Taliban and al Qaeda Remain Linked, U.N. Study Says
WASHINGTON—A United Nations report issued Monday found that Afghanistan’s Taliban has maintained close ties with al Qaeda, holding at least six high-level meetings with leaders of the group during more than a year of talks with the United States. The U.N. findings point to the difficulty faced by the Taliban in implementing its side of the agreement signed with the U.S. in February. Under the terms, the U.S. will withdraw all its troops within 14 months in return for a Taliban guarantee that Afghanistan will never again become...
Source:Wall Street Journal
June 01, 2020 23:15 UTC
Fresh Data Shows Heavy Coronavirus Death Toll in Nursing Homes
The first major federal effort to measure the deadly impact of the new coronavirus in nursing homes found around 26,000 deaths, a total that likely falls short of showing the full toll on some of the most vulnerable Americans. The new survey of nursing homes, released Monday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, showed 25,923 resident deaths tied to Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, and 449 deaths among the facilities’ staff. The survey also found about 95,000 infection cases at nursing homes across 49...
Source:Wall Street Journal
June 01, 2020 23:12 UTC
Shattered Glass in SoHo as Looters Ransack Lower Manhattan
After hours of mostly peaceful protests, the streets of Lower Manhattan grew frenetic around 10 p.m., after police confronted and dispersed a large group that had crossed over the Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn. One small group of young men tore through a CitiBike terminal, yanking bikes from their docks and twisting the plastic. After midnight, a second protest march from Brooklyn crossed the Manhattan Bridge after having clashed with the police outside the Barclays Center. Once they reached Manhattan, the protesters immediately began smashing windows of stores on the Lower East Side. Not long after this group arrived in Manhattan, gunshots rang out along Crosby Street in SoHo, and people scrambled for cover.
Source:New York Times
June 01, 2020 23:03 UTC
Trump and Putin Discuss Russia’s Attendance at G7, but Allies Are Wary
President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke by telephone on Monday, two days after Mr. Trump said he would invite Mr. Putin to attend a Group of 7 summit in the United States in September, the latest instance of a renewed round of personal diplomacy between the two leaders this year. Hours after the Kremlin first described the call on its website, the White House released a statement saying that the men had discussed “the latest efforts to defeat the coronavirus pandemic and reopen global economies” and “progress toward convening the G7.” A largely similar Kremlin readout said Mr. Trump had initiated the call, and a senior White House official said Mr. Trump had extended a personal invitation to Mr. Putin to attend the gathering, which the president will host. Russia was expelled in 2014 from what was known as the Group of 8 after Mr. Putin annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Mr. Trump has supported re-entry but even as he reached out to Mr. Putin, key U.S. allies reiterated that Russia was an outlaw nation that should be denied readmittance into the group of industrialized nations, whose members include the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Japan. Speaking to reporters on Monday, a spokesman for the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, said Britain opposed allowing Russia back into the group because his government had “yet to see evidence of changed behavior which would justify readmittance,” according to Reuters.
Source:New York Times
June 01, 2020 23:03 UTC
The Blockchain Was Born 20 Years Before Bitcoin.
Scott Stornetta gave a presentation this Saturday, the 30th of May 2020, curated by the Government Blockchain Association Of UAE. He did not direct expertise in digital documents or cryptography, but he continued to pursue his interest. The TSS would then timestamp the document’s hash and certify it. The second would be a way to hash digital documents that any enterprise is required to record, so that a later presentation would reveal tampering, it it did happen. The dream of a unimpeachable universal digital witness for the transfer of value started the whole blockchain revolution.
Source:Forbes
June 01, 2020 23:03 UTC
Justice Department Adds New Detail to Compliance Evaluation Guidance
The department first released guidance on how it evaluates corporate compliance programs in 2017 and has updated the document several times since, most recently last year. “Today’s revised guidance on the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs reflects additions based on our own experience and important feedback from the business and compliance communities,” Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a statement. Newsletter Sign-up Risk and Compliance Journal Our Morning Risk Report features insights and news on governance, risk and compliance. The guidance updated Monday is written as a series of questions that prosecutors can ask companies about their compliance programs during criminal investigations. The guidance also serves as an informal set of standards that companies can use when designing compliance programs.
Source:Wall Street Journal
June 01, 2020 23:03 UTC
The World Waits Out Trump
As a beleaguered Trump administration struggles with an unprecedented surge of domestic challenges, foreign leaders friendly and otherwise are recalibrating their strategies for coping with an unconventional administration embroiled in turbulence. It now looks as if China, Russia and Germany have decided how to handle President Trump through November. Berlin will ignore him; Moscow and Beijing will take advantage of U.S. distraction. For Russia, this means overlooking its own economic problems and the coronavirus pandemic...
Source:Wall Street Journal
June 01, 2020 23:03 UTC
Trump vows to mobilize federal resources in address to nation, makes surprise trip to church that caught fire
During the brief visit, the president stood in front of the boarded-up church and held up a Bible. He was accompanied by a variety of aides and officials, including Attorney General Bill Barr, daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Defense Secretary Mark Esper. The basement, which was also torched, is used for childcare during church services, and had recently undergone renovations. "We cannot allow the righteous cries of peaceful protesters to be drowned out by an angry mob," the president added. ATTORNEY GENERAL BARR SPOTTED OBSERVING PROTESTS OUTSIDE WHITE HOUSETrump pointed to a Federal Protective Service officer who was shot and killed amid protests in Oakland, California.
Source:Fox News
June 01, 2020 22:55 UTC
Medical Workers Should Use Respirator Masks, Not Surgical Masks
A new analysis of 172 studies, funded by the World Health Organization, confirms what scientists have said for months: N95 and other respirator masks are far superior to surgical or cloth masks in protecting essential medical workers against the coronavirus. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should recommend that essential workers like nurses and emergency responders wear N95 masks, not just surgical masks, experts said. have suggested that surgical masks are adequate, and they’re clearly not,” said David Michaels, a professor at George Washington University who headed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under President Obama. “Reliance on surgical masks has no doubt led to many workers being infected,” he said. N95 masks offered 96 percent protection, the analysis found, while the figure for surgical masks was 77 percent.
Source:New York Times
June 01, 2020 22:52 UTC
GOP senators critical of Trump's response to unrest following Floyd's death
Thune added that Trump's tweets about the situation have been "not helpful." "It is at times like this that a President needs to speak to the nation, to pledge to right wrongs, and to calm inflamed passions." Asked later if she thinks the President needs to offer a unifying message, Collins said: "I do." President, it helps us when you focus on the death, the unjustified in my opinion, the criminal death of George Floyd.'" Others also declined to comment about Trump's tweets, including Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, who faces voters in the fall.
Source:CNN
June 01, 2020 22:34 UTC
Virginia Dems blame 'volunteer' for tweet praising rioters after night of mayhem across America
The post read: "RT @bharatkrishnan9: When President Obama included the Stonewall Riots in his 2nd inaugural, he didn't make that decision lightly. In a statement to Fox News, the Fairfax Democrats' party chairman, Bryan Graham, walked back the post. A volunteer retweeted a message on May 30 without the review of our organization’s leadership. The Fairfax Republican Party, meanwhile, saved a copy of the Democrats' tweet, and posted: "Yesterday afternoon, Fairfax Dems were lauding riots." However, Floyd's family released their own autopsy report on Monday, indicating that Floyd died from the pressure applied by the officers.
Source:Fox News
June 01, 2020 22:30 UTC
The sixth mass extinction is happening faster than expected. Scientists say it's our fault
(CNN) The sixth mass extinction is not a worry for the future. It's happening now, much faster than previously expected, and it's entirely our fault, according to a study published Monday. Gerardo Ceballos González, a professor of ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and one of the authors of the study, said approximately 173 species went extinct between 2001 and 2014. "173 species is 25 times more extinct species than you would expect under the normal, background, extinction rate," he told CNN in an email. He and his team found that in the past 100 years, more than 400 vertebrate species went extinct.
Source:CNN
June 01, 2020 22:18 UTC
CEOs and Big Businesses Speak out on Racism, Police Violence
Business leaders across industries are speaking out about social injustice and racial inequality in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police and the protests in dozens of U.S. cities the fatal event has sparked. Goldman Sachs Group Inc.asked bank employees to have conversations outside their comfort zones about race and discrimination. Peloton Interactive Inc. committed to donating $500,000 to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund. Washington, D.C.-based restaurant chain &pizza said it would give workers extra...
Source:Wall Street Journal
June 01, 2020 22:18 UTC
Man charged after allegedly handing out explosives in Minneapolis
(CNN) Federal authorities have charged an Illinois man for civil disorder, carrying on a riot and possession of unregistered destructive devices associated with recent clashes between violent protesters and police in Minneapolis. In videos allegedly posted to his Facebook account on May 29, Matthew Lee Rupert, 28, was seen passing out explosive devices to other rioters and encouraged them to throw the devices at law enforcement officers, according to the criminal complaint released Monday. After handing an explosive device to another rioter and telling the person to throw it at police SWAT officers, the complaint states that Rupert is heard on video saying "He's throwing my bombs," adding, "He's going to bomb the police with them." After an audible explosion is heard, Rupert is heard saying, "Good shot my boy," according to the complaint, as well as, "F*** 12," a derogatory phrase often directed at law enforcement. On one video, the complaint alleges Rupert asked for lighter fluid, entered a Sprint cell phone store, and is later heard on video saying, "I lit it on fire."
Source:CNN
June 01, 2020 22:16 UTC
Hennepin County Medical Examiner says Floyd's death was homicide resulting from being restrained
Amid nationwide protests in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, journalist Jemele Hill urged America to keep the focus on the substance of the message. Hill, who writes for "The Atlantic," insisted that those engaging in looting and destruction are in fact not the groups seeking change. The protesters truly speaking out against police brutality and racial injustice aren't "coming there looking for violence. They're coming there because they feel ignored. They're frustrated and they're angry," Hill said.
Source:CNN
June 01, 2020 21:54 UTC