US President Donald Trump wore a face mask in public for the first time Saturday, finally yielding to intense pressure to set a public health example as the coronavirus rampages across America.

Trump had on a black mask as he walked through the corridors of Walter Reed military hospital outside Washington to meet with wounded veterans.

Trump walked past reporters and did not stop to speak to them about what had become a hotly anticipated moment — his possible change of heart on a practice recommended by the government’s own medical experts, even as he resisted.

“I think it’s a great thing to wear a mask. I’ve never been against masks but I do believe they have a time and a place,” Trump said as he left the White House.

News reports this week said aides practically begged the president to relent and wear a mask in public — and let himself be photographed wearing it — as coronavirus cases soar in some states and as Trump trails Democrat Joe Biden badly in polls ahead of the November election.

Trump has steadfastly defended his administration’s handling of the pandemic even though the US is the hardest-hit country in the world.

The country has recently seen several days of more than 60,000 new cases, nearly 135,000 people have died and states have been left to figure out on their own how to reopen without a clear and coherent strategy from the White House.

Source: AFP

Chinese and EU leaders will hold a video summit Monday amid tensions over new tariffs on Chinese firms and Beijing’s actions on Hong Kong as well as concerns that Beijing will buy up European companies weakened by the Covid-19 crisis. The talks come against the backdrop of a rise in bellicose rhetoric toward China from the United States.

Chinese leaders and senior EU officials hold a video summit Monday with tensions rising over new tariffs targeting Chinese firms and European disquiet at Beijing’s assertiveness on the world stage.

The heads of the EU’s main institutions will discuss the coronavirus with top Chinese leaders, after Brussels infuriated Beijing by accusing it of a campaign of disinformation around the pandemic.

The EU will be represented by European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen.

Premier Li Keqiang will be the main Chinese representative and President Xi Jinping is also expected to make a video statement.

China and the EU both say they want to strengthen ties, but the relationship is tangled in a thicket of disagreements on topics ranging from trade and investment rules to human rights and national security.

Beijing’s ambassador to the EU said last week that Monday’s talks were a chance to make relations “more productive and substantive by seizing opportunities and addressing challenges”.

But he rapped Brussels over plans for tougher rules for heavily subsidised foreign companies, which would particularly target Chinese firms, saying the EU was not practising the openness it preached to others.

US President Donald Trump has pursued a bruising trade war with China, and warned last week of “complete decoupling” while suggesting the novel coronavirus is sometimes called “Kung Flu”, in a jibe at China.

The EU has taken a more balanced approach, characterising China as a “systemic rival” and competitor but also as a partner on some issues. The bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has urged a hard-headed approach.

At talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week, Borrell proposed a dialogue with Washington aimed at forging a common trans-Atlantic front against Beijing — though he has also stressed the EU must pursue its own interests and not simply toe the American line.

Human rights  

The bloc has sought to challenge China on human rights issues such as Tibet and Hong Kong, where European capitals are extremely concerned about Beijing’s proposed new security law.

On Friday, the EU demanded the immediate release of a Chinese human rights lawyer jailed for “inciting subversion of state power” after penning an open letter calling for constitutional reforms.

But while such calls have occasionally irritated Beijing, they have done nothing to alter China’s course and it is not expected to budge on Monday.

Cui Hongjian of the China Institute of International Studies said officials would defend their position on Hong Kong and explain the need for the new law — as Foreign Minister Wang Yi did in recent talks with EU counterparts.

The EU’s efforts to stand up to President Xi’s increasingly assertive China have been stymied by a lack of unity among its 27 member states, many of which have been courted assiduously by the Asian giant.

A meeting of EU foreign ministers last month dedicated to China highlighted the bloc’s struggles — Borrell voiced “grave concern” at Beijing’s security clampdown in Hong Kong but said sanctions were all but out of the question.

Trade and investment      

The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, has announced plans for new legislation aimed at ensuring foreign firms backed by heavy state subsidies do not distort competition in Europe.

There is particular concern about Chinese companies swooping in to buy European companies weakened by the coronavirus-triggered recession.

Specifically targeting China’s global reach, the EU on Monday last week imposed an unprecedented tariff on Chinese subsidies to exporters, but not those in China itself.

The measure involved EU imports from Egypt of glass-fibre fabrics that were made by subsidiaries of two Chinese firms.

This was the first time the EU took aim at subsidies granted by a country to exporters located in another state.

Meanwhile, talks towards a China-EU investment agreement remain at a standstill, despite a joint pledge to try to get somewhere by the end of the year during the German EU presidency.

Source: AFP

Donald Trump said Wednesday that US police have “not been treated fairly” and appeared to defend a white officer charged with the murder of a black man.

Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe was charged with murder Wednesday for shooting African American Rayshard Brooks in the back, and aggravated the case by kicking the 27-year-old as he lay on the ground bleeding.

The death of Brooks came less than three weeks after George Floyd died while being pinned down by Minneapolis police officers, fuelling a national uproar and anti-police brutality protests across the country.

“I thought it was a terrible situation, but you can’t resist a police officer,” Trump said of Brooks’ death in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“I hope he gets a fair shake because police have not been treated fairly in our country.

“But, again, you can’t resist a police officer like that. And they ended up in a very terrible disagreement and look at the way it ended. Very bad. Very bad.”

Trump also mentioned Floyd, saying he had been unable to watch the nearly nine-minute clip of Floyd’s death.

“Who could watch that?” he said.

On Tuesday Trump issued an order to improve policing — calling for a ban on dangerous chokeholds — but he has stopped well short of demands made at nationwide protests against racism and police brutality.

Critics, including the Democrat speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, have derided his efforts.

“The president’s weak executive order falls sadly and seriously short of what is required to combat the epidemic of racial injustice and police brutality,” she said in a statement this week.

Trump derided the Democrats during the Fox News interview, claiming: “They do nothing and they want to defund and they want to abolish, they want to abolish police departments.”

Source:  AFP

A video shows a restaurant in the US city of Atlanta in flames as protests escalate following the police killing of a 27-year-old African American there.

Protests erupted in Atlanta in the state of Georgia on Saturday after a video emerged showing the fatal police shooting of Rayshard Brooks who had fallen asleep in his car at a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant drive-thru line and who the officers wanted to take a sobriety test because he was suspected of being intoxicated.

Brooks was shot in the restaurant’s parking lot on Friday night after he allegedly scuffled with police officers. The incident was caught on tape.

The Wendy’s surveillance video didn’t show the scuffle, but showed the victim running away from where police cars were parked.

 Police said he resisted arrest and fled while grabbing a taser from one of the officers and was therefore shot to death.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her official birthday on Saturday in subdued style, with a scaled down version of the traditional “Trooping the Colour” ceremony due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The 94-year-old monarch watched a smaller military parade in the grounds of Windsor Castle, where she has been staying during the COVID-19 outbreak, in her first official public appearance since the country’s virus lockdown began in late March.

It was the first time the castle, west of London, has staged an event to mark a sovereign’s official birthday since 1895, when a ceremony was held in honour of Queen Victoria.

The parade featured soldiers from the Welsh Guards, who observed government virus guidelines to keep at least two metres apart, in a ceremony dubbed “mini-Trooping”.

The annual “Trooping” event, which normally features hundreds of servicemen and women from Britain’s most prestigious regiments for a centuries-old spectacle of military pomp and pageantry in front of thousands of spectators, was cancelled because of the health crisis.

Britain has been among the worst-hit countries in the world by COVID-19, with the number of suspected and confirmed deaths passing the grim milestone of 50,000 this week.

The Queen observed Saturday’s pared back ceremony in the quadrangle of Windsor Castle from a dais and was given the royal salute by the troops.

Despite isolating at the castle for the last three months, the elderly monarch has tried to remain visible, making a rare televised address to the nation in April and her debut on a digital platform this week in a video conference call.

She celebrated her actual 94th birthday on April 21 without the traditional gun salute, due to the health crisis.

The double birthday tradition was started by King George II in 1748, who wanted to have a summer celebration as his own birthday was October 30.

Source:  AFP

President Donald Trump plans to address the new graduating class of the West Point military academy Saturday, as relations with the Pentagon fray over accusations that he has politicized the US military.

Tensions have soared in two weeks since Trump threatened to call out active duty troops to deal with anti-police brutality protests around the country, and then staged a surprise photo op with Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley at a site that had been forcefully cleared of protesters.

Esper’s job was reportedly in the balance last week after he took the extraordinary step of breaking with the president by declaring he would not support calling up regular troops to stifle protests.

And Trump’s actions drew scathing criticisms from former Pentagon chiefs — including Esper’s predecessor James Mattis, who accused Trump of deliberately dividing the country, abusing his power and making “a mockery” of the US constitution.

On Thursday, Milley said he regretted his presence at Trump’s side on June 1, when National Guard fired smoke bombs and pepper balls to clear hundreds of peaceful protestors from outside the White House so the president could walk across and pose for pictures at a nearby a church.

Trump’s display, with Milley wearing his camouflage battle uniform, drew strong criticism that he had turned the Pentagon into a political tool of repression.

“I should not have been there,” Milley told graduates of the elite National Defense University, adding that his presence “created a perception of military involvement in domestic politics.”

– Battling for reelection –

The fracture in civil-military relations weighs on Trump’s address to the 1,110 graduating cadets at the picturesque West Point campus, north of New York City.

The event is clearly important to Trump, who wants to be seen as a tough leader as he battles for reelection in November against Democrat Joe Biden, who Trump labels “weak.”

The academy had been shut and students sent home because of the coronavirus pandemic. But Trump announced in April that he would address the graduates in person.

So cadets were recalled and put through weeks of COVID-19 quarantine and testing. About 1.5 percent have tested positive, Pentagon officials say.

It was not known what Trump plans to say Saturday.

But he has flatly rejected the Pentagon’s criticisms, arguing it was crucial to use force against protestors.

He derided Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general who garners deep respect in the US military, as “our country’s most overrated General.”

“You have to dominate the streets,” he said Monday, defending the June 1 action.

Asked in a Fox News interview that aired Friday about Esper and Milley, Trump replied, “If that’s the way they feel, I think that’s fine.”

“I have good relationships with the military,” he said. “Now we have the greatest military we’ve ever had.”

– Deeper strains –

The strains with the Pentagon go deeper than the protests.

Trump controversially overrode top Pentagon generals in 2019 to protect a Navy Seal, Eddie Gallagher, accused of war crimes and convicted of misconduct.

The president has also forced the Pentagon to divert billions of dollars from other projects to build a wall along the southern US border with Mexico.

And his precipitous efforts to withdraw US troops from abroad — including a reported plan to slash troop levels in Afghanistan before the election — have also upended plans by the defense establishment.

All of that took place in the public eye, ensuring that the graduating cadets are aware of it.

In an open letter this week, several hundred West Point alumni warned the new graduates of being used by politicians.

“Sadly, the government has threatened to use the Army in which you serve as a weapon against fellow Americans engaging in these legitimate protests,” they wrote.

“Politicization of the Armed Forces puts at risk the bond of trust between the American military and American society.”

Source:  AFP

For three generations, black Americans have learned the same cautionary tale about the police. And many, speaking on the fringes of George Floyd’s memorial ceremonies, say that nothing has changed in the US since the mid-20th century struggle for civil rights.

“Some things have changed, but not enough has changed,” Norman Mitchell told AFP during a memorial service for Floyd at his former school, Jack Yates High, in Houston’s predominantly black Third Ward neighborhood.

He acknowledged political advances made for the African American community, such as the election of Barack Obama as the first black president in the history of the US, but at the same time recounted the discrimination he and his children continue to face because of the color of their skin.

“It took an individual kneeling on someone’s neck for eight minutes, 46 seconds for the world to see the issue that we’ve been fighting for the last 100 years,” said the 55-year-old.

“When I was a young man, my father used to tell me to be very careful when I went out because there was a possibility that I could be stopped by the police,” Mitchell added.

He said he “had this exact same conversation with” his sons, whose ages range from 17 to 32.

Floyd’s agony as a white police officer knelt on his neck in a Minneapolis street hit Mitchell’s youngest son particularly hard. He “did not think it was real until May 25, and he knew the stories we had been sharing for years,” Mitchell said, whose own brother was killed by a Houston police officer in 1991.

At 63 years old, Laura Allen was a child when marches and protests against police brutality started in the Texan city’s streets.

“I was three or four years old with my family down (in) the streets, and we’re having to march for the same civil rights that we did years ago,” she said.

“Not much has changed at all.”

The former Yates student — class of 1975 — slammed the inequality and “double standard” of police policies in Houston, where “almost every black male I know have been profiled.”

– Scared of cops –

Like many others, Allen has countless stories of arbitrary arrests and intimidation. In 1980, she was detained by park police “for carrying a glass.”

This year, she was pulled over during a trip to Alabama with her husband and daughter.

“As soon as we crossed the Alabama border, we were instantly stopped. They ask, ‘Is this your car?'” recalled the small, gray-haired woman.

Just as her father brought her to protests, so Allen accompanied her daughter, Leah, last week to a massive rally in Houston, where 70,000 people demanded justice for Floyd.

At 28, Leah Allen has the same distrust of police officers as her mother, since “you never know what could happen.”

“I’m very scared of cops,” she said, recounting how police officers have followed her or leered sexually at her.

Tragedy can strike at any moment. Syreeta Polley, 38, points to the death in 2016 of black motorist Philando Castile, who was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop near Saint Paul, Minnesota.

As with Floyd, his shocking final moments were caught on video.

Polley has taught her teenage daughter, Nia Madison, to “respect authority figures” and be “cautious.”

The 17-year-old has started driving, and the lesson is clear: “Make sure you’re prepared if you’re being pulled over,” said Polley.

“It’s 2020 and it’s a big step back, it pushes us back to the 50s and 60s and the stories my 92-year-old grandmother would tell,” Polley added.

Even the Houston police chief, Art Acevedo, admitted that “there is a lot of work to do” to change the police force’s mindset.

Houston-based rapper William James Dennis — or “Willie D” — hopes that Floyd’s death will serve as a catalyst.

The black community “can use (the death of George Floyd) as a short window of opportunity to move America forward,” the artist and activist told AFP on Tuesday, during Floyd’s funeral.

Source: AFP

New York lawmakers voted on Tuesday to repeal a decades-old law that shields police officers’ disciplinary records from the public. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has said he will sign the bill into law amid nationwide protests against police brutality.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo tweeted that he will sign the bill into law this week amid nationwide protests against police brutality.

The bill is part of a package of police reform measures advanced by the Democratic-controlled Assembly and Senate in Albany this week as protests gripped the nation following the death of George Floyd, a black man, as a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck.

On Monday, the legislature voted to ban the use by police of chokeholds. The practice had come under intense condemnation when an African-American man, Eric Garner, died after a white New York City police officer used a chokehold on him during a 2014 arrest.

Advocates for police accountability have long been pushing for the repeal of the contentious section of New York’s Civil Rights Law, 50-a, that prevented disclosure to the public of disciplinary records of police officers.

“The legislation that will be passed over the coming days will help stop bad actors and send a clear message that brutality, racism, and unjustified killings will not be tolerated,” New York Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said in a statement.

New York police unions have called the legislation an attack on police.

“The message has been sent very clearly to police officers by our elected officials: We don’t like you,” Richard Wells, president of the statewide union the Police Conference of New York, told reporters. “We don’t respect you. We will not support you. We want you to go away.”

He said the repeal of 50-a would enable criminal defense attorneys to cite old complaints against an officer in court to undermine the officer’s testimony.

The New York City Council was also considering a bill to criminalize the use of chokeholds, which has widespread support among lawmakers but is opposed in its current form by the mayor.

Source: REUTERS

George Floyd’s funeral took place on Tuesday in Houston, two weeks after his death while being held by police in a Minneapolis street, as more anti-racism rallies inspired by his treatment were set to take place in the United States and Europe.

George Floyd, whose death has sparked a global protest movement, is to be buried beside his mother in a cemetery in Houston.

“When there is justice for George Floyd, we will truly be on our way to racial justice in America,” said Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in a video address at George Floyd’s funeral in Houston.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a global fight against racism and discrimination.

The mayor of Houston announced a ban on chokeholds by police.

Houston police will increase their audit of taser and body camera usage.

Pastor Steve Wells told mourners at George Floyd’s funeral that they have “awakened the conscience of a nation”.

Delivering the eulogy, the Reverend Al Sharpton reserved his sharpest criticism for President Donald Trump. “You take rubber bullets and tear gas to clear out peaceful protesters, and then take a Bible and walk in front of a church, and use a church as a prop. Wickedness in high places,” Sharpton said.

Source: France 24

A sweeping overhaul of police oversight and procedures is being proposed Monday by congressional Democrats in response to the deaths of black Americans at the hands of law enforcement.

House and Senate Democrats held moment of silence at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, reading the names of George Floyd and others killed. They then knelt for 8 minutes and 46 seconds — now a symbol of police brutality and violence — the length of time prosecutors say Floyd was pinned under a white police officer’s knee before he died.

“We’re here to observe that pain,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, drawing on the nation’s founding with slavery.

“We’re here to respect the actions of the American people to speak out against that,” she said, before kneeling on one knee. “We are here to honor George Floyd.”

According to a draft outline obtained by The Associated Press, the Justice in Policing Act to be unveiled Monday would limit legal protections for police, create a national database of excessive-force incidents and ban police choke holds, among other changes. It outlines the most ambitious changes to law enforcement sought by Congress in years.

‘Police culture must change’

Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, which is leading the effort, said called it “transformative.”

A profession where you have the power to kill should be a profession that requires highly trained officers who are accountable to the public.

Bass said the package from House and Senate Democrats will be bolder than any law enforcement changes of the past decade. “It is time for police culture in many departments to change,” she said. “And we believe that the legislation will make a major step forward in that direction.”

The package confronts several aspects of law enforcement accountability and practices that have come under criticism, especially as more and more police violence is captured on cell phone video and shared widely across the nation, and the world.

The draft document said the proposed legislation would revise the federal criminal police misconduct statute to make it easier to prosecute officers who are involved in misconduct “knowingly or with reckless disregard.”

Source: AP