Afghanistan war: Russia denies paying militants to kill US troops

US reports say a Russian intelligence unit offered rewards for killing US and allied troops.

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Rolling Stones warn Trump not to use their songs - or face legal action

The president's campaign could face legal action if it ignores "cease and desist directives".

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Satellite images show buildup on disputed India-China border

Construction activity appeared underway on both the Indian and Chinese sides of a contested border high in the Karakoram mountains a week after a deadly clash in the area left 20 Indian soldiers dead, satellite images showed. The images released this week by Maxar, a Colorado-based satellite imagery company, show new construction activity along the Galwan River Valley, even as Chinese and Indian diplomats said military commanders had agreed to disengage from a standoff there. China has said that India first changed the status quo last August when it split the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two federal territories — the territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the territory of Ladakh, parts of which are contested by China.

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Italy sends in army after riot erupts on council estate near Naples over new virus outbreak

Italy sent soldiers and riot police as reinforcements on Friday to a council estate in the south of the country where a cluster of coronavirus cases among foreign farm workers has sparked tensions with locals. Violence flared between Italian residents and migrant workers on Thursday and Friday in the town of Mondragone, north of Naples, after five blocks of flats were locked down in an outbreak of 43 positive cases, mostly among Roma and Bulgarian field workers. The trouble reportedly began after a group of Bulgarians attempted to force their way through a cordon put in place earlier this week, to protest not being able to return to work. Police persuaded them to return inside, but a few were later spotted heading out. A throng of angry resident Italians then gathered below the tower blocks shouting insults at the inhabitants, some of whom responded by throwing chairs and objects from their balconies. The affected council estate is home to some 300 Italians and 400 migrant workers from Eastern Europe, North Africa and South America. “We have put all the tower blocks in quarantine. Now they need to stay in their homes and respect the rules: for 15 days no-one enters or exits those buildings,” said Campania governor Vincenzo De Luca, who requested extra law enforcement from the interior ministry and threatened to lock down the whole town if screening identifies more than 100 cases. Several vehicles with Bulgarian plates were vandalized and a van was set alight with a molotov cocktail on Friday morning before the army unit arrived.

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A journalist who covered Trump's Tulsa rally tests positive for COVID-19

A reporter who covered US President Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has tested positive for the coronavirus.

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Florida Smirked at New York's Virus Crisis. Now It Has Its Own.

In late April, as new coronavirus cases in Florida were steadily decreasing, Gov. Ron DeSantis began crowing how his state had tamed the pandemic.He credited his decision to impose a state-specific quarantine on New York, then the epicenter of the nation's outbreak. The move earned him praise in the White House and the ire of Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York.Months later, Cuomo has clearly not forgotten."You played politics with this virus and you lost," Cuomo said Thursday when asked in an interview about DeSantis' earlier boasts.With infections now rapidly spreading in Florida while they retreat in New York, the two states have come to reflect the rapidly shifting course of the coronavirus pandemic.New York still has the country's highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths, but the day-to-day numbers have been steadily falling: At its peak, the virus claimed 1,000 deaths a day in the state; on Thursday, the state recorded 17 deaths. Florida, among the states not mandating masks, rushed to reopen and on Friday reported its highest number of new cases in one day, with close to 9,000.And in their divergent political responses to the outbreak, Cuomo, a Democrat, and DeSantis, a Republican, also mirror the divide over the virus among states and regions around the country.The two brash, telegenic governors both embraced the increased visibility that the virus provided. Cuomo delivered daily sober updates on the virus, the state's aggressive lockdown strategy and its cautious approach to reopening. DeSantis eagerly advanced a narrative pushed by President Donald Trump, seeing the economic damage as a greater risk than a virus that had, for months, largely spared his state.The strain of the pandemic has frayed the ties between New York and Florida, two states that normally enjoy a more symbiotic relationship, even allowing for the occasional hints of schadenfreude.On Wednesday, Cuomo ordered his own quarantine on travelers from states with high-infection rates -- a group of eight that included Florida -- to protect New Yorkers who now have low infection rates. The reversal of fortune was too much to pass up."Your hospital beds are filling up," Cuomo said Thursday. "It means more people are getting sick. That's what's happening. And it's now undeniable."Despite the virus' spread, DeSantis has given no indication that he would order the shutdown of any of the businesses already opened. But on Friday, in an unexpected move, the state's Department of Business and Professional Regulation abruptly announced that on-premises alcohol consumption would be suspended at bars, effective immediately.DeSantis acknowledged that the trend in infections had shifted. "Our peak before was much lower than a lot of the other states -- in the Northeast, for example," he said on Thursday during a news conference in Tampa. "Really, the whole Sun Belt is seeing this."DeSantis said the state, which has lost 3,327 lives to the virus, was prepared for the rise in cases. He did not address Cuomo's remarks or the quarantine of Floridians traveling to New York. A spokeswoman for DeSantis, Helen Aguirre Ferre, said Cuomo was "sadly mistaken if he thinks this pandemic is a political contest."Even before the pandemic, New York and Florida engaged in some interstate rivalry, competing for residents and businesses. Florida has overtaken New York in population in recent years, a trend driven in part by the migration to the state of New Yorkers, census figures show.But in their responses to the coronavirus, the differences between the two states have never been clearer.Cuomo in April mandated all New Yorkers to wear masks when they could not stay 6 feet apart. DeSantis has declined to do the same, even after his own state surgeon general issued an advisory recommending masks in any setting where social distancing is not possible.New York leaders, after a halting early response to the pandemic in March, mostly followed the recommendations of state public health officials, including requirements for widespread testing and contact tracing before reopening. Florida has moved to open its businesses faster, and without the same infrastructure for tracking down the close contacts of the infected.In large part, the different approaches reflect the different experiences with the virus. New York state saw more than 18,000 hospitalizations a day during the worst period of the outbreak, back in April.The state's nursing homes were particularly hard-hit: 6,200 residents have died, and Cuomo has been criticized by DeSantis and others for an executive order that forbade nursing homes from turning away patients arriving from hospitals solely because they had the coronavirus. A Cuomo spokesman recently responded by saying DeSantis does not know how to wear a mask properly.DeSantis received praise for the state's more limited response to the pandemic, including from Trump, who urged the quarantine of New Yorkers going to Florida. DeSantis believed harsh restrictions would result in citizens refusing to follow the rules.He has also attacked the news media, which he said has been overly concerned about contagion in Florida's reopened beaches and not worried enough about virus spread in the New York subway.In early May, Florida began reopening business, and quickly: The state's first phase of reopening included restaurants, gyms, barbershops and large spectator sporting events, with restricted occupancy. In New York, reopening began more haltingly, with manufacturing and construction businesses.And when the White House called, DeSantis traveled to Washington to highlight the state's progress next to Trump."When you look at some of the most draconian orders that have been issued in some of these states and compare Florida," DeSantis said from the Oval Office in late April, including New York in a litany of several states, "Florida has done better."And so the National Basketball Association said it would hold the rest of its season at Walt Disney World. The Republican National Convention relocated its big speeches to Jacksonville, Florida. NASCAR raced at the Homestead-Miami Speedway earlier this month, with DeSantis as its honorary starter.Cuomo has made his own bid for sports, coaxing the Mets and the Yankees to return to New York from their spring training camps by suggesting Florida was no longer safe. (He exempted the teams from the new quarantine, saying they had their own health protocols.)While Cuomo did not explicitly target his quarantine order to apply to Florida, he signaled in the days before making the announcement that the state's recent treatment of New Yorkers was very much on his mind."Well, wouldn't that be karma?" Cuomo said when asked about a quarantine in New York on MSNBC.Florida's quarantine affecting New Yorkers is still in effect: As of Tuesday, New Yorkers arriving at Miami International Airport were still being met by the National Guard and state health officials, told to head straight for their lodgings and ordered to quarantine there for two weeks.But as the course of the coronavirus outbreak has turned in recent weeks, the flow of travelers has reversed: People are now jetting out of Florida and back to the relative safety of New York. Such an exodus would have been unimaginable three months earlier.Epidemiologists said Florida's quarantine of New Yorkers made sense at the time, just as New York's for Floridians does now. "There is more virus in that environment," said Dr. Amanda D. Castel, a professor of epidemiology at George Washington University.Right now, New York was looking like a safer bet to Evan Friedman, a White Plains, New York, resident who had been staying in his second home in Boca Raton, Florida, since March.In recent weeks, Friedman, 58, had begun to worry that Florida residents were not taking the virus seriously enough. A barber not wearing a mask rattled him. So did the man in the bagel shop who prepared a platter without a mask or gloves.Many New Yorkers he knew in Florida had gone back north, and he planned to go early next month.But when Cuomo announced that the new quarantine would take effect at midnight Wednesday, Friedman rushed to pack his bags. He found the flights to New York were all booked, so he got a ticket to Connecticut and rented a car to get back to New York."I have the luxury of being able to be up North or in the South," he said. "I want to be where there are the smallest amount of cases."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

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Coronavirus: US has 'serious problem', says Fauci

The infection is rampant in 16 states, some of which are now freezing their reopening plans.

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China rebuts Canadian criticism over detention of two men

China lashed out at Canada on Saturday over criticism about Chinese prosecution of two Canadians, saying the matter is based on evidence and urging Ottawa to cease "megaphone diplomacy." Chinese prosecutors this month charged Canadians Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, a businessman, for suspected espionage. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called on Beijing to cease the "arbitrary detention," and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also called for their release.

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Protesters resist clearing of Seattle protest zone

Crews arrived with heavy equipment Friday at Seattle's "occupied" protest zone, apparently ready to dismantle barriers set up by protesters, but halted work when demonstrators resisted by lying on top of some of the makeshift structures. (June 26)

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Gunmen wound Mexico City police chief; 3 dead

A high-sided construction truck and a white SUV pulled into the path of Mexico City's police chief just as dawn was breaking Friday on the capital’s most iconic boulevard and assailants opened fire with .50-caliber sniper rifles and grenades on his armored vehicle. The cinematic ambush involving two-dozen gunmen left chief Omar García Harfuch wounded with three bullet impacts and shrapnel. The high-powered armament and brazenness of the attack suggested the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and hours after the attack, García blamed them via Twitter from the hospital.

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Coronavirus: Florida and Texas reverse reopening as infections surge

Florida and Texas reverse moves to reopen business as total cases across the US surpass 2.5 million.

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The US still does a wretched job of teaching Black history. An expert in African American history education explains how to fix it.

An expert in African American history education, LaGarrett King, breaks down the school system's flaws and explains how to teach Black history better.

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Southern states report record coronavirus surges

The U.S. has also seen a record number of cases nationwide, according to the latest figures released.

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Coronavirus food fear: Government launches investigation after meatpacking outbreaks

Government scientists have asked the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to investigate whether food could harbour coronavirus following major outbreaks in meatpacking plants. Four food processing factories in England and Wales have suffered clusters of disease, with 469 workers testing positive for the virus so far. Across the world, staff at meat packing plants have been disproportionately impacted by disease, with cold, crowded and noisy working conditions which force people to shout, thought to be to blame. Now it has emerged that government scientists have asked the FSA to check whether the virus could get into food. So far the risk has been assessed as low, but experts say they are continuing to monitor the situation. A government source said: “We have actually asked the Food Standards Agency to look at this a few times, about the risk in meat and other produce, and their assessment is that the risk is very low for transmission on meat. “But we’ll keep asking them to look as new evidence comes up.” In the US, as many as 25,000 meat and poultry workers have tested positive for Covid-19, and at least 93 have died. This week Kirklees council confirmed that 165 employees of a meat processing plant in West Yorkshire had contracted the virus and Public Health Wales reported 200 coronavirus cases at a meat processing plant on Anglesey. There have also been 34 cases linked to Merthyr Tydfil and 70 to Wrexham. Dr Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health at the University of Southampton, said: “Whilst refrigeration may be a contributory factor to the spread of the virus, the key factors are likely to be the number of people close together in indoor conditions. “Some of these factories have onsite or nearby accommodation where there are several people in each dormitory, they may be transported on a bus to the site of work, and they will be indoors together all day.”

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A Major GOP Nightmare Moves a Step Closer to Reality

Legislation to make the District of Columbia a state is poised to pass the House on Friday, a major advance from the last time the measure came before Congress 27 years ago and 40 percent of Democrats joined with all but one Republican to defeat D.C. statehood. After decades of benign neglect, the movement to make D.C. the 51st state has gained new life with Black Lives Matter and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s heightened profile. President Trump’s efforts to use federal force to dominate streets around the White House exposed the subservient status of a city that must answer to Congress for how it spends money while its 706,000 residents are without full voting representation in the House or Senate. Republicans appear unmoved by pleas for equality. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton took to the Senate floor to denounce the Democrats’ move in a racially tinged speech depicting D.C. as an elitist conclave of the “deep state” and Mayor Bowser as someone who could not be trusted to keep the city and its statues safe. “Yes, Wyoming is smaller than Washington by population,” he tweeted, “but it has three times as many workers in mining, logging, and construction, and 10 times as many workers in manufacturing. In other words, Wyoming is a well-rounded working-class state."Opinion: I Fixed Tom Cotton’s Op-EdThe bill to rename D.C. “Washington, Douglass Commonwealth” is going nowhere in Mitch McConnell’s Senate. But if the Democrats win the White House and flip the Senate, statehood becomes imaginable, since statehood requires only a vote of Congress. “Trump says Republicans would have to be stupid to support D.C. statehood and that’s what the battle is about these days, maybe that’s what it’s always been about,” says Michael Brown, D.C.’s non-voting “shadow senator.” Actually, Trump said Republicans would have to be “very, very stupid” to support statehood for D.C. because it would add two Democratic senators, which McConnell would never let happen. “But it’s about more than McConnell,” Brown told the Daily Beast. “We can’t get one Republican (in the Senate), and there are still six (Senate) Democrats who are not on the bill.” In the modern Senate, 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster and proceed to a vote on legislation of any significance. The exception is judges, where Republicans exercised what is known as the “nuclear option” to confirm two Supreme Court judges and 200 lower court lifetime judges with a simple majority. Democratic leader Harry Reid opened this dangerous door by striking the filibuster for Executive Branch confirmations that McConnell was blocking. Several Democrats who ran for president, including Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg, favor doing away with the filibuster if Democrats win the Senate. Otherwise, they argue, McConnell (or his successor, should he happen to lose his own race) will obstruct everything Democrats try to do.  The District of Columbia has a population of 706,000, more than Wyoming and Vermont, and D.C. residents pay more in total federal income tax than 22 states. It has long been a sore point that fighting in every war and contributing blood and treasure is not enough to gain more than a symbolic vote in Congress. D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has served almost 30 years, has a vote in committee but not on the House floor, and if her committee vote breaks a tie, it doesn’t count. Even that small measure of democratic largesse was taken away by Republicans when they gained control of the House in 1994 and again in 2010. Democrats restored Norton’s limited right to vote when they won the House in 2006 and 2018, and since then Norton has been on a roll when it comes to statehood. She has 226 co-sponsors for the bill, including the No. 2 Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer from Maryland, who opposed statehood until now. Speaking before the Rules committee Wednesday, Norton explained how the legislation before her colleagues was personal to her own history. “My great-grandfather, Richard Holmes, who escaped as a slave from a Virginia plantation, made it as far as D.C., a walk to freedom but not to equal citizenship,” she said. “For three generations my family has been denied the rights other Americans take for granted.” Opponents of statehood argue that the Founding Fathers didn’t want the District to be a state, but our vaunted forebears also didn’t want women to vote, or Black people to vote, so that argument seems lame. “Whether you’re a textualist or an originalist, I don’t believe the Founding Fathers had any more reason to deny representation to people who pay federal taxes, serve in war and do everything a citizen should—than they would have wanted my neighbor down the hall to have a closet full of AK-47s,” says Ellen Goldstein, who served until recently as a neighborhood advisory commissioner for the Sheridan-Kalorama neighborhood, home to the Obamas, the Kushners, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. “You can unearth the minds of the Founding Fathers to justify anything,” Goldstein told the Daily Beast. “As somebody who has lived here for 50 years, I believe the only reason we’re not a state is because of race.” Race has a lot to do with it, says Brown, a former political consultant whose unpaid position’s main perk is identifying as a senator. The Constitution grants Congress jurisdiction over the District in “all cases whatsoever,” which allowed some committee chairmen of the House and Senate Committees on the District of Columbia to run the city like a plantation. In his recent book Class of 1974, John Lawrence recounts how John McMillan, a South Carolina Democrat and a segregationist, sent a truckload of watermelons to the office of appointed Mayor Walter Washington to let him know how little he thought of the budget Washington submitted in 1967 for the committee’s review. The District couldn’t even elect its own mayor until after Home Rule passed Congress in 1973. For a long time, D.C. pridefully called itself “Chocolate City,” acknowledging its majority Black population. No state has ever come into the union with a majority minority population, says Brown. In 1993, the last time Congress voted on statehood, the city was 56 percent Black, a factor in the outcome despite President Bill Clinton’s advocacy for statehood. During his final weeks in office, Bill Clinton had the newly authorized D.C. license plate with the slogan “taxation without representation” affixed to the presidential limousine. His successor, President George W. Bush, had the plate removed. It wasn’t until after President Obama won re-election in 2012 that he ordered the controversial plate installed on all presidential vehicles. In 2011, the District’s Black population fell below 50 percent for the first time in over 50 years. According to 2017 Census Bureau data, the African-American population is 47.1 percent. Unlike the Clinton-era vote, when Democrats were divided on the political merits of D.C. statehood, a newly awakened Democratic leadership is rallying around the cry for equal rights. “It’s beyond statehood,” says Goldstein, citing congressional meddling in District policies on marijuana legalization, gun regulation, and funding for abortion. “If we decide to do it, they take it away. They take our money and tell us how to spend it.”  Goldstein doubts the House vote will change anything, but in her thinking, modern America cannot continue to deny D.C. is a state any more than Macy’s Department store in the movie classic Miracle on 34th Street could deny Kris Kringle was Santa when bags of letters addressed to him were delivered by the Post Office. Using the same reasoning, Goldstein notes that when she shops online on Amazon and scrolls down, D.C. is a state: “If the Post Office thinks you’re Santa, you’re Santa. And if Amazon thinks we’re a state, then by golly, we’re a state.”Until a miracle happens on Capitol Hill, that will have to do.  Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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The Army Is About to Get its First Female Green Beret

A female soldier is scheduled to graduate from the Special Forces Qualification Course in July and become the first woman to join the Green Berets.

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How the officers charged in George Floyd's death could get their jobs back

The Minneapolis police union has had great success convincing arbitrators to reinstate fired officers.

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House passes bill to provide D.C. statehood - POLITICO

1. House passes bill to provide D.C. statehood  POLITICO
2. Cotton says Wyoming's 'well-rounded working-class' population more worthy of statehood than DC  CNN
3. House votes to make Washington D.C. a state  Fox News
4. Why the lopsided House vote in favor of D.C. statehood was so historic  The Washington Post
5. Why DC should (and should not) be the 51st state  CNN
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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House votes in favour of Washington DC statehood in symbolic move - Al Jazeera English

House votes in favour of Washington DC statehood in symbolic move  Al Jazeera EnglishView Full Coverage on Google News

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After deadly border clash, India faces uncomfortable truths about its reliance on China - The Washington Post

1. After deadly border clash, India faces uncomfortable truths about its reliance on China  The Washington Post
2. Satellite images show buildup at site of deadly India-China border clash  CNN
3. China’s Military Provokes Its Neighbors, but the Message Is for the United States  The New York Times
4. India: China deployed army in 'large numbers' at disputed border  Al Jazeera English
5. What happened on the India-China border?  BBC News
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Lo and Behold, Zuckerberg Decides to Slap Labels On Trump's Lies Just As Unilever and Major Advertisers Revolt - SFist

Lo and Behold, Zuckerberg Decides to Slap Labels On Trump's Lies Just As Unilever and Major Advertisers Revolt  SFistView Full Coverage on Google News

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SBA scrapped ethics review for agency employees, lawmakers in emergency loan program | TheHill - The Hill

1. SBA scrapped ethics review for agency employees, lawmakers in emergency loan program | TheHill  The Hill
2. SBA Publishes 2 New Interim Final Rules to Implement PPP Flexibility Act  JD Supra
3. 'Outrageous': Trump Administration Waived Ethics Reviews for Lawmakers and Federal Officials Seeking Small Business Loans  Common Dreams
4. Economic downturn? Not if you're a smart financial advisor  Accounting Today
5. SBA exempted lawmakers, federal officials from ethics rules in $660 billion loan program  The Washington Post
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Google Phone gets Verified Calls to let you know why a business is calling - Neowin

1. Google Phone gets Verified Calls to let you know why a business is calling  Neowin
2. Google’s Phone app could soon tell you why a business is calling you  The Verge
3. Google's Phone app will tell why a business is calling you with its Verified Calls feature  Pocketnow
4. Don't know why a business is calling? Google's phone app will soon let you know  TechSpot
5. Google’s Verified Calls will make it more obvious why businesses are calling you  Phandroid - News for Android
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"The Simpsons" Will No Longer Have White Actors Voice Characters Of Color - BuzzFeed News

1. "The Simpsons" Will No Longer Have White Actors Voice Characters Of Color  BuzzFeed News
2. 'The Simpsons' to Recast Characters of Color  Hollywood Reporter
3. 'The Simpsons' will no longer have white actors play non-white characters  EW.com
4. ‘The Simpsons’ Will ‘No Longer Have White Actors Voice Non-White Characters,’ Producers Say  Variety
5. 'The Simpsons' producers will 'no longer have white actors voice non-white characters'  NBC News
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Teams having conversations with associates of Colin Kaepernick - NFL.com

1. Teams having conversations with associates of Colin Kaepernick  NFL.com
2. The state of the NFL: how the league is adjusting to COVID, activism | Weekly Pulse  USA TODAY Sports
3. Stephen A. reacts to LeBron saying Colin Kaepernick deserves an apology from the NFL | First Take  ESPN
4. Six NFL pre-training camp predictions: Colin Kaepernick stays unsigned, preseason reduced or scrapped, more  CBS Sports
5. No teams have reached out to Colin Kaepernick  MSN Money
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US imposes visa restrictions on Chinese officials over Hong Kong security law

The sanctions aim to punish Beijing over a planned security law that could erode Hong Kong's autonomy.

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Pakistan grounds 262 airline pilots with 'dubious' credentials

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Virus whistleblower alleges retribution has only intensified

A government whistleblower ousted from a leading role in battling COVID-19 alleged Thursday that the Trump administration has intensified its campaign to punish him for revealing shortcomings in the U.S. response. Dr. Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, said in an amended complaint filed with a federal watchdog agency that he has been relegated to a lesser role in his new assignment at the National Institutes of Health, unable to lend his full expertise to the battle against COVID-19. The complaint also said that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is leading a “coordinated effort” to undermine Bright in his new duties, and that has led to former colleagues shunning the sidelined scientist.

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Pence falsely claims the US 'flattened the curve' the day after it broke its single-day record for new COVID-19 cases

Pence once claimed that the US's coronavirus outbreak would be "behind us" by Memorial Day. The US reported more than 39,000 new cases on Thursday.

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Op-Ed: Why California needs affirmative action more than ever

California's Proposition 209, an anti-affirmative action law, never did "level the playing field"; instead it reinforced historic patterns of discrimination.

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