South Korea’s Health Ministry reported 79 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, its largest daily jump in two months and second straight day the country saw an increase in new cases. Thursday’s total is nearly double the 40 new cases reported Wednesday, which was the highest figure in 49 days. South Korea’s deputy health minister, Kim Kang-lip, said 54 of the new cases were from a parcel delivery distribution center for the e-commerce firm Coupang in Bucheon, west of Seoul, adding to 15 earlier cases found at the same location. He said about 4,100 workers who were believed to have not followed social distancing and other safety procedures properly are being isolated and tested. Students eat lunch at tables with protective barriers as a preventative measure against COVID-19, at a high school in Daejeon, South Korea, May 20, 2020.It is unclear if the recent spikes in infections will halt a phased reopening of schools, which had been a major accomplishment in the nation’s anti-virus campaign. The Education Ministry on Wednesday said class openings were delayed at 561 schools nationwide because of virus concerns. South Korea was reporting around 500 new cases per day in early March before managing to stabilize its outbreak with aggressive tracking and testing, which allowed officials to relax social distancing guidelines. South Korea has now reported 11,344 cases and 269 deaths from COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. No new deaths were reported Thursday.
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Month: May 2020
Apple Music to Launch its 1st Radio Show in Africa
Apple Music is launching its first radio show in Africa.The streaming platform announced Thursday that “Africa Now Radio with Cuppy” will debut Sunday and will feature a mix of contemporary and traditional popular African sounds, including genres like Afrobeat, rap, house, kuduro and more. Cuppy, the Nigerian-born DJ and music producer, will host the weekly one-hour show, which will be available at 9 a.m. EDT.”The show represents a journey from West to East and North to South, but importantly a narrative of Africa then to Africa now,” Cuppy in a statement.African music and artists have found success outside of the continent and onto the pop charts in both the U.S. and U.K. in recent years. Acts like Drake and Beyoncé have borrowed the sound for their own songs, while performers like South African DJ Black Coffee as well as Davido, Burna Boy, Tiwa Savage, Wizkid and Mr Eazi — all with roots in Nigeria — continue to gain attention and have become household names.Apple Music’s announcement comes the same week Universal Music Group said it was launching Def Jam Africa, a new division of the label focused on representing hip-hop, Afrobeat and trap talent in Africa. The label said it will be based in Johannesburg and Lagos but plans to sign talent from all over the continent.
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Britain Closes Embassy in North Korea Citing Strict Coronavirus Restrictions
Britain’s ambassador to North Korea says the embassy has temporarily closed in the autocratic regime due to strict coronavirus restrictions. “The British Embassy in Pyongyang closed temporarily on 27 May 2020 and all diplomatic staff have left the DPRK for the time being,” Ambassador Colin Crooks tweeted Thursday, using the abbreviation for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name. The #BritishEmbassy in #Pyongyang closed temporarily on 27 May 2020 and all diplomatic staff have left the #DPRK for the time being. If you need consular assistance call (+44) (0)207 008 1500 #NorthKorea— Colin Crooks (@ColinCrooks1) May 27, 2020NK News, a South Korea-based news site that monitors the North, reported that British Embassy staff had crossed the border into China by land. The British Foreign Office issued a statement saying the decision to evacuate the Pyongyang outpost was made because “restrictions on entry to the country have made it impossible to rotate our staff and sustain the operation of the Embassy.” The statement said London intends to reestablish its presence in Pyongyang as soon as possible. North Korea closed its borders and imposed strict quarantine measures on all resident foreigners at the start of the pandemic, prompting many countries to withdraw their ambassadors and shutter their missions.
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China’s Parliament Approves Controversial National Security Law for Hong Kong
China’s rubber stamp parliament has approved a new national security law for Hong Kong that critics say threatens the city’s semi-autonomous status. The National People’s Congress approved the controversial measure Thursday by a vote of 2,878 to one, with six members abstaining. The new law would prevent and punish acts of “secession, subversion or terrorism activities” that threaten national security. The law would also allow Chinese national security organs to set up agencies in Hong Kong. The legislature’s Standing Committee will begin drafting details of the law, which is expected to take effect in September. The legislation was widely condemned by business groups and Western nations as the death knell for Hong Kong’s status under the “one country, two systems” concept established after Britain handed over control of the financial hub to China in 1997, especially since it bypasses Hong Kong’s legislature. Hong Kong police arrested dozens of protesters on May 27, 2020. (Photo courtesy of Hong Kong Police Facebook)Beijing’s announcement of the national security law for Hong Kong last week sparked a new round of protests similar to the massive and often violent demonstrations that engulfed the city during the second half of 2019. The protests were initially provoked by a controversial extradition bill that eventually evolved into a demand for greater democracy for the city. As many as 360 people were arrested Wednesday night to protest the national security bill. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a press briefing at the State Department on May 20, 2020, in Washington.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday he has reported to the U.S. Congress that Hong Kong is “no longer autonomous from China” and “Hong Kong does not continue to warrant treatment under United States laws,” given facts on the ground. The secretary’s remarks indicate the United States is considering suspending the preferential status that has made the city a top U.S. trading partner. Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists are also angry over legislature under consideration in the city’s Legislative Council, dominated by pro-Beijing lawmakers, that would criminalize disrespect of China’s national anthem. The legislature was forced to adjourn Thursday’s session after two pro-democracy lawmakers were ejected from the chamber during an angry debate over the anthem law.
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Pandemic Pushes Turkey Further to Autocracy
For years, international observers, western governments, and opposition politicians in Turkey have warned of the country’s slide to what one commentator called “an elected autocracy” under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Now,as coronavirus infections and deaths drop,the government has tightened already stringent controls on social media. Critics say the pandemic is accelerating Turkey’s descent from democratic freedoms. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.Camera: Berke Bas Produced by: Jonathan Spier
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Celebrating the City That Never Sleeps
There’s no doubt that New York Cith has born the brunt of the COVID crisis in the United States. But through it all, New Yorkers have one thing in common: they love their town.Camera: Olga Terekhin Alex Barash, Natalia Latukhina, Vladimir Badikov, Max Avloshenko, Aaron Fedor
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Trump Renews Promise to Withdraw Troops from Afghanistan
President Donald Trump has renewed his resolve to “bring our soldiers back home” from Afghanistan, publicly questioning again the goal of the current U.S. military mission to the war-torn country.Trump reiterated his intention amid reports that the ongoing U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan “is well ahead of schedule” outlined in a landmark peace-building pact the United States signed with the Taliban in late February to end the nearly 19-year-old Afghan war.“We are acting as a police force, not the fighting force that we are, in Afghanistan,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. After 19 years, it was time for Afghan authorities to police their own country, he wrote.We are acting as a police force, not the fighting force that we are, in Afghanistan. After 19 years, it is time for them to police their own Country. Bring our soldiers back home but closely watch what is going on and strike with a thunder like never before, if necessary!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2020“Bring our soldiers back home but closely watch what is going on and strike with a thunder like never before, if necessary!” Trump added.Under the Feb. 29 U.S.-Taliban agreement, Washington has committed to reduce its military footprint in Afghanistan from about 13,000 to 8,600 by mid-July before withdrawing all troops, along with several thousand partners in a NATO-led non-combatant mission by mid-2021.The drawdown started within days of the signing of the agreement in Qatar, and U.S. military officials say the process has since been on track.In return, the Taliban is committed to preventing terrorist groups from using Afghanistan for international terrorism. It has also promised to reduce battlefield violence and engage in a political reconciliation process with other Afghan stakeholders to negotiate a permanent cease-fire and power-sharing arrangement in post-war Afghanistan.
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Britain Closes Embassy in North Korea, Evacuates Diplomats
Britain has shuttered its embassy in North Korea and all its diplomats have left the country, its ambassador said Thursday, as Pyongyang maintains strict entry controls to try to prevent a coronavirus outbreak.The North has closed its borders and insists it has not had a single case of the virus that emerged in neighboring China late last year and has since swept the world.The closure was a temporary move and came because Pyongyang’s “restrictions on entry to the country have made it impossible to rotate our staff and sustain the operation of the Embassy,” a Foreign Office spokesperson said.Ambassador Colin Crooks tweeted: “The #BritishEmbassy in #Pyongyang closed temporarily on 27 May 2020 and all diplomatic staff have left the #DPRK for the time being.”The Swedish embassy — which remains open — replied that they would miss him and his team “and hope they can return soon.”The specialist news site NK News said the British diplomats crossed the border into China overland on Wednesday.Britain intends to maintain diplomatic relations with the North “and will seek to re-establish our presence in Pyongyang as soon as it is possible to do so,” the Foreign Office said.Early in the outbreak Pyongyang imposed tight quarantine restrictions on all resident foreigners, including a virtual lockdown in their own premises that Russian ambassador Alexander Matsegora described as “morally crushing.”Those rules were later eased, and dozens of diplomats and other foreigners were allowed to leave the country in March, when several missions in Pyongyang closed, among them the German embassy and France’s representative office — Paris does not maintain full diplomatic relations with the North.Hundreds of foreigners remain in the country.Analysts say that the North is unlikely to have avoided infections, and that its ramshackle health system could struggle to cope with a major outbreak.
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US Congress Approves China Sanctions Over Ethnic Crackdown
Congress voted Wednesday to toughen the U.S. response to a brutal Chinese crackdown on ethnic minorities, adding another factor to the increasingly stormy relationship between the two countries.The House passed a bipartisan bill that would impose sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the mass surveillance and detention of Uighurs and other ethnic groups in the western Xianjiang region, a campaign that has drawn muted international response because of China’s influence around the world.The measure already passed the Senate and needs a signature from President Donald Trump, who said this week he’ll “very strongly” consider it amid U.S. anger over China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak and tension over a Chinese plan to restrict civil liberties in Hong Kong.Both issues emerged, along with other sore points in the China-U.S. relationship, as Republican and Democratic members of Congress spoke in support of the bill. No one spoke against it, and it passed by a 413-1 vote.”Beijing’s barbarous actions targeting the Uighur people are an outrage to the collective conscience of the world,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a floor speech in support of the bill.FILE PHOTO – In this Dec. 3, 2018, a guard tower and barbed wire fences are seen around a facility in the Kunshan Industrial Park in Artux in western China’s Xinjiang region.It was the first bill in history to pass with proxy votes after House Democrats, over Republican objections, adopted a measure allowing such votes in response to the coronavirus outbreak.Congress late last year voted to condemn the crackdown in Xianjiang, where Chinese authorities have detained more than a million people — from mostly Muslim ethnic groups that include Uighurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz — in a vast network of detention centers.This new legislation is intended to increase the pressure by imposing sanctions on specific Chinese officials, such as the Communist Party official who oversees government policy in Xianjiang.The legislation also requires the U.S. government to report to Congress on violations of human rights in Xianjiang as well as China’s acquisition of technology used for mass detention and surveillance. It also provides for an assessment of the pervasive reports of harassment and threats of Uighurs and other Chinese nationals in the United States.A provision that would have imposed export restrictions on surveillance and other equipment used in the crackdown was initially passed in the House but then stripped out in the version that passed in the Senate earlier this month.Despite the limitations, the legislation amounts to the first concrete step by a government to penalize China over the treatment of the Uighurs since the existence of the mass internment camps became widely known in recent years, said Peter Irwin, a senior program officer at the Uighur Human Rights Project.”It signals that a member of the international community is actually taking some steps to address the problem,” Irwin said. “The legislation itself has to spur the rest of the international community, particularly the European Union and other powerful blocs of states, to actually take this as a template and pass their own legislation.”FILE – Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, attends a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 23, 2019.Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and chairman of the House China Task Force, called what’s happening in Xianjiang a “cultural genocide” of Uighurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups.The passage of the bill with strong bipartisan support would “show the Chinese Communist Party and the entire world that their treatment of the Muslim Uighurs is inexcusable and will not be allowed without serious consequences,” McCaul said.China has publicly brushed away criticism of its crackdown in Xianjiang, which it launched in 2014 as the “Strike Hard Against Violent Extremism” in a vast resource-rich territory whose inhabitants are largely distinct, culturally and ethnically, from the country’s Han Chinese majority.The Chinese government, when not bristling at criticism of what it sees as an internal matter, has also said the detention camps are vocational training centers. Uighur activists and human rights groups have countered that many of those held are people with advanced degrees and business owners who are influential in their communities and have no need of any special education.People held in the internment camps have described being subjected to forced political indoctrination, torture, beatings, denial of food and medicine and say they have been prohibited from practicing their religion or speaking their language. China has denied these accounts but refused to allow independent inspections.
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Human Rights Watch Details Harm to Filipino Children from Drug War
Human Rights Watch on Wednesday released harrowing accounts of the drug war’s impact on Filipino children.The 48-page report outlines police killings of children, the bullying and stigma that drug users’ children face, the psychological damage to those who have witnessed family members’ deaths, and the resulting poverty when parents and guardians are killed.The HRW report followed similar ones by Amnesty International, which further detail the devastation of drugs.Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on the illegal drug trade began with his inauguration in June 2016. His anti-drug campaign garnered international attention when human rights advocates uncovered thousands of killings and extrajudicial executions by state forces and vigilante groups.Within the first six months of Duterte’s presidency, more than 7,000 people believed to have been connected with the drug trade were killed — an average of 34 a day. Besides instructing law enforcement to rid the country of drugs, Duterte encouraged citizens to kill suspected drug dealers or users as a part of their “duty.”Since then, Filipino activists have alleged that more than 27,000 people have been killed under Duterte, while the government said the number was closer to 6,600. Contrasting reports and increasing concerns prompted the U.N. Human Rights Council to launch an investigation into the killings in July 2019.UN Launches Probe on Philippines Drug War DeathsFilipino activists have claimed some 27,000 people have been killed as police terrorize poor communitiesThe Duterte administration’s drug crackdown has contributed to overcrowding in prisons, producing breeding grounds for coronavirus outbreaks. Eventual outbreaks in some of the Philippines’ jails forced the country to release nearly 10,000 inmates in early May. Philippines Frees Nearly 10,000 Inmates as Coronavirus Hits JailsCountry, which nationwide has reported 9,000 infections and 603 deaths, races to halt spread of virus in its overcrowded jails
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Cameroonian Villagers Flee Military Base at Site of Civilian Massacre
Cameroonians are fleeing the northwestern village of Ngarr-buh after the military began building a base this week near where troops in February massacred at least 13 civilians. Cameroon says the base is needed to stop separatists from getting supplies in neighboring Nigeria. But, villagers fear they may once again be targeted or get caught in crossfire. Twenty-two-year-old Cameroonian farmer Emelda Tatah says she and her family were among around a hundred villagers who fled Ngarr-buh on Sunday morning after several military trucks full of troops arrived. The troops began constructing buildings for a military base to fight off anglophone rebels in the area. Speaking via a messaging application from the neighboring village of Ngondzen, Tatah said the military’s massacre in their village was still fresh in their minds. “On the 14th of February, military people entered Ngarr-buh and killed many women and innocent children,” she said. “The military has built a camp in the village again and the villagers think that this same military that was supposed to protect them [villagers] they [military] are the very people killing them [villagers]. So, they have to flee to neighboring villages where they feel they will be more secured.” Cameroonian rights groups and opposition political parties have criticized the base in Ngarr-buh, saying it will only increase tensions with villagers.
They estimate over 300 villagers have fled Ngarr-buh within the past week. National President of the United Socialist Democratic Party Prince Ekosso says the military presence in the village is uncalled for. “Why establish a military base in Ngarr-buh, where the military has been accused of massacring civilians, children, women, pregnant women,” he said. “We are calling on the government to retrieve [stop] the initiative of establishing a military base in Ngarr-buh. And we call on the international community to put their eyes [pay attention] on this particular situation in Ngarr-buh. The use of force has never resolved any conflict.” Despite the ongoing tensions between the villagers and military, Cameroon authorities say the new military base is needed to stop rebels from re-supplying in neighboring Nigeria. Speaking Sunday on state radio, Cameroon government spokesman Rene Emmanuel Sadi defended the base as a needed defense against the rebels. Although troops had killed civilians, said Sadi, most atrocities in the area were committed by the separatists. He said most of the rebel fighters in Ngarr-buh disguised themselves as Cameroon troops to commit atrocities on villagers just to give troops a bad image and make civilians hate their military. Sadi said the troops are out to protect civilians from the rebels, who are stealing, raping, abducting for ransom, and making life very difficult in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions. He says the troops will protect Cameroon’s border with Nigeria and stop the separatists from using the border for supplies. Human Rights Watch said in April the attack in Ngarr-buh was part of a larger pattern of rights violations by Cameroon’s military in the anglophone regions. Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, admitted in April troops committed the massacre after an international outcry when authorities initially denied it. Biya ordered the arrest of troops that attempted to cover up the deaths by burning homes and filing a false report. Some 600 villagers in Ngarr-buh had fled immediately following the atrocity. The separatists have been fighting since 2017 to carve out an English-speaking state from French-speaking-majority Cameroon. The United Nations says the fighting has cost more than 3,000 lives and forced half-a-million to flee to French-speaking regions or into neighboring Nigeria.
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South Africa Eases Restrictions on Religious Gatherings
South Africa has softened its coronavirus restrictions on houses of worship, with President Cyril Ramaphosa announcing Tuesday night that religious gatherings will now be allowed under strict conditions. Ramaphosa also announced a national day of prayer for Sunday, the day before restrictions are expected to ease across much of the country. While the nation’s influential religious leaders have greeted the move with rapturous approval, not everyone agrees with it. FILE – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visits the COVID-19 treatment facilities at the NASREC Expo Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, April 24, 2020.”Go ahead and pray — it’s okay.” That’s the word from the man at the top, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, announcing that houses of worship will now be allowed to hold in-person services —with certain restrictions. The announcement softens the government’s hard stance prohibiting all religious gatherings, which medical experts identified as high-risk for transmission of the infectious coronavirus. Ramaphosa said that faith trumped those concerns. “As a nation, we have a responsibility to respond to this aspect of the pandemic with as much effort and urgency as we have responded to the health crisis, and as we have acted to relieve the economic and social effects on our people. We have a responsibility to also take care of the spiritual, psychological and emotional well-being of all South Africans,” he said.FILE – Faithful worship during a church service amid concerns about the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at the Apostolic Christian Church in Kagiso, west of Johannesburg, South Africa, March 22, 2020.Under the new regulations, houses of worship must keep facilities clean and sanitized, limit congregations to fewer than 50 people and require participants to wear face masks and maintain social distancing. Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana, general secretary of the influential South African Council of Churches, told VOA that the group’s member churches came up with the new guidelines, giving him the assurance that they can follow them. He said heads of member churches meet weekly — online — to discuss their anti-coronavirus strategy, and want to include other faiths in their discussions. The bishop stressed that for millions of lower-income South Africans, who don’t have the means to watch virtual services, the physical structure is a lifeline. “For several months, including times of major festivals in their churches or even in their mosques and synagogues, they’ve been unable to get in touch with their spirituality because there’s a total shutdown. It is not appropriate to say that they can only be able to do that next year, when we get to level one. But it says to me that we need to now look at how differently to be church in COVID times, because COVID is not going away,” he said. FILE – Children line up for food at a feeding scheme in Lavender Hill, Cape Town, South Africa, April 21, 2020, during the fourth week of lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus.Fortunately, he said, churches are familiar with the challenges posed by plagues. To that end, the council plans to widen churches’ range of social services, including academic support for students who have suffered from school closures. But not everyone believes this is a good idea. Rick Raubenheimer is president of the South African Secular Society, a group of atheists, skeptics and agnostics that, since the pandemic began, has met only virtually. They do not plan to resume actual meetings, although technically, he told VOA, they could argue that they qualify under the new rules. “We think it’s a bad idea, from several points of view. Firstly, the president has to date largely followed the science, and the science says that you need to practice social distancing, not have large gatherings, take precautions against transmission and so on. And a lot of these would be very problematic in religious gatherings, which is why the prohibition on religious gatherings, just like any other recreational gathering, has been a good idea to date. He is now making an exception for a particular community, so he is in fact going against the Constitution, which says that there shall be no discrimination on the basis of religion or belief,” he said.A legal challenge seems unlikely, as 80 percent of South Africans identify as Christian. Mpumlwana said houses of worship now have to take the lead in showing how to live — and thrive — amid the coronavirus. “We are a society, and we are as churches, a community that saves lives,” he said. “We should not be, and cannot be, that this place of worship becomes a gateway to the grave. And for that reason, we will do everything we can, and we are encouraging everyone. The reason I wear a mask is not because I fear you will contaminate me. I wear a mask because I fear I might contaminate you, and I do not know if I’m a carrier or not. It is an act of love that I would not shake your hand. It is an act of love that I’ll be distant from you. It is an act of love to make sure that all of us survive beyond this.” Ramaphosa has declared Sunday, May 31 a national day of prayer across the Rainbow Nation. More than 520 South Africans have died of the virus since March.
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Historic SpaceX Launch Postponed Because of Stormy Weather
The launch of a SpaceX rocket ship with two NASA astronauts on a history-making flight into orbit was called off with 16 minutes to go in the countdown Wednesday because of thunderclouds and the danger of lightning. Liftoff was rescheduled for Saturday afternoon.The commercially designed, built and owned spacecraft was set to blast off in the afternoon for the International Space Station, ushering in a new era in commercial spaceflight and putting NASA back in the business of launching astronauts from U.S. soil for the first time in nearly a decade. But thunderstorms for much of the day threatened to force a postponement, and the word finally came down that the atmosphere was so electrically charged that the spacecraft with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken aboard could get hit by a bolt of lightning.”No launch for today — safety for our crew members @Astro_Doug and @AstroBehnken is our top priority,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted, using a lightning emoji.The SpaceX Falcon 9, with the Crew Dragon spacecraft on top of the rocket, sits on Launch Pad 39-A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., May 27, 2020.The two men were scheduled to ride into orbit aboard the SpaceX’s bullet-shaped Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, taking off from the same launch pad used during the Apollo moon missions a half-century ago. Both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence had arrived to watch.The flight — the long-held dream of SpaceX founder Elon Musk — would have marked the first time a private company sent humans into orbit.It would also have been the first time in nearly a decade that the United States launched astronauts into orbit from U.S. soil. Ever since the space shuttle was retired in 2011, NASA has relied on Russian spaceships launched from Kazakhstan to take U.S. astronauts to and from the space station.During the day, thunder could be heard as the astronauts made their way to the pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, and a tornado warning was issued moments after they climbed into their capsule.The preparations took place in the shadow of the coronavirus outbreak that has killed an estimated 100,000 Americans.”We’re launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil. We haven’t done this really since 2011, so this is a unique moment in time,” Bridenstine said.With this launch, he said, “everybody can look up and say, ‘Look, the future is so much brighter than the present.’ And I really hope that this is an inspiration to the world.”The mission would put Musk and SpaceX in the same league as only three spacefaring countries — Russia, the U.S. and China, all of which gave sent astronauts into orbit.”What today is about is reigniting the dream of space and getting people fired up about the future,” he said in a NASA interview before the flight was scrubbed.A solemn-sounding Musk said he felt his responsibilities most strongly when he saw the astronauts’ wives and sons just before launch. He said he told them: “We’ve done everything we can to make sure your dads come back OK.”President Donald Trump looks at an area on a piece of equipment to sign during tour of NASA facilities before viewing the SpaceX Demonstration Mission 2 Launch at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., May 27, 2020.NASA pushed ahead with the launch despite the viral outbreak but kept the guest list at Kennedy extremely limited and asked spectators to stay at home. Still, beaches and parks along Florida’s Space Coast are open again, and hours before the launch, cars and RVs already were lining the causeway in Cape Canaveral.The space agency also estimated 1.7 million people were watching the launch preparations online during the afternoon.Among the sightseers was Erin Gatz, who came prepared for both rain and pandemic.
Accompanied by her 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son, she brought face masks and a small tent to protect against the elements. She said the children had faint memories of watching in person one of the last shuttle launches almost a decade ago when they were preschoolers. “I wanted them to see the flip side and get to see the next era of space travel,” said Gatz, who lives in Deltona, Florida. “It’s exciting and hopeful.”NASA hired SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 to transport astronauts to the space station in a new kind of public-private partnership. Development of SpaceX’s Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner capsules took longer than expected, however. Boeing’s ship is not expected to fly astronauts into space until early 2021.”We’re doing it differently than we’ve ever done it before,” Bridenstine said. “We’re transforming how we do spaceflight in the future.”
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Disney Plans to Reopen Florida Parks July 11
Walt Disney World will reopen to the public in July, Disney company officials announced Wednesday.The Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom parks will resume business on July 11, followed by EPCOT and Hollywood Studios on July 15. The four theme parks are in Florida.In a presentation to an economic recovery task force, the multibillion-dollar entertainment company said that the moves will occur in stages to minimize health and safety risks.It is not clear when Disneyland, located in California, will reopen.Precautions approved by local governments in Florida and California include requiring that guests wear face masks, submit to temperature checks and comply with social distancing requirements. Reduced park capacity and cashless transactions will also be implemented. Disney closed its parks around the world after the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe but reopened its Shanghai amusement parks in early May. The location in China had been closed since January.Disney World in Florida employs about 77,000 people. According to CNN, the company’s theme parks accounted for 37% of its annual revenue in 2019. It says the forced closings caused an estimated 58% drop in profit for the parks and experiences unit of the company last quarter.”The theme parks define Disney for millions of its fans around the world,” Robert Niles, editor of ThemeParkInsider.com, told CNN Business. “Returning its parks to operation signals that Disney is coming back to full speed as a company again.”
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Pompeo Says Hong Kong ‘No Longer Autonomous from China’
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that he has reported to the U.S. Congress that Hong Kong is “no longer autonomous from China” and “Hong Kong does not continue to warrant treatment under United States laws,” given facts on the ground. Today, I reported to Congress that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China, given facts on the ground. The United States stands with the people of Hong Kong.— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) Riot police form a line as they plan to clear away people gathered in the Causeway Bay district in Hong Kong, May 27, 2020.Taiwan React China’s moves have also reverberated in Taiwan, where many have long watched how Beijing treats Hong Kong residents. On Wednesday, more than 20 civil society groups gathered in Taipei Wednesday to show solidarity with Hong Kong. One attendee, named Justine, told VOA, “If the national security law is passed, 7.5 million people in Hong Kong will be unsafe, and the Chinese Communist Party is labeling the people who seek democracy and autonomy as terrorists, so now (every) Hong Konger is a fighter.”Many in Taiwan see China’s moves in Hong Kong as the start of a new, tense era over the region’s future. Wu Rwei-ren, a research fellow with the Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica told VOA that this is a “calculated brinkmanship” from China while other countries are struggling with combating the COVID-19 pandemic. “This marks the first war amid the new cold war between the US and China,” he said, “Hong Kong’s fight for autonomy will be persistent, and Taiwan will likely be the next target.”Joyce Huang, Yihua Lee, Jeanette Chiang, and Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report
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Ukrainian Court Finds Lviv Student Guilty of Torching RFE/RL Reporter’s Car
A Ukrainian court has found a university student guilty of torching an RFE/RL reporter’s car, a decision that the media organization’s president said brings prosecutors closer to apprehending the organizers of the premeditated crime. A court in the western city of Lviv on May 25 handed down a suspended five-year sentence with a three-year probation period to Yakob Sarakhman for setting Halyna’s car ablaze on the night of January 30. The 19-year-old university student admitted his guilt to the court and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, Tereshchuk’s lawyer, Oleh Mytsyk, said. FILE – The burned-out car of RFE/RL journalist Halyna Tereshchuk in Lviv.Police have not provided a motive for the crime, but many reporters in Ukraine have been attacked, and even killed, over the years due to their investigative work. Ukraine ranked 96th out of 180 countries in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index. “The conviction is an important first step in holding accountable the perpetrators of this hateful crime. The arson attack not only targeted an RFE/RL colleague, and terrorized her family, but it was a worrisome attempt to intimidate independent journalism in Ukraine,” RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said in a statement. “I call on the Ukrainian authorities to identify and prosecute those who ordered the attack in addition to the individual who carried it out.” Police have named two other suspects in the arson attack: Mykhaylo Cherdak, a local police official, and Vadym Dmytrenko, an unemployed individual with a criminal record. Cherdak is in hiding and his whereabouts unknown, while Dmytrenko is under house arrest.
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Uzbek Sports Journalists Ousted After On-Air Comments About Dam Failure
Two Uzbek sports journalists have left their positions after criticizing the state-run television channel for its coverage of the aftermath of a devastating dam failure earlier in May that killed at least four people and displaced tens of thousands of others.Speaking on condition of anonymity, an official of Sport TV and Radio told RFE/RL on May 25 that Bobur Akmalov, the editor of Sport TV, and the channel’s director-general, Jamoliddin Bobojonov, had been fired.The official did not give any further details, but his comments came after local media reports said the two had been relieved of their duties after they submitted their resignations on May 22.Another Tashkent-based journalist familiar with the situation told RFE/RL that Akmalov and Bobojonov had been forced to resign for expressing their opinions in a Football Plus program aired by the Oriat Dono radio station on May 18.During the broadcast in question, Bobojonov and Akmalov, who was also the anchor of the Football Plus program on Oirat Dono, criticized state-run Uzbekistan 24 for its coverage of the Sardoba dam burst, which flooded several nearby villages. Bobojonov said during the broadcast that “on paper and on the Uzbekistan 24 TV channel, everything is great” in Uzbekistan, “while real life is something completely different.””Well, after watching the reports by Uzbekistan 24, I had the impression that people in Sardoba were happy with the disaster,” Bobojonov said, laughing.Akmalov agreed with Bobojonov and also laughed, saying that reports about President Shavkat Mirziyoev’s visit to the area hit by the floods after the dam burst looked like reports from North Korea, “where people always look happy no matter what.”In a Facebook statement, Alisher Hojaev, chairman of the Uzbek National Television and Radio Company (MTRK), accused Akmalov and Bobojonov of “violating corporate ethics and making baseless and untrue allegations.”The statement was later removed from Facebook.A group called People’s Control has launched a petition on Facebook supporting the two journalists and demanding Hojaev’s resignation.RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service contributed to this report.
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South Korea Sees Biggest COVID-19 Spike in Weeks
South Korean health officials Wednesday reported the nation’s highest number of new coronavirus infections in seven weeks as the nation is easing its restrictions.In his daily briefing in Seoul, South Korean Vice Health Minister Kim Kang-lip said that 37 of the 40 new cases are related to the recent outbreak from nightclubs in Itaewon, Seoul’s multicultural district. Kim said the remaining three are infections from abroad.All but four of the new cases were in densely populated areas in Seoul where officials are scrambling to stop transmissions linked to nightclubs, karaoke rooms and an e-commerce warehouse.Kim said authorities are keeping an eye on the warehouse, owned by local e-commerce company Coupang, after discovering dozens of coronavirus infections linked to workers there. Kim says they suspect the company was not enforcing basic workplace COVID-19 regulations, and they are testing the company’s 3,600 employees.South Korea has reported 269 deaths and 11,265 cases, after managing to contain a severe outbreak earlier.The spike comes as some two million students returned to school Wednesday.
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Hypocrisy Gone Viral? Officials Set Bad COVID-19 Examples
“Do as I say, but not as I do” was the message many British saw in the behavior of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s key aide, who traveled hundreds of miles with coronavirus symptoms during the country’s lockdown.
While Dominic Cummings has faced calls for his firing but support from his boss over his journey from London to the northern city of Durham in March, few countries seem immune to the perception that politicians and top officials are bending the rules that their own governments wrote during the pandemic.
From U.S. President Donald Trump to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, global decision-makers have frequently set bad examples, whether it’s refusing to wear masks or breaking confinement rules aimed at protecting their citizens from COVID-19.
Some are punished when they’re caught, others publicly repent, while a few just shrug off the violations during a pandemic that has claimed more than 350,000 lives worldwide.
Here are some notable examples:New Zealand Health Minister Calls Himself An “Idiot”
In April, New Zealand’s health minister was stripped of some of his responsibilities after defying the country’s strict lockdown measures. David Clark drove 19 kilometers (12 miles) to the beach to take a walk with his family as the government was asking people to make historic sacrifices by staying at home.
“I’ve been an idiot, and I understand why people will be angry with me,” Clark said. He also earlier acknowledged driving to a park near his home to go mountain biking.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said normally she would fire Clark but that the country couldn’t afford massive disruption in its health sector while it was fighting the virus. Instead, she stripped Clark of his role as associate finance minister and demoting him to the bottom of the Cabinet rankings.Mexico’s Leader Shakes Hands
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said it pained him not to embrace supporters during tours because of health risks, but he made a remarkable exception in March, shaking hands with the elderly mother of imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán. Asked about shaking her hand when the government was urging citizens to practice social distancing, López Obrador said it would have been disrespectful not to.
“It’s very difficult humanly,” he said. “I’m not a robot.” America’s Pandemic Politics
The decision to wear a mask in public is becoming a political statement in the U.S. It’s been stoked by Trump — who didn’t wear a mask during an appearance at a facility making them — and some other Republicans, who have questioned the value of masks. This month, pandemic politics shadowed Trump’s trip to Michigan as he toured a factory making lifesaving medical devices. He did not publicly wear a face covering despite a warning from the state’s top law enforcement officer that refusing to do so might lead to a ban on his return.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, meanwhile, wore a mask along with his wife, Jill, as they laid a wreath Monday at a Delaware veterans’ memorial — his first public appearance since mid-March. Trump later retweeted Fox News analyst Brit Hume’s criticism of Biden for wearing a mask in public.
Vice President Mike Pence was criticized for not wearing a mask while on a visit to the Mayo Clinic.
Netanyahu’s Passover Holiday
While the rest of Israel was instructed not to gather with their extended families for traditional Passover Seder in April, Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin hosted their adult children for the festive holiday meal, drawing fierce criticism on social media. Israeli television showed a photo of Avner Netanyahu, the premier’s younger son, attending the Seder at his father’s official residence.
Benjamin Netanyahu later apologized in a televised address, saying he should have adhered more closely to the regulations. The French Exception
French President Emmanuel Macron also has been inconsistent with masks, leaving the French public confused. Although Macron has sometimes appeared in a mask for visits at hospitals and schools, it’s a different story in the Elysee presidential palace and for speeches. During a visit to a Paris hospital on May 15, Macron initially wore a mask to chat with doctors but then removed it to talk with union workers.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner also faced criticism this month for huddling with dozens of mask-makers in a factory for a photo where everyone removed their masks.
Putin’s Different Approach
The only time Russian President Vladimir Putin wore protective gear in public was on March 24, when he visited a top coronavirus hospital in Moscow. Before donning a hazmat suit, Putin shook hands with Dr. Denis Protsenko, the head of the hospital. Neither wore masks or gloves, and a week later, Protsenko tested positive for the virus. That raised questions about Putin’s health, but the Kremlin said he was fine.
Putin has since held at least seven face-to-face meetings, according to the Kremlin website. He and others didn’t wear masks during those meetings, and Putin also didn’t cover his face for events marking Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II.
When asked why Putin doesn’t wear a mask during public appearances, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin has a different approach to protecting the president’s health.
“When it comes to public events, we ask medical workers to test all the participants in advance,” Peskov told reporters. Puerto Rico Official’s Inconsistent Message
Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez was criticized for not always wearing a mask despite holding new conferences ordering people to cover their face outside their homes and inside businesses. A member of the opposition Popular Democratic Party also filed a police complaint last week against members of Vázquez’s New Progressive Party, alleging they violated a curfew by gathering to inaugurate the party’s new headquarters. Police are investigating the incident, which angered many Puerto Ricans. Scottish Medical Official Takes The Low Road
Scotland’s chief medical officer, Dr. Catherine Calderwood, broke her own rules and traveled to her second home during lockdown in April. She faced blowback after photos emerged of her and her family visiting Earlsferry in Fife, which is more than an hour’s drive from her main home in Edinburgh. She apologized and resigned.
“I did not follow the advice I’m giving to others,” Calderwood said. “I am truly sorry for that. I’ve seen a lot of the comments from … people calling me a hypocrite.” Japan’s Gambling Scandal
A top Japanese prosecutor was reprimanded and later resigned this month after defying a stay-at-home recommendation in a gambling scandal.
Hiromu Kurokawa, the country’s No. 2 prosecutor who headed the Tokyo High Prosecutors’ Office, acknowledged that he wasn’t social distancing when he played mahjong for money at a newspaper reporter’s home twice in May. Japan didn’t enforce a stay-at-home recommendation, but his case outraged the public because many were following social distancing measures. Italian Press Conference Criticism
At a March news conference to open a COVID-19 field hospital in Milan’s old convention center, photographers and video journalists were pushed into corners that did not allow proper spacing. Only text reporters were given seating in line with regulations. The Codacons consumer protection group announced it would file a complaint with prosecutors in Milan.
“What should have been a moment of great happiness and pride for Lombardy and Italy was transformed into a surreal event, where in violation of the anti-gathering rules, groups of crowds formed,” Codacons said. South Africa’s Rule-Breaking Dinner
In April, Communications Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams was placed on special leave for two months and forced to apologize by President Cyril Ramaphosa after she violated stay-at-home regulations. Ramaphosa directed police to investigate after a photo emerged on social media of Ndabeni-Abrahams and several others having a meal at the home of former deputy minister of higher education Mduduzi Manana.Spanish Hospital Ceremony Investigated
Madrid’s regional and city officials sparked controversy when they gathered on May 1 for a ceremony shuttering a massive field hospital at a convention center. Eager to appear in the final photo of a facility credited with treating nearly 4,000 mild COVID-19 patients, dozens of officials didn’t follow social distancing rules. Spain’s restrictions banned more than 10 people at events like the one that honored nurses and doctors. The central government opened an investigation, and Madrid regional chief Isabel Díaz Ayuso apologized. She said officials “got carried away by the uniqueness of the moment.”
Former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also defied strict stay-at-home orders, with a television station filming him power walking around in northern Madrid. The Spanish prosecutor’s office is investigating whether Rajoy, who was premier from 2011 to 2018, should be fined.Indian Cricket Game Criticized
In India, a top leader of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party drew flak last weekend after playing a game of cricket. Manoj Tiwari, also a member of India’s parliament, said he followed social distancing rules during the game. Videos circulating on social media showed Tiwati without a mask. He was also seen taking selfies with people. Leaders Who Follow The Rules
Some leaders are setting a good example, including Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Media jokingly called him the most relaxed politician in the world after he was photographed queuing at a supermarket this month, wearing a mask and following social distancing measures. The photo was widely shared on social media.
Another rule-follower is Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who did not visit his ill 96-year-old mother in a nursing home during the last eight weeks of her life because of coronavirus restrictions. He only came to her bedside during her final hours this month.
“The prime minister has respected all guidelines,” according to a statement read by a spokesman. “The guidelines allow for family to say goodbye to dying family members in the final stage. And as such the prime minister was with her during her last night.”
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Biden Knocks Trump for ‘This Macho Stuff’ in Shunning Masks
Joe Biden said Tuesday that wearing a mask in public to combat the spread of the coronavirus is a sign of leadership and called President Donald Trump a “fool” who was “stoking deaths” for suggesting otherwise. Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his wife Jill Biden arrive to place a wreath at the Delaware Memorial Bridge Veterans Memorial Park, in New Castle, Delaware, May 25, 2020.The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s comments came a day after he wore a black face mask while making his first public appearance in more than two months. Biden has remained at his Delaware home amid a pandemic that has frozen the presidential campaign, but he marked Memorial Day by laying a wreath at a nearby veterans’ memorial with his wife, Jill. Trump later retweeted a post that appeared to make fun of a photo of Biden in his mask, though he later said he didn’t mean to be critical. In an interview with CNN, Biden responded, “He’s a fool, an absolute fool, to talk that way.” “He’s supposed to lead by example,” Biden said. The former vice president also noted that nearly 100,000 Americans have been killed by the virus and suggested that as many as half of those deaths were avoidable but for Trump’s “lack of attention and ego.” Federal officials have recommended that people cover their nose and mouth in public when other measures, such as practicing social distancing of at least 6 feet (1.8 meters), aren’t possible. But the issue has become increasingly politically charged, with Trump refusing to wear a mask and polls finding that conservative Americans are more likely to forgo them as well. Biden didn’t wear a mask during the CNN interview, which was conducted outside his house, but he sat 12 feet (3.6 meters) from the reporter. “It’s just absolutely this macho stuff,” Biden said of Trump bristling at wearing a mask in public, a practice the former vice president called being “falsely masculine.” “It’s cost people’s lives.” Biden added that the president is politicizing the issue and “it’s stoking deaths. That’s not going to increase the likelihood that people are going to be better off.” U.S. President Trump hosts Rose Garden event on treating diabetes at the White House during coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Washington.After Biden wore the mask on Memorial Day, Trump retweeted a post by a political commentator that featured an image of a masked Biden over the comment, “This might help explain why Trump doesn’t like to wear a mask in public.” Asked about that during a subsequent event in the White House Rose Garden, the president responded, “Biden can wear a mask.” “But he was standing outside with his wife, perfect conditions, perfect weather,” Trump said. “They’re inside, they don’t wear masks and so I thought it was very unusual that he had one on. But I thought that was fine. I wasn’t criticizing him at all. Why would I ever do a thing like that?” Trump then asked the reporter who was following up with a second question to remove the mask he was wearing, complaining he couldn’t hear him. When the reporter instead said he would speak louder, the president replied: “Oh, OK, ’cause you want to be politically correct.” Federal guidance does not recommend that people wear masks when at home. Still, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany used the same line of argument on Tuesday. She noted that Biden has foregone a mask while appearing for frequent online events from his home, something he did during a virtual fundraiser held Tuesday night. “It is a bit peculiar,” McEnany said. “That in his basement, right next to his wife, he’s not wearing a mask. But he’s wearing one outdoors when he’s socially distant. So I think that there was a discrepancy there.” For his part, Biden changed his Twitter profile picture to one of him in the black face covering, and he tweeted Tuesday night: “Wear a mask.” Meanwhile, the former vice president has continued to face fallout from a remark he made Friday on “The Breakfast Club,” a radio program influential and popular in the black community. He had commented, “If you’ve got a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump, then you ain’t black.” That sparked criticism from some African American activists, and Biden made a previously unscheduled appearance on a U.S. Black Chamber of Commerce conference call hours later to say that he “should not have been so cavalier.” He went further Tuesday, telling CNN, “I shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake.” “When I say something that is understandably, in retrospect, offensive to someone, and legitimately offensive — making it look like taking them for granted — I should apologize,” Biden said. “I don’t apologize for every mistake I make because a lot of them don’t have any consequences.”
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American Virus Deaths at 100,000: What Does a Number Mean?
The fraught, freighted number of this particular American moment is a round one brimming with zeroes: 100,000. A hundred thousands. A thousand hundreds. Five thousand score. More than 8,000 dozen. All dead.
This is the week when America’s official coronavirus death toll reaches six digits. One hundred thousand lives wiped out by a disease unknown to science a half a year ago.And as the unwanted figure arrives — nearly a third of the global pandemic deaths in the first five months of a very trying year — what can looking at that one and those five zeroes tell us? What does any number deployed in momentous times to convey scope and seriousness and thought really mean?
“We all want to measure these experiences because they’re so shocking, so overwhelming that we want to bring some sense of knowability to the unknown,” says Jeffrey Jackson, a history professor at Rhodes College in Tennessee who teaches about the politics of natural disasters.
This is not new. In the mid-1800s, a new level of numerical precision was emerging in Western society around the same time the United States fought the Civil War. Facing such massive death and challenges counting the dead, Americans started to realize that numbers and statistics represented more than knowledge; they contained power, according to historian Drew Gilpin Faust.
“Their provision of seemingly objective knowledge promised a foundation for control in a reality escaping the bounds of the imaginable,” Faust wrote in “This Republic of Suffering,” her account of how the Civil War changed Americans’ relationship with death.
“Numbers,” she wrote, “represented a means of imposing sense and order on what Walt Whitman tellingly depicted as the countless graves' of theinfinite dead.'”
Today’s Americans have precedents for visualizing and understanding 100,000 people — dead and alive. They have numerous comparisons at hand.
For example: Beaver Stadium, seen often on TV as the home to Penn State football and one of the country’s largest sports venues, holds 106,572 people when full. The 2018 estimated population of South Bend, Indiana, was 101,860. About 100,000 people visit the Statue of Liberty every 10 days.
The total amount of U.S. Civil War deaths — combat and otherwise — was 655,000. For World War I it was more than 116,000, for World War II more than 405,000 and for the Korean and Vietnam wars more than 36,000 and more than 58,000 respectively. Those don’t include non-U.S. deaths.
Gun violence killed more than 37,000 people a year on average between 2014 and 2018 in the United States. And 9/11 took exactly 2,996 lives, a figure that the U.S. coronavirus tally passed in early April.
At some point with numbers, though, things start feeling more abstract and less comprehensible.
This has informed the methodology of remembering the Holocaust by humanizing it: Six million dead, after all, is a figure so enormous that it resists comprehension.
“It’s really hard for people to grasp statistics when it comes to numbers after a certain scale,” says Lorenzo Servitje, an assistant professor of literature and medicine at Lehigh University.
“Can you picture 30,000 people Or 50,000 people? And when you get into the millions, what do you even do with that?” he says. “It’s so outside of our everyday life that it’s hard to grasp meaning from them.”The New York Times tried to address that problem Sunday, dedicating its entire front page to naming the virus dead — an exercise that, even in a tiny typeface, only captured 1% of those now gone. “A count,” the newspaper said, “reveals only so much.”
Adding to the complexity is how different coronavirus deaths are from, say, a 9/11, a mass shooting or a cataclysmic natural disaster. Unlike those, the COVID saga unfolds gradually over time, growing steadily more severe, and resists the time-tested American appetite for loud and immediate storylines.
“Each day we’ve become accustomed to the new reality that we don’t realize how far we’ve traveled from what normal is,” says Daryl Van Tongeren, an associate professor of psychology at Hope College in Michigan who studies how people find meaning in suffering.
Our brains, he says, are wired to be empathetic to suffering — to a point.
“With too much suffering over time, it’s overwhelming and we begin to become callous. And our empathy essentially runs out,” Van Tongeren says. “We’re so accustomed to death right now, at 100,000, that our empathy has become lower.”
Finally, there are numbers living within the round 100,000 number that cry out for their own interpretations. The disproportionate number of dead Americans of color, for example. Or the systematic way the disease is ravaging places where older Americans live, taking them in numbers that — if they were dying in mass shootings — might provoke a very different kind of reaction.
Don’t focus so much on the numbers, some admonish. Others criticize official counts, calling them inflated and inaccurate. More likely, because of spotty testing and undiagnosed cases, the number 100,000 falls significantly short.
But whether 100,000 has already happened or is yet to come, the meaning of this numerical milestone — human-imposed though it may be — raises fundamental questions.
Have we decided to live with death, at least to a point? What would it mean if, around Labor Day, we reconvened in this space to discuss the 200,000th dead American? What would that number cause us to contemplate?
In the 14th century, the Black Death ravaged humanity, taking many millions. No one knows how many died. Today, when the dead are counted, some coherence is reached. The thinking is this: If the virus can’t be stopped, at least it can be quantified by human effort — far more palatable than a society where we couldn’t even establish who was no longer among us.
“As humans we like clean stories,” says Roland Minton, a mathematics professor at Roanoke College in Virginia. “And classifying things by number of digits can be a nice, clear way of classifying things.”
So when Whitman wrote of “countless graves,” he was not merely being poetic. Then, the idea of uncounted dead was more than metaphor; it was a direct description of what had happened.
Replacing that situation with accurate numbers, as society grew more sophisticated, did not solve everything. But it was something. Just as 100,000 means something this week in American life. Maybe not everything — not a vaccine, not a treatment — and maybe not clarity, exactly. Not yet. But something.
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Greece Deploys Forces to Build Fence on Turkish Border
Greece is mobilizing forces to boost defenses along its land frontiers with Turkey. The move as Turkey threatens to resume the flow of thousands of migrants to Europe through Greece. The deployment also follows plans by Greece to expand its border fence in the contentious border region. Officials in Athens say they are deploying more than 400 specially trained officers, including riot police, in the northeast region of Evros.
The deployment on Wednesday adds to the eleven hundred officers already in the area. An additional 800 are expected arrive in the coming weeks as Greece ratchets up plans, as Defense Minister Nikos Papagiotopoulos says to defend itself from Turkey’s actions by extending an existing border fence.
Soldiers and police in the region remain on a code-red alert, he says.
Greece is reinforcing its defenses by expanding the fence because, officials say, it does not want to be caught by surprise if Turkey makes any sudden moves.
While both are NATO allies, relations between the two neighbor states have plummeted to a low point since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan opened the borders to millions of refugees trapped in his country, allowing them free access to Europe through Greece. FILE – Migrants wait to board on buses outside Moria camp on their way to the port of Mytilene, on the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos, Greece, May 3, 2020.The move turned the border region of Evros into a dangerous flashpoint as Greece — already inundated with more than 100,000 refugees — was left pushing back what its leaders called a massive migrant invasion in February.
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Turkey closed its borders and ordered migrants back into closed reception centers.
But as lockdown measures are now relaxing across Europe and beyond, Turkey’s foreign minister said yesterday that migrants and refugees in his country may as well be preparing to make the move anew to Europe — a remark that alarmed officials in Athens.
FILE – Greek Army soldiers detain a group of migrants that crossed from Turkey to Greece, near the village of Protoklisi, in the region of Evros, Greece, March 10, 2020.Greece is now scrambling to seal its land border in the Evros region, tripling the size of an existing 12-kilometer fence — a move that has annoyed Ankara.
Conservative lawmaker Tassos Hadjivassiliou explains why.
“It’s a no-brainer,” he said. “Once this fence goes up, Turkey will be severely compromised of its ability to push through migrants. And if that happens, then Ankara will have lost its most powerful tool of leverage against Europe… and its chances, therefore, of clinching a new deal with Brussels, plus added financial support will fade.”
Ankara’s deteriorating economy and political pressure on Erdogan leadership underpin much of these crisis fears.
Hostility between Greece and Turkey has risen noticeably in the Aegean recently. Over the weekend, dozens of Turkish soldiers moved to block Greek soldiers from surveying marshland along the Evros river to extend the fence.
Local media and residents said they spotted troops inching into Greek territory and camping out on Greek soil — a move that enraged Athens, which lodged a protest with Ankara but later denied that any Turkish soldiers had set foot on Greek soil.
“There were many suspicious movements at the time,” Panagiotopoulos told a local broadcaster late Wednesday.
He refused to elaborate.
Human rights experts in Greece warn that migrants are paying the toll in the latest Greek-Turkish spat, remaining trapped in overcrowded camps and in continued lockdown.
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Australian Police End Probe of Journalist, Suspected Whistleblower
Australian police said Wednesday they were dropping an investigation of a prominent journalist who obtained classified documents for a 2018 story on national security. The article by Annika Smethurst, which ran in the Australian-based News Corp newspapers, alleged the federal government was preparing to give intelligence agencies new powers that would allow it to spy on Australian citizens. Police raided Smethurst’s Canberra home last June as part of an investigation into who may have leaked the documents that provided the basis for her story. A day later, police raided the Sydney headquarters of Australian Broadcasting Corporation looking for evidence of the whistleblower who provided documents behind a 2017 report that Australian troops had committed war crimes in Afghanistan. Ian McCartney, the deputy commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, said no charges will be brought against Smethurst or the whistleblower who leaked the documents. But McCartney said Dan Oakes and Sam Clarke, the two ABC journalists who reported the Afghanistan story, were still under investigation. The police decision not to charge Smethurst comes just weeks after Australia’s High Court invalidated the search warrant used to search her home on a technicality. The separate raids angered Australia’s media organizations, who set aside their fierce competitive rivalry to issue a joint demand for greater press freedoms and legal protections for public-interest journalism.
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Hong Kong Police Disperse Protesters Opposing National Security, Anthem Laws
Riot police in Hong Kong Wednesday fired pepper balls to disperse tens of thousands of demonstrators protesting adoption of a controversial national security law that is poised to pass in Beijing on Thursday and a proposed law criminalizing the disrespect of the national anthem tabled in the city’s legislature.
Thousands of riot police officers guarded several districts in Hong Kong, firing pepper balls and using pepper spray to disperse protesters. Police stopped and searched mostly young people outside subway stations and on the streets throughout the day.
Crowds of people who gathered in Admiralty, the area where the legislative council and government quarters are located, were dispersed by police who threatened them with pepper spray if they did not comply. There were police officers guarding every street corner in the area to prevent people from getting near the government buildings. Walkways leading to the government buildings were cordoned off. Police quickly closed in on small groups of activists who gathered to chant slogans and give speeches expressing their opposition to the national anthem bill. At one point, police ordered people in nearby restaurants to leave. WATCH: Street view of Hong Kong protesters Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />CopyAt lunch time, hundreds of office workers turned out on the streets in Central, the heart of Hong Kong’s business district, at a rally. Crowds chanted slogans, including “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong,” “Hong Kong independence, the only way” alternately and shouted obscenities at the police. “Be a Hong Konger!” someone shouted towards the police, implying they were working for the interests of China, and not their own city. About half an hour into the rally, police fired pepper balls and people ran into nearby buildings.
“Not just this national security law, we see China continuously encroaching on our freedoms and we see police being whitewashed (in a report clearing them of wrongdoing),” said a lawyer who declined to give his name. “If we keep quiet, they can get away with it.”Hong Kong riot police on patrol during protest against National Anthem law, May 27, 2020. (Photo: Hong Kong Police Facebook)A police statement said protesters blocked roads with bins and traffic cones and threw objects at officers. It said police had “no other choice but to employ minimal force” by firing pepper balls to stop the “violent behavior.” The interruption was however brief as traffic continued to move slowly.
Hundreds of people also defied the heavy police presence to gather on the streets of Causeway and Mongkok, both busy shopping districts. Many young people were stopped and searched by riot police. Young people, including some in high school uniforms, were made to line up against the wall outside a shopping center in Mongkok. Police accused protesters of blocking traffic and placing obstacles on the streets.
As of mid-afternoon, police said more than 290 people have been arrested for illegal assembly.
Protesters said they were fueled by anger at what they perceive as China’s intensifying encroachments into the semi-autonomous city, including foisting patriotism upon Hong Kongers through a law that forbids mockery of the national anthem. They also expressed helplessness as China’s National People’s Congress prepared to pass national security laws, bypassing Hong Kong’s legislature on Thursday.
“I know we have no power to fight against China, but I must come out to show my opposition to it. I’m not afraid even if they jail me,” said a 71-year-old man surnamed Chow, who used to be a staunch supporter of the Communist party until the crackdown on the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement.
Inside the chamber of the Legislative Council, lawmakers made speeches to express their stance on the national anthem bill, which is expected to pass on June 4, the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Pro-Democracy lawmakers expressed their exasperation over a bill that is poised to pass because the legislature is dominated by pro-Beijing lawmakers – only half the seats are popularly elected by ordinary voters while the rest are chosen by largely pro-Beijing “functional constituencies.”
Lawmaker Dr. Kwok Ka-Ki told the legislature that rulers should follow the teaching of ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius, who said rulers should “love their people as if they were his children.”
“There is no need to use rubber bullets and tear gas to suppress people and to make people become subservient to your rule… and when they are already feeling emotional you suppress them with the security law to subjugate them under truncheons and guns,” Kwok said.
China last week revealed its plan to bypass Hong Kong’s legislature to impose a national security law on Hong Kong to prevent and punish acts of “secession, subversion or terrorism activities” that threaten national security.
The move, which would also allow Chinese national security organs to set up agencies in Hong Kong, has received wide international criticism, with the United States threatening consequences for China.
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