Far-right extremists tried to storm the German parliament building Saturday following a protest against the country’s pandemic restrictions but were intercepted by police and forcibly removed.The incident occurred after a daylong demonstration by tens of thousands of people opposed to the wearing of masks and other government measures intended to stop the spread of the new coronavirus. Police ordered the protesters to disband halfway through their march around Berlin after participants refused to observe social distancing rules, but a rally near the capital’s iconic Brandenburg Gate took place as planned.Footage of the incident showed hundreds of people, some waving the flag of the German Reich of 1871-1918 and other far-right banners, running toward the Reichstag building and up the stairs.Police confirmed on Twitter that several people had broken through a cordon in front of Parliament and “entered the staircase of the Reichstag building, but not the building itself.””Stones and bottles were thrown at our colleagues,” police said. “Force had to be used to push them back.”Germany’s top security official condemned the incident.”The Reichstag building is the workplace of our Parliament and therefore the symbolic center of our liberal democracy,” Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said in a statement.”It’s unbearable that vandals and extremists should misuse it,” he said, calling on authorities to show “zero tolerance.”People gather at the Victory Column as they attend a protest rally in Berlin, Germany, Aug. 29, 2020 against new coronavirus restrictions in Germany. Police in Berlin requested thousands of reinforcements from other parts of Germany.Earlier, thousands of far-right extremists had thrown bottles and stones at police outside the Russian Embassy. Police detained about 300 people throughout the day.Berlin’s regional government had tried to ban the protests, warning that extremists could use them as a platform and citing anti-mask rallies earlier this month where rules intended to stop the virus from being spread further weren’t respected.Protest organizers successfully appealed the decision Friday, though a court ordered them to ensure social distancing. Failure to enforce that measure prompted Berlin police to dissolve the march while it was still in progress.During the march, which authorities said drew about 38,000 people, participants expressed their opposition to a wide range of issues, including vaccinations, face masks and the German government in general. Some wore T-shirts promoting the “QAnon” conspiracy theory while others displayed white nationalist slogans and neo-Nazi insignia, though most participants denied having far-right views.Uwe Bachmann, 57, said he had come from southwestern Germany to protest for free speech and his right not to wear a mask.”I respect those who are afraid of the virus,” said Bachmann, who was wearing a costume and a wig that tried to evoke stereotypical Native American attire. He suggested, without elaborating, that “something else” was behind the pandemic.Another protester said he wanted Germany’s current political system abolished and a return to the constitution of 1871 on the grounds that the country’s postwar political system was illegal. Providing only his first name, Karl-Heinz, he had traveled with his sister from their home near the Dutch border to attend the protest and believed that the coronavirus cases being reported in Germany now were “false positives.”Germany has seen an upswing in new cases in recent weeks. The country’s disease control agency reported Saturday that Germany had almost 1,500 new infections over the past day.A protester is held by German riot policemen in front of the Reichstag building, which houses the Bundestag lower house of parliament, at the end of a Berlin demonstration called by far-right and COVID-19 deniers on Aug. 29, 2020.Germany has been praised for the way it has handled the pandemic, and the country’s death toll of some 9,300 people is less than one-fourth the amount of people who have died of COVID-19 in Britain. Opinion polls show overwhelming support for the prevention measures imposed by authorities, such as the requirement to wear masks on public transport, in stores and some public buildings such as libraries and schools.Along the route were several smaller counter-protests where participants shouted slogans against the far-right’s presence at the anti-mask rally.”I think there’s a line and if someone takes to the streets with neo-Nazis then they’ve crossed that line,” said Verena, a counter-protester from Berlin who declined to provide her surname.Meanwhile, a few hundred people rallied Saturday in eastern Paris to protest new mask rules and other restrictions prompted by rising virus infections around France. Police watched closely but did not intervene.The protesters had no central organizer but included people in yellow vests who formerly protested economic injustice, others promoting conspiracy theories and those who call themselves “Anti-Masks.”France has not seen an anti-mask movement like some other countries. Masks are now required everywhere in public in Paris as authorities warn that infections are growing exponentially just as schools are set to resume classes.France registered more than 7,000 new virus infections in a single day Friday, up from several hundred a day in May and June, in part thanks to ramped-up testing. It has the third-highest coronavirus death toll in Europe after Britain and Italy, with over 30,600 dead.In London, hundreds of people crowded into Trafalgar Square for a “Unite for Freedom” protest against government lockdown restrictions and the wearing of face masks. The Metropolitan Police warned demonstrators that anyone attending a gathering of more than 30 people may be at risk of committing a criminal offense.
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Facebook made a mistake in not removing a militia group’s page earlier this week that called for armed civilians to enter Kenosha, Wisconsin, amid violent protests after police shot Jacob Blake, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.The page for the “Kenosha Guard” violated Facebook’s policies and had been flagged by “a bunch of people,” Zuckerberg said in a video posted Friday on Facebook. The social media giant has in recent weeks adopted new guidelines removing or restricting posts from groups that pose a threat to public safety.Facebook took down the page Wednesday, after an armed civilian allegedly killed two people and wounded a third Tuesday night amid protests in Kenosha that followed the shooting of Blake, who is Black.”It was largely an operational mistake,” Zuckerberg said. “The contractors, the reviewers, who the initial complaints were funneled to, didn’t, basically didn’t pick this up.”Zuckerberg did not apologize for the error and said that so far, Facebook hasn’t found any evidence that Rittenhouse was aware of the Kenosha Guard page or the invitation it posted for armed militia members to go to Kenosha.Facebook is now taking down posts that praise the shooting or shooter, Zuckerberg said. Yet a report Thursday by The Guardian newspaper found examples of support and even fundraising messages still being shared on Facebook and its photo-sharing service, Instagram.Zuckerberg also contrasted the treatment of Blake, who was shot in the back by Kenosha police, and the white 17-year-old now charged in Tuesday’s slayings, Kyle Rittenhouse, who carried an AR-15-style rifle near police without being challenged. Zuckerberg also acknowledged the civil rights demonstration Friday in Washington, D.C.”There’s just a sense that things really aren’t improving at the pace that they should be, and I think that’s really painful, really discouraging,” Zuckerberg said.Zuckerberg also said the company is working on improving its execution, though he did not provide details. He acknowledged that the approaching presidential election would present greater challenges around polarizing content.”There is a real risk and a continued increased risk through the election during this very sensitive and polarized and highly charged time,” he said.
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Dozens of people in Washington and New York City took to the streets Friday afternoon, calling on the U.S. government, the United Nations and countries around the world to do more than condemn the violence against Uighurs, and recognize China’s policies in the northwest region of Xinjiang as a genocide.  The demonstrations came as the ethno-religious minority members mark four years since China stepped up its campaign in Xinjiang, and amid reports that the U.S. government is weighing labeling Beijing’s actions as genocide.  “Tomorrow, August 29, marks the fourth anniversary of Chen Quanguo’s transfer from Tibet to East Turkistan, [the] so-called Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chief who was the mastermind behind the building of concentration camps, prisons, Uighur forced labor and high-tech surveillance, the police state as we know it today,” Salih Hudayar, the founder of the Washington-based Uighur organization East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, told VOA.   Uighur demonstrators gather in front of the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., Aug. 28, 2020. (Photo courtesy of Salih Hudayar)Since late 2016, when Chen was appointed as the CCP secretary of Xinjiang, observers estimate that more than 1 million Uighurs have been held in concentration camps while tens of thousands of others have been forced to work in factories around China. Some watchdog groups, among them FILE – A Chinese police officer takes his position by the road near what is officially called a vocational education center in Yining in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China, Sept. 4, 2018.Calling the U.S. sanctions against him an “ugly farce and disgusting,” Chen has justified his government’s policies in Xinjiang as a way to establish stability.  “No force can interfere with or stop the stability, development and prosperity of Xinjiang and the solidarity of people of all ethnic groups in the region to march forward. I am full of confidence in a brighter future of Xinjiang,” Chinese state media Xinhua quoted him as saying July 21.   Members of the Uighur diaspora who demonstrated in Washington and New York on Friday told VOA that they still have no way of contacting their family members stranded in Xinjiang, given China’s policy of cutting off the region’s communication to the outside world. Many of the protesters held pictures of their relatives, who they said were taken into concentration camps, and chanted slogans like “China stop Uighur genocide” and “Independence for East Turkistan.”  Many Uighurs call their ancestral homeland East Turkistan, an appellation for the present-day Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, with Urumqi as its capital.   FILE – Workers walk by the perimeter fence of what is officially known as a vocational skills education center in Dabancheng in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China, Sept. 4, 2018.One of the protesters in Washington, Aziz Sulayman, 49, told VOA that his 33-year-old brother Alim Sulayman, 47-year-old brother-in-law Yehya Kurban and 31-year-old cousin Ekram Yarmuhammed were all taken by Chinese authorities in the second half of 2016 and have not been seen since.   “My brother was a dentist, my brother-in-law was a businessman, and my cousin was a graduate from a medical school. They didn’t need any vocational training or reeducation as China lied to the world,” Sulayman said, adding that his communication with his mother and five sisters has also been cut off since late 2016.“I don’t know whether my entire family is still alive or dead. We are here to show the world that what the CCP is committing in our homeland against our loved ones meets the criteria of U.N. Genocide Convention,” Sulayman told VOA.  The U.N. defines genocide as any of several acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” according the U.N. website that lists the acts. U.S officials in the past have criticized the CCP treatment of Uighurs in strongly worded statements. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called it the “stain of the century” and condemned it as “a human rights violation on a scale we have not seen since World War II.”
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Weeklong negotiations in Geneva aimed at drafting a new constitution for Syria have ended with an agreement to meet for further talks at an as yet unspecified date.There was no breakthrough in the complex process of drafting a constitution, a key prelude to forming a post-conflict government in Syria. However, there also was no rancorous breakup.U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen describes the talks in Geneva as challenging. But he says that did not deter the 45-member Constitutional Committee from engaging in substantive negotiations.  As the U.N. mediator and go-between among the members of the committee, he says he found it fascinating to listen to their discussions. “Obviously, there are still very strong disagreements, and my Syrian friends are, of course, never afraid of expressing those disagreements,” Pedersen said. “But I was also extremely pleased to hear the two co-chairs saying very clearly that they thought also there were quite a few areas of commonalities.”   FILE – The first meeting of the new Syrian Constitutional Committee gets under way at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Oct. 30, 2019.The weeklong meeting got off to a rocky start. One day after it began, it was temporarily suspended because four members of the committee had tested positive for COVID-19. The talks resumed after a two-day break when new tests apparently indicated the earlier tests were false positives, although those four members attended the talks virtually after that.Though the week was shorter than anticipated, Pedersen says the delegates were able to build a bit of confidence and trust in each other. “I believe the tone was respectful,” he said. “I also got a clear message both from the co-chairs and from the members that they are keen to meet again, and we will build obviously on what we have discussed so far, and this in my opinion is encouraging.”The U.N. mediator says he will be meeting with the two chairs to decide on the agenda for the next round of talks. He says a date for the next meeting will be set once an agreement on the agenda has been reached.
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Президент України Володимир Зеленський підписав закон про підвищення мінімальної заробітної плати на 227 гривень з 1 вересня. Про це повідомили в Офісі президента 29 серпня.

«Документ передбачає збільшення мінімальної заробітної плати та встановлення її з 1 вересня поточного року на рівні 5 тис. грн на місяць», – мовиться у повідомленні.

Кабінет міністрів України з 1 вересня підвищив посадові оклади за всіма тарифними розрядами у зв’язку з підвищенням мінімальної заробітної плати в країні до 5 тисяч гривень, або на 227 гривень.

Щоб зберегти розрив між першим тарифним розрядом і мінімальною заробітною платою в 44,5%, Кабмін збільшив ставку за цим розрядом на 123 грн – до 2 225 гривень.
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Another mass rally gets underway Saturday afternoon in the midwestern U.S. city of Kenosha, Wisconsin, after a night of peaceful protests over the shooting of an African American man in the back by a white policeman.
 
The family of victim Jacob Blake and activists organized the rally as National Guard units stand by with orders to prevent more unrest that erupted in Kenosha earlier in the week in response to the shooting.
 
The 29-year-old Blake was shot in the back seven times Sunday, August 23, in front of witnesses, including Blake’s own young children, leaving him partially paralyzed and turning the predominately white city of 100,000 into the latest hot-spot in a summer of nationwide protests against charges of police brutality and systemic racism.
 
Arson, vandalism and other acts of violence devasted a largely minority community Monday night, one day before a teenager, who was seen on video roaming the streets with an assault rifle, fatally shot two demonstrators and wounded a third.
 
Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, surrendered to police Wednesday close to his home in the state of Illinois near the Wisconsin border, after video showed him trying to surrender in Kenosha minutes after the shootings, only to be told to get off the streets as police vehicles passed him by.  
 
Rittenhouse has been charged with six criminal counts, including first-degree intentional homicide and unlawful possession of a firearm by a minor. One of his lawyers, Lin Wood, tweeted that Rittenhouse shot the demonstrators in self-defense.
 
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said earlier in the week that Officer Rusten Sheskey shot Blake when he was resisting arrest after police responded to a call from a woman who reported her boyfriend arrived at her home without permission.  
 
Kaul also said police later recovered a knife from the floor of the car Blake was leaning on when he was shot. Blake’s lead attorney, Benjamin Crump, said his client was not armed with a knife and did not threaten or provoke the police.
 
The police officers involved in the encounter with Blake have been on administrative leave, pending an investigation by the Wisconsin Justice Department.
 
Governor Tony Evers deployed more Wisconsin National Guard troops earlier in the week to help local law enforcement agencies restore and maintain order.  
 
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A week of protests in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and an apparent power struggle inside the National Unity Government that controls the west of the country have both the U.N. and regional power brokers Egypt and Turkey jockeying to resume stalled political talks inside the country.  
 
A popular protest movement in the Libyan capital of Tripoli is calling for a major government reshuffle to deal with the many crises facing the country.  Public anger brought crowds into the streets again Saturday to decry poor government services, including lengthy electricity blackouts. FILE – U.N. Deputy Libya envoy Stephanie Williams Stephanie Williams delivers a press statement on Libya, on the sidelines of the 56th Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Feb. 16, 2020.U.N. Deputy Libya envoy Stephanie Williams met Saturday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry in Cairo in a bid to jump-start political talks amid what appears to be a power struggle in Tripoli within the U.N.-backed National Unity Government.
 
Analysts in Cairo say the talks are focusing on a joint call August 21 for a cease-fire by Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj and parliament Speaker Aguilah Saleh. The proposal includes new elections in March.
   
Public anger over government-backed militias firing at demonstrators in Tripoli during a week of protests prompted the governing “presidential council” to suspend Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha, pending an investigation into the incidents.
 
Arab media reported that Bashagha and the head of the presidential council, Khaled al Meshri, are now in the Turkish capital, Ankara, to discuss the deepening political crisis. Turkey supports rival factions inside the Tripoli government.
 
Libya analyst Hassan Muftah told Arab media the power-struggle in Tripoli is “pitting militias from the capital, which support Sarraj, against militias from neighboring Misrata, which back Bashagha.” Muftah claims that Turkey, which supports both sides, “is the big loser in the conflict.”
 
Rival militias have struggled for control of Tripoli since former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was killed in October of 2011. A separate struggle for control of the country pits eastern military commander General Khalifa Haftar against militias and armed forces that support the Sarraj government.
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A close ally of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny says authorities in Moscow are reluctant to investigate Navalny’s alleged poisoning, because the Kremlin was behind it, despite its denials.
 
Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer at Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and a prominent opposition activist, said in an interview that all the existing evidence points to the Kremlin.
 
“For me, it’s absolutely obvious, I’m not afraid to speak it out loud, that behind the poisoning is exactly the Kremlin,” said Sobol. Simply, nobody else could do it. Again, the method of the poisoning is the sign of that. Neuroparalytic poison is something that you can’t buy at a pharmacy. It’s a combat substance. And because of that, they will not investigate it,” Sobol said.FILE – Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, center, his wife Yulia, right of him, and opposition activist Lyubov Sobol, second from left, take part in a march in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 29, 2020.Navalny’s associates made a request to Russia’s Investigative Committee for authorities to launch a criminal investigation that could lead to charges of an attempted assassination of a public figure, but say they got no response.
 
“They understand that any investigation will lead to the Kremlin,” Sobol said. “They’re not launching a criminal probe because they will have to answer at some point what the results of the investigation of this criminal case are.”
 
Russia’s Prosecutor General office said Thursday the inquiry launched last week did not find any indication of “deliberate criminal acts committed against” Navalny.
 
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said last week he saw no grounds for a criminal investigation before the cause of Navalny’s condition was fully established.  
 
Navalny, a well-known critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a corruption investigator, fell ill August 20 while flying to Moscow from Siberia, prompting an emergency landing in Omsk.
 
His personal doctor and aide said Navalny had drunk black tea at an airport café, which she believed was laced with poison.Last weekend, Navalny was transferred to the Charité Hospital in Berlin, Germany, for an “extensive medical diagnosis.” Doctors there found traces of “cholinesterase inhibitors,” a neuroparalytic substance, in his system. He reportedly remains on a ventilator in a medically-induced coma.  German doctors describe his condition as serious but not life-threatening. 
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India is grappling with whether entrance examinations for engineering and medical colleges should take place amid a pandemic as it prepares to hold the twice-postponed tests for an estimated 2.5 million students.  
 
Saying further delay would jeopardize students’ future, the government is going ahead with the nationwide examinations, starting September 1.  
 
Turning down a plea filed by a group of students against the decision to conduct the examinations, the Supreme Court last week gave the green light, saying “life must go on” and students “cannot waste a whole year.”  
 
Those arguments have not convinced tens of thousands of students and parents who point to the rapidly rising numbers of coronavirus infections in the country to underline the risk they will face as they travel and take the test.   
India has been reporting record high numbers in recent days – the country added nearly 1.5 million cases in the last three weeks.  
 
Online campaigns against the examinations have gathered momentum, and groups of  
students held sporadic street protests Friday in several cities demanding their cancellation.  
 
The tests are crucial in determining the path for students aspiring to become engineers and doctors – the grades determine the students’ eligibility to attend colleges that include highly sought-after institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology. High school students usually do intensive preparation for one to two years for these tests. Poorer families spend hard-earned savings to fund coaching for their children, hoping it will open doors to successful careers.   
 
Opinion on the forthcoming tests appears to be evenly divided. While many academicians and even students want the examinations to be held, others have expressed deep concern.  
 
Students living in distant towns say they are worried about the challenge of reaching examination centers while public transportation, such as buses and trains, have still not been fully restored. Others say they are apprehensive about taking the test that is crucial for their careers with gloves and masks, and amid anxiety over contracting the virus.  
 
Speaking to India Today television, Ravikant, a student in Ludhiana asked who would take responsibility if he or his family gets infected. Another student from Patna said he was not afraid of the test, but his concerns about the virus run deep because of his asthma. Activists of Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) take part in a protest demanding the government postpone college entrance exams, in Guwahati, India, Aug. 28, 2020.Opposition parties have thrown their weight behind demands for postponement of the tests.
 
“It’s important that the government listens to students,” Rahul Gandhi, a leader of the opposition Congress party, said in a video statement.
Ministers in six opposition-ruled states — West Bengal, Punjab, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand — Friday filed a review petition asking the Supreme Court to revisit its decision to green-light the tests.  
 
“It would be impossible to make provision for the huge logistics required for lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of students appearing in the examinations, including transport and lodging during the pandemic,” the petition said.
 
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg in a tweet earlier this week also urged postponement, calling it “deeply unfair” that Indian students must take the exams during the pandemic and while millions have been affected by floods.
 
The government however has reiterated that further delays risk costing students an academic year and said tens of thousands of students want to take the test.  
 
Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal said 1.7 million registration cards for taking the test have already been downloaded online.
 
“It shows that students want that exams are held at any cost,” Pokhriyal said. “We are very mindful of the safety of our students, we will take full precautions,” he said.  
 
Authorities say they have increased the number of testing centers and spread the tests over several days to ensure that social distancing can be maintained.  
 
Preparations are in full swing – authorities are equipping centers with sanitizer and masks and gloves for the students.
 
The Indian Express backed the government’s decision in an editorial, pointing out that discussions everywhere are moving to “opening up while minimizing the risk.” It said “given that the COVID curve continues its upward climb at different rates in different states there is no evidence that delaying the exam by weeks or months will reduce the risk.”  
 
The tests start Tuesday – those for engineering colleges will be held September 1-6, while the test for medical colleges will be held September 13.  
 
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Officials in Australia say a large housing development project could be blocked to protect endangered koala bears in one of the fastest-growing parts of Australia’s biggest city. The New South Wales government plans to create a sanctuary in Sydney to preserve the country’s last-remaining disease-free koalas. The animals are listed as vulnerable across New South Wales.Koalas could be extinct in New South Wales within 30 years. That grim warning came from a parliamentary committee in June.The state government said it is determined to save one of Australia’s most recognizable indigenous animals. It is creating a new reserve on Sydney’s suburban fringe to allow koalas to use protected woodland corridors to travel between habitats. One hundred thousand trees also will be planted.“We are here to announce the Georges River Koala National Park,” said Matt Kean, environment minister for New South Wales. “We will be securing 1,885 hectares of koala habitat to ensure that the koala survives in this fortress population forever.”A plan to build hundreds of homes in the area could be vetoed by the state government after scientists found that koalas wouldn’t be properly protected.Kean warned the construction company he may not approve the development plans.“I will not be signing off on the bio-diversity certificate unless your development meets all the recommendations of the chief scientist,” he said.The developer has said that protecting native wildlife was a key consideration, but it has yet to formally respond to the state government.Critics have said the koala sanctuary is not big enough. But Cate Faehrmann, a Greens parliamentarian, believes it is a good start.“It is a welcome first step,” Faehrmann said. “Thank you very much, New South Wales government, for recognizing that this koala colony out in Campbelltown — it is our only chlamydia-free population. It is so important. There is anywhere between 200 and 600 koalas out there that have to be protected. They have recognized this.”Koalas face many threats, including chlamydia – a bacterium that can cause pneumonia and infertility. Bushfires, habitat loss, attacks by dogs and road accidents are also significant threats. But in other parts of southern Australia, officials have said there are too many koalas, and that ‘overabundant’ populations have damaged valuable trees.Also, south of Sydney, a group of koalas rescued from last summer’s devastating bushfires has been released back into the wild. Three of the animals are named after the crew of a U.S. water-bombing aircraft that crashed in Australia in January.  
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A string of mammoth drug busts and low street prices for methamphetamine across Southeast Asia this year suggest COVID-19 has done little to stem the flood of illegal drugs washing over the region, even as the pandemic seals borders.If anything, the coronavirus has proven just how resilient the transnational cartels dominating the meth trade out of Myanmar truly are, experts say.”We think it’s business as usual in 2020, which is to say that supply is still surging just as it has been in the last few years,” Jeremy Douglas, Southeast Asia and the Pacific chief for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told VOA.”If Myanmar, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodia data is any indication — and we think it is — then at least within the Mekong the supply is as high or higher than last year in those countries,” he said by phone from Bangkok.The price is rightMethamphetamine prices across the region last year were already the lowest they had been in a decade, even as the purity of the drugs shot up.Data compiled by the UNODC during the pandemic show the price of a kilogram of crystal meth, or ice, in Myanmar and Vietnam on par with 2019. In Cambodia, the price of “yaba,” a popular mix of meth and caffeine, has actually fallen by roughly half, to less than $1 per pill. The UNODC says Thailand also reported a drop in both ice and yaba prices in late 2019 and early 2020 compared with the same period a year before.Long a hub of the heroin trade, the Golden Triangle — where the remote and lawless corners of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet — has in recent years seen transnational cartels turn it into one of the world’s premier meth laboratories, according to the UNODC. Protected by government-backed militias and ethnic rebel armies in Myanmar’s eastern Shan state, the U.N. agency says the cartels’ drugs pour across Southeast Asia and on to more lucrative markets as far off as Australia and Japan. The UNODC now puts the meth market in East and Southeast Asia at some $61.4 billion a year.Since the pandemic, drug seizures have kept pace with 2019 as well, or even picked up.In early July, Thai authorities said they intercepted 1.42 tons of crystal meth on its way to Malaysia. In May, authorities in Myanmar announced Asia’s largest drug bust in decades, netting 200 million meth pills and 500 kilograms of ice; they also seized 35.5 metric tons and 163,000 liters of precursor chemicals and arrested 33 suspects.On their own, more seizures can mean either a spike in production or better enforcement. The fact that prices have stayed low argues strongly in favor of the former, said Richard Horsey, a senior adviser to the International Crisis Group based in Myanmar.Given the stable prices for the drugs, “there’s every indication that big seizures reflect big production, and not that … somehow the police are winning this and seizing everything that’s being produced,” he said.”So, I think the transnational criminal organizations, the synthetic drug trade in Shan state, has shown itself to be extremely resilient to COVID,” he told VOA by phone from Yangon.Plan B, and C and DHorsey likened the cartels to the relatively few big business winners of the pandemic, such as online retail giant Amazon, using their scale, dexterity and deep pockets to adapt quickly to changing market conditions.”They have supply chains that are very sophisticated but also multiply redundant. And that means that border closures and so on, they can find ways around that. They’ve got a Plan B and a Plan C and a Plan D,” he said.”So, they have multiple different routes that they’re constantly testing with test shipments and constantly innovating and constantly keeping lots of options open so that if their main preferred channel fails, they’ve got lots of other options. And that works very well for COVID.”The cartels’ penchant for innovation looks to be paying off.Since the string of large busts earlier this year, Horsey said the cartels have started shifting more of their shipments out of Myanmar from northern Shan to the state’s east and south. He said there were also early signs that they have started shipping much more ice out of Myanmar through the country’s far western Rakhine state, taking advantage of its coastline to reach markets via the Bay of Bengal.The UNODC says seizures of precursor shipments to Myanmar over the past few years also show the cartels tweaking their meth recipes by replacing ephedrine and its sort with sodium or benzyl cyanide, yet more proof of their flexibility.Most of the chemicals come from neighboring China.On Myanmar’s side of the border, experts say a patchwork of militias and warlords in command of virtually autonomous fiefdoms helps make the frontier more sieve than wall.That, too, helps the cartels evade the worst of the border restrictions brought on by the pandemic, said Tom Kramer, a Myanmar-based researcher for the Transnational Institute who studies the nexus of the country’s drug trade and ethnic conflicts.”These illegal routes are still there, and what the government has been controlling of course is the formal trade routes,” he said.Considering the bulk of some of the shipments, he suspects many of them cross formal checkpoints as well but slip through thanks to rampant corruption.”There’s so much money involved, and people can always find different ways of course of getting stuff into the country. The borders are so porous it would be very hard to control them,” he said, even under lockdown.Market shareDouglas, of the UNODC, said the relative ease with which the cartels in Myanmar can continue to access precursors during the pandemic may even help them gain market share over competitors farther afield who source more of their chemicals by sea and air, where supply chains have frayed most.”They’re using the moment in front of them very effectively,” he said.”They never had a problem maintaining production. They had huge chemical stockpiles in place and continuing access to chemicals to ship in to production points in the Triangle, and they kept production at very high levels during the pandemic, and they’ve essentially just continued pumping that supply out.”
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Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s neuroscience startup Neuralink on Friday unveiled a pig named Gertrude that has had a coin-sized computer chip in her brain for two months, showing off an early step toward the goal of curing human diseases with the same type of implant.Co-founded by Tesla Inc and SpaceX CEO Musk in 2016, San Francisco Bay Area-based Neuralink aims to implant wireless brain-computer interfaces that include thousands of electrodes in the most complex human organ to help cure neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s, dementia and spinal cord injuries and ultimately fuse humankind with artificial intelligence.”An implantable device can actually solve these problems,” Musk said on a webcast Friday, mentioning ailments such as memory loss, hearing loss, depression and insomnia.Musk did not provide a timeline for those treatments, appearing to retreat from earlier statements that human trials would begin by the end of this year. Neuralink’s first clinical trials with a small number of human patients would be aimed at treating paralysis or paraplegia, the company’s head surgeon, Dr. Matthew MacDougall, said.Neuroscientists unaffiliated with the company said the presentation indicated that Neuralink had made great strides but cautioned that longer studies were needed.Musk presented what he described as the “three little pigs demo.” Gertrude, the pig with a Neuralink implant in the part of the brain that controls the snout, required some coaxing by Musk to appear on camera, but eventually began eating off of a stool and sniffing straw, triggering spikes on a graph tracking the animal’s neural activity.Musk said the company had three pigs with two implants each, and also revealed a pig that previously had an implant. They were “healthy, happy and indistinguishable from a normal pig,” Musk said. He said the company predicted a pig’s limb movement during a treadmill run at “high accuracy” using implant data.Musk described Neuralink’s chip, which is roughly 23 millimeters in diameter, as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires.””I could have a Neuralink right now and you wouldn’t know,” Musk said. “Maybe I do.”One comment from a webcast viewer described the animals as “Cypork.”Graeme Moffat, a University of Toronto neuroscience research fellow, said Neuralink’s advancements were “order of magnitude leaps” beyond current science thanks to the novel chip’s size, portability, power management and wireless capabilities.Stanford University neuroscientist Sergey Stavisky said the company had made substantial and impressive progress since an initial demonstration of an earlier chip in July 2019.”Going from that to the fully implanted system in several pigs they showed is impressive and, I think, really highlights the strengths of having a large multidisciplinary team focused on this problem,” Stavisky said.Some researchers said longer studies would be required to determine the longevity of the device.Neuralink’s chip could also improve the understanding of neurological diseases by reading brain waves, one of the company’s scientists said during the presentation.Recruiting, not fundraisingMusk said the focus of Friday’s event was recruiting, not fundraising. Musk has a history of bringing together diverse experts to drastically accelerate the development of innovations previously limited to academic labs, including rocket, hyperloop and electrical vehicle technologies through companies such as Tesla and SpaceX.Neuralink has received $158 million in funding, $100 million of which came from Musk, and employs about 100 people.Musk, who frequently warns about the risks of artificial intelligence, said the implant’s most important achievement beyond medical applications would be “some kind of AI symbiosis where you have an AI extension of yourself.”Small devices that electronically stimulate nerves and brain areas to treat hearing loss and Parkinson’s disease have been implanted in humans for decades. Brain implant trials have also been conducted with a small number of people who have lost control of bodily functions due to spiral cord injuries or neurological conditions like strokes.Startups such as Kernel, Paradromics and NeuroPace also are trying to exploit advancements in material, wireless and signaling technology to create devices similar to Neuralink. In addition, medical device giant Medtronic PLC produces brain implants to treat Parkinson’s disease, essential tremors and epilepsy.  
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The 6-meter-high “unsurvivable” wall of water Hurricane Laura was forecast to send onto the Louisiana coast showed up despite widespread reports of a lower peak, authorities said on Friday, rejecting criticism that they had raised too much alarm.The highest surge hit about 24 kilometers east of where Laura was forecast to make landfall but it “wobbled” at the last moment. That slight change likely saved the city of Lake Charles, said Jamie Rhome, head of the storm surge team at the National Hurricane Center (NHC).Most U.S. media played up a nearly 3-meter surge recorded by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observation station near Cameron, Louisiana, and the NHC was criticized for perhaps raising too much alarm.There is just one problem, Rhome said.”It’s wrong. That reporting is based off a single observation station in Cameron Parish that didn’t come close to measuring the peak storm surge which occurred at 10 or 15 miles (16 to 24 kilometers) east of there,” he said.Fresh data on Friday from an Army Corps of Engineer gauge 24 kilometers east indicates that the storm surge was right at the 4.5- to 6- meter forecast that was Rhome’s highest in his 20-year career, he said.An exact reading would soon be released after the data and gauge are fully analyzed, Rhome said.”We’re finding out the storm surge was really 15 to 20 feet (4.5 to 6 meters),” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards confirmed to reporters on Friday after flying over the hardest-hit areas.Rhome said it would be unfair to accuse NHC forecasters — who warned of an “unsurvivable storm surge” the day before Laura made landfall — or local and state leaders for raising alarm about storm surges. A decade ago, 50% of deaths from hurricanes were because of storm surges, he noted.Today, that figure is closer to 4%, Rhome said, largely because the NHC started including storm surge warnings in its bulletins following the devastation brought by Hurricane Ike and its 4.5-meter storm surge in 2008.Trump to visitThe remnants of Hurricane Laura doused Arkansas on Friday before forecasters said it would head to the East Coast, bringing heavy rains and possible flash floods.The storm killed at least 10 people in Louisiana, including four who were killed when trees fell into homes, damaged buildings in Louisiana and Texas and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of residents.U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to head to the Gulf Coast over the weekend to survey the damage.The storm was forecast to drop heavy rain over Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri and Kentucky as it headed out to the East Coast, the National Weather Service said.At its peak upon making landfall on Thursday morning, Laura had maximum sustained winds of 241 km per hour, faster than even Hurricane Katrina, which sparked deadly levee breaches in New Orleans in 2005 after arriving with wind speeds of 217 kph.    
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More than 20 states sued the Trump administration on Friday over its plan to curtail environmental regulations in permitting infrastructure projects that can take years to complete and have long-lasting consequences on land and communities.Led by California and Washington, the lawsuit seeks to block changes the administration has proposed to how the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is implemented. It was filed in federal court in San Francisco against the White House Council on Environmental Quality and its chairman, Mary Neumayr.NEPA requires that prior to permitting a project, federal agencies assess its environmental effects, a process many industries have criticized as lengthy and onerous.FILE – President Donald Trump speaks on proposed changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, at the White House, Jan. 9, 2020, in Washington.U.S. President Donald Trump announced the finalized NEPA rule last month. It is intended to expedite permitting for projects like oil pipelines and road expansions, but critics say it would reduce public input, especially from low-income and minority communities.The lawsuit seeks to vacate the final rule on the basis that the administration failed to justify its revisions to the long-standing law.”NEPA may not be a household word around dinner tables across the United States, but it is foundational,” Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said during a virtual press conference with reporters. “To gut that law would truly have significant consequences.”Friday’s lawsuit marks the 100th time California has sued the Trump administration, Attorney General Xavier Becerra said during the press conference. About half of those lawsuits relate to environmental rollbacks.”I honestly don’t believe that what we are having to do is normal,” Becerra said.The White House was not immediately available for comment on the lawsuit.California and Washington were joined in the lawsuit by 19 other Democratic-led states, the District of Columbia, Guam, the city of New York, Harris County, Texas, and the environmental oversight agencies of Connecticut and New York.
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As more and more schools and businesses around the country get the OK to reopen, some college towns are moving in the opposite direction because of too much partying and too many COVID-19 infections among students. With more than 300 students at the University of Missouri testing positive for the coronavirus, the local health director Friday ordered bars to stop serving alcohol at 9 p.m. and close by 10 p.m. Iowa’s governor ordered all bars closed this week around the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, while the mayor of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, did the same in the hometown of the state’s flagship university. “What we’re seeing in our violations is they’re coming late at night,” said Stephanie Browning, head of the health department for Columbia, Missouri. “Big groups gathering. They’re not wearing their masks, they’re not social distancing.” In Provo, Utah, the home of Brigham Young University, the Municipal Council passed a mask ordinance over the mayor’s veto because of the influx of students from around the country for the start of classes Monday. FILE – Demonstrators gather for an anti-mask rally in Orem, Utah, Aug. 5, 2020.The outbreaks since students began returning to campus in the past few weeks have heightened town-gown tensions and led to recriminations between local politicians and university officials. Meanwhile, California prepared to announce plans Friday for reopening many businesses that were shuttered in July as coronavirus cases soared. In Arizona, another deadly hot spot this summer, a drop in transmission numbers allowed the Phoenix and Tucson areas to reopen gyms and some bars on Thursday. And Ohio let theater groups this week resume performances with strict audience caps. U.S. numbersThe U.S. has recorded over 180,000 deaths from the coronavirus and 5.9 million confirmed infections. Worldwide, the death toll is put at more than 830,000, with at least 24.5 million cases.  Surging infection numbers around the U.S. have been blamed in part on young people ignoring mask and social distancing requirements. Browning, who also slapped a 20-person limit on crowds, said the percentage of tests coming back positive for the virus in the county hit 44% last week, four times higher than before students returned to classes. Chancellor Mun Choi said the university is not considering going to online-only classes. FILE – Iowa Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks in Des Moines, Jan. 16, 2015.In Iowa’s Story County, where Iowa State is located, 74% of new cases over the past seven days were among people ages 19 to 24, Gov. Kim Reynolds said Thursday. In the same time period, 69% of new cases in Johnson County, the home of the University of Iowa, were in that age group. “It is increasing the virus activity in the community, and it’s spilling over to other segments of the population,” Reynolds said.The University of Alabama has recorded over 500 cases of COVID-19 on campus since the fall semester began last week. In closing the town’s bars Monday for the next two weeks, Mayor Walt Maddox said that an unchecked spread of the virus threatens both the health care system and the local economy if students have to be sent home for the semester for remote learning. North Carolina classesThree of North Carolina’s largest public universities have abruptly halted in-person undergraduate instruction and directed students to move out of the dorms after hundreds tested positive following their return to campus. Nearly 800 have been confirmed infected at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, more than 670 at North Carolina State and around 300 at East Carolina University. Leaders at UNC-Chapel Hill, which has shifted to online classes, wrote an open letter Thursday to the mayor outlining steps the university is taking to curb off-campus parties, including disciplinary measures and combined patrols between campus and town police.  FILE – Students wear masks on campus at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., Aug. 18, 2020.”We recognize the very real problems with the behaviors of some of our fraternities and sororities,” the university’s chancellor and provost assured the mayor. Chapel Hill’s mayor and members of the Town Council had written to the school last week urging it to expand virus testing, update its infection figures more often and spell out what discipline students would face for violating school rules and local ordinances. The local leaders decried the “vacuum left by the university’s decision to take minimal responsibility for students when they are off campus.” Oyeronke Popoola, a 17-year-old freshman at UNC-Chapel Hill who moved out of her dorm, said that administrators, not students, deserve most of the blame for the virus-related problems after they ushered students back to campus. “They should’ve put everything online from the beginning, but they wanted the money,” she said. And she said fraternities and sororities weren’t the only ones at fault among the students: “I feel like Greek life gets a lot of blame, which is understandable, but there are other students who were meeting without masks that were not a part of Greek life.” 
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