May 2020

May 31, 2020

China's 'nervous' Xi risks new Cold War, last Hong Kong governor saysChinese President Xi Jinping is so nervous about the position of the Communist Party that he is risking a new Cold War and imperilling Hong Kong's position as Asia's pre-eminent financial hub, the last British governor of the territory told Reuters. Chris Patten said Xi's 'thuggish' crackdown in Hong Kong risked triggering an outflow of capital and people from the city which funnels the bulk of foreign investment into mainland China. The West, he said, should stop being naive about Xi, who has served as General Secretary of the Communist Party since 2012.




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May 31, 2020

Saudi Arabia reopens mosques with strict regulations for worshippersSaudi Arabia's mosques opened their doors to worshippers on Sunday for the first time in more than two months as the kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, eased restrictions imposed to combat the coronavirus. "It is great to feel the mercy of God and once again call people for prayers at mosques instead of at their homes," said Abdulmajeed Al Mohaisen, who issues the call to prayer at Al Rajhi Mosque, one of the largest in the capital Riyadh.




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May 31, 2020

Airlines schedule major increase in flights in July as pressure mounts on ministers to ease quarantineAirlines have scheduled a dramatic increase in flights in July in anticipation that Governments will lift travel restrictions for holidaymakers and save the industry from potential collapse, according to data seen by The Sunday Telegraph. The companies which have already laid off tens of thousands of workers are banking on a “V-shaped” recovery by scheduling 161,200 passenger flights and 29.5 million seats for July, just eight per cent down on last year’s July timetables. The strategy to open up business travel and holiday routes to hotspot favourites like Greece, Italy, France and Spain comes as most European countries are preparing to lift their quarantines or open their borders in mid June or at least by July 1. It will increase pressure on Boris Johnson to make good his suggestion last week that the UK’s quarantine - to be introduced on June 8 - could be replaced with “air bridges” to low-risk holiday destinations when it is reviewed on June 29. One senior industry source claimed: “The sense is that they might quietly do a U-turn after the first review period. Grant Shapps [the Transport Secretary] is against quarantine, the Treasury are against it, Beis is against it and DCMS hate it.” The exclusive data, from Cirium, a travel analytics firm, shows how the coronavirus pandemic devastated the aviation industry as it tore across the world. Scheduled passengers were 22.5 million in February, 10 per cent up on last year before it slumped by 93 per cent in April and May. It has risen in June to 38.5 per cent down on last year, as the Far East has opened up, and rises to just minus eight per cent in July as airlines anticipate Europe unlocking. June and July are “scheduled” rather than actual flights, which will depend on quarantines easing in June and July. Germany has lifted restrictions, Italy wants to resume travel on June 15, and Spain and Portugal are aiming for July 1. France hopes to drop border controls to and from EU countries after June 15 except with countries that impose quarantine on a “reciprocal” basis, namely the UK. Greece has excluded the UK from a “white list” of 29 countries it judges are low-risk enough from which to accept tourists from June 15 without quarantine although it will open up to more countries after it reviews their infection rates at the end of June. British Airways says it is aiming for a “meaningful return” to flying in July, RyanAir plans to ramp up flights to at least 40 per cent of its normal July schedule and EasyJet, which has laid off one in three staff, hopes to operate 30 per cent of its pre-crisis timetable from July to September. Paul Charles, chief executive of PC Consultancy, which advises the tourist industry, said Britain’s quarantine risked “killing” the economy. “Travel companies have not had any bookings for April or May. They are worried that if they don’t get them in June, they will go under,” he said. The Airport Operators’ Association (AOA) has urged ministers to aim for the first “air bridges” to “low risk” destinations by June 8 so that holidaymakers can sidestep quarantine and the requirement to self-isolate for 14 days on their return to the UK. The Department for Transport will shortly publish new guidelines for “safe” travel which will include face coverings or masks throughout the journey, temperature checks, social distancing in airports and contactless travel including for check-ins and payments. An AOA spokesman said: “Once these guidelines are agreed and given that they are based on a common European baseline, this puts in place the right conditions for opening up air bridges to low-risk countries.” The Home Office which has led the moves to introduce quarantine has, however, warned that it will block attempts to lift the quarantine unless it is safe and there is no risk of it sparking a second wave of coronavirus. A Department for Transport source said: “There is certainly a willingness in Government to do as much for this Summer as is safe.” Post-coronavirus air travel: No travel if you have symptoms If ill, no cost re-booking or refunds up to six hours before flying Face masks or coverings from arrival at airport to leaving terminal at destination Only passengers in the terminal, no tearful goodbyes at departure gates Contact-less electronic check-in and boarding Social distancing and one-way systems for waiting and queuing passengers Airports' association pressing for temperature checks Exemption from two-metre rule on plane No on-board duty free, reduced food and drink service, pre-packaged food and cashless payments




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May 31, 2020

MINNEAPOLIS — Officials in Minnesota say no protesters appear to have been hit after a semitrailer drove into a crowd demonstrating on a freeway near downtown Minneapolis.

The Minnesota State Patrol says in a tweet that the action appeared deliberate. The patrol says the driver was injured and taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

It wasn’t clear how the driver was hurt. TV footage showed protesters swarming the truck, and then law enforcement quickly moving in.

Other TV footage showed the tanker truck moving rapidly onto the bridge and protesters appearing to part ahead of it.

The protesters were demonstrating against the death of George Floyd.


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May 30, 2020

U.S. high court rejects church challenges to state pandemic rulesThe U.S. Supreme Court rejected challenges on Friday to curbs on religious services in California and Illinois during the coronavirus pandemic. In the California dispute, the nine justices split 5-4 in rejecting a bid by South Bay United Pentecostal Church in Chula Vista to block the rules issued by Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court's four liberal justices in the majority.




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May 30, 2020

China’s Airline Industry Is Capitalizing on the PandemicThere is no doubt that airliners were the novel coronavirus pandemic’s main vector. Its first direct breakout into the world (and into the U.S.) was certainly from China, long before its lethality was understood. Epidemiologists have established that the virus was on the move in the central Chinese city of Wuhan by early December at the latest.Unfortunately, Wuhan’s significance in the planning of China's increasingly modernized and organized infrastructure made it the perfect place for an accelerated spread of the pathogen.In the last decade, as China gave priority to the development of travel, internal and external, Wuhan was chosen by both the airline and railway industries to become one of a number of super transportation hubs, built with a speed and efficiency that we can only marvel at.Wuhan sat at the middle of one of the country’s most densely populated and fastest growing regions. As aviation consultants promoted a new Wuhan hub airport as a boost to local industries, as well as to travel, the nation’s railway planners saw and pursued the same prize. They made Wuhan the center of a high-speed rail network, with five main lines radiating from it.From Vietnam to COVID-19, the Arrogance of Ignorance Keeps Killing AmericansRapidly increased mobility was a major goal as the Chinese people became more affluent. A risen middle class acquired the means and the taste for travel—becoming, almost overnight, a welcome new wave of business to hoteliers across the globe.Indeed, China’s demand for air travel nearly quadrupled between 2008 and 2018. By 2019 it was generating 18 percent of the world’s airline passenger traffic, worth $89 billion a year. (The largest region is the European Union and United Kingdom, with 25 percent, worth $169 billion). The eight busiest airports in China together were, in one year, handling far more passengers than the entire population of the United States: a total of more than 482 million. VIRUSES ON THE MOVEThe situation was very different back when the SARS virus appeared in Guangdong  province in southeastern China in late 2002. The explosive growth of Chinese air travel had not yet occurred. That virus reached Hong Kong in February 2003 and Beijing in April. Hong Kong and Singapore were then the principal airline hubs in the region. From Hong Kong the virus jumped to Singapore, Toronto and Hanoi. In the end there were cases in 26 countries, with a total of 774 deaths, but the outbreak was contained without becoming a pandemic. Once the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic was clear, domestic air travel in China was curtailed, but never completely shut down. The lowest point was in mid-February, when 3.7 million seats were available on flights inside China in a week. By May 24 the traffic had significantly rebounded, to more than 11 million seats a week. (Previously, reflecting the nation’s planned growth of air travel, China had predicted that between January and April the number of passengers flying per week would reach 16.8 million.)In the U.S., according to the TSA, the number of passengers flying domestically every week in May averaged around 1.75 million; last year it was 18 million.The Chinese numbers are tracked by the international aviation data bank, OAG. John Grant, an analyst at OAG, told The Daily Beast: “Domestic demand and capacity is recovering ahead of international capacity around the world. China is in many ways ahead of other markets. Its airlines are fortunate to have such a large domestic market to serve.”Fortunate indeed.Around 40 airlines operate in China. They are regulated by the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the CAAC, and their major shareholder is the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. This top-down control gives the Chinese government a far tighter grip on the operations of commercial aviation than is possible in any other country because the CAAC has direct control of the airports, airlines and the allocation of routes. That power will be decisive now, not only in deciding how fast domestic Chinese air travel recovers, but how fast foreign airlines will be allowed to return to China. And the outcome of these decisions will inevitably be influenced by the increased escalation of rhetoric and threats between China and the U.S. In fact, China is ideally poised to exploit strategically the situation created by the pandemic. FROM CRISIS, OPPORTUNITYSpecifically, China now sits like a great octopus straddling the air routes of the Asia Pacific region, giving it an entirely new level of influence on how the future of air travel develops, not only in this region but beyond it.That will inevitably impact the three major U.S. airlines, United, American and Delta, that have built very profitable routes into the Chinese market. They suspended all their Chinese flights in February and will have to build them again from scratch.How fast they can do that will be decided by the Chinese aviation authorities, who don’t have to be guided, as the Americans are, by relatively short term market forces. The Chinese can give the green light for their own airlines to start building business again in the Asia Pacific region while restricting the access of U.S. airlines to China, favoring—for example—their national “champions” like China Southern Airlines, already Asia’s largest airline.And they are nimble. Once they saw that the pandemic had created a huge new demand for air cargo, particularly for their own medical products, the authorities decided to begin building a Chinese equivalent of Fedex, combining more sophisticated ground distribution with a greatly expanded worldwide air cargo fleet.OAG’s Grant says: “International capacity remains tightly managed in China. Every market in Asia needs Chinese services. Markets in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore all have a high focus on China.” All of this coincides with an idea first floated by analysts at The Economist, to identify regional “bubbles” where the principal destination countries have dealt well with the virus. (For example, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia.) Inside these zones air travel would be allowed to return to greater frequency faster than in areas, such as North America and Europe, that have been in much greater and deadlier disarray.One thing is for sure. The future geography of the international airline network soon will be very different. The basic global route map has remained the same since the beginning of the Jet Age 60 years ago, with a strong bias favoring the western airlines who pioneered it. At that time China was virtually a void on the map. Now it's looking more like the center of the world.With America withdrawing from its world leadership role and into a protectionist trade war, now compounded by China’s repressive actions against Hong Kong, the Chinese overlords have been handed a clear path to drive the future growth and fashion the shape of air travel throughout Asia and the Pacific. 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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May 30, 2020

Warrant: Police find remains of second child in yardThe remains of a second child that belonged to a Tennessee couple facing abuse charges have been found buried in a yard, court records said. A search warrant affidavit says police recovered the remains of a boy from a Knox County property where Michael and Shirley Gray lived until about 2016, news outlets reported on Friday. Police began searching the property after finding the body of a girl buried under a barn at the Gray's current home in nearby Roane County.




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May 30, 2020

Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd’s neck had 18 previous internal complaints against himThe Minneapolis police officer who was filmed kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for several minutes even as he said “I can’t breathe” has previously been the subject of multiple complaints filed to the Minneapolis Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, it has emerged.Mr Chauvin, who has been fired along with the other three police officers who apprehended Mr Floyd, was reported to the division 18 times. According to a police summary, only two of the complaints were “closed with discipline”.




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May 30, 2020

GOP eyes flipping Michigan senate seatAs Republicans work to maintain their control of the Senate in November, they're looking to flip seats in some key battleground states. That includes Michigan, where two challengers are looking to unseat incumbent Democratic Senator Gary Peters. Riley Beggin, a political reporter for Bridge Magazine, spoke with CBS News about the contest.




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May 30, 2020

France, Britain, Germany 'regret' U.S. end to Iran nuclear waiversFrance, Germany and Britain on Saturday criticised a U.S. decision to end sanctions waivers allowing work on Iranian nuclear sites designed to prevent weapons development. "We deeply regret the U.S. decision to end the three waivers," the three European countries said in a joint statement. "These projects, endorsed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, serve the non-proliferation interests of all and provide the international community with assurances of the exclusively peaceful and safe nature of Iranian nuclear activities."




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May 30, 2020

Minneapolis mayor says 'white supremacists,' 'out of state instigators' behind protests, but arrests show different story



Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Saturday that state officials think "white supremacists" and "out-of-state instigators" could be behind the protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death, but a report showed that "about 86 percent" of arrests so far are mostly of in-state residents.

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May 30, 2020

RNC sets deadline for North Carolina to allow 'full' convention, amid threat to change locations



The Republican National Committee on Saturday set a tight deadline for North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper to provide guidance on whether the party can host a "full" presidential convention in the state in August as planned, amid threats from President Trump to find a new location if necessary. 

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May 30, 2020

Dueling claims: Trump blames Antifa for riots, Minnesota officials point fingers at white supremacists and cartels



President Trump on Saturday blamed at-times violent protests that took place across the U.S. a day earlier on Antifa and other left-wing groups -- as Minnesota officials claimed that white supremacists and even drug cartels were involved in stoking violence.

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May 29, 2020

(OSAGE BEACH, Mo.) — Health officials said Friday that they were seeking to “inform mass numbers of unknown people” after a person who attended crowded pool parties over Memorial Day weekend at Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks tested positive for COVID-19.

Camden County Health Department said in a release that the resident of Boone County in mid-Missouri tested positive on Sunday after arriving at the lake area a day earlier. Officials said there have been no reported cases of the virus linked to coronavirus in residents of Camden County, where the parties seen in videos and photos posted on social media took place.

Read more: Public Health Officials Urge Hundreds of Missouri Pool Party Guests to Self-Quarantine

Because “mass numbers of unknown people” need to be notified, the officials released a brief timeline of the person’s whereabouts last weekend, including stops at a bar called Backwater Jacks, a bar and restaurant that has a pool, as well as a dining and pool venue called Shady Gators and Lazy Gators.

Backwater Jacks owner Gary Prewitt said previously in a statement that no laws were broken, though the images appeared to show people violating Republican Gov. Mike Parson’s state order requiring social distancing.

Parson allowed businesses and attractions to reopen May 4, but the state order requires 6-foot (2-meter) social distancing through at least the end of May.


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May 29, 2020

Move over James Bond; India returns alleged bird spy to PakistanIndian police have released a pigeon belonging to a Pakistani fisherman after a probe found that the bird, which had flown across the contentious border between the nuclear-armed nations, was not a spy, two officials said on Friday. "The pigeon was set free yesterday (May 28) after nothing suspicious was found," said Shailendra Mishra, a senior police official in Indian-administered Kashmir. The Pakistani owner of the pigeon had urged India to return his bird, which Indian villagers turned over to police after discovering it.




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May 29, 2020

Minneapolis mayor responds after night of protests and violence in wake of George Floyd's deathAt a press conference on Thursday, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said protests and unrest after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man seen on video pinned to the ground by the neck while being arrested by a white police officer, were the result of “built-up anger and sadness” in the black community over the past 400 years.




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May 29, 2020

Transcripts released of Flynn's calls with Russian diplomatTranscripts of phone calls that played a pivotal role in the Russia investigation were declassified and released Friday, showing that Michael Flynn, as an adviser to then-President-elect Donald Trump, urged Russia's ambassador to be “even-keeled” in response to punitive Obama administration measures, and assured him “we can have a better conversation” about relations between the two countries after Trump became president. Democrats said the transcripts showed that Flynn had lied to the FBI when he denied details of the conversation, and that he was undercutting a sitting president while ingratiating himself with a country that had just interfered in the 2016 presidential election.




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May 29, 2020

India's economy seen slowing rapidly in March quarter, with worse to comeGross domestic product data out later on Friday is expected to show India's economy grew at its slowest pace in at least two years in the March quarter as the coronavirus pandemic weakened already declining consumer demand and private investment. The median forecast from a Reuters poll of economists put annual economic growth at 2.1% in the March quarter, lower than 4.7% in the December quarter. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has maintained the lockdown ordered on March 25 to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the world's second most populous country, though many restrictions were eased for manufacturing, transport and other services from May 18.




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