U.S. ‘Looking At’ Banning TikTok and Other Chinese Social Media Apps
Newly-wed woman from Nawabshah seeks shelter from abusive husband in Karachi
KARACHI: A newly-wed woman from Nawabshah arrived here at a women’s police station here in the metropolis, seeking shelter from an abusive husband, with authorities searching for her family.
The girl — a resident of Qazi Ahmed Road in Nawabshah district of Sindh — said she had been married to a man named Ahmed six months ago. Within a few weeks, her husband kicked her out of the house, she added, noting that she had no choice but to leave and come to Karachi.
After being admitted to a shelter home in Karachi’s Central district, the facility’s management found her uncles and handed her over to them. However, her uncles also banished her from their home after a while.
Since then, the victim of domestic violence has had nowhere permanent to go.
For now, she has taken refuge at the Liaquatabad women’s police station. According to the girl, her mother had passed away and her only brother also died two-and-a-half years ago.
As for her father, she has no idea about his whereabouts.
According to Station House Officer (SHO) Liaqatabad Uzma Khan, Karachi police were trying to trace her father by contacting their counterparts in Nawabshah.
US soldier accused of planning neo-Nazi attack on unit in Turkey pleads not guilty
Jul 7, 2020
A US Army soldier charged last month with conspiring with members of an occult neo-Nazi network to attack his own unit during an upcoming deployment to Turkey has pled not guilty, prosecutors said.
Twenty-two-year-old Ethan Melzer of Louisville, Kentucky, entered his plea on Monday.
Melzer allegedly used an encrypted messaging app to recruit other members of a self-proclaimed satanic network known as the Order of the Nine Angles (O9A) to help recruit local jihadists in Turkey to carry out an attack on a US military facility that Melzer’s unit would soon be guarding.
The soldier told O9A members that his unit would be lightly armed and that the facility they would be guarding could be easily overrun by a few dozen fighters attacking from nearby high ground, prosecutors said. Messages obtained by investigators and allegedly sent by Melzer suggested he was willing to die in the attack in hope of sparking a war in the Middle East.
The plan was thwarted in May and the Justice Department announced charges against Melzer in June. Prosecutors say Melzer confessed to the plot, waived his Miranda rights and described himself as a traitor in interviews.
O9A publications mix satanic references with white supremacist ideology and have praised Adolf Hitler. The group, which originated in the United Kingdom, claims Judeo-Christian culture has weakened Western civilization and members advocate the murder of public officials to subvert the social order. Its publications have also expressed admiration for Osama bin Laden and the group’s founder once pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda.
Prosecutors said in June that Melzer became involved in O9A sometime in 2019 after enlisting in the US Army the prior year. Melzer’s unit was deployed in Italy earlier this year when he learned they would be transferring to Turkey, prosecutors said. He then used an encrypted messaging service to leak sensitive information about his unit to other O9A members in a group chat labelled “RapeWaffen Division,†in apparent reference to the white supremacist militant group Atomwaffen Division.
Melzer faces life in prison on charges including conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder of US military personnel and attempting to provide material support for terrorism.
Bolsonaro tests positive for coronavirus
President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro has tested positive for coronavirus | Andressa Anholete/Getty Images
Brazil’s president has played down the clinical effects of the coronavirus up to this point.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said Tuesday he has tested positive for COVID-19 after developing symptoms, including a high temperature and muscular pain.
The president told reporters in Brasilia that he was feeling better after being treated with hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that has not proven effective against the coronavirus.
Bolsonaro took the test on Monday. “It just turned out positive,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
Bolsonaro said he imagined he might already have been infected by the coronavirus earlier in the pandemic, given his frequent contact with the population.
“As president, I am on the front lines,” he said.
Bolsonaro has played down the clinical effects of the coronavirus and has insisted on reopening Brazil’s economy, although the virus continues to take its toll, with around 65,000 deaths in the country.
World Health Organization Executive Director for Health Emergencies Programme Mike Ryan said the agency wished Bolsonaro” a speedy recovery from this disease.”
“It brings home for us all the reality of this virus and no one is special in that regard. We are all exposed to the virus. We are equally vulnerable,” Ryan told reporters.
In March, Bolsonaro said he would “not have to worry” about the coronavirus, because “at most it would be like a little flu or a little cold.”
Mother and daughter together again, mourners at funeral of gay rights campaigner told
Mourners at the funeral of a prominent gay rights campaigner heard how the grief of losing her mother Rhona recently was too much for her to bear.
usannah Toland, who died suddenly on July 3, was a well-known and much-loved member of Londonderry’s gay community.
While her family gathered inside St Columba’s Church in Derry, friends followed Requiem Mass inside their vehicles outside, adhering to coronavirus control measures.
Friends also formed a guard of honour along the route from the church to the City Cemetery wearing brightly coloured T-shirts and waving rainbow flags.
In an unusual move, retired Presbyterian minister Dr David Latimer gave an eulogy at the end of the Catholic service.
He said: “What a girl Susannah was.
“I got to know her when I went to see Rhona.
“And what a wife Tony had in Rhona.
“My goodness, there was no one like her.
“We talked together, we laughed and we cried together and we prayed together, and it was special.
“On occasion this lovely daughter Susannah would arrive, and what an impression she made on people.
“She didn’t have to say anything — there was just an aura about her, she filled the room with light and joy and happiness.
“I loved her hugs. They were pretty tight hugs but she meant it.â€
He remarked on the deep love Susannah had for her mother and the struggles she had when she passed away in March.
He added: “I was impressed by the care and compassion that Susannah had for her mummy, and the day her mummy died there was a big part of Susannah that just started to wither. She just couldn’t come to terms with (the fact) her soulmate had gone.
“Life isn’t a straight line for anybody, it is bendy and it is bumpy.
“Sometimes life just becomes too difficult and the burden too heavy for us to bear.â€
Rev Latimer comforted Ms Toland’s father with assurances that his wife and daughter were together again.
He said: “They are smiling, they are together and they are sending a message to you saying: ‘Don’t you worry, this is not the end’.
“This is not the end of Susannah, this is not the end of Rhona, this is not the end of any of our loved ones that we let go.
“They move to the far side of the grave where there is life and they are near the presence of Him who loves us everlastingly.â€
Belfast Telegraph
A Black-Owned Distillery in Minneapolis Pushes Forward
When Chris and Shanelle Montana founded Du Nord Craft Spirits in 2013, they chose the Longfellow neighborhood in southern Minneapolis, “in part because it was a little quieter,†Mr. Montana said.
It didn’t work out that way. Over the past four months, Du Nord has been buffeted and transformed by each new trauma to shake the city, and the world.
In mid-March, with the coronavirus converging on the United States, the couple, like many other distillers, ceased making their gin, vodka, whiskey and liqueurs, and began manufacturing much-needed hand sanitizer.
Mr. Montana handed out that sanitizer to protesters outside the nearby Third Precinct police station after the killing of George Floyd on May 25. The distiller was tear-gassed twice for his trouble.
In the early hours of May 29, Du Nord, like many businesses in the neighborhood, was in flames. The fire activated its sprinkler system, which added water damage to the devastation. The night after that, the Montanas’ East Lake Street apartment building was set on fire.
No sooner had Du Nord begun to clean up than Mr. Montana quickly pivoted, converting what was left of the building, where he leases space, into an impromptu food bank to aid the reeling neighborhood.
“I think one of the things that has made it easier personally is there’s just so much to do,†said Mr. Montana, 37. “You don’t really have time to sit down and soak it all in. I might be bummed because some people set fire to my distillery. That saddens me and angered me. But right now, I have food every night. I’m fine. There are people doing so much worse than I am.â€
Du Nord’s experience is all the more remarkable in the current cultural context because Mr. Montana is one of the few Black distillery owners in the United States.
During the protests and ensuing unrest that engulfed much of East Lake Street, he had to weigh his instincts as a business owner against the dangers that might await him outside. When he heard at 2 a.m. on May 29 that his distillery was on fire, he did not rush to the site, but waited until daybreak.
“That was very scary,†said Shanelle Montana, 36, “the thought of his going back to a burning distillery when the police walk by. Are they going to think he’s a distillery owner mourning his distillery?â€
Though the Montanas, who have three young children, have enough to contend with on their own, their focus has been helping the community. The food bank in the distillery has paused while critical repairs are made to the waterlogged building, but Du Nord is likely to reopen it, based on community need in the coming months.
When friends started GoFundMe accounts for them, the couple’s reaction was to answer those efforts with a fund-raising drive of their own to help other businesses in the area owned by people of color. “I knew a lot of them were uninsured or underinsured,†Mr. Montana said.
The Du Nord Craft Spirits Riot Recovery Fund, administered by the newly created nonprofit Du Nord Foundation, has since raised roughly two-thirds of its $1 million goal. “We’re hoping that within the next two weeks, we’re going to start writing checks,†said Mr. Montana, who hopes to get back to producing spirits by the fall.
This generosity in the face of personal adversity has not surprised the couple’s friends and colleagues. “He’s always making the best of whatever situation is handed to him,†said Jon Kreidler, a co-founder of Tattersall Distilling, a Minneapolis company that teamed up with Du Nord on sanitizer production.
“Chris and Shanelle would never turn down an opportunity to serve the community,†said Jessica Ward-Denison, an organizer of the food bank. “With the scariness and sadness of the days leading up to this, I think there was a great need for something positive.â€
Ms. Montana, who is white, took more time getting to that positive place.
â€I was very angry for a long time,†she said of the destruction. “A lot that were hit were small mom-and-pop businesses by people of color that had been in business for a long time.
“But as I talked to people, a lot of them said, ‘If this is what it takes to change things, then this is what it takes.’ It really changed my perspective. I got there. It took me longer, but I got there, to see the hope in this and to separate the damage from the change it might bring.â€
Mr. Montana benefited from a broader view, informed by his childhood. Soon after his family moved to Minnesota from Indiana, in 1991, he recalled a rally and chants of “No justice, no peace.â€
“Then, it was about Rodney King,†he said. “It occurred to me that here we are, almost 30 years on, the chants are the same, the problems are the same.â€
This time, though, he senses a shift.
“I don’t condone the property damage, but I do understand it,†Mr. Montana said. “If that means there’s going to be attention paid to this fundamental issue in our country, then it’s worth it. I don’t know if there’s a person of color in this country that, whether they own the business or not, who would not pay that price over and over again.â€
International college students may be forced to leave US
International students studying at colleges in the US will have to leave the country if all of their classes for next term are moved online because of coronavirus restrictions.
For US universities and colleges, international students are a significant source of revenue, bringing tens of billions of dollars into the economy.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren called the new rules “xenophobic”.
Al Jazeera’s Sara Khairat reports.
Ferrari’s hopes hang on upgrades as Charles Leclerc podium masks woes – Sport360 News
Charles Leclerc spared Ferrari’s blushes by pulling the disappointing SF1000 from seventh to an unlikely second place at the Austrian Grand Prix last weekend.
It was a stunning drive from the Monaco man. His pace and determination late on once again confirmed just how impressive he can be in pressure situations.
It was a champion’s drive for the man effectively anointed as the Scuderia’s best hope of winning a first world title since 2007.
However, for all the praise, the SF1000 is far from podium material.
Austria will simply be a weekend the Prancing Horse will want to forget, spending much of it battling against the Racing Points and McLarens, rather than the Mercedes and Red Bulls.
Expectations in the Ferrari camp were not high heading into the season-opener and those fears were realised when Leclerc and Vettel placed a disastrous P7 and P11 respectively in qualifying.
They were just the fifth-fastest team in qualifying and the car was nearly a full second slower than they had been around Austria last year, when Leclerc clinched pole position.
The Scuderia were Mercedes’ main challengers last season, with their prime asset being qualifying speed and engine power. They secured nine pole positions out of 21.
Now, they seem to have slipped further behind the Silver Arrow.
There is no magic formula to fix quick problems in F1 and Ferrari must use these next few races to monitor various adjustments and upgrades accurately.
Leclerc admitted the car was better through corners but had some drag. Vettel, meanwhile, said the car lacked grip and downforce down the straights.
The problem, though, is not only with the car’s aerodynamics. Team boss Mattia Binotto insisted after the race that they were losing “0.3secs in cornering and 0.7secs power-limited on the straightsâ€.
To hone in even further, the car was nearly a full second a lap off the pace in Austria, one of the shortest laps on the calendar, and could have been worse if not for the safety cars.
The Italian marquee endured a poor pre-season testing, which prompted a rethink of the SF1000 car. Significant changes were made and were supposed to be ready for the Austria double-header.
However, the final tweaks weren’t completed in time, and Sunday’s car was effectively the same from the final days of testing in Barcelona.
Leclerc appeared to have no hope of a podium after his qualifying disaster, where he barely made it through to Q3.
However, running sixth for most of the race, he moved up to second in the closing laps as a result of retirements in front of him and two clinical overtakes on Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez.
He did profit from Lewis Hamilton’s five-second penalty, but second place was thoroughly deserved after a combative display. He later described it as one of the best drives of his career.
Team-mate Sebastian Vettel finished 10th, after a spin while attempting an over-optimistic lunge on Sainz. He lost the rear a couples of times and said he had difficulty with the overall balance of the car.
For a man leaving Ferrari at the end of the season, and potentially retiring from the sport, it must be difficult to find motivation at present, especially in an under-performing machine.
Having seen the clear lack of pace, Ferrari are bringing forward some planned upgrades to their car following a disappointing showing in Austria.
The car changes may not be enough to reel in the near one-second deficit to Mercedes, but will help the drivers to be more competitive around the Red Bull Ring.
Key to the upgrades will be the introduction of an aerodynamic package, but that will assist more with stability and cornering rather than straight-line speed.
If straight speed does not improve, the car will be even further behind on tracks like Spa, the longest on the calendar, and where straight-line speed has a significant influence on overall lap time.
Rapid results cannot be expected straight away. However, the progress in terms of lap times could allow both Leclerc and Vettel to move up the order and showcase their talents this weekend.
Aggressive and successful development will be central, along with the task of trying to reel in a dominant Mercedes team.
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Newly appointed French minister faces rape allegation
The Paris court of appeals ruled that a judge may reopen the investigation into a 2018 allegation that Darmanin ​raped a woman in 2009, sources told CNN.
A lawyer for Darmanin, who was appointed interior minister on Monday, said the accusation is baseless.
On Tuesday morning, about a dozen activists were gathered outside the interior ministry chanting: “Darmanin rapist, state complicit.” They were quickly removed by the police.
Darmanin was accused of rape and sexual harassment by Sophie Patterson ​in January 2018. She said he used his position as a member of the judicial committee in 2009 to force her into having sex with him. ​
While the case was initially dismissed in February 2018, in June of this year the Paris court of appeals ruled that the reasons for not investigating the claims were not sufficient, according to lawyers for both parties.​
The ruling means that the case will once again be in the hands of an investigating judge, who will decide whether a formal investigation should be opened.
“I am shocked. I am very surprised that a person accused by a woman of rape has been appointed Minister of the Interior,” Patterson’s lawyer, Marjolaine Vignola, told CNN on Tuesday.
“In any European democracy, there are guarantees offered to victims so that they can speak out without fear, whatever the function and whatever the social status of the people they denounce. It sends a scary signal to my client,” Vignola added.
However, Darmanin’s lawyer Pierre-Olivier Sur told CNN he was completely confident the case would be dismissed again because ​of the “emptiness” of the ​allegations.
President Emmanuel Macron’s office told CNN the Elysée palace never comments on ongoing judicial matters and that Darmanin, like every citizen, benefits from the presumption of innocence.
Darmanin’s appointment follows a cabinet reshuffle under the newly appointed Prime Minister Jean Castex, a center-right politician who coordinated the country’s strategy for exiting coronavirus lockdown.
The cabinet reshuffle had been widely anticipated after Macron’s party performed poorly in recent local elections.
New Jersey and Delaware Primary Elections: What to Watch For
New Jersey and Delaware are holding primary elections on Tuesday, with a presidential primary in Delaware and multiple congressional primaries across New Jersey.
Both states are conducting their primaries largely by mail. New Jersey has mailed ballots to the state’s 2.3 million registered Democrats and 1.3 million Republicans, and ballot applications to 2.4 million unaffiliated registered voters. (Primaries in New Jersey are “closed,†meaning that a voter has to be a registered member of a party to vote.)
It is unlikely that official results in New Jersey will be known for at least a week, as mail-in ballots must be postmarked by 8 p.m. on Election Day. As of Monday, election officials had received just under one million ballots, according to the secretary of state in New Jersey.
Here’s what to watch for:
The race to take on a Democratic-turned-Republican congressman is closely watched.
For Democrats in New Jersey and across the country, Representative Jeff Van Drew’s switch to the Republican Party in December, after the impeachment vote against President Trump, was nothing short of a betrayal. Potential opponents began quickly jockeying to take on Mr. Van Drew in what will be one of November’s most watched congressional races.
But the primary battle in South Jersey has turned toxic, fracturing the state’s Democratic establishment along lines both familiar and foreign to those who closely follow the political machinations of Trenton.
Backing Amy Kennedy, a mental health advocate and former teacher who is part of the Kennedy political diaspora, is Gov. Philip D. Murphy, along with progressive activists and labor unions who often side with him.
With Mr. Murphy supporting Ms. Kennedy, it is unsurprising to Trenton insiders that her opponent, Brigid Callahan Harrison, a professor at Montclair State University, has the backing of two fellow Democrats who are often at odds with the governor: Stephen M. Sweeney, the State Senate president; and George E. Norcross, the South Jersey power broker.
But Ms. Callahan also has the support of Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker, the popular junior senator who is up for re-election. He is “bracketing†Ms. Harrison on the ballot, meaning they both will be listed in the same column.
The race has been marked less by the racial justice movement that has shaped recent races in other states and more by local issues, namely infrastructure and economic needs along the Jersey Shore, health care reform and marijuana legalization.
Progressives challenge two incumbents in northern New Jersey.
Whether in New York or Kentucky, voters seemed primed to welcome new, diverse candidates after a month of protests over the May 25 killing of George Floyd after an encounter with the police in Minneapolis. In New Jersey, two progressive challengers have mounted aggressive campaigns against two moderate Democrats in the northern part of the state.
Arati S. Kreibich, a 45-year-old neuroscientist, is challenging Representative Josh Gottheimer, one of the few Democrats in the country who flipped a congressional seat in the 2016 election. Ms. Kreibich has received the endorsement of national progressive leaders like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has been sending text messages to his presidential campaign lists in support of Ms. Kreibich.
But Mr. Gottheimer, who is also one of the most prolific fund-raisers in the Democratic caucus, has turned back similar challenges before.
And Representative Albio Sires, who has been in Congress since 2007, is facing a stiff challenge from a 32-year-old lawyer, Hector Oseguera, who has been a fixture at recent Black Lives Matter rallies and protests. Mr. Sires, who has long enjoyed the support of the powerful northern New Jersey political machine, has been campaigning more aggressively over the past few weeks.
A Republican is pushed north by Mr. Van Drew.
Before the impeachment vote, David Richter, considered a rising star within the Republican Party, was seen as the front-runner to take on Mr. Van Drew, who at that time was a freshman Democrat in a swing district.
But once Mr. Van Drew defected and earned the endorsement of Mr. Trump, Mr. Richter looked elsewhere.
One district north, in fact. He faces Kate Gibbs in a Republican primary in New Jersey’s Third Congressional District, which was flipped by a Democrat in 2018 when Andy Kim upset the incumbent, Tom MacArthur, in what had long been a Republican stronghold.
Vote-by-mail struggles to take off.
New Jersey’s first run through an expanded vote-by-mail election — held in May for multiple municipal races — was rocky at best. Ten percent of ballots were rejected over issues with signatures not matching, according to a study by the online news service NJ Spotlight.
The state attorney general also charged four men with election fraud stemming from the municipal elections in Paterson, the third-largest city in the state. There, county officials rejected nearly 20 percent of the ballots.
A district court in New Jersey ruled last month that voters whose ballots were rejected because of issues with a signature must be notified and given the opportunity to address the problem.
A design flaw in the July ballots also caused the United States Postal Service scanners to mark completed absentee ballots mailed back to election offices as “return to sender.†State officials said they were unsure of how many ballots were affected.
Since the state proactively mailed ballots and ballot applications, New Jersey is allowing only provisional voting at in-person locations. Though election officials don’t expect there to be many long lines like those seen in states like Georgia, provisional ballots do take longer to fill out, which may lead to some longer waits across the state.