Бізнес

Two U.S. astronauts returned to Earth on Sunday, splashing safely into the Gulf of Mexico after a two-month mission to the International Space Station aboard the commercially developed SpaceX spacecraft Crew Dragon.Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley landed at midafternoon off the western coast of Florida, avoiding the dangers of Tropical Storm Isaias moving along the Atlantic Ocean coast of the southern state.The two men had lifted off to space from Florida in May, the first NASA astronaut launch from U.S. soil since 2011 and the first time a commercially developed spacecraft had carried humans into orbit.Hurley and Behnken, both married to astronauts, departed the International Space Station on Saturday night. They awoke to a recording of their young children urging them to “rise and shine” and “we can’t wait to see you.””Don’t worry, you can sleep in tomorrow,” said Behnken’s 6-year-old son, Theo, who was promised a puppy after the flight. “Hurry home so we can go get my dog.”The Dragon capsule slowed from an orbital speed of 28,000 kph to 560 during reentry into the atmosphere and finally to 24 kph at splashdown.In this frame grab from NASA TV, the SpaceX Dragon capsule splashes down Aug. 2, 2020, in the Gulf of Mexico.More than 40 staff were on a SpaceX recovery ship, including doctors and nurses who planned to examine the two astronauts.  NASA astronauts last returned from space to water on July 24, 1975, in the Pacific, the scene of most splashdowns.Until the SpaceX launch, the U.S. had relied in recent years on Russian rockets to send its astronauts to the space station. The private company is planning its next launch near the end of September, sending four astronauts to the space station for six months. 
…

The White House and top congressional Democrats remained at odds Sunday over the scope of more assistance for 30 million American workers left unemployed by the coronavirus pandemic. In back-to-back appearances on ABC’s “This Week” show, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, sparred over how much new aid the national government should approve beyond less generous state unemployment benefits. Motorists take part in a caravan protest in front of Senator John Kennedy’s office at the Hale Boggs Federal Building asking for the extension of the $600 in unemployment benefits to people out of work because of the coronavirus in New Orleans, La.Four months of $600-a-week extra national benefits expired Friday. But Pelosi and other Democrats want to extend the payments through the end of 2020, while President Donald Trump and his administration initially want to cut the extra aid to $200 a week while working toward a package that would set the aid at 70% of what a worker had been paid before being laid off as the virus swept through the United States. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, speaks to reporters following a meeting at the Capitol on a COVID-19 relief bill, Aug. 1, 2020, in Washington.Pelosi, Mnuchin, Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Saturday they had made progress in reaching a deal on the unemployment assistance and other aid to boost the country’s flagging economy. Their aides were set to resume discussions Sunday on details of a package while the main negotiators planned to renew their talks on Monday. They remain far apart on the size of an overall coronavirus assistance package, however, with Democrats calling for $3 trillion in new spending and Republicans wanting to limit it to $1 trillion. The Pelosi and Mnuchin disagreements quickly became apparent on the ABC talk show. “Overwhelmingly this is about keeping people out of poverty,” Pelosi said. “The $600 is essential,” she said. “This is about putting workers first, putting money in the pockets of American workers.” She did not, however, rule out the possibility of settling on a smaller continuing aid figure, but criticized some Republican lawmakers “who don’t want (to approve) anything.” She said the new assistance should be tied to unemployment rate. She downplayed complaints by Republicans that some unemployed workers have collected more in jobless benefits than they were paid while working. Mnuchin said Trump “is very concerned about the expiration” of the benefits” and “wants to spend what we need to.” But Mnuchin said he was surprised Democrats have spurned a White House offer to extend the $600-a-week federal benefits for a week while talks continue.  He said the continuing benefits “should be tied to some percentage of wages.” Mnuchin said “there’s no question some people were paid more to stay home than to work,” an outcome Republicans are determined to end. He said the virus has “devastated our economy.” Mnuchin said last week’s report that the U.S. economy, the world’s largest, fell 9.5% from April to June, the most in records dating back seven decades, was not surprising. He expressed optimism for the future, however. “I think we’re going to see a very big bounce back,” especially in 2021, he said.  
…

The Mexican Army and state security forces have captured Jose Antonio Yepez, a prominent drug gang leader blamed for helping to fuel a major surge in violence in the country in recent years, authorities said on Sunday.Widely known as “El Marro” (The Mallet), Yepez was captured in an operation carried out early on Sunday morning, according to the federal government and authorities in the central state of Guanajuato, a principal flashpoint of gang violence.Yepez, boss of the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, a Guanajuato-based gang, has been engaged in a bloody struggle for criminal control of the state with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of the country’s most powerful and violent outfits.The Guanajuato attorney general’s office said security forces captured Yepez with five other people and rescued a kidnapped local businesswoman during the operation. An “arsenal” of weapons was also secured during the raid. 
…

The Portland Police Bureau declared an unlawful assembly Saturday night when people gathered outside a police precinct in Oregon’s largest city and threw bottles towards officers, police said.Until that point, federal, state and local law enforcement had been seemingly absent from the protests Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The demonstrations – that for weeks ended with tear gas, fireworks shot towards buildings, federal agents on the street and injuries to protesters and officers – have recently ended with chanting and conversations.Activists and Oregon officials urged people at Saturday night’s protest in Portland to re-center the focus on Black Lives Matter, three days after the Trump administration agreed to reduce the presence of federal agents.Groups gathered Saturday evening in various areas around downtown Portland to listen to speakers and prepare to march to the Justice Center and Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse.One of the more popular events, “Re-centering why we are here – BLM,” was hosted by the NAACP. Speakers included activists as well as Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty.Merkley and Hardesty spoke about policies they are putting forward, including to cut police funding and restrict chokeholds.“The next thing we need you to do is vote like your life depends on it, because guess what, it does,” Hardesty said.For the first time since the presence of federal agents in Portland diminished law enforcement and protesters noticeably clashed Saturday night.As one group of protesters gathered outside the courthouse another marched to a precinct for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and Portland Police Bureau.Police stated that protesters threw glass bottles and directed lasers at officers. Just before 10 p.m., Portland police declared an unlawful assembly and told people to disperse or they may be subject to use of force or be arrested. Police could be seen charging, multiple times, at protesters in the area.At the courthouse, the scene was different. Around 11:30 p.m. hundreds of people remained, standing and listening to speakers.By midnight, protesters again began to march through the streets downtown.Thursday and Friday’s protests also attracted more than 1,000 people _ both nights were relatively peaceful. In a news release early Saturday, the Portland Police Bureau described Friday’s crowd as subdued and said there was no police interaction with protesters.At one point during Friday’s protest, a lone firework was shot at the courthouse. In the weeks past the action would be met with more fireworks or teargas canisters being dropped over the fence into the crowd. This time, protesters chastised the person who shot the firework, pleading to keep the demonstration peaceful.The relative calm outside a federal courthouse that’s become ground zero in clashes between demonstrators and federal agents had come after the U.S. government began drawing down its forces under a deal between Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and the Trump administration.Portland had seen more than two months of often violent demonstrations following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In early July, President Donald Trump sent more federal agents to the city to protect the federal courthouse, but local officials said their presence made things worse. 
…

Wilford Brimley, who worked his way up from movie stunt rider to an indelible character actor who brought gruff charm, and sometimes menace, to a range of films that included “Cocoon,” “The Natural” and “The Firm,” has died. He was 85.Brimley’s manager Lynda Bensky said the actor died Saturday morning in a Utah hospital. He was on dialysis and had several medical ailments, she said.The mustached Brimley was a familiar face for a number of roles, often playing characters like his grizzled baseball manager in “The Natural” opposite Robert Redford’s bad-luck phenomenon. He also worked with Redford in “Brubaker” and “The Electric Horseman.”Brimley’s best-known work was in “Cocoon,” in which he was part of a group of seniors who discover an alien pod that rejuvenates them. The 1985 Ron Howard film won two Oscars, including a supporting actor honor for Don Ameche.Brimley also starred in “Cocoon: The Return,” a 1988 sequel.For years he was pitchman for Quaker Oats and in recent years appeared in a series of diabetes spots that turned him at one point into a social media sensation.“Wilford Brimley was a man you could trust,” Bensky said in a statement. “He said what he meant, and he meant what he said. He had a tough exterior and a tender heart. I’m sad that I will no longer get to hear my friend’s wonderful stories. He was one of a kind.”Barbara Hershey, who met Brimley on 1995′s “Last of the Dogmen,” called him “a wonderful man and actor. … He always made me laugh.”Though never nominated for an Oscar or Emmy Award, Brimley amassed an impressive list of credits. In 1993’s John Grisham adaptation “The Firm,” Brimley starred opposite Tom Cruise as a tough-nosed investigator who deployed ruthless tactics to keep his law firm’s secrets safe.John Woo, who directed Brimley as Uncle Douvee in 1993′s “Hard Target,” told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018 that the part was “the main great thing from the film. I was overjoyed making those scenes and especially working with Wilford Brimley.”A Utah native who grew up around horses, Brimley spent two decades traveling around the West and working at ranches and racetracks. He drifted into movie work during the 1960s, riding in such films as “True Grit,” and appearing in TV series such as “Gunsmoke.”He forged a friendship with Robert Duvall, who encouraged him to seek more prominent acting roles, according to a biography prepared by Turner Classic Movies.Brimley, who never trained as an actor, saw his career take off after he won an important role as a nuclear power plant engineer in “The China Syndrome.”“Training? I’ve never been to acting classes, but I’ve had 50 years of training,” he said in a 1984 Associated Press interview. “My years as an extra were good background for learning about camera techniques and so forth. I was lucky to have had that experience; a lot of newcomers don’t.”“Basically, my method is to be honest,” Brimley said told AP. “The camera photographs the truth — not what I want it to see, but what it sees. The truth.”Brimley had a recurring role as a blacksmith on “The Waltons” and the 1980s prime-time series “Our House.”Another side of the actor was his love of jazz. As a vocalist, he made albums including “This Time the Dream’s On Me” and “Wilford Brimley with the Jeff Hamilton Trio.”In 1998, he opposed an Arizona referendum to ban cockfighting, saying that he was “trying to protect a lifestyle of freedom and choice for my grandchildren.”In recent years, Brimley’s pitchwork for Liberty Mutual had turned him into an internet sensation for his drawn-out pronunciation of diabetes as “diabeetus.” He owned the pronunciation in a tweet that drew hundreds of thousands of likes earlier this year.Brimley is survived by his wife Beverly and three sons. 
…

Israeli police used force to disperse protesters gathered outside the official residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Sunday morning.Several thousand demonstrators had been rallying at the square in central Jerusalem since Saturday evening.The Jerusalem protest was one of the largest turnouts since demonstrations calling for Netanyahu to resign began. The anti-Netanyahu protests have been the largest in Israel since the 2011 demonstrations against the country’s high cost of living.Smaller gatherings took place in the capital Tel Aviv and near Netanyahu’s beach house in central Israel.Eventually, police forcefully cleared the square, carrying away protesters who were refusing to leave. There have been no reports of any arrests.Many Israelis believe that prime minister has mishandled the country’s coronavirus crisis. Others say Netanyahu should not remain in office while on trial on corruption charges. 
…

A former Spanish prime minister once described the rock of Gibraltar, which Spain ceded to Britain in 1713, as a stone in the shoe of Anglo-Spanish relations. But Gibraltar currently isn’t the only source of Spanish irritation with the British.Last week’s abrupt decision by London to require Britons returning from vacation in Spain to quarantine for 14 days has angered a Spanish government desperate to salvage something from the wrecked summer tourism season. And it augurs badly for Britain’s ongoing, fraught negotiations with the European Union for a post-Brexit free-trade deal.The two governments have been at loggerheads since Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his advisers abruptly reintroduced the quarantine measures six days ago — to howls of protests not only from the Spanish government but also from Britain’s struggling airlines and Spanish hoteliers trying to stave off bankruptcy.Johnson’s official spokesman warned “no travel is risk-free during this pandemic.” Since then, Luxembourg has been added to Britain’s list of risky countries to visit.The Spanish government has been lobbying Downing Street to change its mind, pointing out that large parts of Spain, including the tourist hotspots of the Canary and Balearic Islands, are safer than Britain and have much lower coronavirus infection rates.In an interview last week with the Telecinco TV network, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said his government was “talking with British authorities to try to get them to reconsider.” He said Britain had made an error by lumping all of Spain together and not taking a more clinical and sophisticated regional approach.He noted nearly 65 percent of Spain’s new cases are occurring in two regions — Catalonia in the northeast and neighboring Aragón. Britain’s quarantine requirement is “not well adjusted” to the epidemiological situation, he said. The Spanish point out that other European countries, notably France and Germany, have only advised their citizens against visiting Catalonia.Under relentless pressure from Madrid, the British government says it will review in 10 days’ time the quarantine requirement, which has prompted tens of thousands of would-be vacationers to cancel their travel plans. Low-cost airlines have halted flights to Spain. The review gives some hope to Spain that Britain may reverse its decision.But Britain’s quarantine decision is prompting a fierce backlash on the Iberian Peninsula that risks significant impact on Brexit talks.Spanish ministers are fuming. They were given no warning by London. The Spanish see the move as a stab in the back. Britons account for more than a fifth of the 80 million tourists who visit Spain in average every year. Nearly half a million Britons own vacation homes in Spain. The Spanish tourism association has offered to pay for British travelers to take virus tests in Spain.The dispute is threatening to reignite tensions between the two countries over the fate of Gibraltar, analysts say. Spanish politicians, goaded by the country’s tabloid press, are warning that they won’t do Britain any favors in the deadlocked negotiations over Britain’s relationship with the EU. A key stumbling block in the negotiations is over fishing rights in Britain’s waters.Gibraltar could well be sued to further complicate Brexit negotiations. The current government in Madrid has dropped pushing Spain’s sovereignty claim to Gibraltar, but it might revive it under pressure from Spain’s parliament.Gibraltar is desperate to ensure it will be able to benefit from a free-trade pact, if one is ever concluded, between Britain and the EU. Spain could wield a veto over that happening, shutting Gibraltar out of any easy relationship with the rest of the EU. Spain’s EU Affairs Minister Juan Gonzalez-Barba warned last month, before the current spat, that talks over Gibraltar’s future relationship with Spain and the EU “will not be easy.”And he hinted Spain could revive sovereignty ambitions. Ninety-six percent of Gibraltar’s voters opposed Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum.Spain’s Iberian neighbor, Portugal, also is in dispute with Britain. Portugal was not included on Britain’s safe-last of countries, which was first published last month. The country’s foreign ministry blasted the exclusion, noting that 28 times more people had died from COVID-19 in Britain than in Portugal. An infuriated António Costa, the prime minister, tweeted a graph illustrating it was safer in the tourist hotspot the Algarve, favored by British sun-seekers, than it was in Britain.While Portugal has enjoyed centuries of good relations with Britain, Anglo-Spanish relations have been more uneasy, stretching back to Tudor times when Henry VIII offended Spain by ditching and humiliating his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. British piracy during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in the “Spain Main” off the coastline of the Americas and in the Caribbean Sea set the scene for Spain’s bid to invade England. But the Spanish Armada was defeated by legendary English seadogs like Sir Francis Drake.   
…

The coronavirus pandemic, declared by the World Health Organization on March 11, will be a lengthy one, the WHO said Saturday.Citing the likelihood of response fatigue, the health organization’s emergency committee anticipates the COVID-19 pandemic will be long and the global risk level of COVID-19  very high, it said in a statement.So far worldwide, at least 17.7 million people have been infected and at least 681,000 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University data.”It’s sobering to think that six months ago,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said before entering the meeting as it began Friday, “there were less than 100 cases and no deaths outside China.”In the United States, which leads the world in confirmed cases, 4.6 million, and deaths, more than 145,000, another member of the U.S. Congress has tested positive for the virus.Rep. Raul Grijalva, 72, a Democrat from Arizona, on Saturday became at least the 11th member of Congress to test positive for the coronavirus. Grijalva is the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, where he sat close to Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, who earlier this week tested positive for the virus. It is unclear where Grijalva was exposed to the virus, and like Gohmert, he has no symptoms.“While I cannot blame anyone directly for this, this week has shown that there are some members of Congress who fail to take this crisis seriously,” Grijalva said in the statement. “Numerous Republican members routinely strut around the Capitol without a mask to selfishly make a political statement at the expense of their colleagues, staff, and their families.”Lawmakers for the Navajo Nation, another area hit hard by the pandemic, passed nearly $651 million in spending to fight the coronavirus. The funds came from more than $714 million the tribe received as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.A man walks his dog as the sun sets in Asuncion, Paraguay, Aug. 1, 2020, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.About 175,00 people live on the reservation that spreads across parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. About one-third of the homes lack running water, and quarantining is an unfamiliar concept.As of Friday, the tribe reported more than 9,000 people infected and 456 deaths.On Saturday, Vietnam said it plans to test everyone in Danang, a city of 1.1 million, for the coronavirus.The country had been a success story, passing 100 days without a new case of coronavirus, when a cluster of cases surfaced in the popular resort city.Forty new cases were reported Saturday and four more Sunday, for a total of nearly 600 confirmed cases of coronavirus and three deaths.Up to 800,000 visitors to Danang have left for other parts of the country since July 1, the Health Ministry said Saturday, adding that more than 41,000 people have visited three hospitals in the city since.New coronavirus cases in other cities, including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, have links to Danang.Also Saturday, France began testing travelers for the coronavirus when they arrive at airport or port from one of 16 countries. Travelers can skip the test if they have proof of a negative test within 72 hours.France is not allowing most travel to or from those 16 countries, which include the U.S. and Brazil.Daily confirmed cases of COVID-19 have increased in France recently to more than 225,000 and more than 30,200 deaths. It is now mandatory to wear a face mask in indoor public spaces. 
…

Eastman Kodak Co. on Monday granted its executive chairman options for 1.75 million shares as a result of what a person familiar with the arrangement described as an “understanding” with its board that had previously neither been listed in his employment contract nor made public.One day later, the administration of President Donald Trump announced a $765 million financing deal with Eastman Kodak, and in the days that followed the stock soared, making those additional options now held by executive chairman Jim Continenza worth tens of millions.The decision to grant Continenza options was never formalized or made into a binding agreement, which is why it was not disclosed previously, according to the person familiar with the arrangement. The options were granted to shield Continenza’s overall stake in the company from being diluted by a $100 million convertible bond deal clinched in May 2019 to help Eastman Kodak stay afloat, according to the person’s account.While Kodak’s approach is permissible, it is unusual because executives are paid to grow a company’s long-term value and are not usually given extra compensation personally to cover events that may hurt share prices, several experts said.Kodak disclosed the stock options award to Continenza in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which was previously reported. But the person familiar with the arrangement told Reuters that the transaction occurred because of the understanding with the board.Unexpected windfallThat arrangement reported by Reuters for the first time sheds new light on Eastman Kodak’s handling of the unexpected windfall for its top executives.An Eastman Kodak spokeswoman said that Continenza had no comment. The spokeswoman said the gains reflected by the rise in the share price are only on paper: Continenza, she said, “is a strong believer in the future of the company and has never sold a single share of stock.”Prior to this week’s financing deal, the company warned investors it was at risk of not continuing as a going concern, but it was boosted by the agreement with the Trump administration on Tuesday to supply drug ingredients.As a result, Continenza’s gains at the end of this week amounted to about $83 million following a roughly tenfold increase in Eastman Kodak’s stock, compared with the approximately $53 million in gains he would have seen were it not for the additional options, according to a Reuters analysis of company filings.Roughly 29% of the options Continenza received on Monday vested immediately, giving him the right to cash them out as soon as possible.FILE – The Kodak logo is shown during the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, Jan. 6, 2017.Wide latitude on optionsWhile most corporate boards and their committees have wide latitude in awarding options, three corporate governance experts interviewed by Reuters said the move to mitigate the impact of dilution on Continenza’s stake in the company without a prior contractual obligation was unusual.”The compensation committee’s job is not to protect the CEO from every adverse effect on the stock price,” said Sanjai Bhagat, a finance professor at the University of Colorado. “It’s to get the CEO to think about long-term value.”A fourth expert, Robin Ferracone, chief executive of compensation consultant Farient Advisors, said the company might have offered the prospect of additional options to executives as they worked toward the convertible bond offering — to avoid their being “disincentivized” to seal a deal that would help the firm but potentially water down their holdings.The additional options awarded to Continenza, a former telecommunications executive, were approved by the board’s compensation committee on Monday, the spokeswoman said. Shareholders had voted in May of this year to increase the shares available for executive compensation.”The issue is the board wanted to make sure the CEO had the same economic alignment as was contemplated when he took the job,” said a person close to the company.The company’s market capitalization jumped from a little over $100 million at the start of the week to almost $1 billion by Friday following the deal.Other executivesEastman Kodak also granted options on Monday to three other executives, worth $712,000 each, according to regulatory filings. Kodak declined to comment on the reason for these awards.The company has struggled to reinvent itself from a flagging camera company after emerging from bankruptcy in 2013. Its selection by the U.S. government for the production of key pharmaceutical ingredients surprised many industry analysts who expected such a deal to go to a major generic drugmaker.The government’s U.S. International Development Finance Corp. released a July 28 statement quoting Continenza as saying: “Kodak will play a critical role in the return of a reliable American pharmaceutical supply chain.”Trump, too, hailed the development. “I want to congratulate the people in Kodak,” he said at a press briefing. “They’ve been working very hard.”
…

Connie Culp, the recipient of the first partial face transplant in the U.S., has died at 57, almost a dozen years after the groundbreaking operation.The Cleveland Clinic, where her surgery had been performed in 2008, said Saturday that Culp died Wednesday at the Ohio clinic of complications from an infection unrelated to her transplant.Dr. Frank Papay, chair of Cleveland Clinic’s dermatology and plastic surgery institute and part of Culp’s surgical team, called her “an incredibly brave, vibrant woman and an inspiration to many.””Her strength was evident in the fact that she had been the longest-living face transplant patient to date,” Papay said in a statement. “She was a great pioneer and her decision to undergo a sometimes-daunting procedure is an enduring gift for all of humanity.”Culp’s husband shot her in the face in 2004 in a failed murder-suicide attempt for which he was imprisoned for seven years. The blast destroyed her nose, shattered her cheeks and shut off most of her vision. Her features were so gnarled that children ran away from her and called her a monster, The Associated Press previously reported.Culp underwent 30 operations. Doctors took parts of her ribs to make cheekbones and fashioned an upper jaw from one of her leg bones. She had countless skin grafts from her thighs. Still, she was left unable to eat solid food, breathe on her own or smell.80% replacement from donorIn December 2008, Dr. Maria Siemionow led a team of doctors in a 22-hour operation to replace 80% of Culp’s face with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from a donor, Anna Kasper. It was the fourth face transplant in the world, though the others were not as extensive.After the operation, her expressions were a bit wooden and her speech was at times difficult to understand, but she could talk, smile, smell and taste her food again. In 2011, Siemionow said Culp had “a normal face” after doctors refined the droopy jowls and extra skin they purposely left to make checkup biopsies easier.”She’s smiling, she’s perfect. When she jokes, she kind of flickers her eyes. Her face is vivid. You can see emotions,” Siemionow said.Also in 2011, a Texas man severely disfigured in a power line accident underwent the nation’s first full face transplant.Culp made several television appearances and become an advocate for organ donation. Two years after her operation, Culp met with the family of Kasper, the donor, who had died of a heart attack. Culp told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer: “They’re just really nice people.”Kasper’s daughter, Becky Kasper, 23, said she could see part of her mother in Culp, though their bone structures were different.”I can definitely see the resemblance in the nose,” she said. “I know she’s smiling down on this, that she’s very happy.”
…

To vote in the U.S. presidential election, a potential voter must be a U.S. citizen,
be 18 years old on or before Election Day and meet residency requirements, which vary from state to state. 
…

South Korean prosecutors arrested the elderly leader of a secretive religious sect Saturday as part of an investigation into allegations that the church hampered the government’s anti-virus response after thousands of worshippers were infected in February and March.Prosecutors in the central city of Suwaon have been questioning 88-year-old Lee Man-hee, chairman of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, over charges that the church hid some members and underreported gatherings to avoid broader quarantines.The Suwon District Court early Saturday granted prosecutors’ request to arrest Lee over concerns that he could temper with evidence.Lee and his church have steadfastly denied the accusations, saying they’re cooperating with health authorities. The church’s spokesperson, Kim Young-eun, said the church will do its best so that “the truth is clearly proved in court.”More than 5,200 of the South Korea’s 14,336 coronavirus cases have been linked to the church. Its branch in the southern city of Daegu emerged as the biggest cluster after infections spiked in late February.Health authorities used an aggressive test-and-quarantine program to contain the outbreak in Daegu and nearby towns by April, but the country has seen a resurgence of the virus in the Seoul metropolitan area since late May.
…

President Donald Trump went to one of his private golf courses Saturday in Virginia after threatening to halt operations in the United States of a popular Chinese-owned video sharing social media app. “As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” he told reporters Friday on Air Force One traveling with him from Florida. He said he would likely use an executive order to prohibit the app. No action was announced before the president left the White House Saturday morning for the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.Trump was seen by VOA dressed casually departing the West Wing of the White House. It is common for him on weekends to golf at his 325-hectare property, which is located 40 kilometers northwest of the White House.   Trump also told reporters on Air Force One the previous day that he does not support a deal that would allow a U.S. company to buy TikTok’s American operations. The app is extremely popular globally. It already has been downloaded 2 billion times worldwide, and 165 million of those downloads were in the United States. The app features not only entertainment videos, but also debates, and it takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the coming U.S. presidential election. Officials in Washington are concerned that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing the company might share its user data with China’s government.When asked by Fox News last month whether Americans should download the app on their phones, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “Only if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.” TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has said it does not share user data with the Chinese government and maintains that it only stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore. ByteDance has agreed to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok completely in a bid to save a deal with the White House, the Reuters news agency reported Saturday. TikTok also recently chose former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive in a move seen as an effort to distance itself from Beijing. “Banning an app like TikTok, which millions of Americans use to communicate with each other, is a danger to free expression and technologically impractical,” said the American Civil Liberties Union.  The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency group led by the Treasury Department, opened a national security review of TikTok last year.  CFIUS’s job is to oversee foreign investments and assess them for potential national security risks. It can force companies to cancel deals or institute other measures it deems necessary for national security.Microsoft and other U.S. companies, in recent days, reportedly have been looking to purchase the U.S. operations of TikTok.Some on social media are accusing Trump of singling out TikTok because pranksters used the app to order hundreds of thousands of tickets to his June 20 rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which attracted a smaller-than-expected crowd. TikTok is also where comedian Sarah Cooper posts her videos lip-synched to Trump sound bites, which have attracted millions of views.  Cooper on Friday, uploaded a video mouthing comments made by the president earlier in the day about TikTok.   How to tick tack pic.twitter.com/1Mn8nk363f
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) July 31, 2020
…

Protesters took to the streets of the Russian city of Khabarovsk for the fourth straight weekend on Saturday, angered by the arrest of the region’s popular governor.Sergey Furgal was arrested by federal law enforcement in early July on charges related to multiple murders in 2004 and 2005, before he became governor. He was flown to Moscow where he was ordered jailed for two months. Many people in Russia’s Far Eastern city on the border with China believe the charges leveled against Furgal, and his replacement last week, are politically motivated. Furgal was elected in 2018, defeating a candidate from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia.”What is happening to our governor Sergey Furgal is injustice and the violation of all conceivable human rights, and I can’t remain indifferent to this,” said protester Natalia Smoktunova.Other protesters expressed their indignation with the falling standards of living.”We’ve become fed up with this kind of life,” said Tatiana, another protester, who didn’t give her last name. “We want our children to have everything they need—good schools and a better life, instead of poverty-level salaries and unemployment.”The Kremlin replaced Furgal with a young State Duma deputy, Mikhail Degtiarev, to serve as acting governor of the Khabarovsk region.”Wonderful people live here (in Khabarovsk),” said pensioner protester Nadezhda Svobodnaya. “They’re hard workers who want to work honestly and live with dignity, without being afraid for the future of our children and grandchildren. But everything is being trampled here: dignity and honor and freedom. We live in a civilized world after all. How much longer can we bear this?”Protests in Khabarovsk, a city about 8,000 kilometers east of Moscow, erupted on July 11. Since then, protesters have been demanding the release of Furgal and an open and fair trial for him. 
…

Amid the chaos of the pandemic’s early days, doctors who faced the first coronavirus onslaught reached across oceans and language barriers in an unprecedented effort to advise colleagues trying to save lives in the dark.With no playbook to follow and no time to wait for research, YouTube videos describing autopsy findings and X-rays swapped on Twitter and WhatsApp spontaneously filled the gap.When Stephen Donelson arrived at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in mid-March, Dr. Kristina Goff was among those who turned to what she called “the stories out of other places that were hit before.”Donelson’s family hadn’t left the house in two weeks after COVID-19 started spreading in Texas, hoping to shield the organ transplant recipient. Yet one night, his wife found him barely breathing, his skin turning blue, and called 911.In New York or Italy, where hospitals were overflowing, Goff thinks Donelson wouldn’t even have qualified for a then-precious ventilator. But in Dallas, “we pretty much threw everything we could at him,” she said.Like doctors everywhere, Goff was at the beginning of a huge and daunting learning curve.”It’s a tsunami. Something that if you don’t experience it directly, you can’t understand,” Italian Dr. Pier Giorgio Villani said in a series of webinars on six straight Tuesday evenings to alert other intensive care units what to expect. They started just two weeks after Italy’s first hospitalized patient arrived in his ICU, and 10 days before Donelson fell ill in Texas.Villani, who works in the northern city of Lodi, described a battle to accommodate the constant flow of people needing breathing tubes. “We had 10, 12, 15 patients to intubate and an ICU with seven patients already intubated,” he said.The video sessions, organized by an Italian association of ICUs, GiViTI, and the non-profit Mario Negri Institute and later posted on YouTube, constitute an oral history of Italy’s outbreak as it unfolded, narrated by the first doctors in Europe to fight the coronavirus.
Italian friends spread the word to doctors abroad and translations began for colleagues in Spain, France, Russia and the U.S., all bracing their own ICUs for a flood of patients.
They offered “a privileged window into the future,” said Dr. Diego Casali of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, who is from northern Italy and was directed to the webinars when he sought advice from a front-line friend about how to prepare.Dr. Jane Muret of the French Society of Anesthesia-Resuscitation also heard by word-of-mouth and, impressed by the breathing-tube lessons, posted a translation when France had only a handful of diagnosed COVID-19 cases.”Now we can recognize our COVID patients” when they start showing up, she said.
Every tidbit about the newest baffling symptom, every trick to try, served as clues as the virus bore down on the next city, the next country. By the time Donelson arrived, Goff’s hospital was adjusting ventilator care based on that early advice.But while grateful for the global swirl of information, Goff also struggled to make sense of conflicting experiences.”You have no idea how to interpret what went right or what went wrong,” she said, “or was it just the native course of the disease?”Even now, months into a pandemic first wave that’s more like constantly shifting tides, Goff is humbled at how difficult it remains to predict who will live and who will die. She can’t explain why Donelson, finally home after a 90-day ordeal, was ultimately one of the lucky ones.COVID-19 patient Stephen Donelson is applauded by family and health care professionals as he departs the Zale Hospital on the UT Southwestern Campus in Dallas, June 19, 2020.Doctors in Italy were confused: Reports from China were suggesting a death rate of about 3% among those infected. But for the first 18 days, only the dead left the ICU at Bergamo’s large Pope John XXIII Hospital.While the toll eventually dropped, 30% of the hospital’s initial 510 COVID-19 patients died.After decades in practice, ICU chief Dr. Luca Lorini thought he knew how to treat the dangerous kind of respiratory failure — called ARDS, or acute respiratory distress syndrome — first thought to be the main threat.”Every night, I would go home, and I had the doubt that I had gotten something wrong,” Lorini said. “Try to imagine: I am all alone and I can’t compare it with France because the virus wasn’t there, or Spain or the U.K. or America, or with anyone who is closer to me than China.”Only later would it become clear that for patients sick enough to need the ICU, death rates were indeed staggeringly high.By February, China had filed only a limited number of medical journal reports on how patients were faring. Lorini’s hospital tried to fill the data gap by dividing patients into small groups to receive different forms of supportive care and comparing them every three or four days — not a scientific study, but some real-time information to share.
The first lessons: The coronavirus wasn’t causing typical ARDS, and patients consequently needed gentler ventilation than normal. They also needed to stay on those ventilators far longer than usual.”We made big errors,” Villani said, weaning patients off machines too soon.
Then mid-March brought another startling surprise: In a training video for U.S. cardiologists, Chinese doctors warned that the virus causes dangerous blood clots, and not just in the lungs.Dr. Bin Cao of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing explained that as the virus sneaks past the lungs into the bloodstream, it damages the lining of blood vessels, forming clots in the heart, kidneys, “all over the body.” He urged American doctors to use blood thinners protectively in the severely ill.In Italy’s epicenter, doctors were making the same discovery. Lorini described a scramble to get the word out via Skype and email. “This is a vascular sickness more than a pulmonary one and we didn’t know that,” he said.In the U.S., the finding about blood thinners made biological sense to Dr. Tiffany Osborn, a critical care physician at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.”It means at least you’re not shooting in the dark. You’re trying something that from a physiologic standpoint makes sense,” said Osborn, who was living in a camper in her driveway to avoid bringing the virus home to her family after her long ICU shifts.By April, many doctors were bowing to pressure to try a malaria drug named hydroxychloroquine that obsessed President Donald Trump. Osborn never understood why such a drug would work and, sure enough, it eventually failed when put to a real test.But what else might be effective?”We’re learning as we go,” Osborn said. “You could talk to me in two weeks and I might be telling you something that’s really different.”FILE – In this March 12, 2020 photo, medical staff work at one of the emergency structures that were set up to ease procedures at the Brescia hospital, northern Italy.When Stephen Donelson arrived in the emergency room, “we had very little hope for him,” Goff said.The Midlothian man had undergone an organ transplant two years earlier, and the immune-suppressing drugs that prevent rejection of his new lungs and liver meant his body couldn’t fight the coronavirus. Goff’s first challenge: how to scale back those medicines just enough for Donelson to battle the virus without endangering his transplant.Her second: He was fighting against the ventilator’s artificial breaths. So Goff deeply sedated Donelson, paralyzing his muscles to let the machine do all the work.Hospital after hospital struggled with balancing how to get enough air into oxygen-starved coronavirus patients without further damaging fragile lungs.Ventilation is like “blowing air into a sponge and all the little holes are opening up. Walls between the holes can be very thin. If you’re putting in a lot of air, it can damage the lining of those little holes,” explained Osborn, the St. Louis critical care specialist.A trick the doctors shared with each other: Flip patients over from their backs to their stomachs — a procedure called proning that takes pressure off the lungs, which lie closer to the back. It also helps lower fluid accumulation in the lungs.It’s not a one-time fix. Donelson stayed on his belly about 16 hours a day early on, as his doctors watched his oxygen levels improve. It’s also hot and heavy work: Every turn took five or six health workers, in full safety garb, working in slow synchrony to avoid dislodging his breathing tube.Italy’s Alessandro Manzoni Hospital set a schedule: Start turning patients onto their bellies at 2 p.m. — it took more than three hours to work through them all — and then put them on their backs again at 8 a.m., when fresh nurses arrived.Hospitals that specialize in treating ARDS knew how to prone before COVID-19 hit. For many others, it was a brand-new skill their workers had to learn. Fast.”We’ve never had to prone anyone here before the pandemic, but now it’s like second nature,” Kevin Cole, a respiratory therapist at Fort Washington Medical Center in Maryland, said four months into the U.S. outbreak.And some hospitals now are asking patients not yet on ventilators to simply roll over periodically, in hopes it might prevent them from needing more invasive care.”What have we got to lose? That’s something that’s not going to hurt anybody,” Osborn said.Molly Gough, a speech therapist at the Zale Hospital on the UT Southwestern Campus speaks with patient Stephen Donelson as he departs the hospital in Dallas, June 19, 2020.Even in normal times, critical-care specialists know they can’t save all their patients. But they’re used to more hand-holding. With this virus, even garbed in spacesuit-like protective gear, health workers must minimize time with infectious patients to avoid getting sick themselves. And family members are largely barred, too.”My general way of doing things is, no one dies alone,” said Osborn, who holds her phone in front of dying patients so loved ones can say goodbye.She paused to compose herself, and added: “If this is going to happen, and you can provide some comfort that maybe they wouldn’t have gotten if you weren’t there, that’s important.”The newest lesson: Recovery takes a lot longer than surviving.Back in Dallas, Donelson spent 17 days on a ventilator. When it was removed, he was too weak to even sit without support and the breathing tube had taken away his ability to swallow.”He would try to pick his head up off the pillow and it would lob to the side just like a newborn baby,” said his wife, Terri Donelson, who for the first time since his hospital admission finally was allowed to connect with her husband through a videoconferencing app.For days after waking up, Donelson had tremendous delirium, a dangerous state of mental confusion and agitation. He didn’t know where he was or why, and would try to pull out his IV tubes. Then a bacterial infection hit his lungs.Then one morning, worried that Donelson suddenly was too quiet, his doctor donned what she calls her “full-helmet, Darth Vader-style mask, which cannot possibly help anyone’s delirium,” and went in to check on him.”I rubbed his arm,” Goff recalled, asking him to wake up. “I said, ‘Hey are you OK, are you with me?'” and Donelson started trying to talk, at first too raspy to understand.Eventually, she made out that he was wishing her a happy Easter. She can only guess he heard the date on TV.Doctor and patient cried together.That was Donelson’s turning point. He still wasn’t deemed virus-free but physical therapists cautiously spent a little more time helping him gain strength and learn to swallow. His first bite: chocolate pudding.Terri Donelson countered the long periods of isolation by keeping the video app running non-stop, talking to her husband and giving him quizzes to stimulate his memory.”Little by little, with each day, he gains something new, something else reawakens,” she said.Finally, on June 19, 90 days after the frantic ambulance ride, Donelson — still weak but recovering — went home. His doctor is humbled by his survival, and anxiously awaiting better science to help guide care as the pandemic continues.”If you have one patient who leaves a really strong impression on you, you may interpret that patient’s experience to be hallmark. Until we have large, population-based studies of actual outcomes, it’s really hard to know what’s real and what’s not real,” Goff said.
…

The U.S. Gross Domestic Product contracted 9.5% in the second quarter, the worst drop ever recorded according to data published by the Department of Commerce. The massive fall in economic output comes as the country experiences a surge in coronavirus cases that has forced many states to tap the brakes on reopening plans in an effort to again slow the spread of the disease. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
Camera: Skype
Produced by: Kim Weeks
…

Two prominent members of the U.S. Congress issued a stern warning to China on Friday in response to arrest warrants issued for six pro-democracy activists, including a U.S citizen, under Hong Kong’s new national security law.Chinese state television said Friday Hong Kong authorities had issued warrants for Nathan Law, Wayne Chan Ka-kui, Honcques Laus, Simon Cheng, Ray Wong Toi-yeung and Samuel Chu, a U.S. citizen. The six have fled the territory and are wanted on suspicion of violating the national security legislation that entered into force a month ago.Congressman Eliot Engel, Chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, and Senator Robert Menendez, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement, “If Beijing thinks that this effort will silence those who stand for freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, it is gravely mistaken: Today we are all Hong Kongers.”Engel and Menendez said they were deeply concerned by the decision of pro-Beijing authorities of the semi-autonomous territory, which included “an extraterritorial warrant for the arrest of an individual who has been a United States citizen for over two decades.”“This action only further undermines the credibility of China as a responsible rule-abiding member of the international community,” they said. 
…