Friday, 31 July 2020

U.S. Adds Sanctions Over Internment of Muslims in China

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China hawks in the administration blamed Mr. Trump and top economic advisers, including Mr. Mnuchin, for holding back on sanctions in order to avoid jeopardizing trade talks with China and to cozy up to Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader. But now, as the pandemic roils the United States and endangers the president’s prospects of re-election, Mr. Trump has begun to sour on maintaining cordial relations with China, and the hawks have greater leeway to pursue tougher actions on China and to try to set the two nations on a long-term course for confrontation.

Mr. Trump’s campaign strategists have also urged him to attack China in an attempt to turn the spotlight away from the president’s failures on the pandemic and the economy.

“Today’s designations are the latest U.S. government action in an ongoing effort to deter human rights abuse in the Xinjiang region,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the most vocal of the China hawks, said in a statement on Friday.

The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps was founded in 1954 as a group entwined with the People’s Liberation Army that would oversee the deployment of large numbers of ethnic Han citizens, many of them military veterans, to Xinjiang to build farms, factories and towns that would allow China to consolidate control of the important border region and the many ethnic minority groups there.

As of 2009, the group, which reports directly to Beijing, had an annual output of goods and services of $7 billion, and the settlements and entities overseen by the bingtuan, or soldiers corps, included five cities, 180 farming communities and 1,000 companies. They also run their own courts, universities and media organizations.

On July 9, the United States imposed sanctions on four Chinese officials associated with Xinjiang policy, including Chen Quanguo, the party chief of the region and a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s 25-member ruling Politburo. That move was largely symbolic, but it sent a stronger message than an October 2019 action in which the administration placed 28 Chinese companies and police departments deemed to be associated with Xinjiang abuses on a blacklist that forbids American companies from selling technology and other goods to them without a license. At that time, the State Department also announced visa restrictions on some Chinese officials.

On July 20, the Trump administration added 11 new Chinese entities, including companies supplying major American brands like Apple, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger, to the list that restricts them from purchasing American products, saying the firms were complicit in human rights violations in Xinjiang. That brought to 48 the total number of Chinese companies and security units on the U.S. entity list for violations related to Xinjiang.



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In photos: Eid-ul-Azha celebration amid coronavirus

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People play with an animal ahead of the Muslim festival of sacrifice Eid-ul-Azha in Dakar, Senegal July 30, 2020. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra


Muslims wearing protective face masks offer Eid-ul-Azha prayers at a mosque in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia July 31, 2020. REUTERS/ Lim Huey Teng


A man carries balloons on a motorbike at a market ahead of the Eid-ul-Azha festival in Sanaa, Yemen July 29, 2020. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi


Fatih Municipality workers in protective suits disinfect Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque on the eve of the Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Azha in Istanbul, Turkey, July 30, 2020. REUTERS/Murad Sezer


A Bahraini boy is seen standing along with his sheep as he waits for customers at a livestock farm ahead of the Muslim festival of sacrifice Eid-ul-Azha in Manama, Bahrain, July 28, 2020, REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed


Migrant people are seen on board an overcrowded ferry at the Sadarghat Ferry Port while leaving Dhaka to go home to celebrate Eid-ul=Azha in Dhaka, Bangladesh, July 30, 2020. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain


A trader using a cloth as a protective face mask deals with customers at a livestock market ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Azha in New Delhi, India, July 28, 2020. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi


A boy wears a mask as sheep and goats are seen in a truck at a livestock market ahead of Eid-ul-Azha in Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank July 27, 2020. REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta





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Despite Historic Plunge, Europe’s Economy Flashes Signs of Recovery

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LONDON — Before the pandemic, a traditional state of play prevailed in the enormous economies on the opposite sides of the Atlantic. Europe — full of older people, and rife with bickering over policy — appeared stagnant. The United States, ruled by innovation and risk-taking, seemed set to grow faster.

But that alignment has been reordered by contrasting approaches to a terrifying global crisis. Europe has generally gotten a handle on the spread of the coronavirus, enabling many economies to reopen while protecting workers whose livelihoods have been menaced. The United States has become a symbol of fecklessness and discord in the face of a grave emergency, yielding deepening worries about the fate of jobs and sustenance.

On Friday, Europe released economic numbers that on their face were terrible. The 19 nations that share the euro currency contracted by 12.1 percent from April to June from the previous quarter — the sharpest decline since 1995, when the data was first collected. Spain fell by a staggering 18.5 percent, and France, one of the eurozone’s largest economies, declined 13.8 percent. Italy shrunk by 12.4 percent.

Europe appeared even worse than the United States, which the day before recorded the single-worst three-month stretch in its history, tumbling by 9.5 percent in the second quarter.

But beneath the headline figures, Europe flashed promising signs of strength.

Germany saw a drop in the numbers of unemployed, surveys found evidence of growing confidence amid an expansion in factory production, while the euro continued to strengthen against the dollar as investment flowed into European markets — signs of improving sentiment.

These contrasting fortunes underscored a central truth of a pandemic that has killed more than 670,000 people worldwide: The most significant cause of the economic pain is the virus itself. Governments that have more adeptly controlled its spread have commanded greater confidence from their citizens and investors, putting their economies in better position to recuperate from the worst global downturn since the Great Depression.

“There is no economic recovery without a controlled health situation,” said Ángel Talavera, lead eurozone economist at Oxford Economics in London. “It’s not a choice between the two.”

European confidence has been bolstered by a groundbreaking agreement struck in July within the European Union to sell 750 billion euro ($892 billion) worth of bonds that are backed collectively by its members. Those funds will be deployed to the hardest hit countries like Italy and Spain.

The deal transcended years of opposition from parsimonious northern European countries like Germany and the Netherlands against issuing common debt. They have balked at putting their taxpayers on the line to bail out southern neighbors like Greece while indulging in crude stereotypes of Mediterranean profligacy. The animosity perpetuated the sense that Europe was a union in name only — a critique that has been muted.

The United States has spent more than Europe on programs to limit the economic damage of the pandemic. But much of the spending has benefited investors, spurring a substantial recovery in the stock market. Emergency unemployment benefits have proved crucial, enabling tens of millions of jobless Americans to pay rent and buy groceries. But they were set to expire on Friday and there were few signs that Congress would extend them.

Europe’s experience has underscored the virtues of its more generous social welfare programs, including national health care systems.

Americans feel compelled to go to work, even at dangerous places like meatpacking plants, and even when they are ill, because many lack paid sick leave. Yet they also feel pressure to avoid shops, restaurants and other crowded places of business because millions lack health insurance, making hospitalization a financial catastrophe.

“Europe has really benefited from having this system that is more heavily dominated by welfare systems than the U.S.,” said Kjersti Haugland, chief economist at DNB Markets, an investment bank in Oslo. “It keeps people less fearful.”

The more promising situation in Europe is neither certain nor comprehensive. Spain remains a grave concern, with the virus spreading, threatening lives and livelihoods. Italy has emerged from the grim calculus of mass death to the chronic condition of persistent economic troubles. Britain’s tragic mishandling of the pandemic has shaken faith in the government.

If short-term factors look more beneficial to European economies, longer-term forces may favor the United States, with its younger population and greater productivity.

A sense of European-American rivalry has been provoked by the bombast of a nationalist American president, making the pandemic a morbid opportunity to keep score.

“There is a certain amount of triumphalism,” said Peter Dixon, a global financial economist at Commerzbank in London. “People are saying, ‘Our economy has survived, we are doing OK.’ There’s a certain amount of European schadenfreude, if I can use that word, given everything that Trump has said about the U.S.”

But for now, Europe’s moment of confidence is palpable, most prominently in Germany, the continent’s largest economy.

Though the German economy shrank by 10.1 percent from March to June — its worst drop in at least half a century — the number of officially jobless people fell in July, in part because of government programs that have subsidized furloughed workers.

Surveys show that German managers — not a group inclined toward sunny optimism — have seen expectations for future sales return to nearly pre-virus levels. That buoyancy translates directly into growth, emboldening companies to rehire furloughed workers.

Ziehl-Abegg, a maker of ventilation systems for hospitals, factories and large buildings, recently broke ground on a 16 million euro ($19 million) expansion at a factory in southern Germany.

“If we wait to invest until the market recovers, that’s too late,” said Peter Fenkl, the company’s chief executive. “There are billions of dollars in the market ready to be invested and just waiting for the signal to kick off.”

The euro has gained more than 5 percent against the dollar so far this year, according to FactSet. European markets have been lifted by international money flowing into so-called exchange-traded funds that purchase European stocks. The Stoxx 600, an index made up of companies in 17 European countries, appears set for a second straight month of gains outpacing the S&P 500.

The French oil giant Total saw demand for its products in Europe drop by nearly one third in the second quarter of the year, but a powerful recovery has been gaining momentum, said the company’s chairman and chief executive, Patrick Pouyanné.

“Since June, we have seen a rebound here in Europe,” he said during a call with analysts. “Activity in our marketing networks is back to, I would say, 90 percent of the pre-Covid levels.”

France, Europe’s second largest economy, has been buttressed by aggressive government spending. President Emmanuel Macron has mobilized more than 400 billion euros ($476 billion) in emergency aid and loan guarantees since the start of the crisis, and is preparing an autumn package worth another 100 billion euros.

Those funds paid businesses not to lay off workers, allowing more than 14 million employees to go on paid furlough, stay in their homes, accumulate modest savings and continue spending. Delayed deadlines for business taxes and loan payments spared companies from collapse.

In the second quarter, when France was still partially locked down, the country’s economy contracted by nearly 14 percent. Tourism, retail and manufacturing, the main pillars of the economy, ground to a halt.

But services, industrial activity and consumer spending have all shown signs of improvement. The Banque de France, which originally expected the economy to shrink more than 10 percent this year, recently forecast less damage.

In Spain, a sense of recovery remains distant. Its economy shrunk by nearly 19 percent from April to June. The nation’s unemployment rate exceeds 15 percent, and could surge higher if a wage subsidy program for furloughed workers is allowed to expire in September.

Spain officially ended its coronavirus state of emergency on June 21, but has since suffered an increase in infections. The economic impacts have been compounded by Britain’s decision to force travelers returning from Spain to quarantine for two weeks. Tourism accounts for 12 percent of Spain’s economy.

Italy is also highly exposed to tourism. Its industry is concentrated in the north of the country, which saw the worst of coronavirus. The central bank expects the Italian economy to contract by nearly 10 percent this year.

But exports surged more than one-third in May compared with the previous month. That left them below pre-pandemic levels, yet on par with German and American competitors, according to Confindustria, an Italian trade association.

“We are starting to slowly recover after the most violent downfall in the last 70 years,” said Francesco Daveri, an economist at Bocconi University in Milan.

Europe’s fortunes appear on the mend because its people are more likely to trust their governments.

Denmark acted early, imposing a strict lockdown while paying wage subsidies that limited unemployment. Denmark suffered far fewer deaths per capita than the United States and Britain.

With the virus largely controlled, Denmark lifted restrictions earlier, while Danes heeded the call to resume commercial life. The Danish economy is expected to contract by 5.25 percent this year, according to the European Commission, with a substantial improvement in the second half of the year.

In the United States, people have wearied of bewildering and conflicting advice from on high against a backdrop of more than 150,000 deaths.

The result has been record surges of new cases along with a syndrome likely to persist — an aversion to being near other people. That spells leaner prospects for retail, hotels, restaurants and other job-rich areas of the American economy.

Liz Alderman reported from Paris. Emma Bubola contributed reporting from Milan, Raphael Minder from Madrid and Stanley Reed and Eshe Nelson from London.



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5 Things to Know About Shakuntala Devi

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Shakuntala Devi (1929-2013) was best known as “the human computer” for her ability to perform lengthy calculations in her head, swiftly. One example of this, described in her New York Times obituary, took place in 1977, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds. It took a Univac computer 62 seconds to do the same.

Now, her life story has inspired the Hindi-language film “Shakuntala Devi,” streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Starring the veteran Bollywood actress Vidya Balan as Devi, the film is directed by Anu Menon and tells the story of Devi’s life from the perspective of her daughter, Anupama Banerji. Played by Sanya Malhotra, Banerji was involved in the making of the film.

Here are five facts about Devi you may not know.

In 1980, she correctly multiplied two 13-digit numbers in just 28 seconds at Imperial College London. The feat, also included in her obituary, earned her a place in the 1982 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. It was even more remarkable because it included the time it took Devi to recite the 26-digit solution. (The numbers, selected at random by a computer, were 7,686,369,774,870 and 2,465,099,745,779. The answer was 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730.)

In one famous interview on the BBC in 1950 (recreated in the biopic), her answer to a mathematical question was deemed incorrect, before the host later acknowledged that in fact, the computer’s answer was wrong and Devi was right.

In 1960, Devi married Paritosh Banerji. They divorced years later, and the 2001 documentary “For Straights Only” claimed the marriage fell apart because Banerji was gay. Devi said in the documentary that she set out to learn more about the challenges faced by L.G.B.T.Q. individuals to promote wider acceptance. In 1977, she wrote “The World of Homosexuals,” which featured her research findings, including interviews with same-sex couples in India and abroad.

“It is not the individual whose sexual relations depart from the social custom who is immoral — but those are immoral who would penalize him for being different,” she wrote in the book.

Perhaps because of her fascination with numbers, Devi tried her hand at astrology, which is highly revered in Indian culture. “Personal Astrologer of Presidents, Prime Ministers, Royalty, Movie Stars and Top Business Tycoons of the world is now available for Astrological Consultations” a newspaper ad claimed at the time. She similarly toured the world, according to a Times article, seeing up to 60 clients a day. They would give her a date of birth, time of birth and birthplace, and she would answer three questions about their lives. She also wrote a book called “Astrology for You.”

When Devi stopped touring the world doing shows featuring her arithmetic prowess, she wrote several books on math and her techniques, including “Puzzles to Puzzle You,” “Super Memory: It Can Be Yours” and “Mathability: Awaken the Math Genius in Your Child.” But decades prior, in 1976, Devi also wrote a crime thriller called “Perfect Murder.” Written entirely in the first-person, the story explores what happens when a lawyer, motivated by greed, decides to kill his wife to escape the marriage.

In 1980, Devi ran for Parliament, the Lok Sabha, as an independent candidate from two different localities — Mumbai and Medak (in the present-day state of Telangana). In Medak, her main opponent was the former prime minister, Indira Gandhi, whom Devi had openly criticized. Her fame, however, didn’t translate into votes, and she finished ninth, while Gandhi went on to win and became prime minister once again.



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With Security Law as a Cudgel, Beijing Cracks Down on Hong Kong

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BEIJING — For weeks, as Beijing quickly drafted and imposed a stringent new national security law for Hong Kong, many in the territory feared the rules would be used to intimidate the opposition, but hoped they would not presage a broad crackdown.

Now those hopes have been dashed. Brushing aside international criticism and sanctions, the Chinese government has used the letter and spirit of the law to crush Hong Kong’s pro-democracy opposition with surprising ferocity.

In the last week alone, the authorities have ousted a tenured law professor at the University of Hong Kong who has been a key figure in the city’s democracy movement, and arrested four young activists on suspicion that they expressed support online for independence. They have also barred a dozen candidates from running for the legislature, using opposition to the security law as new ground for disqualification.

On Friday, the authorities postponed for a year the election itself, which had been scheduled for Sept. 6. While they cited the coronavirus pandemic as justification for the move, it underscored Beijing’s fears that pro-democracy candidates could triumph.

The breadth and severity of the actions reflect Beijing’s urgency to smother opposition to its encroaching authority over the territory after more than a year of political upheaval there.

“More will come,” said Victoria Tin-bor Hui, a political scientist from Hong Kong at University of Notre Dame.

The aggressive consolidation of power mirrors China’s broader moves to flex its political, economic and military might as the world is distracted by the pandemic.

Western nations have pushed back aggressively against Beijing’s measures, imposing sanctions and even suspending extradition agreements with Hong Kong, but to no avail. In some ways, it appears to have emboldened China, which blames the dissent in Hong Kong on foreign interference.

“The people of Hong Kong deserve to have their voice represented by the elected officials that they choose in those elections,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a radio interview on Thursday ahead of the postponement of the election. “If they destroy that, if they take that down, it will be another marker that will simply prove that the Chinese Communist Party has now made Hong Kong just another communist-run city.”

Wang Wenbin, the chief spokesman of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that Beijing was allowing the Hong Kong authorities to decide the timing of the election. But he also insisted that Beijing would not be dissuaded by any foreign countries from doing what it deems necessary in Hong Kong.

“China is not afraid of intimidation by any external forces — our determination is unwavering and unshakable in safeguarding national sovereignty, security, and development interests,” he said.

On the mainland, China thoroughly stifles political dissent. For the authorities there, Hong Kong — with its nominal political autonomy and robust democracy movement — has been a major irritant, especially after huge protests openly and at times violently challenged Beijing’s control and even sovereignty over the city last year.

With its crackdown, Beijing is following the authoritarian playbook of countries like Russia, holding elections but managing them so that they cease to reflect genuine voter will. Russia’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, recently orchestrated a constitutional referendum to perpetuate his rule — and then followed it up with a series of arrests, hoping to smother discontent before it could gain momentum.

“They are running short of confidence to face the people, to face the people’s choice, to face the people’s demands,” said Alvin Yeung, a sitting pro-democracy lawmaker from the moderate Civic Party who was disqualified from running on Thursday. “It’s fear.”

Years in the making, the national security law created a climate of fear and uncertainty in only a matter of hours after it was imposed.

The day the law took effect, the police detained 10 protesters for national security violations, including a young man on a motorcycle with a Hong Kong liberation flag who collided with police officers. Tong Ying-kit, who was hospitalized after the collision, was later the first charged under the new law. He remains in custody.

The newly created agency to enforce the law, the Office for Safeguarding National Security, soon took up residence in the Metropark Hotel in Causeway Bay (a 4.5 rating on Tripadvisor.com) and surrounded it with barricades in a physical manifestation of Beijing’s growing authoritarian footprint on the city.

The agency is headed by Zheng Yanxiong, a senior Communist Party official dispatched from Guangdong, the neighboring province on the mainland. He is best known for his hostility to a short-lived democracy experiment in a Guangdong village, Wukan, nearly a decade ago.

On July 10, the Hong Kong police raided an independent polling institute whose computers were being used by democracy supporters for an unofficial primary to decide which candidates would run for the legislature. Five days later, the police arrested five activists, including a vice chairman of the territory’s Democratic Party, in connection with protests and violent clashes at Hong Kong Polytechnic University last November.

The four young activists arrested on Wednesday were all former members of Studentlocalism, a pro-independence group led by secondary school students that ended its operations just before the security law took effect. In the past, the group had typically distributed leaflets supporting independence outside schools.

Regina Ip, a cabinet member and the leader of a small pro-Beijing political party in the legislature, welcomed the arrest on Wednesday of the four activists, who ranged in age from 16 to 21. She said that their postings showed continued support for Hong Kong independence after the law went into effect, although the police have not elaborated on what the four specifically said.

Their arrest shows that the authorities are “acting in accordance with the law,” she said.

On Friday evening, Chinese state television reported that the Hong Kong police had issued warrants for the arrests of six democracy advocates who are now overseas. They are wanted on charges of promoting secession and colluding with foreign forces, according to the report — crimes that are punishable with life imprisonment under the security law. The police declined to comment.

One of the six, Samuel Chu, said on Twitter that he had been an American citizen for 25 years.

Also on Friday, Hong Kong’s secretary for justice said that David Leung, the city’s British-trained director of prosecutions, had submitted his resignation. Pro-Beijing politicians and the police had accused Mr. Leung of being too cautious about bringing charges against protesters, though he had prosecuted some high-profile activists. Mr. Leung did not issue a statement.

The spirit of the security law has been used to justify the dismissal of the professor at the University of Hong Kong, Benny Tai. After the rollout of the rules, Mr. Tai, who was convicted of public nuisance for his role in protests in 2014, helped organize the recent primary vote for the pro-democracy camp.

Beijing’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong supported his removal, describing it in a statement as “a just act of punishing evil and promoting good and conforming to the people’s will.” The security law was also invoked this week for the disqualifications of candidates for the legislature.

The legislature cannot have seats “for these unscrupulous individuals who are plotting to destroy” Hong Kong, the liaison office said. The Hong Kong government said that candidates who objected “in principle” to Beijing’s enactment of the law were violating the oath to uphold Hong Kong’s constitution.

The government also said it was unconstitutional to vow to block its legislative proposals in order to pressure the administration. Some opposition lawmakers had floated the idea of voting down the government’s budget. Under Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, known as the Basic Law, that could force the resignation of the chief executive, Carrie Lam, and new elections.

The yearlong delay in the election now gives the authorities time to disqualify more pro-democracy candidates from running and quash any remaining momentum of the anti-government movement.

While the protests have largely quieted down since the law was imposed, the opposition had been looking toward the election as a way to revive their cause. The pro-democracy camp had been hoping for big gains in the voting, following their landslide victory last fall in district elections. With many of their most prominent leaders now banned from running, their chances seem less certain.

Mr. Yeung, the lawmaker, said the government had failed to show that the election could not go ahead during the pandemic. He cited safety measures adopted by South Korea and Singapore during recent elections.

“How on earth can they convince the rest of the world, including Hong Kong people and the international community, that they have no other ulterior motives other than public health concerns?” he said.

Ms. Hui, from Notre Dame, compared Beijing’s strategy to Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.” Beijing, she said, has exploited advantages to defeat its perceived enemies, not just with the security law in Hong Kong, but also in the South China Sea, on China’s border with India and in other contested areas.

“The harshness of the law cannot be measured by the number of arrests,” she said, “but by the deterrent effects on silencing anyone who dares to dissent.”

Keith Bradsher reported from Beijing, Elaine Yu reported from Hong Kong and Steven Lee Myers reported from Seoul.



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On the Lookout for Moose on Michigan’s Isle Royale

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At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, with travel restrictions in place worldwide, we launched a new series — The World Through a Lens — in which photojournalists help transport you, virtually, to some of our planet’s most beautiful and intriguing places. This week, Tony Cenicola, a New York Times staff photographer, shares a collection of images from a remote island in Michigan.

Tucked away in the northern reaches of Lake Superior, far closer to both Ontario and Minnesota than to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, lies one of the country’s least visited national parks: Isle Royale.

The park — which consists of the 206-square-mile Isle Royale, along with hundreds of smaller adjacent islands — sees very few visitors. In 2018, the year I went, just 18,479 people visited the island portion of the park, the lowest number of any park in the contiguous 48 states. (Compare that, for example, with Grand Canyon National Park, which in 2018 drew nearly 6.4 million visitors.)

By the time I planned my trip, the only inn on the island was fully booked, so camping was my sole option. And I decided to drive from New York, because it would have been something of a nightmare to get on a plane with all my photography equipment and camping gear.

Isle Royale is a six-hour ferry ride from the port in Houghton, a small city on the Upper Peninsula. Established as a national park in 1940, it is known for its moose population; in 2018 there were around 1,500 on the island. (It’s also known for its much smaller wolf population, which has fluctuated dramatically in recent years, raising complicated questions about conservation.) On the ferry, my fellow passengers and I were instructed to keep a safe distance from the moose — about the length of a railway car. “When in doubt, move farther away,” the National Park Service advises.

It was late afternoon when I arrived at my campsite for the night, at the Rock Harbor campground. I wasn’t even done setting up my tent when a bull moose appeared with a full rack of antlers. He was just wandering through, foraging for food in the underbrush.

I could feel the adrenaline race through my head as I started shooting pictures of him from no more than 50 feet away. He was in a thick stand of trees, so I didn’t think there was any danger of him charging me. He stuck around for nearly an hour, and I kept shooting him from behind the trees.

My wife and I have something of a running obsession with moose. We have moose paraphernalia in our house. There’s a local road near our home that we call the “mooseway” for no particular reason. (There are no moose in the area.) Whenever we travel to an area where there’s even the remotest possibility of sighting a moose, we’re on high alert.

And because of my minor obsession, seeing one on this trip was my top priority — and I felt both excited and relieved that it happened so quickly.

Over the course of the hour, more and more people gathered to watch the moose. He was standing near a vacant campsite, and a handful of people settled onto a nearby picnic table to watch him. Eventually the moose picked up his head and looked our way. That was enough to send several onlookers running away through the woods.

You’re only allowed to stay at the Rock Harbor campground for one night, so the next day I had to break camp and lug all my equipment and camping gear to a new site three miles away — no easy feat, since my pack weighed around 65 pounds.

I ended up hiking around 13 miles that day, through difficult terrain: wetlands, inland lakes and streams. I spotted turtles basking on logs and saw evidence of beaver activity.

At one point, realizing I didn’t have enough water in my quart-size water bottle, I began picking wild blueberries and placing them in the bottle. I’d gulp a few down with each sip. It helped extend my water supply and keep my energy level up.

At 7 p.m., once I was settled into my new campsite, I collapsed, ate the balance of my blueberries, sipped the remaining water and had a granola bar. After a few hours of rest, I woke up around 1 a.m. and went out to photograph the incredible night sky. Mars was shining so brightly it reflected in Lake Superior.

The next morning, I trekked to the harbor for breakfast at the inn. There, I rented a motorized rowboat to tour a few other parts of the island, including the Edisen Fishery, a historical fishing camp that shows what life was like here for commercial fishermen and their families in the 1800s and 1900s, before the island became a national park.

The motorized rowboat made everything so much easier, and it meant that I didn’t have to hike back to the harbor with all my equipment when leaving the island. In the end I took a seaplane to get back to the mainland — a leisurely conclusion to an otherwise tiring, and satisfying, trip.



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Cardinals-Brewers Game Postponed After St. Louis Records Coronavirus Positives

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M.L.B. created a 113-page set of protocols for teams before it resumed play, and its officials had been encouraged by the fact that, until Friday, only one team — the Miami Marlins — had any players who tested positive. But the Marlins’ outbreak, which has widened to include 18 players, has devastated its roster, and the Cardinals’ news sent a sobering signal of the complications in staging a 60-game season, with extensive travel, during a pandemic.

“We have a lot of really smart people working on this, a number of committed players who want to play through this, but everybody wants to play safely,” Mark Attanasio, the Brewers’ principal owner, said during a news conference at Miller Park. “If we’re not smart and safe, we’ll fail. But we’re going to do everything we can not to fail.”

The league’s investigators have been probing the cause of the Marlins’ outbreak, and a person briefed on the findings said that players were found to have gone out in Atlanta, where the Marlins played exhibition games last Tuesday and Wednesday. The person was granted anonymity because the league has not yet released its findings, the details of which were first reported by Bleacher Report.

While the Marlins’ behavior was not entirely surprising, their outbreak was a clear warning to players, a point Commissioner Rob Manfred reiterated Friday in a conversation with Tony Clark, the executive director of the players’ union, as reported by ESPN. Manfred emphasized that players must stay vigilant about following safety protocols or risk ending the season.

“It’s definitely in a lot of guys’ minds, that’s for sure,” said Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo, adding that the Cardinals’ news had been discouraging. “We all want to play,” he said, “and the guys here in our clubhouse, as we get going, know the importance of sticking together and being as prudent as possible away from the field and at the field.”



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‘The Better I Got in Sports, the Worse the Racism Got’

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In a one-hour conversation after a recent practice, Mills shared some of the names he was called during his childhood, including “darkie,” “blackie,” “petrol sniffer,” “monkey,” “chimp,” “abo” (a derogatory term short for Aboriginal) and other disparaging terms that he was called “regularly at school or on the sporting fields.”

“The better I got in sports,” Mills said, “the worse the racism got.”

The Mills family moved to Canberra because his parents got jobs working in Aboriginal affairs for the government. “It was a bit like going to Washington,” said Benny Mills, Patty’s father.

Yet leaving their home on Thursday Island in Torres Strait — where, Patty said, everyone “looked like me and spoke like me” — landed him in that kindergarten classroom where he was first punched.

“It was the very beginning of how I was going to be treated for the rest of my time at school, not only by students but, more appallingly, by teachers and principals,” Mills said.

Within a few years, when Mills was 9, his parents began explaining the traumatic past of his mother, Yvonne Mills. One of five siblings born to a white man and an Aboriginal woman, Yvonne and the other four children were taken from their mother, Gladys Haynes, in 1949 after their parents had separated. Yvonne, the youngest, was 2 years old. The children were moved to group homes as wards of the state and sent to separate foster families in a government-sponsored social engineering program designed, in effect, to assimilate Aboriginal children into white society.

Throughout their childhoods, Yvonne and her siblings were told that their mother did not want them. The falsehoods were exposed by a government inquiry in the mid-1990s, which confirmed decades of human rights violations that made Yvonne part of what became known as Australia’s “Stolen Generations” — although she said she did not receive a written acknowledgment of such status from the South Australian government until 2018. Yvonne had virtually no contact with her mother between the ages of 2 and 17; Haynes died in 1979.



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Lawmakers ‘Alarmed’ by Reports U.S. Envoy Told Brazil It Could Help Re-elect Trump

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RIO DE JANEIRO — Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Friday they were “extremely alarmed” by assertions that the American ambassador in Brazil had signaled to Brazilian officials they could help get President Trump re-elected by changing their trade policies.

In a letter sent Friday afternoon, Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel demanded that the ambassador, Todd Chapman, produce “any and all documents referring or related to any discussions” he has held with Brazilian officials in recent weeks about their nation’s tariffs on ethanol, an important agricultural export for Iowa, a potential swing state in the American presidential election.

The committee’s letter was sent in response to reports in the Brazilian news media this week saying that Mr. Chapman, a career diplomat, made it clear to Brazilian officials they could bolster Mr. Trump’s electoral chances in Iowa if Brazil lifted its ethanol tariffs.

Eliminating tariffs would give the Trump administration a welcome trade victory to present to struggling ethanol producers in Iowa, where the president is in a close race with his Democratic rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The House committee said it was opening an inquiry into the matter.

The State Department said Friday afternoon in an emailed statement that “allegations suggesting that Ambassador Chapman has asked Brazilians to support a specific U.S. candidate are false.”

The statement added: “The United States has long been focused on reducing tariff barriers and will continue do so.”

The O Globo newspaper published a story on Thursday saying Mr. Chapman had underscored “the importance to the Brazilian government of keeping Donald Trump” in office. Mr. Bolsonaro, a far-right leader, has made closer alignment with the Trump administration his top foreign policy priority.

A competing newspaper, Estadão, published an article Friday saying its reporters independently confirmed that the ambassador framed his argument against tariffs in partisan terms. The article said the Brazilian officials who met with Mr. Chapman rejected the appeal, declining to be drawn into the American presidential battle.

Neither article named its sources. But Alceu Moreira, a Brazilian congressman who heads the agricultural caucus, told The New York Times in an interview that Mr. Chapman had made repeated references to the electoral calendar during a recent meeting the two had about ethanol.

He said that Mr. Chapman did not explicitly urge him to help the Trump campaign or bring up the contest in Iowa — but that the American ambassador did tie the ethanol issue to the election.

“He said, ‘You know, we have elections in the United States, and that this is very important,’” Mr. Moreira said, recounting their conversation. “He said this four or five times.”

In the letter, Mr. Engel said that if Mr. Chapman had pressured the Brazilians to help the Trump campaign, it could be a violation of the Hatch Act, a 1939 law that bars federal officials from engaging in certain partisan activities.

“These statements are completely inappropriate for a U.S. ambassador to make,” Mr. Engel, a Democrat from New York, wrote in the letter, which was also signed by Representative Albio Sires, who chairs the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Civilian Security and Trade.

The letter called on Mr. Chapman to “reassure Congress and the American people that our Ambassador to Brazil is truly representing the interests of the United States and not the narrow, political interests of President Trump."

Promoting favorable terms for American industries abroad is a core priority for American ambassadors. But American diplomats are reminded in election years to steer clear of any actions that might reasonably be construed as partisan.

The committee’s letter also took issue with Mr. Chapman’s defense of a video promoting the Trump campaign that Eduardo Bolsonaro, a federal lawmaker and a son of President Jair Bolsonaro, posted Sunday on Twitter.

The video ends with a slide that says “Trump 2020: The Great Victory.”

Asked about the video in an interview with O Globo, Mr. Chapman said he saw no problem with Eduardo Bolsonaro’s endorsement.

“I’m a big defender of freedom of expression,” Mr. Chapman told the newspaper. “And everyone is free to say who they like and who they’re against as they see fit; I’m not going to tell someone they can’t speak in favor or against my president.”

Mr. Engel and Mr. Sires, a Democrat from New Jersey, said the ambassador should have responded differently.

“While Mr. Bolsonaro has the right to speak freely, it is simply not appropriate for sitting government officials — in any branch of government — to promote the campaigns of candidates in the United States,” the congressmen wrote. “We frankly believe that you should know better.”

Eduardo Bolsonaro is the rare Brazilian official who has openly supported lowering ethanol tariffs for American sellers. In a video he posted last September, he said taking a hit on ethanol would be a boon for Brazilian exporters of meat and sugar by improving the chances of a free-trade agreement between the two countries.

“That could bring so many benefits to us as Brazilians,” said the younger Mr. Bolsonaro, an ardent supporter of Mr. Trump who wore a “Make Brazil Great Again” baseball cap during a visit to the White House last year.

The United States has long pushed Brazil to lower tariffs on ethanol. Those talks gained a new sense of urgency in recent months as the coronavirus pandemic led to plummeting demand, and American ethanol sellers were squeezed by the trade dispute between Beijing and Washington.

Currently, American ethanol companies can sell up to 750 million liters of ethanol to Brazil per year without paying tariffs. Any sales beyond that are subject to a 20 percent tax. The Brazilian government raised the tariff-free cap last September from 600 million liters — a gesture intended to give Brazilian sugar producers greater access to the American market.

Mr. Trump hailed that move, calling it “great progress for our Farmers.”

But Washington did not make good on the sugar access, which left the Brazilians feeling embittered.

The current ethanol tariff framework is set to expire in August. If the two countries don’t reach a deal, Brazil will apply a 20 percent tax to all ethanol imports, a blow to an industry that is pleading for government bailouts.

Mr. Moreira, the Brazilian congressman who heads the agricultural caucus, said he told Mr. Chapman that Brazilian politicians also had political considerations to consider, given coming municipal elections in September. Ethanol producers in Brazil’s northeast states would look dimly on tariff rules that put them at a competitive disadvantage.

“Is the ethanol producer very important electorally speaking? Yes, very important,” Mr. Moreira said. “We very much like the American people, but we like our people more.”

Congressman Arnaldo Jardim, who leads a Brazilian congressional bloc that supports ethanol producers, said Mr. Chapman has been negotiating with a sense of urgency as the deadline approaches.

“Let’s just say he’s putting pressure” on Brazilian officials, said Mr. Jardim, adding that he had not personally met with the ambassador about this issue, but regularly speaks to several officials who have. “He’s saying that this is paramount for the United States and paramount for Trump.”

Orlando Ribeiro, who heads the department of commercial and international relations at Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, said that negotiators had hoped to reach a deal on ethanol tariffs before the August deadline that took into account the interests of all stakeholders.

Barring that, he said he feared Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolsonaro could hash out a deal over the phone at the last minute.

“What could happen is that on the eve, Trump could call Bolsonaro and they might decide to lift all” tariffs, he said.



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Canada’s Key Role in Creating a Once Awaited Vaccine

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Connaught, however, had come up with a synthetic, liquid growth mixture, known as Medium 199, for cancer cell research that produced more virus, more quickly and without contamination. It was provided to Dr. Salk for his polio efforts.

Credit...Sanofi Pasteur Canada Archives

It was Dr. Farrell, one of a very small number of women then working as research chemists in Canada, who figured out how to safely produce vast quantities of virus in Medium 199. Adapting earlier work, she developed what came to be known as the Toronto Method. Racks of specially designed machines gently rocked bottles of Method 199 and the virus.

Her next task was to get enough machines built and to hire enough qualified staff to make not only enough virus for the tests in the United States, Canada and Finland, but also to create enough vaccine to inoculate all of Canada’s children. In a bid to accelerate vaccination, the Canadian government gambled and placed an order with Connaught before knowing if the Salk vaccine would prove safe and effective in tests.

It did, with the result made public on April 12, 1955, the day before Dr. Farrell’s birthday. “I could not help feeling that I had received a pretty fine present,” she said in a speech that fall.

Variations of the Toronto Method were used until the 1970s to make polio vaccines, Dr. Rutty told me. Apparently, at Dr. Farrell’s request, Connaught decided not to patent the process.

Dr. Rutty, who is the expert when it comes to Canada’s role in polio research and who serves as the historian for Connaught’s successor company, Sanofi Pasteur Canada, said that frustratingly little is known about Dr. Farrell’s personal life. She never married, as was the case with many other women in Canadian medical research, nor had children.



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Hear why experts now question if masks are enough

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Public health officials have been stressing the importance of wearing face masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus for months, but many experts are now urging the use of face shields and eye goggles as well. CNN's Brian Todd reports.

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The Coronavirus Infected Hundreds at a Georgia Summer Camp

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As schools and universities plan for the new academic year, and administrators grapple with complex questions about how to keep young people safe, a new report about a coronavirus outbreak at a sleepaway camp in Georgia provides fresh reasons for concern.

The camp implemented several precautionary measures against the virus, but stopped short of requiring campers to wear masks. The virus blazed through the community of about 600 campers and counselors, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday.

The staff and counselors gathered at the overnight camp in late June. Within a week of the camp orientation, a teenage counselor developed chills and went home.

The camp, which the C.D.C. did not name, started sending campers home the next day, and shut down a few days later. By then, 76 percent of the 344 campers and staffers whose test results were available to C.D.C. researchers had been infected with the virus — nearly half the camp.

The study is notable because few outbreaks in schools or child care settings have been described to date, said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“The study affirms that group settings can lead to large outbreaks, even when they are primarily attended by children,” she said.

“The fact that so many children at this camp were infected after just a few days together underscores the importance of mitigation measures in schools that do reopen for in person learning,” Dr. Rivers added.

Physical distancing, universal mask use, hygiene and ventilation are essential to reducing transmission, she noted.

While the role children play in the spread of the virus has been questioned, the authors of the report said the research adds to evidence that children of all ages are not only susceptible to infection, but may play an important role in transmission.

Dr. Preeti Malani, the chief health officer at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study, called the report “a cautionary tale.”

“It’s difficult when you have a gathering this large,” she said. “Young people want to be with other young people. They want to socialize. It just takes one person for it to spread to lots of people.”

Of the 344 campers and staff for whom test results were available, 260 tested positive. Of children ages 6 to 10, over half were infected; 44 percent of those ages 11 to 17 were infected, as were one-third of those ages 18 to 21. Only seven staffers were older than 22, and two of them tested positive.

Those who had been at the camp longest had the highest rate of infection; overall, more than half of the staff, who had arrived before the campers, were infected.

Additional cases may have been missed, because the researchers did not have access to data about 253 other campers and staff.

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Though the camp was following the directives of an executive order issued in Georgia, it was not in full compliance with recommendations made by federal health officials at the C.D.C.

Campers and staff members were required to show proof that they had tested negative for the coronavirus no more than 12 days before arriving at the camp. Cleaning and disinfection of communal areas were enhanced; the camp required physical distancing outside cabins, and it staggered the use of communal spaces.

But while staff were required to wear cloth masks, the camp did not ask campers to do so, and did not open windows and doors to increase air circulation in buildings. The campers stayed overnight in cabins, with an average of 15 occupants in each.

Many camp activities — which took place indoors as well as outdoors — included “vigorous singing and cheering,” which can enhance spread of the virus, the report said.

The case highlights the limitations of asking for proof of negative coronavirus tests before large gatherings, Dr. Malani said.

“Testing doesn’t always mean safety,” she added. “It has to be combined with individuals adhering to strict quarantine. And that’s hard to do for young people, on a college campus, and in K through 12.”

Inconsistent mask wearing is also problematic, she said.

“Even if the staff were wearing masks around the campers, it’s likely that when they were back in their quarters at night, they weren’t — because that’s what happens,” Dr. Malani said. “It’s hard to do, because it’s not natural to have to distance all the time and wear a mask.”

In a recent study of an outbreak at a high school in Jerusalem that began 10 days after in-person classes resumed in late May, 13 percent of the student body and 16 percent of the staff ultimately tested positive.

Though the students were supposed to wear face masks and practice social distancing, researchers concluded crowded classrooms of up to 38 students made distancing impossible. Air conditioning may have accelerated the spread of the virus.



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Florida Teenager Is Charged as ‘Mastermind’ of Twitter Hack

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OAKLAND, Calif. — One by one, the celebrity Twitter accounts posted the same strange message: Send Bitcoin and they would send back double your money. Elon Musk. Bill Gates. Kanye West. Joseph R. Biden Jr. Former President Barack Obama. They, and dozens of others, were being hacked, and Twitter appeared powerless to stop it.

While some initially thought the hack was the work of professionals, it turns out the “mastermind” of one of the most high-profile hacks in recent years was a 17-year-old recent high school graduate from Florida, the authorities said on Friday.

Graham Ivan Clark was arrested in his Tampa apartment, where he lived by himself, early Friday, state officials said. He faces 30 felony charges in the hack, including fraud, and is being charged as an adult.

Two other people, Mason John Sheppard, 19, of the United Kingdom, and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, Fla., were accused of helping Mr. Clark during the takeover. Prosecutors said the two appeared to have aided the central figure in the attack, who went by the name Kirk. Documents released on Friday do not provide the real identity of Kirk, but they suggest that it was Mr. Clark.

Mr. Clark was skilled enough to go unnoticed inside Twitter’s network, said Andrew Warren, the Florida state attorney handling the case.

“This was not an ordinary 17-year-old,” Mr. Warren said.

Mr. Clark convinced one of the company’s employees that he was a co-worker in the technology department who needed the employee’s credentials to access the customer service portal, a criminal affidavit from Florida said. By the time the hackers were done, they had broken into 130 accounts and raised significant new questions about Twitter’s security.

Despite the hackers’ cleverness, their plan quickly fell apart, according to court documents. They left hints about their real identities and scrambled to hide the money they’d made once the hack became public. Their mistakes allowed law enforcement to quickly track them down.

Less than a week after the incident, federal agents, search warrant in hand, went to a home in Northern California, according to the documents. There, they interviewed another youngster who admitted participating in the scheme. The individual, who is not named in the documents because he or she is a minor, gave authorities information that helped them identify Mr. Sheppard and said that Mr. Sheppard had discussed turning himself in to law enforcement.

Because Mr. Clark is under 18, he was charged by the Florida state attorney in Tampa, rather than by federal authorities. His age also means that many details of his case are being kept under wraps.

Federal authorities were already tracking Mr. Clark’s online activity before the Twitter hack, according to legal documents. In April, the Secret Service seized over $700,000 worth of Bitcoin from him, but it was unclear why.

The documents released on Friday largely repeat what several hackers involved in the attack told The New York Times two weeks ago: The hack began early on July 15 as a quiet scheme to steal and sell unusual user names.

But as the day wore on, the attack, led by Kirk, took over dozens of accounts belonging to cryptocurrency companies and celebrities. Bitcoin flowed into the hackers’ accounts. The scheme netted Bitcoin worth more than $180,000, according to a New York Times estimate.

A special agent with an Internal Revenue Service investigative unit said in a court filing that Mr. Sheppard participated in the hack while using the screen name “ever so anxious.” A person using that name told The Times a few days after the attack that he got involved because he wanted to acquire unique Twitter user names.

“i just kinda found it cool having a username that other people would want,” “ever so anxious” said in a chat with The Times. He ultimately brokered the sale of at least 10 addresses, such as @drug, @w and @L, according to the indictment against him.

Mr. Fazeli is also accused of serving as a middleman, helping to sell stolen Twitter accounts on the day of the attack under the user name “Rolex.” But the indictment provides few details on Mr. Fazeli’s work as a middleman.

By the time Twitter finally managed to stop the attack, the hackers had tweeted from 45 of the accounts they had broken into, gained access to the direct messages of 36 accounts, and downloaded full information from seven accounts, the company said.

Mr. Fazeli and Mr. Clark were arrested on Friday. Mr. Sheppard has not been arrested but is expected to be taken into custody, the F.B.I. said.

“While investigations into cyber breaches can sometimes take years, our investigators were able to bring these hackers into custody in a matter of weeks,” said John Bennett, a special agent in charge with the F.B.I. The investigation is still underway, and it is possible there will be additional arrests, a bureau spokeswoman said.

The young men who participated in the breach come from a loose-knit community of hackers who focus on account takeovers, cybersecurity experts said. Using a practice known as SIM-swapping, they often target telecom companies to compromise victims’ phone numbers and intercept login credentials.

The attackers targeted Twitter employees, stealing their account credentials in order to gain access to an internal system that allowed them to reset the passwords of most Twitter users. (Some users, like President Trump, have extra security on their accounts to prevent takeovers.)

“These people come trained to be efficient and creative at their attack methods,” said Allison Nixon, the chief research officer of the security firm Unit 221B. “They’ve realized there’s this world of soft targets.”

These hackers often focus on financial fraud, but their ability to gain access to the accounts of political figures could attract new and dangerous customers, Ms. Nixon said.

“One of the things that concerns me is that, as these actors continue to refine their techniques and learn, they’re going to realize that there are other customers who will pay a lot more for things other than a single-character user name,” she said. “I don’t think they’ve even scratched the surface of how much damage they could cause.”

In a statement, Twitter thanked law enforcement for its “swift actions” and said it would continue to cooperate with the investigation.

The relatively young age of the hackers did not come as a surprise to security professionals who monitor the SIM-swapper community. Many of the people drawn to it are teenagers who pursue unique user names because controlling them conveys a sense of importance and clout.

“This activity is addictive in a way, it’s a thrill,” Ms. Nixon. “Breaking into gigantic companies and stealing ridiculous amounts of money is a huge thrill for them.”



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T20 Challenge announcement shows women’s cricket has bounced back in India: Shantha Rangaswamy | Cricket News

[ad_1] Shantha Rangaswamy. (TOI Photo) MUMBAI: The BCCI’s decision to host the third edition of the Women’s T20 Challenge in the United Arab...