims to hold nebulous 'antifa' to blame for injuries

A conservative writer from Portland, Oregon, filed a lawsuit Thursday against purported elements of the nebulous, far-left militant groups collectively known as antifa, days after President Donald Trump blamed those groups for inciting violence at protests over police killings of black people. The suit was filed on behalf of Andy Ngo, who is known for aggressively covering and video-recording demonstrators. “I am hoping that this marks a turning point, that militants belonging to a criminal movement can no longer depend on the anonymity ... to get away with their crimes,” said Ngo, who previously was a writer with the online publication Quillette and now is with The Post Millennial.

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Boris Johnson told Italy's prime minister the UK had been aiming for coronavirus herd immunity, new documentary reveals

Italian health minister Pierpaolo Sileri said Johnson's early COVID-19 plan was pursuing herd immunity in an interview with Channel 4's Dispatches.

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Britain says nearly 30,000 COVID-19 tests sent to U.S. lab came back void

Nearly 30,000 COVID-19 tests which Britain sent to a U.S. lab for processing came back void, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesman said on Thursday, adding to a mounting pile of questions over the UK's testing regime. Johnson's spokesman said that "operational issues in our lab network" had meant that 67,000 tests were sent to the United States for processing.

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Hawley Calls on U.S. Companies with Chinese Interests to Condemn CCP’s Actions in Hong Kong

China hawk Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) wrote an “open letter” to American companies with business ties to China on Thursday, calling on them to publicly denounce the Chinese Communist Party’s recent national security law that overrides Hong Kong’s independence.As Hong Kongers protested on the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Hawley warned that “the fate of Hong Kong hangs in the balance,” saying that the new law — which was passed unilaterally by China’s National People’s Congress last month — will “mean the death of democracy in Hong Kong.” Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Congress that the new law meant Hong Kong is effectively no longer “autonomous.”Hawley called on U.S. firms to use their market power to speak out against the new legislation, and suggested they could withdraw from the Chinese market if the security law goes through.“The CCP may not care about freedom, democracy, or any of the other things for which we, as Americans, have long stood and fought. But it does care about you,” Hawley explained. “The CCP knows that its economic fortunes are still tied to your companies’ participation in its markets. If it knows that you may retract that participation in response to the Hong Kong crackdown, then it may yet restrain itself. And some vestige of freedom – some glimmer of hope – might yet live on in that city. This is the power you hold.”The Missouri Republican, who has been outspoken about Hong Kong and visited the island amid pro-democracy protests last year, called on companies to live up to their “obligation to put principle ahead of profit.”“You are an American company first and foremost. And you have a responsibility to your nation – and indeed, to all free nations of the world – to speak up for what is right,” Hawley wrote. “You have an obligation to put principle ahead of profit and to ensure that your actions do not enable the destruction of others’ freedoms. Nowhere is this truer than in Hong Kong, the frontline of the fight against CCP imperialism.”Hawley’s letter comes after U.K.-based bank HSBC backed the CCP’s new security measures, saying the company “respects and supports any laws that stabilize the social order in Hong Kong.”

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Esper, on thin ice with the White House, reverses decision on troop deployments

The Pentagon chief irritated the president when he complained about deploying active-duty soldiers.

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Magnitude 5.5 quake hits shaky California desert region

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Libya's government claims to have retaken Tripoli as Russian-backed rebel retreats

Libya's internationally recognised government has claimed victory in the battle for control of the country's capital after more than a year of fighting. Turkish-backed forces fighting for the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord said on Thursday morning that they had retaken control of all of the Tripoli city administrative area as forces loyal to Gen Khalifa Haftar withdrew from the suburbs. Separately Reuters cited a source in Gen Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) saying that it would complete its withdrawal from the Tripoli districts of Ain Zara, Abu Salim and Qasr Ben Gashir on Thursday. The announcements came as both sides prepared to resume UN-brokered ceasefire talks in Geneva. Fayez-al Serraj, the prime minister of the GNA, was due to meet Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday to discuss how to consolidate their gains. Gen Haftar, who rules eastern and southern Libya in tandem with a parliament that split with the GNA in 2016, launched an assault on Tripoli in April 2019. The LNA, with backing from several foreign countries including the UAE, Egypt and Russia, succeeded in seizing the city's southern suburbs but became bogged in a war of attrition before it could reach the city centre. The tide of the war began to turn after Turkey intervened on the side of the GNA at the beginning of this year, deploying drones, air-defence systems, and thousands of Syrian fighters in support of Tripoli. GNA troops on Thursday recaptured the city's derelict international airport, a focal point of fighting over the past year. LNA troops are believed to be consolidating around the town of Tarhuna, southeast of Tripoli. Hundreds of Russian fighters, believed to be with the Kremlin-linked Wagner private military company, have been seen accompanying the LNA pull back. Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday that large numbers of Russian and Soviet made anti-personnel mines not previously recorded in Libya had been found planted in civilian areas abandoned by the LNA. “Any use of internationally banned landmines is unconscionable,” said Steve Goose, arms division director at Human Rights Watch and chair of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. “Those fighting in Tripoli should halt using landmines and start clearing them to avoid further harm to life and limb.”

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Sen. Lindsey Graham on stunning revelations from Rod Rosenstein's Senate testimony

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham joins Sean Hannity with insight on 'Hannity.'

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New York police take seconds to restore reputation for brutality

Driving vehicles into protesters demanding justice for George Floyd earned the backing of the mayor, but of few others * George Floyd killing – latest US updates * See all our George Floyd coverageIt doesn’t take long to blow up a reputation. In the case of the New York police department, an institution with an already troubled history, the clip lasted all of 27 seconds.It showed an NYPD vehicle in Brooklyn lined up against a metal barricade behind which protesters were chanting during Saturday’s demonstrations over the police killing of George Floyd. Projectiles were thrown on to the roof of the car, then suddenly a second police SUV drew up alongside and instead of stopping continued to plough straight into the crowd.Seconds later the first vehicle lurched forward, knocking the barrier over and with it propelling several protesters to the ground amid a harrowing chorus of shrieking.A 27-second video, now viewed more than 30m times, had quickly shredded years of effort to repair the deeply tarnished image of the NYPD. New York’s “finest” were firmly cast in a role normally reserved for the security corps of petty dictators.The shocking video was compounded hours later when the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, spoke about the incident. A politician who won election in 2013 largely on a promise to reform the NYPD and scrap its racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk policy, astounded even his closest supporters when he defended the police.De Blasio said: “I do believe the NYPD has acted appropriately.”Social media lit up. Was it appropriate to drive those two SUVs into the crowd? Was it appropriate for an NYPD officer forcibly to remove the coronavirus mask of a black protester whose arms were raised in the air, then pepper-spray his face?Was it appropriate for another officer to tell a protester to get off the street, then physically shove her several feet towards the curb where she landed on her head? Or that the police officers involved in the pepper spray incident had covered their badge numbers, presumably to avoid having to answer for their actions. Or to beat a nurse walking home from a shift at a hospital?The clashes between New York’s police and its protesters have reverberated around the city. The largest police force in the US, with its $5.6bn annual budget and 36,000 uniformed officers under the leadership of one of the most progressive mayors in the country, has responded to demonstrations about police brutality with more police brutality.The Black, Latino and Asian Caucus of the city council, which makes up more than half of the legislative body, was swift and devastating in its criticism. In a statement, it said that the NYPD had acted “with aggression towards New Yorkers who vigorously and vociferously but nonetheless peacefully advocated for justice”.Adrienne Adams, co-chair of the caucus, told the Guardian the NYPD had tried to suppress legitimate anger felt by African American and other minority communities following years of police abuse. “We cannot allow people who have kept people of color down for decades to say now that we don’t have the right to display our outrage,” she said.Though that sentiment applies nationwide, Adams believes New York stands out as having a “horrible history of police brutality”. It was the NYPD that set the tone, she said, when Daniel Pantaleo, the officer implicated in the 2014 death by chokehold of Eric Garner in Staten Island, avoided prosecution.“When nothing happened to the police officers who were responsible for the death of Eric Garner, New York set the blueprint for what happened to George Floyd,” she said. “There’s no penalty, no consequence, so it’s OK.”Adams’s framing of the Garner killing could equally be applied to a long string of notorious episodes of police misconduct that preceded it. In 1997, Haitian immigrant Abner Louima was handcuffed by an NYPD officer and sexually assaulted with a broken broomstick.Two years later, Amadou Diallo was shot near his home in a hail of 41 bullets after officers mistook his wallet for a gun. In an echo of that event, an unarmed Sean Bell was shot 50 times in Queens on the morning of his wedding in 2006 – it took six years for the NYPD detective who opened the fusillade to be chucked off the force while nobody has ever been convicted of any crime.In the policing of protest, the NYPD also has a contentious track record. In 2004 it rounded up more than 1,800 peaceful protesters rallying outside the Republican National Convention during the re-election bid of George W Bush and herded them into overcrowded pens on Pier 57 in Manhattan. In 2011 it was similarly criticized for heavy-handed tactics during the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.Cutting across all this, the force has consistently targeted its efforts on neighborhoods of the city with majority black or Latino populations, straying at times into overt racial profiling. Though stop and frisk has been reined back in recent years, the NYPD continues to heavily and disproportionately police those communities despite a historically low homicide rate.Despite this long legacy of overreach, the force continues to be systemically resistant to public oversight. Under Section 50-A of New York state law, the disciplinary files of police officers are largely held in secret, making the task of holding them accountable almost impossible.Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney at the Cop Accountability Project (CAP) within the Legal Aid Society, told the Guardian that there were currently more than 200 police officers still being employed by the NYPD on full pay who should have been considered for termination following reports of misconduct.Data collected by CAP shows that where cases of misconduct arise they often involve escalation of low-level encounters into aggressive confrontations – something officers are supposed to be trained not to do. The project is currently litigating the case of Tomas Medina who was put in a chokehold and Tasered in 2018 after police were called to a complaint about loud music being played.Eric Garner’s fatal arrest was triggered by him allegedly selling single cigarettes.Although the use of chokeholds has been banned in New York, the project has found that between 2015 and 2018 the city settled 30 lawsuits involving NYPD use of the potentially lethal maneuver.Wong believes such endemic deployment of excessive force has spilled over into the NYPD’s handling of the George Floyd protests. She was present at a peaceful protest in Brooklyn that suddenly turned volatile not because of the behavior of protesters but by a sudden change of tack on the part of the police.“In a split second, the NYPD snapped and engaged in over-aggressive enforcement. They escalated it from 0 to 10 out of nowhere, arresting people and wielding their batons.”If there has been unrestrained use of batons in the city, it would be with the full approval of Ed Mullins, the provocative president of one of the main police unions, the Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA). He wrote to members urging “each and every one of you to report for duty with your helmet and baton and do not hesitate to utilize that equipment in securing your personal safety”.The sister Police Benevolent Association of New York City has also spoken to its members in inflammatory terms about them being “under attack by violent, organized terrorists while New York City council and other politicians sit at home demanding we ‘de-escalate’”.There is no denying that the NYPD faces difficult challenges in the policing of mass protests, especially late at night when violent outbreaks have erupted as they did on Monday in Manhattan and the Bronx. Fires were started in the street and stores looted.For Eugene O’Donnell, a former NYPD officer and prosecutor in Brooklyn and Queens who is now a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Monday night’s spectacle of looting along Fifth Avenue amounted to a collapse of policing in the city.“This weekend, the job of police officer in New York became officially impossible when the police abolitionists won. They have created a model of zero tolerance towards force being used and any injuries being inflicted, and that’s absurd.”O’Donnell said the same pattern is repeating itself across America. “In city after city, the police were abolished this weekend. They stood back and watched as damage was inflicted that was irreversible.”

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Researchers just retracted a massive study on whether a common malaria pill can help treat coronavirus

Scientists had questioned the data used in the study, and researcher said they could "no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources."

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Rio looks to reopen as Brazil approaches Italy in coronavirus deaths

The mayor of Rio de Janeiro allowed more than 10,000 street vendors to go back to work on Thursday and Brazil's president pressed for legal action to force local governments to reopen beaches, as the coronavirus death toll in the country quickly approached that of Italy.