Russian prosecutors on Wednesday asked for a sentence of nearly 10 years in a penal colony for a former US marine accused of attacking police officers.
Trevor Reed, a 28-year-old student and former Marine from Texas, allegedly attacked police while drunk after attending a party last year.
He is accused of grabbing one policeman while being driven to a police station and elbowing another.
A spokeswoman for Moscow's Golovinsky district court told AFP that prosecutors asked the judge to impose a sentence of 9 years and 8 months, close to the maximum possible sentence of 10 years.
The verdict will be announced Thursday.
Reed has been held in a Moscow prison in pre-trial detention since August 2019. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge, saying he remembers nothing of the incident.
His defense team has pointed to discrepancies in the evidence given by the police officers.
The case has attracted attention owing to the lengthy sentence faced by a US citizen and speculation in Russian and US media that Reed could become part of a prisoner swap.
In June, Russia convicted US citizen Paul Whelan, also an ex-Marine, to 16 years in a penal colony on an espionage charge, also prompting speculation that he could participate in a prisoner swap.
Whelan's brother David said in a statement on Wednesday that "our family is not privy to government discussions, if there are any, about Paul's case".
Twitter on Wednesday permanently suspended the account of a high-profile British rapper and apologised for its initially slow response to his series of anti-Semitic messages posted last week.
The social media giant, along with photo-sharing site Instagram, on Friday banned grime artist Wiley from their platforms for seven days after he send the messages earlier that day.
But some of the messages remained visible for hours, drawing criticism in Britain and prompting politicians, celebrities and other high-profile figures to launch a 48-hour Twitter boycott from Monday.
"Upon further investigation, our teams have permanently suspended the account in question for repeated violations of our hateful conduct policy," Twitter said in a statement on Wednesday.
"Let us be clear: hateful conduct has absolutely no place on our service and we strongly condemn anti-Semitism.
"We are sorry we did not move faster and are continuing to assess the situation internally."
Facebook and Instagram said on Tuesday they were banning Wiley, the stage name of Richard Cowie, who is considered a pioneer of the UK's popular grime music scene.
British police have also said they are investigating his statements on social media accounts.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism said it welcomed the news that Twitter had "finally listened", but branded the action "too little, too late".
"It is at least a start for this deeply irresponsible social network," the group added.
Weekends just aren’t what they used to be, as the COVID-19 pandemic blurs the line between work weeks and leisure time. But the two-day weekend that many around the world consider to be a normal part of life is actually a very recent social practice with some cultural variations.
In the Islamic world, for example, the “weekend” usually means Friday and Saturday. When I moved to Egypt in 2004 to join the faculty at American University in Cairo, it took some time to get used to the fact that the work week began on Sunday, not Monday.
Capitalist roots
In the U.S. and the U.K., the five-day work week is the result of both labor unions that demanded a more humane and safe work week and religious practices that required at least one day of rest.
The weekend emerged in the U.S. in the early 20th century as a means of accommodating the religious practices of Jewish industrial workers in New England. They were granted Saturday off from work to practice the Shabbat, or a day of complete rest, thus reducing the work week to six days.
In the 1920s and 1930s, labor unions representing industrial workers agitated for further reducing the work week to 40 hours, eventually gaining victory in 1940 with the passage of amendments to the 1938 Fair Standards Labor Act. The two-day weekend is an outcome of that effort.
After World War II the global economy shifted away from manufacturing to putting greater emphasis on consumption and leisure. Automobiles, family vacations, department stores and movie theaters emerged as important drivers of economic growth.
In this context, the idea of the weekend became more significant, not just as a rest from work, but as a time to consume more.
Religious beliefs
With the creation of the two-day weekend in 1940 on Saturday and Sunday, both Christian and Jewish days of worship were acknowledged.
The Jewish Shabbat, or Sabbath, for example, commences on Friday evening and goes through Saturday evening. Besides worship, on this day, some Jews observe a strict day of nonwork including not cooking or turning on any power switches. Similarly, Christians mark Sunday as a day of worship and rest.
I am a scholar who studies the impacts of modernity on everyday Muslim lives. In Islam, as I know, no day of rest is acknowledged; the idea came with modernity. The 12th-century Islamic scholar and jurist al-Ghazali issued religious ruling that Jewish workers and subjects had the right to follow the Shabbat and be released from work. But never was it expected that Muslims also take a special day of rest.
In the Quran, the Christian and Judaic idea that Allah “created the heavens and the earth and all between them in six days” is affirmed. But it goes on to assert that “nor did any sense of weariness touch us.”
An Islamic weekend
The idea of the weekend as a period of rest from work was introduced across the Muslim world mostly through European colonial rule in the second half of the 20th century. The United Nations’ International Labor Organization also played a key role in getting countries to accept this change.
However, in Islamic practice, Friday is a special day of worship, not Saturday or Sunday. On this day, Muslims are called to pray in a congregation during the midday prayer.
So, in much of the Muslim world, the modern weekend is adapted to allow Friday as a day off from work to accommodate the congregational prayer.
Rather than just a special midday prayer, for most of the Muslim world the entire Friday takes on new significance, making it more akin to the Christian and Jewish ideas of a day of rest and a full day of religious celebration.
In Cairo, for example, the Friday sermon, “khutba,” along with recitations from the Quran are blared from electronic speakers across the soundscape of the city starting in midmorning. Many stores and bazaars are closed during the day, opening only in the evening, much like in Jewish and Christian communities and countries.
For many Muslims around the world, Friday is the beginning of a weekend, where they combine piety, a break from work and family time, along with leisure.
One in five patients hospitalized in Germany over the coronavirus succumbed to the disease, with the fatality rate rising to 53 percent for those who received ventilation, a study showed Wednesday.
Data of 10,000 patients admitted to 930 German hospitals between February 26 and April 19 were analyzed by the German Interdisciplinary Association of Critical Care and Emergency Medicine, the Technical University of Berlin and AOK health insurance group's research arm WIdO.
Hospitalized male patients had a higher mortality rate than women, with 25 percent compared to 19 percent.
Older patients were also significantly more vulnerable, as 27 percent of patients in their 70s died while 38 percent of those above 80 years old failed to pull through.
"These high mortality rates clearly show that a relatively high number of patients with a very serious course of disease were treated in hospitals," said Juergen Klauber, director of WIdO.
"Such serious course of diseases mainly affect older people and people whose health is already compromised, but also occur in younger patients," he warned, urging the population to take necessary precautions to prevent new infections.
Of the 10,021 patients, 1,727 were given mechanical ventilation. While almost twice as many who received ventilation were men, the mortality rates were similar gender-wise, the study said.
Patients were staying in hospitals for an average of 14 days, with those not on ventilation hospitalized for an average of 12 days while the duration for those who needed help breathing rose to 25 days.
Reinhard Busse, professor of healthcare management at TU Berlin, noted that on average, 240 days of ventilation would be required for every 100 hospitalized patients.
"These are important numbers to prepare for a second wave of the pandemic. However, we do not anticipate any problems with normal hospital beds, even with high infection rates," he added.
Thanks to its decentralized healthcare system, Germany has been able to significantly ramp up its capacity to treat COVID-19 patients, avoiding scenes like in Italy where some hospitals were overwhelmed by the sudden huge caseload.
However, health experts have urged against complacency, with the head of the RKI disease control agency, Lothar Wieler, repeatedly urging the population to keep to hygiene rules like social distancing or mask wearing.
With the summer holiday season in full swing, politicians are also watching anxiously at infection numbers which have ticked up in recent weeks.
As of Wednesday, Germany has recorded 206,926 cases of infections including 9,128 deaths.
A Hiroshima court issued a rare ruling Wednesday expanding the designation of atomic bomb survivors to include more people hit by radioactive "black rain", 75 years after the US nuclear attack on Japan at the end of World War II.
The Hiroshima District Court said all 84 plaintiffs, aged from their 70s through 90s, should be granted medical benefits given to the victims of the attack, known locally as "hibakusha".
After the war, the central government designated certain areas as having been significantly impacted by the bombing, and offered free medical care to those who were there at the time.
The plaintiffs were in areas outside that zone but that were showered in radioactive "black rain" following the August 6, 1945 attack, and argued that they suffered health effects similar to those inside the government-designated areas.
"There is no irrationality in the residents' statements that they were soaked in the black rain," presiding judge Yoshiyuki Takashima told the court, according to broadcaster NHK.
"Medical documents show that the residents are experiencing illnesses that are believed to have links with the atomic bomb, and that fulfil legal conditions required of hibakusha," he said.
Japan offers generous healthcare for the elderly. Those who are 75 or older pay 10 percent of costs, but the case also carried symbolic value for those who have argued for years that they too suffered in the horrific attack.
After the verdict was announced, a man emerged from the courthouse and unfurled a banner reading "complete victory" as plaintiffs and their supporters erupted in cheers.
As of March, the central government recognized 136,682 people as hibakusha, including those who lived in Nagasaki, which was the target of the second and final atomic raid on August 9, 1945.
Around 140,000 people were killed in the Hiroshima bombing and its aftermath, and 74,000 perished in the Nagasaki attack. Japan will hold ceremonies marking the 75th anniversary of the two bombings next week.
Turkey's parliament passed a law regulating social media on Wednesday, that critics said will increase censorship and help authorities silence dissent.
President Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AK Party, which has a majority with an allied nationalist party, had backed the bill. The assembly began debating the new legislation on Tuesday, and its passage was announced by parliament on Twitter.
The law requires foreign social media sites to appoint Turkish-based representatives to address authorities' concerns over content and includes deadlines for removal of material they take exception to.
Companies could face fines, the blocking of advertisements or have bandwidth slashed by up to 90%, essentially blocking access, under the new regulations.
As a majority of Turkey's mainstream media has come under government control over the past decade, Turks have taken to social media and smaller online news outlets for critical voices and independent news.
Turks are already heavily policed on social media and many have been charged with insulting Erdogan or his ministers, or criticism related to foreign military incursions and the handling of the novel coronavirus.
Ahead of the bill's passage, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said the draft law "would give the state powerful tools for asserting even more control over the media landscape".
Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said the bill would not lead to censorship but would establish commercial and legal ties with the social media platforms.
Turkey was second globally in Twitter-related court orders in the first six months of 2019, according to the company, and it had the highest number of other legal demands from Twitter.
Erdogan has repeatedly criticized social media and said a rise of "immoral acts" online in recent years was due to lack of regulations.
France's coronavirus crisis has sparked a fierce battle in its hallowed champagne industry over this season's harvest, with producers and growers at loggerheads over how much bubbly should be put into bottles.
The main production houses are demanding a sharp reduction in harvest yields as sales plunge amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Growers say this would decimate their revenues.
Traditionally, both sides negotiate how many grapes are harvested by the hundreds of champagne growers each year, many of whom sell to merchants including big-name brands like Veuve Clicquot or Pommery.
The goal is to limit the risks from poor harvests and drastic price swings that could put many players out of business.
But merchants say they are already loaded with stocks and with revenues hit hard by the crisis they cannot afford to produce more bottles than they can sell.
"The growers want 8,500 kilogrammes per hectare [about 7,600 pounds per acre] and the houses want just 6,000 to 7,000 kilos," said Bernard Beaulieu, a grower in Mutigny, a village amid rolling vineyards south of Reims, the capital of France's Champagne region.
With the price per kilo expected to remain relatively strong this year at roughly 6.50 euros, the stakes are high.
"Not having a deal with harvests just a month away, this hasn't happened since after World War II," Beaulieu said.
The Union des Maisons de Champagne (UMC) trade body, however, expects to sell 100 million fewer bottles this year, an unheard-of hit that will slash overall sales to 3.3 billion euros ($3.9 billion) -- down 34 percent from 2019.
And they say over one billion bottles are currently waiting in champagne cellars, representing several years of potential sales.
The UMC's director general, David Chatillon, told AFP he would not comment on the dispute before an August 18 meeting of the Champagne Committee, which groups both growers and merchants.
- 'Roll of the dice' -
Growers are especially furious because this year's harvest, to begin on August 20, is set to be "exceptionally good, with vines able to yield up to 16,000 kilos per hectare", Beaulieu said.
Maxime Toubart, head of the SGV grower's association, accused merchants of putting livelihoods at risk by trying to take advantage of a crisis to reduce storage costs.
"Growers are demanding a yield level that covers 2020 shipments while ensuring survival for vineyards," Toubart said.
The situation for growers is all the more alarming, he said, since the SGV has not obtained additional payroll tax exemptions from the government to weather the coronavirus slump.
For Yves Couvreur of the FRVIC federation of independent growers, which groups some 400 vineyards that also produce their own champagne, "9,000 kilos per hectare is the limit, we can't go any lower than that".
To cope with a crisis that could last "two or three years," he is pushing for a suspension of uniform harvest yields so that the different players could adapt as they see fit.
"The break-even point isn't the same for people who sell their grapes, and those who make a living off of their brands," he said.
Couvreur also wants more leverage against merchants by allowing growers to let their wines mature in cellars longer, up to 18 or even 24 months instead of 15 currently.
"Any proposal that prevents a flooding of the market is good," he said.
For now, if no deal is reached on yields, the decision will be left with France's National Institute of Origin and Quality (INAO), which governs the country's wine appellations.
"And if that happens, it's a roll of the dice for both sides," Beaulieu warned.
Mecca (Saudi Arabia) (AFP) - Mask-clad Muslim pilgrims on Wednesday began the annual hajj, dramatically downsized this year as the Saudi hosts strive to prevent a coronavirus outbreak during the five-day pilgrimage.The hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam and a must for able-bodied Muslims at least once in their lifetime, is usually one of the world's largest religious gatherings.But this year only up to 10,000 people already residing in the kingdom will participate in the ritual, a tiny fraction of the 2.5 million pilgrims from around the world that attended last year.Pilgrims walked into M...
Beijing (AFP) - China's first Mars probe has beamed back a photo of the Earth and the Moon as it heads toward its destination, the country's space agency said Tuesday.The image, which shows the two celestial bodies as small crescents in the empty darkness of space, was taken 1.2 million kilometres (746,000 miles) away from Earth three days after the Tianwen-1 mission was launched on Thursday, the China National Space Administration said.China joined the United States and United Arab Emirates this month in launching a mission to Mars, taking advantage of a period when Mars and Earth are favoura...
On Tuesday, The New York Timesreported that Russia used a trio of English-language sites to spread false information about the coronavirus pandemic.
"Russian military intelligence, known as the G.R.U., has used its ties with a Russian government information center, InfoRos, and other websites to push out disinformation and propaganda about the pandemic, such as amplifying false Chinese arguments that the virus was created by the United States military and articles that said Russia’s medical assistance could bring a new détente with Washington," reported Julian Barnes.
"Many of the articles created by Russian intelligence were published on InfoRos, a site controlled by the Russian government, and OneWorld.Press, a nominally independent site that U.S. officials said had ties to the G.R.U. American officials said other sites, such as GlobalResearch.ca, regularly amplify G.R.U. propaganda, but officials have not tied it directly to Russian intelligence," continued the report. "U.S. intelligence reports have identified two Russians, Denis V. Tyurin and Aleksandr G. Starunskiy, with ties to the G.R.U. and who make sure the messaging and disinformation crafted by the intelligence officials are pushed by InfoRos and on InfoBrics.org and OneWorld.Press."
"OneWorld published articles about how the pandemic was an experiment in manipulating the world," said the report. "InfoRos published an article, also published by Tass news agency, that said the United States was using the pandemic to impose its view of the world, according to American officials. InfoBrics.org published reports about Beijing’s contention that the coronavirus was originally an American biological weapon."
The U.S. media is struggling to contain misinformation about coronavirus, including from Trump himself, who has repeatedly spread falsehoods about the efficacy of a discredited COVID-19 protocol using the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine.
Several top musicians, including Mick Jagger and Sheryl Crow, have signed a letter demanding that politicians get their consent before playing their songs at campaign rallies.
The soundtrack to political events was a hot topic during the 2016 election and is again this year, with several stars objecting to President Donald Trump playing their songs without permission.
Michael Stipe of REM, Regina Spektor and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler were among others to put their name on the letter, which was written in partnership with the Artist Rights Alliance, Rolling Stone magazine reported.
"No artist should be forced to compromise their values or be associated with politicians they don't respect or support," the Artist Rights Alliance tweeted on Tuesday.
"To defend free speech and political expression, we're calling on campaigns to get permission before using music at political events," it added.
Last month, British rock legends the Rolling Stones threatened legal action against Trump for his use of their classic "You Can't Always Get What You Want" at campaign rallies.
The same month, the family of rock musician Tom Petty issued a cease and desist letter over Trump's use of "I Won't Back Down" at a rally in Tulsa on June 20.
Queen complained when Trump walked on stage to their anthem "We Are The Champions" during a Republican Party event in Cleveland, Ohio in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
Pharrell Williams, Rihanna, Aerosmith, Adele, Neil Young and the estate of singer Prince all have also hit out after Trump used their songs.
Other signatories of the letter revealed Tuesday include Lionel Ritchie, Elvis Costello, and bands Blondie, Green Day and Pearl Jam, Rolling Stone said.
A researcher claimed Tuesday to have discovered the exact spot where Vincent Van Gogh painted his last canvas before his mysterious death from a gunshot wound.
The tortured Dutch artist had been working on "Tree Roots", a jumble of brightly-coloured tree trunks, roots and stumps near Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris, on a hot July day in 1890 when he staggered back wounded to the village inn.
Wouter van der Veen, of the Van Gogh Institute, which looks after the artist's room at the Auberge Ravoux where he spent his final 70 days, said most of the tangle of roots is still there, a stone's throw from the inn.
Wouter van der Veen, of the Van Gogh Institute, next to the alleged spot where Vincent Van Gogh painted his last canvas in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.AFP - FRANCOIS GUILLOT
Experts at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam have backed the finding, saying it was "an interpretation, but it looks like indeed it is true."
The museum's director Emilie Gordenker and the great grandson of Van Gogh's younger brother Theo travelled to the village Tuesday to unveil a plaque at the spot.
Both Vincent and Theo, who had supported the painter for much of his life and outlived him by just six months, are buried next to each other in the village cemetery.
Van der Veen told AFP that he made the breakthrough from a postcard of the village from the turn of the 20th century, which shows an embankment with the trees on the main road through the hamlet, 30 kilometres (18 miles) north of Paris.
He was going through some documents during the coronavirus lockdown when "my eye was caught by a detail from the postcard".
'Shot by accident'
He compared it with the painting and found "that the trunks and roots corresponded.
"Discovering the place where Van Gogh painted his last and most mysterious work is a waking dream which I am still trying to comprehend," the researcher added.
Teio Meedendorp, of the Van Gogh Museum, told AFP that Van Gogh would have often passed the spot "going out to the fields behind the chateau of Auvers where he painted in the last week of his life."
Because of the way the light falls in the painting, Van der Veen said Van Gogh was probably still working on it late in the afternoon, "about 5:00 pm or 6:00 pm".
This, he argued, could help disprove the controversial theory that Van Gogh had not killed himself but had got drunk and fought with two local boys who shot him by accident.
The theory was first floated in a biography of the painter by the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith nine years ago, and featured in the 2018 movie "At Eternity's Gate" starring Willem Dafoe.
Its director, the American painter Julian Schnabel, told AFP when the film was released that Van Gogh was probably murdered.
He insisted that a man who had painted 75 canvases in almost as many days at Auvers-sur-Oise was unlikely to be suicidal.
Schnabel also claimed that "the painting material he had that day was never found.
"It is strange to bury your shit if you are committing suicide," he added.
'Lousy' murder theories
But Van der Veen dismissed "these lousy theories", insisting that for him the painting was Van Gogh's final "testament, a farewell letter... Suicide had been an option for him for a year".
Van Gogh had been in an asylum near Arles and released just three months earlier.
"The thicket of roots was a symbol of the struggles of life. We cut down the tree and from their stumps new shoots appear.
"It makes sense, the theme of life and death, and eliminates all these lousy theories which do little for his memory," Van der Veen said.
The revolver with which Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest sold for 162,500 euros ($182,000) at a Paris auction last year.
Discovered in a field near the village, it was billed as "the most famous weapon in the history of art".
The rusty 7mm Lefaucheux had already been exhibited at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
While the Van Gogh Institute said the link with painter could not be proven conclusively, the bullet extracted from his stomach was the same calibre as the one used for the Lefaucheux revolver.
The Virgin Galactic spaceship that will someday carry very moneyed tourists boasts windows and cameras galore for easy selfies with planet Earth.
The company, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, provided a virtual tour Tuesday of the inside of the ship that will transport people willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a brief taste of being at the edge of space.
Besides all the windows and cameras, the craft will have a mirror in the back of the cabin so people can admire themselves.
There is no firm date for the first commercial flight and the company has repeatedly pushed it back, but executives said recently it is a question of months and not years away.
Several test flights must still be made before Branson himself steps aboard.
The inside of the cabin, which will have seats for six passengers and a two-member crew, will feature 12 windows and 16 cameras. It is designed to give the best possible view of our planet.
An AFP reporter made a remote tour of the spacecraft with a virtual reality headset provided by the company. Each seat is close to a large oval-shaped porthole, and a camera is attached to each window in such a way that passengers can be photographed with Earth behind them, with no need to take a selfie of their own.
The travelers can unbuckle their seatbelts and float. Portholes in the ceiling will give them a spectacular view of the blue planet standing out against a jet black sky.
So far, 600 people who have paid up to $250,000 -- Virgin Galactic calls them "future astronauts" -- have been waiting for years to take their seat on SpaceShipTwo.
Its development has been delayed by a devastating crash of the first one in 2014 due to a pilot error.
The spacecraft will be taken up by a special plane and released in high altitude. Seconds later, the spaceship -- part plane, part rocket -- will ignite its engine and blast upward with an acceleration of 3.5 g, meaning three and a half times that of Earth's gravitational force.
It will then cut off the engine, which will create a feeling of weightlessness for a few minutes as the spacecraft reaches its highest point, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) above the planet, and then begin its descent like a cannonball.
It will glide to landing at a place called Spaceport America, built in the New Mexico desert.
As for fares to be paid by new customers, "we may see an increase for a bit," chief space officer George Whitesides told a virtual news conference Tuesday.
