Canada and the US have agreed to extend their agreement to keep border closed to non-essential travel to June 21 during the coronavirus pandemic.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday the border is a source of vulnerability, so the agreement will be extended by another 30 days. The restrictions were announced on March 18 and were extended in April.
Trudeau said Canada's provincial leaders clearly wanted to continue the measures.
This will keep people in both of our countries safe." Trudeau said.  U.S. President Donald Trump has said that the U.S. and Canada are doing well in handling the pandemic. But many Canadians fear a reopening.
The U.S. has more confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 than any country in the world, though its per capita numbers are well below many other nations.
Essential cross-border workers like healthcare professionals, airline crews and truck drivers are still permitted to cross. Truck drivers are critical as they move food and medical goods ..

Canada, US extend border closure to non-essential travel

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Indian-origin evangelist Ravi Zacharias, who built an international ministry that strives to defend Christianity on intellectual grounds, has died in Georgia. He was 74.
Zacharias died Tuesday at his home in Atlanta after a brief battle with sarcoma, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries said in a statement.
The Rev. Billy Graham invited Zacharias to preach at the inaugural International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam in 1983, the organization said.
He rose to prominence as a defender of the intellectual credibility of Christianity, the ministry said.
The ministry's mission is helping the thinker believe and the believer think," it said in announcing the death of Zacharias.
Zacharias saw the objections and questions of others not as something to be rebuffed, but as a cry of the heart that had to be answered, Michael Ramsden, the ministry's president, said in a statement.

Indian-origin evangelist who built global ministry dies in Atlanta at 74

Belgian police have seized 11.5 tons of cannabis with an estimated street value of 114 million euros ($124.6 million) and arrested six people during a drugs bust at Brussels' main wholesale market, officials said Tuesday.
The Belgian capital's prosecution office said special federal police units found the drugs in a container during a large-scale operation early Monday. Laurent Nys, the market's director, said about 30 police vehicles and a helicopter were involved.
More than 100 companies are based on the 34.5-acre site that receives 23,000 visitors a month.
It's very difficult to inspect all the trucks that come in and out," Nys told local broadcaster RTBF. And I don't have the police powers to do that." The six suspects were remanded in custody.
Amid worldwide air travel restrictions, the coronavirus has dealt a blow to the illegal drug trade. In Belgium, the federal police said there are fewer drugs available, resulting in a slight increase in prices.

Belgian police seize 11.5 tons of cannabis, arrest 6 people

Member states of the World Health Organisation have unanimously passed a resolution brought by European Union members, African nations and others calling for an independent comprehensive evaluation of the international response to the COVID-19 outbreak coordinated by the UN health agency.
The United States has sharply criticized the agency and its relationship with China, where the outbreak erupted.
Overnight, US President Donald Trump listed concerns and criticism about the WHO to its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Nations rallied around the resolution that calls on the director-general to initiate at the earliest appropriate moment an evaluation that would review experience gained and lessons learned from the WHO-coordinated international health response to COVID-19.
It was not immediately clear how, when or by whom that evaluation will be conducted.
The resolution pointed to the role of extensive immunization against COVID-19 as a global public good, and called on ...

WHO members OK evaluation of virus response

Defections by lawmakers disgruntled over President Emmanuel Macron's economic policies cost France's ruling party its absolute majority in the lower house of parliament Tuesday, in a symbolic blow to Macron's leadership amid the coronavirus crisis.
The move leaves the centrist LREM party with 288 lawmakers out of a total of 577  just one short of an absolute majority. Yet LREM and its centrist allies, including 46 lawmakers from the MoDem party, remain largely dominant at the National Assembly which has the final say in the law-making process.
A new independent group was created Tuesday at the National Assembly after seven lawmakers left Macron's LREM.
The move echoes tensions over the political direction Macron's young party, born from the 2017 presidential race, should follow. It comes at an inconvenient time for Macron, who is struggling to revive the economy after two months of lockdown.
The president of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand, from LREM, told France 2 TV that ...

Macron party loses ground, but not control, amid defections

On a hot Saturday afternoon, Mahrous Mahmoud is busy as can be. The professional soccer player, however, is working up a sweat in a different way these days  as a street vendor.
At this time of the year, Mahmoud would be on the field playing as a defender for Beni Suef, a club in Egypt's second division. But like millions in the Arab world's most populous country, he has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
These days, he heads to work in a crowded market in an Upper Egypt town. Shoulder-to-shoulder, shoppers jostle around stalls as he prepares a pancake-like pastry.
Prior to the pandemic, Mahmoud made about $200 a month playing for his club. That went a long way toward feeding his family of three but he also did part-time jobs to supplement it.
The league was shut down in mid-March and Mahmoud's main source of income dried up.
Egypt has implemented a strict curfew and closed cafes, malls and other shops as part of a government effort to stem the spread of the virus.
His club ...

Pandemic turns Egyptian soccer player into a street vendor

Spanish soccer club Mlaga says it plans to fire some employees to improve its financial situation amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The second-division club's finances have been overseen by a public administrator since a judge replaced Qatari club owner Sheikh Abdullah Al Thani in February.
Mlaga says the measure is one of many being taken to "ease the difficult economic situation it is experiencing." It says the "restructuring" is needed to ensure its sustainability.
The club did not say which employees will be fired. The team is in 15th place in the second-division standings.
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The German basketball league plans to finish its season next month in a closed three-week tournament.
Ten teams will live in Munich and play at the Audi Dome without fans or contact with the outside world. The league's seven other teams will not take part and their season will be declared finished.
Each team will be allowed to bring 22 people to live in hotels closed to the public. Games will be played at the .

Spanish soccer club Mlaga announces firings

The Old Trafford cricket ground is spearheading plans in England to try to bring fans back into a sports venue during the coronavirus pandemic.
Lancashire Cricket Club chief executive Daniel Gidney believes social distancing can be applied in their 26,000-seat ground to allow in at least 2,000 fans.
Not only are mass gatherings still banned by the government, but sports teams aren't allowed to play or train together. A cricket season that was due to start in April won't begin until July at the earliest.
"I'm hopeful that we can get some domestic cricket away in the back end of August and September, at least behind closed doors, but possibly even with some small crowds," Gidney told The Associated Press.
"Sometimes you can get into this negative box. And when I'm being positive, I'm not being reckless or saying things that can't happen from a safety perspective."
Gidney's plan for the northwest England cricket ground could form a template that facilitates the return of much-needed ...

Old Trafford cricket ground plans for social-distancing fans

Manchester City's appeal against a two-year ban from European soccer will be heard over three days in June, the Court of Arbitration for Sport said Tuesday.
CAS set aside June 8-10 for the case. It is unclear if a hearing will be held in person at the court or by video link.
No timetable was set for a verdict but a ruling is needed before English teams enter next season's Champions League draw. The draw in Monaco is scheduled for Aug. 27 but could be pushed back because of the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
Man City was banned by UEFA in February for "serious breaches" of financial monitoring rules and failing to cooperate with investigators. The English champions have been accused of deceiving UEFA in order to comply with Financial Fair Play regulations.
Announcing its verdict three months ago, UEFA said City was guilty of "overstating its sponsorship revenue in its accounts and in the break-even information submitted to UEFA between 2012 and 2016."
UEFA also fined Man City ..

CAS to hear Man City's appeal against 2-year ban in June

Olympic runner Bralon Taplin lost his appeal against a four-year ban for dodging a doping test and will miss next year's Tokyo Games and the next two track world championships.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport said Tuesday it found Taplin's explanation "to be implausible" that he was never approached or chaperoned to give a sample after winning an April 2019 race in Grenada.
The CAS judge "was comfortably satisfied that the athlete was guilty of the offense of evading sample collection," the court said in a statement.
The 28-year-old Taplin, a former NCAA relay champion for Texas A&M who competes for Grenada, has been banned until Sept. 24, 2023.
Taplin finished seventh in the 400 final at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and he is the eighth fastest man on the all-time list in the indoor 400.
CAS upheld a ruling by the Caribbean anti-doping organization. It found Taplin was told by a chaperone during track-side media interviews in Grenada that he was needed to give a ...

Olympic runner Taplin banned 4 years for evading test

China said Tuesday that a boy who disappeared 25 years ago after being picked by the Dalai Lama as Tibetan Buddhism's second-highest figure is now a college graduate with a stable job.
Very little information has been given about Gedhun Choekyi Nyima or his family since he went missing at age 6 shortly after being named the 11th Panchen Lama.
China, which claims that Tibet is part of its territory, named another boy to the position, Gyaltsen Norbu, who is rarely seen and is believed to spend most of his time in Beijing. He is generally viewed as a political figure under Beijing's control and shares none of the Dalai Lama's global fame.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Gedhun Choekyi Nyima received free compulsory education when he was a child, passed the college entrance examination and now has a job." Zhao said neither the now-31-year-old man or his family wishes to be disturbed in their current normal lives.
No other details were given.  The tussle between Beijing and .

China says boy picked by Dalai Lama now a college graduate

Lesotho's Prime Minister Thomas Thabane has resigned after losing a struggle with leaders of his party who wanted him out over allegations of his involvement in the 2017 murder of his estranged wife, Lipolelo.
The 80-year-old Thabane had said he would go at the end of July, but rivals in his All Basotho Convention party reached a deal with the main opposition Democratic Congress to form a new government in the southern African nation.
A Council of State meeting on Monday advised King Letsie III to swear in Finance Minister Moeketsi Majoro on Wednesday, according to the king's senior private secretary, Monehela Posholi.
That left Thabane no choice but to leave in a historic smooth transfer of power without a no confidence vote or elections.
The time to retire from the great theater of action, take leave from public life and office has finally arrived, Thabane said in a televised address Monday. He asked citizens to give his successor the utmost support.
Thabane served as prime minister 

Lesotho's prime minister resigns after pressure over murder

Tropical Storm Arthur moved further out to sea Tuesday and was expected to dissipate into a depression before dumping heavy rain on Bermuda later in the week.
The first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season sent rain over North Carolina Monday and forecasters warned to expect dangerous surf and rip currents for another day along parts of the U.S. East Coast.
The storm had top sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kmh) Tuesday morning, and was moving east-northeast at 15 mph (24 kmh) on a path that would carry its center over the island of Bermuda on Thursday.
The storm represented another early start for the Atlantic hurricane season. Arthur formed Saturday in waters off Florida, marking the sixth straight year that a named storm has developed before June 1.
By late Monday, storm watches and warnings in effect for parts of the North Carolina coast were cancelled.
North Carolina Emergency Management Director Mike Sprayberry said conditions were stable apart from some minor flooding in ..

Tropical Storm Arthur spins out to sea, will drench Bermuda

Albanian police have arrested 24 people involved in an alleged criminal organization who produced false documents to illegally smuggle people into the United States, Canada and Britain.
A statement Tuesday said a joint operation with the U.S. embassy's Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) arrested two dozen Albanians on Monday and charged them with illegal people smuggling, producing false documents and belonging to a criminal group.
The operation was initiated by the DSS a year ago after a false U.S. passport was seized. The investigation discovered how an international criminal organization facilitated illegal border crossings and produced false documents like ID cards, passports, driving licenses and health insurance cards.
The group used travel and tourism agencies, securing travel tickets, bus transport and accommodation mainly in Italy and Germany for people in Albania, Kosovo or other countries aiming to illegally cross into the U.S., Canada and Britain.
During the last year, 12 ..

Albania arrests 24 in alleged human trafficking ring

A federal appeals court gave the green light Tuesday to New York state's June 23 Democratic presidential primary.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court judge who ruled two weeks ago that the primary must include the contest over the state's objections.
Three appeals judges heard arguments Friday in Manhattan, demonstrating through their remarks that they agreed with withdrawn candidates Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang that the primary should occur.
They issued an order Tuesday morning to say they were upholding the lower court's ruling and said a written opinion would follow.
Elections were already scheduled for June 23 for numerous other races, including for state and Congressional offices.
The Democratic presidential primary had been cancelled on the grounds that the coronavirus posed too big a safety threat, especially since thousands of poll workers would have to be hired and hundreds of thousands of voters might have trouble social distancing.
But U.S. ...

Appeals court OKs June 23 NY Democratic presidential primary

UK-based budget airline easyJet said Tuesday that highly sophisticated hackers accessed the email addresses and travel details of approximately 9 million customers.
It also said that following a forensic investigation, it found that the credit card details of only 2,208 people were accessed and that those affected have already been contacted.
It added that all those customers who have been affected will be contacted in the next few days but that there was no evidence" that the personal information has been misused.
Since we became aware of the incident, it has become clear that owing to COVID-19 there is heightened concern about personal data being used for online scams," said easyJet Chief Executive Officer Johan Lundgren.
Lundgren apologised to those customers affected and said every business must continue to "stay agile to stay ahead of the threat.
The airline, which has grounded its fleet in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, did not reveal when the hack took place. Some ...

EasyJet reveals 'sophisticated' hack of customer details

An influential group of British lawmakers on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government of failing to conduct enough tests for the new coronavirus, saying the lapse helped COVID-19 cut a deadly swath through UK nursing homes.
As official statistics revealed more than 11,000 coronavirus deaths in British nursing homes, the House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee said testing capacity has been inadequate for most of the pandemic so far. In a letter to the prime minister, committee chairman Greg Clark said Britain's limited testing capacity drove strategy, rather than strategy driving capacity.
UK authorities initially sought to trace and test everyone who had been in contact with people infected with the coronavirus. But they abandoned that strategy in mid-March as the number of infections overwhelmed the country's testing resources.
Johnson's Conservative government has faced growing criticism as Britain suffers one of the world's worst coronavirus death ...

UK lawmakers say testing lapses increased nursing home toll

Germany's agreement to share debt with other EU countries to finance an economic recovery plan is being greeted as an overdue sign of unity in the face of the worst downturn the bloc has ever seen and as a potential advance toward deeper integration among its 27 members.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel broke with her country's longstanding opposition to raising money together with other - often poorer - EU countries.
But the proposal made with French President Emmanuel Macron is limited in scale and duration, which could help her sell it to skeptics back home.
It consists of 500 billion euros ($550 billion) in loans and grants to help countries through the recession, and is viewed by some as a step toward stronger EU ties as the 27-country union faces challenges not just from the virus crisis, but from populist forces in member countries Hungary and Poland who want to loosen the bloc's ties.
France, whose president had pushed hard for the fund proposal announced Monday, exulted. It's .

Germany breaks taboo in effort to get EU through pandemic

Walmart became a lifeline to millions of people as the coronavirus spread and its surging profit and sales during the fiscal first quarter topped almost all expectations.
Online sales in the U.S. jumped 74%, fueled by a rush on canned foods, paper towels and other crucial supplies needed as people sheltered in place. Same-store sales rose 10% at U.S. Walmart stores on strong sales of food, health and wellness goods.
Costs soared as well, $900 million in all related to the pandemic.
Cash bonuses issued to all hourly workers reached $755 million and Walmart upped pay by $2 per hour at its warehouses. It rolled out an emergency leave policy and spent money on shields at checkout lines, as well as new signage to control the flow of customers in stores.
Walmart pulled its guidance for the year, citing the chaos of the pandemic. It also pulled the plug on Jet.com, an online startup that it bought for more than $3 billion in 2016 as it sought to ramp up online operations to compete with ...

Walmart becomes a lifeline and online sales surge 74%

The Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam, will reopen next week after the conclusion of a major holiday, following weeks of closure aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus, authorities said Tuesday.
The Islamic endowment overseeing the site under Jordanian custodianship had taken the unprecedented step of closing it to worshippers in March as other major holy sites were shuttered across the Middle East.
The endowment said that in light of the relative decline of the spread of the virus it would reopen the site to worshippers after the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which will begin this weekend and last for three days.
A mechanism and procedures regarding lifting the suspension will be announced later, it added.
The raised esplanade is home to the Al-Aqsa mosque and the iconic golden Dome of the Rock. It is also the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because it was the location of the .

Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque to reopen after Muslim holiday

Racial and economic disparities in the coroanvirus pandemic's impact in New York City present a challenge for an administration that has sought to fight inequality, Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged Tuesday.
There's a lot we're going to do right now but the big question is going forward: how do you create a city where these disparities don't exist? de Blasio said on TV station WPIX.
Data released by the city Monday showed that the coronavirus has hit hardest in low-income neighborhoods outside of Manhattan. The data showed that black and Hispanic New Yorkers were more than twice as likely to be killed by the virus as white people.
De Blasio, a Democrat who first ran for mayor in 2013 vowing to end the Tale of Two Cities, said the city is meeting the coronavirus threat in severely affected communities through beefed-up testing for the virus as well as outreach to make sure people have the information they need to protect themselves and their families.

AP

AP

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