Author: CensorBiz

Mexico City is launching a massive COVID-19 testing program as it aims to begin reopening the capital city’s economy.Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced Wednesday that officials intend to conduct 100,000 tests a month by July, with the help of an aggressive information campaign.Mexico City’s approach is counter to that of President Andres Manuel López Obrador’s administration, which dismissed mass testing as a waste of money.Mexico federal Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell praised Mexico City’s effort, but he made no mention of expanding federal coronavirus testing.The mayor’s plan also promises to get more data on tracking potential infections.Mexico City has the vast majority of COVID-19 cases in the country, with more than 32,000 infections and more than 3,200 deaths.So far, Mexico is reporting more than 129,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 15,000 deaths. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump is set to meet with faith leaders, law enforcement officers and small business owners Thursday in Dallas, Texas, as he considers potential responses to nationwide protests that followed the death in police custody of African American man George Floyd.The White House said the roundtable discussion would cover “solutions to historic economic, health and justice disparities in American communities.”White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany told reporters Wednesday that both legislative proposals and executive orders are under consideration, and that the administration is looking to deliver them “in the coming days.”One proposal Trump does not support is altering the so-called qualified immunity doctrine that helps shield law enforcement officers from civil lawsuits.“That’s a nonstarter in the Democratic legislation,” McEnany said.Leaders in the majority-Democrat House of Representatives have introduced legislation seeking overhauls in the country’s policing laws, aiming to broaden police accountability, track officers through a national police misconduct registry and end the practice of transferring military equipment to police departments across the nation.The Republican-led Senate is working on its own package, and the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to hold a hearing on the issue next week.Protesters block a street outside the police station June 10, 2020, in Florissant, Mo. Several hundred protesters were calling attention to a video that appears to show a Florissant police detective hitting a man with his police car.The House Judiciary Committee held its own hearing Wednesday, at which Floyd’s brother, Philonise, urged lawmakers to approve legislation restricting the use of force by police.City and state leaders have already instituted their own changes, including banning the use of chokeholds, pledging to shift funding from police departments to community programs, and setting up commissions to review complaints of police misconduct.Crowds marched Wednesday in Boston, Oakland and elsewhere to voice their demands for defunding city police departments and reallocating the money for other programs.Protesters assembled peacefully Wednesday in Seattle, the northwestern city where there had been repeated clashes between demonstrators and police in the earlier days of the protests.Trump called the Seattle protesters “domestic terrorists” in a late Wednesday tweet repeating his often-used phrase “LAW & ORDER!” and threatened federal action as he criticized city and state leaders.“Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game,” Trump said.Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan responded to the president with her own tweet: “Make us all safe. Go back to your bunker. #BlackLivesMatter”More changes also came Wednesday in the city of Buffalo, New York, where Mayor Byron Brown announced he is introducing a Public Protection Unit to replace the police Emergency Response Team.Members of the ERT were suspended after being seen on video shoving a 75-year-old protester who had to be hospitalized. Buffalo will also stop arresting people for minor, non-violent offenses such as marijuana possession and make it easier for members of the public to see the video taken by body cameras worn by officers.“We will shift policing in Buffalo away from enforcement and to a restorative model that promotes stronger community bonds, civic engagement and an end to young black men, black people, being caught in a cycle of crime and incarceration by consciously limiting their negative engagement with police,” Brown said at a news conference.The popular car racing series NASCAR announced a ban on the flag of the Confederate States of America, the breakaway group of Southern states that seceded from the country and lost the Civil War of the 1860s.Many Americans see the flag as a symbol of oppression and slavery. It has endured mainly in the South among those who view it as a source of pride and remembrance of those who died fighting for the Confederacy.Philonise Floyd, a brother of George Floyd, arrives to testify before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on proposed changes to police practices and accountability on Capitol Hill, June 10, 2020, in Washington.“The presence of the confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry,” NASCAR said in a statement.Protesters in Richmond, Virginia, which was the Confederate capital, tore down a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, on Wednesday night.Earlier in the day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for the removal of 11 Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol, including one of Davis, his vice president Alexander Stephens, and military leader Robert E. Lee.“The statues in the Capitol should embody our highest ideals as Americans, expressing who we are and who we aspire to be as a nation,” Pelosi wrote.  “Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals. Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage. They must be removed.”There have also been calls for renaming of multiple U.S. military installations named after Confederate leaders, including Fort Bragg in North Carolina.  Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy have indicated they are open to a bipartisan discussion about the issue, but Trump is sharply opposed.“My Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with. Respect our Military!”
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U.S. envoy for peace in Afghanistan met with the Taliban in Doha and Pakistani officials in Islamabad this week. He is expected to meet Afghan officials in Kabul to talk about steps to start intra-Afghan negotiations. Meanwhile, Qatar said Wednesday that it is ready to host the talks. VOA’s Rahim Gul Sarwan reports from Kabul.
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The organization behind the Oscar awards elected “Selma” director Ava DuVernay on Wednesday as it slightly increased its number of female and black governors.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has repeatedly been hit with criticism in recent years for a lack of diversity both among its members, and among the Oscar nominees and winners they select.”As a result of this election, the number of female Academy governors increases from 25 to 26, and people of color increases from 11 to 12, including the three Governors-at-Large,” the Academy said in a statement.DuVernay’s election comes well after the #OscarsSoWhite movement was launched in January 2015 in response to the Academy picking an all-white slate of nominees — the same year “Selma” was in contention.The movie about Martin Luther King Jr’s civil rights march did earn a best picture nomination, and won best original song, but was seen to have been snubbed in other categories.Its star David Oyelowo, who failed to pick up a nomination, last week claimed Academy members had threatened to sink “Selma” after cast and crew protested the death of Eric Garner with “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts at the film’s 2014 premiere.The Academy responded on Thursday, tweeting: “Ava & David, we hear you. Unacceptable. We’re committed to progress.”The expression “I Can’t Breathe” has once again become a rallying cry for anti-racism protesters after the death of George Floyd last month.Garner and Floyd were both African American men who died in police custody.Four of those joining the board for the first time are women, including Lynette Howell Taylor — who produced this year’s Oscars ceremony — while Whoopi Goldberg was among those reelected. 
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Kansas City should rename an iconic fountain and street that bears the name of an important city developer who barred minorities from living in affluent neighborhoods that he designed in the early 1900s, a member of the city’s parks board said.Chris Goode wrote last week to fellow members of the Board of Parks and Recreation asking them to consider a new name for the J.C. Nichols fountain and a parkway that runs through County Club Plaza.The fountain was the gathering spot for many of the recent protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.”The time has come for us to stop turning a blind eye towards racism of past and present,” Goode said in the letter. “There is no immediate resolution to racism, that of which has been deeply embedded for over 400 years into the fabric of this country. We can however, make a collective decision to simply do the right thing, now.”Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said in a statement that he supported Goode’s suggestion.”No person accelerated white flight, redlining, and racial division in the Kansas City area more than J.C. Nichols,” Lucas said. “The time has long passed that we remove Kansas City’s memorials to his name.”The park board said it would schedule two public comment sessions in the next 30 days before voting on the request. 
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More than 1,250 former attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department called Wednesday for the agency’s internal watchdog to investigate the role Attorney General William Barr played in the aggressive police clearance of largely peaceful protesters from a park near the White House last week.Police mounted on horses and officers on the ground firing pepper balls at the protesters cleared Lafayette Square minutes before President Donald Trump walked through the park June 1 for a photo-op at a nearby church where he held a Bible aloft.Barr, the top U.S. law enforcement official, has acknowledged telling police commanders stationed at the park that he wanted the fencing perimeter surrounding the park extended a block farther away from the White House after three days of occasionally violent protests in Washington May 29-31.But he has disputed accounts that clearing the park was directly related to Trump’s short walk, which Barr joined, through the park to St. John’s Episcopal Church.Tear gas floats in the air as a line of police move demonstrators away from St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park from the White House, as they gather to protest the death of George Floyd, June 1, 2020, in Washington.Even though U.S. attorneys general are appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents and serve at their will, there is a general understanding that they are to enforce U.S. law in an apolitical manner.The former Justice Department attorneys, many of them career prosecutors in both Republican and Democratic administrations in Washington, asked Horowitz to “immediately open and conduct an investigation of the full scope of the Attorney General’s and the DOJ’s role” in clearing the park and related other actions aimed at controlling the protests.“The rule of law, the maintenance of the Department’s integrity, and the very safety of our citizens demand nothing less,” the group wrote.The Justice Department and Horowitz’s office declined comment.In an interview last Sunday on the CBS News network, Barr said the Lafayette Park protesters “were not peaceful protesters. And that’s one of the big lies that the media is – seems to be perpetuating at this point.”DC National Guard Military Police officers stand guard behind a fence surrounding Lafayette Park outside the White House as protests continue over the death in police custody of George Floyd, in Washington, June 2, 2020.The attorney general said he saw projectiles being thrown at police, but added, “Here’s what the media is missing. This was not an operation to respond to that particular crowd. It was an operation to move the perimeter one block.”CBS’s Margaret Brennan told Barr that to Americans watching on television it appeared that the park was cleared of protesters so Trump, accompanied by heavy security and top aides, could walk to St. John’s for his brief photo opportunity.“In an environment where the broader debate is about heavy-handed use of force in law enforcement, was that the right message for Americans to be receiving?” she asked.“Well, the message is sometimes communicated by the media,” Barr said. “I didn’t see any video being played on the media of what was happening Friday, Saturday and Sunday” of the authorities being attacked by projectiles.“All I heard was comments about how peaceful protesters were,” Barr said. “I didn’t hear about the fact that there were 150 law enforcement officers injured and many taken to the hospital with concussions. So, it wasn’t a peaceful protest. We had to get control over Lafayette Park, and we had to do it as soon as we were able to do that.” 
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On this edition of Africa 54, Burundi government says President Pierre Nkurunziza dies at the age of 56; The U.S. House Judiciary Committee set to hear from Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd, who died in police custody; The top U.S. infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci describes COVID-19 as his “worst nightmare”; The Moroccan government says it will start easing restrictive measures imposed to curb coronavirus.A54 Technology: Health experts say app-based contact tracing is appealing in part because the coronavirus spread is so stealthy. Infected people can transmit the virus for days before they develop symptoms. An Eritrean-born American has launched an android app called “Tracker” that tracks user’s locations and notifies them if they’ve been within a certain distance of someone who tested positive for COVID-19. For more insight, Africa 54’s Paul Ndiho spoke to Beruk Habte, the creator of the contact tracing mobile application based in the U.S. state of Maryland.
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Starbucks expects to lose more than $3 billion in revenue in its fiscal third quarter due to the new coronavirus, but said the disruption to its business should subside through the rest of the year.”The Starbucks brand is resilient, customer affinity is strong and we believe the most difficult period is now behind us,” Starbucks President and CEO Kevin Johnson said in an open letter.The Seattle-based coffee giant said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that the virus outbreak will also slash its operating income between $2 billion and $2.2. billion for the quarter, which ends June 28. Starbucks plans to report its third quarter results on July 28.Starbucks was forced to close its stores to customers at the height of the pandemic but continued to operate  drive thru and pickup  in many locations. The Seattle company said 95% of its 8,000 U.S. company-run stores are now open with varying levels of service, just slightly lower than operations globally.Starbucks said U.S. same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least a year, improved for six consecutive weeks through the end of May. They fell by 32% the last week in May, compared to a 65% decline at the pandemic’s height in mid-April. The company says it expects a 10% to 20% decline in U.S. same-store sales for its full fiscal year, which ends Sept. 27.In China, where the pandemic hit first, same-store sales were down 14% at the end of May. That compares to a 78% decline in February. Starbucks said most stores in China have returned to pre-pandemic operating hours and 70% are now offering full cafe seating.Starbucks provided a preliminary estimate for a third-quarter adjusted loss of about 55 cents to 70 cents per share. Analysts polled by FactSet predict a loss of 16 cents per share.For the fourth quarter, Starbucks said it anticipates earnings of 15 cents to 40 cents per share. Analysts were predicting earnings of 38 cents per share.With many workers still at home and customer traffic patterns shifting, Starbucks said it’s accelerating a plan to build smaller, pickup-only locations in major U.S. cities. It’s also retrofitting some cafes to better accommodate mobile pickup and delivery orders.Starbucks opened two pickup locations in New York and Toronto over the last seven months. It had planned to open more over a three- to five-year time period, but has pushed that timetable to the next 18 months. Starbucks said 80% of U.S. Starbucks transactions even before the pandemic were to-go orders.Shares fell 5% to $78.55 in morning trading. 
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The World Health Organization is urging Pakistan to impose a new round of lockdowns as the number of new coronavirus infections there has soared over the last several days.   In a letter to health authorities in Punjab, Pakistan’s largest state, WHO representative Palitha Mahipala recommended officials adopt intermittent lockdowns of “two weeks on, two weeks off” and to double its testing capacity to 50,000 per day.   People sit in waiting area of the Benazir Hospital ignore social distancing, during a lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, April 22, 2020.The Muslim-majority nation has reported a total of 113,702 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with well over 2,100 deaths, including a record 105 fatalities reported Tuesday.Mahipala said the number of confirmed infections have soared since several provinces began easing quarantine restrictions in early May.   Prime Minister Imran Khan has refused to impose a strict nationwide lockdown similar to other nations, arguing it will have a devastating effect on the economy, especially the poor.   FILE – A man wears a face mask as he scans a code before entering the Wuhan Railway Station, in China’s central Hubei province on May 28, 2020.Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department says it will resume operations at its consulate in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected late last December.  The U.S. State Department withdrew consulate staff and their families in late January after the Chinese government put the city under lockdown to curb the spread of the virus.  Dr. Anthony Fauci has described COVID-19 as his “worst nightmare,” saying the disease spread around the world with surprising speed.    The New York Times, reporting Tuesday on Fauci’s speech to biotechnology executives, says Fauci warns that the pandemic “isn’t over yet,” despite many countries in Europe and the United States starting to ease restrictions.    Fauci said he was surprised at how fast COVID-19 spread after emerging from China in December.     Most efficiently transmitted diseases can become a pandemic between six months to a year. Fauci said this one took a month.    Also Tuesday, another expert epidemiologist, Maria Van Kerkhove of the World Health Organization, sought to clear up what she says are “misunderstandings” about her earlier comments on asymptomatic transfer of the disease — that is from people who have the virus but aren’t showing any symptoms.  FILE – An employee sprays disinfectant on Piazza Duomo in Milan during Italy’s lockdown aimed at curbing the spread of the COVID-19 infection, March 31, 2020.Van Kerkhove said Monday, “It still appears to be rare that asymptomatic individuals actually transmit onward” — a statement that contradicted the findings of other scientists who say there is lots of evidence that asymptomatic people can spread COVID-19.    She backed down from her statement Tuesday, telling reporters that asymptomatic spread is a “really complex question” and much is still unknown.    “We don’t actually have that answer yet,” she said, adding that her earlier comment was based on a few studies.    WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr. Michael Ryan, said “both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals are part of the transmission cycle,” but that it was unclear how much each contributed to disease spread.    COVID-19 patients lie on beds in a field hospital built inside a gym in Santo Andre, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil, June 9, 2020.Brazil is once again reporting coronavirus details on its official government website after the Supreme Court ordered it to restore such information for the public.    Justice Alexandre de Moraes said that dropping it from the internet had made it “impossible” for medical experts to monitor the spread of the disease and establish proper prevention.    Brazil has the world’s second highest number of coronavirus cases after the United States, and the third highest number of deaths after the U.S. and Britain.    Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has scoffed at the severity of COVID-19, calling it a “little flu” and mocking people worried about the disease as neurotics.   He has threatened to pull Brazil out of the WHO.   
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The long-standing wrangle over voting rights and election security came to a head in Georgia, where a messy primary and partisan finger-pointing offered an unsettling preview of a November contest when battleground states could face potentially record turnout.  
Many Democrats blamed the Republican secretary of state for hourslong lines, voting machine malfunctions, provisional ballot shortages and absentee ballots failing to arrive in time for Tuesday’s elections. Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential campaign called it “completely unacceptable.” Georgia Republicans deflected responsibility to metro Atlanta’s heavily minority and Democratic-controlled counties, while President Donald Trump’s top campaign attorney decried “the chaos in Georgia.”  
It raised the specter of a worst-case November scenario: a decisive state, like Florida and its “hanging chads” and “butterfly ballots” in 2000, remaining in dispute long after polls close.
Meanwhile, Trump, Biden and their supporters could offer competing claims of victory or question the election’s legitimacy, inflaming an already boiling electorate.  
Adia Josephson, a 38-year-old black voter in the Brookhaven area just outside Atlanta, waited more than two hours to vote but wasn’t about to let the long lines stop her. Problems with voting machines and long lines must be corrected before the next election, she said. “There’s no room for error,” she said. “There’s a lot to gain and a lot to lose.”
At Trump’s campaign headquarters, senior counsel Justin Clark blamed Georgia’s vote-by-mail push amid the COVID-19 pandemic, alluding to the president’s unfounded claims that absentee voting yields widespread fraud.  
“The American people want to know that the results of an election accurately reflect the will of the voters,” Clark said. “The only way to make sure that the American people will have faith in the results is if people who can, show up and vote in person.”
Rachana Desai Martin, a Biden campaign attorney, called the scenes in Georgia a “threat” to democracy. “We only have a few months left until voters around the nation head to the polls again, and efforts should begin immediately to ensure that every Georgian — and every American — is able to safely exercise their right to vote,” she said.  
Martin stopped short of assigning blame, but two Georgia Democrats on Biden’s list of potential running mates pointed at Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who led the selection of Georgia’s new voting machine system and invited every active voter to request an absentee ballot.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tweeted at Raffensperger about problems in pockets of metro Atlanta. “Is this happening across the county or just on the south end,” the Democrat asked, referring to an area with a heavily black population.
Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor and an Atlanta resident, tweeted that “Georgians deserve better” and that Raffensperger “owns this disaster.” Abrams established herself as a voting rights advocate after she refused to concede her 2018 race because of voting irregularities when her Republican opponent, now-Gov. Brian Kemp, was secretary of state.  
Voting rights groups, including Abrams’ Fair Fight Action, said Georgia’s experiences justify their efforts to combat what they describe as a coordinated GOP push to restrict ballot access. Fair Fight, Priorities USA and American Bridge this week announced a “Voter Suppression Watch” partnership.  
“Trump is already trying to extend this culture war by creating fear around vote-by-mail,” said Aneesa McMillan of the Priorities political action committee. She noted the Republican National Committee’s plans to recruit thousands of poll watchers now that the GOP is no longer under a court order banning the practice that Democrats equate to voter intimidation.  
“We have to learn our lessons, not just from Georgia, and protect the entire process,” McMillan said.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Raffensperger laid blame elsewhere, noting state law charges counties with on-ground operation of elections.  
“It’s really specifically in one or two counties, in Fulton and DeKalb counties, that had these issues today,” Raffensperger said. “It has nothing to do with what we’re doing in the rest of Georgia.”
Raffensperger, minimizing problems that were documented in other counties, promised investigations of Fulton’s and DeKalb’s handling of the primary. The Republican speaker of Georgia’s state legislature, meanwhile, called for an investigation of the entire primary process, singling out Fulton County as “particularly” troubling.
That kind of back-and-forth, with white Republicans and black Democrats from big cities trading barbs over voting issues, isn’t new. And it’s one that could easily repeat in November in battleground states where Democrats and minorities figure prominently in the most populous cities and counties: Broward County (Fort Lauderdale), Florida; Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan; Charlotte, North Carolina; Philadelphia; Milwaukee.  
Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, has a history of slow vote tabulation. Its local elections chief, Richard Barron, called Tuesday a “learning experience” while alluding to the state’s role in the primary process.
The finger-pointing goes beyond details of the law. Raffensperger correctly noted that county officials train poll workers, including on the use of the new voting machines. But Raffensperger is the state’s chief elections official who decides how many machines to send to each county, and his office provides training curriculum for local officials.
On absentee ballots, the Republican secretary of state pushed unprecedented no-fault absentee access, paying to send an application to every Georgian on the active voter rolls. But, as Barron noted, neither the secretary of state nor the legislature provided additional money for local officials to hire staff to process the influx, which dwarfed the typical primary.  
History suggests that both local and state officials, whether in Georgia or elsewhere, could find themselves in the national crosshairs if their election tallies leave the presidency in flux.  
“I know that in these hyperpartisan times, half the people will be happy, and the other half will be sad,” Raffensperger said. “But we want to make sure that 100% of people know … the election was done fairly and we got the accurate count.”
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As protests over the death of a black man while in police custody continued into its third week, President Donald Trump again took to Twitter in posts that appear aimed at stoking division and glorifying police violence. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara looks at how Trump’s combative approach might fare at a time when there is remarkable national outpouring of empathy for the African American community.Camera: Taris Iman, Laurentius Wahyudi    
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Family members, politicians and celebrities mourned George Floyd at his funeral in Houston Tuesday. An African American, Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25. The death has prompted protests around the United States and in many other countries. Mike O’Sullivan reports. 
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Chris Dunker, a reporter for the Lincoln Journal Star, said he was shocked to be briefly detained while covering a demonstration in Lincoln, Nebraska, on May 31.  At the time, the reporter was wearing a vest clearly labeled Press. Police knocked him to the ground, handcuffed and briefly detained Dunker, before releasing him. The journalist then continued filming.   “To see, just like the flagrant way that law enforcement has been targeting journalists, violating their rights to report, arresting them, you know, just for doing their jobs under the First Amendment has been very alarming,” Dunker told VOA.  The reporter is one of several journalists to be detained while covering protests over the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, while in police custody in Minneapolis. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is investigating over 50 similar cases of police detaining the news media.  Press rights are same as protestersThe arrests are an infringement of First Amendment rights and risk damaging the U.S. standing overseas as a haven for press freedom overseas, rights groups and media experts have said.  When covering a protest, journalists are afforded the same rights as a demonstrator, said Sarah Matthews, a staff attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), which provides pro bono legal representation to journalists.  A journalist is protected by the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, Matthews said. “What that means at the really basic level is that journalists cannot be targeted by police with attacks and assault, simply for doing their job, when those journalists are complying with lawful orders by the police,” Matthews told VOA. The attorney said that videos of journalists being arrested or attacked have been “extremely distressing.”  ‘Did everything right’She cited a May 29 incident in which police in Minneapolis arrested three members of a CNN news crew who had identified themselves as press and asked law enforcement where in the streets they should be reporting from. Matthews said the news crew “did everything right.  “This demonstrates that there’s a need for law enforcement to take the initiative, to make sure that this doesn’t happen,” Matthews said. The RCFP is one of several groups calling for investigations into the attacks and arrests.    Lawsuit filed by ACLUThee American Civil Liberties Union  (ACLU) of Minnesota on June 3 filed a class-action lawsuit  against the city of Minneapolis, its police department, and the Minnesota State Patrol on behalf of journalists attacked, threatened, or “arrested without cause” while working.  And on June 8, about 600 organizations issued a joint letter calling for a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council and an independent inquiry into police violence against protesters and journalists, Reuters reported.  Some press freedom advocates said they fear the incidents could have broad consequences.  “For other countries, they look to the U.S. to set a standard,” Kathy Kiely, the Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism, told VOA.  “To the extent that other countries see that right being trampled on by authorities in this country, you do worry that it greenlights other countries, greenlights behaviors that really go against American values.”  A bad example?Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, added that while the U.S. is one of the world’s most welcoming countries toward journalists, other countries could use recent incidents against America. “Governments that don’t share our values would readily jump on this as evidence that the U.S. is not what it claims to be,” Paulson said. “Other governments will point to this as hypocrisy by the United States.”  The board of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has warned that the police response could “empower the despots and autocrats who show no mercy in the relentless suppression of their own people and press.” In a June 5 statement to U.S. governors, mayors and police chiefs, the CPJ board highlighted the important role the press plays and added, “Every effort to impede their coverage is an effort to deny information to that public — the same public that you and your departments serve.”  VOA director Amanda Bennett is on the CPJ board of directors. CPJ advocacy director Courtney Radsch told VOA that the press freedom group has been providing emergency assistance and will be contacting local and state officials about the treatment of journalists.  “We’re going to make this a big headache for the police departments,” Radsch said. “They have the responsibility to protect journalists and to uphold the law, the primary basis of which is our Constitution.” 
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Four Republican U.S. senators on Tuesday urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review whether to revise liability protections for internet companies after President Donald Trump urged action.Trump said last month he wants to “remove or change” a provision of a law that shields social media companies from liability for content posted by their users and directed a U.S. Commerce Department agency to petition the FCC to take action within 60 days.Senators Marco Rubio, Kelly Loeffler, Kevin Cramer and Josh Hawley asked the FCC to review Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and “clearly define the criteria for which companies can receive protections under the statute.”FILE – FCC Chairman Ajit Pai testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 5, 2019.Last week, an advocacy group backed by the tech industry sued, asking a judge to block the executive order.FCC Chairman Ajit Pai — who in 2018 said he did not see a role for the agency to regulate websites like Facebook Inc , Alphabet Inc’s Google and Twitter — declined to comment on potential actions in response to Trump’s executive order. He told reporters on Tuesday it would not be appropriate to “prejudge a petition that I haven’t seen.”FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said on Tuesday the order poses a lot “of very complex issues.”O’Rielly tweeted earlier “as a conservative, I’m troubled voices are stifled by liberal tech leaders. At same time, I’m extremely dedicated to the First Amendment which governs much here.” 
 
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Deepfakes, which use artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate highly realistic but phony videos, have been exploited for both entertainment and unethical purposes. Now one startup is showing how the face-swapping technology can be a practical tool for improving mental health and therapy practices.  VOA’s Tina Trinh explains.Camera: Tina Trinh
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Three Democratic lawmakers are asking federal watchdogs to investigate whether U.S. Park Police broke any laws in routing demonstrators from the square in front of the White House last week.The request was made in a letter released Tuesday to the Interior Department inspector general, Mark Lee Greenblatt. Officials were in the early stages of reviewing the request, said IG spokeswoman Nancy DiPaolo.Park Police and other security forces lobbed chemical agents and punched and clubbed demonstrators and journalists in clearing Lafayette Square near the White House on June 1, as protests surged around the country following the killing of George Floyd in police custody. Trump administration officials have denied federal forces were making way for President Donald Trump to stage photos nearby.The request for an investigation was made by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raul Grijalva of Arizona, and Committee Vice Chair Rep. Debra Haaland of New Mexico.”The First Amendment rights to free speech, peaceful assembly, and free press are the building blocks of all other rights,” the three lawmakers said. “Any actions by the Park Police to muzzle these rights is an affront to all Americans and should be swiftly addressed.”The Park Police is a small force under Interior’s National Park Service that is charged with law enforcement at Lafayette Square in front of the White House, at the Statue of Liberty in New York, and at a small number of other heavily visited federal sites.Spokespeople for the park service and the Interior Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told Grijalva in a letter last week that the Park Police had been in a “state of siege” from violent attacks in the square.Democratic lawmakers say witness and journalist accounts and photos and videos made public so far don’t support allegations of that scale of protester violence.The three lawmakers’ letter, sent Monday, asks Interior’s internal watchdog whether the force used by Park Police was lawful and in line with rules, policies and training standards for the force.Lawmakers also asked the investigators to determine who was giving orders to the Interior Department in the square’s clearing. 
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A former militia leader accused of war crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region is now in the custody of the International Criminal Court. The ICC said in a statement Tuesday that Abu Kushayb surrendered himself voluntarily in the Central African Republic. Kushayb is accused of commanding Janjaweed militia that attacked Darfur villages in 2003 and 2004, as part of a counter-insurgency strategy by the government of Sudan, then led by longtime president Omar al-Bashir. Among other crimes, Kushayb is accused of enlisting and arming fighters, and personally taking part in attacks on four villages where the killing, rape, and torture of civilians took place. The ICC issued a warrant for his arrest in 2007 that accused him of 22 counts of war crimes and 28 counts of crimes against humanity. The ICC said a date for Kushayb’s first appearance before the court has not been established.  
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