The top U.S. health official is urging everyone to wear a mask when out in public to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but he stopped short of saying there needs to be a nationwide mandate.A day after President Donald Trump was seen for the first time wearing a face covering in public, Surgeon General Jerome Adams said on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday that people need to be educated on why it is important to cover their faces instead of the “big brother” approach.”As surgeon general, I want people to understand why they should wear a face covering, and they are going to be more likely to do it and more likely to do it willingly, and they’re going to be more likely to do it when we are not watching, which is important,” Adams said.Dr. Adams said the Trump administration is working hard to walk back its earlier message on masks, which was that they aren’t necessary.Trump himself has wavered between mocking those who wear face masks and saying he doesn’t see anything wrong with it.He was pictured wearing one Saturday during a visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.“When you’re in a hospital, especially … I think it’s a great thing to wear a mask,” he said.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 9 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 16 MB720p | 39 MBOriginal | 58 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioIt will be mandatory to wear a mask in public starting Monday in Croatia and in four Spanish regions – Andalusia, Aragon, La Rioja and Navarre.Andalusian leader Juan Manuel Moreno said authorities there fear an influx of tourists will walk through the streets and enter restaurants of the popular vacation spot mask-free.Spain has been one of the countries hit hardest by the coronavirus. It began easing lockdowns last month. But some local authorities are starting to reimpose restrictions as a growing number of new cases sparks fears of a second wave.South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a renewed ban on the sale of alcohol and a new nighttime curfew Sunday as the number of new COVID-19 cases grows. South Africa has the most cases in Africa.Ramaphosa said in a televised address that hospitals and doctors don’t have the facilities and time to deal with alcohol-related injuries right now.“This is a fight to save every life, and we need to save every bed,” he said. “The coronavirus storm is far fiercer and more destructive than any we have known.”South Africa lifted its two-month-long ban on the sale of alcoholic drinks last month, in part because breweries and vintners complained.Mexico is on the verge of overtaking Italy for fourth place on the list of nations with the most COVID-19 deaths, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.Both countries have a little less than 35,000 deaths. But some Mexican health officials say they believe the death toll is much higher because of a lack of testing.The United States, with 135,000 deaths as of Sunday, is far ahead of all other countries.Florida set the nationwide record for the most new cases in 24 hours Saturday – 15,299.Cases have been rising across the Southern and Western U.S., in part because of what New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy calls “knucklehead behavior” — people balking at wearing masks and social distancing.One group of workers in Germany is demanding the government reopen their businesses — brothels.Prostitutes demonstrated in Hamburg, saying other industries have been allowed to operate again and they should be permitted to go back to work, too.“The oldest profession needs your help,” read a sign held up by one of the protesters who says brothels are just as hygienic as massage parlors, beauty shops, and nightclubs.  
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With more than 3 million cases and over 137,000 deaths, COVID-19 is taking a heavy toll on the United States as the number of new infections continues to rise. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, encouraging people to wear masks is becoming a widespread effort throughout the country that could help control the spread of the virus. 
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Demonstrators around the U.S. have been calling in recent weeks for the removal of confederate monuments honoring slaveowners who fought against Union troops in the American Civil War.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports of a similar movement south of the mainland in Puerto Rico, where activists call for the removal of statues honoring Spanish colonizers.
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Crowded bars and house parties have been identified as culprits in spreading the coronavirus. Meat packing plants, prisons and nursing homes are known hot spots. Then there’s the complicated case of America’s churches.The vast majority of these churches have cooperated with health authorities and successfully protected their congregations. Yet from the earliest phases of the pandemic, and continuing to this day, some worship services and other religious activities have been identified as sources of local outbreaks.They are by no means at the top of the list of problematic activities across the U.S., but they have posed challenges for government leaders and public health officials whose guidelines and orders are sometimes challenged as encroachments on religious liberty.“If we wanted to have zero risks, the safest thing would be to never open our doors,” said prominent Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress. “The question is how can you balance risk with the very real need to worship.”In the past two weeks alone, there have been two notable church-government confrontations in California.San Francisco’s city attorney sent a cease-and-desist order in late June to the Roman Catholic archdiocese, alleging that some of its churches had violated a local ban on large indoor gatherings. The archdiocese promised to comply.A few days later, state officials temporarily banned “indoor singing and chanting activities” at all places of worship, prompting some pastors to defy the rule.Evangelical pastor Samuel Rodriguez said worshippers at his Sacramento megachurch joined in singing hymns on July 5, even as most of them wore face masks and obeyed social-distancing guidelines.“To forbid singing in a church is morally reprehensible,” Rodriguez said. “That is how we petition heaven.”The extent to which religious gatherings have contributed to the pandemic’s toll may never be known with any precision.But there’s no question they have played a role throughout, internationally as well as in the United States, even as myriad houses of worship halted in-person services for safety reasons. Of the first wave of cases in South Korea in February, several thousand were members of the secretive Shincheonji Church of Jesus. Hundreds of other cases were linked to a Muslim missionary movement event in late February in Malaysia that was attended by about 16,000 people from numerous East Asian countries.In the second week of March, before warnings and lockdown orders proliferated in the U.S., 35 of the 92 people who attended events at a rural Arkansas church developed COVID-19, and three of them died, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report issued in May.More recently, in mid-June, a small-town church in northeastern Oregon became the epicenter of the state’s largest coronavirus outbreak when 236 people linked to the Lighthouse Pentecostal Church tested positive.According to the Observer newspaper in nearby La Grande, the church in Island City had held religious services, a wedding and a graduation ceremony in the weeks preceding the outbreak, sometimes with more than 100 people in attendance in defiance of state restrictions on gatherings.Union County, with a population of 25,000 people, had recorded fewer than 25 cases during the pandemic prior to the church outbreak. Within two weeks, it had Oregon’s highest per capita rate of coronavirus infections.Also in June, West Virginia’s health department announced outbreaks linked to five churches in different parts of the state. The biggest was at Graystone Baptist Church in Lewisburg with 51 cases, three of them fatal.In several cases, churches that resumed in-person services opted to close again after outbreaks. Among them:A church and an administrative office affiliated with the Church of God in Cleveland, Tennessee, which is the home base for the Pentecostal denomination. No official case count has been released, but a senior leader of the denomination, General Overseer Tim Hill, confirmed that the number of verified cases is growing, and that several church leaders were among those seriously ill. One pastor, Ernie Varner of Lenoir City, Tennessee, died Friday, six days after posting on Facebook, “I’m in the ICU with COVID. Please pray for me.”Calvary Chapel, an evangelical church in Universal City, Texas. It reopened in early May only to close anew in late June after dozens of staff and churchgoers tested positive, including Pastor Ron Arbaugh and his wife. Arbaugh says he regrets telling worshippers last month they could resume the tradition of hugging each other during an interlude of mid-service socializing.Holy Family Catholic Church in Las Vegas. The diocese announced Thursday that the church would be closed indefinitely after a priest who celebrated Mass this week tested positive.First Baptist Church of Tillmans Corner in Mobile, Alabama. It resumed in-person services May 17 after the governor gave a statewide green light, but recently canceled them at least through July 31 after more than 20 of the congregation’s 1,500 members tested positive. Pastor Derek Allen wrote a blog post describing the outbreak as a “harrowing and demoralizing journey,” and offering advice to other pastors: “Assume every sniffle is COVID-19, and act quickly. We’ve learned that the tests take too long, and false positives are possible along with false negatives.”Another Baptist church, First Baptist Dallas, was in the spotlight June 28 when it hosted Vice President Mike Pence at its annual Freedom Sunday celebrations. Most of the 2,400 attendees wore face masks, but some criticism surfaced after the choir sang without masks.Jeffress, the church’s pastor and a prominent evangelical conservative with close ties to President Donald Trump, said the choir and orchestra had been tested for COVID-19 beforehand. The church said a few who tested positive did not take part in the event.Jeffress bristled at the idea that choirs should be temporarily banned.“Choirs will always be a part of worship for us,” he said. “We think it’s possible to still have them but do it in a safe way.”A few days after the Freedom Sunday event, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an order requiring people wear face masks in most public settings — with several exceptions, including participants in religious services.Some churches, through their physical attributes and the decisions of their leaders, have been able to minimize risks as worship resumes.In Incline Village, Nevada, along the north shore of Lake Tahoe, St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church took advantage of a unique feature to relaunch scaled-back, in-person services this month: its outdoor mountain amphitheater chapel shaded by pine trees.Church officials took precautionary measures such as moving the log-bench pews farther apart, capping attendance at 50 and requiring worshippers have their temperature taken, employ hand sanitizer and wear masks. There was no Eucharist or passing of the peace, and the usual post-service coffee hour was held by video conference.“Good morning, children of God,” the Rev. Sarah Dunn, the church’s rector, said from behind a plexiglass screen, welcoming parishioners back to the socially distanced service July 5 after 16 Sundays apart. She acknowledged feeling “mixed emotions”: apprehension as the virus remains a threat, but joy at being able to gather in the sacred space. 
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With COVID-19 ravaging the aviation industry, airlines and airports worldwide are reining in costs and halting new spending, except in one area: reassuring pandemic-wary passengers about travel.”Whatever the new normal (…) it’s going to be more and more around self-service,” Sean Donohue, chief executive of Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport (DFW), told Reuters in an interview.The airport is working with American Airlines – whose home base is DFW – to roll out a self-check-in for luggage, and all of its restrooms will be entirely touchless by the end of July with technology developed by Infax Inc. They will have hands-free sinks, soap, flushing toilets, and paper towel dispensers, which will be equipped with sensors to alert workers when supplies are low.”One of the biggest complaints airports receive are restrooms,” Donohue said.Dallas is piloting three technology options for luggage check-ins: Amadeus’s ICM, SITA, and Materna IPS.DFW has become the world’s busiest airport, according to figures from travel analytics firm Cirium, thanks in part to a strategy by large global carrier American to concentrate much of its pandemic flying through its Texas hub.Last year DFW rolled out biometric boarding — where your face is your boarding pass — for international flights and is taking advantage of the lull in international traffic to work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to use the VeriScan technology for arriving passengers too, he said.Delta Air Lines opened the first U.S. biometric terminal in Atlanta in 2018, and some airports in Europe and Asia also use facial recognition technology. It has spurred some concerns, however, with a U.S. government study finding racial bias in the technology and the European Union earlier this year considered banning it in public places over privacy concerns.The Dallas airport is also testing new technology around better sanitization, beginning with ultraviolet technology that can kill germs before they circulate into the HVAC system.But it has also deployed electrostatic foggers and hired a “hit team” of 150 people who are going through the terminals physically sanitizing high-touch areas.”Technology is critical because it can be very efficient,” Donohue said, but customers “being able to visualize what’s happening is reassuring as well.” DFW has invested millions of dollars above its cleaning and sanitation budget since the pandemic broke out, while suspending about $100 million of capital programs and reducing its second-half operating costs by about 20% as it addresses COVID-19’s steep hit to the industry, which only months ago was preparing for growth.Nearly 114,000 customers went through DFW on July 11, an improvement from a 10,000 per day trough in April, but still just about half of last year’s volumes.The airport has also been testing touchless technology for employee temperature checks, but is not currently planning hotly-debated checks for passengers, barring a federal mandate for which there has yet to be any inclination by the U.S. government.Michael Davies, who runs the New Technology Ventures program at London Business School, said technology will be one of many changes to the airport experience going forward, with fewer overall travelers who will be seeking more space and spending less time dining and shopping.”You put these things together and this feels in some interesting ways very much like back to the golden age of air travel,” said Davies. 
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The coronavirus continues its steady climb upward in some places around the world.There are now more than 12.7 million coronavirus infections around the world, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, with more than a half-million deaths.The U.S. has roughly one-fourth of the world’s infections at 3.2 million and more than 134,000 deaths.On the day the U.S. reported a record 66,528 new cases, President Donald Trump was seen wearing a mask for first time Saturday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on the outskirts of Washington.“When you’re in a hospital, especially … I think it’s a great thing to wear a mask,” he said.Trump has mocked reporters and others for wearing masks, a practice that has helped many countries to reduce the coronavirus infection and death rate.The Arizona Republic newspaper published a scathing obituary last week written by a woman whose father died from the virus. In it, she blames U.S. politicians and “their clear lack of leadership” for his death.Kristin Urquiza wrote of her father, Mark Urquiza, who was a 65-year-old Mexican American: “His death is due to the carelessness of the politicians who continue to jeopardize the health of brown bodies through a clear lack of leadership, refusal to acknowledge the severity of this crisis, and inability and unwillingness to give clear and decisive direction on how to minimize risk.”South Carolina reported more than 2,200 new infections Saturday, while Louisiana reported more than 2,600 Friday.Mexico reported more than 6,000 new cases Saturday. Russia said Sunday that it also had more than 6,000 new infections.More than 60 U.S. Marines have contracted the virus on the U.S. base in Okinawa.Japan said Sunday Tokyo has confirmed 206 new cases in the capital. New infections in Tokyo have been over 200 for four straight days.  
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