America

Issued on: 01/06/2020 – 19:13Modified: 01/06/2020 – 19:13 Facebook employees critical of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision not to act on President Donald Trump's inflammatory comments about U.S. protests went public on Twitter, praising the rival social media company for acting, and rebuking their own employer. Advertising Read more Many tech workers at companies – including Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc's Google, and Amazon.com Inc – have actively pursued social justice issues in recent years, urging their employers to take action and change policies. Even so, the weekend criticism marked a rare case of high-level employees publicly taking their chief executive to task, with at least three of the seven critical posts seen by Reuters coming from people who identified themselves as senior managers. "Mark is wrong, and I will endeavor in the loudest possible way to change his mind," wrote Ryan Freitas, whose Twitter account identifies him as director of product design ..

Issued on: 01/06/2020 – 13:42Modified: 01/06/2020 – 13:42 As demonstrations against the police killing of George Floyd spread across the United States in recent days, protesters in cities around the world also took up the mantle to decry systemic racism and police brutality in the United States and at home. Advertising Read more Many people have watched with growing unease at the civil unrest in the US after the latest in a series of police killings of unarmed black men and women. Floyd died on May 25 in Minneapolis after a white police officer kneeled on Floyds neck for almost nine minutes, including several minutes after he became unresponsive. The officer, Derek Chauvin, has been fired and charged with murder. The three other officers with him were also fired. Some 4,000 people marched in New Zealand's largest city Auckland on Monday to protest the killing of George Floyd as well as to stand up against police violence and racism in their own country. Demonstrators marc..

Issued on: 01/06/2020 – 11:08Modified: 01/06/2020 – 11:13 IN THE PAPERS – Monday, June 1: Papers see the United States at a breaking point as the twin crises of police violence and the coronavirus outbreak "put America's deep racial inequalities in stark relief", as The New York Times puts it. For many cartoonists, US President Donald Trump is the one fanning the flames of the chaos. Israeli papers draw a parallel between the killing of George Floyd and the killing of an unarmed and autistic Palestinian man by Israeli border police. Finally, in more positive news, SpaceX astronauts brought a sparkly dinosaur on their mission to the ISS. Advertising There's a sense that the United States has reached a tipping point after protests over the death of George Floyd spread nationwide this weekend. The Washington Post writes that the "US is at a precipice" while The New York Times headlines "Twin crises and surging anger convulse the US." The paper writes that there are "paralle..

Issued on: 01/06/2020 – 08:21Modified: 01/06/2020 – 08:21 President Jair Bolsonaro rallied alongside supporters on Sunday as others protested against the Brazilian leader, saying he is not taking the virus threat seriously. The demonstrations came as the US said it had sent Brazil 2 million doses of hydroxychloroquine, a controversial unproven drug touted by US President Donald Trump for use against Covid-19. Advertising Read more Brazil is Latin America's hotspot for the deadly pandemic, with more than 500,000 cases and a death toll of nearly 28,000, the world's fourth-highest after the United States, Britain and Italy. But Bolsonaro met a tightly packed throng of supporters outside the government palace in the capital Brasilia. The crowd chanted, "Myth! myth! myth!" – echoing the president's dismissal of the virus pandemic. Protected by bodyguards, he approached the crowd without touching them, although he did pick up two children and put them on his shoulder..

Issued on: 31/05/2020 – 07:33Modified: 31/05/2020 – 07:33 U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would postpone a Group of Seven summit he had hoped to hold next month until September or later and expand the list of invitees to include Australia, Russia, South Korea and India. Advertising Read more Speaking to reporters on Air Force One during his return to Washington from Cape Canaveral in Florida, Trump said the G7, which groups the world's most advanced economies, was a "very outdated group of countries" in its current format. "I'm postponing it because I don't feel that as a G7 it properly represents what's going on in the world," Trump said. It was unclear whether Trump's desire to invite the additional countries was a bid to permanently expand the G7. On several previous occasions, he suggested Russia be added, given what he called Moscow's global strategic importance. Russia was expelled from what was then the G8 in 2014 when Tru..

Issued on: 30/05/2020 – 08:33Modified: 30/05/2020 – 08:33 Brazil on Friday reached 27,878 coronavirus deaths, official figures showed, surpassing the toll of hard-hit Spain and making it the country with the fifth-highest number of fatalities. Advertising Read more The epicentre of the South American coronavirus outbreak, Brazil saw 1,124 deaths in 24 hours, the Ministry of Health said. It also had a record number of new cases – 26,928 in one day – bringing the total number of infections to 465,166. The United States, Britain, Italy and France lead the world in coronavirus deaths. As of Friday Spain had recorded 27,121 deaths, with virus fatalities there rapidly slowing. Brazil could soon surpass France, which has seen 28,714 deaths. Brazil is second in the number of confirmed cases, though trailing far behind the United States which has 1.7 million infections. Brazil has seen 131.2 coronavirus deaths per one million people – cRead More – Source [contf] [contfnew] france..

Issued on: 29/05/2020 – 11:26Modified: 29/05/2020 – 11:27 IN THE PAPERS – Friday, May 29: We look at how US cartoonists are reacting to the death of unarmed black man George Floyd, who died after a police officer knelt on his neck. We also look at frustration from French sports paper l'Équipe as France remains the only major European country where football games haven't been able to start up again. And a 7-year-old boy creates a mini "socially distant" prom for his babysitter in his own backyard! Advertising Many cartoonists in the US are evoking what they see as a double standard applied to those protesting the death of George Floyd while he was in police custody, compared with the largely white protesters who have been resisting lockdown measures. In this cartoon from Pat Bagley we see a teargas canister sailing straight over the heads of the armed anti-lockdown protesters only to land on a Black Lives Matter demonstrator who is just asking not to be killed. Another c..

Issued on: 29/05/2020 – 09:33Modified: 29/05/2020 – 09:33 Brazil registered a new record in Covid-19 cases and more than 1,000 dead in a 24-hour period, according to official figures released on Thursday. Advertising Read more The South American country has the world's second highest number of confirmed novel coronavirus cases — 438,238 — after the United States. According to Health Ministry data, 26,417 new cases were confirmed in a 24 hour-period ending late Thursday. In that same period Brazil experienced its third highest number of virus deaths since the start of the pandemic: 1,156, bringing the total death toll to 26,754, the sixth highest in the world. [embedded content] Some experts, however, believe that the actual virus infection rate could be up to 15 times higher because there has been no widespread testing in Brazil. The virus is spreading as feRead More – Source [contf] [contfnew] france24 [contfnewc] [contfnewc]

Issued on: 28/05/2020 – 06:43Modified: 28/05/2020 – 06:44 Demonstrators gathered Wednesday for a second night of protests over the killing in the US city of Minneapolis of a handcuffed black man by a policeman who held him to the ground with a knee on his neck. Advertising Read more As dusk fell, police formed a human barricade around the Third Precinct, where the officers accused of killing George Floyd worked before they were fired on Tuesday. They pushed protesters back as the crowd grew, a day after police fired rubber bullets and tear gas on thousands of demonstrators angered by the latest death of an African-American at the hands of US law enforcement. Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo cautioned protestors to remain peaceful. President Donald Trump in a tweet called Floyd's death "sad and tragic", as outrage spread across the country over a bystander's cellphone video of his killing on Monday while in the custody of four white police officers. ….I ..

Issued on: 28/05/2020 – 02:12Modified: 28/05/2020 – 02:12 SpaceX's landmark launch to the International Space Station — the first crewed mission to blast off from US soil in almost a decade — was scrubbed Wednesday due to bad weather. Advertising Read more With NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley strapped into the Crew Dragon capsule, the launch pad platform retracted and rocket fueling underway, SpaceX made the call to abort. "Unfortunately, we are not going to launch today," launch director Mike Taylor said, with less than 20 minutes to go until takeoff. Officials cited the threat of lightning, among other factors. It means a wait of at least a few more days for the first crewed launch on an American rocket since the space shuttle program ended in 2011. They will try again on Saturday. If successful, the launch will be the first time the feat has been performed by a privately-owned company. A live video feed showed Behnken and Hurley — in their futuristic w..