China Considers Toughening Rules for Foreign English Teachers

China recently issued new draft rules aimed at toughening oversight of foreign teachers in the country, requiring them to undergo ideological training sessions and creating a new social credit rating system to monitor their conduct.Arrests and deportations of foreign teachers in China have soared since 2018 amid a broad crackdown on teachers without proper work visas and Beijing’s push for a more patriotic education system.Analysts told VOA this is partly due to the deterioration of U.S.-China relations and China’s relations with other English-speaking countries. Yet parents say they are still interested in having their children learn English.Draft regulationThe FILE – A Chinese teacher writes English words on a blackboard at a class in Shanghai, April 26, 2002.What about learning English?English teaching has a huge market in China. The China Science News reported that more than 300 million people in China are learning English. English classes, mandated by the Ministry of Education, cost nearly 164 billion RMB (about $24 billion) annually.Yet as China’s relationship with the U.S. and other major English-speaking countries worsens, some worry the situation will mirror what happened in the 1960s, when passion to learn Russian sharply decreased after ties between Beijing and Moscow deteriorated.Commentator Qin Weiping said there’s a possibility that English might be less important if China keeps its aggressive foreign policy and is further isolated by the U.S. and other major economies down the road.Professor Zhan Jiang disagreed, saying that the current situation was temporary.“Some kids can’t go abroad, and some international students can’t come back. There are lot of reasons — COVID-19, Sino-U.S. relations. But I think most Chinese students will still learn English as their second language. That trend won’t change,” he told VOA.Li Ping, parent of a Beijing student, told VOA that he still wanted his child to learn English well, so he has the opportunity to go to the U.S. for further education. He added that he thought China’s current foreign policy and international environment would change one day. “We must invest in education,” he said.

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US Pulling Africa Command from Germany

The United States is preparing to pull more troops from Germany, days after President Donald Trump criticized the country for being “delinquent” on defense spending.U.S. Africa Command confirmed Friday it is in the early stages of moving its headquarters from the city of Stuttgart, where it has been located since the command was first stood up in 2008.“U.S. Africa Command has been told to plan to move,” its commander, Gen. Stephen Townsend, said in a statement. “While it will likely take several months to develop options, consider locations, and come to a decision, the command has started the process.”U.S. military officials have been looking for months at reducing the approximately 6,000 troops stationed in Africa.  FILE – U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend watches during a tour north of Baghdad, Iraq, Feb. 8, 2017.“It is important our African partners understand our commitment to them remains strong,” Townsend said in Friday’s statement, adding his command “will continue to work with our African and other partners to address mutual interests.”While a new site for the command headquarters has not yet been chosen, an AFRICOM official told VOA that planners will be looking first to other European countries, and then at moving the command to the U.S.“The team will look at available infrastructure, housing, access to transportation, adequate medical care, and a range of other consideration factors,” said AFRICOM spokesman Col. Chris Karns.“It will be a deliberate and orderly approach and process,” he added, noting, “It was important to let partners as well as personnel and families know that planning is under way.”Africa itself, where the U.S. has long tried to maintain a small military footprint, is not under consideration, officials said.Just how much moving AFRICOM’s headquarters from Stuttgart will cost, and how much money could be saved by using another location, has yet to be determined.Reaction to changesWhile U.S. military officials argue the changes are strategically necessary and will give them more flexibility, German officials have expressed disappointment at the U.S. decision to pull some 12,000 troops from the country.FILE – Norbert Roettgen, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Bundestag, speaks during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, Feb. 18, 2020.”Instead of strengthening NATO, the troop withdrawal will weaken the alliance,” Norbert Roettgen, a senior ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the chairman of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.U.S. lawmakers, including some Republicans who often side with Trump, have also raised concerns about the changes, though Sen. Jim Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called the moves “sound.”Trump defended the decision to pull troops out of Germany earlier this week, suggesting the U.S. could move troops based with other NATO allies if those countries do not increase defense spending.”We don’t want to be the suckers anymore,” he told reporters Wednesday.But some analysts have raised concerns that moving troops and critical commands from Germany will hurt overall operations.“We get huge benefits from our U.S. military posture in Germany,” said Bradley Bowman, a former adviser to members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees.“We are able to project U.S. military power into North Africa and the Middle East much more effectively because of our military posture in Germany,” said Bowman, now with the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. 
 

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Court Overturns Boston Marathon Bomber’s Death Sentence

A federal appeals court Friday threw out Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, saying the judge who oversaw the case did not adequately screen jurors for potential biases.A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new penalty phase trial on whether Tsarnaev, 27, should be executed for the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.”But make no mistake: Dzhokhar will spend his remaining days locked up in prison, with the only matter remaining being whether he will die by execution,” Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote in the ruling, more than six months after arguments were heard in the case.An email seeking comment was sent to an attorney for Tsarnaev. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston said the office was reviewing the opinion and had no immediate comment.Prosecutors could ask the full appeals court to hear the case or go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court.The mother of Krystle Campbell, the 29-year-old killed in the attack, expressed outrage at the court’s decision.’It’s just terrible'”I just don’t understand it,” Patricia Campbell told The Boston Globe. “It’s just terrible that he’s allowed to live his life. It’s unfair. He didn’t wake up one morning and decide to do what he did. He planned it out. He did a vicious, ugly thing.”Former Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer Dic Donohue, who was severely injured in a gunfight with the brothers, said the ruling was not surprising to him.”And in any case, he won’t be getting out and hasn’t been able to harm anyone since he was captured,” he tweeted.Tsarnaev’s lawyers acknowledged at the beginning of his trial that he and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, set off the two bombs at the marathon finish line. But they argued that Dzhokar Tsarnaev was less culpable than his brother, who they said was the mastermind behind the attack.Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a gunbattle with police a few days after the April 15, 2013, bombing. Dzhokar Tsarnaev is now behind bars at a high-security supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.Tsarnaev was convicted on 30 charges, including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction.Punishment for USProsecutors told jurors that the men carried out the attack to punish the United States for its wars in Muslim countries. In the boat where Tsarnaev was found hiding, he had scrawled a confession that referred to the wars and wrote, among other things, “Stop killing our innocent people and we will stop.”Tsarnaev’s attorneys identified a slew of issues with his trial but said in a brief filed with the court that the “first fundamental error” was the judge’s refusal to move the case out of Boston. They also pointed to social media posts from two jurors suggesting they harbored strong opinions before the 2015 trial started.One juror had said in Twitter posts that that she was “locked down” with her family during the manhunt and retweeted another post calling Tsarnaev a “piece of garbage,” but later told the court she had not commented on the case or been asked to shelter in place, the defense said. On the day of Tsarnaev’s sentencing, the juror changed her Facebook profile picture to an image that said “BOSTON STRONG,” a rallying cry used in the wake of the bombing, the attorneys said.Tsarnaev’s lawyers pushed several times to move the trial out of the city where the bombs exploded, arguing the intense media scrutiny and number of people touched by the attack in Boston would taint the jury pool. But U.S. District Judge George O’Toole refused, saying he believed a fair and impartial jury could be found in the city.’Pervasive’ coverageThe 1st Circuit said the “pervasive” media coverage featuring “bone-chilling still shots and videos” of the bombing and dayslong manhunt required the judge to run a jury selection process “sufficient to identify prejudice.” But O’Toole fell short, the judges found.The judges said O’Toole deemed jurors who had already formed the opinion that Tsarnaev was guilty qualified “because they answered ‘yes’ to the question whether they could decide this high-profile case based on the evidence.” Yet he didn’t sufficiently dig into what jurors had read or heard about the case, it said.”By not having the jurors identify what it was they already thought they knew about the case, the judge made it too difficult for himself and the parties to determine both the nature of any taint (e.g., whether the juror knew something prejudicial not to be conceded at trial) and the possible remedies for the taint,” Thompson wrote.All three judges agreed that the death sentence should be tossed.In a concurring opinion, Judge Juan Torruella wrote that the case should never have been tried in Boston.”If this case did not present a sufficient basis for a change of venue, there are no set of circumstances that will meet this standard, at least not in the First Circuit,” he wrote.President Donald Trump weighed in on the ruling during an address to supporters on the tarmac of Tampa International Airport.”I see in Boston, where you have the animal that killed so many people during the Boston Marathon,” Trump said. “They just sent this conviction for the death penalty back to the lower courts so they’ll argue about that for a long time. It’s ridiculous.”

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US Imposes Sanctions on Chinese Company Over Abuse of Uighurs

The United States intensified its economic pressure on China’s Xinjiang province on Friday, imposing sanctions on a powerful Chinese company and two officials for what it said were human rights abuses against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities.The move, the latest blow to U.S.-China relations, came a week after U.S. President Donald Trump closed the Chinese consulate in Houston, prompting Beijing to shutter the U.S. consulate in Chengdu.The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement it blacklisted the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, also known as XPCC, along with Sun Jinlong, former party secretary of XPCC, and Peng Jiarui, XPCC’s deputy party secretary and commander, over accusations they are connected to serious human rights abuse against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.”The Chinese Communist Party’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, China against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities rank as the stain of the century,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.China denies mistreatment of the minority group and says the camps holding many Uighurs provide vocational training and are needed to fight extremism.Washington’s action freezes any U.S. assets of the company and officials; generally prohibits Americans from dealing with them; and bars Sun Jinlong and Peng Jiarui from traveling to the United States.A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the company as a “a secretive, paramilitary organization that performs a variety of functions under the direct control” of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”They are directly involved in the implementation of the CCP’s comprehensive surveillance, detention and indoctrination … which we all know targets the Uighurs and members of other ethnic minority members in Xinjiang,” the official said.The Treasury also issued a license, authorizing certain wind-down and divestment transactions and activities related to blocked XPCC subsidiaries until Sept. 30.Washington recently imposed sanctions on the autonomous region of Xinjiang’s Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, the highest-ranking Chinese official to be targeted, blacklisting the member of China’s powerful Politburo and current first party secretary of the XPCC, as well as other officials and the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau.Peter Harrell, a former official and sanctions expert at the Center for a New American Security, said that from an economic perspective, Friday’s action was a “substantial escalation” of U.S. pressure and sends a warning to companies engaged in activity in China.”The Trump administration finally took a meaningful sanctions … action on Xinjiang, as opposed to ones that were primarily symbolic,” Harrell said.XPCC is a quasi-military group created in 1954. It was initially made up of demobilized soldiers who spent time in military training while developing farms on the region’s arid Land.Civilian members from eastern China later joined the corps, which now numbers 3.11 million people, or more than 12% of the region’s population. It is almost entirely made up of Han Chinese in a region that is home to the Muslim Uighur people. 

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Requirements for Huawei Official’s Extradition to US Have Been Met, Canada Says

Canada’s attorney general says the requirements for extraditing Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou to the United States on charges of bank fraud have been met, documents submitted in a British Columbia court show.Meng, 48, was arrested in December 2018 on a warrant from the United States, which alleges that she misled the bank HSBC about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran.Meng has been under house arrest in Vancouver since then, fighting extradition, and has said she is innocent. Her case has caused a diplomatic row between Canada and China, which has demanded that Meng be released. China detained two Canadians after Meng’s arrest.The documents, which were filed last week and released to media Friday, are a precursor to the formal hearing on committal, or whether Meng should be extradited to the United States. Those hearings will take place in April 2021.The documents outline the evidence in support of Meng’s custody and conclude that the test for committal has been met.Assessment of charges’ potentialThe extradition hearings are not a full trial on the charges laid by the United States, the documents state, only whether there is the potential for those charges to be found valid.”The evidence demonstrates that Ms. Meng deliberately made dishonest representations to HSBC in an attempt to preserve Huawei’s relationship with the bank,” lawyers for the Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General David Lametti wrote.”Since Ms. Meng concedes that she is the person sought for prosecution for the conduct set out in the extradition request, all of the formal requirements for committal are established.”Huawei declined to comment and pointed instead to its past legal submissions on its arguments.In May, a judge in British Columbia’s Superior Court found that the legal standard of double criminality — meaning that Meng’s actions could be considered a crime in both Canada and the United States — had been met, dealing a blow to hopes for a quick end to the trial.The next hearings, scheduled for August 17-21 in Vancouver, will discuss whether the attorney general’s assertion of privilege in declining to release some documents requested by Huawei relating to Meng’s initial arrest is valid.Hearings for the trial are scheduled to wrap up in April 2021, although the potential for appeals of the decision from either side means the case could drag out over several years.

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Тиждень слави! 22-29 липня 2014 року. Антизрада. ЗСУ заслужили на згадку!

Тиждень слави! 22-29 липня 2014 року. Антизрада. ЗСУ заслужили на згадку!
 

 
 
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Интернет локаут путляндии произойдет в 2022 году

Интернет локаут путляндии произойдет в 2022 году.

Власти подлампичили закон о “суверенном интернете”, который вступит в силу в 2022 году, согласно которому из страны будет минимизирована передача данных, а внутренний трафик будет жестко подконтролен
 

 
 
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Лукашенко пошел ва-банк: пленные “вагнеровцы”, “лечение трактором” и “пощечина” пукину…

Лукашенко пошел ва-банк: пленные “вагнеровцы”, “лечение трактором” и “пощечина” пукину…

На “выборах” в Беларуси вырисовывается богатая сюжетная линия, не вполне понятной пока кривизны…
 

 
 
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Обида дегенерата кадырова из за санкций. Попытка путляндии украсть вакцину

Обида дегенерата кадырова из за санкций. Попытка путляндии украсть вакцину.

Хабаровск бастует, придурок дегтярев несет бред, якобы он упокоил граждан, хотя сам общается только с массовкой, а вот путляндия хочет создать первой вакцину и уверяет, что для этого есть все шансы, правда некоторые страны Европы и Америка обвиняют банду карлика пукина в том, что хакеры пытаются украсть их наработки в сфере вакцины. Цап-царап, как говорил чекист. Ну а наш дегенерат кадыров очень расстроен, что его родных внесли в санкционные списки
 

 
 
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Лукашенко врубил Вагнера обиженному карлику пукину, а тот засунул голову в песок

Лукашенко врубил Вагнера обиженному карлику пукину, а тот засунул голову в песок.

Лукашенко очень не хочет повторить судьбу януковича, поэтому будет создавать пукину неприятности до тех пор, пока не выторгует для себя более выгодную перспективу чем Ростов
 

 
 
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Increase in US Immigration Fees Announced

The Trump administration on Friday announced it would dramatically increase U.S. immigration fees in multiple categories, including a first-ever fee for asylum applicants and an 80% increase for naturalization services.The new fee structure, unveiled by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), is expected to take effect October 2. The cost of online naturalization applications is increasing from $640 to $1,160. There will also be a $50 fee for asylum-seekers.The agency, which has closed offices and suspended most services during the pandemic, has said it faces a significant revenue shortfall that could trigger furloughs. Earlier this year, the agency requested $1.2 billion in emergency funds from Congress.“USCIS is required to examine incoming and outgoing expenditures and make adjustments based on that analysis,” Joseph Edlow, USCIS deputy director for policy, said in a statement to the press. He added, “These overdue adjustments in fees are necessary to efficiently and fairly administer our nation’s lawful immigration system, secure the homeland and protect Americans.”According to USCIS, the new rule supports payroll, technology and operations to accomplish its mission.Experts said the United States now joins Iran, Fiji and Australia in imposing a fee on asylum-seekers. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, a Washington nonprofit that advocates for immigrants, decried the added financial burden on newcomers, who are also charged a fee for an initial work permit.The USCIS fee rule continues the Trump administration’s attacks on asylum seekers:
– First-ever fee ($50) for asylum
– For the first time, requires asylum seekers to pay to apply for an initial work permit, even though they’re not allowed to work before then—at the cost of $550.
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) July 31, 2020Earlier, the agency removed a proposed $275 renewal fee for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients.U.S. immigration fees have risen dramatically in recent decades. In the 1990s, the fee to apply for naturalization was under $100.USCIS does not operate like most federal agencies as it receives funds mostly from fee collection.

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Twitter Bans Account of Former KKK Leader David Duke

Twitter Inc said on Friday it has permanently suspended the account of David Duke, a former leader of the white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan, as the social media company tries to curb the spread of hateful content on its website.Duke’s account had been suspended for repeatedly violating Twitter’s policy on hateful content and harmful links, the micro-blogging site said.Under Twitter’s hateful conduct policy, any threats of attacks directed at people on the basis of their religion, race or ethnicity is prohibited on its website.Twitter has long been under pressure to clean up hateful content on its platform and has come under the scanner to control misinformation especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.The KKK is the oldest white supremacist group in the United States and its roots trace back to the Reconstruction period in the South that followed the Civil War.In addition to anti-Black views, the KKK has expressed anti-semitic, anti-immigrant and anti-gay views. 

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Zimbabwe Protests Stopped by Government Soldiers

A heavy security presence in Zimbabwe’s capital Friday shut down planned opposition protests against the government’s handling of corruption and the economy.On social media Friday, Zimbabwean police said the country was “calm and peaceful” and urged the public to continue with their normal day-to-day activities “with the full knowledge that their safety and security is guaranteed.” In Harare, however, armed soldiers and police ordered shops to close down early and sealed off all roads leading to the central business district.Armed soldiers and police ordered shops to close down early and sealed off all roads leading to the central business district, Harare, July 31, 2020. (Columbus Mavhunga/VOA)While a handful of demonstrators tried to gather, security forces made sure that protests planned by opposition groups never got off the ground.Makomborero Haruzivishe, one of the organizers of the protests, spoke to VOA by phone from an undisclosed location, saying he characterized the day as a victory for the opposition.“For us, the demonstration was very successful. Because we are all usually victims of ZANU-PF, we are all victims of corruption, but when we call for demonstrations against poverty, against high prices, usually people of Zimbabwe will get into streets,” he said.”But today we made a strategy and shut down and went home and left police officers and soldiers to demonstrate on our behalf in the streets,” he continued. “If you check the amount of resources that were used to deploy those merchants of terror by the panicking Mnangagwa regime, so we have delivered a score: There was people’s powered shutdown. This is just the beginning of weeks, months revolution.”Tafadzwa Mugwadi, spokesman for the ruling Zanu PF party, says Zimbabweans snubbed the Friday protest calls because of the coronavirus epidemic, in Harare, July 21, 2020. (Columbus Mavhunga/VOA)Haruzivishe is one of 14 political activists being sought by police in connection with the protests, which were not sanctioned by authorities, as required by law.Tafadzwa Mugwadi, the spokesman for the ruling ZANU-PF party, said Zimbabweans snubbed the protest calls because of the coronavirus epidemic. Business owner and ZANU-PF supporter Samson Malibho says he was against the protests because they affect his business of mending tires in Highfields, one of Harare’s poorest suburbs, July 31, 2020. (Columbus Mavhunga/VOA)“It is … clear that Zimbabweans (are) aware of the realities of COVID-19 and this is why they have spurned and literally have refused to participate in the purported demonstrations that had been called irresponsibly by merchants of death,” Mugwadi said.ZANU-PF supporter Samson Malibho said he was against the protests because they affect his business of mending tires in Highfields, one of Harare’s poorest suburbs.“It’s a dead day, people are not moving around because of the opposition planned protests,” he said. “There is no business activity. People have been ordered to remain indoors to contain the protests. Such events – protests – are useless and affect our livelihoods, we depend on informal businesses.”Abduction trialMeanwhile, the trial of three female Zimbabwe opposition leaders facing charges of faking their abduction began Friday.The women disappeared for two days in May and said they were kidnapped and beaten by state security agents.Women’s rights group Equality Now released a statement calling for the charges against the trio to be dropped.  The three – Joana Mamombe, Netsai Marova and Cecilia Chimbiri – face 10 years in jail if convicted. 
 

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Botswana’s Capital Back in Lockdown After COVID-19 Cases Double

Botswana has put its capital, Gaborone, back into a two-week lockdown starting Friday, closing schools and restricting movements, after confirmed local COVID-19 transmissions doubled this week.Botswana’s health minister, Dr. Lemogang Kwape, said a return to lockdown was needed after the capital saw what he called a “worrying rise” in local cases of COVID-19.”I now regret to inform you that the situation has worsened in the last 24 hours,” he said. “Botswana has recorded 30 new positive cases of COVID-19, with the majority of the cases emanating from schools in the greater Gaborone.”Students walk near a school as classes are cancelled in response to a surge of new COVID-19 cases, in Gaborone, Botswana. (Mqondisi Dube/VOA)Authorities closed schools in Gaborone on Friday and, except for essential workers, resumed requiring temporary permits for anyone to move around.Schools elsewhere in Botswana remain open.Confirmed, local transmissions of the virus in Gaborone doubled in the last week, from 70 to 140, most of them recorded in schools. Kwape said contact tracing had become more complex.He said some transport operators were failing to keep a passenger register, as required by COVID-19 regulations.”During the course of this week the disease has taken an unexpected turn. This now requires that we place the greater Gaborone zone under lockdown for a minimum period of two weeks to enable us to contain the disease,” Kwape said.Soldiers and police monitor a roadblock in the capital, Gaborone, which is under a two-week lockdown, July 31, 2020. (Mqondisi Dube/VOA)This is the second time Botswana has returned the capital to lockdown after lifting the restrictions since the pandemic began.Botswana, with 804 recorded cases of COVID-19 and two deaths, has been relatively unscathed by the virus, compared to other African countries.Botswana’s neighbor, South Africa, is the worst-hit on the continent, with confirmed COVID-19 cases approaching half a million.The majority of Botswana’s confirmed cases were along the border – and most of them foreigners.

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Obama Takes Aim at Trump in Fiery Eulogy for Civil Rights Icon John Lewis

In a fiery eulogy for longtime U.S. Representative John Lewis on Thursday, former President Barack Obama took a series of thinly veiled shots at the actions of his successor that he said tore at the legacy of the Black civil rights icon being laid to rest.  
 
The funeral for Lewis, who played an instrumental role in passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, came on the same day Republican President Donald Trump suggested the Nov. 3 election could be delayed. Trump has also waged a war against mail-in ballots, a tactic critics say is aimed at suppressing votes.
 
“We no longer have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to cast a ballot,” Obama said in the eulogy, referring to one way Black people were once disqualified at the ballot box.
 
“But even as we sit here, there are those in power doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations and targeting minorities with restrictive ID laws and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision.”
 
Obama also referred to reported moves to undermine “the postal service in the run-up to an election that could be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don’t get sick.”
 
Obama, joined at the funeral by two fellow former presidents, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton, spoke of Lewis’s rise from humble beginnings on a Troy, Alabama, farm to become a leader of the 1960s struggle for equal rights for Black Americans. Ultimately, the man known as the “conscience of Congress” never gave up his drive to make “good trouble” in the cause of justice, Obama said.
 
Obama and others spoke or sang in front of his casket draped in the American flag at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. King, who was assassinated in 1968, had been a mentor to Lewis.
 
Lewis, who was first elected in 1986 to represent Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives, died on July 17 at age 80 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. His death came at a time of reckoning across the United States over racial injustice ignited by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.  
 
Obama – a Democrat who was the nation’s first black president and who awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 – argued that the man whose sharecropping parents “picked someone else’s cotton” now should be counted among the Founding Fathers.
 
“America was built by John Lewis. He as much as anyone in our history brought our country closer to its highest ideals,” the Democratic former president said.
 
In his speech, Bush remembered joining Lewis in Selma, Alabama, for the 50th anniversary of the watershed 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. “The story that began in Troy isn’t ending here today, nor is the work.”
 
The funeral capped a week of memorial services. Lewis’s coffin was escorted across the bridge on Sunday, decades after his beating there drew a national spotlight to the struggle for racial equality, including suppression of the Black vote in the South. And on Monday his casket was taken to the U.S. Capitol in Washington where it lay in state through Tuesday.
 
Eric Terrell, 65, of Atlanta, sat outside the church in his wheelchair, in the heat and thick air of an Atlanta summer morning, waiting to get a glimpse of former Presidents Clinton and Bush, but especially Obama. He was camped out before 6:30 a.m. so he could bow his head as Lewis’s funeral procession rolled by.
 
And he held his homemade sign until his arms got tired. It read, “Get your ass out and vote.” “He put his life on the line in Selma so we could vote,” said Terrell, who is Black. “So we better do it,” he said before joining the throng of onlookers outside the church watching the services on a Jumbotron.
 
In an essay written shortly before his death and published in the New York Times on Thursday, Lewis called on the younger generation to get into “good trouble,” using perhaps his most famous utterance about the importance of challenging inequality.
 
“In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way,” he wrote, before invoking a famous line from King: “Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.”

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US Marine Killed in Accident Off Southern California Coast

The U.S. Marines said Friday that an accident off the southern California coast has claimed the life of one Marine, injured two others and left eight missing.An NBC-owned television station in San Diego, California reported an amphibious assault vehicle carrying the Marines was taking on water Thursday during a drill. Unit commander Col. Christopher Bronzi said, “We are deeply saddened by this tragic accident” and asked that, “you keep our Marines, sailors and their families in your prayers.” Bronzi did not disclose details of the accident, but Marines frequently practice beach attacks using amphibious troop transport vehicles.The Marines said operations were underway early Friday to find and rescue the Marines, who were assigned to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit based at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California.

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Champagne Losing its Fizz as Global Pandemic Clobbers Sales

Champagne is losing its fizz. For months, lockdown put the cork on weddings, dining out, parties and international travel — all key sales components for the French luxury wine marketed for decades as a sparkling must at any celebration. Producers in France’s eastern Champagne region, headquarters of the global industry, say they’ve lost an estimated 1.7 billion euros ($2 billion) in sales for this year, as turnover fell by a third — a hammering unmatched in living memory, and worse than the Great Depression. They expect about 100 million bottles to be languishing unsold in their cellars by the end of the year. “We are experiencing a crisis that we evaluate to be even worse than the Great Depression” of 1929, said Thibaut Le Mailloux of the Champagne Committee, known by its French acronym CIVC, that represents some 16,000 winemakers. Recognizing the urgency of the problem, the CIVC is launching unprecedented damage-limitation measures. Like oil-producing countries, the committee regulates the size of the harvest each year to avoid the kind of excess production that would cause bottle prices to plummet. At a meeting scheduled for Aug. 18, it’s expected to impose a cap so tight that record quantities of grapes will be destroyed or sold to distilleries at discounted prices. The prospect alarms smaller producers, who are more vulnerable than the big houses. Anselme Selosse, of Jacques Selosse Champagnes, called it “an insult to nature” that champagne’s famous grapes might even be destined to produce alcohol for hand sanitizer, as is happening in other wine-producing regions such as Alsace after demand spiked during the pandemic. “We are to destroy (the grapes) and we pay for them to be destroyed,” Selosse said, referring to the industry as a whole. “It’s nothing but a catastrophe.” “Champagne has never lived through anything like this before, even in the World Wars,” Selosse added. “We have never experienced … a sudden one-third fall in sales. Over one hundred million bottles unsold.”Paul Francois Vranken, Director of Vranken-Pommery Monopole speaks during an interview in the Champagne region, east of Paris, July 28, 2020.Major producers such as Vranken-Pommery predict that the crisis could last for years. “It should not be forgotten that (champagne) has lived through every single war,” said Paul-Francois Vranken, founder of Vranken-Pommery Monopole. “But with the other crises, there was a way out. For now, there is no way out — unless we find a vaccine.” Vranken said the very essence of champagne marketing — as a drink quaffed at parties and weddings — needs to be re-evaluated to reflect the new normal: Fewer festivities and a lack of celebratory group events. The new branding strategy for his, and other champagne companies, will seek to highlight the wine’s status as a naturally, and often organically, produced quality drink from a historic French region. “Even if the bars and the nightclubs are closed for five years, we don’t plan on missing out on customers … There will be a very big change to our marketing that highlights the grandeur of our wines,” Vranken said. Selosse, who produces many “natural” champagnes with no added sugar, also hopes the pandemic will encourage thought about future champagne marketing and how the multi-billion dollar industry is restructured. He would like to see a more cooperative side to production, such as “communal wine presses” to help pool the costs for smaller producers. Selosse said adaptability has served champagne well in the past, helping it evolve from a dessert wine in the 19th century to the modern-day dry version named “brut.”  He even thinks — but this is a minority view among producers — the industry could move away from effervescence and be able to produce all sorts of wine, as it did in the past: red, white or still. In fact, literally no fizz.

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Eurozone Economy Suffers Record Drop During Lockdown Months

The economy of the 19-country eurozone shrank by a devastating 12.1% percent in the April-June period from the quarter before – the largest drop on record – as coronavirus lockdowns shut businesses and hampered consumer spending.Economists say the worst of the downturn is past as many restrictions have eased, but that the recovery will be drawn out and vulnerable to renewed virus outbreaks.
Spain, which along with Italy was among the first to get hit hard by the spread of the virus, suffered the region’s heaviest drop at 18.5%. France, Italy and Portugal also endured steep declines, but no country escaped the impact of the pandemic.  
For the currency union as a whole it was the biggest decline since the records started in 1995. The broader 27-country European Union, not all of whose members use the euro, saw output sag 11.9%.
The decline in Europe compares with a 9.5% quarter-on-quarter drop in the United States, which unlike Europe has not yet been able to get its contagion numbers firmly down yet and whose economic recovery is in doubt.
European governments are countering the recession with massive stimulus measures. EU leaders have agreed on a 750 billion-euro recovery fund backed by common borrowing to support the economy from 2021. National governments have stepped in with loans to keep businesses afloat and wage support programs that pay workers’ salaries while they are furloughed. The European Central Bank is pumping 1.35 trillion euros in newly printed money into the economy, a step which helps keep borrowing costs low.
Those support measures have helped keep unemployment from spiking. The rate rose to 7.8% in June from 7.7% in May. But many job losses will wind up being permanent despite the stimulus.
Major companies such as Lufthansa, Daimler and Airbus have said they will cut thousands of jobs.
Economists say the downturn was concentrated in the months of April and May when lockdowns were most severe. Many restrictive measures have been eased, and business confidence in Germany, the biggest eurozone economy, has ticked up for three straight months.
But the outlook is for a long and uncertain climb back to pre-virus levels that could take until 2022 or longer. Company forecasts for the rest of the year assumed that there is not a renewed outbreak of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Cases have been rising again in several countries as people go on vacations and Britain slapped a 14-day quarantine on travelers returning from Spain.  
Rosie Colthorpe, European economist at Oxford Economics, said the current third quarter was likely to see high growth rates, “but not nearly large enough to make up for the damage.”
“Beyond this initial bounce, the recovery is set to be gradual and uneven,” with pre-virus output regained only by mid-2022, she said, adding that “recent flare-ups of the virus in several European countries risk derailing this recovery.”
The Spanish economic drop was by far the sharpest since the country’s national statistics agency began collecting data. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was meeting later Friday with the leaders of Spain’s regions to discuss how to rebuild the economy and where to deploy billions of euros in European Union aid for recovery.
Germany, the largest of the countries that use the euro, went through a 10.1% decline, the biggest since records started in 1970.  
In France, the startling plunge of 13.8% in April-June was the third consecutive quarter of contraction in France’s worsening recession. The pain has been so damaging to jobs and industries that the government is talking down the possibility of another nationwide lockdown as infections tick upward again. Finance minister Bruno Le Maire called on French people to spend more to help the economy recover.
“All the growth in GDP seen in the 2010-2019 decade has been wiped out in five months,” said Marc Ostwald, chief economist at ADM Investor Services International. In Italy’s case, economists said it wiped out about 30 years of growth.

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Hong Kong Postpones Elections By a Year, Citing Coronavirus

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam announced Friday that the government will postpone highly anticipated legislative elections by one year, citing a worsening coronavirus outbreak in the semi-autonomous Chinese city.
        
The Hong Kong government is invoking an emergency ordinance in delaying the elections. Lam said the government has the support of the Chinese government in making the decision.
        
“The announcement I have to make today is the most difficult decision I’ve had to make in the past seven months,” Lam said at a news conference.
        
“We want to ensure fairness and public safety and health, and need to make sure the election is held in an open, fair and impartial manner. This decision is therefore essential,” she said.
        
The postponement is a setback for the pro-democracy opposition, which was hoping to capitalize on disenchantment with the current pro-Beijing majority to make gains. A group of 22 lawmakers issued a statement ahead of the announcement accusing the government of using the outbreak as an excuse to delay the vote.  
        
“Incumbent pro-democracy legislators, who represent 60% of the public’s opinion, collectively oppose the postponement and emphasize the responsibility of the SAR government to make every effort to arrange adequate anti-epidemic measures to hold elections in September as scheduled,” the statement said, referring to the territory’s official name, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
        
“Otherwise, it is tantamount to uprooting the foundation of the establishment of the SAR.”
        
The city of 7.5 million people has had a surge in coronavirus infections since the beginning of July. Hong Kong has recorded 3,273 infections as of Friday, more than double the tally on July 1.
        
The government has tightened social distancing restrictions, limiting public gatherings to two people, and banned dining-in at restaurants after 6 p.m.
        
The lead-up to the elections has been closely watched, after a national security law that took effect in late June stipulated that candidates who violated the law would be barred from running.  
        
The new law is seen as Beijing’s attempt to curb dissent in the city, after months of pro-democracy and anti-government protests in Hong Kong last year.
        
On Thursday, 12 pro-democracy candidates including prominent pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong were disqualified from running for not complying with the city’s mini-constitution or pledging allegiance to the local and national governments.
        
“Beyond any doubt, this is the most scandalous election ever in Hong Kong history,” Wong said at a news conference Friday. “I wish to emphasize that no reasonable man would think that this election ban is not politically driven.”
        
“Beijing has staged multiple acts to prevent the opposition bloc from taking the majority in the Hong Kong legislature,” he said. 

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Asia COVID Resurgence Shatters Travel Bubble Hopes

The coronavirus is reemerging in Asian countries previously praised as models of containment, underscoring the resilience of the virus and dealing a blow to the idea of so-called travel bubbles between countries seen as safe zones. Vietnam, Hong Kong, Australia, and Japan have all seen the virus spread faster than ever this month, raising the prospect of a return to extended lockdowns. Mainland China, where the virus originated, has also seen a spike in cases. Some of those countries had been part of discussions about travel bubbles, which were proposed early in the pandemic as a way to reinvigorate economies by reopening quarantine-free tourist and international business travel. But with the new wave of infections, even many proponents of travel bubbles are acknowledging the idea is unrealistic for now. “It’s just a real mess,” says Ken Atkinson, vice chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Advisory Board, which has lobbied the Vietnamese government to consider the travel bubbles. “I think we’re looking at some time into next year before we can really see non-quarantine travel from anywhere.”A health worker disinfects arriving Vietnamese COVID-19 patients at the national hospital of tropical diseases in Hanoi, Vietnam on July 29, 2020.Vietnam resurgence To understand the difficulty of eradicating the coronavirus, look no further than Vietnam. Until this week, the country of 95 million people had reported only around 450 cases and zero deaths, thanks to its rapid quarantine measures and rigorous contact tracing. Vietnam had gone nearly 100 days without seeing a local infection – a stunning accomplishment for a country that shares a long border with China. But even that sustained success wasn’t enough to prevent a COVID-19 resurgence. Over the past week, Vietnam has reported 93 new cases as part of a wave of infections traced to the central city of Danang. Authorities have since evacuated 80,000 people, mostly local tourists, and suspended flights to and from the popular resort city, parts of which now resemble a ghost town.In Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, bars and nightclubs have been closed and large gatherings banned. Many of the country’s beaches that had been filled with local tourists now sit empty.“We have several drivers and tour guides and they are at home without work,” says Marcel Renes, who owns the Ninh Binh Tourist Center that offers tours and private drivers in the Hong River Delta in northern Vietnam.  With Vietnam’s borders sealed for months, many hotels, resorts, and other parts of the tourist industry had switched their focus to attracting locals rather than foreigners. But the latest outbreak has endangered even that.“I have no idea what we can do now,” Renes says. “The borders are still closed, and I think for the next six months they will remain closed.”The source of Vietnam’s outbreak isn’t clear. Since the new cases were discovered, Vietnam has cracked down on illegal immigration from China, although authorities have not linked any of the cases to unauthorized border crossings. Business travel blamed in Hong Kong Hong Kong is also experiencing a new wave of infections, after having not reported a locally transmitted case for three weeks. For the past nine days, Hong Kong has reported over 100 new cases per dayThe Chinese territory, whose economy relies on international business travel, has allowed certain categories of inboard travelers – including some executives, airline staff, and government officials – to be exempt from various quarantine rules. Over 290,000 people have been given such exemptions since February, according to official figures. Health authorities now acknowledge those exemptions may be at least partly to blame for the virus resurgence. People wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus walk by a decoration outside a shopping mall in Beijing, June 28, 2020.China, Japan, Australia Mainland China for a time was the epicenter of the global pandemic, but quickly contained the virus using some of the world’s most draconian measures, including walling off an entire province for months. But even those steps couldn’t stop the virus from returning. New daily coronavirus cases in China surpassed 100 for the first time since mid-April. Most of the new infections have been in the northwest region of Xinjiang, posing a new threat for the masses of Uighur Muslims that have been sent to internment camps. China closed its borders to almost all foreigners in late March and had only slowly begun relaxing some of those restrictions on a country-by-country basis.Japan has also reported record high numbers of cases this week, surpassing 1,000 new daily infections for the first time. Officials have warned another state of emergency could be declared in major urban centers such as Tokyo. In Australia, a surge of infections has been centered in Victoria, the country’s second most populated state. Australia saw its deadliest day Thursday, reporting at least 13 deaths and more than 700 new infections. The Australian infections have further delayed a quarantine-free travel arrangement with New Zealand – a deal that many once hoped would become one of the world’s first travel bubbles.New Zealand is now one very few countries to have seemingly eradicated the coronavirus – and kept it that way.  Other regional successes include South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. But it’s a short list that seems to be getting shorter every week.Years not months As long as many parts of the world continue to see locally spreading infections, widespread international travel will be “pretty much impossible until a vaccine is found,” says Archie Clements, an epidemiologist at Curtin University in Perth, Australia.“We will be dealing with this for quite some time,” predicts Clements. “I think we’re talking multiple years rather than months before we can resume international travel in a fairly contained way.”But in the meantime, international travel will continue in many countries, even if it is more expensive. Travelers now must now consider the cost of pricier airline tickets, mandatory coronavirus tests, and potentially an enforced weeks-long quarantine stay. “You’ve got to pay the cost of a two-week quarantine in a hotel…who can afford to do that?” says Sharon Friel, who focuses on health equity and governance at the Australian National University.That dynamic, Friel says, could result in a throwback to the class divide of the 1950s, when only wealthier individuals could afford to travel overseas.“It will be people with money,” she says, “that will be doing any sorts of international travel.”  
 

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Турецкая ловушка: обиженный карлик пукин выдохся и теряет последние силы

Турецкая ловушка: обиженный карлик пукин выдохся и теряет последние силы.

В общем, если Турция переходит на альтернативные российским нефть и газ, то ей нужно иметь возможность парировать любые угрозы со стороны путляндии и ее временных или постоянных сателлитов. Эрдоган принял мяч у Порошенка и показывает довольно неплохую игру. И не удивительно, что он получает критику за свое активное противодействие обиженному карлику пукину из тех самых источников, с которых выгребал и Порошенко. А это говорит о том, что Турция все делает правильно
 

 
 
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“Доходяга” пукина: “авианосец” «кузя» самоуничтожается даже без вмешательства врага

“Доходяга” пукина: “авианосец” «кузя» самоуничтожается даже без вмешательства врага.

Проще списать в утиль, чем продолжать его ремонт: ржавый пукинский так называемый авианосец “адмирал кузнецов” можно увидеть даже из космоса…
 

 
 
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Азербайджанский “тычок”: Эрдоган показал миру настоящее лицо обиженного карлика пукина

Азербайджанский “тычок”: Эрдоган показал миру настоящее лицо обиженного карлика пукина.

Турция – это страна, которая не боится путляндии и делает всё, что считает нужным, реализуя свои национальные интересы…
 

 
 
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Китай показал клыки! Для карлика пукина закончилась большая геополитика!

Китай показал клыки! Для карлика пукина закончилась большая геополитика!

Последние новости путляндии и мира, экономика, бизнес, культура, технологии, спорт
 

 
 
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