A Manila Regional Trial Court branch convicted the chief executive of popular media outlet Rappler of cyber-libel Monday in a case seen as back-handed retaliation over a string of articles critical of the Philippine president. The court ruled that Rappler CEO Maria Ressa and former researcher-writer Reynaldo Santos Jr. had committed cyber-libel, a first for Philippine journalists, over a report posted in 2012. Each faces a jail term of up to six years, Rappler reported.  Philippine authorities got the pair on cyber-libel, a charge usually aimed at pornographers and stalkers, through flukes of timing and details of the law itself, analysts of the case believe.  The government of President Rodrigo Duterte was suspected of pushing legal agencies to seek the conviction because it resents Rappler for reports that criticize its policies. The verdict dovetails with the Duterte government’s anti-fake news laws and its restrictions on reporters going out during the national anti-coronavirus lockdown, his critics say.  “We’re under lockdown, we have a pandemic and the government seems intent on controlling free speech, so this is a very dangerous situation,” said Renato Reyes, secretary-general of the Manila-based Bagong Alyansang Makabayan alliance of leftist political organizations. Rappler has been the subject of 11 “cases and investigations”, Ressa told an online news conference June 10. She rejects the cyber-libel charges. “I always say I have not done anything wrong that I haven’t done in almost 35 years of being a journalist,” she told the news conference. A judge has allowed Ressa to remain free on bail pending an appeal.   Journalism advocacy groups and Ressa’s lawyers point to glitches in timing and an unusual interpretation of the law to suggest government retaliation. The media outlet questions Duterte’s 4-year-old, deadly anti-drug campaign and his intent to back away from military ties with the United States, for example.Rappler CEO and Executive Editor Maria Ressa, center, is escorted after attending her hearing in Manila, Philippines on June 15, 2020.Among the timing oddities, the cyber-libel law was enacted four months after Rappler posted the story in question. The Department of Justice said last year that the law could extend to cases dating back as far as 12 years. The justice department charged Ressa and Rappler itself – which was cleared of charges Monday – in February 2019 over a report on possible ties between a Philippine businessman and a former president of the Philippine Supreme Court. Rappler’s story linked the former justice, Renato Corona, to businessman Wilfredo Keng and cited an intelligence report allegedly connecting Keng to drug and human trafficking. Keng, who disputed the allegations against him, filed a case against Rappler in 2017 with the National Bureau of Investigation cybercrime division. Although a division of the bureau “junked” the cyberlibel complaint, a former bureau director later called it an “unfinished evaluation”, Philippine broadcast network ABS-CBN online said. the bureau filed its case in 2018 and Ressa was arrested last year. The 2014 correction of a spelling error in the controversial report gave the prosecution more clout. When a “defamatory statement is published several times, it gives rise to as many offenses as there are publications,” a trial court judge said, as quoted by Rappler. Ressa, a former CNN Philippines investigative reporter and Time magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year, told the news conference last week she felt “under attack” and “anger” for doing her job. Her lawyer, Ted Te, vowed to appeal. “We’re going to challenge it all the way to the supreme court,” Te told the new conference. Media freedoms took root in the Philippines after martial law ended in the 1980s. But the Southeast Asian democracy of 109.6 million people ranks 136th this year out of 180 countries in the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders’ 2020 World Press Freedom Index. It had placed at No. 134 in 2019. Duterte asked reporters in 2017, a year into his term, to avoid lies, “sensationalized news” and “overpublicized political propaganda.” In a similar case, ABS-CBN quit broadcasts in May after the National Telecommunications Commission halted a franchise license. Duterte had separately accused the network of declining to air his political campaign ads. However, most media in the Philippines still operate freely as long as they report known facts, rather than taking strong viewpoints or digging too deep, country observers say. “If you put (Rappler  and ABS-CBN) together plus Duterte’s foul language against the media, then you get the impression there’s a systematic attack against the media,” said Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school. “But if you look at the big picture, there’s a few other thousand media outlets out there.” 
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A Fulton County, Georgia, medical examiner has ruled Rayshard Brooks’ death outside an Atlanta fast food restaurant Friday night a homicide. Brooks was cooperating with police officers during a sobriety test, but then struggled with the officers as they tried to arrest him and ran. The medical examiner’s autopsy found that Brooks was shot in the back twice and died from organ damage and blood loss. Officer Garrett Rolfe has been fired, and the Atlanta police chief, Erika Shields, has resigned. A second officer, Devin Brosnan, has been placed on administrative leave. Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard told CNN his office will decide later this week what kind of charges, if any, Rolfe would face.  “(Brooks) did not seem to present any kind of threat to anyone, and so the fact that it would escalate to his death just seems unreasonable,” Howard said. “If that shot was fired for some reason other than to save that officer’s life or prevent injury to him or others, then that shooting is not justified under the law,” he added. Shields resigned Saturday even as the investigation into the shooting had barely begun.  “I have served alongside some of the finest men and women in the Atlanta Police Department. Out of a deep and abiding love for this city and this department, I offered to step aside as police chief. … It is time for the city to move forward and build trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.” Police dash and body cam video shows the 27-year-old Brooks asleep in his car and blocking the drive-thru lane of a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant.  It took a few moments for Officer Rolfe to waken Brooks. The video shows the two having a cordial conversation, but Brooks didn’t seem to know what city he was in or what restaurant. At one point, Brooks told the officer “I know you’re just doing your job.” This screen grab taken from body camera video provided by the Atlanta Police Department shows Rayshard Brooks speaking with Officer Garrett Rolfe in the parking lot of a Wendy’s restaurant, late Friday, June 12, 2020, in Atlanta.When the second officer, Devin Brosnan, arrived, Brooks failed a breathalyzer, was handcuffed and appeared to resist arrest.  The officers wrestled him to the ground, demanded he stop fighting and warned Brooks that they would use a Taser on him. Brooks apparently grabbed one of the officer’s Tasers and pointed it at the police as he tried to run off. Rolfe opened fire and three shots could be heard as Brooks falls to the ground. Fellow officers attempted to comfort Rolfe as an emergency team tended to Brooks, who was pronounced dead at a hospital. The shooting set off a day of protests in Atlanta Saturday that started peacefully but turned violent. Demonstrators tried to block an interstate highway and the Wendy’s restaurant where Brooks was shot was burned to the ground. Thirty-six people were arrested, and police are looking for the suspect who started the fire. A lawyer for the Brooks family, L. Chris Stewart, says he wants Rolfe to be charged with “an unjustified use of deadly force, which equals murder.” “You can’t say a Taser is a nonlethal weapon … but when an African American grabs it and runs with it, now it’s some kind of deadly, lethal weapon that calls for you to unload on somebody,” Stewart said. But the only African American member of the U.S. Senate, South Carolina’s Tim Scott, says more questions need to be asked.  “The question is when the suspect turned to fire the Taser, what should the officer have done?” Scott told CBS’s Face the Nation, adding that what happened in Atlanta “is certainly a far less clear one than the ones that we saw with George Floyd and several other ones around the country.” The death of Brooks comes as the entire country is grappling with the issue of how police treat African American men suspected of relatively minor crimes.  Many Americans regard last month’s death of George Floyd in Minneapolis as the last straw in several such incidents. Floyd died after an officer held his knee on Floyd’s neck when Floyd was suspected of trying to spend a counterfeit $20 bill. His death set off protest marches in nearly every major U.S. city and in several European capitals. 
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High-profile Philippine journalist Maria Ressa was convicted Monday in a cyber libel case that press freedom advocates have branded a ploy to silence critics of President Rodrigo Duterte. The verdict was handed down in a Manila courtroom against Ressa, who heads the news site Rappler, and she will be allowed to post bail. 
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South Korea on Sunday convened an emergency security meeting and urged North Korea to uphold reconciliation agreements, hours after the North threatened to demolish a liaison office and take military action against its rival.There’s concern that North Korea could turn to provocation to bolster its internal unity and wrest outside concessions as nuclear talks with the United States remain deadlocked. Observers say North Korea desperately needs sanctions relief in the face of harsh U.S.-led sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic.South Korea’s national security director, Chung Eui-yong, held an emergency video conference with ministers in charge of security and military generals on Sunday morning to discuss the latest situation on the Korean Peninsula and the government’s possible steps, the presidential Blue House said in a statement.The Unification Ministry, which handles relations with North Korea, later said that both Koreas must strive to abide by all agreements they have reached. The Defense Ministry said separately it closely monitors North Korea’s military and maintains a firm military readiness.Both ministries said the South Korean government “views the current situation as grave.”On Saturday night, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, warned that Seoul will soon witness “a tragic scene of the useless North-South liaison office (in North Korea) being completely collapsed.” She also said she would leave to North Korea’s military the right to take the next step of retaliation against South Korea.North Korean Leader’s Sister Threatens Military Action Against South Korea ‘We will soon take a next action,’ vows Kim Yo Jong North Korea earlier suspended communication lines with South Korea and threatened to nullify 2018 agreements that led the Koreas to halt firing exercises, remove some land mines and tear down guard posts in front-line areas.The North has linked its recent series of threats to Seoul’s failure to prevent activists from launching propaganda leaflets across their border. But some experts say North Korea is deeply frustrated that South Korea hasn’t done enough to revive lucrative joint economic projects as well as over a lack of progress in its nuclear talks with Washington.The negotiations have made little progress since a second summit between Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump in early 2019 fell apart because of disputes over how much sanctions should be lifted in return for Kim’s dismantling his main nuclear complex.Kim later vowed to expand his nuclear arsenal, introduce a new strategic weapon and overcome the U.S.-led sanctions that he said “stifles” his country’s economy.He also pushed South Korea to resume the operations of the two big inter-Korean projects — a factory park and a tourism site, both in North Korea — but South Korea was unable to do so due to the sanctions.Kim’s struggle to address economic woes has likely faced setbacks as the coronavirus pandemic forced North Korea to close its border with China, its biggest trading partner. North Korea says it hasn’t reported a single outbreak but foreign experts question that claim and warn a pandemic in the North could be dire due to its fragile heath care system.Some observers say the end of the 2018 deals could allow North Korea to send ships across the disputed sea boundary, float down mines on a border river or take other provocative steps at the border area. The South Korean Defense Ministry statement said the 2018 deals must be maintained to prevent accidental armed clashes and establish peace on the Korean Peninsula.But it’s still unclear if the North would go ahead with its threat to destroy the liaison office, which was built at a North Korean border town following a 2018 summit between Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Such a move could deepen anti-Pyongyang sentiments and make it difficult for the North to restore ties with South Korea when needed. 
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Looming U.S. legislation that imposes stringent sanctions on the Syrian government has raised concerns among the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with Kurdish officials warning that including northeast Syria region in the sanctions could hinder their fight against the Islamic State (IS) terror group.
 
The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which takes effect June 17, sanctions the Syrian government over human rights abuses and targets companies working with the regime and its military, construction, energy and engineering sectors. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has called it “economic terrorism.”
 
Sinam Mohamad, the SDF representative in the U.S., told VOA that authorities in northeast Syria fear the sanctions could impact their economy, deepening the impoverishment of civilians already struggling to recover from IS destruction.
 
“As Caesar sanctions are about to go into effect, the status of northeastern Syria must be taken into consideration especially when these sanctions might affect the battle to fight IS,” Mohamad told VOA.FILE – A fighter with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) monitors on surveillance screens prisoners accused of being affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group, at a prison in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakeh, Oct. 26, 2019.Mohamad said SDF was unsure if the region, known by locals as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, will be protected from the consequences of the crippling sanctions, especially as it uses the Syrian currency, Lira.
 
She said Kurdish officials hope Washington in its sanctions act makes it clear that their area will remain open to commercial transactions with other countries and international organizations providing aid to rebuild infrastructure in their region.   
 
The SDF has been assured by the U.S. deputy special envoy to the anti-IS global coalition William Roebuck, according to Mohamad. The assurance, Roebuck added, was “a positive stand.  But it’s still unclear what are the procedures that will be put in place to exclude this region from the sanctions.”
 US stance
 
A U.S. State Department spokesperson told VOA that the sanctions seek to prevent the Syrian regime from “abusing the international financial system and global supply chain to continue brutalizing the Syrian people.”
 
The official said the U.S. will provide exemptions for humanitarian aid to ensure civilians are not harmed by the sanctions.FILE – A woman walks through a market in the Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli, in Syria’s northeastern Hasakeh province, Oct. 29, 2019.“As the sanctions under the Caesar Act enter into force, the United States will remain in close coordination with our partners, the humanitarian community, and civil society groups, and we will continue our support to help meet humanitarian needs and create the kind of stability and security necessary for a better future for the Syrian people,” the spokesperson told VOA.
The Caesar Act passed the U.S. Senate later last year in a bipartisan effort and as a part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020. It is named after a pseudonym used by a Syrian military police forensic photographer based in Damascus. The photographer defected from the Syrian regime in 2013 and smuggled out of Syria about 55,000 photographs documenting systematic torture of prisoners between 2011 and 2013 by the Syrian regime security inside detention facilities.  
 
Kurdish officials in a May statement warned that the sanctions, if applied to the northeastern region, could negatively impact their efforts to go after IS remnants and maintain security and stability.
 
“IS danger could return to Syria and the world, and measures must be taken to support the effort to fight IS in our areas,” the statement read. “We will make all necessary efforts to mitigate the effect of the sanctions on our areas as we will work to limit its negative consequences,” the statement said.
 Deteriorating economy
 
Some Syria experts say the approaching U.S. sanctions have already worsened Syria’s fragile economy with the Syrian currency hitting an all-time low, standing Sunday at $0.002 USD. Prices have been rising as Syrians across the country took to the streets recently to protest deteriorating living conditions.
 
To face the possible consequences on the northeast, Kurdish authorities have called on farmers in the region to sell their crops to the local administration and banned exporting it to the areas under the Syrian government.FILE – A shepherd rides a donkey across a pumpjack operating in an oil field in the countryside of al-Qahtaniyah town in Syria’s northeastern Hasakeh province, near the Turkish border, March 11, 2020.However, some experts charge that Caesar Act’s overall effect on the local economy will be limited. The sanctions, they say, will deal a blow to the al-Assad’s regime for its alleged war crimes as well as its main backers Russia and Iran. Similarly, the act could discourage countries such United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China to reestablish relations with the Syrian government.
 
“Caesar Act is quite targeted in terms of its secondary sanctions, that is specific to the companies contributing to the construction efforts to petroleum and to aircrafts and other things to do with to the military, so it shouldn’t have quite a negative effect on the people as a whole,” Genevieve Zingg, a legal fellow at the Syria Justice and Accountability Center (SJAC), told VOA.
 
Zingg said that the U.S. humanitarian exemptions ensure Syria will have free access to medical and humanitarian supplies, especially as the war-torn country remains vulnerable to a coronavirus outbreak.
 
The sanctions, she said, will not achieve justice for crimes committed during the Syrian war. However, “they are very important as a deterrent mechanism to ensure that we are not normalizing relations with a regime and its allies that perpetrated horrible war crimes and violations of international law throughout this conflict.”
 
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions have been displaced. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says it has documented during the war more than 16,000 deaths from torture, including some 125 children.   
 VOA’s State Department correspondent Nike Ching contributed to this story. 
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The thousands of people expected to attend next Saturday’s political rally for President Donald Trump in Oklahoma “probably” ought to wear a face mask to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Sunday. The Trump campaign, however, has not said whether it plans to enforce guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control calling for face coverings at large gatherings such as the Trump rally in in Tulsa. As many as 19,000 people could crowd into the city’s BOK Center to take part in the president’s first large-scale rally in three months. Kudlow told CNN that as U.S. workers return to their jobs after being laid off because of the spread of the coronavirus, they should continue to observe social distancing guidelines calling for people to stay two meters away from others and to wear face masks. Asked whether his suggestion for workers to wear a face mask also applied to people at the Trump rally, Kudlow said, “Well, OK. Probably so.”   Asked how the rally can be held safely, one of the president’s biggest supporters, Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford told ABC’s “This Week” show, “I don’t know how they’re going to handle that.” But he said he plans to go. Trump has repeatedly ignored suggestions that he wear a face mask in public to set an example for Americans to prevent the spread of the pandemic that has infected more than 2 million people and killed more than 115,000 in the U.S., both figures by far the most in any nation around the world. Asked about wearing a face mask, Trump at one point said, “I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.” But liability for the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, is worrying the Trump campaign. It claims that 200,000 to 300,000 people have requested tickets for the Tulsa rally in one of the biggest Trump-supportive states in the country. FILE – President Donald Trump walks onstage to speak at a campaign rally, Feb. 28, 2020, in North Charleston, S.C.But anyone requesting a ticket must agree to a disclaimer saying they acknowledge the “inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present” and agrees to relinquish any right to sue the Trump campaign or the arena if they subsequently contract the virus. Trump, believing large-scale rallies are a crucial political lifeline leading up to his November national re-election contest against former Vice President Joe Biden, has made it clear he does not want to speak to a two-thirds-empty arena to accommodate social distancing or a sea of faces wearing face masks.
Trump campaign chairman Brad Parscale said last week, “Americans are ready to get back to action and so is President Trump. The Great American Comeback is real and the rallies will be tremendous.” But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, voiced deep concerns last week about the crowd expected to hear Trump, saying that the pandemic is far from over. “Oh my goodness,” Fauci said. “Where is it going to end? We’re still at the beginning of really understanding.” Some Americans have equated wearing a face mask as a sign of weakness, but U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Sunday on Twitter, “Some feel face coverings infringe on their freedom of choice — but if more wear them, we’ll have MORE freedom to go out.” He said that with face coverings, there would be “less asymptomatic viral spread, more places open, and sooner! Exercise and promote your freedom by choosing to wear a face covering!” According to the Centers for Disease Control guidelines, the Trump rally would fall into the “highest risk” category, defined as “large in-person gatherings where it is difficult for individuals to remain spaced at least 6 feet (two meters) apart and attendees travel from outside the local area.” The CDC guidance also says that “cloth face coverings are strongly encouraged in settings where individuals might raise their voice (e.g., shouting, chanting, singing)” — all of which is typical of a political rally.  
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Officials in Pakistan have estimated that nationwide confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections could reach up to 1.2 million by the end of July, urging the nation to strictly comply with safety guidelines to help reverse the rising trajectory of new cases.  
 
The national tally of infections has surpassed 140,000, with about 2,700 deaths, since late February when the coronavirus pandemic reached the South Asian nation of 220 million people.  
 
Pakistani officials said Sunday the country has recorded more than 6,800 cases in the last 24 hours.  
 
Asad Umar, the head of the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) directing Pakistan’s battle against the virus, said Sunday the escalation in COVID-19 infections was a cause of grave concern for the government. 
 
“Unless the current trend is reversed, our experts are telling us the number of cases could double by the end of June and could even reach one million to 1.2 million by the end July,” Umar warned while addressing a news conference in Islamabad.  FILE – People ride on the back of a mini truck after the government resumed public transport services easing the lockdown imposed against the COVID-19 coronavirus, in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi, June 3, 2020.COVID-19 infections have particularly soared since last month when Prime Minister Imran Khan eased restrictions on commercial and public activities to help restore livelihood means for millions of poverty-stricken families.  
 
Scores of government workers and national as well as provincial lawmakers have also contracted the virus while several others have died. 
 
Umar said that despite a sustained government campaign to promote, among other safety measures, the use of masks in public places, a major chunk of the population ignored the instructions, leading to a rise in infections in Pakistan. This has forced the government to go for a “selective” or “smart” lockdown, he said.   FILE – A man wearing a protective face mask gestures while shopping outside an electronics market, after Pakistan started easing lockdown restrictions, as the outbreak of the coronavirus disease continues, in Karachi, Pakistan, June 4, 2020.“Now the government has decided to crackdown on people violating safety guidelines in high-risk areas or hot spots, to protect them against contracting the virus and to ensure they are able to conduct commercial activities at the same time,” he said. 
 
Hundreds of hot spots have already been sealed off in Pakistan, including parts of the national capital, over the past few days to contain the spread of the virus. 
 
Khan has rejected calls for enforcing prolonged and complete fresh lockdowns, insisting such a move would hurt the poorest in a country where two-thirds of the population depend on day-to-day earnings.  
 
The prime minister has from the outset argued that about 150 million people in the country would suffer from starvation and his cash-starved government cannot feed them beyond a few months. 
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Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, 34, was found dead in his Mumbai home Sunday.Citing police sources, local media reported that the actor was found hanging in his apartment in an apparent suicide, but that no note was found.“It pains us to share that Sushant Singh Rajput is no longer with us,” Rajput’s publicist wrote in a statement, asking for privacy.Rajput, originally from Patna, Bihar, made his Bollywood debut in the film “Kai Po Che” (I have cut) in 2013. He notably portrayed former Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the film “M.S. Dhoni” in 2016.Rajput attended New Delhi University to study engineering before dropping out to pursue acting.Indian social media was flooded with messages from politicians, athletes, and fellow Bollywood stars in remembrance of Rajput.“I can’t believe this at all… it’s shocking… a beautiful actor and a good friend,” Nawazuddin Saddiqui wrote on Twitter.  
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During the coming week, the U.N. Human Rights Council will be faced with many important issues left hanging when its 43rd session was suspended in March because of COVID-19.  The meeting, which opens Monday, will employ a so-called hybrid approach, with a mix of both real and virtual presentations.To ensure the safety of participants during this time of coronavirus, U.N. officials say social distancing measures will be strictly enforced.  Delegations will have a reduced number of representatives attending the session and hundreds of side events by nongovernmental organizations will not take place on U.N. premises.Presentation of reports and interactive dialogues on human rights issues will involve experts who are either physically present or speaking by video conference.  Countries that will come under review include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Ukraine, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Central African Republic.One of the highlights of the weeklong meeting will be an urgent debate on institutionalized racism in the United States underlined by the killing of African American George Floyd while in police custody.Geneva director of Human Rights Watch John Fisher calls this a moment of reckoning for the United States.  He said the event will likely be used by some countries to advance their own agendas.“We are also very concerned that China is seeking to exploit this moment of global chaos and the disarray within the U.S. to crack down on rights and freedoms in Hong Kong … And, we are calling upon states to take this moment to bring more attention to Hong Kong, as I mentioned.  We feel this is a time when China will be watching the international response, and, if that response is muted, will feel emboldened to go even further down the track,” he said.A year ago, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callemard, presented her report on the killing of Saudi columnist for the Washington Post Jamal Khashoggi, which she claimed was by agents of the Saudi government.  While this issue is not formally on the council agenda, Fisher believes it should be given renewed attention.“In addition to, of course the murder of Khashoggi, while a number of women human rights defenders have been released from prison, a number remain.  There are still allegations of torture.  They still face criminal charges …There continues to be use of the death penalty, flogging, a crackdown on dissent, new waves of arrests,” he said. At the end of the week, the council will take action on decisions and the adoption of more than 40 resolutions.  They include recommendations on improving human rights in countries such as Libya, Iran, Nicaragua, South Sudan, and Myanmar. 
  
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Black Lives Matter protests attracted large crowds in Australia on Saturday in defiance of government warnings about the coronavirus. The marches have been inspired by mass gatherings in the United States following the death in police custody of George Floyd.Across Australia, thousands of anti-racism demonstrators rallied against high rates of indigenous incarceration, deaths in custody and the removal of indigenous children from their families. Aboriginal Australians make up about 3 percent of the population but almost a third of prison inmates are indigenous.“We are here to support our future as indigenous people and to walk against injustices of what happened to our people,” one aboriginal woman said.In Perth, Western Australia, protesters defied calls by the authorities Saturday not to attend because of coronavirus fears. Organizers handed out masks and hand sanitizer.An earlier march in Sydney was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court on public health grounds, but hundreds of people joined the protest.“I am here because there have been 437 deaths in custody since 1991,” a protester in Sydney said. “So I am here to make a stand, and I do not care that the government has said this is illegal.”New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Mick Willing was not happy protesters had ignored coronavirus health orders.“It is disappointing to acknowledge that around 300 people chose to ignore the warnings that had been given by police in terms of coming to this public gathering,” he said.There have been separate rallies in Australia by groups protesting the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.The government had urged demonstrators to stay home because of concerns that mass gatherings could spread the coronavirus, which has been mostly contained in Australia.Two women were arrested after a statue of the British explorer, Captain James Cook, was defaced in Sydney.  Another was damaged in Perth.  However, Peter Dutton, Australia’s Home Affairs minister, criticized calls to remove statues of European colonists in Australia as an “obscure left-wing cause.”This year has marked the 250th anniversary of Cook’s voyage to Australia. British settlement would begin 17 years later.Historical monuments across the world have been torn down in recent weeks by anti-racism campaigners following the death of George Floyd, an African American man, in U.S. police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last month.  
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Officials in two Southern California communities are investigating the hanging deaths of two African American men.The body of 24-year-old Robert Fuller was found last week in Palmdale, hanging from a tree near City Hall.Late last month, the body of Malcolm Harsch, who was 38, was also found hanging from a tree in Victorville, near a homeless campsite.Authorities in both locations initially suspected the men had committed suicide but are now reserving final decisions in response to community uproar and pending further investigation.Thousands of people turned out Saturday in Palmdale for a memorial for Fuller. Diamond Alexander, Fuller’s sister, said, “We just want the truth. My brother was not suicidal. He was a survivor.”One woman told the Los Angeles Times that while officials suspected “suicide,” she suspected “a lynching.”The Harsch family has issued a statement, saying that they “want justice, not comfortable excuses.” They added, “There are many ways to die but considering the current racial tension, a Black man hanging himself from a tree definitely doesn’t sit well with us right now.”The U.S. has experienced protests across the country recently in response to the death of George Floyd, an African American man who died after a police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes.America has a long history with hanging or lynching black people. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a museum in Montgomery, Alabama, says it is a “national memorial acknowledging the victims of racial terror lynchings.”The museum says on its website that the memorial “is a sacred space for truth-telling and reflection about racial terror in America and its legacy.”
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Saturday said the opposition would not recognize a “false” electoral body named by the government-friendly supreme court, while his allies pledged to extend the term of the current legislature.An extension past the January 2021 end date would allow Guaido, who is recognized by dozens of countries as Venezuela’s rightful leader due to his position as president of the opposition-held National Assembly, to remain in the role even if the opposition boycotts parliamentary elections due by the end of the year.“We do not recognize any false national electoral council,” Guaido told reporters during a virtual news conference.Venezuela’s constitution grants the power to appoint members of the national electoral council to congress, but the Supreme Court — widely viewed as loyal to President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government — on Friday named its own board after ruling the legislature had failed to do so.Opposition leaders denounced the move as an attempt to rig the election, and some prominent Guaido allies said in response the current legislature should extend its term.“The current legitimate National Assembly will continue as long as no valid constitutional electoral process to substitute it has been held,” Henry Ramos, a senior lawmaker from the large Democratic Action block, wrote on Twitter on Friday night.Asked about a possible extension of the legislature’s term, Guaido said his priority was ousting Maduro before the end of the year, and that the National Assembly would move forward with naming its own electoral rectors.“For us, 2021 is very far away,” he said.Venezuela’s information ministry did not respond to a request for comment.The court’s decision to name its own council has raised the likelihood that opposition parties would boycott the parliamentary election as they did Maduro’s reelection in 2018. 
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Faulty software or poorly calibrated vote-tabulation scanners used to count mailed-in ballots in this week’s chaotic Georgia primary may have prevented thousands of votes from being counted, election officials and voting integrity activists said.The issue was identified in at least four counties, DeKalb, Morgan, Clarke and Cherokee, according to officials who discovered them, including activists who have sued the state for alleged election mismanagement.“The fact that it is in multiple counties tells me that it’s probably systemic,” said Richard DeMillo, a Georgia Tech computer scientist who has testified for the plaintiffs, because identical scanners and software were used to count all absentee ballots across the state. DeMillo said the only way to know for sure is through audits.A top Georgia voting official, voting implementation manager Gabriel Sterling, said Friday that he had seen no evidence yet of the issue and found it difficult to believe the reports were “an active description of what is happening on the ground.”“These are activists who have an ax to grind,” he said.Nearly 1.1 million Georgians voted by mail for Tuesday’s primary, which had been delayed twice due to the coronavirus pandemic.In-person voting Tuesday was beset by cascading failures. Voters waited up to five hours to cast ballots at some polling places due to equipment problems, poll worker unfamiliarity with a new voting system and social distancing measures taken because of the virus. Many voters also showed up to vote in person because absentee ballots they requested never arrived by mail.People vote at voting booths in the Georgia’s primary election at Park Tavern on June 9, 2020, in Atlanta.The scanners and ballot-marking devices used in all 159 Georgia counties Tuesday are part of a voting equipment package the state purchased for $120 million from Dominion Voting Systems after a federal judge ordered it to scrap an outdated, untrustworthy system.In post-election reviews Wednesday, election panels in all four counties detected unregistered votes while examining ballot images flagged by the vote-tallying scanner’s software for anomalies.In Morgan County, Republican-dominated and just southeast of Atlanta, panelists discovered at least 20 votes on scanned ballot images that the program had not recorded, said Jeanne Dufort, a Democrat on the panel. She said it appeared the votes did not register because ovals that were supposed to be filled in were instead checked or marked with X’s.All three panelists agreed to add the unregistered votes to the electronic tally, said Dufort. But on Thursday, the county elections board voted 3-2 not to audit the rest of the roughly 3,000 absentee ballots. The other two panelists, both Republicans, did not return emails and phone calls seeking comment.“It is a head-in-the-sand approach,” Dufort complained.In Clarke County, vote review panelist Adam Shirley estimated at least 30 ballots out of about 300 flagged for anomalies had votes that “the system had not marked at all, that had not processed at all.”Shirley, a Democrat, recommended a review of all 15,000 absentee ballots.In an email Friday to fellow board members, county election board chair Jesse Evans said the problem should be addressed before results are certified.People wait in line to vote in the Georgia’s primary election at Park Tavern on June 9, 2020, in Atlanta.He quoted Shirley as saying “it’s not just possible but probable that a ballot whose voter had clearly but not completely marked their vote would not have its votes counted by the software” and that he was disturbed the software did not flag the uncounted votes.“We only noticed them by sheer luck as we were adjudicating other, flagged contests on ballots,” Shirley wrote to Evans.In Cherokee County, the problem was detected in less than 5 percent of the flagged ballots, said an elections official who spoke on condition they not be further identified, citing fear of political harassment. The official said the number of flagged ballots was in the hundreds.In DeKalb, County, review panel member Elizabeth Burns estimated finding between 20-50 uncounted votes on 530 flagged ballots and said her team had so far only reviewed half its 100,000 absentee ballots. Like Shirley, she said her team had stumbled upon the issue. She said she wondered if other counties were even aware of it.“Maybe not everyone has been as thorough as us and noticed this,” she said.“The detection of this major problem was only because of diligent citizen oversight. The officials charged with the duty to fully test the equipment recklessly failed to responsibly do so, or to audit it,” said Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, which is demanding in court that the state scrap the ballot-marking devices.Dominion spokeswoman Kay Stimson referred questions to the state but said in an email that her company’s systems “are designed to support robust post-election audits, and we support them as a recommended best practice for elections.”A Cobb County absentee ballot is seen May 5, 2020, in Kennesaw, Georgia.Sterling, the state official, said authorities are willing to consider audits if merited.Voting security expert Harri Hursti said inadequate preelection testing may be the cause of the issue. A fix could be as simple as adjusting the contrast settings in the image-capturing software. Or it could be a different coding issue.Amber McReynolds, CEO of the nonprofit Vote at Home that promotes voting by mail, said it may have been possible to avoid the unregistered vote issue by placing the software at the highest sensitivity for discerning markings. The Dominion election system used in Georgia is used in many states with tough standards like Colorado, she said.It was, however, denied certification by Texas, which cited “multiple hardware and software issues” identified by state-appointed examiners. They cited a complex installation process and one called the suite “fragile and error prone.”The system is proprietary, however, and Hursti said it has never been subjected to an independent security review. 
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