For a moment, Congress had a chance to act on a policing overhaul, mobilized by a national trauma and overwhelming public support. Those efforts have stalled now and seem unlikely to be revived in an election year.  It’s latest example of how partisanship and polarization on Capitol Hill have hamstrung Congress’ ability to meet the moment and respond meaningfully to public opinion.  Major changes in policing policy appear likely to join gun control and immigration as social issues where even with Americans’ overwhelming support, their elected representatives are unable or unwilling to go along, especially when President Donald Trump is indifferent or opposed.”In this moment, as it was with gun violence and immigration reform, we don’t know where the president really is,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who weeks ago was expressing skepticism weeks ago about a breakthrough. “If this were the first time we were in this situation, I’d be more hopeful,” he said then.  Rep. Karen Bass joined by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other House Democrats spaced for social distancing, speaks during a news conference on the House East Front Steps on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 25, 2020.The bipartisan outcry over the deaths of George Floyd and other Black Americans appeared to be a chance for Congress to reshape its reputation. Polls showed nearly all Americans in a favor of some measure of change to the criminal justice system, and both chambers moved quickly to draft legislation.  There were common elements in the House Democratic proposal and the Senate Republican bill, including a national database of use-of-force incidents by law enforcement and restrictions on police chokeholds. But efforts to bridge the divides bogged down in a predictable fight over process and exposed again how little trust there is between the Senate’s leaders, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.McConnell said Democrats refused to take him at his word that he was willing to negotiate over the final bill, and he pitched a supposedly fair and freewheeling floor debate. Schumer and other Democrats saw little that was genuine in McConnell’s overtures, noting that during his tenure as GOP leader, the sharp-elbowed Kentucky Republican has permitted almost no open floor debate on legislation.  The swift rise and fall of prospects for the police bill showed how lawmakers are often driven more by the views of their parties’ hard-liners than overall public opinion.  “The incentive structure is misaligned for compromise. That’s the reality of it. Members are more likely to be rewarded electorally for representing their base primary voters than for reaching out to voters in the middle,” said Michael Steel, who was a top aide to former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. “The giants of yesteryear are remembered as such because voters rewarded them for successfully legislating. And that just seems to be less and less the case.”Public support for some kind of policing overhaul after Floyd’s death is overwhelming. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll shows 29% of Americans say the criminal justice system needs a complete overhaul, 40% say it needs major changes and 25% say it needs minor changes.Democrats Accuse Attorney General Barr of Political Meddling in US Justice SystemWilliam Barr is the ‘president’s fixer,’ said Jerrold Nadler, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary CommitteeThere are other high-profile examples where public support has been unable to overcome partisanship in Congress — most notably on gun control. An AP-NORC survey from March 2019 found 83% of Americans in favor of a federal law requiring background checks on all potential gun buyers. Trump has also supported the idea.But gun control legislation has gone nowhere in Washington.The parties have also failed to make progress in overhauling immigration laws, despite broad public support. The most overwhelmingly popular measure — granting legal protections to young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children — has gotten caught in the fray, with hundreds of thousands of such “Dreamer” immigrants caught in legal limbo.  This gridlock has been exacerbated by Trump’s reputation on Capitol Hill as an unreliable negotiating partner on major issues. On policing, he spoke generally about supporting legislation but exerted little political capital when the process hit a roadblock.  “To do really hard things you always need a president leaning in and engaged,” said Brendan Buck, a top aide to former Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., during Trump’s first two years in office. “And on the really hard things he has not shown a willingness to get engaged.”The police debate also suffered from the realities of the political calendar. With the Congressional Black Caucus, progressive activists and the civil rights community all calling the Republican bill too weak to be salvaged, some Democrats saw little incentive to give ground now when they might be able to get more if their party has sweeping successes in the November elections, now just over four months away.  “Why cut a bad deal now when you could potentially be in the driver’s seat to write a real bill that effects real change in just a few months?” said Matt House, a former Schumer aide.  Some veteran lawmakers have found ways to navigate the fierce partisanship on Capitol Hill.  GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and the committee’s top Democrat, Patty Murray of Washington, have shepherded a major education policy rewrite and legislation to combat opioids through a McConnell-led Senate. They did so by building sweeping consensus among lawmakers in both parties before committee or floor action.  Murray said in an interview that there was little attempt to do that kind of behind-the-scenes work on policing.”This didn’t even smell like an attempt to get something done,” Murray said. “The feeling that you want to accomplish something, that you want to get something done … is a very different feeling than we saw with policing reform.”
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Facebook said Friday that it will flag all “newsworthy” posts from politicians that break its rules, including those from President Donald Trump.Separately, Facebook’s stock dropped more than 8%, erasing roughly $50 billion from its market valuation, after the European company behind brands such as Ben & Jerry’s and Dove announced it would boycott Facebook ads through the end of the year over the amount of hate speech and divisive rhetoric on its platform. Later in the day, Coca-Cola also announced it joined the boycott for at least 30 days.CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously refused to take action against Trump posts suggesting that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud, saying that people deserved to hear unfiltered statements from political leaders. Twitter, by contrast, slapped a “get the facts” label on them.Until Friday, Trump’s posts with identical wording to those labeled on Twitter remained untouched on Facebook, sparking criticism from Trump’s opponents as well as current and former Facebook employees. Now, Facebook is all but certain to face off with the president the next time he posts something the company deems to be violating its rules.“The policies we’re implementing today are designed to address the reality of the challenges our country is facing and how they’re showing up across our community,” Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page announcing the changes.Zuckerberg said the social network is taking additional steps to counter election-related misinformation. In particular, the social network will begin adding new labels to all posts about voting that will direct users to authoritative information from state and local election officials.Facebook is also banning false claims intended to discourage voting, such as stories about federal agents checking legal status at polling places. The company also said it is increasing its enforcement capacity to remove false claims about local polling conditions in the 72 hours before the U.S. election.Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Civic Media, said the changes are a “reminder of how powerful Facebook may be in terms of spreading disinformation during the upcoming election.”He said the voting labels will depend on how good Facebook’s artificial intelligence is at identifying posts to label.“If every post that mentions voting links, people will start ignoring those links. If they’re targeted to posts that say things like ‘Police will be checking warrants and unpaid traffic tickets at polls’ — a classic voter suppression disinfo tactic — and clearly mark posts as disinfo, they might be useful,” he said.But Zuckerman noted that Facebook “has a history of trying hard not to alienate right-leaning users, and given how tightly President Trump has aligned himself with voter-suppressing misinfo, it seems likely that Facebook will err on the side of non-intrusive and ignorable labels, which would minimize impact of the campaign.”Earlier in the day, shares of Facebook and Twitter dropped sharply after consumer-product maker Unilever announced a new ad boycott on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram through at least the end of the year.The European company said it took the move to protest the amount of hate speech online. Unilever said the polarized atmosphere in the United States ahead of November’s presidential election placed responsibility on brands to act.In addition to the decline in Facebook shares, Twitter ended the day more than 7% lower.Unilever, which is based in the Netherlands and Britain, joins a raft of other advertisers pulling back from online platforms. Facebook in particular has been the target of an escalating movement to withhold advertising dollars to pressure it to do more to prevent racist and violent content from being shared on its platform.“We have decided that starting now through at least the end of the year, we will not run brand advertising in social media newsfeed platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the U.S.,” Unilever said. “Continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society.”Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Thursday, Verizon joined others in the Facebook boycott.Unilever “has enough influence to persuade other brand advertisers to follow its lead,” said eMarketer analyst Nicole Perrin. She noted that Unilever pulled back spending “for longer, on more platforms (including Twitter) and for more expansive reasons” — in particular, by citing problems with “divisiveness” as well as hate speech.Sarah Personette, vice president of global client solutions at Twitter, said the company’s “mission is to serve the public conversation and ensure Twitter is a place where people can make human connections, seek and receive authentic and credible information, and express themselves freely and safely.”She added that Twitter is “respectful of our partners’ decisions and will continue to work and communicate closely with them during this time.”
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European Union countries failed to settle on Friday on a final “safe list” of countries whose residents could travel to the bloc from July, with the United States, Brazil and Russia set to be excluded.Ambassadors from the 27 EU members convened from Friday afternoon to establish criteria for granting quarantine-free access from next Wednesday.A redrawn text of 10-20 countries was put to them, but many said they needed to consult first with their governments, diplomats said. The list did not include the United States, Brazil or Russia, one diplomat said.Discussions were continuing overnight, with the EU countries expected to give informal replies by Saturday evening, people familiar with the matter said.U.S. passengers may be allowed to travel if they meet certain conditions such as passing temperature checks, two U.S. officials said.The European Commission had advised that the bloc first lift internal border controls and then gradually open up to outsiders. However, the first step has not gone according to plan.Greece is mandating coronavirus tests for arrivals from a range of EU countries, including France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, with self-isolation until results are known.The Czech Republic has said it will not allow in tourists from Portugal, Sweden and part of Poland.There is broad agreement that the bloc should only open up to those with a similar or better epidemiological situation, but there are questions about how to assess a country’s handling of the epidemic and the reliability of data.A number of countries, such as Tanzania, Turkmenistan and Laos have no reported cases in the past two weeks, according to EU agency, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).Based on ECDC data for the two weeks to Thursday, a range of countries are clearly in a worse situation than the European Union.They include the United States, Mexico, Brazil and much of Latin America, Russia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia.Despite pressure from U.S. airlines and unions, the White House has not committed to mandating fresh air travel safety measures in the wake of the pandemic. Discussions between airlines and government officials including Vice President Mike Pence on Friday over temperature checks ended without an agreement.In a statement, Pence’s office said the parties also discussed “the best path forward for allowing Americans to safely travel internationally again.”The Commission has suggested the western Balkans countries — Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia — should be admitted.However, according to the ECDC data, the number of cases in Bosnia and North Macedonia could be too high. 
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Businesses across Greece have been slowly reopening, scrambling to make up for lost work after a shutdown of more than two months because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The relaunch isn’t easy, especially for those in marginalized professions, such as sex workers, who say they are among the hardest hit.In the small city of Larisa, north of the Greek capital, Soula Alevridou operates one of the region’s top brothels.For years, she said, business was booming. Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck.Now, times are tough.“There is very little work,” Alevridou said. “Almost nothing. This industry has been hurt badly, and it feels as if its workers are coming out of a war, all of them injured. Those who manage to recover will survive, but it is tough.”Under a new set of government health and safety regulations, brothels must now implement new protective measures to prevent coronavirus infections.They require sex workers to wear masks, keep their heads a distance from customers and take on appointments of no more than 15 minutes, all measures the industry has agreed to.Names and contact numbersHowever, orders to register clients’ names and contact numbers, as well as to keep them in orderly lines outside brothels, have prostitutes balking, saying the measures strike at the very foundation of their service: anonymity.“Keeping records of clients, their names and contacts may be right,” Alevridou said. “It assists health authorities in tracking and tracing potential cases.” Sex workers, though, she said, cannot play the role of police officers. The sex trade is a different business altogether, she said.Cashless payments, now required, are also proving a problem.A married man, Alevridou said, cannot go to a brothel and pay with his cash or credit card. His family probably shares the same card and he’s bound to have problems once his wife or son or daughter get a whiff of the bordello charges, she said.Critics say the measures will be impossible to impose.“It’s highly unlikely that these measures will be observed,” said Thanos Askitis, a leading sex therapist in Greece. Ultimately, he said, they will add no further protection to the industry. It will all boil down to luck or lack of it in containing the crisis on this front, he said.So far, no cases have been recorded nationwide involving Greek sex workers.However, the financial beating the industry has suffered in recent months, plus the new measures imposed, have many sex workers returning to the streets, branching out online or just going underground to eke out a living.800 brothelsThe crisis is much more prevalent in big cities, such as Athens, where most sex workers are already operating illegally. Authorities said they count about 800 brothels, but only a third of them are legally listed.While the Greek government has offered financial assistance to those who have lost their income because of the COVID-19 crisis, no adequate provisions have been made for the sex industry.To qualify for the aid payments, workers must show they are operating legally and have been paying taxes. That is impossible, though, for the uncounted numbers of unregistered sex workers here, mainly migrants, who cannot do so because they lack legal status.Unlike other countries across Europe and beyond, sex workers here have received little, if any, support from local charity groups.
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“The Simpsons” will no longer use white actors to dub ethnic minority characters, the producers of the long-running animated series announced Friday.The decision includes a recurring character from the series, launched in 1989 — Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, a grocer of Indian origin voiced in the American version of the show by white actor Hank Azaria.The character has long been seen as problematic and conveying racist stereotypes. Last January Azaria announced that, in agreement with producers, he was abandoning the role.”Moving forward, THE SIMPSONS will no longer have white actors voice non-white characters,” Fox Studios said in a statement to AFP.The change will also affect the character of Dr. Hibbert, a Black man dubbed by the white actor Harry Shearer who also lends his voice to many other characters on the series — from Homer Simpson’s boss Mr. Burns to the chirpy neighbor Ned Flanders.The announcement came as Mike Henry, the white actor who voices the Black character of Cleveland Brown in “Family Guy,” another animated series produced by Fox, announced on Twitter that he was giving up the role.”It’s been an honor to play Cleveland on Family Guy for 20 years. I love this character, but persons of color should play characters of color. Therefore, I will be stepping down from the role,” he wrote.Americans are in the midst of a reckoning on systemic racism and discrimination ignited by the death of George Floyd, an African American man, in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25.      
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A federal judge on Friday ordered the release of children held with their parents in U.S. immigration jails and denounced the Trump administration’s prolonged detention of families during the coronavirus pandemic.U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee’s order applies to children held for more than 20 days at three family detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some have been detained since last year.Citing the recent spread of the virus in two of the three facilities, Gee set a deadline of July 17 for children to either be released with their parents or sent to family sponsors.The family detention centers “are ‘on fire’ and there is no more time for half measures,” she wrote.In May, ICE said it was detaining 184 children at the three detention centers, which are separate from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services facilities for unaccompanied children that were holding around 1,000 children in early June. The numbers in both systems have fallen significantly since earlier in the Trump administration because the U.S. is expelling most people trying to cross the border or requiring them to wait for their immigration cases in Mexico.Gee oversees a long-running court settlement governing the U.S. government’s treatment of immigrant children known as the Flores agreement. Her order does not directly apply to the parents detained with their children.But most parents last month refused to designate a sponsor when ICE officials unexpectedly asked them who could take their children if the adults remained detained, according to lawyers for the families. The agency said then it was conducting a “routine parole review consistent with the law” and Gee’s previous orders.Advocates contend that ICE should release all families from detention especially as the coronavirus has spread rapidly through immigration detention. In court filings revealed Thursday, ICE said 11 children and parents have tested positive for the coronavirus at the family detention center in Karnes City, Texas.At the detention center in nearby Dilley, at least three parents and children — including a child who turned 2 this week — were placed in isolation after two private contractors and an ICE official tested positive for the virus.Amy Maldonado, an attorney who works with detained families, said Gee “clearly recognized that the government is not willing to protect the health and safety of the children, which is their obligation.”“They need to make the sensible choice and release the parents to care for their children,” she said of the government.For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death. The vast majority of people recover.More than 2,500 people in ICE custody have tested positive for the virus. The agency says it has released at least 900 people considered to have heightened medical risk and reduced the populations at its three family detention centers. But in court filings last month, ICE said it considered most of the people in family detention to be flight risks because they had pending deportation orders or cases under review.  
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U.S. intelligence has concluded that the Russian military offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan to kill American troops and other coalition forces, The New York Times reported Friday.Citing officials briefed on the matter, the Times said the United States determined months ago that a Russian military intelligence unit linked to assassination attempts in Europe had offered rewards for successful attacks last year.Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the newspaper said.The White House, the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined requests from Reuters for comment on the Times report.President Donald Trump has been briefed on the intelligence finding, the Times said. It said the White House had yet to authorize any steps against Russia in response to the bounties.Of the 20 Americans killed in combat in 2019, the Times said, it was not clear which deaths were under suspicion.After nearly 20 years of fighting the Taliban, the United States is looking for a way to extricate itself from Afghanistan and to achieve peace between the U.S.-backed government and the militant group, which controls swaths of the country.On February 29, the United States and the Taliban struck a deal that called for a phased U.S. troop withdrawal.U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan is down to nearly 8,600, well ahead of a schedule agreed with the Taliban, in part because of concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, U.S. and NATO officials said in late May.
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A new survey suggests Democrats and Republicans have very different views on whether the economy has improved since being shut down this spring. This comes as the number of coronavirus cases is rising again in several states. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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Після публікацій журналістських розслідувань програми «Схеми: корупція в деталях» (проєкт Радіо Свобода і телеканалу «UA:Перший»), а згодом програми «Наші гроші» про ймовірні махінації на підприємстві «Центренерго», контрольний пакет акцій якого належить державі, голова Комітету Верховної ради з питань енергетики та житлово-комунальних послуг Андрій Герус звернувся до Кабінету міністрів та Фонду держмайна з вимогою провести аудит на підприємстві та перевірити інформацію викладену в журналістських розслідуваннях.

«За даними засобів масової інформації (відповідні відомості було поширено у матеріалі Радіо Свобода, а також у програмі «Наші гроші» з Денисом Бігусом) протягом тривалого часу на ПАТ «Центренерго» могли мати місце корупційні схеми», – йдеться у зверненні Андрія Геруса на адресу уряду та ФДМУ від 9 червня 2020 року. 

«З метою повного розслідування можливих зловживань на публічному акціонерному товаристві «Центренерго» та притягнення винних осіб до відповідальності прошу провести аудит діяльності ПАТ «Центренерго» за 2019 рік», – написав голова Комітету Верховної ради з питань енергетики та житлово-комунальних послуг. 

16 червня 2020 року прем’єр-міністр Денис Шмигаль дав доручення Голові Фонду держмайна Дмитру Сенниченку, міністру фінансів Сергію Марченку та заступнику Держсекретаря Кабінету міністрів Геннадію Плісу розглянути звернення Андрія Геруса.

Читайте також: Разом з Коломойським на постачанні вугілля на державне «Центренерго» заробляє і Медведчук – «Схеми»​

У відповідь на депутатське звернення Фонд державного майна зазначив, що проведе аудит «Центренерго» за участі фахівців Національної комісії, що здійснює державне регулювання у сферах енергетики та комунальних послуг, Державної аудиторської служби України та Міністерства енергетики та захисту довкілля України. 

«Аудиторське дослідження планується розпочати орієнтовно з 20.07.2020», – йдеться у листі ФДМУ у відповідь Андрію Герусу. 

Раніше «Схеми» отримали та проаналізували масив документів про фінансово-господарську діяльність «Центренерго» за 2019 – І квартал 2020 роки – про те, який товар, у кого та за якою ціною воно закуповувало. 

Журналісти «Схем» виявили, що пов’язані з Коломойським фірми за пів року заробили понад 4 мільярди гривень на продажі вугілля та газу державній компанії «Центренерго», продаючи сировину для виробництва електроенергії за цінами, подекуди вищими за ринкові.

Читайте також: Україна збирається приватизувати «Центренерго» та «Президент-Готель» – меморандум з МВФ​

Згодом «Схеми» встановили, що частки у компанії «Синтез Ойл», яка після зміни влади у 2019 році почала заробляти на постачанні вугілля на державне підприємство «Центренерго» з націнкою, мають не лише структури бізнесмена Ігоря Коломойського, але й дружина голови політради партії «Опозиційна платформа – За життя» Віктора Медведчука. 

До складу «Центренерго» входять три ТЕС: Вуглегірська (Донецька область), Зміївська (Харківська область) і Трипільська (Київська область), сумарна проектна потужність яких становить 7 660 МВт, це близько 14% від загальної потужності електростанцій України.
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A spacewalking astronaut on Friday added a small mirror to the millions of pieces of junk orbiting the Earth, as he lost the small object from his space suit, while stepping out of the International Space Station. U.S. Commander Chris Cassidy said the mirror floated away at about 0.3 meters per second. Mission Control said the mirror somehow became detached from Cassidy’s spacesuit. Spacewalking astronauts wear a wrist mirror on each sleeve to get better views while working.  The mirror is just 12 centimeters by roughly 8 centimeters and came loose as the ISS was in darkness. Once he was in sunlight, Cassidy inspected his sleeve for clues that might explain how the mirror came off but told Mission Control he found no evidence of thread damage. Cassidy and fellow astronaut Bob Behnken have conducted the first of at least four spacewalks to replace the last in series of old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new, more efficient lithium-ion batteries. The batteries store energy collected by the station’s solar panel arrays. Their spacewalks are expected to continue through July before Behnken returns to Earth in August aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Behnken and Doug Hurley made history at the end of May with SpaceX’s first astronaut launch. This was the seventh spacewalk for both men. Each has spent more than 30 hours out in the vacuum of space. 
 
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A Moscow court on Friday convicted acclaimed Russian theater and film director Kirill Serebrennikov of fraud, in a long-running case that critics have slammed as fabricated.The judge ruled that Serebrennikov, 50, and two co-defendants were guilty of misappropriating 129 million rubles ($2 million) of state funds that financed a theatrical project.”Serebrennikov, [Yury] Itin and [Konstantin] Malobrodsky carried out actions directed at personal enrichment” and acted as a group to mislead employees of the culture ministry, Judge Olesya Mendeleyeva said, according to an AFP correspondent in the court.A fourth defendant in the case, Sofia Apfelbaum, was “unaware” of the fraud, the judge said.The prosecution earlier this week asked the court to give Serebrennikov a six-year prison sentence, but the judge can take a long time to reach sentencing.Serebrennikov, who heads one of Moscow’s top theater venues, the Gogol Center, was arrested in 2017 and the case against him nearly fell apart last year when a judge handed it back to the prosecution because of “inconsistencies.”It restarted with a new judge, and the amount of the alleged fraud was revised from 133 million rubles to 129 million rubles.The judge on Friday backed claims by the prosecution that Serebrennikov orchestrated theft of state money allocated to the Platforma project he ran between 2011 and 2014.Serebrennikov and his co-defendants insisted they were innocent. The director this week called the accusations that he stole the money “laughable.”
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