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After months of denying it had any coronavirus infections, North Korea has reported its first suspected case, blaming an alleged defector who had recently reentered the country.State media said a runaway who was “suspected to have been infected with the vicious virus” had left for South Korea three years ago but returned July 19 “after illegally crossing the demarcation line” that separates the two Koreas.The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said an “uncertain result was made from several medical checkups of the secretion of that person’s upper respiratory organ and blood,” but it did not say whether the patient had undergone a coronavirus test.“The person was put under strict quarantine as a primary step and all the persons in Kaesong City who contacted that person and those who have been to the city in the last five days are being thoroughly investigated, given medical examination and put under quarantine,” it said.North Korean leader Kim Jong Un convened a politburo meeting Saturday during which he acknowledged “the vicious virus could be said to have entered the country,” KCNA said.FILE – Students wearing face masks take a class at the Ryongwang Senior Middle School in Pyongyang, North Korea, June 3, 2020. After months of denying it had any coronavirus infections, North Korea reported its first suspected case July 25, 2020.Kim, the report said, declared a state of emergency in the affected area and “took the preemptive measure of totally blocking Kaesong City and isolating each district and region from the other within July 24 afternoon just after receiving the report on it.”North Korea had long insisted it was coronavirus-free, even though a wide range of outside experts said that was practically impossible. The country shares a long border with China, where the virus originated. Although North Korea moved quickly to formally close the border, much of the interaction across that border is informal and hard to control.An outbreak in North Korea would be extremely dangerous, since many parts of the country are impoverished and lack an adequate health care system.International aid groups have sent medical supplies, including face masks and thousands of coronavirus test kits, to North Korea since the worldwide coronavirus pandemic began.The delivery of that medical aid has been complicated by export controls, border closures and international sanctions on North Korea’s nuclear program.Since the coronavirus emerged last December in China, more than 200 countries have reported cases. Worldwide, nearly 16 million cases of coronavirus have been confirmed, and more than 640,000 people have died.
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Peter Green, the dexterous blues guitarist who led the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac in a career shortened by psychedelic drugs and mental illness, has died at 73.A law firm representing his family, Swan Turton, announced the death in a statement Saturday. It said he died peacefully in his sleep? this weekend. A further statement will be issued in the coming days.Green, to some listeners, was the best of the British blues guitarists of the 1960s. B.B. King once said Greenhas the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.”Green also made a mark as a composer with Albatross,'' and as a songwriter withOh Well” and Black Magic Woman.''  He crashed out of the band in 1971. Even so, Mick Fleetwood said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2017 that Green deserves the lion's share of the credit for the band's success.Peter was asked why did he call the band Fleetwood Mac. He said, Well, you know I thought maybe I'd move on at some point and I wanted Mick and John (McVie) to have a band.' End of story, explaining how generous he was,'' said Fleetwood, who described Green as a standout in an era of great guitar work.Indeed, Green was so fundamental to the band that in its early days it was called Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac.Peter Allen Greenbaum was born on Oct. 29, 1946, in London. The gift of a cheap guitar put the 10-year-old Green on a musical path.He was barely out of his teens when he got his first big break in 1966, replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers _ initially for just a week in 1965 after Clapton abruptly took off for a Greek holiday. Clapton quit for good soon after and Green was in.In the Bluesbreakers he was reunited with Mick Fleetwood, a former colleague in Peter B's Looners. Mayall added bass player McVie soon after.The three departed the next year, forming the core of the band initially billed as ``Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac featuring (guitarist) Jeremy Spencer.''Fleetwood Mac made its debut at the British Blues and Jazz festival in the summer of 1967, which led to a recording contract, then an eponymous first album in February 1968. The album, which included ``Long Grey Mare'' and three other songs by Green, stayed on the British charts for 13 months.  The band's early albums were heavy blues-rock affairs marked by Green's fluid, evocative guitar style and gravelly vocals. Notable singles included ``Oh Well'' and the Latin-flavored ``Black Magic Woman,'' later a hit for Carlos Santana.But as the band flourished, Green became increasingly erratic, even paranoid. Drugs played a part in his unraveling.On a tour in California, Green became acquainted with Augustus Owsley Stanley III, notorious supplier of powerful LSD to the The Grateful Dead and Ken Kesey, the anti-hero of Tom Wolfe's book ``The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.''  ``He was taking a lot of acid and mescaline around the same time his illness began manifesting itself more and more,'' Fleetwood said in 2015. ``We were oblivious as to what schizophrenia was back in those days but we knew something was amiss.''``Green Manalishi,'' Green's last single for the band, reflected his distress.In an interview with Johnny Black for Mojo magazine, Green said: ``I was dreaming I was dead and I couldn't move, so I fought my way back into my body. I woke up and looked around. It was very dark and I found myself writing a song. It was about money;The Green Manalishi’ is money.”In some of his last appearances with the band, he wore a monk’s robe and a crucifix. Fearing that he had too much money, he tried to persuade other band members to give their earnings to charities.Green left Fleetwood Mac for good in 1971.In his absence, the band’s new line-up, including Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, gained enormous success with a more pop-tinged sound.  
 
Green was confined in a mental hospital in 1977 after an incident with his manager. Testimony in court said Green had asked for money and then threatened to shoot out the windows of the manager’s office.  Green was released later in the year, and married Jane Samuels, a Canadian, in 1978. They had a daughter, Rosebud, and divorced the following year. Green also has a son, Liam Firlej.  Green returned to performing in the 1990s with the Peter Green Splinter Group.  In 1998, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with other past and present members of Fleetwood Mac.
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Jordanian security forces arrested leading members of the opposition-run teachers union Saturday, raided its offices and shut it down for two years, escalating a confrontation with a group that has become a leading source of dissent.Prosecutors charged Nasser Nawasreh, the acting head of the Jordanian Teachers Syndicate, with incitement over a speech to supporters last Wednesday that criticized Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz’s government. State media said other charges related to allegations of financial and administrative wrongdoing.Riot police reinforcements were deployed Saturday near the seat of government in the capital and in other areas where teacher activists were planning protests. Security forces raided the union’s headquarters in Karak.Political opposition is often marginalized in Jordan, but protests have grown in recent years over eroding living standards, corruption and the slow pace of political reforms. Saturday’s crackdown on the union would “only further aggravate political tensions by the government at a time people are choked under hard economic conditions,” said Murad Adailah, head of Islamic Action Front, the largest opposition party.Monthlong strikeThe 100,000-strong union went on strike last year, shutting down schools across Jordan for a month in one of the longest and most disruptive public sector strikes in the country’s history.In recent weeks its leadership has accused the government of failing to honor a deal signed last October that ended the strike.The deal included a 50% pay raise this year, which the government now says is unaffordable because of the economic blow from the coronavirus crisis.Some officials have also accused union leaders of harboring the Islamist opposition’s political agenda. The union says this accusation is part of a government smear campaign.Opposition politicians say the government has been using draconian emergency laws enacted in March at the start of the coronavirus lockdown to limit civil and political rights. Activists have been arrested in recent weeks over comments on social media.
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Somalia’s parliament has removed Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre in an unexpected vote of no-confidence, the speaker of parliament said.Holding a press conference Saturday after the voting, the speaker, Mohamed Mursal Abdurahman, accused the government of Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre of “ineffectiveness.”  
 
“One hundred and seventy lawmakers favored the motion against the prime minister, and only 8 lawmakers opposed,” the speaker of parliament, announced. “Therefore, the motion has passed, and we urge Somalia’s president to appoint a new prime minister.”
 
The speaker has accused Prime Minister Khayre and his government of not fulfilling promises they made to the nation.
 
“The government has failed to fulfill its national promises, including holding one man – one vote elections, and establishing a national security force capable of tightening the security,” the speaker said.
 
The unexpected vote came after what analysts have termed “the explosion of a long-awaited dispute” between the president and the prime minister on the model and the timing of the country’s upcoming elections.
 
Khayre, a dual Norwegian citizen and former Soma Oil Company executive, was not immediately available to respond to the action. He had been prime minister of the eastern African country since March 2017.
 
Immediately after the voting, Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (also known as President Farmajo) said he accepted the decision by parliament to remove Khayre and that he will nominate a new prime minister.
 
“Any rift between the parliament, which is the base of our government, and the cabinet of ministers will weaken the progress made so far; therefore, to save that progress, I have decided to respect and accept the decision of the parliament,” the president said in a statement published on state radio’s website.
 
Members of Khayre’s cabinet say they have rejected the parliament’s decision and described it as a political conspiracy against the government.
 
“The parliament members were meeting to debate an election law agenda when the speaker unexpectedly brought the issue of voting for a motion of no confidence against the government,” said Somalia’s minister of Internal Security, Mohamed Abukar Islow. “The vote did not go through legal parliamentary process and looked a conspiracy.”
 
Analysts say the action could be a big political setback for Somalia because it came a few months before the country’s elections.
 
“The voting was not timely and could derail the efforts to hold elections within the few remaining months,” said Abdirashid Hashi, executive director of the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies, a Mogadishu based independent, nonprofit research group.
 
“Now the ball is in the court of the president. He only has two options — to appoint a prime minister within the short period, who will also lead the nation into elections on time, or work on establishing an all-inclusive national unity government to avoid a vacuum,” Hashi said.
 Ousting prime minsters
 
A Somali parliament firing a prime minister and differences between the president and the prime minister are nothing new in Somalia’s political culture.
 
Since the collapse of the former central military regime of Mohamed Siyad Barre, at least four presidents, going back to 2004, have had major problems with their prime ministers. Each president had three prime ministers in their respective single terms.  
 
Of the more than 10 prime ministers the country has had since 2000, only two were not dismissed.  
 
President Farmajo and former prime minister Hassan Ali Khayre were praised for avoiding such disputes for nearly four years now, but what seemed to be a minor difference between the two leaders escalated into an open feud this week when the two leaders attended a meeting in the central Somalia town of Dhusamareeb.
 
In that meeting, the country’s federal government leaders and leaders across the federal member states agreed to hold timely national elections, a move for which the prime minister campaigned.
 
Although the president did not openly oppose the agreement, his supporters and the speaker of the parliament wanted any decisions relating to elections to be made by the parliament, not by the federal government and state leaders. The tenure of the incumbent president and the two houses of the parliament expires later this year.
 Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulle contributed this report from Mogadishu.
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A Taliban claim that it has moved away from its strict restrictions on the local Afghan population has been received with skepticism, with some observers warning that the militants continue to violate fundamental human rights in remote Afghan districts they control.  
 
Before their ouster by the U.S. in 2001, the Taliban imposed very repressive rules in Afghanistan, particularly on women.
 
The militant group that entered into a peace deal with the U.S. in recent months has portrayed itself as reforming its views.
 
However, some experts charge the group’s pledges to modernize can be a tactical move to gain international recognition.  
 
Andrew Watkins, a senior Afghanistan analyst at the International Crisis Group, told VOA the militants are trying to adapt to their exposure to the outside world, with their representatives learning the “language of international diplomacy.”  
 
Watkins warned that the Taliban throughout 19 years of war with the U.S. have protected “much of their ideology” by which they ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s. He said the change in tone showed “a bit of tactical or strategic move to begin speaking all of the right terms.”
 
Human Rights Watch, in a report last month, said that the Taliban continue with their extreme restrictions in the areas they control. It said that despite the Taliban officially claiming it no longer objected to girls’ education, some Taliban would not allow girls’ schools at all and only a few of them would allow girls to go to school after puberty.
 
“What the Taliban say at the leadership level …does not mean that is what happens on the ground,” John Sifton, the Asia Advocacy Director at HRW told VOA.  
 
Sifton said the Taliban’s local commanders “interpret things their own way.”
 
The watchdog group accused the Taliban of restrictions on media and freedom of expression in the areas they controlled. It said the group’s public punishment measures were “infrequent” compared to the 1990s but its “vice and virtue” police continued imprisonment and corporal punishment, such as beating.
 
The Taliban have rejected the HRW’s accusations as propaganda, calling them “spiteful and politically motivated.”  
 
Stressing a shift in the militants’ direction, Mawlai Qalamuddin, a former deputy head of the Taliban’s Promotion of Virtue and Elimination of Vice, told VOA the Taliban were committed to protecting basic rights of civilians, including the rights of women and girls to education.   
 
Qalamuddin said the Taliban restrictions on women’s education in the past had to do with lack of infrastructure.  
 
“At that time, there were no places for education, no transportation, or designated institutions for women’s education. But now we have [facilities]. If there is security and a stable state, then women would be given full rights based on Islamic law,” he said.
 
The Taliban leadership is mainly based outside of Afghanistan, though it maintains control over the group inside the country through a shadow government.  
 
According to Long War Journal (LWJ), the Taliban control 20 percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts and contest about 50 percent of the districts. There are 4.5 million people living in the areas controlled by the Taliban, and 12 million Afghans are living in the contested areas.
 
Shinkai Karokhail, a member of the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of Afghanistan’s parliament, told VOA that there was a major disparity between what the Taliban do on the ground and what their political mouthpieces say.
 
The “Taliban’s political office issues statements but they do not take responsibility for the violations that take place in the areas the Taliban control,” said Karokhail.
 Girls’ education
 
According to Qamar Niazi, an advisor to Helmand’s governor and a women rights activist, gender norms hindered girls’ education in her province. She said that the Taliban has allowed boys to go to school “which is a positive change.” But the militants’ extremist view on girls’ education has seen “no major change.”
 
Niazi added that she and other activists in Helmand could only work with women from four districts that are under full government control. The activists are blocked from accessing another nine districts of the province where the Taliban has influence.  
 
Sifton of HRW told VOA that the Taliban in areas such as Kunduz province maintained an inconsistent approach towards female education, allowing girls to go to school in some areas, while providing no female schools or only allowing girls education until puberty in other areas.
 
“They say that there is right to education, but then they say: If a local community does not want education to be there for girls,then there won’t be,” said Sifton, calling it a “violation of those girls’ rights.”
 
After the Taliban were removed from power in late 2001, the new Afghan government and the international community pledged to get all girls to school.  
 
Nevertheless, data from the U.N.’s children’s agency UNICEF shows that only 50 percent of girls, of the official primary school age, attended primary or secondary education in 2015. Rights organizations say the number of girls going to school has been dropping in recent years due to insecurity, poverty, and displacement.  
 Press restrictions
 
Some activists and observers say monitoring rights violations in Taliban-controlled areas could be a life-threatening task. The militants have imposed strict regulations on media, requiring journalists to obtain permission before any reporting.  
 
“One cannot go on his own,” said Sami Serat, a journalist working with a local radio station in Helmand.  
 
“It is dangerous to go to those areas, you can get killed,” he told VOA.   
 
The 2020 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Afghanistan 122nd out of 180 nations for violations against journalists. The organization said press freedom in Afghanistan faced a “permanent threat” from the Taliban, the Islamic State, warlords, and corrupt political officials.   
 
Given the Taliban’s unwillingness to change, a possible return of the extremist group to power in Afghanistan would be a ‘tragedy’, warned Scott Smith, a senior expert for Afghanistan peace processes at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP).
 
“I think the international community will look very carefully at the kind of government that it will be funding and would want to see (that) some of these basic rights are reflected in the agreement so that it can justify …that it is not funding the Taliban’s government like  the 1990s,” said Smith, adding that the Taliban have to understand that any future government in Afghanistan would depend on international funding.
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Scientists warn record Siberian temperatures and the rapid melting of the Arctic sea ice along the Russian coast indicate that climate change is occurring and may be irreversible. Siberia, famous for its bitterly cold weather, has been experiencing a tropical heat wave, with temperatures reaching a record 38 degrees Celsius June 20 in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk.  This week alone, the World Meteorological Organization reports some parts of Siberia have been warmer than the U.S. states of Florida and California, with temperatures going above 30 degrees Celsius.    It says the exceptional and prolonged heat is fueling devastating Arctic fires and causing a rapid decrease in the Arctic sea ice coverage.WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis says the Arctic is heating more than twice the global average, and that is having a major impact on local populations and ecosystems.“We always say what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic,” said Nullis. “It does affect our weather in different parts of the world where hundreds of millions of people live.  There was a study last week, which says that the extreme heat that we are seeing would have been almost impossible without climate change.  So, it does have a clear fingerprint of climate change on it.”   Since January, Scientists estimate total carbon emissions from the fires raging inside the Arctic Circle are the highest in 18 years of monitoring the phenomenon.  In addition, they warn the melting of ice and thawing of permafrost will potentially release methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.Nullis tells VOA greenhouse gases are having a major impact on infrastructure and ecosystems throughout the region.“It will be very, very hard to reverse because of the law of physics,” said Nullis. “You know, the levels of carbon dioxide, which we have got in the atmosphere now, will carry on heating surface temperatures for generations to come.  The lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere runs into many, many, many decades.”   A new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change warns that the iconic polar bear—a symbol of climate change—may be nearly extinct by the end of the century because of shrinking sea ice.   The article suggests high greenhouse gas emissions also will likely cause a steep decline in the reproduction of other Arctic subpopulations by 2100.
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Legal groups sued the U.S. government Friday to try to stop the expulsion of children detained in hotel rooms by the Trump administration under an emergency declaration citing the coronavirus.The owners of the Hampton Inn & Suites in McAllen, Texas, said Friday night that they ended any reservations on rooms used to detain minors. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also confirmed that all children had been taken away from the hotel, two days after The Associated Press reported that it was one of three hotels used nearly 200 times for detention of children as young as 1.But ICE repeatedly refused to answer questions about where contractors have taken the children, citing a potential security risk. “The Trump administration is holding children in secret in hotels, refusing to give lawyers access to them so it can expel them back to danger without even a chance for the children to show they warrant asylum,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit on behalf of the Texas Civil Rights Project. Gelernt said suing on behalf of unnamed children was necessary “because the government is refusing to provide any information about the children.” The lawsuit was filed in Washington federal court, and Gelernt said he would seek to include any minors detained at the hotel as of Thursday. Government data obtained by AP shows children were detained 123 times at the McAllen hotel in April and June. Castle Hospitality, which operates the McAllen location, refused to say how many rooms had been booked for use by ICE or its private contractor, MVM Inc. The other Hampton Inns are near the airports in Phoenix and El Paso, Texas, according to the data obtained by AP.Under federal anti-trafficking law and a court settlement, most children who cross the U.S.-Mexico border are supposed to go to facilities operated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and eventually placed with family sponsors. But the Trump administration says it must expel children to prevent the spread of COVID-19, citing an emergency declaration in March by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 2,000 children have since been expelled without getting the chance to seek refuge in the U.S.Some children are as young as 1 and others have been held in hotels two weeks or longer, according to government data obtained by AP for April and June. Roberto Lopez of the Texas Civil Rights Project said when he entered the hotel last Friday, he saw people in scrubs going room to room on the fourth and fifth floors of the Hampton Inn caring for children. He saw one small child holding on to a gate in a doorway as an adult on the other side played with him. But on Thursday, when another advocate from the group went to the fourth floor, three men dressed in plainclothes stopped him, according to a video the group posted online. After the men asked for his identity, the advocate yelled in Spanish that he was a lawyer trying to help. The video shows the men in plainclothes shoving him and forcing him into an elevator, repeatedly refusing to identify themselves. On Friday, ICE described the lawyer and another person with him as people who “attempted to forcefully gain access” to an area its contract officers were restricting. A group of Congressional Democrats wrote Friday to Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf expressing “deep alarm” about the detention of children in hotels.“We are gravely concerned that the CDC order is being grossly misused to circumvent asylum and child welfare protections,” the letter said.
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A six-day series of events memorializing the life of the late civil rights icon and member of the U.S. House of Representatives John Lewis begins Saturday in his hometown of Troy, Alabama, and culminates next week with his funeral in the state of Georgia.A public service celebrating Lewis will take place Saturday morning at Troy University, where Lewis will lie in repose for visitors to pay their respects. Later in the day, a private ceremony will honor him at a chapel in Selma, Alabama, ahead of another public viewing.On Sunday, Lewis’ body will cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where he and other voting rights demonstrators were beaten in 1965 on a day known as “Bloody Sunday.”His body will be carried to Alabama’s capital, Montgomery, where Mayor Steven Reed is encouraging people to line the sidewalks on the final leg of that journey. Officials are asking the public to wear face masks and socially distance.Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has ordered flags to be flown at half-staff on Saturday and Sunday in honor of Lewis.During the nearly weeklong memorial events, Lewis’ body will lie in state at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta and the U.S. Capitol in Washington.U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced earlier this week that visitors could pay their respects to Lewis in the U.S. Capitol on Monday and Tuesday.Due to the coronavirus, the public viewing will take place outside the Capitol building instead of inside in the traditional Capitol Rotunda. The lawmakers said social distancing will be “strictly enforced” and face masks will be required.The Georgia Democrat will be the second Black lawmaker to lie in state at the Capitol, following Congressman Elijah Cummings, who died last year.Lewis’ family said there will also be a procession through Washington next week and said members of the public will be able to pay their respects in a “socially distant manner.”Lewis’ funeral will be held Thursday at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. was once the pastor. Following the service, which will be private, Lewis will be interred at South View Cemetery in Atlanta.Lewis died last Friday at age 80, after a yearlong battle with advanced pancreatic cancer.He rose to fame as a leader of the modern-day American civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. At 23, he worked closely with King and was the last surviving speaker from the August 1963 March on Washington where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.The civil rights movement led Lewis into a career in politics. He was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981 and to Congress in 1986, calling the latter victory “the honor of a lifetime.” He served 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia’s fifth district.  
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The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said it is “concerned” that authorities in Zimbabwe may be using the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to clamp down on citizens’ freedoms. This week, police arrested a prominent investigative journalist and an opposition leader, accusing them of inciting public violence.Journalist Hopewell Chin’ono and politician Jacob Ngarivhume have been jailed since Monday on allegations of inciting public violence — through social media — ahead of a planned July 31 government corruption protest. Both men have denied the charges.In Geneva on Friday, OHCHR spokesperson Liz Throssell said Zimbabweans have a right to protest corruption or anything else.“Merely calling for a peaceful protest or participating in a peaceful protest is an exercise of recognized human rights,” she said. “We are also concerned at reports of police using force to disperse and arrest nurses and health workers for infringing lockdown restrictions as they were trying to protest for better salaries and conditions of work… While recognizing the government’s efforts to contain the pandemic, it is important to remind the authorities that any lockdown measures and restrictions should be necessary, proportionate and time-limited, and enforced humanely without resorting to unnecessary or excessive force.”Late Friday, Chin’ono was denied bail by the Magistrate Courts, one day after the courts denied bail to Ngarivhume. Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said it would appeal the rulings to the High Court next week.Earlier in the week, bail hearings for Chin’ono and Ngarivhume were cut short on two consecutive days. Officials said they wanted to leave early to ensure they comply with a dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed in Harare on Wednesday as part of new restrictions to contain the coronavirus.Beatrice Mtetwa of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, who is representing Chin’ono, was not amused.“We find this extremely frustrating because constitutional rights like the right to liberty have now been suspended through failure to make appropriate arrangements,” she said. “Surely, they should make arrangements such as bail to take staff home so that constitutionally guaranteed rights like liberty are not unnecessarily infringed. It’s extremely frustrating. It makes a mockery of the need to come to court within 48 hours. It makes a mockery of the requirement that bail (application) be heard urgently.”Announcing the curfew, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said he was aware that some rights would be infringed upon. But Mtetwa was not convinced.“If you want to make excuses for trampling on people’s rights, you are absolutely free to do so but it is not what the constitution provides for,” she said. “Bail matters are always heard on an urgent basis. You can sit right into the night as long as you make arrangements to take the court staff home. So, it cannot be an excuse that the president has decreed. The president has no power to suspend constitutional rights.”Getting into a waiting prison vehicle Friday, Chin’ono had this to say to waiting reporters:“We are being persecuted for talking about corruption and we won’t be bowed.” Asked about his spirits, he said, “I am fine.”Nick Mangwana, the secretary of Zimbabwe’s ministry of information, did not answer phone calls from VOA. 
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A U.S. judge has ruled against Oregon, which sought to restrain federal officers’ actions during daily protests in Portland that have often spiraled into violence.The presence and actions of federal officers in Portland have raised concerns of a possible constitutional crisis on the ground that the agents have been deployed without local consent.U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman ruled Friday that the state lacked standing to sue on behalf of protesters. The state lawsuit sought to restrict federal agents’ actions when they arrest people, including prohibiting federal agents from detaining protesters without probable cause.The protests against racial injustice and police brutality pit local officials against the Trump administration and have increased the nation’s political tensions.Disturbances erupted again Friday with protesters clashing with agents who were dressed in fatigues and were positioned behind a steel fence by a federal courthouse, firing tear gas. Agents said they were hit with projectiles and lasers and forced protesters away from the building after declaring an unlawful assembly.Friday’s events came a day after another court ruling over the Portland protests. A different federal judge Thursday blocked U.S. agents from arresting or using physical force against journalists and legal observers at demonstrations. That case was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon.Earlier this week, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler was among a group of protesters who were tear-gassed when federal agents broke up a protest at the courthouse.According to the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, policing is a state power, not the authority of the federal government.“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” the amendment states.Wheeler has said he wants the agents to leave, calling their presence an abuse of federal authority and an incitement for violence.Federal officers use chemical irritants and projectiles to disperse protesters at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, July 24, 2020.Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Thursday announced an investigation into the use of force by federal agents in Portland and Washington, where tear gas was used to clear an area across from the White House last month before President Donald Trump crossed the street to stand in front of a church.Also Thursday, Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari announced an investigation into allegations of improper behavior by DHS law enforcement in Portland recently.Demonstrators have marched in Portland every day in response to the May 25 death of George Floyd, a Black man, while in police custody in Minneapolis. Some protests have led to vandalism and other crimes.Elsewhere, federal law enforcement agents are also being dispatched to Chicago, Illinois, after a surge in gang violence that has left about 100 dead in the last several weeks. Agents are also being sent to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Kansas City, Missouri. The deployment to these three cities is part of what has been dubbed “Operation Legend” to fight violent crime.The mayors of these three cities and 12 others have sent a letter to federal authorities calling for the immediate withdrawal of their forces and to “agree to no further unilateral deployments in U.S. cities.”Trump has emphasized “law and order” as he finds himself fighting for re-election in November against former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee.David Chipman, a senior policy adviser at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told VOA that when he was an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, “I was proud to work with local leaders when they needed help righting wrongs.”Chipman said Trump’s recent actions in Portland and his statements about problems in other cities “make clear he thinks federal law enforcement are his personal chess pieces for partisan power grabs.”VOA’s Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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Amid rising diplomatic tensions, China has ordered the United States to close its consulate in Chengdu. Experts see the move as retaliation for the U.S. closing of China’s consulate in Houston, and they say it reflects a new level of hostility between the two countries ahead of U.S. presidential elections in November.  VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Washington.Videographers: Stella Hsu, Zoom video interviews; Jela de Franceschi, Skype interview
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Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama stepped up their attacks on President Donald Trump and defended their time in the White House in a new video showing their first in-person meeting since the coronavirus outbreak began.The 15-minute video, posted online Thursday, is the latest effort to get the former president more involved in the 2020 campaign as his former vice president tries to rebuild Obama’s winning coalition. Obama has promised an active role on the campaign trail this fall.  The former White House partners used an interview-style conversation to amplify Biden’s arguments against Trump, with Obama emphasizing Biden’s experience and personal attributes. They pointed to their administration’s 2010 health care law and blamed Trump for stoking division among Americans. They also were sharply critical of the Republican president’s efforts to combat the coronavirus, which has killed more than 140,000 Americans.  “Can you imagine standing up when you were president and saying, ‘It’s not my responsibility, I take no responsibility’?” Biden said, offering a line of attack similar to his recent campaign speeches when he asserted that Trump “quit” on the country and has “waved the white flag” in the pandemic.”Those words didn’t come out of our mouths while we were in office,” Obama replied. Trump slammed the pair Thursday afternoon in a Tweet, accusing them of doing a “terrible job” in office and allowing his election. The Republican National Committee issued a scathing assessment of “slickly produced, substance-free love fests,” dubbing the effort “Biden and Obama’s fiction.”The two men are shown wearing masks while arriving at an office, then sitting down well apart from each other to observe social distancing for an unmasked chat. Biden’s campaign billed it as their first in-person meeting during the pandemic.Obama compared the nation’s current economic circumstances to what he inherited in 2009 after the financial collapse that played out during his general election campaign the previous year.  “We had to move fast, not just 100 days,” Obama said. “We had to move in the first month to get the recovery act passed.” Calling Obama “Mr. President,” Biden answered that he’d repeat what he learned: “We have got to sustain and keep people from going under forever.”  The former president largely stayed out of the once-crowded Democratic primary but endorsed Biden in April, when he was the last candidate standing. Obama hosted a virtual fundraiser for his former vice president last month that raised $7.6 million, the most of any Biden campaign event so far. He warned then against Democrats becoming “complacent and smug.”In other exchanges, Obama and Biden blasted Trump’s view of American society, and Obama praised Biden as possessing empathy that he said Trump lacks.  “He ran by deliberately dividing people from the moment he came down that escalator, and I think people are now going, ‘I don’t want my kid growing up that way,'” Biden said, recalling Trump’s 2016 campaign launch.Obama said he has confidence in Biden’s “heart and your character.” Governing, the former president said, “starts with being able to relate. If you can sit down with a family and see your own family in them … then you’re going to work hard for them, and that’s always what’s motivated you.”Building on the point, Biden discussed the final months before his son Beau died of brain cancer and tied it to the 2010 health care law. Biden said he recalled thinking “what would happen if his insurance company was able to come in — which they could have done before we passed Obamacare — and said, ‘You have outrun your insurance.'”Obama said he “couldn’t be prouder of what we got done” and alluded to the Trump administration’s continued efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act through Congress and have it invalidated by the courts. “It is hard to fathom anybody wanting to take away people’s health care in the middle of a major public health crisis … and a time when unemployment is at double digits,” he said. The Republican National Committee insisted, “President Trump and Republicans will always protect pre-existing conditions.” However, when the GOP controlled Congress during Trump’s first two years in office, it failed to pass a promised ACA replacement that would preserve the law’s ban on insurers denying coverage based on a person’s medical history.  The RNC also noted that Obama pledged repeatedly in his first term that the new law would allow anyone to keep his existing private coverage. In fact, minimum coverage standards in the law did effectively force some policyholders to obtain different plans.  Obama remains a go-to foil for Trump and the Republican base, just as he was throughout his two terms as president. But the 44th president’s two winning coalitions remain the rough model for a Biden victory in November. At the time of the 2016 election, Obama had a 53% Gallup job approval rating, with 45% disapproving, for a net positive approval of 8 percentage points. When he left office a few months later, that net positive had risen to 22 percentage points: 59% approve, 37% disapprove. In 2018, when Gallup assessed past presidents’ standing, Obama notched a retrospective approval of 63%.  For Trump, meanwhile, Gallup has measured just three net positive approval ratings during his three-plus years in office, all coming earlier this year and none of them higher than 4 percentage points.   
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen left prison on Friday to finish his criminal sentence at home, a spokesman for Cohen’s attorney said, a day after a judge found he was imprisoned two weeks ago as retaliation for planning to publish a book about Trump.  Cohen was picked up at a prison in Otisville, New York, about 70 miles (110 km) northwest of New York City, by his son, the spokesman said. He is expected to return to his Manhattan apartment. In May, Cohen was furloughed from the prison because of concerns about the spread of the novel coronavirus.U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein on Thursday ordered Cohen to be released by 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) Friday. “We’re just waiting to get him home and then will be considering all next steps, including what the conditions of release will be, who will be supervising him and what, if any, additional legal actions he’ll take,” E. Danya Perry, who represents Cohen, said in an interview on Friday.
 
On July 9, Cohen and his lawyer, Jeffrey K. Levine, met with prison officials to convert his furlough to a home confinement for the final two years of his three-year sentence. After Cohen questioned a provision that barred him from publishing the book, engaging with news organizations and posting on social media, officials shackled him and returned him to prison.
 
Hellerstein said in Thursday’s court hearing that he had never seen such a gag provision in his 21 years on the bench. “It’s retaliatory because of his desire to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish a book,” Hellerstein said. Cohen may file a lawsuit seeking compensation for his unlawful imprisonment and violation of his First Amendment rights, his attorney said.”The lawsuit will get deeper into how this happened and who ultimately was responsible,” Levine said.  The probation officer who drafted the agreement for Cohen with the no-media provision told the court that he had not been aware of the book.  The Federal Bureau of Prisons also issued a statement after the judge’s ruling saying said the book played no role in the decision to return Cohen to prison. The bureau did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Cohen’s departure from prison.Cohen, who once said he would “take a bullet” for Trump, was sentenced in 2018 for directing hush payments to pornographic film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said they had affairs with Trump. The president has denied having the encounters and has called Cohen a “rat.”  In court papers, Cohen said the book will contain his experiences and observations from the decade he worked for Trump, including both before and after he became president. Cohen said it would provide “unflattering details” of Trump’s Behavior.Even as he turned on Cohen, Trump has voiced his support for people who remained loyal to him.A day after Cohen was sent back to prison, Trump commuted longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone’s prison sentence for lying under oath to lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
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