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French President Emmanuel Macron will host a U.N.-backed international donors’ virtual conference Sunday to raise funds for Lebanon following a massive blast at the port of Beirut last week that killed at least 158 people and injured about 6,000 others.U.S. President Donald Trump announced his participation in a tweet Friday, after he talked with Macron and his Lebanese counterpart, Michel Aoun, tweeting that “everyone wants to help!””We will be having a conference call on Sunday with President Macron, leaders of Lebanon, and leaders from various other parts of the world,” he said.In the meantime, the U.S. has delivered emergency aid to Lebanon, starting with food, water, and medical supplies, under Trump’s direction. Initially it has pledged more than $17 million in disaster aid for the country.In other developments, Lebanese security forces fired tear gas Saturday at thousands of demonstrators who gathered in Beirut’s main square to protest the government’s management of the recent explosion that devastated large parts of the city.At the beginning of a planned protest, a small group of men started throwing stones at security forces as they tried to jump over barriers blocking entry to the parliament building. Police responded by firing tear gas at the protesters.A police spokesman said an officer was killed during scuffles. A police officer at the scene said that the officer died after falling down an elevator shaft when he was chased by protesters into a building in the area.The demonstrators also stormed the foreign ministry building while others in Martyrs Square set up symbolic nooses for politicians and chanted “the people want the fall of the regime.”The protesters later set fire to a truck that was reinforcing barriers on a street leading to the parliament building.The Lebanese Red Cross said more than a dozen protesters were hospitalized and scores of others received medical treatment on the scene.The protest, the first significant demonstration since the explosion, occurred amid mounting anger at Lebanon’s political leadership.The country’s leaders have been accused of widespread corruption and incompetence that contributed to Tuesday’s devastating explosion.Prime Minister Hassan Diab said Friday he will draft legislation calling for early elections and is willing to remain in the position for two months to allow political leaders time to implement structural reforms.The head of the Kataeb Party, Sami Gemayal, told mourners at the funeral of party Secretary-General Nazar Najarian Saturday that he was withdrawing three party members from parliament in the wake of the fallout from the explosion.Progressive Socialist Party and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt told Arab media he was calling for early parliamentary elections and that protesters have the right to demand that political leaders resign.Jumblatt said, however, it is up to Christian protesters and Christian political parties to call for an end to the mandate of President Michel Aoun.Christian political leader Samir Geagea has also called for early parliamentary elections but stopped short of withdrawing his party’s members from parliament.The U.S. Embassy in Beirut said Saturday the U.S. government backs the demonstrators’ rights to peaceful protest and is urging them to “refrain from violence.” In a tweet, the embassy also said the Lebanese people “deserved leaders who listen to them and change course to respond to popular demands for transparency and accountability.”
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U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper says U.S. troops in Afghanistan will be reduced to “a number less than 5,000” by the end of November.The reduction in force comment was made by the defense chief in an interview broadcast Saturday on Fox News.Earlier last week, President Donald Trump said in an interview with Axios that he would like to see the approximately 8,600 U.S. troops in Afghanistan decreased by “anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000.”  
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Britain’s armed forces have been asked to help deal with boats carrying migrants across the Channel from France, the Defense Ministry said Saturday after a spate of arrivals on the southern English coast.Taking advantage of a spell of hot weather and calm seas, hundreds of people including children and pregnant women have made the dangerous 33-km (21-mile) crossing in recent days, many in overloaded rubber dinghies and other small vessels.The Defense Ministry said it had received a formal request from the Home Office, or interior ministry, to assist the UK Border Force with its operations in the Dover Straits.”We are assessing the requirements … and are working hard to identify how we can most effectively assist,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.A Home Office spokeswoman declined to comment.300-plus arrivalsMore than 200 people arrived on the English coast on Thursday, followed by 130 on Friday, and media reported more arrivals on Saturday as the hot weather persisted.A junior Home Office minister in charge of immigration compliance, Chris Philp, called the rise in arrivals “shameful” and sought to put pressure on France ahead of a meeting with his French counterpart in Paris next week.”The French need to stop these illegal migrants from getting in the water in the first place,” he said in an opinion column published in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, adding that Britain would seek to return to France those who made it across.France’s interior ministry said surveillance teams on the northern coast were intercepting migrants daily and it had mobilized extra resources. It said five times as many migrant boats had been caught between January and July as were caught during the same period in 2019.FILE – French gendarmes patrol the beach in Ambleteuse near Calais, northern France, Jan. 18, 2019, looking to halt migrants’ bid to cross the English Channel.”This is a joint problem … which needs a joint operational response,” a spokesman said.The Sunday Telegraph reported that France would ask Britain to pay 30 million pounds ($39.12 million) to police the English Channel and that the UK had not yet decided whether to accept that demand.’Not a crisis’Uncontrolled arrivals of asylum-seekers and migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia have long been a source of tension between European countries struggling to find an effective joint response.Britain left the European Union in January and a transition period during which most EU rules and accords are still in force will end December 31, which could further complicate cooperation with EU member France.Immigration has been an especially polarizing issue in Britain since the Brexit referendum in 2016 because “taking back control” of immigration and border policy was presented as one of the key advantages by pro-Brexit campaigners.Home Secretary Priti Patel, an enthusiastic Brexiteer, made the link in a tweet on Friday about the Channel crossings: “I know that when the British people say they want to take back control of our borders, this is exactly what they mean.”Critics such as groups campaigning for the rights of immigrants and refugees accuse the government of stoking some voters’ xenophobic fears by magnifying the issue.”Britain is better than this. The arrival of small numbers of people by boat is not a crisis,” said Stephen Hale, chief executive of Refugee Action, who urged the government to focus on the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic crisis.The numbers crossing the Channel are tiny compared with the flows of people who try to reach EU countries such as Malta, Greece, Italy and Spain every year by crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa or Turkey, thousands of them dying on the way.
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Twitter Inc has approached TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to express interest in acquiring the U.S. operations of the video-sharing app, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as experts raised doubts over Twitter’s ability to put together financing for a potential deal.It is far from certain that Twitter would be able to outbid Microsoft Corp and complete such a transformative deal in the 45 days that U.S. President Donald Trump has given ByteDance to agree to a sale, the sources said on Saturday.The news of Twitter and TikTok being in preliminary talks and Microsoft still being seen as the front-runner in bidding for the app’s U.S. operations was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.Twitter has a market capitalization of close to $30 billion, almost as much as the valuation of TikTok’s assets to be divested, and would need to raise additional capital to fund the deal, according to the sources.”Twitter will have a hard time putting together enough financing to acquire even the U.S. operations of TikTok. It doesn’t have enough borrowing capacity,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan.”If it (Twitter) tries to put together an investor group, the terms will be tough. Twitter’s own shareholders might prefer that management focus on its existing business,” he added.One of Twitter’s shareholders, private equity firm Silver Lake, is interested in helping fund a potential deal, one of the sources added.Twitter has also privately made a case that its bid would face less regulatory scrutiny than Microsoft’s, and will not face any pressure from China given that it is not active in that country, the sources said.TikTok, ByteDance and Twitter declined to comment.TikTok has come under fire from U.S. lawmakers over national security concerns surrounding data collection.Earlier this week, Trump unveiled bans on U.S. transactions with the China-based owners of messaging app WeChat and TikTok, escalating tensions between the two countries.Trump said this week he would support Microsoft’s efforts to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations if the U.S. government got a “substantial portion” of the proceeds. He nevertheless said he will ban the popular app on September 15.Microsoft said on Sunday it was aiming to conclude negotiations for a deal by mid-September.  
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China on Saturday sealed off another village in Inner Mongolia after a resident died from bubonic plague, the second lockdown in the region in two days.According to a statement issued by the Health Commission of Bayannaoer, a local patient suffering with the centuries-old disease died Friday of multiple organ failure. He was the second victim of the plague reported this month in the northern Chinese region.”The place of residence of the deceased is locked down, and a comprehensive epidemiological investigation is being carried out,” the announcement posted on the commission’s website said.The first lockdown was announced Thursday in an adjacent city when the health commission of Baotou announced a villager there had died of circulatory system failure.Map of China showing Inner Mongolia regionThe bubonic plague is a highly infectious and often fatal disease, “with a case-fatality ratio of 30% – 100% if left untreated,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO).The authorities in both cities issued a third-level alert – the second lowest in a four-level system – effective immediately until the end of 2020, to prevent the spread of the disease.While the disease is spread mostly by rodents, authorities in both cities have warned that human-to-human transmission is possible. “Currently, there is a risk of human plague spreading in our city,” the statement reads.All close and secondary contacts of the patients have been quarantined, the two commissions said. They also urged people to reduce contact with wild animals and avoid hunting, skinning or eating animals that could cause infection.Cases are becoming increasingly rare in recent years in China. According to China’s National Health Commission, there were five cases in 2019, with one death. Worldwide, there are 1,000 to 2,000 cases each year that are reported to the WHO.
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Chinese tech giant Huawei is running out of processor chips to make smartphones because of U.S. sanctions and will be forced to stop production of its own most advanced chips, a company executive says, in a sign of growing damage to Huawei’s business from American pressure. Huawei Technologies Ltd., one of the biggest producers of smartphones and network equipment, is at the center of U.S.-Chinese tension over technology and security. The feud has spread to include the popular Chinese-owned video app TikTok and China-based messaging service WeChat. Washington cut off Huawei’s access to U.S. components and technology including Google’s music and other smartphone services last year. Those penalties were tightened in May when the White House barred vendors worldwide from using U.S. technology to produce components for Huawei. Washington also is lobbying European and other allies to exclude Huawei from planned next-generation networks as a security risk. Production to stopProduction of Kirin chips designed by Huawei’s own engineers will stop September 15 because they are made by contractors that need U.S. manufacturing technology, said Richard Yu, president of the company’s consumer unit. He said Huawei lacks the ability to make its own chips.  “This is a very big loss for us,” Yu said Friday at an industry conference, China Info 100, according to a video recording of his comments posted on multiple websites.  “Unfortunately, in the second round of U.S. sanctions, our chip producers only accepted orders until May 15. Production will close on September 15,” Yu said. “This year may be the last generation of Huawei Kirin high-end chips.”  More broadly, Huawei’s smartphone production has “no chips and no supply,” Yu said.  Yu said this year’s smartphone sales probably will be lower than 2019’s level of 240 million handsets but gave no details. The company didn’t immediately respond to questions Saturday. Spying a concernHuawei, founded in 1987 by a former military engineer, denies accusations it might facilitate Chinese spying. Chinese officials accuse Washington of using national security as an excuse to stop a competitor to U.S. tech industries. Huawei is a leader among emerging Chinese competitors in telecoms, electric cars, renewable energy and other fields in which the ruling Communist Party hopes China can become a global leader. Huawei has 180,000 employees and one of the world’s biggest research and development budgets at more than $15 billion a year. But, like most global tech brands, it relies on contractors to manufacture its products.  Huawei became the world’s top-selling smartphone brand in the three months ending in June, passing rival Samsung for the first time because of strong demand in China, according to Canalys. Sales abroad fell 27% from a year earlier.
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Thousands of demonstrators gathered again Saturday in Russia’s Far East city of Khabarovsk to denounce the arrest of the region’s governor a month ago, protests that are posing a direct challenge to the Kremlin.Sergei Furgal was arrested on July 9 on suspicion of involvement in murders and taken to jail in Moscow. The estimated 3,000 demonstrators on Saturday protested the charges, believing them to be politically motivated, and want him returned to the city for trial. Furgal has denied the charges.Furgal, who has been removed from his post, is a popular figure in the region bordering China about 6,100 kilometers (3,800 miles) east of Moscow. Since his arrest, daily demonstrations have been held in the city, with attendance peaking on weekends.Demonstrations in support of the Khabarovsk protesters were held in at least seven other cities in Russia. The OVD-Info organization that monitors political arrests said at least 10 people were arrested in those demonstrations.No arrests were reported in Khabarovsk, where authorities have not interfered with the demonstrations, apparently hoping they will fizzle out. 
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A Venezuelan court sentenced two former U.S. soldiers to 20 years in prison for their role in a failed incursion aimed at ousting President Nicolas Maduro in early May, chief prosecutor Tarek Saab said late on Friday.Former Green Berets Luke Denman, 34, and Airan Berry, 41, admitted to participating in the May 4 operation, Saab wrote on his Twitter account.”Said gentlemen ADMITTED to having committed the crimes,” he wrote, adding that the trials were ongoing for dozens of others captured.Denman and Berry were charged with conspiracy, terrorism and illicit weapons trafficking, Saab wrote.Alfonso Medina, a lawyer for the two, said their legal team was not allowed into the courtroom. The two men were not available for comment.The sea incursion launched from Colombia, known as Operation Gideon, left at least eight dead.Maduro’s government said it arrested a group of conspirators that included Denman and Berry near the isolated coastal town of Chuao.U.S. special forces veteran Jordan Goudreau, who ran Silvercorp USA, a private Florida-based security firm, has claimed responsibility for the raid.Denman appeared in a video on Venezuelan state TV days after their capture, saying they had been contracted by Silvercorp USA to train 50 to 60 Venezuelans in Colombia, seize control of Caracas’ airport and bring in a plane to fly Maduro to the United States.Opposition leader Juan Guaido’s office said Guaido had known about the operation since October, but did not finance or order It.Maduro, who describes Guaido as a Washington puppet, has said that President Donald Trump’s government backed the Operation.The Trump administration has denied any direct involvement. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the U.S. government would use “every tool” to secure the U.S. citizens’ return.
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For decades, thousands of vendors have fanned out along roadsides from Alabama to Michigan each summer to haggle over the prices of old Coca-Cola bottles, clothes, toys, knives and more at The World’s Longest Yard Sale.And though the coronavirus pandemic has canceled events around the globe, the six-state yard sale is happening this weekend for the 34th straight year.Beginning Thursday and ending Sunday, thousands of people will mingle, chat and bargain across a 1,110 kilometer stretch of Middle America. Organizers say they might not get the usual crowd, estimated at 200,000 people, but they could.“We feel like there’s a lot of pent-up demand,” said Hugh Stump III, executive director of tourism in Gadsden, at the southernmost end of the sale.The crowd was predominantly older on the first day in Gadsden, and many people wore face masks and visibly tried to keep away from others. COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, can be particularly dangerous for the elderly and people with other health problems.But many others didn’t wear facial coverings, and it wasn’t uncommon to see people standing shoulder to shoulder as they looked through racks of clothes or tables full of shoes set up outside.Promoters considered canceling the event because of the pandemic, which has killed more than 160,000 Americans and infected nearly 5 million more, but they decided to go ahead with precautions including reminders about masks, social distancing and handwashing.“The fact that it’s a mostly outdoor event was a large determining factor in going forward. There’s plenty of space for social distancing and the other guidelines can be followed as well. In addition, because this event is critical to many people’s livelihood it’s very important,” sale spokesperson Josh Randall said in an email.Vendors set up days early at Cumberland Mountain General Store in Clarkrange, Tennessee, where as many as 100 booths will be open though the weekend.A crowd looks through items at the World’s Longest Yard Sale, which stretches from Alabama to Michigan, at its southernmost point in Gadsden, Ala., on Aug. 6, 2020.“It’s usually packed here,” store clerk June Walker said.Other places opted out this year because of the virus. The Darke County Steam Threshers Association in Ansonia, Ohio, decided against allowing vendors on its 12 hectares of land, President Jo Stuck said.“To keep up with all the health mandates … we just do not have the volunteers to do it this year,” she said. “The two of us who can be there all the time have compromised immune systems, and that puts our health at risk plus the health of our visitors and our vendors.”The loss of rental income will hurt the group, which stages events featuring old farm machines, but members didn’t want to be put in the position of dealing with people who willfully defy Ohio’s mandatory mask rule, Stuck said.“There are a lot of people around here that have an issue with it and don’t want to follow it,” she said. “It’s a big problem.”The yard sale began in 1987 as a way to lure visitors off interstate highways to a small town in Tennessee. No one owns the event, Randall said, but it’s promoted on a website that includes tips for vendors, maps and, for 2020, pandemic health guidelines.Also known as the 127 Yard Sale, the event follows U.S. 127 from near Addison, Michigan, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, through Ohio and Kentucky. From there, it meanders through northwest Georgia to Noccalula Falls, a 100-hectare public park in Gadsden.Patricia Gurley piled into a car with two friends and drove about 275 kilometers to the Gadsden end of the sale from her home in Corinth, Mississippi. With a yellow mask pulled down under her chin, she was excited about visiting the sale for the first time and wasn’t concerned about the pandemic.“I don’t worry about that. If you’re gonna get it, you’re gonna get it,” she said.A crowd looks through items at the World’s Longest Yard Sale, which stretches from Alabama to Michigan, at its southernmost point in Gadsden, Ala., on Aug. 6, 2020.Nicole Gerle came even farther: She drove 3,340 kilometers from her home in San Diego and planned to travel the route at least to Ohio, maybe even all the way to Michigan.Wearing a mask, Gerle said she wasn’t fretting over the coronavirus: “If other people aren’t going to be smart, I’m going to be smart on my side.” But Gerle was worried about getting good deals on items including a metal basket she planned to take home, repurpose into other goods and sell.“The purchasing is livelihood for me and the selling is livelihood for them,” she said, pointing toward sales tables. “People make their income; they count on this.”Vendor Ann Sullins has set up shop at the past five sales and was thankful this year’s wasn’t called off. But realistically, she said, the yard sale is just too big to cancel.“People are going to do just like they do,” said Sullins, who wasn’t wearing a mask but tried to keep her distance from others and had hand sanitizer. “When something like this comes up, they’re going to go out and do it just because it gives them a break from home.” 
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Two years after a pan-European military initiative was first proposed to help tackle the Sahel’s Islamist insurgency, the Takuba task force is finally becoming reality, as its first troops arrive amid the coronavirus pandemic, political turmoil and spreading unrest.A group of roughly 100 Estonian and French special forces are the first on the ground to comprise Takuba, the Tuareg name for a sabre. Some 60 Czech troops are to join them in October, and another 150 Swedish ones by early next year. Estonia, Belgium and more recently Italy count among others to announce troops for the mission intended to help Mali and Niger forces fight extremist groups in the region.But for now, and likely in the future, the main foreign troop contributor in the region is France, analysts say, whose own 5,100-troop Barkhane counterinsurgency operation enters its seventh year.And despite recent military victories, they say, chances of eradicating the conflict are remote, unless the Europeans and Africans offer more holistic, long-term solutions.“If you have a gushing wound on your neck, you don’t put a plaster on it,” said Andrew Yaw Tchie, a senior Africa security expert at the London-based Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, or RUSI.Victory possible?France thinks differently. At a June Sahel summit in Nouakchott, Mauritania, French President Emmanuel Macron urged regional and international governments to intensify their military campaign against the Islamists.”We are all convinced that victory is possible in the Sahel,” Macron said, citing progress in recent months.Emboldening his stance was the early June killing of a key Islamist leader by French forces with the reported aid of a U.S. drone. Abdelmalek Droukdel, headed al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the main groups operating in the region.But other prominent jihadist leaders, including two linked to al-Qaida, remain at large, in a tangled conflict in which Islamist and local extremist groups have fueled and profited from inter-communal violence as well.Overall, the United Nations estimates terrorist attacks against civilian and military targets in three of the most vulnerable Sahel countries — Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger — has increased fivefold since 2016.In a recent interview with VOA, J. Peter Pham, the top U.S. envoy to the Sahel region, noted extremist attacks in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger had increased 40 percent in the first quarter of this year alone.Asked whether counter-insurgency efforts were winning, Pham added, “It depends on what time horizon you use and what definition you use for winning.”While Droukdel’s death might be considered a “specific” success, he noted insecurity was expanding in Burkina Faso and central Mali, which “certainly cannot be counted a success.”Spreading threatExtremist groups are also spreading southward, deeper into sub-Saharan Africa — profiting from north-south ethnic and religious divides within countries, and more recently, analysts say, the coronavirus pandemic.Against this backdrop, there is no unified international military response, says Bakary Sambe, director of the Timbuktu Institute in Dakar.“Today, there are 19 different international strategies in the Sahel and no coordination,” Sambe said. “At a time when terrorist groups are beginning to coordinate, international partners are diverging.”The Takuba task force is intended to facilitate regional coordination, as well as to provide equipment and training to Malian and other G-5 Sahel forces, which also hail from Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Chad.Some observers see it as a test case for Macron’s broader goal of a more unified European Union defense, which a number of other EU member states are lukewarm about.It’s also unclear how many European countries will ultimately commit to the Sahel initiative. Some, including Norway and Germany, have already bowed out for a mix of reasons. Britain, which formally exited the EU last year, plans instead to dispatch 250 forces to beef up the U.N.’s MINUSMA peacekeeping mission in Mali.RUSI’s Tchie, who describes Britain as joining an “unwinnable fight in the Sahel” with its U.N. commitment, has similar reservations about the Takuba troops.“In essence, all you’re doing is saying, ‘Let’s deal with counterterrorism, and at some point, we’ll deal with the other stuff,’” he said, summarizing what he considers the European thinking.Yet such thinking, he added, fails to address interlinking problems, including climate change, corruption, poverty and underdevelopment that are fueling the conflict.Parallels with SomaliaAdding to the challenges is the current political turmoil in Mali, where West African leaders are trying to find an exit plan to a crisis in which protesters are calling for President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita to quit.Some regional forces have been accused of civilian abuses. For their part, extremist groups have capitalized on the coronavirus pandemic to further their interests, including staging attacks and recruiting new members, analysts say.France faces its own set of challenges. Its Barkhane force has lost 43 men in its Sahel operations since 2013. It also faces a negative image in some countries, where memories of its colonial presence linger.Takuba is partly intended to send the message that “France is not alone in the Sahel,” the country’s newspaper Le Monde wrote.The Timbuktu Institute’s Sambe sees it another way.“I think that wanting to realize Takuba is in itself an admittance that Barkhane and other foreign interventions have been a failure,” he said. “It’s been years that a purely security and military approach hasn’t functioned to eradicate terrorism.”In London, RUSI’s Tchie draws parallels between the Islamist groups in the Sahel and Somalia, where the al-Shabab terrorist group has grown and spread despite years of U.S. and other military efforts. In both regions, he says, extremist groups have scored points in local communities, he says, in ways national and foreign intervention has not.“It delivers justice, it delivers humanitarian relief to communities, and people feel more secure,” he said of al-Shabab. “It’s not that people want to go to al-Shabab. But when they need security, justice and things to work for them, al-Shabab delivers.”  
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The United States is delivering emergency aid to Lebanon, starting with food, water, and medical supplies, under the direction of President Donald J. Trump following Tuesday’s blast in Beirut, national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien said Friday.In addition, the U.S. will continue to work with authorities in Lebanon to identify further health and humanitarian needs and will provide further assistance. The U.S. Agency for International Development is deploying a disaster assistance response team to help coordination and delivery of assistance, the statement said.The Trump administration has initially pledged more than $17 million in disaster aid for the country, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said, and “will continue to help the Lebanese people as they recover from this tragedy.”In addition to providing aid, Pompeo said, the U.S. is joining other nations in the call for “a thorough and transparent investigation” into the cause of the explosion.United Nations rescue workers searched the wreckage for survivors Friday. French and Russian rescue teams with dogs also searched the area Friday.Lebanese authorities believe that 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrite stored in warehouses for the last six years led to the explosion of this week.An aerial view taken Aug. 7, 2020, shows a partial view of the port of Beirut, the damaged grain silo and the crater caused by the colossal explosion three days earlier of a huge pile of ammonium nitrate.Officials say they expect the death toll to go up as they pick through the wreckage. Initial damage estimates are as high as $15 billion.Health officials also fear the disaster will aggravate the coronavirus outbreak as victims pack hospitals and the homeless seek shelter.Human Rights Watch was the first to call for an independent investigation of the explosion. The group said international experts should be allowed into Lebanon to “determine the causes and responsibility for the explosion and recommend measures to ensure it cannot happen again.”Russia flew in a mobile military hospital along with 50 medical workers. Qatar is also sending a field hospital, while Iraq is supplying a crew of medical workers and truckloads of supplies.Tunisia offered to bring patients there for treatment and Germany has dispatched a team of rescue experts and search dogs.Cash pledges have come in from Australia, Britain, Hungary, and other countries.   
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The African Union says “aggressive and bold” action is needed to combat the coronavirus outbreak on the continent.More than 1 million cases of the virus have been reported across Africa, but officials warn the real number is likely larger, citing the absence of comprehensive testing in some countries.Australia’s Victoria state reported more than 450 new coronavirus cases Saturday and 12 deaths. Victoria is home to more than two-thirds of Australia’s almost 21,000 COVID infections.On Friday, a day when more than 60,000 new COVID-19 infections were reported in the U.S., Sturgis, South Dakota, began welcoming participants for its annual motorcycle rally. Some 250,000 people are expected this year. The biker event regularly attracts 500,000, but the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to keep some people home.There are no mask requirements in Sturgis and people have been asked to social distance, a practice that was not being observed Friday on the town’s crowded streets.Elsewhere, a student who was suspended for posting a photograph of a crowded hallway in her school, where many students were not wearing masks in the U.S. southern state of Georgia will be back in school Monday. School officials were widely criticized for suspending her over the photograph. The student told CNN on Friday that she has no regrets about what she did.Johns Hopkins University says there are 19.3 million reported global COVID-19 cases and more than 720,000 deaths.
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At least 10 times over the past six years, authorities from Lebanon’s customs, military, security agencies and judiciary raised alarm that a massive stockpile of explosive chemicals was being kept with almost no safeguard at the port in the heart of Beirut, newly surfaced documents show.Yet in a circle of negligence, nothing was done — and on Tuesday, the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate blew up, obliterating the city’s main commercial hub and spreading death and wreckage for miles around.President Michel Aoun, in office since 2016, said Friday that he was first told of the dangerous stockpile nearly three weeks ago and immediately ordered military and security agencies to do “what was needed.” But he suggested his responsibility ended there, saying he had no authority over the port and that previous governments had been told of its presence.”Do you know how many problems have been accumulating?” Aoun replied when a reporter pressed whether he should have followed up on his order.The documents surfacing in social media since the blast underscore the corruption, negligence and incompetence of Lebanon’s long-ruling political oligarchy, and its failure to provide its people with basic needs, including security.Investigators probing the blast have focused on personnel at the Port of Beirut, Lebanon’s main port, so well known for corruption that its common nickname is Ali Baba’s Cave.So far, at least 16 port employees have been detained and others questioned. On Friday, investigators questioned and then ordered the detention of the head of the port, Hassan Koraytem, the country’s customs chief, Badri Daher, and Daher’s predecessor.But many Lebanese say the rot permeates the political system and extends to the country’s top leadership.The explosion of the ammonium nitrate, after apparently being set off by a fire, was the biggest in Lebanon’s history. The known death toll reached 154, including bodies recovered from the rubble Friday, and more than 5,000 people were wounded. Billions of dollars in damage was caused across the city, where many are too impoverished by Lebanon’s financial crisis to rebuild.People remove debris from a house damaged by Tuesday’s explosion in the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 7, 2020.Aoun’s comments were the most senior confirmation that top politicians had been aware of the stockpile.”The material had been there for seven years, since 2013. It has been there, and they said it is dangerous and I am not responsible. I don’t know where it was placed. I don’t even know the level of danger. I have no authority to deal directly with the port,” he told a news conference.He said that when he was told of the stockpile on July 20, he immediately ordered military and security officials “to do what is needed.””There are ranks that should know their duties, and they were all informed. … When you refer a document and say, ‘Do what is needed,’ isn’t that an order?” he added.He said the explosion may have been caused by negligence, but the investigation would also look at the possibility that it could have been caused by a bomb or other “external intervention.” He said he had asked France, which has close ties to its former colony, for satellite images from the time of the blast to see if they showed any planes or missiles.The ammonium nitrate, a chemical used in fertilizers and explosives, originated from a cargo ship called MV Rhosus that had been traveling from the country of Georgia to Mozambique in 2013. It made an unscheduled detour to Beirut as the Russian shipowner was struggling with debts and hoped to earn some extra cash in Lebanon. Unable to pay port fees and reportedly leaking, the ship was impounded.The first known document about it came on February 21, 2014, three months after the ship’s arrival. Col. Joseph Skaff, a senior customs official, wrote to the customs authority’s anti-smuggling department warning that the material still on board the ship docked at port was “extremely dangerous and endangers public safety.”Skaff died in March 2017 in unclear circumstances. He was found near his house in Beirut after allegedly falling from a big height. Medical reports at the time gave different explanations, one saying it was an accident, the other saying there was unusual bruising on his face.On June 27, 2014, Jad Maalouf, a judge for urgent matters, wrote to the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation, warning that the ship was carrying dangerous material and could sink. He said the ministry should deal with the ship, remove the ammonium nitrate and “place it in a suitable place that it (the ministry) chooses, and it (the material) should be under its protection.”A dog of the French rescue team searches for survivors at the scene of this week’s massive explosion in the port of Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 7, 2020.Soon after that, the shipment was moved into Warehouse 12 at the port, where it remained until it exploded. It is unclear if it was officially under the ministry’s control.Lebanon’s LBC TV station reported that in October 2015, the army intervened after learning of delays in dealing with the shipment. Military intelligence sent an expert who tested the material and found that the nitrogen levels were 34.7 percent, considered a highly explosive level, LBC said.The army reported to the customs department that the material should be quickly removed, suggesting it be exported. Customs referred the report back to the judge of urgent matters, LBC said.Three military and security officials did not respond to calls and messages from the Associated Press to comment or confirm the report on LBC.Daher, the customs department head, told the AP before his detention that between 2014 and 2017, he and his predecessor sent six letters to the judge warning that the stockpile was dangerous and seeking a ruling on a way to remove or sell it.Daher said it was his duty to alert authorities of the danger but that was the most he could do. He said he never got a reply.Relatives of Lebanese army lieutenant Ayman Noureddine, who was killed by Tuesday’s explosion that hit the seaport of Beirut, mourn over his coffin during his funeral procession, in Numeiriyeh village, south Lebanon, Aug. 7, 2020.Earlier this year, State Security, after investigating the stockpile, issued a five-page report saying the material must be gotten rid of. It said the ammonium nitrate could explode and warned terrorists could steal it, saying one wall of the warehouse had a hole in it and a gate was open.Throughout this period, Lebanon had four prime ministers, including the current one — Hassan Diab, who came to office earlier this year — as well as multiple government reshuffles. In 2013, when the ship docked, Michel Suleiman was president, followed by two years without a president as political factions wrangled, before finally electing Aoun in October 2016.For decades, Lebanon has been dominated by the same political elites, many of them former warlords and militia commanders from the civil war. The ruling factions use public institutions to accumulate wealth and distribute patronage to supporters. A blind eye is often turned to corruption, and little development is put into institutions. As a result, power outages are frequent, trash is often uncollected and tap water is largely undrinkable.The leader of the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group, whose allies dominate the government, said in a speech Friday that “negligence, corruption, nepotism” had a role in the explosion and must be dealt with.Hassan Nasrallah warned that if no one was held accountable, “we are basically saying to the people there is no state.” He also said Hezbollah’s domestic opponents were trying to use the blast to stir public opinion against it but would fail. He denied any role by Hezbollah in the disaster.Both Nasrallah and Aoun rejected calls for an international investigation.Since last October, the Lebanese people have held mass protests denouncing the country’s entire ruling elite, including Nasrallah. The demonstrations achieved only a rearranging of the names in the government, and largely faded amid the coronavirus pandemic and Lebanon’s financial collapse.In a sign of how the public has largely come to expect government inaction, thousands of volunteers have cleaned up streets in the neighborhoods worst hit by the blast. They swept broken glass and reopened roads, helped restaurants and shops clear debris, and salvaged merchandise. They separated rubble into piles of broken glass and mangled metal. Others volunteered to go into destroyed homes to look for medicine, valuables and essential documents for the residents who fled in panic.French and Russian rescue teams with dogs searched the port area on Friday, pulling more bodies from the rubble. Women cried nearby as they waited for news about missing relatives.France has sent a team of 22 investigators to help investigate the cause of the blast. Based on information from Lebanon so far, France’s No. 2 forensic police official, Dominique Abbenanti, said Friday the explosion “appears to be an accident” but that it’s too early to say for sure.In an interview with the AP, he predicted that the death toll would grow. 
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Much of Canada’s remaining intact ice shelf has broken apart into hulking iceberg islands thanks to a hot summer and global warming, scientists said.Canada’s 4,000-year-old Milne Ice Shelf on the northwestern edge of Ellesmere Island had been the country’s last intact ice shelf until the end of July when ice analyst Adrienne White of the Canadian Ice Service noticed that satellite photos showed that about 43% of it had broken off. She said it happened around July 30 or 31.Two giant icebergs formed along with lots of smaller ones, and they have already started drifting away, White said. The biggest is nearly the size of Manhattan — 21 square miles (55 square kilometers) and 7 miles long (11.5 kilometers). They are 230 to 260 feet (70 to 80 meters) thick.”This is a huge, huge block of ice,” White said. “If one of these is moving toward an oil rig, there’s nothing you can really do aside from move your oil rig.”The 72-square mile (187 square kilometer) undulating white ice shelf of ridges and troughs dotted with blue meltwater had been larger than the District of Columbia but now is down to 41 square miles (106 square kilometers).Temperatures from May to early August in the region have been 9 degrees (5 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1980 to 2010 average, University of Ottawa glaciology professor Luke Copland said. This is on top of an Arctic that already had been warming much faster than the rest of globe, with this region warming even faster.”Without a doubt, it’s climate change,” Copland said, noting the ice shelf is melting from both hotter air above and warmer water below.”The Milne was very special,” he added. “It’s an amazingly pretty location.”Ice shelves are hundreds to thousands of years old, thicker than long-term sea ice, but not as big and old as glaciers, Copland said.Canada used to have a large continuous ice shelf across the northern coast of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, but it has been breaking apart over the last decades because of man-made global warming, White said. By 2005 it was down to six remaining ice shelves but “the Milne was really the last complete ice shelf,” she said.”There aren’t very many ice shelves around the Arctic anymore,” Copland said. “It seems we’ve lost pretty much all of them from northern Greenland and the Russian Arctic. There may be a few in a few protected fjords.”
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New York schools can bring children back to classrooms for the start of the school year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday, citing success in battling the coronavirus in the state that once was the U.S. heart of the pandemic.The Democratic governor’s decision clears the way for schools to offer at least some days of in-person classes, alongside remote learning. Students will be required to wear masks throughout school day.”Everywhere in the state, every region is below the threshold that we established,” Cuomo said during a conference call with reporters. “If there’s a spike in the infection rate, if there’s a matter of concern in the infection rate, then we can revisit.”Many New York school districts have planned to start the year with students in school buildings only a few days a week, while learning at home the rest of the time. Cuomo said individual districts will decide how to instruct students.More than 1 million public school students in New York City — the largest district in the U.S. — had their last day of in-class instruction on March 13, just as waves of sick people were beginning to hit city hospitals. All schools statewide were closed by March 18.The city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, has been saying since the spring that his goal for fall was to bring students back on schedule, with as much classroom time as possible while still allowing for social distancing.A coalition of teachers, students, and families protest during a rally called National Day of Resistance Against Unsafe School Reopening Opening, Aug. 3, 2020, in New York.That plan has looked exceedingly ambitious as other large school systems have backed away from in-person instruction in recent weeks.Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Houston, among other places, all announced they would start the school year with students learning remotely.De Blasio, while cautioning that he could change course at any time, had expressed hope that the relatively low rate of transmission of the virus in the city would allow students and staff to return safely.He had also said a return to classroom instruction is vital to jump-starting the city’s economy, now hobbled by parents being forced to stay home with their children.”It will not be easy but I think most parents feel strongly that even some time in school is a lot better for their kids than none,” de Blasio said Friday at a separate briefing earlier in the day.School reopening plans, though, face enormous hurdles.Cuomo warned that New York’s roughly 750 districts still need to address the fears of parents and teachers that schools will be unsafe. He said he will ask school districts to post their remote learning plan and require “discussion sessions” with parents.”They have to communicate with the parents and explain the plan and answer the questions of the parents,” Cuomo said.The outbreak, while reduced, is not over in New York. Around 10,000 New York City residents tested positive for the virus in July.On Wednesday, two unions, New York State United Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers, demanded clearer health protocols dictating that schools should shut down immediately for two weeks if any student or member of the staff contracts the virus.Teachers are prohibited from striking in New York, but it has been unclear whether large numbers would either opt out of classroom instruction for medical reasons or simply refuse to work.Parents, too, have struggled to decide whether to send their children to school or opt solely for online instruction at home.Schools have spent the summer coming up with safety plans, securing protective gear and figuring out how to fit fewer students into classrooms and school buses. Cuomo required all school systems to submit plans detailing their reopening plans, saying that the state would not allow any district with an unsafe plan to bring students back to classrooms.The governor said the Department of Health will continue to go through plans over the weekend, and will notify school districts where incomplete or deficient. He said about 50 school district health plans are incomplete or deficient. A district can’t open if its health plan is rejected.State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker warned this week that “an ill-prepared reopening could put students, staff and parents in peril.”Earlier this summer, Cuomo set a general metric to help measure when it was safe to bring students back, saying the state would allow a return in regions where fewer than 5% of people tested for COVID-19 came back positive.The entire state has been well under that threshold all summer, but Cuomo had also recently stressed that, even if he allowed schools to reopen, it wouldn’t work if parents and teachers aren’t sure they are safe.  
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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: Over 80% of all diseases in the world are transmitted by hand.Verdict: MisleadingRead the full story at: Africa Check Social Media DisinfoScreenshotCirculating on social media: Claim that the Pirbright Institute, a British research institute dedicated to the study of infectious diseases of farm animals which has ties to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, holds a patent for a vaccine against COVID-19.Verdict: FalseRead the full story at: Reuters​Factual Reads on CoronavirusCould My Symptoms Be Covid-19?
These days, every cough, sneeze or headache makes you wonder: Could it be Covid-19?
— New York Times, August 5​Nine Important Things We’ve Learned about the Coronavirus Pandemic So Far
Some early public health messages about COVID-19 have been overturned.
— Scientific American, August 4Coronavirus: WHO gears up for main mission into China to hunt for the origins of Covid-19
WHO and Chinese experts have drafted terms of reference for probe into the epidemiology of early infections.
— South China Morning Post, August 4
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Officials in northwestern Italy have evacuated part of an Alpine resort town and are closely monitoring a glacier which, following days of warm temperatures, is showing signs of breaking apart and could crash into the valley below.Officials Thursday evacuated 75 residents and tourists in the Ferret Valley from their homes and two lodgings in the shadow of the glacier.Aerial views of the Planpincieux Glacier taken Friday show a large section – estimated to be about 500,000 cubic meters in size, breaking away from the rest of the ice field. A regional glacier expert, Valerio Segor, told reporters Friday the section is about the size of a cathedral, or perhaps a soccer field if it were under 80 meters of ice.Segor said the next two or three days will be critical for the glacier, as temperatures are expected to rise during that time. He said water circulation between the ice and rocks beneath will determine if glacier breaks apart.‎The Planpincieux Glacier is located under a group of Alpine peaks on the Italian side of Mont Blanc, near the border with France.
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