The U.N. is appealing for nearly $95 million to contain and mitigate the spread of the coronavirus in densely populated Palestinian refugee camps across the Middle East.Overcrowded Palestinian camps are perfect breeding grounds for the coronavirus. Social distancing is difficult, and access is limited to the sanitary and health conditions necessary to keep the virus at bay.
 
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, says its efforts aimed at containing the virus in the camps over the past few months had been largely successful. Unfortunately, that has changed. Agency spokeswoman Tamara Alrifal says there has been a dramatic jump of COVID-19 infections over the last few weeks, from 200 cases to 4,000 cases.
 
“The jump is mostly due to the longer-term socio-economic impact of the lockdowns and the closures and the fact that beyond a few weeks, it was not possible to keep everybody confined in camps because Palestine refugees needed to go back to work to livelihoods,” she said.
 
Alrifal describes the situation as very worrisome. She says it is crucial UNRWA receive the funds it needs so it can support the refugees to stay in the camps and prevent a major outbreak of the deadly disease.FILE – A general view shows the Al-Baqaa Palestinian refugee camp, near Amman, Jordan, June 16, 2020.She told VOA containing the spread of the pandemic inside the Palestinian refugee camps is critical. She says a virus does not stop at the border of a camp.
 
“So, in Jordan, where I am based and where I am speaking with you from, we have seen a recent uptick in numbers, despite the fact that the numbers in Jordan since the very beginning have been pretty much contained. So, unfortunately, there is a surge in Jordan, but also in Lebanon and across our field of operation,” she said.
 
Alrifal says the $94.6 million appeal will cover the emergency needs of 5.6 million registered Palestinian refugees in the Middle East until the end of the year.UNRWA runs operations in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
 
Alrifal says money from the appeal will focus on health needs, cash assistance and education. She notes more than half-a-million girls and boys receive a quality education in 711 UNRWA schools across the region.
 
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Lebanon is in the throes of its worst financial crisis since its independence in 1943, observers say, and the Beirut port explosion in early August has only compounded its woes. Public debt amounts to more than 150% of GDP and is among the highest in the world. Audits of the central bank are ongoing, but experts say it will be a challenge to get the country’s financial house in order  
 
Alain Bifani, Lebanon’s former director general of the Finance Ministry, resigned in June over the way Lebanon’s leadership handled the country’s financial crisis. He told the Carnegie Middle East Center that talks with the International Monetary Fund broke down because the government and the political elite wrangled over what numbers to give the IMF for a reform program.    
 
“Reality is that we don’t negotiate figures. We negotiate how to eliminate the losses. How to distribute the burden of the losses, not the size of the losses themselves because if we start doing that, any program that we will build on wrong figures will have very detrimental effects on the country,“ Bifani said.
 
The IMF wants Lebanon’s banking sector overhauled, formal capital controls put in place, corruption tackled, a forensic audit and reform of the state electricity company, and changes to the telecom sector, according to economists.  FILE – A man wearing a face mask walks past a fortified Blom Bank ATM machine, in Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 21, 2020.Professor Hicham Safieddine of King’s College London says Lebanon’s political elites and bankers didn’t want such reforms, and some siphoned off their dollars to be sent abroad. He says banking secrecy in Lebanon is even more stringent than in Switzerland. There are numerical accounts, but without names, in Lebanon.  
 
Bifani says that precious time lost in making needed banking reforms shifted monetary losses from the central bank to ordinary citizens and depositors.   
 
“By making simple calculations, we end up finding between $5.5 to $6 billion left the country when everybody else was forbidden to withdraw $100 from their accounts. This itself is not acceptable, and I think people should be held accountable for this,” Bifani said.   An adviser to the IMF and the Lebanese Finance Ministry, economist Toufic Gaspard, points to another complication to resolving Lebanon’s financial crisis. He told Reuters that as long as Hezbollah controls the levers of political power in Lebanon, an economic recovery would be hampered. That’s because the Iran-backed militant group would not accept reforms on border and customs controls, which it manages.   
 
“This is the sword of Damocles hanging above everybody’s head … if this situation is not addressed, I don’t see how we can have a sustainable solution,” Gaspard said.   
 
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Masked security agents dragged students off the streets and bundled them into vans as new protests broke out against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Saturday on the fourth weekend since his disputed re-election.
 
Up to 30 people were detained for taking part in unsanctioned protests, Russian news agency TASS quoted the Minsk police as saying.  Draped in red-and-white opposition flags, students staged protests in several places in the capital, including outside the Minsk State Linguistic Institute where police had arrested five people on Friday, local media footage showed.
 
Elsewhere masked men dragged away students who had gathered at an eatery in Karl Marx Street in the center of Minsk, while some of the protesters shouted “tribunal!,” according to footage shown by news outlet TUT.BY.
 
Thousands of women later held a separate march through Minsk in the afternoon, shouting “hands off the children” as one of their slogans.
 
A former Soviet collective farm manager, Lukashenko has struggled to contain a wave of mass protests and strikes since he won a sixth term at an election last month that opponents say was rigged. He denies electoral fraud.
 
Lukashenko has previously dismissed the coronavirus pandemic as a “psychosis” that could be tackled by drinking vodka and taking saunas.
 
But on Saturday he appeared to chide the protesters for spreading the disease.
 
“We stagger through the streets, rubbing against each other,” he said at a televised government meeting. “Where’s the social distancing and so on in that? We’re doing everything we can to delay the moment when we say goodbye to this disease. That’s unacceptable.”
 
Thousands took part in protests that coincided with the start of the school year on Tuesday. At the Minsk State Linguistic Institute, students sang “Do you hear the people sing,” a protest anthem from the musical “Les Miserables.” 
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Serbia and Kosovo signed a U.S.-brokered agreement in Washington Friday to normalize economic relations.
 
Reached after two days of talks, the document also included plans for Israel and Kosovo to establish diplomatic relations and for Belgrade to move its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.
 
President Donald Trump who also signed the document at the White House ceremony, called the agreement “historic,” adding that “after a violent and tragic history and years of failed negotiations, my administration proposed a new way of bridging the divide.”   
 
“By focusing on job creation and economic growth, the two countries were able to reach a major breakthrough,” Trump said.President Donald Trump’s special envoy on Serbia and Kosovo Richard Grenell speaks during a signing ceremony, with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic sitting at a desk in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Sept. 4, 2020.Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti called the agreement a significant step forward.   
 
“Of course, speaking about politics, we haven’t resolved our problems. There are still a lot of differences between us, but this is a huge step forward,” Vucic said.   
 
“And I’m once again profoundly grateful to you [Trump] and to your people that you successfully got us here. And we didn’t speak about many items that we signed today but for us it’s very important that we are going to have a unified economic zone in an entire Western Balkans which will bring us to the real economic results for the benefit and for the sake of all our people,” Vucic added.
 
Hoti said the agreement was a “great achievement.”
 
“I think, absolutely this is a great moment for Kosovo and for the region. I think we’ve made a huge step forward toward full normalization of relations that should lead eventually to mutual recognition between the two countries,” Hoti said.Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti, seated, listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, Sept. 4, 2020.“We are fully committed to work together to improve people’s lives, to create new jobs in the region. And we fully believe in your [Trump’s] administration. We share the same values of freedom, democracy and open market economy. So, we are looking forward to start implementing this agreement as soon as possible,” Hoti said.
 
Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, who co-hosted the talks at the White House along with Richard Grenell, Trump’s special envoy for the peace talks between Kosovo and Serbia, struck an optimistic tone for the countries’ way forward.  
 
“I think today is about normalization of economic ties. And it’s really a fantastic step for the two peoples have taken, both Kosovo and Serbia. It’s taken a lot of effort. I think that’s a first step,” O’Brien said.
 
Grenell said that it remains to be seen “if the concentration on economics and job creation can ‘unstick’ the political claims by both sides.  
 
“I think one of the great parts of this agreement is over the next year, we have a freeze on the recognition and derecognition campaigns. That means over this next year, we can see job growth and job creation really take hold in the region. And then a year from now, judge us on where the political process goes,” Grenell said.
 
Former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s rival in the U.S. presidential election, responded to a question from VOA about the agreement by saying that “normalization of relations among countries is a … by and large, and almost every instance a good thing,” stressing that “Kosovo should be an independent country. Not a part of Serbia.”   
  ‘A new approach?’   
 
The U.S. effort to get Kosovo and Serbia to agree to cooperate on a range of economic fronts to attract investment and create jobs has been led by Grenell, who has called the economic approach “flipping the script,” and has focused on incentivizing the two countries’ citizens, especially youth.   
 
Grenell Friday gave credit to Trump for a “creative” approach and stressed that the deal could not have been reached by Washington insiders who have been stuck for years.
    
“I’m telling you that the only way that this agreement could have happened is from an outsider,” Grenell said at a press briefing with O’Brien and Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.    
   
The deal includes rail and transit agreements, including one that would clear the way for the first flight between Pristina and Belgrade, the two countries’ capitals, in 21 years.   
   
On Monday, Hoti and Vucic are scheduled to go for talks to Brussels, where the European Union has been mediating the talks between Kosovo and Serbia for over a decade.
 
U.S. officials have been in close touch with EU officials on the issue of normalizing economic relations between Serbia and Kosovo, Grenell said Friday.
     Main challenge to normalization remains  
 
The White House talks were not without surprises. While the White House had said the talks would be about economic issues, on Thursday, after the first morning session of the talks a Serbian delegation member, Finance Minister Sinisa Mali, said that they were presented with a document that included “mutual recognition” between the countries.   
 
Grenell retweeted a Twitter post referring to Mali’s comments, writing “Not True.”Not true. https://t.co/oDyaqs7ZvJ— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) September 3, 2020At the end of the first day of talks, Vucic confirmed what Mali had said, responding to a question by the VOA Serbian. “If you asked me whether Serbia will accept mutual recognition, which was mentioned at some draft proposals, it won’t work for Serbia,” he said.  
 
The signed documents did not include a “mutual recognition” clause.   
 
Grenell told Newsmax Friday that there had been some surprises at the talks but that neither “side was that surprised”.  
 
“Surprises are good. They press the sides to do more. We had some surprises, but I don’t think either side was that surprised. They like to pretend before the media that they are more surprised than they actually are,” he said. A woman walks past graffiti on a wall reading: “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia,” in Belgrade, Serbia, Sept. 4, 2020.At the heart of the dispute between the former foes, is Serbia’s refusal to recognize Kosovo’s independence, which it declared unilaterally in 2008.  
 
Most Western nations – including the United States – have recognized Kosovo. Russia and China have not.   
 
Vucic and Hoti’s Washington comments on the subject show a difficult road is ahead.   
 
Hoti said he sees the economic agreement as one step toward recognition.   
 
“We see this as a big step towards final resolution, which is mutual recognition. I have stated publicly, that for us this indicates a big achievement towards finalization of an agreement with Serbia,” he told VOA.    FILE – Kosovo’s flags decorate a street as people walk during its 12th independence anniversary, in the capital Pristina, Feb. 17, 2020.However, Vucic said after the signing that the pact is a bilateral agreement with the United States, rather than Kosovo, aiming to fend off criticism at home that an agreement with its former province would be interpreted as recognizing it.   
 
Damon Wilson, a vice president of the Atlantic Council said the political issues “cannot be buried.”
 
“Ultimately what we are talking about is a comprehensive resolution, a settlement that provides for normalization,” he told VOA Albanian this week.  Diplomatic pre-election win?  
 
The announcement appears to provide Trump with a diplomatic victory ahead of the November presidential election.  
 
“This meeting has become by now a part of Trump’s electoral campaign, with the White House looking for a foreign policy accomplishment that will produce an event and a photo opportunity for President Trump as a peace broker,” said Majda Ruge, a fellow with Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and with the European Council for Foreign Relations
 
Wilson though, said Kosovo and Serbia are not exactly front-page news in the United States.  
 
“It’s not exactly the leading issue for vote-getters across our country, and it is not likely to really factor too much into electoral calculations in that sense,” he said.  
 
While it is early to say how a change in the White House would affect this issue, Democratic and Republican administrations’ policy towards the Balkans have usually had a “sense of continuity,” Wilson said.   
 
“We want to see that there is a bipartisan commitment to U.S. engagement in the Western Balkans and that’s something that we want to nurture and sustain,” he said.   
 VOA White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara, Burim Goxhuli from VOA’s Albanian Service, Milan Nesic and Ivana Konstantinovic from VOA’s Serbian Service contributed to this report.  
 
…

Officials in Bangladesh said Saturday that at least 11 people have died following a blast likely caused by a leak in a gas pipeline at a mosque outside Dhaka during evening prayers Friday.The Dhaka Tribune reported that 26 people are being treated at Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery in Dhaka.The victims have burns covering at least 60% to 70% of their bodies, according to Fatullah police station Officer-in-Charge Aslam Hossain.Narayanganj Fire Service’s Deputy Assistant Director Abdullah Al Arefin said apparently all six air conditioners on the mosque’s ground floor exploded.  He said fire officials suspect “that gas had leaked from the pipeline and accumulated inside as the windows were closed. The explosion was probably triggered due to sparks when someone tried to switch on or off the ACs or fans.”  
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President Donald Trump has directed the Office of Management and Budget to crack down on federal agencies’ anti-racism training sessions, calling them “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”OMB director Russell Vought, in a letter Friday to executive branch agencies, directed them to identify spending related to any training on “critical race theory,” “white privilege” or any other material that teaches or suggests that the United States or any race or ethnicity is “inherently racist or evil.”The memo comes as the nation has faced a reckoning this summer over racial injustice in policing and other spheres of American life. Trump has spent much of the summer defending the display of the Confederate battle flag and monuments of Civil War rebels from protesters seeking their removal, in what he has called a “culture war” ahead of the November 3 election.Meanwhile, he has rejected comments from Democratic nominee Joe Biden and others that there is “systemic racism” in policing and American culture that must be addressed.Vought’s memo cites “press reports” as contributing to Trump’s decision, apparently referring to segments on Fox News and other outlets that have stoked conservative outrage about the federal training.Vought’s memo says additional federal guidance on training sessions is forthcoming, maintaining that “The President, and his Administration, are fully committed to the fair and equal treatment of all individuals in the United States.”“The President has a proven track record of standing for those whose voice has long been ignored and who have failed to benefit from all our country has to offer, and he intends to continue to support all Americans, regardless of race, religion, or creed,” he added. “The divisive, false, and demeaning propaganda of the critical race theory movement is contrary to all we stand for as Americans and should have no place in the Federal government.”  
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More than a week after Category 4 Hurricane Laura ripped through the southwestern corner of Louisiana, state officials report more than 230,000 residents remain without power Friday. Another 175,000 are without water.“People around the country don’t realize how bad it is here,” Michelle Lee of Lake Charles, Louisiana, told VOA. “Entergy says we won’t have power for four or five weeks. Some people say they don’t think it’ll be until November.”Gov. John Bel Edwards said Thursday that power has been restored for nearly 400,000 people, but that the remaining outages would likely be the hardest ones to fix. The reason for this, he said, was that thousands of miles of electrical wires, thousands of utility poles and many hundreds of transmission towers were damaged by the storm.Lake Charles officials said this is a main reason residents have been unable to return to the city of 80,000, which was hit early August 27 with winds of more than 240 kph — the most powerful hurricane to reach Louisiana since 1856.“Why come back right now if you don’t have to?” Lee said. “I have friends who are in hotel rooms in New Orleans and Texas, and why not? A hot shower is a lot better than what we’ve got here. There are people in Lake Charles living in homes with a tree through the roof and with no water or power. I know people who are sleeping in cots on their porch or in tents in their backyard.”Edwards estimated that more than 11,000 people are being sheltered by the state, some in large emergency shelters, but the majority in hotel rooms in cities around Louisiana.Lee said she tried to find a place for herself and her two dogs but didn’t have any luck.“At first I was told I could find a place to stay in Baton Rouge, so I drove there, but then they said, ‘No, go to Metairie.’ So I drove to Metairie and they said, ‘No, go to Alexandria.’ It was a mess,” Lee said.The lucky oneAfter driving more than 800 miles during the evacuation, Lee was afraid her old car might die, stranding her and her dogs. She was also worried about missing work at an auto repair shop if she couldn’t return to Lake Charles.“I don’t have a lot of great options,” she said. “I didn’t want to go into one of the big shelters, because I didn’t think it was safe with COVID. Even if I managed to find an open hotel room, as far as I can tell, the emergency vouchers are gone, and that would be a lot of money for me to pay out of pocket.”Michelle Lee says the RV park she calls home looked ‘like a war zone’ after Hurricane Laura tore through. (Courtesy Michelle Lee)She decided to try her luck back home.Just three days after the hurricane, Lee and her dogs returned to the RV park they’d lived in since Lee’s daughter left for college. (Lee playfully calls it “the cheap life.”) She was horrified by what she saw.“When I left before the storm on Wednesday, there were 20 RVs in the lot,” she said. “When I got back, there were only two that were livable. The rest were tipped over on their sides, or had been split completely in half. It looks like a war zone.”Fortunately for Lee, one of the RVs still habitable was her own. She is now living in her wind-damaged motorhome with her two dogs, as well as a couple and their dog whose RV was destroyed. Lee doesn’t have running water, and the only electricity they have is when they run the generator, which Lee says is getting expensive.“It’s another $150 a week to run the generator, the RV is kind of crowded and I’d really like a warm shower, but I still think I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said. “At least I’m home and I can go to work.”Far from homeOlivia Dean also evacuated the day before the storm. She and the nearly 15 family members and friends she’s traveling with, including her grandparents and several uncles, have yet to make it home, though.She said they have been unable to get an emergency voucher to cover their housing costs. This has forced them to move from one hotel to another across Texas as they search for more affordable options.“I can’t believe how much these hotels are costing us,” Dean said. “But, stuck between a pandemic and a disaster, we don’t really have a better option.”Dean said the group is eager to return home so they can go to work and check on their property. They are finding it difficult, however, to get information that would tell them if it’s safe to return.“I was able to find one stranger on Facebook to go by the property and take a picture so we knew what the damage was like,” she said, referring to the social media groups that pop up in the wake of disasters to help get information and assistance to victims.Olivia Dean hasn’t been able to go home. She knows her apartment house lacks water, and she says she doubts the building has power. (Courtesy Olivia Dean)She said she knows her building lacks water, either because it has been turned off or it is contaminated. She also doubts her apartment building has power because no one in that area has electricity unless they use a generator.“One of the buildings looks like the roof and side were torn off, but ours looks like it might be OK. We can’t really tell,” Dean said.For natural disaster victims like Dean and Lee, the lack of information causes the most frustration, they said.“The governor said the disaster wasn’t as bad as expected, but that’s tough to hear when you know so many people who have lost everything,” Dean said. “Nobody wants to hear how bad it isn’t right now. It’s bad enough.”Lee agreed, adding she worries that statements like that from local officials will lead to less urgency for the rest of the country to help rebuild the region.“We might not be as well-known as New Orleans or New York or Miami, but we have 78,000 people here and most don’t have power,” Lee said. “I’m worried people will hear what the governor says and think maybe we don’t need the help. But, trust me, we do.”In a press conference Thursday, Gov. Edwards acknowledged the progress that has been made clearing debris, but noted that the storm “left a long trail of devastation and just catastrophic damage.”Olivia Dean hasn’t been able to go home. She knows her apartment house lacks water, and she says she doubts the building has power. (Courtesy Olivia Dean)“We clearly have a very, very long way to go,” he said, adding that “this is very much going to be a marathon, not a sprint.”For residents like Lee and Dean, the marathon has just begun.“It’s going to be weeks until I see any sort of assistance from FEMA,” Lee said. “An inspector hasn’t even made it to our RV park, so my application is still pending. I’m just hanging on the best I can until I get some help — that’s all I can do.” 
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The White House is defending its efforts to protect the November presidential election from outside interference following a revelation that Russian “malign … actors” have been echoing President Donald Trump’s repeated warnings about potential election fraud.”We’re going to do everything we can to protect the sanctity of our election,” U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told reporters Friday, adding the White House and the president have taken “unprecedented action” to protect the November vote.National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien speaks to reporters outside of the West Wing of the White House in Washington on May 21, 2020.”We’ve made it very clear to the Chinese, to the Russians, to the Iranians and others that haven’t been publicly disclosed that anyone who tries to attempt to, that anyone who attempts to interfere with American elections will face extraordinary consequences,” he said.The assurances follow the release Thursday of a leaked Department of Homeland Security bulletin saying Russia is stoking fears that expanded mail-in voting will lead to a flawed election result.“Since at least March 2020, Russian malign influence actors have been amplifying allegations of election integrity issues in new voting processes and vote-by-mail programs,” according to the Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center William Evanina speaks during the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit in Washington, Oct. 31, 2017.“We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment,’” National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina said in the August 7 statement.“Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television,” he added.Evanina also said both China and Iran would prefer to see a Biden victory.Beijing sees Trump as “unpredictable,” Evanina said, adding that Chinese officials understood the range of influence operations they have set in motion “might affect the presidential race.””The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information & intellectual property & to our economic vitality is the counterintelligence & economic espionage threat from #China” @FBI Dir Christopher Wray tells @HudsonInstitute— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) July 7, 2020Trump, who has been frustrated by allegations that Moscow helped him win in 2016, has repeatedly dismissed suggestions Russia would like to see him win.“We’ve taken stronger action against Russia than any other country in the world,” he told reporters late Friday during a wide-ranging briefing at the White House, while also arguing the threat from Russia has been exaggerated.”It is interesting that everybody’s always mentioning Russia,” Trump told reporters. “I don’t mind you mentioning Russia, but I think probably China, at this point, is the nation you should be talking about, much more so than Russia.”U.S. officials have been promising that despite the myriad concerns, the upcoming presidential election will be “the most secure election in modern history,” though they have warned that unlike in past elections, final results may be delayed by what they expect will be a large number of mail-in ballots. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials have also said there is no intelligence to suggest any foreign country or anyone in the U.S. is actively trying to use mail-in ballots to rig the presidential election.
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Americans headed into Labor Day weekend — the unofficial end to the Lost Summer of 2020 — amid warnings from public health experts that backyard parties, crowded bars and other gatherings could cause the coronavirus to come surging back.”I look upon the Labor Day weekend really as a critical point,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert. “Are we going to go in the right direction and continue the momentum downward, or are we going to have to step back a bit as we start another surge?”The rise in infections, deaths and hospitalizations over the summer, primarily in the South and West, was blamed in part on Americans behaving heedlessly over Memorial Day and July Fourth.A waiter in a face mask delivers food to the tables outside of a local restaurant during lunch in Hoboken, N.J., Sept. 4, 2020.The landscape has improved in recent weeks, with the numbers headed in the right direction in hard-hit states like Florida, Arizona and Texas, but there are certain risk factors that could combine with Labor Day: Children are going back to school, university campuses are seeing soaring case counts, college football is starting, more businesses are open, and flu season is around the corner.And a few states are heading into the holiday with less room in hospitals than they had over Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Alabama, for example, had about 800 people hospitalized with the virus on July 1. This week, it has just under 1,000.More beaches will be open on Labor Day than on Memorial Day, but Fauci said that is not cause in itself for concern, as long as people keep their distance.”I would rather see someone on a beach, being physically separated enough, than someone crowded in an indoor bar,” he said.The outbreak is blamed for about 187,000 deaths and almost 6.2 million confirmed infections in the U.S., by far the highest totals in the world. Cases of COVID-19, which spiked from about 20,000 per day to around 70,000 during the summertime surge in the South, are now down to about 40,000.Dr. Albert Ko, a Yale University epidemiologist, said he is concerned about students heading back to school across the nation next week after coming back from holiday travel and a weekend of social gatherings.”Any transmission events that happen here could be amplified unless we’re careful about it,” Ko said. “Whether it’s going to be a perfect storm, l don’t think so. People are aware of the risk, and people have been socially distancing. But this is certainly a concern.” 
 
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George Washington University is investigating the case of a history professor who allegedly admitted to fraudulently pretending to be a Black woman for her entire career.In a blog post that has gained international attention, a writer claiming to be Jessica Krug, a GW associate professor of history, writes that she is in fact a white Jewish woman.”I concealed my past as a white Jewish child from the residential suburbs of Kansas City in favor of several black identities that I was not allowed to claim: first Black from North Africa, then African-American , and finally Black from the Bronx, of Caribbean origin,” wrote this woman, who is fair-skinned.Krug did not respond to a request on her blog page for comment. The university declined to comment, but said in a tweet, “We are aware of the post by Jessica Krug and are looking into the situation. We cannot comment further on personnel matters.”The blog post expresses deep remorse, calling the deception, “the very epitome of violence, of thievery and appropriation.”The writer blames “unaddressed mental health demons” dating to childhood and says she frequently thought of confessing the deception, “but my cowardice was always more powerful than my ethics.”Krug’s biography on the GW website lists imperialism and colonialism and African American history among her areas of expertise. Her writings center heavily on issues of African culture and diaspora.Social media furorThe post caused an immediate furor on social media, with Black academics, writers and activists recalling their interactions with Krug.Hari Ziyad, editor of the online publication RaceBatr, which had published Krug’s writings, wrote on Twitter that Krug had confirmed the details of the blog post to him in a phone call Thursday morning. He described Krug as “someone I called a friend up until this morning when she gave me a call admitting to everything written here.”Ziyad wrote that the Krug claimed to be Afro-Caribbean from the Bronx.Krug’s public persona comes across in a video testimony to a New York City Council hearing on gentrification from June. Referring to herself as Jess La Bombalera, Krug refers to “my Black and brown siblings” in the anti-gentrification movement and criticizes “all these white New Yorkers” who “did not yield their time to Black and brown indigenous New Yorkers.”The case is similar to that of Rachel Dolezal, a Washington state NAACP civil rights leader, who identified as Black but was biologically white.This article includes material from Reuters and AFP.
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Iran continues to increase its stockpile of enriched uranium in violation of limitations set in a landmark deal with world powers, but has begun providing access to sites where it was suspected of having stored or used undeclared nuclear material and possibly conducted nuclear-related activities,, the U.N.’s atomic watchdog agency said Friday.
 
The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in a confidential document distributed to member countries and seen by The Associated Press that Iran as of Aug. 25 had stockpiled 2,105.4 kilograms (2.32 tons) of low-enriched uranium, up from 1,571.6 kilograms (1.73 tons) last reported on May 20.  
 
Iran signed the nuclear deal in 2015 with the United States, Germany, France, Britain, China and Russia. Known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, it allows Iran only to keep a stockpile of 202.8 kilograms (447 pounds).
 
The IAEA reported that Iran has also been continuing to enrich uranium to a purity of up to 4.5%, higher than the 3.67% allowed under the JCPOA. It said Iran’s stockpile of heavy water — which helps cool nuclear reactors — had decreased, however, and is now back within the JCPOA limits.
 
The nuclear deal promised Iran economic incentives in return for the curbs on its nuclear program. President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal unilaterally in 2018, saying it needed to be renegotiated.  
 
Since then, Iran has slowly violated the restrictions to try and pressure the remaining nations to increase the incentives to offset new, economy-crippling U.S. sanctions.
 
Those countries maintain that even though Iran has been violating many of the pact’s restrictions, it is important to keep the deal alive because the country has continued providing the IAEA with critical access to inspect its nuclear facilities.  
 
The agency had been at a months-long impasse over two locations thought to be from the early 2000s, however, which Iran had argued inspectors had no right to visit because they dated to before the deal.  
 
But after IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi personally visited Tehran in late August for meetings with top officials, he said Iran had agreed to provide inspectors access.
 
In its report, the IAEA said inspectors had already visited one site and would visit the other this month.  
 
It didn’t detail their findings.  
 
The ultimate goal of the JCPOA is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, which Iran insists it does not want to do.  
 
Still, since the the U.S. withdrawal, it has stockpiled enough enriched uranium to produce a weapon.  
 
According to the Washington-based Arms Control Association, Iran would need roughly 1,050 kilograms (1.16 tons) of low-enriched uranium — under 5% purity — and would then need to enrich it further to weapons-grade, or more than 90% purity, to make a nuclear weapon.
 
Before agreeing to the nuclear deal, however, Iran enriched its uranium up to 20% purity, which is just a short technical step away from the weapons-grade level of 90%. In 2013, Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was already more than 7,000 kilograms (7.72 tons) with higher enrichment, but it didn’t pursue a bomb.
 
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President Donald Trump has urged Iran not to execute a popular wrestler who authorities say killed a man during 2018 anti-government rallies.Citing reports on the death sentence for 27-year-old Navid Afkari, Trump said in a Thursday tweet: “To the leaders of Iran, I would greatly appreciate if you would spare this young man’s life, and not execute him. Thank you!”Judiciary authorities in Iran say Afkari was sentenced to death for the death of Hassan Torkaman, a water supply company employee in the southern city of Shiraz, following an anti-government protest over economic problems.A provincial court in Shiraz sentenced Afkari to death and his brothers Vahid Afkari and Habib Afkari to 54 and 27 years in prison, respectively. All three were construction workers.The July verdicts that were reported in August prompted an outcry both in Iran and internationally.Earlier this week, the Afkaris’ mother, Behieh Namjou, in a video that circulated on social media, claimed the three men confessed to the killing under torture. She pleaded to authorities for mercy for her children.The news website of Iran’s judiciary, Mizanonline, on Monday denied Afkari had been tortured and called the Greco-Roman wrestler a “murderer of an innocent citizen.”Hassan Younesi, Afkari’s lawyer, told the semiofficial ILNA news agency that there is no evidence showing Afkari had a role the victim’s death and has requested a retrial.In 2018, protests broke out in several Iranian cities over the country’s falling currency and economic woes that led to a violent encounter between police and protesters. It came after Trump in May that year pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major world powers and imposed sanctions on Iran that sent the country’s economy into free fall. 
 
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