China denounces Canada's 'megaphone diplomacy' over spy charges

China sharply criticized Canada on Saturday, blaming its leaders for "irresponsible" statements about two Canadians accused of spying in China and calling on Ottawa to end its "Megaphone Diplomacy." The evidence against the two Canadians, former Beijing diplomat Michael Kovrig and North Korean consultant Michael Spavor, is "solid and sufficient," a statement posted on the website of the Chinese embassy in Ottawa said.

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Pence hails 'remarkable progress' on COVID-19 as new cases surge in many states

Vice President Mike Pence hailed “remarkable progress” toward returning the nation to normalcy at the first public briefing of the coronavirus task force in nearly two months on Friday, a day the U.S. saw a new high for coronavirus cases recorded.

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Jeyaraj and Fenix: Outrage mounts over deaths in Indian police custody

The two men died after allegedly being tortured in police custody, raising calls for justice.

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UNICEF: Millions of Yemeni children may starve amid pandemic

Millions of children could be pushed to the brink of starvation as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps across war-torn Yemen amid a "huge" drop in humanitarian aid funding, the U.N. children’s agency warned Friday. The stark prediction comes in a new UNICEF report, “Yemen five years on: Children, conflict and COVID-19.” “As Yemen’s devastated health system and infrastructure struggle to cope with coronavirus, the already dire situation for children is likely to deteriorate considerably,” warned UNICEF.

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Here's what it was like on the Las Vegas Strip on the first day of Nevada's mask mandate

What happens here may stay here, but there's a new mantra now at play in Las Vegas: "No shirts, no shoes, no mask, no service."

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Supreme Court rebuffs Texas vote-by-mail expansion

The justices let stand the ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that halted a federal judge's earlier decision to permit any voter concerned about the threat of coronavirus infection to cast a ballot by mail. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, fought the expansion of mail-in voting. There were no noted dissents on the high court, although liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a statement saying she hopes the 5th Circuit issues a final decision on the legal merits of the case "well in advance of the November election."

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COVID-19 may be linked to brain complications, study finds. But does it cause them?

Severe cases of COVID-19 may be linked to brain complications, according to the first nationwide survey of the neurological complications.

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Lawsuit brewing in fight over game bird in Sierra Nevada

Conservationists are headed back to court to try to force the Trump administration to protect a rare game bird along the California-Nevada border as the government keeps changing its mind about whether to list the cousin of the greater sage grouse as threatened or endangered. Three groups have filed formal notice of their intent to sue after the Fish and Wildlife Service reversed course in March and abandoned its 2018 proposal to list the bi-state grouse under the Endangered Species Act. The hen-sized bird is similar but separate from the greater sage grouse, which lives in a dozen Western states and is at the center of a dispute over the government’s efforts to roll back protections adopted under President Barack Obama.

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Mississippi Votes to Remove Confederate Emblem from State Flag

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Gunfire at Walmart Distribution Center in California, Worker Says

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Biden Campaign Says Just Over a Third of 2020 Staff Members Are People of Color

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Satellite images show buildup on disputed India-China border

Construction activity appeared underway on both the Indian and Chinese sides of a contested border high in the Karakoram mountains a week after a deadly clash in the area left 20 Indian soldiers dead, satellite images showed. The images released this week by Maxar, a Colorado-based satellite imagery company, show new construction activity along the Galwan River Valley, even as Chinese and Indian diplomats said military commanders had agreed to disengage from a standoff there. China has said that India first changed the status quo last August when it split the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two federal territories — the territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the territory of Ladakh, parts of which are contested by China.

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A journalist who covered Trump's Tulsa rally tests positive for COVID-19

A reporter who covered US President Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has tested positive for the coronavirus.

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Florida Smirked at New York's Virus Crisis. Now It Has Its Own.

In late April, as new coronavirus cases in Florida were steadily decreasing, Gov. Ron DeSantis began crowing how his state had tamed the pandemic.He credited his decision to impose a state-specific quarantine on New York, then the epicenter of the nation's outbreak. The move earned him praise in the White House and the ire of Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York.Months later, Cuomo has clearly not forgotten."You played politics with this virus and you lost," Cuomo said Thursday when asked in an interview about DeSantis' earlier boasts.With infections now rapidly spreading in Florida while they retreat in New York, the two states have come to reflect the rapidly shifting course of the coronavirus pandemic.New York still has the country's highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths, but the day-to-day numbers have been steadily falling: At its peak, the virus claimed 1,000 deaths a day in the state; on Thursday, the state recorded 17 deaths. Florida, among the states not mandating masks, rushed to reopen and on Friday reported its highest number of new cases in one day, with close to 9,000.And in their divergent political responses to the outbreak, Cuomo, a Democrat, and DeSantis, a Republican, also mirror the divide over the virus among states and regions around the country.The two brash, telegenic governors both embraced the increased visibility that the virus provided. Cuomo delivered daily sober updates on the virus, the state's aggressive lockdown strategy and its cautious approach to reopening. DeSantis eagerly advanced a narrative pushed by President Donald Trump, seeing the economic damage as a greater risk than a virus that had, for months, largely spared his state.The strain of the pandemic has frayed the ties between New York and Florida, two states that normally enjoy a more symbiotic relationship, even allowing for the occasional hints of schadenfreude.On Wednesday, Cuomo ordered his own quarantine on travelers from states with high-infection rates -- a group of eight that included Florida -- to protect New Yorkers who now have low infection rates. The reversal of fortune was too much to pass up."Your hospital beds are filling up," Cuomo said Thursday. "It means more people are getting sick. That's what's happening. And it's now undeniable."Despite the virus' spread, DeSantis has given no indication that he would order the shutdown of any of the businesses already opened. But on Friday, in an unexpected move, the state's Department of Business and Professional Regulation abruptly announced that on-premises alcohol consumption would be suspended at bars, effective immediately.DeSantis acknowledged that the trend in infections had shifted. "Our peak before was much lower than a lot of the other states -- in the Northeast, for example," he said on Thursday during a news conference in Tampa. "Really, the whole Sun Belt is seeing this."DeSantis said the state, which has lost 3,327 lives to the virus, was prepared for the rise in cases. He did not address Cuomo's remarks or the quarantine of Floridians traveling to New York. A spokeswoman for DeSantis, Helen Aguirre Ferre, said Cuomo was "sadly mistaken if he thinks this pandemic is a political contest."Even before the pandemic, New York and Florida engaged in some interstate rivalry, competing for residents and businesses. Florida has overtaken New York in population in recent years, a trend driven in part by the migration to the state of New Yorkers, census figures show.But in their responses to the coronavirus, the differences between the two states have never been clearer.Cuomo in April mandated all New Yorkers to wear masks when they could not stay 6 feet apart. DeSantis has declined to do the same, even after his own state surgeon general issued an advisory recommending masks in any setting where social distancing is not possible.New York leaders, after a halting early response to the pandemic in March, mostly followed the recommendations of state public health officials, including requirements for widespread testing and contact tracing before reopening. Florida has moved to open its businesses faster, and without the same infrastructure for tracking down the close contacts of the infected.In large part, the different approaches reflect the different experiences with the virus. New York state saw more than 18,000 hospitalizations a day during the worst period of the outbreak, back in April.The state's nursing homes were particularly hard-hit: 6,200 residents have died, and Cuomo has been criticized by DeSantis and others for an executive order that forbade nursing homes from turning away patients arriving from hospitals solely because they had the coronavirus. A Cuomo spokesman recently responded by saying DeSantis does not know how to wear a mask properly.DeSantis received praise for the state's more limited response to the pandemic, including from Trump, who urged the quarantine of New Yorkers going to Florida. DeSantis believed harsh restrictions would result in citizens refusing to follow the rules.He has also attacked the news media, which he said has been overly concerned about contagion in Florida's reopened beaches and not worried enough about virus spread in the New York subway.In early May, Florida began reopening business, and quickly: The state's first phase of reopening included restaurants, gyms, barbershops and large spectator sporting events, with restricted occupancy. In New York, reopening began more haltingly, with manufacturing and construction businesses.And when the White House called, DeSantis traveled to Washington to highlight the state's progress next to Trump."When you look at some of the most draconian orders that have been issued in some of these states and compare Florida," DeSantis said from the Oval Office in late April, including New York in a litany of several states, "Florida has done better."And so the National Basketball Association said it would hold the rest of its season at Walt Disney World. The Republican National Convention relocated its big speeches to Jacksonville, Florida. NASCAR raced at the Homestead-Miami Speedway earlier this month, with DeSantis as its honorary starter.Cuomo has made his own bid for sports, coaxing the Mets and the Yankees to return to New York from their spring training camps by suggesting Florida was no longer safe. (He exempted the teams from the new quarantine, saying they had their own health protocols.)While Cuomo did not explicitly target his quarantine order to apply to Florida, he signaled in the days before making the announcement that the state's recent treatment of New Yorkers was very much on his mind."Well, wouldn't that be karma?" Cuomo said when asked about a quarantine in New York on MSNBC.Florida's quarantine affecting New Yorkers is still in effect: As of Tuesday, New Yorkers arriving at Miami International Airport were still being met by the National Guard and state health officials, told to head straight for their lodgings and ordered to quarantine there for two weeks.But as the course of the coronavirus outbreak has turned in recent weeks, the flow of travelers has reversed: People are now jetting out of Florida and back to the relative safety of New York. Such an exodus would have been unimaginable three months earlier.Epidemiologists said Florida's quarantine of New Yorkers made sense at the time, just as New York's for Floridians does now. "There is more virus in that environment," said Dr. Amanda D. Castel, a professor of epidemiology at George Washington University.Right now, New York was looking like a safer bet to Evan Friedman, a White Plains, New York, resident who had been staying in his second home in Boca Raton, Florida, since March.In recent weeks, Friedman, 58, had begun to worry that Florida residents were not taking the virus seriously enough. A barber not wearing a mask rattled him. So did the man in the bagel shop who prepared a platter without a mask or gloves.Many New Yorkers he knew in Florida had gone back north, and he planned to go early next month.But when Cuomo announced that the new quarantine would take effect at midnight Wednesday, Friedman rushed to pack his bags. He found the flights to New York were all booked, so he got a ticket to Connecticut and rented a car to get back to New York."I have the luxury of being able to be up North or in the South," he said. "I want to be where there are the smallest amount of cases."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

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Coronavirus: US has 'serious problem', says Fauci

The infection is rampant in 16 states, some of which are now freezing their reopening plans.

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Jon Stewart says he doesn't remember Republicans being mad about erasing history when the Saddam Hussein statue was toppled in Baghdad

On "The Daily Social Distancing Show with Trevor Noah", Jon Stewart lampooned Republicans' hypocrisy over tearing down Confederate statues.

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Protesters resist clearing of Seattle protest zone

Crews arrived with heavy equipment Friday at Seattle's "occupied" protest zone, apparently ready to dismantle barriers set up by protesters, but halted work when demonstrators resisted by lying on top of some of the makeshift structures. (June 26)

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Coronavirus: Florida and Texas reverse reopening as infections surge

Florida and Texas reverse moves to reopen business as total cases across the US surpass 2.5 million.

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The US still does a wretched job of teaching Black history. An expert in African American history education explains how to fix it.

An expert in African American history education, LaGarrett King, breaks down the school system's flaws and explains how to teach Black history better.

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Southern states report record coronavirus surges

The U.S. has also seen a record number of cases nationwide, according to the latest figures released.

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Coronavirus food fear: Government launches investigation after meatpacking outbreaks

Government scientists have asked the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to investigate whether food could harbour coronavirus following major outbreaks in meatpacking plants. Four food processing factories in England and Wales have suffered clusters of disease, with 469 workers testing positive for the virus so far. Across the world, staff at meat packing plants have been disproportionately impacted by disease, with cold, crowded and noisy working conditions which force people to shout, thought to be to blame. Now it has emerged that government scientists have asked the FSA to check whether the virus could get into food. So far the risk has been assessed as low, but experts say they are continuing to monitor the situation. A government source said: “We have actually asked the Food Standards Agency to look at this a few times, about the risk in meat and other produce, and their assessment is that the risk is very low for transmission on meat. “But we’ll keep asking them to look as new evidence comes up.” In the US, as many as 25,000 meat and poultry workers have tested positive for Covid-19, and at least 93 have died. This week Kirklees council confirmed that 165 employees of a meat processing plant in West Yorkshire had contracted the virus and Public Health Wales reported 200 coronavirus cases at a meat processing plant on Anglesey. There have also been 34 cases linked to Merthyr Tydfil and 70 to Wrexham. Dr Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health at the University of Southampton, said: “Whilst refrigeration may be a contributory factor to the spread of the virus, the key factors are likely to be the number of people close together in indoor conditions. “Some of these factories have onsite or nearby accommodation where there are several people in each dormitory, they may be transported on a bus to the site of work, and they will be indoors together all day.”

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The Army Is About to Get its First Female Green Beret

A female soldier is scheduled to graduate from the Special Forces Qualification Course in July and become the first woman to join the Green Berets.

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How the officers charged in George Floyd's death could get their jobs back

The Minneapolis police union has had great success convincing arbitrators to reinstate fired officers.

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