| This powerful image of a Black man carrying a white counter-protester to safety frames a day of chaos and race-inspired violence in London Posted: 14 Jun 2020 03:06 AM PDT  The picture was taken as hundreds of white demonstrators, some of which belong to far-right groups, clashed with police in central London on Saturday.
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| Emergency meeting held in South Korea after Kim Jong Un's sister threatens military action Posted: 14 Jun 2020 05:08 AM PDT  South Korean military "is maintaining resolute military readiness to respond to all situation," the country's defense ministry said.
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| Fox News reportedly edited photos of Seattle's largely peaceful 'autonomous zone' to include an armed man in front of smashed storefronts Posted: 13 Jun 2020 09:11 AM PDT  According to The Seattle Times, Fox News edited images of the gunman and smashed storefronts were taken on separate occasions more than 10 days apart.
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| Meet the Gloster Meteor: The Only Allied Jet Aircraft of World War II Posted: 13 Jun 2020 01:30 PM PDT  Was it a game-changer or too late to make a difference?
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| George Floyd: How far have African Americans come since the 1960s? Posted: 14 Jun 2020 02:57 AM PDT  How much progress have black people in the US made towards equality since the 1960s?
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| Should police officers be required to live in the cities they patrol? There's no evidence it matters Posted: 13 Jun 2020 01:00 AM PDT  Protests that have swept the country in the wake of George Floyd's death have prompted calls to limit where police can live.
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| Exclusive: No summer holidays in US 'for months' says America's top public health expert Posted: 13 Jun 2020 09:18 AM PDT  British holidaymakers can expect to be banned from travelling to the United States for months under coronavirus restrictions, according to America's most prominent public health official. In an interview with The Telegraph, Dr Anthony Fauci, a leading member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said the ban could last until a vaccine is developed, although it may be before that. He said lifting it would be "more likely months than weeks." Around 3.8 million Britons visit the United States in a normal year, to holiday destinations including New York, Los Angeles, Florida and Las Vegas. The travel ban was ordered by Donald Trump In March. There are some exceptions, including green card holders, those with American spouses, and UK government officials, but the vast majority of British citizens are effectively barred. Bans are also in place for the European Union, China, and Brazil. Dr Fauci, America's top infectious disease expert, said: "It's going to be really wait and see. I don't think there's going to be an immediate pull back for those kinds of restrictions. My feeling, looking at what's going on with the infection rate, I think it's more likely measured in months rather than weeks." US waves of infection will come 'back and forth' amid fears of second peak During the pandemic Dr Fauci, 79, has become America's most trusted official. Appearing alongside Donald Trump at White House briefings, the bespectacled immunologist emerged as the nation's best source of information in a bewildering time With infection rates now surging across a host of US states, and protests sweeping the globe, Dr Fauci expressed concern, and said the crisis was far from over. "We were successful in suppressing the virus in cities where there were major outbreaks - New York, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans," he told The Telegraph. "But we're seeing several states, as they try to reopen and get back to normal, starting to see early indications [that] infections are higher than previously. "The question is will they have the capability to do the appropriate and effective isolation, and contact tracing, to prevent this increase from becoming a full blown outbreak? I'm concerned it's happening. I hope the individual states can blunt that. It [the virus] could go on for a couple of cycles, coming back and forth. I would hope to get to some degree of real normality within a year or so. But I don't think it's this winter or fall, we'll be seeing it for a bit more." He added: "It is not inevitable that you will have a so-called 'second wave' in the fall, or even a massive increase, if you approach it in the proper way."
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| Russia inaugurates cathedral without mosaics of Putin, Stalin Posted: 14 Jun 2020 07:59 AM PDT  Russia inaugurated on Sunday a huge new cathedral dedicated to its armed forces that had caused controversy over initial plans to decorate its interior with mosaics depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin and Soviet-era leader Joseph Stalin. Russian Orthodox Church officials said last month neither would be depicted in the cathedral. The cathedral had been scheduled to open its doors in May when Russia was also planning to hold a military parade, but both events were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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| Appeals court appears unlikely to stop Flynn case Posted: 12 Jun 2020 01:00 PM PDT  Flynn's lawyers are seeking order directing a federal district judge to let the Department of Justice drop the case.
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| The Saudis’ Preaching Inspired Terror, and Then It Turned on Them Posted: 14 Jun 2020 01:52 AM PDT  If you recognize the term "Wahhabi" or "Wahhabism," the conservative state religion of Saudi Arabia, it's probably because of 9/11. It was in the wake of that attack that institutions like Freedom House began to publish reports about "Wahhabi ideology" that seemed to provide some intellectual context for a senseless event. The same goes for Salafism, for which there wasn't even a standard spelling in 2001: The Guardian went with "Salafee" in one post-9/11 article.Trump Administration Preps New Weapons Sale To Saudi ArabiaThe terms still tend to be tossed around by non-Muslims, with renewed vigor after the rise of ISIS, as examples of a "fundamentalist Islam" promoted by Saudi Arabia, which vaguely corrupted the Muslim world and was often embraced by jihadi terrorists. But understanding Saudi religion, and what it did abroad, requires considerably more nuance. It's true that, for decades, the Saudis used their austere religious vision as a tool of soft power to promote their interests around the world among Arabs and also in Indonesia, in Nigeria, in Kosovo and almost anywhere else with a sizeable Muslim community. But over the course of six decades, the faith the Saudis spent so lavishly to spread had unpredictable effects on the ground, and its most violent apostles actually turned against the kingdom.The Saudi brand started to deteriorate during the Gulf War of 1990–1991, when non-Muslim U.S. troops were accepted on the holy soil of Arabia in order to protect it from Saddam Hussein. That move, and the perceived hypocrisy of the Saudi clerics who greenlit it, dented Saudi Arabia's cultivated image as a leader of Muslims everywhere. And it ended the golden age of Saudi dawa, which means literally "the call" or "invitation" to Islam, and refers more generally to proselytizing.But 9/11 was something else. Fifteen out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals and popular opinion about the kingdom quickly soured. Just six months after the attack, 54 percent of Americans agreed that "the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a state that supports terrorism." The Gulf War was a blow to Saudi Arabia's bid for leadership of the Muslim world, but 9/11 brought it to its knees.The 838-page-long joint inquiry by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into the 9/11 attacks published in 2002 contains a long-suppressed 28-page section on Saudi financing that was only declassified in 2016 and found that some of the hijackers "were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi Government."Something else happened while Saudi Arabia was in the spotlight: it experienced a 9/11 of its own. Al Qaeda, led by the ex-Saudi national Osama bin Laden, attacked major targets inside the kingdom, destroying a housing compound in Riyadh in 2003 and then Saudi oil fields in 2004.The stunned Saudi government set up a joint task force with the U.S. to investigate terrorist financing, and in May 2003, introduced banking regulations that temporarily stopped all private charities from sending funds abroad. These shock waves would be felt around the Muslim world, where Saudi charity had become an integral part of education and development. In 2003, the kingdom briefly considered recalling its religious attachés, diplomats under the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs, Dawa, and Guidance who oversaw dawa activities in about two dozen foreign countries. In 2004, a royal decree was issued to centralize all Islamic charities.Thus, 9/11 briefly imploded the transnational Saudi dawa apparatus. So when we talk about Saudi money today, it's essential to keep this dynamic in mind; it is no longer accurate to refer to some kind of all-powerful, centralized, ideologically coherent global project. We need to appreciate it at face value: piecemeal, diluted, opportunistic. DEFINING DEFINITIONSSaudi Arabia's mid-century ambitions to define orthodoxy in the Muslim world, fight revolutionary ideologies coming from Iran and Egypt, and support besieged Muslim minorities abroad stretched its global campaign, by the 1990s, into a project that frankly outpaced its capacities. For the eminent Saudi scholar Madawi al-Rasheed, who lives in self-imposed exile in London, the phenomenon of jihadis like Bin Laden, a Saudi citizen by birth, perfectly encapsulates the tension between the kingdom's rhetoric to "obey their current rulers at home while at the same time fostering the spirit of jihad abroad." That gets to the heart of why Saudi dawa has such chaotic effects outside the kingdom's borders.Wahhabism is an ultraconservative religious movement founded by the fiery 18th-century Arabian preacher Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. It focuses on removing idolatry and "deviations" in Islam, and after Ibn Abd al-Wahhab signed a pact with the royal House of Saud, it became the official religion of the family and their successive attempts to consolidate a state on the Arabian peninsula, the last of which came together in 1932 and is modern-day Saudi Arabia.Salafism, meanwhile, is a revivalist Sunni Islamic movement that seeks to return to the traditions of the salaf, the first three generations of Muslims in the seventh and eighth centuries. It came out of late 19th century Egypt, chiefly as a reaction to Western colonialism. In practice, Salafis and Wahhabis have a lot in common. Both religious currents tend to promote personal austerity as well as intolerance of other beliefs, not only those of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, but of Muslims who have not embraced what they consider the true faith. Shia Muslims are a particular target. Wahhabism is highly linked to Saudi royal authority, which makes little sense outside the Gulf, so Saudi dawa tends to create Salafi communities abroad.Inside Saudi Arabia, as proved most recently by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's brash moves to modernize civil society, the state can rein in the excesses of the Wahhabi clerics if it thinks that is necessary. Outside, Saudi-promoted Salafi movements are much harder to control.Does Saudi dawa actively create terrorists? Sometimes, but in very specific conditions, like the Afghan jihad, when it sponsored people including Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden. Has Saudi dawa inspired terrorists, jihadists, and extremists? Much more broadly, yes. But they are a subset of a broader universe. "Salafi-jihadism," the strain of violent Salafism that includes al Qaeda, Boko Haram, ISIS, and others typically draws from a larger pool of nonviolent Salafis in a given region, and those broad communities often have direct connections to Saudi dawa. The most infamous Salafi-jihadist group, ISIS, rose to global prominence claiming to be the world's true Wahhabi state, and it set up its own printing press in Mosul in 2014 to publish Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's texts, much to Saudi Arabia's chagrin. The surprisingly widespread phenomenon of hardline Muslims destroying ancient holy sites, from Palmyra to Timbuktu, also follows a distinctly Wahhabi logic of eliminating occasions for "idolatry" and "polytheism" by razing shrines and tombs. ISIS is the worst offender, but non-jihadists do this, too: in Bale, Ethiopia, Saudi-affiliated fundamentalists destroyed more than 30 Sufi shrines in the early 2000s. The world's growing anti-Shia rhetoric, too, speaks in the distinctly Wahhabi language of "deviance" and "polytheism." And even blasphemy convictions often echo the Wahhabi logic of takfir, "excommunicating" improper Muslims. Even if Saudi officials occasionally decry the violent effects of past dawa, they are in an awkward position, given that these actions are completely in accordance with the ideas of the most famous Saudi preacher of all time.Nigeria is an instructive example. 'PRESERVING VIRTUE'In December 2015, Abdullahi Muhammad Musa crammed into a sedan with six relatives for the five hour drive from Nigeria's capital, Abuja, to the northern state of Zaria to celebrate Quds Day, the international expression of solidarity with Palestine. Abdullahi, 32, made it back to Abuja alive. But all the rest in that car, and at least 340 other civilians, were gunned down by the Nigerian military in what is now known as the Zaria Massacre. All were followers of an outspoken Shia group, the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, that has long been under attack by Sunnis, Salafis, and the state. As in many other parts of the Muslim world, this anti-Shia sentiment was fueled by Saudi-oriented Salafis. But in Nigeria, it's taken an especially deadly turn. It's estimated that roughly half of Nigeria's 191 million people are Muslim, although religious demographics are so contentious that the question has not been posed on the census since 1963. The country is a huge arena for global contests over Islamic dogma, and in such a volatile religious climate, the rise of Saudi-affiliated Salafism stirred things up, and then spiraled in unpredictable directions.Saudi Arabia started its outreach to West Africa shortly after Nigeria won independence from British rule in 1960. Within a decade, a generation of Salafis emerged in northern Nigeria, whose Muslims had, until then, been predominantly Sufi or non-denominational. Salafis created the Izala movement for "preserving virtue" and were influential in deciding the shape of sharia, Islamic law, which was implemented across the north of Nigeria starting in 1999. The most infamous Nigerians to identify as Salafis are the members of Boko Haram, the Salafi-jihadist group responsible for hundreds of terror attacks and the kidnapping of thousands of schoolchildren since 2009. At one point, in 2015, Boko Haram even surpassed ISIS as the world's deadliest terror group. But it did not emerge in a vacuum. The founder of Boko Haram, Muhammad Yusuf, studied with the most prominent Saudi-educated Salafi in Nigeria, Jafar Mahmud Adam, and even briefly sought refuge, like many Islamists under fire, in Saudi Arabia itself.The Salafi-jihadism of Boko Haram, although an extreme fringe, emerged from the rich Salafi tapestry that was woven in Nigeria over the previous half century. Since the 1960s, Saudi outreach cultivated deep personal contacts in the postcolonial nation and seeded opportunities to study in the kingdom. The resulting Salafis have clashed with both the reigning Sufi orders and the parallel, Iran-affiliated Shia movement. Some have been mainstreamed into government positions, while others laid the ideological groundwork for Boko Haram. BOKO HARAMIn April 2014, Boko Haram boldly kidnapped 276 female students from their school in Chibok, in the northeastern state of Borno. The event horrified observers inside Nigeria and around the world, who were stunned at the inability of the state to protect the girls or to negotiate effectively with the terrorist group (112 of the 276 girls are still missing). In more recent incidents, Boko Haram has kidnapped over 1,000 children since 2018 and, as recently as 2018, abducted 110 more girls from the town of Dapchi. Even during one of my visits in May 2019, a handful of staffers were kidnapped from a girls' school in Zamfara State. Easily the most infamous Islamic movement in northern Nigeria today, Boko Haram also has contributed to a devastating regional famine by preventing farmers from planting crops and blocking access to Lake Chad. Since Boko Haram styles itself as a Salafi-jihadist group, it begs the question of how closely it is linked with the greater Salafi movement in the region, and of whether that Salafi movement would have flourished in northern Nigeria without Saudi dawa. In a word, the answer is no. Saudi proselytizing has been integral to Salafism in northern Nigeria, and Boko Haram's ideology directly springs from the Salafi corpus spread there by Saudi-educated Nigerian preachers. But in an ironic twist, the majority of mainstream Nigerian Salafis oppose the jihadi group and have even tried to wage public debates with its leaders, albeit to little effect. The resulting situation is typical of what Saudi proselytizing often looks like in the wild, rife with unstable by-products. Boko Haram has praised al Qaeda and it pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2015, but it remains more a localized insurgency than a transnational jihadist group. In fact, it existed for six years as a nonviolent fundamentalist group and only turned violent in 2009, when its founder was killed. Its context is deeply local to Maiduguri, the northeastern state where it is headquartered. And Salafism would never have entered Maiduguri were it not for a preacher named Jafar Adam, the most popular and charismatic Saudi educated Salafi in modern Nigeria. He founded a group called Ahl Al-Sunna, which considered itself more purely Salafi, and less tainted with politics, than Izala had become by the new millennium. And Adam's star student was a young man named Muhammad Yusuf. Adam even appointed him to lead Ahl Al-Sunna's youth wing. But just as Adam branched off from Izala in a more hardline direction, so Yusuf did to Adam, whom he rejected as insufficiently Islamic.In 2007, Yusuf published the foundational manifesto of Boko Haram: "This is our creed and method of proclamation," which mostly consisted of quotations from Saudi Salafi texts. Boko Haram was not his own name for the group. He called it Jama'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Dawah wa'l Jihad, the Group of the People of the Sunnah for Preaching and Jihad. Nigerian media came up with the shorter cognomen, which captured Yusuf's central idea that Western education, or "Boko" in Hausa, was forbidden. This newer, even more charismatic breakaway movement drew hundreds of young people. Everyone in Maiduguri knew Yusuf and vice versa. "Once I met him in a gas station and he instantly recognized me and asked whether I was still part of the army of Satan," one resident told me. Yusuf eventually attracted thousands of followers across the northeastern states and even from neighboring Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. But within a few years, this volatile Salafi coterie headquartered in Maiduguri became an ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. In 2007, Jafar Adam, the most influential Saudi-educated nonviolent Salafi preacher of the decade, was assassinated under mysterious circumstances—most likely on the directive of Boko Haram. And then, in 2009, Boko Haram clashed with the Nigerian military amid allegations it was building bombs. One thousand people died, 700 in Maiduguri alone. Among them was Muhammad Yusuf, who was interrogated by police and then executed. The heavy-handed military confrontation was the proximate cause for Boko Haram's turn toward violence, but in the bigger picture, it's obvious that Boko Haram could not have formed as a group, nor attracted its popular base across multiple states without its ideological background and the charismatic Salafi preachers at its core. Boko Haram's material links to Saudi and Gulf actors are basically opportunistic. Around 2002, Osama bin Laden reportedly sent an aide to Nigeria with $3 million to distribute among local groups including Boko Haram. In 2015, Boko Haram switched allegiance to the Islamic State and restyled itself as the "Islamic State in West Africa." It's worth noting that, in its current, violent iteration, Boko Haram considers Saudi Arabia to be a state of unbelief. Under the leadership of Abubakar Shekau, who took over from Yusuf in 2009, Boko Haram declared its enmity toward literally every other Islamic group and entity imaginable, including the Sufis, Shia, Izala, the Nigerian government, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In a video message filmed in December 2014, Shekau, holding a rifle that he periodically shot off to punctuate his address for emphasis, screamed, "The Saudi state is a state of unbelief, because it is a state that belongs to the Saud family, and they do not follow the Prophet … the Saudi Arabians, since you have altered Allah's religion, you will enter hellfire!" Saudi Arabia was the site of an attempted negotiation between Boko Haram and the Nigerian state in 2012 to 2013. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the peace talks held there did not make much headway.Given the persistent rifts and splintering among Nigerian Salafis, it's not surprising that Boko Haram experienced its own internal split in 2016, where a rival named Abu Musab al-Barnawi made a bid for leadership over Shekau and linked his faction more closely with ISIS. There's no chance Saudi Arabia foresaw any of these chaotic effects back in 1965, when its dawa outreach to Nigeria started. Indeed, it's likely that every successive splintering of Nigerian Salafism became more and more distant from the original Saudi soft power project, which was formed on close personal contacts between Nigerian and Saudi leaders, but became more localized over time. Spreading such a charged ideology abroad was like opening a can of worms. It's why so many jihadist groups today prize Wahhabi theology and revile the kingdom itself. Thus the central paradox today: even if Saudi Arabia is embarrassed by its reputation for spreading extremism and the unsavory effects of its campaign, it's not really a problem the Saudis can solve anymore.This excerpt is adapted from The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project, by Krithika Varagur.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Secret Service says it used pepper spray on Lafayette Square protesters Posted: 13 Jun 2020 01:59 PM PDT  The agency initially denied it had used pepper spray to clear demonstrators.
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| China Has Way Too Much Power Over Zoom. These Activists Learned the Hard Way. Posted: 13 Jun 2020 01:00 PM PDT  Zoom confirmed Wednesday evening that the video conferencing company removed a U.S.-based account after it commemorated the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
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| Lawyers arrested for throwing Molotov cocktails during George Floyd protests could face life in prison Posted: 13 Jun 2020 11:54 AM PDT  Two Brooklyn lawyers and a woman from upstate New York have been indicted for throwing Molotov cocktails at police during protests over the killing of George Floyd.The three face up to life in prison for a variety of federal charges, including the use of explosives, arson and civil disorder.
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| The Atlanta police officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks has been fired, and a 2nd officer is on administrative leave Posted: 13 Jun 2020 09:47 PM PDT  The officer had opened fire on Rayshard Brooks after a scuffle in which Brooks grabbed a Taser, then ran away and pointed it behind him.
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| Canada indigenous chief Allan Adam battered during arrest Posted: 13 Jun 2020 03:20 AM PDT  A violent arrest and police custody deaths have ignited anti-police brutality protests across Canada.
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| Fresh Lebanon protests over spiralling economic crisis Posted: 13 Jun 2020 02:48 PM PDT  Hundreds of demonstrators angered by a deepening economic crisis rallied Saturday across Lebanon for a third consecutive day, after violent overnight riots sparked condemnation from the political elite. Protesting against the surging cost of living and the government's apparent impotence in the face of Lebanon's worst economic turmoil since the 1975-1990 civil war, protesters in central Beirut brandished flags and chanted anti-government slogans. "We are here to demand the formation of a new transitional government" and early parliamentary elections, Nehmat Badreddine, an activist and demonstrator told AFP near the Grand Serail seat of government.
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| Ukraine alleges $5 million bribe over Burisma, no Biden link Posted: 13 Jun 2020 07:41 AM PDT  Ukrainian officials on Saturday said they were offered $5 million in bribes to end a probe into energy company Burisma's founder, but said there was no connection to former board member Hunter Biden whose father is running for the U.S. presidency. The Ukrainian company was thrust into the global spotlight last year in the impeachment inquiry into whether U.S. President Donald Trump improperly pressured Kiev into opening a case against his rival for the November election race. Trump wants an investigation into the Democrats' 2020 candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son.
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| Letters to the Editor: Confederates killed Americans and fought for slavery. Remove their names Posted: 14 Jun 2020 03:00 AM PDT  It's unbelievable that the U.S. would honor the leaders of a murderous rebellion who fought to keep slavery.
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| More rallies planned Saturday in Chicago's Loop, South Side and suburbs, drawing attention to racism, police brutality Posted: 13 Jun 2020 04:35 AM PDT  More protests are planned across the Chicago area Saturday, drawing attention to racism and police brutality.
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| An entire South Florida SWAT team resigned over criticism from 22-year-old vice mayor who was elected while a student Posted: 12 Jun 2020 08:39 PM PDT  Javellana, who was elected while still a student at Florida International University, has no plans to back down from her criticisms of local police.
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| South African president's shame over surge in murders of women Posted: 14 Jun 2020 05:33 AM PDT  Cyril Ramaphosa's remarks come after several femicides amid the lifting of coronavirus restrictions.
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| 'Nobody is going to defund the police': Top black congressman says Democrats want to 'deconstruct' US policing Posted: 14 Jun 2020 07:16 AM PDT  The top black US congressman has signalled in clear terms he does not support calls to "defund the police," despite a wave of activism calling for such measures in the wake of the death of George Floyd and other black people during incidents involving police."Nobody is going to defund the police. We can restructure the police forces — restructure, reimagine policing. That is what we are going to do," House Minority Whip James E Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the chamber, said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.
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| Biden's Vice-Presidential Search Gathers Steam Posted: 14 Jun 2020 08:28 AM PDT  Joe Biden's advisers have conducted several rounds of interviews with a select group of vice-presidential candidates and are beginning to gather private documents from some of them, as they attempt to winnow a field that features the most diverse set of vice-presidential contenders in history.The search committee has been in touch with roughly a dozen women, and some eight or nine are already being vetted more intensively.Among that group are two contenders who have recently grown in prominence, Rep. Val Demings of Florida and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta. One well-known candidate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, has lost her perch as a front-runner. And some lower-profile candidates, like Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, are advancing steadily in the search process.The New York Times spoke to an array of people who are familiar with the vice-presidential search and the activities of the Biden team, and the interviews yielded the fullest picture yet of the list of candidates Biden is considering, who is advancing and who may be fading, and the dynamics at play.Biden's vice-presidential search has taken a bifurcated course so far, with one path unfolding in the open -- joint appearances on television or in virtual events with potential running mates -- and another in an environment of strict discretion. People involved in the confidential part described it on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to discuss a process that is designed to shield Biden's thinking and the participants' privacy.Some of the contenders who have advanced furthest in the process are well known, including Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. But The Times confirmed that several other women -- whose names have been repeatedly floated but who have not publicly confirmed that they agreed to be vetted for the job -- are under active consideration as well.Harris and Warren have been interviewed at length by Biden's team, as has Baldwin, who was the first openly gay candidate ever elected to the Senate.Two women with distinctive national-defense credentials have also been interviewed and asked for documents: Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, an Iraq war combat veteran who is Asian American, and Susan Rice, the former national security adviser to President Barack Obama and the first black woman to serve as ambassador to the United Nations.As the vetting process advances to a newly intense phase, the political currents of the last few weeks are also leaving a mark on the Biden team's deliberations. The wave of demonstrations touched off by the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of a white police officer there, has elevated a pair of black women long regarded as intriguing long-shot candidates: Demings and Bottoms.Though Demings and Bottoms are far less known to the national electorate than other figures on Biden's list, they have played crucial roles in a cascading civil rights crisis: Demings, a former police chief in Orlando, Florida, has become a major figure in the law-enforcement debate, while Bottoms' handling of chaotic demonstrations in her city earned her national acclaim.Both women have spoken with the vetting team, and Biden advisers have reached out to their allies to seek information about them.Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida, a supporter of Demings, said he had recently spoken about her with former Sen. Christopher Dodd, a member of Biden's search committee. Crist -- a former Republican who was vetted for vice president by John McCain in 2008 -- predicted that if Biden made Demings his running mate, it would lock down Florida's 29 Electoral College votes."She is ready for the task," Crist said of Demings, adding, "It would make a huge difference if you actually had a Floridian on the ticket."Biden insisted in an interview with CBS this past week that the last few tumultuous weeks had not meaningfully changed his thinking about the vice presidency, except to put "greater focus and urgency on the need to get someone who is totally simpatico with where I am.""I want someone strong," he said, "and someone who is ready to be president on Day 1."Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada, a prominent early supporter of Biden, counseled him to not be caught up in a momentary news cycle but rather make a sober-minded governing choice, someone to help him steer through turbulent years ahead."He needs to pick somebody who's serious, respected and has some policy chops," Titus said, "not just somebody who's a personality."Several state executives have also had conversations with members of the vetting team, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who clashed with President Donald Trump over his handling of the coronavirus, and Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, a leader of her party's centrist wing. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, a former chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, is one of the candidates from whom Biden advisers have requested private documents, a signal that she is regarded as a serious contender.It is not clear precisely where Stacey Abrams, the former candidate for governor in Georgia, stands in the process. In an appearance Wednesday on Stephen Colbert's CBS show, Abrams appeared to say she had not been contacted by the search committee, though several people insisted she was still in the mix.Harris, who was already a leading prospect, appears to have lifted herself further in recent weeks with her advocacy for policing reform. But three Democrats in regular contact with top Biden officials said they still frequently expressed unease about Harris because of her rocky turn as a presidential candidate and her blistering attack on Biden in the first debate last year.Klobuchar is also still under consideration, but she has receded amid criticism that she did not take on police misconduct as a district attorney in Hennepin County, home to Minneapolis. That may leave Warren as the most formidable white candidate in the running, in large part because of her popularity with liberals and her credibility as a messenger on the economy.Biden's decision has taken on outsize importance as the country faces an overlapping set of crises that are all but certain to last beyond Inauguration Day.At 77, Biden would be the oldest person ever elected to the White House, a distinction with actuarial implications that cannot be discounted. A moderate white man in a party fueled by the political energy of women, young liberals and people of color, Biden is facing demands from numerous quarters to complete his ticket with someone who represents racial, geographic, generational or ideological balance -- imperatives that no one running mate could satisfy in full.If Biden wins the November election, he might well take office under the darkest conditions of any president in half a century, with economic stagnation and a deadly pandemic shadowing his new administration.That unsettling reality has bolstered the view among many Democrats that Biden must choose a running mate who could be a full partner in governing rather than someone who is useful chiefly for tactical purposes in an election season.The selection process by now has become so delicate that some of Biden's senior aides are stepping gingerly. Steve Ricchetti, one of Biden's closest advisers, has told people he is trying to avoid contact with any of the prospects because he does not want to be seen as tipping his hand.The fact that someone has been interviewed for vice president does not necessarily mean she is among the top candidates, and it is somewhat customary for presidential candidates to put a few close allies on their shortlist as a kind of reward for their support. People briefed on the search also said it would be premature to assume anyone has been eliminated as a candidate simply because she may not have moved as far in the process as others.Jennifer Palmieri, who advised Hillary Clinton during her 2016 hunt for a running mate, said it made sense for the search committee to screen a large number of candidates to give Biden flexibility in his decision. The search, she said, should function "outside of the day-to-day political ecosystem" that thrives on fleeting conventional wisdom."Their job is to give Biden as many qualified options as possible," Palmieri said. "Somebody who does not make a lot of sense in June can make a great pick on Aug. 1."The search process has been carried out by a selection committee staffed by a team of lawyers and led by four close allies of Biden: Dodd, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles and Cynthia Hogan, Biden's counsel when he was vice president himself.The process has unfolded in several stages, according to people familiar with the search. In April and May, advisers to Biden contacted more than a dozen Democratic women to ask whether they would be willing to be vetted for the vice presidency. Nearly everyone approached answered in the affirmative; a notable exception was Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, who is running for reelection this year and declined to join a time-consuming vetting process that she believed was highly unlikely to end in her selection.A second senator, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, did not immediately rebuff the Biden team but removed herself from consideration late last month. Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire also agreed to be vetted, but she has not been actively pursuing the job and is not seen as a major candidate.For those who agreed to move ahead, the next step was interviewing with members of Biden's screening committee. Those sessions involved a range of broad questions concerning the role of the vice presidency and the policy challenges facing a potential Biden administration, as well as aspects of the candidates' public records.Only in recent days has the process moved toward more intrusive scrutiny of the candidates' sensitive private matters.That stage of the process may be especially important for candidates like Bottoms and Demings, who have not undergone the kind of public examination that other women, like Harris and Warren, endured as presidential candidates.While Demings could help Biden in Florida, a similar argument could apply to Bottoms, given Georgia's status as an emerging political battleground. As mayor, she has managed the coronavirus response in the Southern metropolis and has regularly criticized Trump's rhetoric about reopening states.Some of Bottoms' fellow city leaders are enthusiastic about the idea of a mayor on the ticket. "She'd be strong and is very popular amongst her colleagues," said Mayor Steve Benjamin of Columbia, South Carolina.Benjamin, a former president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said he had shared his high opinion of Bottoms with the Biden camp.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Fears rise over safety of detained Saudi princess, family confidant says Posted: 14 Jun 2020 01:30 AM PDT  "[If] she's dead or alive we have no idea, we literally have no single clue," said someone close to the Saudi princess.
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| Uncertainty as Spain puts virus death toll 'on hold' Posted: 13 Jun 2020 09:31 AM PDT  For days now, Spain's daily coronavirus death toll has been on hold, generating widespread uncertainty about the real state of the epidemic that has claimed more than 27,000 lives. The health ministry's emergencies coordinator Fernando Simon, who for months has given a daily briefing on the pandemic's evolution, acknowledged the "astonishment" and "confusion" generated by the figures. On May 25, the ministry changed its method of collecting data on confirmed cases and fatalities, initially giving a daily death toll of between 50 and 100.
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| Putin says Russia will be able to counter hypersonic weapons Posted: 14 Jun 2020 03:34 AM PDT  Russia will soon be in a position to counter hypersonic arms deployed by other countries, President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday, adding that Moscow was ahead of the United States in developing new types of weapons. Hypersonic glide vehicles can steer an unpredictable course and manoeuvre sharply as they approach impact. Washington and Moscow have been expanding their defence capabilities as some Cold War-era arms control agreements collapsed during worsening of Russia's ties with the West.
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| Fears of a second coronavirus wave rise in China as Beijing battles new cluster Posted: 14 Jun 2020 01:48 AM PDT  Beijing was among the last to relax COVID-19 restrictions in China. Now it has returned to 'wartime mode' as dozens of local infections are found.
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| Ben Carson Defends Atlanta Police Officer Who Killed Rayshard Brooks on ‘Fox News Sunday’ Posted: 14 Jun 2020 08:46 AM PDT  Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace opened his interview this weekend with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson by asking about the "terrible incident" in Atlanta that ended with the fatal police shooting of 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks after he was found sleeping in his car.As Wallace put it, Brooks was "clearly resisting arrest" when he apparently grabbed one of the officer's Tasers and ran away from them. But, he asked, "was it appropriate to use deadly force against somebody whose original offense was that he fell asleep in the drive-thru lane at a Wendy's?" After suggesting that perhaps he was not knowledgeable enough about this situation and police shootings in general, Carson weighed in anyway. "I think this is a situation that is not clear cut, you know, like the callous murder that occurred in Minnesota," Carson said. "And it really requires the heads of people who know what should be done under the circumstances to make judgement."Stephen Colbert Confronts Fox News' Chris Wallace for Defending Trump Tear-Gassing ProtestersPressed by Wallace on why he didn't believe the shooting was "clear cut," Carson started comparing this shooting to the police killing of George Floyd, but the host cut him off. "No, no, I understand that, but why was the Atlanta case not clear cut?" he asked. "Because we don't know what was in the mind of the officer," Carson answered. "When somebody turns around, points a weapon at him, is he absolutely sure that's a non-lethal weapon?" "You know, this is not a clear-cut circumstance," he continued, repeating that phrase for the third time. "Now could it have been handled better? Certainly, in retrospect, there are probably other ways to do things. But we, the public, don't know." Carson's comments closely resembled those of Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who told Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan on Sunday, "That situation is certainly a far less clear one than the ones that we saw with George Floyd and several other ones around the country." Announcing the resignation of her city's police chief on Friday, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms took a far more decisive stance. "I firmly believe that there is a clear distinction between what you can do and what you should do," she told reporters. "I do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force and have called for the immediate termination of the officer." In a separate interview on ABC News' This Week, Carson declined to back Trump's claims that he has been the best president since Abraham Lincoln for the African-American community, saying the debate was "not productive.""To get into an argument about who has done the most probably is not productive, but it is good to acknowledge the things that have been done," he said.Trump Goes After George Floyd Protesters and Lincoln's 'Questionable' Legacy in Bizarre Fox News InterviewRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| A white Wisconsin lawyer was charged with a hate crime after spitting on a 17-year-old Black protester Posted: 13 Jun 2020 07:20 AM PDT  Stephanie Rapkin was seen on video spitting on the Black Lives Matter protester after parking her car in the way of the anti-racist demonstration.
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| Sen. Tim Scott rejects key criminal justice proposals by Democrats, setting up Capitol Hill showdown on police conduct Posted: 13 Jun 2020 06:20 PM PDT  Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., is crafting the GOP response to the Justice in Policing Act Democrats proposed following protests over George Floyd's death.
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| China reports highest coronavirus case rise for two months, as lockdowns ease globally Posted: 14 Jun 2020 07:41 AM PDT  Parts of Beijing remain under 'wartime' lockdown after outbreak at market.
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| West Point graduates its first observant Sikh woman Posted: 12 Jun 2020 02:30 PM PDT |
| Sen. Tim Scott on President Trump's on West Point commencement speech Posted: 13 Jun 2020 08:42 AM PDT  South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Republican member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, joins 'CAVUTO Live.'
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| Turkey and Russia put off talks expected to tackle Libya and Syria Posted: 14 Jun 2020 04:32 AM PDT |
| Virginia protesters march to statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee Posted: 13 Jun 2020 06:59 PM PDT  "We picked the monument with the idea that this would be the last big gathering here," an organizer said.
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| HIMARS Could Be A Game-changer In The Philippines Fight Against China Posted: 14 Jun 2020 12:00 AM PDT  These missiles could settle the South China Sea.
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| Trump Aides Know His Polls Are Terrible—And Tell Him Otherwise Posted: 14 Jun 2020 01:41 AM PDT  This past week, Donald Trump's campaign did what one senior aide on the president's 2020 team described to The Daily Beast as the "dumbest thing I've read in a long time."In a cease-and-desist letter dated June 9, 2020, the president's re-election staff demanded that CNN retract and apologize for a recently released poll that had presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leading Trump by 14 points. The letter, which the cable news network immediately laughed off, heavily cited the work of Trump pollster John McLaughlin, whose company alleged that CNN had somehow engaged in a "defamatory" act of "misinformation" and deliberately "skewed" data in an attempt to depress the president's supporters. The legal threat quickly became a punchline in political media and even in some sectors of Trump's own political operation. In one respect, it was just the latest effort by the president's aides to attempt to satisfy the boss' appetite for retribution. But it also revealed an element of the Trump political operation that has increasingly demanded time, money, and attention—mainly, the task of convincing Trump that the electoral landscape and polling deficits he faces aren't as dire as he's been hearing. "This helps keep the president from flying into a rage as much as he otherwise would," said a White House official who's been in the room for these types of sessions.On June 4, for instance, the president convened multiple meetings at the White House with top officials in his administration and from his campaign, including his son-in-law and White House aide Jared Kushner and campaign manager Brad Parscale, to have a series of discussions about strategy and communications. According to a person familiar with one of those gatherings, Trump sounded impressed that the support among his conservative base had remained solid in the presented data given recent media coverage and the maelstrom of crises he'd been facing.At one point, members of the president's team began briefing him on the campaign's own private polling, much of which did not look favorable. They sought to reassure the president by telling him that their numbers showed a large "enthusiasm gap" between Trump and Biden voters, and that much of the public polling wasn't to be trusted, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. In particular, they argued that public polls skew in favor of the Democratic Party at this time because polling firms were polling registered voters and not "likely voters." In the characterization of one source close to the president, a chunk of the re-election team focuses on proving to the president that his "dumpster-fire numbers" aren't as bad as they seem, or reinforcing Trump's conviction that pollsters get it wrong "all the time."Trump World Thrilled That Their Terrible Poll Numbers Aren't Worse But not everyone on Team Trump is buying the spin. In fact, efforts to pacify the president about the polls and his campaign's position ahead of November have been undercut from within, with several key advisers making personal entreaties to Trump in the past few weeks to try to convince him that he should not brush off the numbers, even unpleasant ones that comes from news organizations such as CNN. "I have told the president that the numbers are real and that I believe he can and will win, but that right now it looks bad," said a Republican who recently spoke to Trump. "He said, 'Come on, don't you know that's all fake?' But in a lot of these internal numbers [that I've seen], we're way down right now.""Something needs to change," the Trump ally added.This person wasn't the only one sounding the alarm over the past month. Two other sources who've spoken to the president lately—one of whom is a senior administration official—said that when the topic of polls came up they advised Trump that the surveys on swing states and key demographics seemed bleak. Both said they were concerned the president wasn't taking them as seriously as they had wished. Outside the campaign, a belief has grown that the Pollyannaish advisers surrounding the president—and who are feeding him news that won't puncture his feel-good bubble—are doing a disservice to both their clients and their professions. "There are a few pollsters who are bought and paid for, and they will tell you [the client] what you want to hear," Frank Luntz, a famed-GOP pollster and Trump-skeptical conservative, said, without naming names. "There are pollsters [for whom] if the check is big enough, the lie will be big enough.""I don't envy those who have to tell Donald Trump what he doesn't want to hear," Luntz continued. "I've met him several times, I've met Biden several times. I would rather present bad [polling] information to Biden than Donald Trump. Presenting bad information or tough information to Joe Biden, you'll break his heart, if you present tough information to Donald Trump, he breaks your arm."GOP Stimulus Plan Is a Trillion-Dollar Trump Re-Election FundBut some Trump confidants are more willing to take the chance of harm than others. Late last month, David Bossie and Corey Lewandowski, two prominent informal advisers to the president, visited the White House to warn Trump that his electoral prospects were deteriorating in certain states crucial to securing a second term in office. Lewandowski, who also serves as a senior adviser to Trump 2020, has often second-guessed official campaign strategy, while whispering in the president's ear that his current aides are failing him.The Trump campaign counters that the surveys that have shown him trailing Biden do not account for the economic turn around that they believe is taking place, which the president and his allies have dubbed the "Great American Comeback." The campaign has also argued that their own secret polls give Trump the edge over a "defined" Joe Biden—a descriptor that is both unscientific and a concession that the campaign has so far failed to effectively define its opponent with just a few months left before election night.When The Daily Beast reached out for comment on this story on Friday, the Trump campaign's communications director Tim Murtaugh wrote back: "2016 proved that public polling is routinely wrong about President Trump, otherwise Hillary Clinton would be in the Oval Office right now. Our internal data consistently shows the President running strongly against a defined Joe Biden in all the states we track. And we know the President's supporters are more enthusiastic than Biden's. Trump supporters would run through a brick wall to vote for the President. Nobody is running through a brick wall for Joe Biden."But Trump's approval rating on his handling of the coronavirus fallout has itself dipped dramatically in recent weeks. And there is no evidence that the pandemic is truly fading. And on top of that, Republican senators facing competitive reelection fights this year have been far less sanguine in their rhetoric on the economic fallout, suggesting they've opted for empathy rather than triumphalism. It's not an enviable position, Luntz concedes. But it's not yet fatal either. "It's not doomsday. We are too early in the election process. We never anticipated we would be where we are [today, even] two days ago," Luntz stressed, citing the economic implosion, the coronavirus pandemic that has a U.S. death toll upwards of 100,000, and the mass protests following the police killing of George Floyd. "The changes in racial awareness and opinion is the story of a generation and we got all three of them happening at the same time. Nobody knows what's going to happen in November. Nobody knows what's going to happen next Friday. Everybody would be wise to just keep quiet."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Egypt accuses Ethiopia of holding it "hostage" in Nile dam talks Posted: 13 Jun 2020 09:46 AM PDT  Egypt said Saturday that tripartite talks with Ethiopia and Sudan over a controversial mega-dam on the River Nile were deadlocked because of Addis Ababa's "intransigence". The Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD) has been a source of tension in the Nile River basin ever since Ethiopia broke ground on it nearly a decade ago.
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| The Latest: China has most new virus cases since mid-April Posted: 12 Jun 2020 09:51 PM PDT  China is reporting its highest daily total of coronavirus cases in two months after the capital's biggest wholesale food market was shut down following a resurgence in local infections. Officials say there were 57 confirmed cases in the 24 hours through midnight Saturday.
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| Martin Gugino, 75-year-old protester pushed in Buffalo, has brain injury, fractured skull Posted: 12 Jun 2020 03:53 PM PDT  On Friday, Martin Gugino's lawyer, Kelly Zarcone, said Gugino's skull was fractured and that he hasn't been able to walk yet.
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| The COVID-19 pandemic is unleashing a tidal wave of plastic waste Posted: 13 Jun 2020 05:00 AM PDT  Activists worry that all those coronavirus masks, medical kits, takeout containers and grocery bags are setting back a global fight to curb single-use plastic.
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