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European markets picked up where Asia left off Monday, with its benchmark indexes making big gains thanks to  investors’ continued optimism over a post-pandemic recovery.    Britain’s FTSE index is up one percent in midday trading, France’s CAC-40 index is 0.8% higher, and the DAX index in Frankfurt, Germany has gained 0.9%.   Hours earlier, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei index closed 2.2% higher.  Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index ended the day 0.1% higher, while the Shanghai Composite was up 1.7%.   A man wearing a face mask to help curb the spread of the coronavirus looks at an electronic stock board showing Japan’s Nikkei 225 index at a securities firm in Tokyo, July 13, 2020.In Australia, the S&P/ASX index was 0.8% higher.  The KOSPI index in South Korea finished up 1.6%, and Taiwan’s TSEC index rose 1.1%.  Mumbai’s Sensex index is up 0.2% in late afternoon trading.   In oil trading, U.S. crude oil is selling at $39.90 per barrel, down 1.6%, and Brent crude, the international standard, is selling at $42.64 per barrel, down 1.3%.    All three major U.S. indexes are trending upward in futures trading, indicating strong earnings on Wall Street after its opening bell.   
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Amid concerns expressed by a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators over some of his actions, U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack said in a letter he is committed to fixing management issues in the agency after being tasked with making “bold and meaningful changes.The letter, dated July 8 and obtained by the Associated Press and CNBC, came in response to one he received from a bipartisan group of senators who said Pack acted without consulting or notifying Congress, and that his decision to fire the heads of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks and the Open Technology Fund “raise serious questions” about the future of the agency, which also includes Voice of America, under his leadership.“The president, the American people, and the Senate asked me to make bold and meaningful changes,” Pack said.  “Indeed, throughout the confirmation process, and in the weeks since taking the helm, I made clear my commitment to fixing the widely-known management issues that have long beleaguered USAGM and, in turn, its institutions.”“During the confirmation process, I pledged to respect and protect the independence of the USAGM journalists, and I stand by that pledge,” Pack said. “I also wish to reiterate my firm commitment to honoring the VOA Charter and to supporting the missions of the other USAGM networks and our heroic journalists around the world. As an agency, through accurate and reliable reporting, we have to get the truth to those starved for it.”In addition to the concerns of members of the Senate, a group of 11 Democrats in the House of Representatives said in a letter to the heads of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Program that they were “deeply concerned about the firings of qualified leadership” and “reports that USAGM has frozen funds and grants” for programs aimed at evading censorship and providing tools for internet freedom in Hong Kong and elsewhere.Beyond personnel and budgetary matters, the lawmakers expressed concern that the agency’s “truth-based reporting and programming” would be jeopardized if its editorial independence was eroded.
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The man accused of carrying out the worst mass shooting New Zealand’s history will represent himself at his sentencing hearing next month.Attorneys for Australian Brenton Tarrant said they were dismissed by Tarrant during a hearing Monday at the Christchurch High Court. The judge approved Tarrant’s request after speaking personally to him in a pre-hearing video call, saying he was assured that Tarrant understood his actions.The sentencing hearing, which has been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, is scheduled to begin on August 24 and is expected to last more than three days.Tarrant has pleaded guilty to 51 counts of murder, 40 charges of attempted murder and one charge of terrorism in connection with the March 15, 2019, shootings at two mosques in Christchurch. Hours before carrying out the March 15, 2019, shootings, the now-29-year-old Australian white supremacist published a long manifesto online explaining his reasonings for the attack. He then livestreamed the attack on Facebook, which was viewed by scores of people around the world before it was taken down.Tarrant unexpectedly entered a guilty plea in March during a court hearing via video link from his prison cell in Auckland, as New Zealand began a four-week nationwide lockdown to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
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About 60 U.S. universities on Sunday filed a brief supporting a lawsuit by two others, seeking to block a Trump administration rule barring foreign students from remaining in the country if educational institutions don’t hold in-person classes this fall.The lawsuit was filed by Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Wednesday in a federal court in Boston.The so-called amicus brief — a supporting document submitted by interested parties — was filed by 59 U.S. universities on Sunday, including seven other Ivy League schools.The universities said they relied on federal guidance, which was to remain “in effect for the duration of the emergency,” allowing international students to attend all-online courses during the pandemic, according to the amicus brief.”The emergency persists, yet the government’s policy has suddenly and drastically changed, throwing amici’s preparations into disarray and causing significant harm and turmoil,” they added.About 1.1 million foreign students attended U.S. higher education institutions in the 2018-19 school year, according to a report by the State Department and the Institute of International Education (IIE), and they made up 5.5 percent of the entire U.S. higher education enrollment.The Trump administration announcement blindsided academic institutions grappling with the challenges of safely resuming classes as the coronavirus pandemic continues unabated around the world and surges in the United States.The U.S government has been trying to get schools and universities to reopen by autumn. Harvard has already announced it would hold all classes online that term. 
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Thousands of Bulgarians gathered for a fourth day on Sunday in Sofia and other cities to protest against corruption and demand the resignation of the conservative government.Over 3,000 protesters shouted “Mafia!” and “Resign!” outside the government headquarters in Sofia and marched to parliament.The protests in the capital were sparked by an unprecedented raid by heavily armed police and prosecutors on the presidential headquarters on Thursday.President Rumen Radev’s legal affairs and anti-corruption secretary and his security and defense adviser were detained for questioning and their offices searched as part of two separate probes into influence-peddling and disclosure of state secrets.Protesters also gathered in at least 10 other towns on Sunday.The searches on Thursday sparked public anger and brought thousands of demonstrators onto the streets of Sofia to condemn the raids as an attack by the government and the chief prosecutor against the Socialists-backed Radev.The president is an outspoken critic of the cabinet of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, accusing it of “links with oligarchs.”Borisov on Saturday refused to resign but opponents launched an online petition aiming to gather as many as 1 million signatures to demand his ouster.The Socialist opposition in parliament also said Sunday that they would table a no confidence motion against the cabinet for “corruption” next Wednesday, appealing to protesters to back them.Friday’s rallies turned violent with 18 protesters arrested, including two men who were hospitalized after being beaten, prompting an even bigger turnout on Saturday when Radev joined protesters in their demand for the resignation of the cabinet and the chief prosecutor.Police had appealed for restraint ahead of Sunday’s demonstration and the interior ministry announced late Sunday that the rally had ended without incident.Thirteen years after joining the EU as its poorest country, Bulgaria has also remained the bloc’s most graft-prone member state, according to Transparency International’s corruption perception index.A new rally is scheduled for Monday afternoon and another nationwide protest for Thursday. 
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A retired Iranian British engineer detained in Iran since 2017 on spying charges that he denies has decided to speak up for the first time about alleged human rights abuses at the Tehran jail where he is imprisoned.Anoosheh Ashoori is the latest of several individuals whose detentions in Iran under harsh conditions have pushed them into becoming human rights advocates from their prison cells.Iran-born Ashoori was arrested in Tehran in August 2017 while visiting his mother. He traveled from London, where he, his wife, son and daughter have lived for decades. Iranian authorities later convicted him of spying for Israel and sentenced him to 10 years in the capital’s Evin prison.The family of the 66-year-old dual national has rejected the spying charge as bogus. It also has urged the British government, which has diplomatic relations with Iran, to do more to secure Ashoori’s release. The British foreign office has issued statements urging Iran to reunite him with his family.’Victims of tyranny’In a July 3 statement read by Ashoori during a phone call from prison with his wife, Sherry, who recorded it on an iPad and sent it exclusively to VOA Persian, Ashoori said he is willing to cooperate with human rights organizations to raise awareness about what he called “victims of tyranny” at Evin.“These victims are too scared to talk, as they fear that they or their loved ones will be harmed by the ruthless elements of the Islamic regime,” he said, referring to Iran’s rulers.Anoosheh Ashoori (L) is seen with his wife Sherry Izadi in a photo posted on her Twitter account (@IzadiSherry)Ashoori has made a series of audio statements in recent months via a prison-monitored telephone with the help of his wife, who has recorded and made them public at his request. A weeklong audio diary shared with Emirati newspaper The National in April detailed what he described as a chaotic response by Evin authorities to the threat of coronavirus contagion in the prison.In a June 10 recording shared with AFP, Ashoori appealed to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to get him and other British nationals out of Evin, where he said the threat of the coronavirus was “as strong as ever.”Britain has said it is aware of about a dozen incidents of its citizens being arrested in Iran since 2015 and has warned that British-Iranian dual nationals face a “high risk” of arbitrary detention. Rights activists have accused Tehran of detaining Iranians with dual Western nationalities that it does not recognize in order to use them as bargaining chips for concessions from Western powers.Suicide attempts, shock treatmentsAshoori’s July 3 statement went further than his previous recordings by detailing the kinds of rights abuses that he said he has seen and heard about at Evin. He said those abuses include two cases of prisoners being killed during harsh interrogations, one case of a prisoner dying of medical problems induced by poor prison conditions, and a dozen cases of prisoners being taken to mental hospitals for unknown injections and electric shock treatments.Ashoori also said he had learned of six prisoners attempting suicide and two others who succeeded in killing themselves. He did not name any of the prisoners whose cases he cited.Raha Bahreini, a London-based Iran researcher for rights group Amnesty International, told VOA Persian that there have been several suspicious deaths of detainees in Iran since 2017. She said there are signs that the deaths resulted from torture by Iranian authorities, but Iran’s refusal to allow independent investigations and autopsies have made it impossible to determine the causes of those deaths.Bahreini said one such case involved Kavous Seyed-Emami, an Iranian Canadian environmentalist who Iran said committed suicide at Evin in February 2018, two weeks after his arrest for alleged espionage. Iranian authorities refused to allow an independent investigation of his death, leading his family to reject suicide as the cause.Bahreini said Amnesty has not compiled a report on actual suicides and suicide attempts at Evin. But she cited the case of Iranian alternative medicine practitioner Mohammad Ali Taheri, who was released from detention in April 2019 after serving a term of more than seven years in several prisons including Evin for his peaceful activities.“He was held in solitary confinement for more than six years, and during that period he attempted suicide multiple times,” Bahreini said.Lengthy list of illnessesIn his July 3 statement, Ashoori recited a long list of illnesses that he said his fellow inmates had suffered because of poor living conditions at Evin: brain stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, paralysis of the esophagus, trembling hands, early whitening and loss of hair, joint problems, loss of teeth, prostate complications and cancer, gallbladder and liver problems, ophthalmic problems, skin fungus, and mental problems including depression and anxiety.“That is completely consistent with information that Amnesty has gathered over the years about prisoners who develop medical problems because of inhumane conditions they are held in,” Bahreini said.Ashoori also called for human rights observers and independent medical teams to be allowed to inspect conditions at Evin and interview victims of the alleged abuses that he described.“I think it is a very brave act that he is engaging in,” Bahreini said. “It shows the pain and sense of injustice of prisoners who have been jailed for politically motivated reasons is so enormous, that over time, it leads them to engage in human rights activism, even from inside prison.”In one example of a prisoner who went through a similar evolution, Bahreini highlighted Iranian blogger Soheil Arabi, who has been detained since 2013 when authorities arrested him for allegedly posting Facebook comments deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad.“Over the years, as Arabi has faced multiple abuses in prison, he has turned into a full-blown activist who stands up for other prisoners of conscience and who issues statements about them from inside prison,” Bahreini said.Ashoori’s call for independent inspections of Evin prison also drew praise from Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights. He told VOA Persian that organizations such as his have issued similar calls for years, but Iran has either refused to respond or denied those requests.U.N. Special Rapporteurs on human rights last visited some Iranian prisons in the late 1980s to early 1990s, Amiry-Moghaddam said.“Iranian authorities didn’t like the reports of those U.N. experts and didn’t let them in again,” he said. “However, if international pressure is strong enough, Iranian authorities can be forced to accept prison inspections. I hope Ashoori’s words will contribute to this.”This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. Ramin Haghjoo contributed.  
 
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Eleven people suffered minor injuries in an explosion and fire Sunday on board a ship at Naval Base San Diego, military officials said.  The blaze was reported shortly before 9 a.m. on USS Bonhomme Richard, said Krishna Jackson, the base’s public information officer.  Eleven people were treated for “non-life-threatening injuries,” Jackson said. She didn’t have additional details. 
The cause of the fire was under investigation. Jackson didn’t know where on the 255-meter (840-foot) amphibious assault vessel the blast and the fire occurred.  The flames sent up a huge plume of dark smoke visible around San Diego.  San Diego is the Bonhomme Richard’s home port and it was undergoing routine maintenance at the time of the fire.  Jackson estimated about 200 sailors and officers were on board — far fewer than if the ship was on active duty.  The ship has the capacity to deploy and land helicopters, smaller boats and amphibious vehicles. 
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Two leading U.S. Democrats on Sunday condemned President Donald Trump’s clemency for his long-time friend Roger Stone, wiping out his 40-month prison sentence for political wrongdoing, saying it was a perversion of American legal standards.“It’s staggering corruption,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of Trump’s commutation of Stone’s sentence during an interview on CNN.“People should know this isn’t just about lying to Congress, that means lying to the American people, and witness tampering and the rest,” Pelosi said of the seven convictions a jury handed down against the 67-year-old Stone. “It’s about our national security.”U.S. presidential power for overseeing pardons and commutations is virtually unlimited, but Pelosi said legislation will be introduced that would in the future limit a president from commuting, pardoning or offering clemency to anyone who is convicted of a crime that affects the president’s behavior and culpability.FILE – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff speak during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Oct. 2, 2019.House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, who oversaw impeachment proceedings against Trump last year, was a guest Sunday on ABC News’s “This Week” show.“Anyone who cares about the rule of law in this country is nauseated by the fact that the president has commuted the sentence of someone who willfully lied to Congress, covered up for the president, intimidated witnesses, obstructed the investigation,” he said. “It shouldn’t matter whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, this should be offensive to you if you care about the rule of law and you care about justice.”  Schiff, a longtime Trump critic, said Stone “lied to cover up and protect the president.”Schiff said that Trump, with his Friday night action to keep Stone from heading to prison, “is basically saying through this commutation, ‘If you lie for me, if you cover up for me, if you have my back, then I will make sure that you get a get-out-of-jail-free card.’  “Other Americans? Different standard,” Schiff said. “Friends of the president, accomplices of the president, they get off scot-free.”FILE – Republican Senator Mitt Romney speaks with members of the media on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 16, 2020.Some Republicans join freyTwo Republican senators, Mitt Romney and Pat Toomey, on Saturday also attacked Trump’s action.Romney, who lost the 2012 presidential election to former President Barack Obama, called Trump’s commutation of Stone’s sentence “unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.”Toomey, from the eastern state of Pennsylvania, said Trump “clearly has the legal and constitutional authority to grant clemency for federal crimes,” but called his action a “mistake.” Toomey said Stone “was duly convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of a congressional investigation conducted by a Republican-led committee.”Trump, in a tweet Saturday night, called Romney and Toomey “RINO’S,” an acronym that stands for “Republicans in Name Only.”“Stone was treated very unfairly,” Trump said Saturday night about his commutation of Stone’s prison sentence. The president blamed the jury forewoman and the judge and said Stone “should have had another trial.”FILE – Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is surrounded by reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 25, 2020.One Republican lawmaker, Senator Lindsey Graham, said in advance of Trump’s action, “In my view it would be justified. Mr. Stone is in his 70s (Stone is 67 – ed.) and this was a nonviolent, first-time offense.”  A jury convicted Stone of seven offenses, including witness tampering and lying to federal authorities, and a judge sentenced him to 40 months in prison. He was to report to prison this week before Trump commuted the sentence, but did not pardon him, which left his convictions in place.The clemency for Stone was only the 36th Trump has granted, with 180 denied. Many of those granted by Trump have been to political supporters of his or suggested by people he knows, rather than being processed through normal pardon procedures overseen by the U.S. Justice Department.  At the same points in their presidencies, 3½ years after taking office, Trump’s six predecessors had acted on hundreds or thousands of petitions for clemency.One juror in Stone’s trial, Seth Cousins, told the Washington Post, that it was a “shocking act of corruption for the president to commute the sentence of a person convicted of lying to protect him. The fact remains that Roger Stone is a convicted felon, that he was found guilty of seven counts of lying to Congress and intimidating a witness and of impeding an investigation. Nothing that Trump or anyone has done or can do changes that fact.”Special counsel Robert Mueller, who led the investigation into whether Russia colluded with the Trump campaign in 2016 to help him win, wrote in a Post opinion article that the probe was of “paramount importance” and asserted Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.”After a lengthy probe, Mueller’s investigation did not find clear evidence that Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election and did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice. In any event, long-standing Justice Department policy says sitting U.S. presidents cannot be charged with criminal offenses.Late Friday, Trump spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said that Trump granted Stone clemency “in light of the egregious facts and circumstances surrounding his unfair prosecution, arrest and trial.“Roger Stone is a victim of the Russia hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump presidency,” she said. “There was never any collusion between the Trump campaign, or the Trump administration, with Russia. Such collusion was never anything other than a fantasy of partisans unable to accept the result of the 2016 election.“The collusion delusion spawned endless and farcical investigations, conducted at great taxpayer expense, looking for evidence that did not exist,” McEnany concluded. 
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Nealry 600,000 people cast their votes in an unofficial primary in Hong Kong Sunday to determine which pro-democracy leaders will run for office in September. The vote, seen as a protest against controversial new security laws imposed by Beijing, was organized by the opposition party to determine who would run in September elections for Hong Kong’s legislative council. Hundreds of thousands of people voted in Hong Kong over the weekend, despite warnings that the poll may violate the harsh new security law enforced by Beijing. In addition to allowing security agents from mainland China to operate officially in Hong Kong for the first time, the law outlaws what Beijing describes as secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.   Beijing enacted the law on June 30 in response to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protest movement, sparking widespread concern that wide-ranging freedoms Britain granted to the semi-autonomous territory before returning it to China in 1997 will be crushed. The last formal popular vote in Hong Kong took place in November 2019 for lower level district council seats, resulting in landslide victories for many pro-democracy candidates. 
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President Donald Trump on Sunday criticized a privately built border wall in South Texas that’s showing signs of erosion months after going up, saying it was “only done to make me look bad,” even though the wall was built after a months-long campaign by his supporters.The group that raised money online for the wall promoted itself as supporting Trump during a government shutdown that started in December 2018 because Congress wouldn’t fund Trump’s demands for a border wall. Called “We Build the Wall,” the group has raised more than $25 million promoting itself as supporting the president.Former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon joined the group’s board and Trump ally Kris Kobach became its general counsel. Kobach is now seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Kansas.The company that built the private section in January, North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, has since won a $1.3 billion border wall contract from the federal government, the largest award to date.The section in question is a roughly 3-mile (5-kilometer) fence of steel posts just 35 feet (10 meters) from the Rio Grande, the river that forms the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. That’s much closer to the river than the government ordinarily builds border barriers in South Texas because of concerns about erosion and flooding that could violate U.S. treaty obligations with Mexico.Trump tweeted Sunday in response to a ProPublica-Texas Tribune report that the riverbank has started to erode. A federal judge on Wednesday ordered attorneys for Fisher Industries and opponents of the private wall to set a schedule for experts to visit the site and inspect any erosion.”I disagreed with doing this very small (tiny) section of wall, in a tricky area, by a private group which raised money by ads,” Trump wrote. “It was only done to make me look bad, and perhsps it now doesn’t even work. Should have been built like rest of Wall, 500 plus miles.”Tommy Fisher, CEO of Fisher Industries, said Sunday that he thought the president “just got some misinformation on this stuff” and that he had “complete respect” for Trump.Fisher acknowledged that there had been some erosion on the land in front of the fencing caused by rain and the natural flow of the river. He said his crews planned to install more organic material to fill the gaps or insert rock if erosion continues, but that other parts of the wall remained untouched.”The wall will stand for 150 years, you mark my words,” Fisher said.Experts and people who live and work near the property have warned that building so close to the river would cause flooding or a break in the fence. And a binational commission earlier this year found that the project violates U.S. treaty obligations and called on Fisher to make changes.Marianna Trevino Wright, executive director of the nonprofit National Butterfly Center, has long opposed the project and warned it could damage the center, which is adjacent to where the private wall was being built.”It is troubling that President Trump admits to prior knowledge of this project — one he should have insisted comply with U.S. law, rather than proceed in violation of it,” she said Sunday.Originally promoted by We Build the Wall, the private section instead became a showcase for Fisher, who has promoted his company heavily on Fox News and conservative media. We Build the Wall ultimately provided about $1.5 million for the project and Kobach said in a previous court hearing that his group was mostly providing “social media cheerleading.” We Build the Wall’s founder, Brian Kolfage, did not return a phone message Sunday.In May, Fisher Industries won a $1.3 billion contract to build 42 miles (68 kilometers) of wall in Arizona. The wall will be painted black because “that’s what the president wanted, plain and simple,” said U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, in May. Cramer said then that he personally pitched the company to Trump.Another $400 million contract Fisher won last year was placed under review by the defense department’s inspector general.
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At this time of the year, The Friendly Fisherman on Cape Cod is usually bustling with foreign students clearing tables and helping prepare orders of clam strips or fish and chips.But because of a freeze on visas, Janet Demetri won’t be employing the 20 or so workers this summer. So as the crowds rush back, Demetri must work with nine employees for her restaurant and market — forcing her to shutter the business twice a week.“It’s really disturbing because we are really busy,” said Demetri. “We can’t keep up once the doors are open.”The Trump administration announced last month that it was extending a ban on green cards and adding many temporary visas to the freeze, including J-1 cultural exchange visas and H-2B visas. Businesses from forestry to fisheries to hospitality depend on these visas, though there are exceptions for the food processing sector.The move was billed as a chance to free up 525,000 jobs to Americans hard hit by the economic downturn, though the administration provided no evidence to support that. Supporters of immigration reform have hailed the move and insisted it should be easy to find Americans to bus tables and sell souvenirs at popular tourist destinations.“The work that people on H-2B visas do or on J-1 summer work travel is not something that is alien to Americans,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for restrictions. “Those jobs are already mostly done by Americans whether its landscaping, making beds or scooping ice cream. The employers are just going to have to up their game in recruitment because there are 20 million people who are unemployed whom they could be drawing from.”Vacation spots sufferingHardest hit by the ban are beach communities and mountain getaways up and down the East Coast from parts of New Hampshire to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.Businesses said they want to hire Americans but are in regions with tiny labor pools that are no match for the millions of tourists visiting each summer. Companies also face the challenge of convincing unemployed workers, many who are still collecting federal benefits, to take a job in the hospitality industry amid a pandemic. Rising housing prices as well as a lack of child care amid the pandemic also pose hurdles.Mark Carchidi, whose company Antioch Associates USA II Inc. processes paperwork for H-2B visas on the East Coast, said businesses he works with were counting on an additional 30,000 visas this year beyond the 66,000 already allowed under the program.More than 108,000 J-1 summer work travel visas were issued last year, according to the State Department, but only 1,787 so far this year.“Any seasonal resort area or seasonal business that you can think in whatever part of the country has really been hurt terribly hard by this,” Carchidi said.Businesses struggle to copeThe ban has left seasonal businesses scrambling to fill openings just as economies are restarting. Many are forced to scale back hours and amenities or close completely.Patrick Patrick, who has relied upon 10 to 15 J-1 visa holders to work at his army navy surplus store in Provincetown, Massachusetts, got none this year. He reduced the store’s hours and isn’t offering dressing rooms or customer services.“If you are in hospitality, accommodations or restaurants and you truly have no staff, you can’t fake it,” said Patrick, who is also the local chamber of commerce president. “We are faking it. We’re throwing merchandise on the floor and letting customers walk on it and hopefully, they buy it. You can’t do that in a restaurant.”In Myrtle Beach, businesses only got a fraction of the 3,000 J-1 and H-2B visas they were expecting, according to Stephen Greene, president & CEO of the Myrtle Beach Area Hospitality Association.Mark Lazarus, the president and owner of Lazarus Entertainment Group, employs 1,000 workers at his three theme parks. About 150 of those are usually J-1 visa holders but none came this year. As a result, he has cut his hours and reduced the number of cashiers.Lazarus agrees with Trump’s efforts to crackdown on illegal immigration but admits the J-1 ban “baffles me.” There aren’t enough students to fill seasonal jobs in Myrtle Beach, he said, and worries the ban will hurt the fragile economy.“Our revenues are going to be down because we are cutting our hours and they will be down because we can’t open all the amenities that everyone has,” he said.The shortage, however, has been eased somewhat by the pandemic’s continued impact on the tourism industry.Another layer of uncertaintyIn Myrtle Beach, bars, theaters and larger venues are still shuttered and visitor numbers are down. Maine, too, is not seeing widespread labor shortage, since business is a fraction of what the state sees in a normal summer.Still, the visa ban adds another layer of uncertainty for businesses like the 145-bed Meadowmere, one of the largest hotels in Maine. It received only half of its requested H-2B visas and likely won’t be getting seven or eight J-1 student visas.Other businesses are soldiering on and adjusting to the new reality. In Hampton, New Hampshire, businesses have hired relatives and are working longer hours. Some were able to hire local students to replace the visa holders.“I have a group of kids now that are 17-years-old replacing the J-1s who hopefully will be here for the next five years,” said Tom McGuirk, who owns a hotel and restaurant and was able to replace seven J-1 visa workers with teenagers who worked in shuttered movie theaters and camps. “That is exactly what we have been missing from the market for the past few years.”At the Friendly Fisherman, Demetri hasn’t been as fortunate. She advertised in newspapers and online for prep cooks, cashiers and counter help. Despite offering to pay $14 an hour for training and starting wages of $16 an hour plus tips, she had few takers beyond “14-year-old kids” who are limited by the hours they can work and jobs they can do.“These students aren’t taking any jobs away from locals, not a single one,” Demetri said of the J-1 visa holders.  
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A Beijing law professor who has been an outspoken critic of China’s President Xi Jinping and the ruling Communist Party was released on Sunday after six days of detention, his friends said. Xu Zhangrun, a constitutional law professor at the prestigious Tsinghua University, returned home on Sunday morning but remained under surveillance and was not free to speak publicly about what happened, one of his friends, who declined to be identified, told Reuters. Calls to the media departments of the Beijing police and Tsinghua University seeking comment went unanswered on Sunday. Law professor Xu Zhangrun is seen in this undated photo. (Wiki Commons)Xu, 57, came to prominence in July 2018 for denouncing the removal of the two-term limit for China’s leader, which will allow Xi to remain in office beyond his current second term. According to a text message circulated among Xu’s friends and seen by Reuters, he was taken from his house in suburban Beijing on Monday morning by more than 20 policemen, who searched his house and confiscated his computer. According to Xu’s friends, police told his wife that he was being detained for allegedly soliciting prostitution during a trip to Chengdu, but at least two friends dismissed that allegation as character assassination. Since the 2018 article, Xu has written other critiques of the party. At the peak of China’s coronavirus outbreak in February, he wrote an article calling for freedom of speech. Most recently in May, before China’s delayed annual parliamentary meeting, he wrote an article accusing Xi of trying to bring the Cultural Revolution back to China. Under Xi, China has clamped down on dissent and tightened censorship. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said on Tuesday the United States was deeply concerned about China’s detention of Xu and urged Beijing to release him.  
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