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In an effort to woo passengers into flying again, U.S. airlines announced they are taking some new steps to protect travelers from the coronavirus. This comes as the number of people flying has once again decreased. Airlines such as Delta recently posted a nearly $6 billion loss for the 2nd quarter and many airlines are encouraging employees to retire early to reduce the need for layoffs in October when federal payroll aid expires. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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U.S. Democrats officially nominated former Vice President Joe Biden Tuesday to be their candidate in the November presidential election on another evening in which prominent Republicans joined with Democrats in criticizing President Donald Trump while praising Biden’s leadership skills.  Biden had been the party’s presumptive nominee for months after outlasting a crowded field of Democratic presidential hopefuls in state-by-state primary and caucus votes, including his closest rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. On the second night of the Democratic National Convention, the traditional roll call vote of states officially picking the party nominee featured representatives speaking from their states and territories pledging their support for Biden as he now runs against Trump, a Republican.In this image from video, Gilbert Alaquinez of Arkansas speaks during the state roll call vote on second night of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 18, 2020.Biden said the nomination “means the world to me and my family, and I’ll see you on Thursday,” looking ahead to his speech accepting the nomination on the final night of the convention. As Democrats gathered virtually, Trump traveled Tuesday to two key battleground states, Iowa and Arizona, and sought to curry favor with women voters with a pardon earlier in the day of women’s suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony who protested during the 1870s. ‘Finding mercy and grace’Biden’s wife, Jill, said that if elected, her husband would bring to the White House “leadership worthy of our nation” at the time of an historic coronavirus pandemic and economic depression.  “There are those who want to tell us that our country is hopelessly divided, that our differences are irreconcilable. But that’s not what I’ve seen over these months,” Jill Biden said as she gave the final remarks of the night. “We’re coming together and holding onto each other. We’re finding mercy and grace in the moments we might have once taken for granted. We’re seeing that our differences are precious and our similarities infinite.In this image from video, Jill Biden, wife of Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden, speaks during the second night of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020. “We have shown that the heart of this nation still beats with kindness and courage. That’s the soul of America Joe Biden is fighting for now,” she said, delivering her speech from a classroom in the high school where she once taught in Wilmington, Delaware. Jill Biden has played an active, behind-the-scenes role in her husband’s third run for the presidency over three decades. Aides say she offered her thoughts on his choice of a vice presidential running mate before he chose California Senator Kamala Harris last week, making Harris the first Black woman and South Asian American to be picked for a spot on a national U.S. political ticket. Harris is set to give her convention acceptance speech Wednesday, along with remarks from former President Barack Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, who served in the Obama-Biden administration, used his speech Tuesday night to portray Trump’s foreign policy as a failure. “When this president goes overseas, it isn’t a goodwill mission, it’s a blooper reel. He breaks up with our allies and writes love letters to dictators. America deserves a president who is looked up to, not laughed at,” Kerry said. Kerry added that Biden understands that the problems facing the world, including the coronavirus, terrorism and climate change, cannot be resolved “without bringing nations together with strength and humility.”John Kerry speaking at the Democratic National Convention held in Milwaukee, Aug. 18, 2020.Times of crisis Former President Bill Clinton criticized Trump’s leadership, particularly in times of crisis. “At a time like this, the Oval Office should be a command center. Instead, it’s a storm center. There’s only chaos,” Clinton said. “Now you have to decide whether to renew his contract or hire someone else.  “If you want a president who defines the job as spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media, he’s your man. Denying, distracting, and demeaning works great if you’re trying to entertain and inflame. But in a real crisis, it collapses like a house of cards,” the former president said. Next week, Trump is set to officially accept his party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are making campaign stops during Biden’s week in the spotlight, traveling to political battleground states that could play a pivotal role in the election. Trump headed to the Midwestern state of Iowa on Tuesday and later visited Yuma, Arizona, near the border with Mexico to assess the construction of a border wall to thwart undocumented immigrants from crossing into the United States. The issue was a major plank of his successful 2016 run for the presidency.  On Thursday, Trump plans to visit a site near Biden’s boyhood home in Scranton, Pennsylvania. 
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The U.S. Agency for Global Media announced Tuesday that it is moving forward with funding two internet firewall circumvention projects despite an ongoing legal battle over the agency’s broader internet freedom strategy. The awardees — Psiphon and ACI — write software that help people gain access to websites and information blocked by their governments.  “Our agency is determined to expand freedom of expression by continuing to explore, develop, and fund the most secure and effective internet freedom tools,” FILE – Michael Pack, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, is seen at his confirmation hearing, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Sept. 19, 2019. Pack’s nomination was confirmed June 4, 2020.The announcement comes as USAGM, which is also the parent agency of Voice of America, remains locked in a legal battle with the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a Washington-based organization that receives a grant from USAGM to fund internet freedom technologies worldwide. Founded in 2012 as a pilot program under Radio Free Asia, another media organization under USAGM, OTF was spun out into a nonprofit organization in the fall of 2019. After Pack assumed office in June, he moved to fire OTF’s board and executives and install new leadership. A federal appeals court blocked that move in July. USAGM has withheld funding to OTF, leading the organization to halt 49 of its 60 internet freedom projects.US Global Internet Freedom Group Says Work Limited by Funding Dispute Open Technology Fund says global media chief is blocking access to $20 million for programs aimed at evading censorship in China, Iran, other authoritarian countriesEarlier this month, a group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers asked the Trump administration to release $20 million in congressionally approved funds for OTF. Psiphon, based in Toronto, creates software that “helps over 3 million people every week connect to content on the Internet,” according to its website. ACI, also known as Advanced Circuiting Inc., is the creator of NthLink, an “anti-censorship mobile application capable of circumventing Internet censorship and self-recovering from blocking events,” according to material on its website.  Both Psiphon and ACI have received funding through OTF over the past few years. A May OTF monthly report called the companies “veteran circumvention tool providers.” Details of the new awards were unavailable. 
 
USAGM did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. Lawyers representing Open Technology Fund board members also did not respond to questions about the awards.  In its announcement Tuesday, USAGM also said it was reviving the Office of Internet Freedom (OIF), which was created in 2016 but had ceased operations. It is through the OIF that the grants to Psiphon and ACI were made. OIF will soon launch “another round of competitive bidding to fund additional internet freedom technology,” according to the USAGM press release. Pack said that reviving the Office of Internet Freedom will help allow people worldwide to gain access to information. “Blocking access to information is a horrible thing. But fostering access to information, especially in this advanced capacity, will prove a blow for liberty,” Pack said in a statement. “That’s why we’re funding a range of internet firewall circumvention tools. Bringing back OIF will further allow our agency to make significant strides in this area.” 
 
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A group recommending a new Mississippi state flag chose five final designs Tuesday — three with a magnolia blossom, one with a magnolia tree and one with a shield that has wavy lines representing water. Mississippi legislators voted in late June to retire the last state flag in the U.S. with the Confederate battle emblem that’s broadly condemned as racist. “When the flag came down, it was one of the great days of my life,” Reuben Anderson, chairman of a nine-member flag commission, said during Tuesday’s meeting. The law shelving the old flag created the commission to come up with a new design that cannot include the Confederate battle emblem and must have the phrase, “In God We Trust.” Four of the designs chosen Tuesday are mostly or entirely red, white and blue. One has a stylized white magnolia tree on a blue background. Most have stars representing Mississippi as the 20th state. Each includes one star made of five diamond shapes that reflect the state’s Choctaw heritage. The five final designs will be manufactured. Commissioners hold their next meeting August 25, and those flags will be hoisted outside the Old Capitol in downtown Jackson. The Old Capitol is now a museum but was still the statehouse in 1894, when white supremacists in the Mississippi Legislature adopted a state flag with the Confederate battle emblem in the upper left corner. That vote reflected the backlash against political power African Americans briefly gained during Reconstruction. The state Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that even though the flag had remained in use, it lacked official status because state laws were updated in 1906 and sections describing the flag were not included. Mississippi residents voted in a 2001 election to keep the Confederate-themed flag, but it remained a divisive symbol in a state with a 38% Black population. All of Mississippi’s public universities and many local governments stopped flying it. Legislative leaders said for decades that they could not muster support to change the flag, but momentum shifted rapidly after Minneapolis police killed a Black man named George Floyd and protests against racial injustice happened across the U.S., including outside the Mississippi governor’s mansion. The final push to change the flag came from business, education, religion and sports leaders. Legislators created a nine-member commission, and that group received nearly 3,000 designs from the public. Commissioners will choose one design September 2, and that will go on the November 3 ballot. If voters accept the design, it will become the new Mississippi flag. If they reject it, the commission will find a new design to go on the ballot later. Even as the commission is working toward a new flag, some Mississippi residents are rebelling against change. Organizers of a group called Let Mississippi Vote said Monday that they are starting an initiative  to put the old Confederate-themed flag and three other flag designs on the statewide ballot. But the initiative process is burdensome, and their efforts will be complicated by the coronavirus pandemic. If the initiative gets to the ballot, that election could be a year or two away. And, Mississippi could be flying a new flag by then.  
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​.Daily DebunkClaim: The Covid-19 virus cannot survive on an inanimate object for more than nine days.Verdict: CorrectRead the full story at: Africa CheckSocial Media DisinfoWilson Primary School in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., August 17, 2020. REUTERS/Cheney OrrCirculating on social media: Claim that under the “COVID Act,” school officials in the U.S. can quarantine children with COVID-19 symptoms outside their family home without their parents’ or guardians’ consent.Verdict: FalseRead the full story at: SnopesFactual Reads on CoronavirusCoronavirus Doctors Battle Another Scourge: Misinformation
Physicians say they regularly treat people more inclined to believe what they read on Facebook than what a medical professional tells them.
— New York Times, August 17
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Doctors in Libya are braced for a surge in serious coronavirus cases, as the infection rate has jumped in recent weeks. Latest figures suggest there are around 8,500 cases in the conflict-torn country, though the true figure is likely to be much higher. As Henry Ridgwell reports, authorities are urging people to adhere to social distancing to slow the spread of the disease.Camera:  Henry Ridgwell      Produced by: Rob Raffaele 
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One of the hottest air temperatures recorded anywhere on the planet in at least a century, and possibly ever, was reached on Sunday afternoon at Death Valley in California’s Mojave Desert where it soared to 130 Fahrenheit (54.4 Celsius).
An automated observation system run by the U.S. National Weather Service in the valley’s sparsely populated Furnace Creek reported the record at 3:41 p.m. at the crest of an extreme heat wave, a more frequent occurrence because of climate change.
It was a dry heat: Humidity fell to 7%. But it felt “insanely hot” all the same, according to meteorologist Daniel Berc at the weather service’s Las Vegas bureau. A heat wave roasting much of the Western United States would continue all week, he said on Monday.
“It’s literally like being in an oven,” he said in a telephone interview. “Today is another day we could take another run at 130F.”
Tourists on Monday took selfies by an outdoor thermometer at the Death Valley visitor center while avoiding touching metal surfaces with bare skin.
Those who live and work in Furnace Creek, which had a population of 24 in the 2010 census, saw cause for pause in the record.
“We are seeing more records being broken at a daily and monthly level,” said Brandi Stewart, a public information officer for Death Valley National Park who can see the Furnace Creek weather station from her window. “It is significant that we’re seeing more records breaking.”
A temperature of 134F (56.7C) was recorded in Death Valley in July 1913, and Kebili, Tunisia, is said to have hit 131F in July 1931, according to the World Meteorological Organization. But recent research by Christopher Burt, an extreme weather expert, has led some meteorologists to view these older records as the results of observer error.
Climate change has pushed global temperatures to new highs. In Europe, northern Spain broke local heat records in July, while wheat fields in France caught fire.
Forests across Siberian Russia are seeing unprecedented wildfires, while the Arctic sea ice shrank to a record low for July due to melting.
In Furnace Creek, staff and guests at The Oasis hotel were being urged to wear hats and sip water relentlessly while outside, according to general manager John Kukreja.
He tells guests that extreme heat does strange, deceptive things to the body.
“You’re going to sweat and the sweat’s going to dry instantly and you’re never going to know you actually felt hot,” he said. “Your hair stands on end. It’s almost like you feel like you’re cold, like goose bumps.” 
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