A New York Times survey of 270 U.S. colleges and universities has uncovered 6,600 COVID-19 infections among students and staff and 14 coronavirus-related deaths.Hundreds of the almost 1,000 schools the newspaper contacted did not reply to the questions. The statistics do not include numbers for the fall semester that has already started at some schools.“This data, which is almost certainly an undercount, shows the risks colleges face as they prepare for a school year in the midst of a pandemic,” the newspaper said.American educators are cobbling together a hodgepodge of plans on how best to protect students and staff from the virus. Some have taken all classes online, while other have a mixture of online and in-class learning.China is sending seven Chinese health officials, the first of a 60-member team to Hong Kong Sunday to begin widespread COVID-19 testing in the territory. The global financial hub is experiencing a third wave of the coronavirus outbreak. Hong Kong’s new infections have been in the triple digits for the past 11 days.A cyclist passes a group of police and soldiers patrolling the Docklands area of Melbourne on Aug. 2, 2020, after the announcement of new restrictions to curb the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.Australia has not been hit as hard as some countries with the coronavirus, but the state of Victoria has experienced a recent surge in cases, resulting in the imposition of new lockdown restrictions in Melbourne, the capital, effective Sunday. Victoria is Australia’s second-most-populous state.The coronavirus pandemic, declared by the World Health Organization on March 11, will be a lengthy one, the WHO said Saturday.Citing the likelihood of response fatigue, the health organization’s emergency committee anticipates the COVID-19 pandemic will be long and the global risk level of COVID-19 very high, it said in a statement.So far, worldwide, at least 17.8 million people have been infected and more than 685,000 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University data.”It’s sobering to think that six months ago,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said before entering the meeting as it began Friday, “there were less than 100 cases and no deaths outside China.”Lawmakers for the Navajo Nation, another group hit hard by the pandemic, approved nearly $651 million in spending to fight COVID-19. The funds came from more than $714 million the tribe received as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.About 175,00 people live on the reservation that spreads across parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. About one-third of the homes lack running water, and quarantining is an unfamiliar concept.As of Friday, the tribe reported more than 9,000 people infected and 456 deaths.On Saturday, Vietnam said it plans to test everyone in Danang, a city of 1.1 million people, for the coronavirus.The country had been a success story, passing 100 days without a new case of the coronavirus-caused disease, when a cluster of cases surfaced in the popular resort city.Forty new cases were reported Saturday and four more Sunday, for a total of nearly 600 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and three deaths.Up to 800,000 visitors to Danang have left for other parts of the country since July 1, the Health Ministry said Saturday, adding that more than 41,000 people have visited three hospitals in the city since.New coronavirus cases in other cities, including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, have links to Danang.Also Saturday, France began testing travelers for the coronavirus when they arrive at an airport or port from one of 16 countries. Travelers can skip the test if they have proof of a negative test within 72 hours.France is not allowing most travel to or from those 16 countries, which include the U.S. and Brazil.Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have increased in France recently to more than 225,000 and more than 30,200 deaths. It is now mandatory to wear a face mask in indoor public spaces. 
…

The United States has condemned the Hong Kong government’s decision to postpone the Legislative Council elections initially scheduled for September 6, 2020, for one year.“There is no valid reason for such a lengthy delay,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Saturday, adding that “the elections should be held as close to the September 6 date as possible.”If elections are not held in “a manner that reflects the will and aspirations of the Hong Kong people,” he said, the semi-autonomous city “will continue its march toward becoming just another Communist-run city in China.”Pompeo called the postponement a “regrettable action” which confirms Beijing’s intention not to honor the Sino-British Joint Declaration, an UN-registered treaty, and the Basic Law, when Britain turned Hong Kong to China in 1997.China’s hand-picked Hong Kong leader, Carrie Lam, announced Friday that the city’s September legislative election would be postponed for a year, because of the coronavirus pandemic.The move is seen as a blow to the pro-democracy camp, which was widely expected to do well in the election.Observers say the postponement was the latest in a series of moves by the government in recent days to thwart the pro-democracy movement.Just recently, Hong Kong authorities fired two pro-democracy academics active in politics, arrested four young activists on national security charges and issued arrest warrants for six others, including a U.S. citizen, and disqualified 12 pro-democracy candidates for the legislative election.The six have fled the territory and are wanted on suspicion of violating the national security legislation that entered into force a month ago.Two prominent U.S. legislators, Congressman Eliot Engel, Chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, and Senator Robert Menendez, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a stern warning to China Friday, saying in a statement that “if Beijing thinks that this effort will silence those who stand for freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, it is gravely mistaken: today we are all Hong Kongers.” “This action only further undermines the credibility of China as a responsible rule-abiding member of the international community,” Engel and Menendez said.  
…

“Boston Strong” remains a “vibrant” rallying cry more than seven years after the marathon bombing killed three people and injured more than 260 others, a federal appeals court noted as it threw out the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.But even as the ruling opened old wounds, it raised familiar questions about whether Tsarnaev could receive a fair hearing in the city where the bombs exploded — a community that may now be asked to relive unspeakable trauma.The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Friday that jurors were not adequately screened for bias ahead of Tsarnaev’s 2015 trial, describing media attention in the case as “unrivaled in American legal history.”The three-judge panel ordered a new penalty phase — this time with more searching questions for prospective jurors — to decide whether the 27-year-old should be executed.Tsarnaev “will spend his remaining days locked up in prison,” the judges made clear, “with the only matter remaining being whether he will die by execution.”The Justice Department is expected to appeal. Legal observers predict prosecutors will turn straight to the U.S. Supreme Court without asking for a hearing before the full 1st Circuit. The U.S. government recently resumed federal executions following a 17-year pause and, under President Donald Trump, has pursued capital punishment in an increasing number of cases.’Pro-prosecution'”When it comes to death penalty cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has been much more pro-prosecution than many of the circuit courts,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.Should Friday’s ruling stand, attention will shift to whether an impartial jury can be impaneled in a city still traumatized by the 2013 attack. Tsarnaev’s defense team may renew its request to transfer the case out of Boston, where they have long contended public opinion is immutably slanted.”Everybody in the community understands where ‘Boston Strong’ came from,” Dunham said. “The question will be whether that’s so ingrained in the community that jurors can’t set it aside and fairly determine the outcome of this case.”FILE – In this March 5, 2015, courtroom sketch, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, center, is depicted between defense attorneys Miriam Conrad, left, and Judy Clarke during his federal death penalty trial in Boston.Tsarnaev’s case is uniquely complicated in that an entire city — if not the whole country — considered itself the target of the bombing, said George Kendall, an attorney who filed a brief contending it was a mistake to hold the trial in Boston. Prosecutors said Tsarnaev and his brother intended the attack to punish the U.S. for wars in Muslim countries.”This was not just a horrific crime against the individuals who were killed and hurt,” Kendall said in an interview Saturday. “This was an attack on the city of Boston and a deliberate attack on its most cherished tradition.”Robert Bloom, a Boston College law professor who has followed the case for years, said a new penalty phase would force the community to relive the bombing.”My hope is that the government will decide not to put the victims through this again,” Bloom said, noting Tsarnaev had been willing to plead guilty before the trial had the government taken the death penalty off the table.Another trial, or closure?Tsarnaev’s lawyer echoed Bloom in an email to The Associated Press following Friday’s ruling.”It is now up to the government to determine whether to put the victims and Boston through a second trial, or to allow closure to this terrible tragedy by permitting a sentence of life without the possibility of release,” David Patton wrote.Tsarnaev’s attorneys did not dispute his involvement in the attack, but argued he was less culpable than his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died in a gunbattle with police a few days after the bombing.Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted of 30 charges — including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction — all but a few of which were upheld in the appellate ruling.The appellate judges differed on whether the case should be moved to another jurisdiction but noted that, “given the sizable passage of time, the venue issue should look quite different the second time around.””Two of the three judges indicated it was not error to have the trial in Boston, so the opinion may actually help keep it in Boston in the future,” said Brian Kelly, a former assistant U.S. attorney known for his prosecution of crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger.Marty Weinberg, a veteran defense attorney, said a second penalty phase would be “made enormously more difficult by the widespread knowledge — particularly in the Boston area — that another jury previously decided upon death.” 
…

A pair of NASA astronauts face the final and most important part of their SpaceX test flight: returning to Earth with a rare splashdown.Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken took part in a farewell ceremony Saturday at the International Space Station, several hours ahead of their planned departure on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.  Despite approaching Hurricane Isaias, NASA said the weather looks favorable for a Sunday afternoon splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico near Panama City, Florida. It will be the first splashdown for astronauts in 45 years. The last time was following the joint U.S.-Soviet mission in 1975 known as Apollo-Soyuz.The astronauts’ homecoming will cap a two-month mission that ended a prolonged launch drought in the U.S., which has relied on Russian rockets to ferry astronauts to the space station since the end of the shuttle era.  In launching Hurley and Behnken from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on May 30, SpaceX became the first private company to send people into orbit. Now SpaceX is on the verge of becoming the first company to bring people back from orbit.  “The hardest part was getting us launched, but the most important is bringing us home,” Behnken said.  A successful splashdown, Behnken said, will bring U.S.-crew launching capability “full circle.”This photo provided by NASA shows, from left, front, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on the International Space Station, Aug. 1, 2020. Behnken and Hurley are scheduled to leave the station in a SpaceX capsule Saturday and splashdown Sunday.Space station commander Chris Cassidy, who will remain on board with two Russians until October, presented Hurley with the small U.S. flag left behind by the previous astronauts to launch to the space station from U.S. soil, in July 2011. Hurley was the pilot of that final shuttle mission.The flag — which also flew on the first shuttle flight in 1981 — became a prize for the company that launched astronauts first.  Elon Musk’s SpaceX easily beat Boeing, which isn’t expected to launch its first crew until next year and will land in the U.S. Southwest. The flag has one more flight after this one: to the moon on NASA’s Artemis program in the next few years.”We’re a little sad to see them go,” Cassidy said, “but very excited for what it means to our international space program to add this capability” of commercial crew capsules. The next SpaceX crew flight is targeted for the end of September.Hurley and Behnken also are bringing back a sparkly blue and purple dinosaur named Tremor. Their young sons chose the toy to accompany their fathers on the historic mission.
…