The coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe looks to have done little, at least in Laos, to slow China’s grand plans for a high-speed rail line linking its landlocked interior to the bustling ports of Singapore through mainland Southeast Asia.Work crews started laying track along the first 414-kilometer leg of the line through the country in March, five years after breaking ground. With most of the many dozen tunnels and bridges it will need to cut through Laos’ mountainous north now bored and built, state media this month reported that the $6 billion project was 90% done. Service is set to start by 2022.Analysts say the full line remains a vital part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Starting in Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunnan province, it will help the remote region tap into some of Southeast Asia’s largest economies, while boosting China’s political sway over them in the process.”The rail from Kunming to Singapore is a high priority for China. It will allow poor regions of western China, which are now landlocked, increased access to wealthier parts of Southeast Asia. It will boost trade and tourism,” said Murray Hiebert, a senior associate of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.”It would boost China’s political sway, but to a limited extent. Southeast Asian countries remain anxious about China’s goals,” added Hiebert, author of the forthcoming book Under Beijing’s Shadow: Southeast Asia’s China Challenge. He noted the competing claims some of them have with Beijing in the South China Sea and the Chinese dams they blame for choking off the Mekong River and exacerbating droughts in recent years.A bird’s-eye view of the planned route would show it winding through Laos, Thailand and Malaysia before reaching Singapore, hitting the countries’ capitals of Vientiane, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur along the way.Big push for regional influence”It will provide a big push for China to expand its economic influence [and] to eventually dominate mainland Southeast Asia; I think that’s going to be a long-term objective,” said Prapat Thapchatree, who heads the Center for ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Studies at Thailand’s Thammasat University.Laos has embraced the project warmly, hoping it will transform one of Southeast Asia’s poorest countries from landlocked to “land-linked” and draw new business from a line that promises to send more trade and tourists each way. It will turn what is a three-day slog from Boten on Laos’ border with China to the capital of Vientiane, on its border with Thailand, into a three-hour jaunt.However, the potential rewards come with some risk.A 2018 report by the U.S.-based Center for Global Development lists Laos among the countries hosting BRI projects that face the highest debt risk. A more recent report on BRI debts by Australia’s Lowy Institute said Laos owed more of its foreign debt to China, some 45%, than any of the other nine countries selected for its study. Much of it is going to pay for the railway. The government has borrowed about $1.5 billion from the state-owned Export-Import Bank of China to help pay for its 30% stake in the project, according to the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.Critics of China’s “debt diplomacy” say Beijing is pulling those financial strings to have Laos do its bidding within ASEAN. As a member of the 10-nation bloc, Laos stands accused of helping spoil efforts to mount a united front against Beijing’s sweeping South China Sea claims.”At a regional level, China has used Laos as a wedge against other countries in ASEAN,” said Elliot Brennan, a Southeast Asia analyst and research fellow at Sweden’s Institute for Security and Development Policy.The leg of the new rail line running through Laos will be of little use to China if it can’t extend the route south, keen as it is to connect with Southeast Asia’s larger economies.Thailand’s cautious approachHowever, Prapat said Thailand and Malaysia are more reluctant to be drawn much further into China’s orbit and, unlike Laos, have the clout to be coy and dictate terms.”Thailand is very cautious, very concerned about what’s happening in Laos and in Cambodia, when these two countries are too dependent on China,” he said, likening them to de facto provinces of their giant neighbor.Thailand and Malaysia are proving more practical about the project as well. “Even after the military coup in 2014 when the regime in Bangkok was shunned by many Western governments and China was one of its only friends, the generals played very hard to get because the high-speed train China was proposing was very expensive and not a priority for the Thai leadership,” said Hiebert.Thailand has moved cautiously in reaching a deal with China to build the route from Laos to Bangkok over cost concerns, and put off plans to sign the contract in December. Malaysia even froze work on its leg of the line from Thailand to Kuala Lumpur for nearly a year and agreed to start up again in April 2019 only after convincing China to slash the original $20 billion price tag by about a third.Analysts say China’s dreams of a high-speed rail line running the length of mainland Southeast Asia will be a harder sell still after the heavy hit the region’s economies have taken from the pandemic.Until the line does finally pull into Singapore, Prapat said, “it’s going to be a long way to go.” 
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Republicans and Democrats have been appealing to older voters, especially those 65 and older, as polls show Democrat Joe Biden is gaining ground against President Donald Trump with this key voting group.The contest for seniors is likely to play out in battleground states with large populations of retired people, such as Florida and Arizona, says Thomas Volgy of the University of Arizona. Volgy, a political scientist, is a former Democratic mayor of Tucson, in a state that Trump won by just under four percent.One in five eligible voters in Arizona is a senior, according to state and federal statistics, and “even more importantly,” said Volgy, “people over 65 tend to turn out in larger numbers than any other group.”That gives them a disproportionate impact here and in other states, and both parties know this.  At a White House roundtable on seniors on June 15, Trump affirmed his “iron-clad commitment” to protecting the nation’s elders.  In late May, he announced a cap on insulin prices, citing seniors as a key group helped by the measure.A leading pro-Biden group called American Bridge has launched a $20 million, 10-week ad campaign aimed at seniors in states that Trump narrowly won four years ago: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
Supporters of President Donald Trump cheer as he arrives on stage to speak to a campaign rally at the BOK Center, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.Polls show an average 10-point overall lead for Biden, who’s now at roughly 50 percent among all demographics in national polling.“When a challenger reaches the 50 percent point,” says analyst Volgy, “losing the election becomes very, very difficult for him. And from all accounts, it looks like Biden has now reached the 50 percent point.”Still, a lot could change in coming months, and the polls in 2016, which put Clinton in the lead, got the election wrong.Both campaigns have learned their lessons from that presidential vote and are now targeting seniors, a crucial demographic in the state-by-state contest that helped propel Trump to victory the last time. 
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A Jerusalem court early on Sunday ordered the release of a leading activist opposed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule and whose arrest prompted hundreds to protest outside the Israeli leader’s residence.Retired Brigadier General Amir Haskel has been a leader of the protest movement against Netanyahu, demanding that the longtime leader step down while facing charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes. Haskel and several others were detained on Friday in what police said was an “illegal” demonstration because the protesters blocked roads.Haskel, a former top Israeli air force general, has become a symbol of the protest movement that opposes Netanyahu’s continued rule. Demonstrations have been held regularly around the country, with protesters waving signs reading “crime minister” and calling for Netanyahu to resign.“No one will prevent us from protesting anywhere,” Haskel said upon his release, adding a barb toward Netanyahu about his own brief experience in jail. “We were in Hadarim prison for 15 hours. It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t terrible.”The arrests drew angry denunciations from prominent Israelis and sent hundreds out to protest outside Netanyahu’s residence on Saturday, with many slamming the police for making what they viewed as politically motivated arrests.Police said they offered to release Haskel and others if they agreed to refrain from returning to the scene of the protests. Haskel and two others refused.Gabi Lasky, the lawyer representing Haskel, told Israeli Army Radio that the court eventually released him without conditions, saying protesting was the foundation of democracy.The country’s acting police chief said the force would learn a lesson from the incident.“The role of the police is to allow freedom of expression and demonstration to every person and to keep the public peace and security, this regardless of the protest’s subject, the identity of the protesters or their opinions,” acting commissioner Motti Cohen said.Netanyahu is on trial for a series of scandals in which he allegedly received lavish gifts from billionaire friends and traded regulatory favors with media moguls for more palatable coverage of himself and his family. The trial is set to resume next month.Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing, calling the charges a witch-hunt against him result from a hostile media and a biased law enforcement system.        
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Concerns over democratic standards and bread-and-butter issues top the agenda as Poles began voting on Sunday in round one of a tight presidential race that had to be postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.Incumbent Andrzej Duda, 48, is campaigning for reelection in a vote that could determine the future of the right-wing government that supports him.Ten candidates are vying to replace him, but opinion polls show that Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, a liberal from the main Civic Platform (PO) opposition party, will enter a neck-and-neck run-off on July 12.Victory for Trzaskowski, also 48, would deal a heavy blow to the Law and Justice (PiS) government, which has relied on its ally Duda to endorse polarizing legislation, especially judicial reforms.While the PiS insists the changes are needed to weed out judicial corruption, critics and the European Union insist they erode judicial independence and democracy just three decades after Poland shed communism.U.S. President Donald Trump, who regards the populist PiS administration as a key European ally, gave Duda his blessing this week.Trump invited him to the White House on Wednesday as the first foreign leader to visit since the coronavirus pandemic began, just four days ahead of election day.Originally scheduled for May, the ballot was postponed due to the pandemic and a new hybrid system of postal and conventional voting was in place on Sunday in a bid to stem infections.While official figures show over 33,000 confirmed cases and more than 1,400 deaths, the health minister has admitted that there are likely up to 1.6 million undetected cases in Poland, an EU country of 38 million people.Anti-gay rhetoricDuda has promised to defend the governing party’s raft of popular social benefits, including a child allowance and extra pension payments — a key factor behind the populists winning a second term in October’s parliamentary election.Bread-and-butter issues are weighing heavily on voters’ minds as the economic fallout of the pandemic is set to send Poland into its first recession since communism’s demise.”I’m happy. I can’t complain; I get an extra pension payment and children are getting 500 zloty,” Irena, a 63-year-old pensioner, told AFP in the central Polish town of Minsk Mazowiecki.”I’d like this to continue,” she added, declining to provide her surname.Duda has also echoed PiS attacks on LGBT+ rights and Western values, something analysts see as a bid to attract voters backing a far-right candidate.Campaigning with the slogan “Enough is Enough,” Trzaskowski promises to use the experience and contacts he gathered as a former European affairs minister to “fight hard” for a fair slice of the EU’s 2021-27 budget, and to repair tattered ties with Brussels.He has however vowed to keep the PiS’s popular welfare payments.While many see his PO party as a weak and ineffectual opposition, Trzaskowski supporters regard him as a bulwark against the PiS’s drive to reform the courts, something they insist risks destroying any notion of an independent judiciary.”I’m a lawyer and this (PiS justice reforms) affect me directly,” Marek, 60, told AFP in Minsk Mazowiecki, also declining to provide his surname.”It’s as if a blacksmith would go to a watchmaker’s shop and try to put things in order. People might support it, but in the long run these reforms will have to be reversed.”‘Budapest model’?Since winning power in 2015, both Duda and the PiS have in many ways upended Polish politics by stoking tensions with the EU and wielding influence through state-owned companies and public broadcasters.Some analysts view the election as a crucial juncture: a second five-year term for Duda would allow the PiS to make even more controversial changes while defeat could unravel the party’s power.A win for Duda would pave the way to “bolstering ‘Eastern’ tendencies, like the rise of oligarchs… and a drift to the Budapest model (of Hungary’s Viktor Orban) – that’s the danger,” Warsaw University political scientist Anna Materska-Sosowska told AFP.Polling stations opened at 7:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) and will close at 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT) with an exit poll expected as soon as voting ends.      
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Authorities were investigating a fatal shooting Saturday night at a park in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, where demonstrators had gathered to protest the death of Breonna Taylor.Reports of shots fired at Jefferson Square Park came in around 9 p.m., Louisville Metro police said in a statement, followed by calls that the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department was performing life-saving measures on a male who died at the scene. Shortly after, police were told of a shooting victim across the street at the Hall of Justice. That person was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.Video posted on social media appeared to show a man opening fire into the park as people scrambled for cover. The footage later showed at least one person bleeding profusely on the ground.Officers cleared the park and police “are trying to gather as much information as possible in order to identify all who were involved in the incident,” the statement said. No information about arrests, possible suspects and the victims’ identities and ages was immediately released. Officials did not immediately release additional information.The park has for weeks been the epicenter for protests in the city after the police killings of Taylor and George Floyd. The Saturday night shooting was at least the second during nearly a month of protests in Louisville over Taylor’s death. Seven people were wounded May 28 when gunfire erupted  near City Hall, prompting a statement from Taylor’s mother asking people to demand justice “without hurting each other.””Praying for our city,” tweeted Kentucky state Rep. Charles Booker of Louisville late Saturday. The Democrat is running for his party’s nomination to challenge Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell in the fall.Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was killed in her Louisville home in March by police who were serving a no-knock warrant. Protesters have been calling for the officers involved in her death to be charged. One of the officers was recently fired.Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend, was originally charged with attempted murder after he fired a shot at one of the officers who came into the home. Walker has said he thought he was defending from an intruder.
The no-knock search warrant that allows police to enter without first announcing their presence was recently banned by Louisville’s Metro Council.
 
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Vice President Mike Pence called off campaign events in Florida and Arizona this coming week as the states experience a surge in new coronavirus cases.Pence will still travel to those states, which have set records for new confirmed infections in recent days, the White House confirmed, saying he will meet with governors and their health teams.Pence said Friday during a briefing by the White House’s coronavirus task force that he would be visiting Florida, Texas and Arizona to receive a “ground report” on spiking cases of COVD-19 across the region. The three states’ Republican governors have come under criticism for pushing for aggressive reopening after virus-related lockdowns as cases in the states rise.Pence is traveling to Dallas on Sunday to attend a “Celebrate Freedom Rally” at First Baptist Church Dallas before meeting with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. But planned political events later in the week have been pushed off.On Tuesday, Pence was supposed to address a Trump-Pence campaign “Faith in America” event in Tuscon, Arizona, before meeting Gov. Doug Ducey in Yuma. The campaign event has been postponed.In Florida on Thursday, Pence was to embark on a bus tour, including an appearance in Lake Wales at an event organized by the pro-Trump group America First Policies billed as the “Great American Comeback tour.” The group announced that “out of an abundance of caution at this time, we are postponing the Great American Comeback tour stop in Florida. We look forward to rescheduling soon.”The Sarasota County Republican Party confirmed in a note to supporters that Pence’s campaign event along the Gulf Coast of the state was also postponed. He was still set to meet with Gov. Ron DeSantis. 
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Princeton University has announced plans to remove the name of former President Woodrow Wilson from its public policy school because of his segregationist views, reversing a decision the Ivy League school made four years ago to retain the name.University President Christopher Eisgruber said in a letter to the school community Saturday that the board of trustees had concluded that “Wilson’s racist views and policies make him an inappropriate namesake” for Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs and the residential college.  Eisgruber said the trustees decided in April 2016 on some changes to make the university “more inclusive and more honest about its history” but decided to retain Wilson’s name. Trustees revisited the issue in light of the recent killings of George Floyd and others.Wilson, governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913 and then the 28th U.S. president from 1913 to 1921, supported segregation and imposed it on several federal agencies not racially divided up to that point. He also barred Black students from Princeton while serving as university president and spoke approvingly of the Ku Klux Klan.Change at MonmouthEarlier this month, Monmouth University of New Jersey removed Wilson’s name from one of its most prominent buildings, citing efforts to increase diversity and inclusiveness. The superintendent of the Camden school district also announced plans to rename Woodrow Wilson High School, one of the district’s two high schools.”Wilson’s racism was significant and consequential even by the standards of his own time,” Eisgruber said, adding that the former president’s segregationist policies “make him an especially inappropriate namesake for a public policy school.”The trustees said they had taken what they called “this extraordinary step” because Wilson’s name was not appropriate “for a school whose scholars, students and alumni must be firmly committed to combating the scourge of racism in all its forms.”The school will now be known as the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, he said. Princeton had already planned to close Wilson College and retire its name after opening two new residential colleges currently under construction but will change the name to First College immediately.Eisgruber said the conclusions “may seem harsh to some” since Wilson is credited with having “remade Princeton, converting it from a sleepy college into a great research university,” and he went on to become president and receive a Nobel Prize.Part of the problemBut while Princeton honored Wilson despite or perhaps even in ignorance of his views, that is part of the problem, Eisgruber said.  “Princeton is part of an America that has too often disregarded, ignored or excused racism, allowing the persistence of systems that discriminate against Black people,” he said.Four years ago, a 10-member committee gathered input from Wilson scholars and more than 600 submissions from alumni, faculty and the public before concluding that Wilson’s accomplishments merited commemoration, so long as his faults were also candidly recognized. The committee report also said using his name “implies no endorsement of views and actions that conflict with the values and aspirations of our times.”  Princeton will retain Wilson’s name on an award given annually to an undergraduate alumnus or alumna since it stems from a gift that requires that the prize be named for Wilson and honor his “conviction that education is for ‘use’ and … the high aims expressed in his memorable phrase, ‘Princeton in the Nation’s Service,’ ” the trustees said.Floyd died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into his neck for several minutes even as he pleaded for air and stopped moving.
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Several dozen women demonstrated Saturday in support of French police in central Paris, to counter public discontent over the perceived way law enforcement treats minorities.The demonstration of support surfaced as local governments across France attempt to change law enforcement practices and punish officers suspected of racism following the death of African American George Floyd while in the custody of officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota.Police officers and their unions in France accuse governments of blaming police for deep-rooted social ills in an attempt to deflect public anger.Among the women supporting police outside the Paris police headquarters Saturday were wives and partners of officers. One carried a message for Interior Minister Christophe Castaner that read “Respect our Police.”Castaner infuriated police this month when he acknowledged there were cases of racism in the police force and proposed sentences for officers found guilty of “proven suspicions of racism.”Police themselves have been protesting efforts to change their practices and punish them. Hundreds of officers rallied Friday night outside Paris’ Bataclan concert hall, where 90 people were killed in a terrorist attack by Islamist militants in 2015.  Protests erupted around the world following U.S. outrage over the May 25 death of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man. City lawmakers Friday unanimously advanced a proposal that could lead to the dismantling of that city’s police department.
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Botswana soldiers this week shot and killed a suspected rhino poacher during a gunfight in the vast Okavango Delta, where poaching has reached unprecedented levels. The southern African nation’s anti-poaching unit has killed 19 suspects since 2019, as the government employs a shoot-to-kill policy.Botswana’s military said a rhino poaching suspect was killed Wednesday during an exchange of fire in the thickets of the Okavango Delta.Botswana Defense Force’s Major Mabikwa Mabikwa said poachers are using sophisticated weapons of war and communication equipment.  He says the army is up to the challenge. President Mokgweetsi Masisi recently said the military will not hesitate to shoot poachers.“Poachers are sufficiently radicalized to kill, so they are dangerous,” said Masisi. “We put an army in place to defend this country, so any intruder is an enemy. And unfortunately, as with any war, there are casualties.”The army says it has killed 19 suspected rhinoceros poachers since last year, while one soldier lost his life during an exchange in April.Poachers mostly target rhino, with 56 of the endangered animals killed in the past two years.The government recently decided to dehorn all the rhinos and relocate them to secure, private locations.Department of Wildlife and National Parks principal veterinary officer Mmadi Reuben said in addition to dehorning, anti-poaching efforts would be intensified.“We expect to see the results. It (dehorning) is meant to disincentive,” said Reuben. “This does not in any way replace our anti-poaching strategies that we put in place. In fact, we up our anti-poaching operations and augment them further to ensure that any perpetrators that come in, they are brought to book.”The Okavango Delta is wet and challenging to navigate, with some areas inaccessible by road. Most poachers cross over from neighboring countries. 
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Afghan officials said Saturday a roadside bomb blast in Kabul has killed two members of the national human rights monitoring group.   
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said its female donor coordinator, 24-year-old Fatima Khalil, and a driver were traveling to their office in the morning when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device in an eastern part of the capital.
 
The commission condemned the attack, saying it was “deeply shaken” by the loss of its employees. “Those responsible should be identified after an investigation and brought to justice for committing this terrible crime,” read a press release.
 
No one immediately took responsibility for the bombing, the latest in a string of high-profile targeted killings in Kabul in recent weeks that remain unclaimed. They include attacks on highly respected Afghan clerics, civil society representatives and four members, including two lawyers, of the country’s Attorney General’s office, who were gunned down last week.  
 
Militants have previously carried out deadly attacks against members of the constitutionally mandated AIHRC. Afghan officials usually blame Taliban insurgents for the violence.  
 U.S. ambassador to Kabul Ross Wilson denounced the attack on the AIHRC as unacceptable, calling for end to the ongoing cycle of violence and the “impunity and indignity” of such attacks on Afghans.
 
“Recently, we and this country’s citizens have grieved the deaths of Afghan security forces, innocent civilians, religious scholars, representatives of Afghanistan’s judicial system, and now those who defend human rights and liberty. These attacks must end,” Wilson tweeted. 
The commission has lately stepped up its campaign to seek a “clear role” for women in the proposed peace talks between the Taliban and representatives of a broader Afghan society to monitor respect for human rights.
 
Shaharzad Akbar, the chairperson of AIHRC, told a special United Nations meeting earlier this week that “only an inclusive process with human rights at its heart can lead to lasting peace and prevent a return to conflict” in Afghanistan.  
 
During their five-year rule in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, the Islamist group, among other controversial policies, barred girls from seeking an education and women from working outdoors.  
 
Afghan and Taliban officials have said their peace dialogue will be held in Qatar, where the insurgent group maintains its office, soon after an ongoing prisoner swap between the two adversaries is concluded.  
 
The prisoner exchange and the intra-Afghan negotiations, which are aimed at discussing a permanent cease-fire and a power-sharing arrangement, are the key provisions of a landmark deal the United States signed with the Taliban in February.  
 
The Afghan government has so far freed nearly 4,000 Taliban prisoners and is in the process of releasing the remaining 1,000. The insurgents have set free more than 600 of the promised 1,000 Afghan security forces in their custody.
 
The U.S.-Taliban agreement requires all American and coalition troops to withdraw from Afghanistan by July 2021 in return for the Taliban’s counterterrorism guarantees and political reconciliation with rival Afghan groups.  
 Meanwhile, the Taliban has denied allegations that it had received bounties from Russian intelligence operatives to kill American and coalition forces in Afghanistan.  
 
“The 19-year jihad of the Islamic Emirate (the Taliban) is not indebted to the beneficence of any intelligence organ or foreign country,” said a Taliban statement issued Saturday.  
 
In a story published Friday in The New York Times, unnamed officials were quoted as saying that elements linked to Russia’s military intelligence service had been giving rewards to Taliban fighters to encourage them to launch attacks on international forces.  
 
The Russian Embassy in Washington also rejected the report as “baseless and anonymous accusations,” saying it has led to direct threats to the life of employees at its diplomatic mission in the U.S.
 
“Stop producing #fakenews that provoke life threats, @nytimes,” the embassy wrote on its official Twitter account.
  
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