China is engaged in an “economic blitzkrieg” to supplant the United States as the world’s only superpower, Attorney General William Barr declared Thursday — the latest in a series of scathing comments about Beijing by top Trump Administration officials.  Speaking at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Barr said the U.S. response to China’s global ambitions “may prove to be the most important issue for our nation and the world in the twenty-first century.”China uses a variety of “predatory and often unlawful tactics” to gain an advantage over the U.S., according to Barr.    “How the United States responds to this challenge will have historic implications and will determine whether the United States and its liberal democratic allies will continue to shape their own destiny or whether the CCP and its autocratic tributaries will control the future,” Barr said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.Among China’s alleged predatory practices Barr listed were currency manipulation, tariffs, quotas, state-led strategic investment and acquisitions, theft and forced transfer of intellectual property, state subsidies, dumping, cyberattacks, and espionage.US Imposes Visa Restrictions on Chinese Tech Companies’ EmployeesAnnouncement is seen as the latest move to punish Chinese Communist Party’s alleged human rights abuses against country’s minority Muslim populationBeijing has long rejected many of the assertions made in Barr’s speech. China’s foreign minister warned on Wednesday that Beijing will retaliate with sanctions of its own against U.S. individuals and entities. The ministry said that “Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs and no foreign country has the right to interfere,” according to media reports.American business leaders remain the “principal focus” of Chinese foreign influence operations, said the attorney general. He warned that U.S. executives who fail to disclose their relations with China could run afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.  FARA requires agents of foreign governments to disclose their activities and their relationship with foreign entities.“You should be alert to how you might be used, and how your efforts on behalf of a foreign company or government could implicate” the law, Barr said.The attorney general’s speech comes amid elevated tensions between the U.S. and China and is the latest in Trump administration officials’ often strident remarks about Beijing’s global ambitions in recent weeks.  Last month, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said decades-long U.S. efforts to moderate the Chinese communist system resulted in “the greatest failure of American foreign policy since the 1930s.”US Mulls Ending Deal Underpinning Trading in Chinese CompaniesFrustration at lack of Chinese transparency is driving move that could push Chinese firms off US exchanges“The days of American passivity and naivete regarding the People’s Republic of China are over,” O’Brien told a group of Arizona business executives on June 24.FBI Director Christopher Wray weighed in last week, saying China poses “the greatest long-term threat” to U.S. economic and national security.Almost half of the FBI’s 5,000 counter-intelligence cases involve China. The bureau is opening a new China case every ten hours, Wray said.“And at this very moment, China is working to compromise American health care organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and academic institutions conducting essential COVID-19 research,” Wray said during remarks at the Hudson Institute on July 7.In the coming days, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “will sum up what is at stake for the United States and the free world,” Barr said.  “I hope these speeches will inspire the American people to reevaluate their relationship with China, so long as it continues to be ruled by the Communist Party,” he said.The speeches come as U.S. and China have clashed over a host of issues ranging from trade to Hong Kong’s autonomy and the coronavirus pandemic.  While at one time President Trump aggressively sought to strike a trade deal with China, his administration is taking an increasingly hawkish stance toward Beijing, blaming China for initially covering up the coronavirus and for undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy by imposing strict national security laws.On Wednesday, Trump signed legislation and an executive order that said the U.S. “will hold China accountable for its oppressive actions against the people of Hong Kong.” The legislation imposes sanctions on Chinese officials who undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy, while the executive order ends preferential treatment to Hong Kong.
 
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Another 1.3 million laid-off U.S. workers filed for unemployment compensation last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, as the world’s biggest economy struggles in the face of a surging number of new coronavirus cases.  It was the 17th straight week that the number of benefit claims had dropped, but only by 10,000 in the week ending July 11 from the previous week. The single-week high of 6.9 million claims came in March, but the recent four-week rolling average of nearly 1.4 million claims a week remains historically high.  In all, the government said about 17.3 million workers remain unemployed even as millions of workers have returned to their jobs. A total of 51 million workers have collected jobless benefits at some point in the last four months.    The unemployment benefit claim figures since mid-March have been staggering, easily topping the 695,000 total in one week in 1982 that had been the highest on record until the coronavirus pandemic swept into the United States.  FILE – People gather at the North Shore Tavern in Pittsburgh, June 28, 2020.Millions of the unemployed have returned to work, but those still left without work are facing new financial difficulties, with the national government’s $600-a-week boost to less generous state unemployment benefits set to expire in two weeks, at the end of July. In addition, economic experts say that employers have cut millions of jobs off their ledgers, leaving one-time workers with nothing to return to, or have permanently closed their businesses.  The White House and Congress are considering what additional aid, if any, laid-off workers should get from the federal government, but no decisions are likely until the end of July. Some additional boost to the U.S. economy is likely, however, but the money could go to businesses or state and local governments rather than directly to taxpayers or the unemployed.  FILE – In this illustration photo taken May 08, 2020, a COVID-19 Unemployment Assistance Updates logo is displayed on a smartphone against the backdrop of an application for unemployment benefits, in Arlington, Virginia.Smaller federal unemployment benefits — such as $200 to $400 a week on top of state aid — are possible but not a certainty. U.S. President Donald Trump has said he supports another round of $1,200 stimulus payments to most taxpayers, even as some of his fellow Republicans have voiced concerns about the country’s ever-increasing national debt that now totals more than $26 trillion. Some lawmakers have called for incentive payments to returning workers, some of whom have collected more in unemployment benefit payments than from their previous salaries. Trump’s daughter, White House adviser Ivanka Trump, had advice this week for the unemployed whose jobs have been wiped out by the pandemic: “Find something new.” Her pitch was part of a new government jobs initiative aimed at boosting the benefits of skills training and career paths that do not require a college degree. Trump administration critics on social media immediately ridiculed the jobs plan as “clueless” and “tone deaf” considering the country is facing an unrelenting surge in new coronavirus cases and an economic recession because of the pandemic. Numerous brand-named corporations are retrenching. Travelers pass a sign alerting them to distance at LaGuardia Airport, during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in New York, June 29, 2020.United Airlines says it is laying off more than a third of its 95,000 workers. Brooks Brothers, an upscale men’s clothier that first opened for business in 1818, filed for bankruptcy. Bed Bath and Beyond said it will close 200 stores. Some Federal Reserve officials have voiced fears that the economic recovery is faltering. But President Trump, facing a difficult November re-election contest against former vice president Joe Biden, has remained upbeat. “I created the greatest economy we’ve ever had,” he said days ago. “And now we’re creating it again.” The U.S. is now recording more than 60,000 new coronavirus cases a day. The U.S. leader has wrongly called them 99% “totally harmless,” with many of the patients requiring hospitalization.     The southern tier of U.S. states that had escaped the brunt of the pandemic in March and April has been particularly hard hit. Their governors reopened businesses — too soon, some now acknowledge — and younger people started socializing in public again at bars and restaurants without embracing such safe practices as wearing a face mask or social distancing themselves from others by at least two meters.   Now, some state governors are ordering these businesses shut down again. Investment banker Goldman Sachs said 70% of the country has either reversed reopening plans or delayed them. Key U.S. economic officials are predicting that the country’s full recovery from the pandemic will take a lengthy period, extending well into 2021.   The Bureau of Labor Statistics has said the country’s unemployment rate improved to 11.1% in June, compared to the official May figure of 13.3%. But the June figure was compiled at mid-month before the surge of new coronavirus cases.  The Federal Reserve has predicted that U.S. unemployment will fall to 9.3% by the end of this year and to 6.5% by the end of 2021, a rosier advance than some economists are forecasting.    The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus has now topped 137,000, by far the most of any country in the world, and health experts predict tens of thousands more will die in coming months.  
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A little-known nonprofit organization backed by the U.S. government has become the center of a maelstrom as the Trump administration changes its leadership.The Open Technology Fund, an independent, private nonprofit corporation, receives funding from the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the agency that oversees Voice of America. Since its founding in 2012, OTF has helped fund some of the most important digital tools available to dissidents, activists and others as repressive governments worldwide beef up their ability to surveil and block their own citizens.But the future of the organization, which has a 2020 annual budget of about $21 million, may be at stake, according to digital rights groups worldwide.A change of leadership at USAGM that removed its chief executive, president and board threatens to upend the organization that rights groups say has become the backbone of the internet freedom community. They fear a new OTF will move away from supporting “open-source” projects — apps, software and technology made with code that all can see and test — and instead turn to “closed-source” technologies, making it harder for activists, journalists and others to know whether they can trust it.In June, Michael Pack, the new chief executive of USAGM, fired several of the heads of organizations that report to him. Pack removed Libby Liu, the chief executive and co-founder of OTF, and Laura Cunningham, the president of the corporation, and replaced the OTF board. Funding was frozen during the restructure.Four former board members, including two former U.S. ambassadors, attempted to block the changes via a lawsuit against USAGM, but the suit was denied by a federal judge. They are appealing that decision.More than 500 organizations, including the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation and Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox internet browser, have signed a petition asking the U.S. Congress to look at recent changes at OTF.“There are serious concerns that the new leadership within the USAGM will seek to dismantle OTF and re-allocate all of its U.S. government funding to support a narrow set of anti-censorship tools without a transparent and open review process,” the petition reads.USAGM declined multiple requests for comment.A tech arms raceOTF was created as a program in Radio Free Asia to finance early-stage digital tools, before becoming an independent nonprofit corporation in September 2019. In addition to the $21 million annual grant from USAGM, OTF also receives private funds.Digital rights groups, activists and tech startups can apply for funding for projects via OTF’s website. For example, more than 50 organizations received money from its Internet Freedom Fund, which awards contracts between $50,000 and $200,000.In addition to providing rapid-response funding for activists facing immediate censorship threats, OTF trains people worldwide on digital safety, sponsors yearlong fellowships, runs several laboratories on technology, legal and other internet freedom areas, performs security audits of technology tools, and translates new apps and software into more than 200 languages.Some of OTF’s awardees are among the most widely used technologies among dissidents and activists. Between 2013 and 2016, OTF awarded more than $3 million to help fund Signal technology, which provides end-to-end encryption for communications. The same technology is now part of the foundation of WhatsApp, the Facebook messaging app.During the same time frame, OTF awarded $3 million to Tor, which allows people to anonymously access news and information blocked by their governments.Other projects included Let’s Encrypt, which allows organizations and small businesses to protect websites against hackers and cyber criminals, and WireGuard, a virtual private network (VPN) code that closed vulnerabilities that could be exploited by repressive regimes, according to technologists.Question of ScaleOTF is not without its critics. Competing visions both inside and outside of the organization, including on what OTF should be doing, predate the arrival of Pack and the new leadership team.These include whether it should focus on financing circumvention tools that help USAGM’s TV, radio and digital programming and news circumvent government firewalls to reach more than 300 million people worldwide, a mission some argue is aligned with a federally funded international broadcast agency. Or whether OTF should continue handing out financial grants to people building anti-surveillance tools to help activists on the ground communicate and evade government detection.While OTF has accomplished a lot, it can do more, said Katrina Lantos Swett, president of the Lantos Foundation, a human rights organization named after her father, Rep. Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California. She is also a past chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.“We believe there is a potential to bring down the Great Firewalls, writ large, and that we should also be funding large-scale circumvention tools with the ability to free vast numbers of people from what are, essentially, digital prisons,” Lantos Swett said. “It’s not an either/or scenario – open-source versus circumvention tools – but I believe a little bit of funding for the latter could yield tremendous results. China is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to shore up its firewall, so we should be willing to spend tens of millions to punch holes in it.”OTF has not previously funded large-scale projects but was looking into it, said people familiar with its operations. An additional issue, they say, is that some of the circumvention technology that the Lantos Foundation and others are promoting come with “closed-source technology,” which makes it harder for people to audit, test and trust.Chris Riley, director of government relations at Mozilla and an early advisory council member of OTF, said the group’s promotion of open-sourced technology has been critical.“OTF’s focus on open-source tools and the open-source developer community has been particularly valuable for the security and availability of these tools, for those who most need them,” Riley said. “A change in strategy for OTF away from open source would put significant parts of the secure, open internet, and the human rights and lives that depend on it, at greater risk.”In a July 2 interview with the site RealClearPolitics, Pack declined to discuss OTF but said he is still evaluating OTF’s role and has no plans to dismantle the organization.The interim head of OTF, James Miles, 78, is a former secretary of state of South Carolina. An attorney, Miles practiced labor and employment law but doesn’t appear to have technology or media experience. Miles did not respond to a VOA interview request about his new role.The tools for digital securityFor digital activists, OTF’s turmoil comes at a time when protesters in places such as Hong Kong face new crackdowns and surveillance.There is “an arms race” of digital tools between repressive regimes and dissidents and activists who are operating inside of them, said Bill Marczak, a research fellow at Citizen Lab, which is based at the University of Toronto, and one of the signatories of the petition.“There’s a benefit to make sure people have access to digital security when they need it,” said Marczak, who in 2014 received a one-year fellowship from OTF focusing on technology to detect servers used in hacking attacks.Raphael Mimoun, founder of Horizontal, is currently under contract with OTF for work improving Tella, a free app that encrypts photos, videos and other content on mobile devices.Despite the changes at OTF, Mimoun said he expects the organization will honor his firm’s contract for $53,000.But it’s the future he worries about. The Tella app is available on Android phones but not iPhones, a project that Mimoun might turn to OTF for funding.“In the long run, it will be a disaster if OTF was taken in a direction and hollowed out in what it does so well,” he said.  
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The United States shattered its own record Wednesday for the most reported COVID-19 cases in a 24-hour period – 67,600 according to Johns Hopkins University.With nearly 3.5 million confirmed cases and more than 137,358 deaths, the United States leads the world in both counts. Brazil trails the U.S. with some 1.9 million confirmed cases and 75,366 deaths.States that had been easing lockdowns and restrictions are starting to reimpose them as health officials blame the coronavirus resurgence on people who refuse to wear masks or ignore social distancing rules.The country’s two largest brick-and-mortar retailers – Walmart department stores and Kroger supermarkets said Wednesday that all customers walking through their doors will be required to wear face masks starting next week.About 35 percent of all Walmart stores are in cities and towns where local governments have no face covering mandates. Walmart has more than 5,000 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico, according to its corporate website.”Walmart has a great deal of influence in this regard,” Walton College of Business Professor Alan Ellstrand told the cable news network CNN. “It may signal to the public that if a large retailer like Walmart supports requiring customers to wear a mask, it is good for Americans to do so more broadly as well.”Walmart says it will station what it calls “heath ambassadors” at the front doors of its stores to remind customers to cover their mouths and noses. Shoppers at Walmart’s Sam’s Club warehouse stores will be given face masks if they don’t have one.The United States has no nationwide mandate for people to wear face masks in public leaving that up to the states. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends the practice.Other countries facing rising case numbers are reimposing lifted restrictions or adding new ones.All visitors to Greece must show border guards a negative COVID-19 test result that is no more than 72 hours old.Romania was extended its nationwide state of alert for another 30 days.Israel is threatening to reimpose a complete nationwide lockdown if its coronavirus case numbers don’t start falling in the next few days.South Africa revived a ban on the sale of alcohol, saying its doctors and hospitals have no time or facilities to deal with injuries related to heavy drinking.That country had more than 311,000 confirmed cases on Wednesday – Africa’s highest and the world’s eighth highest, according to Johns Hopkins. South Africa’s COVID-19 death toll is 4,453 people.Kenyan officials say the coronavirus killed four health workers and sickened 450 others in the country’s biggest maternity hospital.Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who spent months minimizing COVID-19 as nothing  more than a “little flu” and mocking those who take the virus seriously, said Wednesday he has tested positive again.He first tested positive last week and said he will be tested again before this week is over. 
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