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Inmates at a prison in central Bolivia staged a rooftop protest Monday, demanding medical services after the deaths of three inmates, including one suspected of having the novel coronavirus. Inmates held up banners calling attention to their plight, including one banner that read, “We want COVID-19 tests.”   A relative of one of the inmates complained that there are no doctors and no medicine.  She said the inmates are dying inside the facility. She implored that authorities cannot let them die, that we are all human beings and we cannot allow the authorities to do this.Inmates protest on the roof of a San Sebastian prison, asking for better medical attention amid the pandemic and to be given the results from previously administered COVID-19 tests, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, July 27, 2020.One inmate said authorities are aware of the deaths of inmates and police. But until today they have not received information about the deaths of other inmates. The demonstrators heightened concerns over their health follows the suspected coronavirus deaths of 23 people in the San Pedro jail in the capital, La Paz.   Officials are reportedly awaiting tests to see if those who died in the La Paz jail were infected with COVID-19. So far, Bolivia has confirmed more than 71,000 coronavirus cases and more than 2,600 deaths. 
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The coronavirus pandemic has forced small businesses around the world to come up with new ways to cope with the new reality – including using technology to stay afloat.   VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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One of the most famous gardens in America is getting a face-lift.  Melania Trump on Monday announced details of a plan already under way to spruce up the White House Rose Garden, an iconic outdoor space famous for its proximity to the Oval Office. The current garden design has been around since the Kennedy years, but the first lady  says a “comprehensive renovation” is needed after decades of use for weddings, state dinners and countless presidential news conferences, statements and Thanksgiving turkey pardons. She used the Rose Garden to announce her “Be Best” youth program in May 2018. Mrs. Trump said the redesign will increase the garden’s “beauty and functionality” and blend the past with the present in “complete harmony.” FILE – First lady Melania Trump speaks during an Indian Health Service Task Force briefing at the White House in Washington, July 23, 2020.”Protecting the historic integrity of the White House landscape is a considerable responsibility, and we will fulfill our duty as custodians of the public trust,” she wrote in the opening of a detailed report on the project, which is expected to be completed in about three weeks. Early signs of the work ahead were visible Monday. Tarps, drapes and other padding had been hung to protect the West Wing colonnade, including in front of the Oval Office. The most visually striking change to the garden will be the addition of a limestone walking path bordering the central lawn, according to Perry Guillot, the landscape architect working on the project. Less noticeable changes include improved drainage and infrastructure, and making the garden more accessible for people with disabilities. Audiovisual, broadcasting and other technical fixes are part of the plan, too. President Donald Trump has been using the Rose Garden more lately for open-air statements and news conferences in the age of coronavirus, a trend he’s likely to continue until the virus is brought under control and as the November presidential election nears.  Mrs. Trump said the plan will return the Rose Garden to its original 1962 footprint. President John F. KennedyPresident John F. Kennedy was so inspired by the gardens he saw during a 1961 state visit to France, and other stops in Europe, that he enlisted his friend Rachel Lambert Mellon to design the outdoor space by the Oval Office.  Inspiration came to Mellon as she walked along New York’s Fifth Avenue on a cold October afternoon in 1961, she wrote for the White House Historical Association.  First ladies are largely in charge of ensuring upkeep of the White House and its grounds, and they often endeavor to leave something behind for future presidential families to enjoy.  Michelle Obama planted a produce garden on the South Lawn that Mrs. Trump has continued.  Mrs. Trump has overseen several renovation projects, including refurbishment of Red Room wall coverings, Blue Room furniture and the White House bowling alley.She faced sharp criticism for announcing, around the time of the virus outbreak earlier this year, that construction had begun on a privately funded tennis pavilion on the south grounds. She pushed back in a tweet that encouraged those “who choose to be negative & question my work” to “contribute something good & productive in their own communities.” The Rose Garden renovation plan, which is also to be paid for with private donations, has been approved by the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, which offers advice on preservation projects. The White House did not provide a cost estimate. 
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​.Daily Debunk”Cuomo Distorts CDC Finding in Blaming Trump,” FactCheck.org, July 24. Social Media DisinfoScreenshotClaim: Photo shows supporters of ABS-CBN, the largest television network in the Philippines, gathering in violation of the country’s COVID-19 restrictions.Verdict: FalseRead the full story at: Agence France-Presse Factual Reads on CoronavirusCoronavirus vaccine: Might it have side-effects?
The BBC’s online health editor Michelle Roberts answers some of your questions about coronavirus vaccines.
— BBC, July 22​
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Deep-pocketed and often anonymous donors are pouring over $100 million into an intensifying dispute about whether it should be easier to vote by mail, a fight that could determine President Donald Trump’s fate in the November election. In the battleground of Wisconsin, cash-strapped cities have received $6.3 million from an organization with ties to left-wing philanthropy to help expand vote by mail. Meanwhile, a well-funded conservative group best known for its focus on judicial appointments is spending heavily to fight cases related to mail-in balloting procedures in court.  And that’s just a small slice of the overall spending, which is likely to swell far higher as the election nears.  The massive effort by political parties, super PACs and other organizations to fight over whether Americans can vote by mail is remarkable considering the practice has long been noncontroversial. But the coronavirus is forcing changes to the way states conduct elections and prompting activists across the political spectrum to seek an advantage, recognizing the contest between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden could hinge on whether voters have an alternative to standing in lines at polling places during a public health crisis.  Some groups are even raising money to prepare for election-related violence. “The pandemic has created a state of emergency,” said Laleh Ispahani, the U.S. managing director for Open Society, a network of nonprofits founded by billionaire progressive donor George Soros. “Donors who haven’t typically taken on these issues now have an interest.” How much will be spent is unclear because many of the organizations are nonprofits that won’t disclose those details to the IRS until well after the election. Even then, many sources of money will remain unknown because such groups don’t have to disclose their donors, commonly referred to as “dark money.”  Tax filings, business records and campaign finance disclosures offer some clues. They reveal vast infrastructure that funnels money from wealthy donors, through philanthropic organizations and political groups, which eventually trickles down to smaller nonprofits, many of which operate under murky circumstances.  On the conservative side, organizations including Judicial Watch, the Honest Elections Project, True the Vote and the Public Interest Legal Foundation are litigating cases related to voting procedures across the U.S.  A substantial portion of the financing comes from Donors Trust, a nonprofit often referred to as the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement. The organization helps wealthy patrons invest in causes they care about while sheltering their identities from the public.  In other instances, funding comes from charitable foundations built by the fortunes of Gilded Age industrialists.  Litigation is a primary focus. Democrats and good government organizations are pushing to eliminate hurdles to absentee voting, like requiring a witness’s signature or allowing third parties to collect ballots. Conservatives say that amounts to an invitation to commit voter fraud. As these issues wind their way through courts, they say judges could decide complex policy matters that often were already debated by state legislatures.  “The wrong way to go about this is to run to court, particularly a week or two before an election, trying to get judges to intervene and second-guess decisions legislatures have made,” said Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project.  His organization is a newly formed offshoot of the Judicial Education Project, a group that previously focused on judicial appointments and received more than $25.3 million between 2016 and 2018 from the Donors Trust, records show. They are deeply intertwined with the conservative Catholic legal movement and share an attorney, William Consovoy, with the Republican National Committee, which has pledged $20 million for voting litigation.  Leonard Leo, a Trump confidant who was instrumental in the confirmations of the president’s Supreme Court nominees, plays a leading role. He’s now chairman of a public relations firm called CRC Advisors, which is overseeing a new effort to establish a clearinghouse for anonymous donors to fund conservative causes, including the fight over vote by mail.  The firm played a significant role in the 2004 election by publicizing unfounded claims made by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, which questioned Democratic nominee John Kerry’s record as a Vietnam War hero, records show.The group’s involvement in vote by mail marks a sea change for Republicans. Claims of widespread voter fraud have long energized segments of the party’s base. But it did not elicit much interest from donors, and the handful of groups devoted to the issue operated on minuscule budgets.  But in recent years, Democrats have mounted legal challenges that threatened voting laws championed by conservatives. And Trump’s repeated focus on “rigged elections” has made the issue part of a broader culture war. Still, some activists question the GOP establishment’s commitment to the cause.  “They aren’t going to take on Republicans like we have,” said Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder of True the Vote. While Republicans are focused on the courts and raising doubts about vote by mail, the challenge faced by Democrats is far more daunting. In addition to litigation, they must mobilize their base during a pandemic. That includes educating the public about vote by mail, a difficult task when door-to-door canvasing isn’t an option.  Some groups are donating directly to local governments. In Wisconsin, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit with ties to left-leaning philanthropy, has donated $6.3 million to the state’s five largest cities to set up ballot drop boxes, help voters file absentee ballot requests and expand in-person early voting. Even before the pandemic, government funding for elections was limited. Since then, the outbreak has escalated costs while cratering tax revenue.  “Due to COVID, there definitely has been a higher cost,” said Mayor John Antaramian, of Kenosha, which received $863,000 through the grant — roughly four times what the city budgeted for the election. “Is there a financial shortfall on that basis? Of course.”  Much of the money on the left is likely to come from a series of nonprofit funds controlled by the consulting firm Arabella Advisors, which typically routes upwards of $500 million a year to causes supported by liberal donors. The firm was founded by Eric Kessler, who served in Bill Clinton’s White House. The firm has been instrumental in financing so-called resistance groups following Trump’s election. And some nonprofits they’ve provided seed money were responsible for millions of dollars in TV advertising that blistered Republicans during the 2018 midterms. They’ve also pioneered the practice of creating “pop-up” organizations: groups that appear to be grassroots-driven efforts to influence public policy, which use trade names that obscure a deep pool of resources from those with ideological or financial motivations.  The firm recently registered a handful of trade names for groups that appear to be focused on voting rights, records show.  Another effort Arabella Advisors are involved in, the Trusted Elections Fund, aims to raise between $8 million and $10 million in case the pandemic leads to chaos in November.  The group is preparing for potential foreign hacking of state voting systems, “election day or post-election day violence,” as well as contested results.  A Trusted Elections Fund representative declined to comment. But a two-page summary available online elaborated on their aims.  “Philanthropy has a responsibility to make sure that we are prepared for emergencies that could threaten our democracy,” it read.   
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Gathered in the small assembly hall in Little Rock, Arkansas, their chairs spaced 6 feet (1.83 meters) apart, the business leaders listen admiringly to the nation’s chief law enforcement official.
They ask Attorney General William Barr about elder fraud. They ask about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, about protection of federal monuments. And each thanks Barr for his devotion and service, praising him as a patriot who is working tirelessly to protect America and restore order.
But there are those who disagree. Outside, Black Lives Matter protesters approach the doors, screaming, chanting and banging on the windows. The business leaders strain to be heard over the din.
“We’ve been here an hour and now we all understand what you go through every day,” a middle-age banker tells Barr, “so thank you.”
Barr can expect this kind of praise when he appears Tuesday for the first time before the House Judiciary Committee — but only from its Republicans. To them, he is a conservative stalwart, an unflappable foe of the left and its excesses, and — most importantly — a staunch defender of President Donald Trump.
The reception from the Democrats will be closer to the hostility of Little Rock’s demonstrators.
In the course of roughly 18 months in office, the 70-year-old Barr has become inexorably linked to a norm-busting president with sagging popularity and uncertain reelection prospects.
His actions, including the investigation he launched into the Russia probe, have deepened criticism of him as Trump’s faithful protector. Democrats have suggested he should be impeached and are holding hearings into what they say is the politicization of the Justice Department under his watch.
He came to the job with the reputation of an establishment Republican, and the expectation, by some, that he would temper the behavior of an impulsive and iconoclastic president. He has not, leading some to believe he has tailored his principles to conform with Trump’s views on politics and the law.
In fact, for decades Barr has made no secret of his commitment to law and order and his support for expansive presidential power. Those views have married neatly with a president who has repeatedly tested the limits of executive authority, a pairing that has benefited both men and perhaps allowed Barr to let down his hair more than ever before.
The people who know him insist that Barr is just being Barr — that he is not motivated by ambition or anything other than the opportunity to put his heartfelt beliefs into practice.
“He doesn’t have anything to prove from a professional or career standpoint,” said his longtime colleague and friend, attorney Chuck Cooper. “He’s been at the apex of the legal profession for a long time. And so, in that respect, he’s unlike any other attorney general. He’s already ascended to that pinnacle once before.”
 
Only one other attorney general has served two non-consecutive terms — John J. Crittenden, who held the job under presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler and later Millard Fillmore in the 19th century. Barr’s first stint was from 1991 to 1993, under President George H.W. Bush.
He first encountered Bush, then director of the CIA, when Barr was working for the intelligence agency’s legislative counsel while attending law school. Bush was testifying before Congress against a proposal to notify people whose mail had been read by the CIA.
Barr would recall, in an oral history for the University of Virginia: “Someone asked him a question, and he leaned back and said, ‘How the hell do I answer this one?’ I whispered the answer in his ear, and he gave it, and I thought: ‘Who is this guy? He listens to legal advice when it’s given.'”
Clearly, he liked having the ear of the powerful.  
Devoutly Catholic son of the headmaster at a tony prep school, Barr had an upper-class, New York City upbringing: parochial elementary school, then storied Horace Mann prep school, and on to Columbia University and George Washington University for law.
He was conservative from a young age. It is often noted that as a kindergartner, he gave a speech for Dwight Eisenhower. He announced he was supporting Richard Nixon in his Roman Catholic elementary school and a nun took him aside and promised to pray for him. He told a high school counselor he wanted to run the CIA.  
But he did not stay at the CIA. He held a clerkship with a U.S. Court of Appeals judge on the D.C. circuit, then went into private practice — though he kept a toe in the political world, working on candidate vetting, among other things. He served in the Reagan White House for more than a year.
Then, when Bush was elected, Barr joined the Justice Department — first as assistant attorney general of the Office of Legal Counsel, then as deputy attorney general, and finally as attorney general.  
Even then, his views of executive power were expansive: He advised George H.W. Bush’s administration that congressional authorization was not needed to attack Iraq but said a resolution of support would be helpful, nonetheless. He blessed Bush’s desire to pardon Reagan administration officials in the Iran-Contra scandal as within the president’s authority, and provided legal justification for the Bush administration to invade Panama and arrest Manuel Noriega.
His post-government career included a string of lucrative private-sector legal jobs — including general counsel for Verizon Communications and attorney for the Caterpillar construction equipment company — until he answered Donald Trump’s call to replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general.
Barr arrived at his confirmation hearings with credentials as a member of more mainstream, and conventional, Republican circles than Trump. He was seen as a reasonable choice to restore normalcy to an agency riven with tumult, including an attorney general whose recusal from the Russia investigation left him openly and publicly despised by the president.|
Despite early indications of an askance view of the Russia investigation — he authored a memo months before his nomination critical of special counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts — he struck a soothing note at his confirmation hearing.
Mueller would of course be permitted to finish his work, he said. A president who offered a pardon in exchange for the concealment of incriminating information may well be committing obstruction, Barr said. And a nominee who had proposed names other than his own for the job reassured the Senate that, as someone already near the end of his career, he had no need to curry favor with the president.
He was confirmed 54-45, mostly along party lines.
But that support began to erode weeks later after he cleared Trump of obstruction of justice allegations even when Mueller and his team had pointedly declined to do the same, and after he produced a summary letter of Mueller’s investigation that painted a more flattering portrait for the president than the special counsel had done.
He’s since initiated an investigation of the Russia probe that Trump supporters have embraced, but that Democrats see as vindictive and backward-looking.
“In his confirmation hearing, I came in with an open mind, especially because a series of people who’d previously served with him in the DOJ, a long time ago, had reached out to me to say they believed he was committed to the rule of law and would be a good attorney general,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. “But I have become more and more concerned about his priorities, and his leadership as the months have gone on.”
Barr’s supporters and friends describe him as unmoved by the criticism, committed to actions that he sees as appropriate and proper regardless of what anyone thinks.
“Nobody likes criticism, but Bill is one of those folks who follows his own path and is self-confident enough that he believes he’s doing the right thing in each case. I think he’s less affected by public criticism than some. I would compare him to someone like Justice Scalia,” said Andrew McBride, a Washington lawyer and longtime Barr friend.
Which is a good thing for Barr, because in his second term as AG he has faced far more criticism than he did in his first. And as Barr often jokes, he’s far more recognizable now than he was in the 1990s; he’s even been stopped in European bars for selfies.  
He sought leniency in the sentencing of Trump ally Roger Stone — his idea alone, he insists, and a “righteous decision based on the merits.” The move promoted angry dissent in the Justice Department and the swift resignation of a well-regarded prosecutor, and though the judge did impose a sentence shorter than what the trial team had sought, Trump commuted the sentence anyway.
He also moved to dismiss the prosecution of former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn, a request the Justice Department expected would be simple but that has instead produced a pitched fight before a federal appeals court.
He tried to fire the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, but that didn’t go precisely as planned when U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman refused to step aside, leaving Berman’s deputy in his place instead of the prosecutor Barr had selected to replace him.
The actions have resulted in open letters signed by thousands of Justice Department alumni who have demanded Barr’s resignation.
They’ve also reinforced criticism that he is facilitating the vision of a president who has shown little regards for the historic norms that have for decades guided the relationship between the White House and the Justice Department, chief among them that law enforcement operates independent of politics when it comes to cases and matters.
Trump and Barr have broken on occasion: Trump wanted a full-on prosecution of players in the Russia probe, like Andrew McCabe, and bristled when Barr asked him to stop tweeting about Stone, saying that the tweets were making it impossible to do his job.
But largely, Barr has delivered, Trump has told confidants, including when he moved to drop the Flynn prosecution and ousted Berman.
And it was Barr, acting on the president’s “law and order” pledge, who stood in Washington’s Lafayette Square last month before law enforcement cleared the street of demonstrators at the height of the George Floyd protests. A short time later, he stood just a few feet away as the president held a Bible aloft outside St. John’s Church, creating one of the defining — and, as it turned out, politically damaging — moments of his presidency.
Barr fancies himself a lawman’s lawman. While sheriffs and even many rank-and-file officers adore him, after all these years he doesn’t quite fit in with the blue-collar world of the working-class cop.
Just before Christmas, Barr visited New York’s One Police Plaza to meet with New York Police Department brass after a series of suicides among New York police officers. Later that night, he hosted a thank-you dinner for hundreds of officers. The NYPD sent two officers from each precinct, along with some chiefs, the NYPD’s commissioner and his chief deputy.
As the officers streamed into the Queens catering hall, bagpipes played in the background. (Barr is a competitive bagpipe player, though he also rocks out to Shakira.)
The officers were offered drinks. But they were in uniform — Barr didn’t realize that they were not allowed alcohol. Barr apologized and told them to eat up. He paid the bill — well over $10,000 — out of his own pocket, handing the owner his credit card.
Barr has devoted numerous speeches to discussing restoring the rule of law in America. A signature line: There is no more noble profession than being a law enforcement officer. Even as the nation engages in a growing conversation about police reform, Barr has loudly cautioned that going too far — allowing the pendulum to swing all the way — would be detrimental.
Earlier this month, Barr flew to South Carolina and Arkansas to meet with police officials and community leaders. At a predominantly African American church, community leaders told him they didn’t want to “defund” the police. The officers in their communities needed more training and better resources. Police officials shared the same views.  
Barr has said he recognizes there is racism in the U.S., and that there’s reason for some communities to be more suspicious of law enforcement than others, but he doesn’t think that the system is systemically racist.  
“Like all power, it can be abused. And people just sort of act like it is an either-or situation, it’s all about abuse or, you know, beat the Iron Fist,” Barr said in an interview.  
Instead, he believes it is incumbent upon the government to ensure there are adequate policies in place to protect against abuse and that officers have proper training. But going too far and pushing to defund or disband police departments or moving quickly to bring criminal charges against police officers without robust investigations is likely to lead to a mass exodus of officers, he argues.
The demonstrations happening across the country aren’t a totally new phenomenon for Barr, and George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer is reminiscent of a major civil rights investigation he handled in his first stint as attorney general — the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles in the early 1990s.  
When a state jury acquitted three officers, and failed to reach a verdict on a fourth, it was the Barr Justice Department that brought federal charges in the case, leading to convictions of two officers.  
Barr is one of the most hands-on attorneys general the nation has ever seen. He often digs into the minutia of cases or pressing investigations and demands briefings, sometimes every half hour.
But Democrats on Capitol Hill have accused Barr of acting more like Trump’s personal lawyer than America’s chief law enforcement officer. For Barr, that’s a criticism easily shrugged off.
“I dismiss it because like many other talking points these days, there’s never any actual particular matter presented to support it, so I ignore it as just part of the general background noise,” Barr said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
But the criticism isn’t limited to congressional Democrats. Many former federal prosecutors have puzzled over actions that they see as breaking against Justice Department convention and tilting in the favor of Trump allies, including his push to drop the prosecution of a former adviser, Michael Flynn, who had already pleaded guilty.
Like Trump, he believes there must be a thorough investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation that shadowed Trump’s presidency, even as Democrats decry those probes as politically motivated. What seems “to upset them is that I am dead set on making sure we get to the bottom of what happened during the 2016 election period,” he said.
He points to the Justice Department inspector general’s report that found flaws in how the FBI’s Russia investigation was conducted. Despite the problems the watchdog office identified, it nonetheless determined that the FBI had a legitimate basis to launch a full investigation — a finding Barr disagrees with — and that the probe was not motivated by political bias.
At the end of the day, Barr insists his most controversial decisions have been right and just.  
“I think the only way to handle this kind of job, especially in the kind of environment we are in, is to just put one foot in front of the other, and every time a decision is brought to you, you make a decision and walk away with a clear conscience,” Barr said.
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A Brooklyn man who told French police investigators that he killed his wife by stabbing her twice during an argument has been charged with her murder, a prosecutor said Monday. The French-American, identified in French media reports as Billy Kruger, told investigators that he acted in self-defense, Marie-Agnès Joly, a prosecutor in the southwest city of Narbonne, told The Associated Press. Kruger was placed under formal investigation Sunday on a preliminary charge of aggravated murder and ordered held in jail, pending a possible trial. The body of his wife, 52-year-old Laure Bardina-Kruger, was found Friday in Peyriac-de-Mer, on the Mediterranean coast, south of Narbonne. The couple lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he is a diving instructor and she worked as a teacher, Joly said. The couple had a holiday home in Peyriac-de-Mer, and police found the wife’s body hidden in the storm drain nearby. The husband was detained Friday as he was preparing to fly from Toulouse, bound for Jakarta, the prosecutor said. The couple had been expected to fly out together. The wife’s parents raised the alarm after they were unable to reach the couple by phone ahead of the flight. Police sent to the couple’s home found that the wife’s belongings were still there. They then learned that the husband had checked into the flight alone. He was arrested in the boarding zone of the airport. During police questioning, the man said he stabbed his wife twice, the prosecutor said. He said they’d been arguing and he put forward “a vague” explanation of self-defense, she said. The investigation is continuing.  
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Serbia is seeking to further strengthen its armed forces by purchasing more warplanes, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Sunday. Vucic made the statement while visiting an army tank brigade in Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia’s autonomous province of Vojvodina. “We cannot keep track of the gifts and donations that certain NATO counties in the neighborhood are getting from the United States, Germany and other countries and therefore we must fight alone to preserve the peace alone and to preserve our future alone,” Vucic said. Vucic did not specify what warplanes Belgrade plans to buy but said the intention is the safety of his country and the stability and peace in the Balkan region. “We, as a military neutral country, want to preserve our military neutrality, which means that we look after our sky alone, to look after our country alone. We will invest money and I believe that we, by not wanting to participate in any sort of race, will always be able to guarantee safety, stability but also peace,” Vucic continued. Pro-government media reported that Serbia had officially asked the United States for 20 fighter-bombers, but Washington had not responded to the request.  The report, however, speculated that in case of a U.S. refusal, Serbia was likely to purchase “Sukhoi-25” attack aircraft from Russia. “The Americans, Turks and Germans are taking care of their beloved child,” Vucic said, referring to Kosovo. He said Washington had recently equipped Kosovo’s security forces with armored vehicles. Although claiming Serbia’s military neutrality, Belgrade has recently received a sophisticated anti-aircraft system from Russia, including fighter jets, attack helicopters, and armored vehicles. Serbia has also obtained military drones from another ally, China. The U.S. has said that it would impose sanctions against Serbia if Moscow sends more arms to the country, which could threaten the security of neighboring NATO members. 
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Many Roman Catholic churches in Mexico City, including its main cathedral, celebrated the first Mass Sunday after three months of lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. Restrictions, however, are still in place, including mandatory face masks, shortened services, and church occupancy not more than 20%. “We are filled with joy to be able to receive our faithful and to be with them at this time when it has been so hard for them not to participate in the celebrations,” Auxiliary Bishop Salvador Gonzalez Morales said. Observing the sanitary measures to protect themselves from COVID-19, parishioners were nevertheless happy to attend Mass. “I felt very happy because I had been wanting to come for a long time and I couldn’t.  The Church wasn’t open. And now I was very pleased to be able to visit the Blessed Sacrament, to talk to him,” Maria Juana Flores, a church attendee, said. Another parishioner felt spiritually empowered to be able to go to church. “Peace and quiet. The spirit, one receives a spiritual force that lifts us up, right?” Hugo Perez, a church attendee, said. Mexican federal authorities left the decision on opening places of worship to state governments and city councils. The Mexican clergy has been hit hard by the coronavirus, with 46 priests, six deacons and three nuns dead as of July 15, according to data provided by the Catholic Multimedia Center of Mexico. The country now has over 385,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 43,000 deaths. 
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Australia’s competition regulator has launched court proceedings against Alphabet’s Google for allegedly misleading consumers about the expanded use of personal data for targeted advertising.The case by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in Federal Court said Google did not explicitly get consent nor properly inform consumers about a 2016 move to combine personal information in Google accounts with activities on non-Google websites that use its technology.The regulator said this practice allowed the Alphabet Inc unit to link the names and other ways to identify consumers with their behavior elsewhere on the internet.Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The move by the ACCC comes amid heightened attention in much of the world on data privacy. U.S. and European lawmakers have recently stepped up their focus on how tech companies treat user data because of privacy concerns.”We are taking this action because we consider Google misled Australian consumers about what it planned to do with large amounts of their personal information, including internet activity on websites not connected to Google,” ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.The regulator alleges Google used the combined data to boost targeted advertising – a key source of income – and that it did not make clear to consumers about changes in its privacy policy.The regulator did not say what it wanted the court to do, adding that it has filed the claim on a “confidential basis pending claims by Google.”
 
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Protests took a violent turn in several U.S. cities over the weekend with demonstrators squaring off against federal agents outside a courthouse in Portland, Oregon, forcing police in Seattle to retreat into a station house and setting fire to vehicles in California and Virginia.A protest against police violence in Austin, Texas, turned deadly when police said a protester was shot and killed by a person who drove through a crowd of marchers. And someone was shot and wounded in Aurora, Colorado, after a car drove through a protest there, authorities said.The unrest Saturday and early Sunday stemmed from the weeks of protests over racial injustice and the police treatment of people of color that flared up after the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd, who was Black and handcuffed, died after a white police officer used his knee to pin down Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes while Floyd begged for air.In Seattle, police officers retreated into a precinct station early Sunday, hours after large demonstrations in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Some demonstrators lingered after officers filed into the department’s East Precinct around 1 a.m., but most cleared out a short time later, according to video posted online.At a late-night news conference, Seattle police Chief Carmen Best called for peace. Rocks, bottles, fireworks and mortars were fired at police during the weekend unrest, and police said they arrested at least 45 people for assaults on officers, obstruction and failure to disperse. Twenty-one officers were hurt, with most of their injuries considered minor, police said.In Portland, thousands of people gathered Saturday evening for another night of protests over George Floyd’s killing and the presence of federal agents recently sent to the city by President Donald Trump. Protesters breached a fence surrounding the city’s federal courthouse building where the agents have been stationed.Police declared the situation to be a riot and at around 1:20 a.m., they began ordering people to leave the area surrounding the courthouse or risk arrest, saying on Twitter that the violence had created “a grave risk” to the public. About 20 minutes later, federal officers and local police could be seen attempting to clear the area and deploying tear gas, however protesters remained past 2:30 a.m., forming lines across intersections and holding makeshift shields as police patrolled and closed blocks abutting the area. Multiple arrests were made, but it wasn’t immediately clear how many.In the Texas capital of Austin, 28-year-old Garrett Foster was shot and killed Saturday night by a person who had driven through the march against police violence.Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said a car turned onto the block where protesters stood and honked its horn. The driver and several witnesses told police that Foster approached the driver and pointed an assault rifle at them.In video streamed live on Facebook, a car can be heard honking before several shots ring out and protesters start screaming and scattering for cover. Police could then be seen tending to someone lying in the street.Manley said the driver called 911 to report the incident and was later taken into custody and released. Police didn’t immediately identify the driver.Sheila Foster, Garrett’s mother, said she was told her son was pushing his fiancée, who uses a wheelchair, through an intersection when the suspect was driving “erratically” through the crowd. She said she was told the driver shot her son three times.In the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, meanwhile, a protester shot and wounded someone after a car drove through a crowd marching on an interstate highway, police said. The wounded person was taken to a hospital in stable condition. Police didn’t release many details about the shooting, including whether the person who was shot had been in the car. Police said on Twitter that demonstrators also caused “major damage” to a courthouse.Protesters in Oakland, California, set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station, broke windows, spray-painted graffiti, shot fireworks and pointed lasers at officers after a peaceful demonstration Saturday evening turned to unrest, police said.In Virginia’s capital, Richmond, a dump truck was torched as several hundred protesters and police faced off late Saturday during a demonstration of support for the protesters in Portland. Police declared it to be an “unlawful assembly” at around 11 p.m. and used what appeared to be tear gas to disperse the group. Five people were arrested in the incident and charged with unlawful assembly. A sixth person was also arrested and charged with rioting and assault on a law enforcement officer.In downtown Atlanta on Sunday, federal agents examined damage to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility where windows were shattered late Saturday. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, FBI spokesman Kevin Rowson said in an email. No arrests had been announced.And in Baltimore, people from a group of nearly 100 demonstrators spray-painted anti-police messages on a Fraternal Order of Police building and adjacent sidewalks on Saturday night, The Baltimore Sun reported.|
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Olivia de Havilland, the doe-eyed actress beloved to millions as the sainted Melanie Wilkes of “Gone With the Wind,” but also a two-time Oscar winner and an off-screen fighter who challenged and unchained Hollywood’s contract system, died Sunday at her home in Paris. She was 104.  Havilland, the sister of fellow Oscar winner Joan Fontaine, died peacefully of natural causes, said New York-based publicist Lisa Goldberg.De Havilland was among the last of the top screen performers from the studio era, and the last surviving lead from “Gone With the Wind,” an irony, she once noted, since the fragile, self-sacrificing Wilkes was the only major character to die in the film. The 1939 epic, based on Margaret Mitchell’s best-selling Civil War novel and winner of 10 Academy Awards, is often ranked as Hollywood’s box office champion (adjusting for inflation), although it is now widely condemned for its glorified portrait of slavery and antebellum life.The pinnacle of producer David O. Selznick’s career, the movie had a troubled off-screen story.  Three directors worked on the film, stars Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable were far more connected on screen than off and the fourth featured performer, Leslie Howard, was openly indifferent to the role of Ashley Wilkes, Melanie’s husband. But de Havilland remembered the movie as “one of the happiest experiences I’ve ever had in my life. It was doing something I wanted to do, playing a character I loved and liked.”During a career that spanned six decades, de Havilland also took on roles ranging from an unwed mother to a psychiatric inmate in “The Snake Pit,” a personal favorite. The dark-haired De Havilland projected both a gentle, glowing warmth and a sense of resilience and mischief that made her uncommonly appealing, leading critic James Agee to confess he was “vulnerable to Olivia de Havilland in every part of my being except the ulnar nerve.”She was Errol Flynn’s co-star in a series of dramas, Westerns and period pieces, most memorably as Maid Marian in “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” But De Havilland also was a prototype for an actress too beautiful for her own good, typecast in sweet and romantic roles while desiring greater challenges.  Her frustration finally led her to sue Warner Bros. in 1943 when the studio tried to keep her under contract after it had expired, claiming she owed six more months because she had been suspended for refusing roles. Her friend Bette Davis was among those who had failed to get out of her contract under similar conditions in the 1930s, but de Havilland prevailed, with the California Court of Appeals ruling that no studio could extend an agreement without the performer’s consent.  The decision is still unofficially called the “De Havilland law.”De Havilland went on to earn her own Academy Award in 1946 for her performance in “To Each His Own,” a melodrama about out-of-wedlock birth. A second Oscar came three years later for “The Heiress,” in which she portrayed a plain young homebody (as plain as it was possible to make de Havilland) opposite Montgomery Clift and Sir Ralph Richardson in an adaptation of Henry James’ “Washington Square.” In 2008, de Havilland received a National Medal of Arts and was awarded France’s Legion of Honor two years later.She was also famous, not always for the better, as the sister of Fontaine, with whom she had a troubled relationship. In a 2016 interview, de Havilland referred to her late sister as “Dragon Lady” and said her memories of Fontaine, who died in 2013, were “multi-faceted, varying from endearing to alienating.””On my part, it was always loving, but sometimes estranged and, in the later years, severed,” she said. “Dragon Lady, as I eventually decided to call her, was a brilliant, multi-talented person, but with an astigmatism in her perception of people and events which often caused her to react in an unfair and even injurious way.”De Havilland once observed that Melanie Wilkes’ happiness was sustained by a loving, secure family, a blessing that eluded the actress even in childhood.  She was born in Tokyo on July 1, 1916, the daughter of a British patent attorney. Her parents separated when she was 3, and her mother brought her and her younger sister Joan, to Saratoga, California. De Havilland’s own two marriages, to Marcus Goodrich and Pierre Galante, ended in divorce.Her acting ambitions dated back to stage performing at Mills College in Oakland, California. While preparing for a school production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she went to Hollywood to see Max Reinhardt’s rehearsals of the same comedy. She was asked by to read for Hermia’s understudy, stayed with the production through her summer vacation and was given the role in the fall.Warner Bros. wanted stage actors for their lavish 1935 production and chose de Havilland to co-star with Mickey Rooney, who played Puck.”II wanted to be a stage actress,” she recalled. “Life sort of made the decision for me.”She signed a five-year contract with the studio and went on to make “Captain Blood,” “Dodge City” and other films with Flynn, a hopeless womanizer even by Hollywood standards.”Oh, Errol had such magnetism! There was nobody who did what he did better than he did,” said de Havilland, whose bond with the dashing actor remained, she would insist, improbably platonic. As she once explained, “We were lovers together so often on the screen that people could not accept that nothing had happened between us.”She did date Howard Hughes and James Stewart and had an intense affair in the early ’40s with John Huston. Their relationship led to conflict with Davis, her co-star for the Huston-directed “In This Our Life”; Davis would complain that de Havilland, a supporting actress in the film, was getting greater and more flattering time on camera.De Havilland allegedly never got along with Fontaine, a feud magnified by the 1941 Oscar race that placed her against her sister for best actress honors. Fontaine was nominated for the Hitchcock thriller “Suspicion” while de Havilland was cited for “Hold Back the Dawn, a drama co-written by Billy Wilder and starring de Havilland as a school teacher wooed by the unscrupulous Charles Boyer.Asked by a gossip columnist if they ever fought, de Havilland responded, “Of course, we fight. What two sisters don’t battle?” Like a good Warner Bros soap opera, their relationship was a juicy narrative of supposed slights and snubs, from de Havilland reportedly refusing to congratulate Fontaine for winning the Oscar to Fontaine making a cutting crack about de Havilland’s poor choice of agents and husbands.Though she once filmed as many as three pictures a year, her career slowed in middle age. She made several movies for television, including “Roots” and “Charles and Diana,” in which she portrayed the Queen Mother. She also co-starred with Davis in the macabre camp classic “Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte” and was menaced by a young James Caan in the 1964 chiller “Lady in a Cage,” condemning her tormenter as “one of the many bits of offal produced by the welfare state.”  In 2009, she narrated a documentary about Alzheimer’s, “I Remember Better When I Paint.” Catherine Zeta-Jones played de Havilland in the 2017 FX miniseries about Davis and Joan Crawford, but de Havilland objected to being portrayed as a gossip and sued FX. The case was dismissed.Despite her chronic stage fright, she did summer stock in Westport, Connecticut, and Easthampton, New York. Moviemaking, she said, produced a different kind of anxiety: “The first day of making a film I feel, `Why did I ever get mixed up in this profession? I have no talent; this time they’ll find out.'” 
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With more than four million confirmed cases of COVID-19 across the country, many U.S. states are pausing reopening efforts, leaving those who remain unemployed unsure about their futures. Senate Republicans plan to introduce another coronavirus relief bill this week. VOA’s Esha Sarai has more.
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Turkey’s decision to convert the ancient Hagia Sophia monument back into a mosque has sparked a war of words between Athens and Ankara. However, as Greece intensifies its diplomatic scramble to slap sanctions on Turkey, Greek businesses have launched a campaign to boycott goods and services from the neighboring country.Vassilis Korkidis, a leading representative of commerce in Greece, is blunt about the need, as he puts it, to strike back at Turkey.We recognize the ongoing works and efforts of the government to counter the recasting of Hagia Sophia, he said. However, until that materializes into something concrete, Korkidis said, Greek businesses should waste no time in boycotting trade with their Turkish partners.Even on a personal level, he says, consumers should follow suit. They can do so immediately, he said, boycotting Turkish goods, which bear the numbers 868 and 869 on the barcodes of imported products.Despite age-old animosity between the two countries, trade relations have grown substantially in recent years. Greece’s annual exports to Turkey total about $1.6 billion, significantly more than the $1.2 billion in imports from Turkey.Whether Greeks will heed the trade boycott remains unclear, especially as the economy here has been thrown into chaos by the COVID-19 pandemic.However, the anger, sadness and resentment toward the Hagia Sophia recast weighs heavily in this largely Eastern Orthodox country — so much in fact, that experts say any short-lived trade gain is offset by bigger losses.In this Presidential Press Office handout picture, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends Friday prayers at Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul, July 24, 2020.Korkidis explained, “We may enjoy a generous trade surplus, he says, but when you factor in the resources that Greece has to pull together to fend off continued flows of illegal migration from Turkey, and the huge military costs now racking up to safeguard against Turkish provocations — well all of that wipes out any semblance of a surplus.”The issue of Hagia Sophia is just the latest of a string of crises Greece is facing from its fellow NATO member, Turkey. Relations have been aggravated for years over land and sea rights in the Aegean, as well as thousands of illegal migrants continuing to stream into Greece from Turkey. In recent weeks, also, tensions have soared as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to begin drilling for oil and gas in waters Greece considers its own. Greek business associations say they are already reaching out to partner organizations across Europe to institute build an even broader boycott against Turkey.It is clear that the West is becoming increasingly unnerved by the actions of Turkey, Korkidis said. It is high time, he said, that Erdogan’s government stops using cultural issues to advance its political agenda.The trade boycott is just one of many grassroots movements and protests, swelling in Greece.On Sunday, alone, church bells tolled anew across the nation while tens of thousands of people packed into houses of prayer, singing hymns in honor of the Hagia Sophia, the seat of Eastern Christianity for about a thousand years before Ottoman Turks conquered its host city, then known as Constantinople.Protesters burn a Turkish national flag outside of a church during a gathering in Thessaloniki, July 24, 2020, against turning the historic Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to a mosque after serving for more than 80 years as museum.In more worrying signs, though, teams of far-right nationalists fanned out across a city in northern Greece, torching a Turkish flag. The Greek government condemned the move. Still, it stoked nationalist and patriotic passions with a fresh round stinging remarks against the country’s age-old foe by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.He said Turkey is a troublemaker threatening peace and security in the region, he says, but we have shown, that we can defend our borders, the European Union’s frontiers.Greece believes the Hagia Sophia conversion is part of a bigger plan by Turkey to reassert itself as a regional and energy superpower.Turkey says Greece is significantly overreacting. Even so, Greece insists it is not taking any chances, keeping its forces on code-red alert, ready to wage war if further provoked on any front. 
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Pakistan and China have refuted as “absurd” and “fabricated” media reports that the two close allies are jointly conducting secret research to develop biological weapons in breach of global treaties. 
 
An Australian publication, The Klaxon, alleged in its investigative report last week that Beijing and Islamabad have entered a covert three-year deal “to expand potential bio-warfare capabilities, including running several research projects related to the deadly agent anthrax.” 
 
The report quoted multiple intelligence sources as saying that China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology had “lent all financial material and scientific support” to set up the secret facility in Pakistan. “The Wuhan lab was providing “extensive training on manipulation of pathogens and bio-informatics” to Pakistani scientists “to help Pakistan develop its own virus collection database,” it said.  
 
“It is a politically motivated and fake story, composed of distortion of facts and fabrications that quote anonymous sources,” said a Pakistan Foreign Ministry statement issued Sunday. 
 
It insisted that “there is nothing secret” about the facility referred to in the report, saying the laboratory is being used for research and development on emerging health threats, surveillance and diseases outbreak investigation.  
 
The ministry noted that Pakistan has been “strictly” abiding by its international obligations and has been sharing information about the laboratory in question with states parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The international treaty forbids member nations from developing, producing and stockpiling biological agent or toxin. 
 
“The attempt to cast aspersions about the facility is particularly absurd against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has highlighted the need for better preparedness in the areas of disease surveillance and control and international collaborations in that regard,” the Pakistani statement lamented. 
 
The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan also denounced as “fabricated” the Australian media report.  
 
“It is totally irresponsible, vicious-intentioned to smear China and Sino-Pak relations. As a responsible nation, China always lives up to its obligations to BWC,” the diplomatic mission tweeted Sunday.  
 
Pakistan and China have traditionally maintained close political, economic and defense relations. The two neighboring countries have over the past six years further cemented bilateral ties, with Beijing investing billions of dollars in major infrastructure and energy development projects in Pakistan. 
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Hurricane Hanna battered the south Texas coast with blistering winds and crashing waves into the early hours of Sunday, leaving a large area already badly hit by COVID-19 bracing for torrential downpours and potential flash floods. Hanna came ashore on Padre Island on Saturday afternoon as a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, and later made a second landfall in Eastern Kennedy County, Texas. Weakening as it headed west over land, Hanna was a tropical storm by Sunday morning, with its center about 40 miles (65 km) from Mcallen, Texas and about 65 miles (105 km) from Monterrey, Mexico, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. Two men stand near a seawall as Hurricane Hanna makes landfall, July 25, 2020, in Corpus Christi, Texas.At 0400 CDT (0900 GMT), Hanna’s top sustained winds were around 60 miles per hour (95 kph), it said. It was forecast to further lose steam as it moved across Texas and northeastern Mexico. The center canceled storm surge warning it had issued for the Texas coast but said Hanna could dump upward of 18 inches (45 cm) of rain in the area through Monday. “This rain will produce, life-threatening flash flooding, rapid rises on small streams, and isolated minor to moderate river flooding,” the NHC said. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said during a Saturday briefing that the storm was especially challenging as it was sweeping through an area of the state that has been the worst hit by the coronavirus. He issued a disaster declaration for 32 counties in Texas that were in the storm’s path. The storm was not expected to affect offshore oil and gas production. Energy companies have not evacuated workers or shut down production from their Gulf of Mexico platforms because of Hanna. The Texas area struck by Hanna has struggled to contain outbreaks of COVID-19 in recent weeks. Cases along the state’s coast have soared into the tens of thousands. More than 400 people in Corpus Christi were hospitalized with the illness on Friday, according to city data. 
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French authorities have charged a Rwandan church volunteer who confessed to setting the 15-century Nantes cathedral on fire.The local prosecutor’s office said that the 39-year-old asylum-seeker who has lived in France for several years, was detained Saturday for a second time.  He had been held for a day, questioned and released immediately after the fire on July 18.Prosecutor Pierre Sennès, said the suspect admitted being responsible for the fire that started in three different places at the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul after initially denying it.Sennès said in a statement that the man has been charged with “destruction and damage by fire,” and faced up to 10 years in prison and $175,000 in fines. French authorities have not identified the man and gave no motive for the arson.His lawyer, identified in the media as Quentin Chabert, said his client bitterly regretted his acts. 
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