
By BY ROGER COHEN from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/3jTqktX



Federal police forces will remain in Portland until Trump administration officials determine the Oregon governor, a Democrat, has a plan that is working to quell protests and violence there, says Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf."Law enforcement officers that have been there over the past 60 days will remain there in Portland until we are assured that the plan that has been put in place by the governor and Oregon State Police will be effective night after night," Mr Wolf told Fox News on Friday morning.
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Mexico is poised to overtake Britain as the country with the third-highest coronavirus death toll as the pandemic reaches new milestones in Latin America and threatens to disrupt efforts to reopen the economy. The unwanted record will place Mexico behind Brazil, Latin America's largest and most populous nation, and the United States. More than 91,000 people have died in Brazil and the U.S. death toll has surpassed 152,000.
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Former Vice President Joe Biden is still looking good in key swing states across the country.In May, a poll from the British consulting firm Redfield & Wilton Strategies put Biden ahead of President Trump in six states Trump won in 2016: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Redfield & Wilton Strategies' July poll shows Biden still has a lead in all of those states, and even widened it in three of them.While Biden had a 4 percent lead over Trump in Arizona, a 2-point lead in Florida, and an 8-point lead in Michigan in May, he has an 8, 7, and 12 percent lead, respectively, in those states as of July. Biden maintained his 10-point lead in Wisconsin over the past two months. Meanwhile Biden lost traction in North Carolina, where he had a 45-43 lead over Trump in May but has a 43-42 lead as of July, and Pennsylvania, where his margin fell from 48-39 to 48-41.Redfield & Wilton surveyed anywhere from 742 to 1,121 registered voters in each of the states, with larger populations corresponding to larger sample sizes. The polls were conducted from July 19-24.More stories from theweek.com The White House reportedly scrapped a national testing plan because the virus was mostly hitting blue states Josh Hawley's good idea to stop modern slavery New Lincoln Project video imagines what it's like to wake up from a coma in 2020
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The House Foreign Affairs Committee has subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents he turned over to a Senate panel that is investigating Hunter Biden, a son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Committee Chair Eliot Engel said Friday he had issued the subpoena as part of an investigation into Pompeo's “apparent use of Department of State resources to advance a political smear of former Vice President Joe Biden.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump's top immigration enforcement official on Friday announced he will retire from the agency, a staffing shakeup in a key policy area for Trump as he faces re-election in November. Matthew Albence, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said in a statement that his plan to retire had been prolonged by the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic has created challenges for ICE operations both in the field and in immigration detention centers, where nearly 4,000 immigrants have tested positive for the disease.
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Donald Trump's tweet suggesting that the 2020 presidential election could be postponed amid the coronavirus pandemic set off a day of wild speculation as to whether he would, could, or how that would even look if he did.After saying that a mail-in ballot system would create the "most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history", the president double-downed during his White House press conference, saying he doesn't want to wait weeks, months or even years for the result of the election to be known.
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A new survey has found more evidence to suggest that people can become infected with COVID-19 through aerosol transmission, which could be prevented by wearing a mask. Carried out by data scientists in the UK, Norway, and the US, the study is one of the first to investigate which personal and work-related factors can lead to COVID-19 transmission. After surveying 2,000 people in the UK and US, the researchers found that the data from both countries suggests that aerosol transmission of the virus -- via microdroplets which are so small that they remain suspended in the air for several hours -- is very likely.
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ROME—The offices that house the Vatican’s computer network system were one of the few allowed to stay minimally staffed during the pandemic to ensure that God's work—as it were—continued unfettered. But in early May, weeks before Italy and the Vatican emerged from a draconian COVID-19 lockdown, a series of cyber intrusions reportedly took place, masterminded by Chinese hackers keen on eavesdropping on the Pope's plans for the controversial Catholic Church in China, according to the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future and reported in The New York Times. Is Pope Francis Selling Out the Chinese Underground Church to Its Government?One of the hacks used a fairly standard Trojan malware called PlugX Payload, which was woven into the coding on a cable sent from the office of the Vatican's secretary of state to Monsignor Javier Corona Herrera in Hong Kong. The letter expressed condolences from the pope over the death of a bishop, fairly standard practice in an institution built on rituals and traditions. But when the office in Hong Kong opened the cable, it unleashed the malware.The breach into the Vatican system allowed the deviants to then access the receiving computer network—in the case of the condolence letter, the Catholic Church’s China Study Mission in Hong Kong. By sending what looked like a legitimate cable from behind the Vatican's secure firewall, the hackers could be sure the entity opening it would do so without suspicion, and unwittingly grant access. The act is called spear phishing which, unlike regular phishing, is highly targeted. The Diocese of Hong Kong was also targeted and the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions in Milan was also singled out. Recorded Future’s report states that additional hacks were found using the same malware. “The first sample included a lure document spoofing a news bulletin from the Union of Catholic Asian News regarding the impending introduction of the new Hong Kong national security law,” the report states. Another hack refers to the Vatican and uses a document called, “QUM, IL VATICANO DELL’ISLAM.doc” as the decoy. The document refers to the Shi’ite city of Qom and includes writings from an Italian Catholic academic living in Iran. “Although the direct target of these two lures are unclear, both relate to the Catholic church,” Recorded Future states in the report. A source who worked in the Vatican's security office before being furloughed over the pandemic told The Daily Beast that one of the biggest fears the Vatican had was exactly what happened: being hacked by Chinese government operatives looking to derail important talks set for September intended to bolster the tenuous relationship between the Vatican and the Chinese Catholic Church. In 2018, Pope Francis broke a 60-year-stalemate between the Roman Catholic Church and the Chinese Catholic Church that grew from an attempt in 1960 for Beijing to set up its own Holy See, and shut the real one out. The Chinese Holy See was called the Catholic Patriotic Association and instead of accepting bishops chosen by Rome, as in nearly every other diocese in the world, they chose their own political appointees. During those 60 years, Chinese Catholics were only allowed to worship openly if they adhered to the Chinese Church's rules, which spawned an underground Catholic Church that instead followed Rome's orders. Those bishops have now been sidelined as part of the 2018 deal.The conflict is far from over, but the 2018 agreement between Beijing and Rome, which has never been published but is hailed as landmark, was set to be renewed and expanded next month. The most contentious aspects of the ongoing negotiations were being discussed between Rome and Hong Kong separately, so they could strategize about how to deal with China's insistence that they still choose politically appointed bishops and give the pope the opportunity to "bless" them but not remove or replace them. Those preparatory meetings between Rome and Hong Kong would have normally taken place in person to avoid exactly what happened but thanks to the pandemic, many exist in the form of secret cables. The Vatican has made no public statement on the matter, but an official told the Catholic website Asia News, “To say that China spies on the Vatican is like discovering hot water. By now espionage and hackers have become an international problem we have to live with.”What happens next is worrying for the Vatican. The hack, now discovered, will likely stop here. But that might also mean the same thing happens to this crucial step forward for Chinese Catholics. 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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Taiwan's former president Lee Teng-hui, who defied China and earned the nickname "Mr Democracy" for the part he played in the island's transition away from authoritarian rule, died Thursday aged 97. Lee's 12 years in office from 1988 to 2000 were marked by growing cross-strait tensions as he pitched himself against Beijing, infuriating Chinese authorities for daring to carve out a separate identity for Taiwan. Despite being self-ruled since 1949, Taiwan has never formally declared independence from the mainland and Beijing has vowed to react with force if it ever does.
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Police have arrested a man in connection with a fire set at the Democratic Party Headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, last week.Officials announced on Wednesday that they had arrested 29-year-old Matthew Egler on arson charges that morning.
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The Chicago Police Department's new deputy chief of criminal networks was found dead on Tuesday from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, the latest in a history of suicides at the department.Dion Boyd, 57, was sworn into his new post on July 15 after 30-years on the force. Superintendent David Brown urged officers to keep an eye out for colleagues who could be in distress."Let's always remember to take care of ourselves and each other," Brown said at a press conference.The national suicide rate among police officers is about 18 per 100,000 as of 2017, however the rate in Chicago is 60 percent higher."One of the shocking statistics for me was that cops kill themselves at a higher rate than bad guys kill the police. And when you put it in those numbers, you realize that there’s a real problem," Phil Cline, executive director of the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation, told WBBM radio. “And it’s not something the just sprung up in the last year or so. It’s been a problem for a while."Boyd's body was found at the department's Homan Square facility, a secretive site that houses the anti-gang and bomb and arson squads. Various abuses allegedly occurred at the site, including reports of excessive force used in interrogations uncovered by The Guardian in 2016.Chicago police are currently attempting to clamp down on shootings that have plagued the city since Memorial Day weekend.While shootings typically rise in the city throughout the summer months, this year has seen a particularly sharp uptick. Chicago has recorded about 2,000 shooting victims so far this year, compared to roughly 1,400 over the same period in 2019.The seasonal rise seems to have been exacerbated by the impact of coronavirus lockdowns on inner city neighborhoods, as well as anti-police sentiment stemming from the George Floyd protests roiling the U.S.
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"You really can't hide behind legal fictions this time," Nadler said.
Half an hour before curfew on June 1, baton-swinging police fired smoke canisters, flashbang grenades and rubber bullets to drive protesters farther from the White House, enabling President Donald Trump to walk across Lafayette Park and hold up a Bible in front of St. John’s Church, a house of worship visited by U.S. presidents for two centuries.
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Georgia's governor said he's withdrawing a request for an emergency hearing in a lawsuit that aims to block the state's largest city from ordering people to wear masks in public or imposing other restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Gov. Brian Kemp earlier this month sued Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and the City Council, but a spokesman announced late Monday that the governor wanted “to continue productive, good faith negotiations.” As a result, the governor decided to withdraw the request for a hearing that was scheduled for Tuesday morning, spokesman Cody Hall said.
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Colombia's national lockdown to curb infections of the new coronavirus will be extended by one month until the end of August, President Ivan Duque said on Tuesday. The Andean country has reported more than 267,300 coronavirus cases and 9,074 deaths. "Obligatory preventative isolation, as the general concept, will continue until August 30," Duque said in his nightly broadcast.
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Oregon's governor on Wednesday said the federal government agreed to withdraw agents from Portland but the Department of Homeland Security said it would keep officers there until it was certain federal properties would not be attacked. Governor Kate Brown said the government agreed to a phased withdrawal of federal officers deployed at Portland's Mark Hatfield United States Courthouse after weeks of clashes between activists and agents.
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As states in the South and Southwest grapple with how to control the spread of the coronavirus, officials on President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force cautioned the nation’s governors Tuesday that a new set of states is beginning to experience an uptick in positive cases and recommended that local leaders implement mask mandates and close bars to contain the outbreaks.Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator for the task force, said the positivity rate in states such as Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Colorado was increasing and warned they should quickly take action before they fall into what she described as the “red COVID zones” category. Birx defined the red zones as those states with more than 100 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people and more than a 10 percent test positivity rate.“By the time you see hospitalizations, your community spread is so wide that you’ve flipped into a red state incredibly quickly,” Birx said, according to a recording of the call obtained by The Daily Beast. “By the time you see it, up to 80 or 90 percent of your county already has more than 10 percent positivity rate.”The warnings from Birx and other task force officials come as the administration is pushing states across the country to reopen schools, a point Vice President Mike Pence reiterated on the call. Pence said the task force would support whatever decision state leaders make but that the team was beginning to see evidence that “encouraging masks,” closing bars, and limiting indoor gatherings were slowing the spread in some of the hot spot states. Birx was more explicit with her advice, saying that the “100 percent mask mandates” played a significant role in containing the virus in those states.Trump in the past has resisted mask wearing and said in a Fox News interview this month that he would not impose a national mask mandate. On Monday, Trump retweeted a video shared by his son Donald Trump Jr. that featured a doctor saying masks were unnecessary. Twitter restricted Donald Trump Jr.’s account and removed the video from the platform.Trump Pushes Fake COVID Cure From Fringe Doctors, Banned by FacebookDr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top vaccine official, was also on the call with governors and said states should adhere to Birx’s recommendations even if it wasn’t politically expedient to do so. “You may be reluctant to do that because the general population is saying, ‘Wait a minute, we’re not that bad,’” Fauci said, referring to the advice of implementing mask mandates and restricting large gatherings of people. “You are worse than you think you are because where you are now is going to be reflected and what you are going to see… weeks from now. I know it may sound intrusive but it really isn’t.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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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