Hannah Gjerde starts her day at her hot-mat yoga class on the front lawn of her parent’s home, right before settling onto the couch for the rest of the day. “Being home makes it hard because my dad will be in the kitchen working, or it’s too crowded in my room to do it,” says Gjerde.   Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many gyms have been deemed non-essential businesses and are not allowed to open. Closing fitness centers has created a sedentary lifestyle for many people.  So more people are moving their fitness routines online.  Gjerde, a Californian, also uses the backyard for her workout space, completing workouts online with an instructor at her usual yoga studio. Gyms and gym-goers alike are finding innovative ways to keep moving while practicing social distancing to thwart the spread of the coronavirus.Photo of Hannah Gjerde working out. (Courtesy of photo/Hannah Gjerde)In a pre-pandemic world, Yo Dinh, who works in investments in Australia, found that the most effective way to get himself to work out was to invest in a personal trainer.  YouTube videos just weren’t enough, he says.  “I didn’t really push myself. You know, it’s that barrier,” he says. That’s when the idea behind his website Avatar PT was born. It started as a private project where he and his personal trainers had a platform to connect and virtually work out together.  “I actually started with one person from the Philippines, and then now I’ve actually gotten a guy from Bulgaria and another guy from Serbia as well,” Dinh says.  From all over the world, they could still connect.  After the coronavirus outbreak, Australia restricted public gatherings of more than two people. The thought occurred that “maybe other people might be interested in working at home as well. And then that’s when I shared it to other people,” he says.  “And now I’ve got my brother and my brother’s friends, my housemates, other people doing it with me as well.” For Dinh, it’s not about the profit.  “It’s free at the moment. I just said it’s free until the end of April to see if anyone’s interested,” says Dinh.  On the other side of the globe, Mark Harrington, the president of the four Healthwork Fitness centers in the Greater Boston area, is taking advantage rather than lamenting COVID closures in the U.S. He says Healthworks corporate team is “launching stuff and iterating hourly,” he says, to help customers adapt to exercising remotely. The fitness centers offer free and paid programs through their Instagram Live.  “I think a lot of people want to try it before they buy it,” he says.  To stay motivated, he said, “the best thing to do is get one of your friends to do it, too. Even though you’re not together, you’re both holding each other accountable to doing it.” Jeanette Thong, also a private trainer based in Singapore, first got into fitness when she started experiencing back pain and weight gain from sitting at a desk all day at her office job.  But since the outbreak, her standards for her workout achievements have decreased.  “Right now, it’s more of maintenance of what I have,” she says. Singapore was one of the first countries to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak and maintains a lockdown lite compared to other countries.  Although restrictions have been easing up in the city-state, she says that Singapore has experienced a “mini lockdown” for a while. “It has been more mentally draining than anything else,” says Thong. She acknowledges that working out from home can be a challenge now, but a sedentary lifestyle should be far from acceptable.  “It’s really important for people to remember to move and try to keep active the best they can. It will also help mentally. It is okay to also not want to do anything, but it’s important to at least try.”  In California, Gjerde continues to do yoga on her front lawn. A high school English teacher in Rancho Cucamonga who has played soccer since she was 4, she says she keeps up with her yoga.  “That’s all I do. I teach and I work out,” she says. Since the quarantine, Gjerde, too, has found it difficult to find the motivation to work out.  “I’m not doing as much as I was, but I’m trying. […] I’m way less likely to stick it out. Usually I’m competing with the girl next to me, in my head,” she says. Now, “there’s no one to hold me accountable.” One of the biggest ways Gjerde manages to complete her workout is to keep in mind her goals.  “When this is over, I do want to look super good when I go to the beach […]. Set your intention, and when you hit the hard spot in class, go back to that intention.” 
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Supported by the United States, Syrian Kurdish groups last week announced the first step toward uniting efforts to run the northeastern part of Syria. Since 2012, the Kurdish-majority region has largely been controlled by the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD). The YPG is the main element within the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF has been a major U.S. partner in the fight against Islamic State (IS) in Syria. In addition to these groups, the Kurdish National Council in Syria (ENKS) is another major bloc that includes several political parties. The ENKS has opposed the PYD and its autonomous administration in northeast Syria. ‘Significant progress’ U.S. officials hope the two sides put their differences aside and focus on improving the local administration in the war-torn country.   “We are here tonight to celebrate the progress that has been made, which is significant,” Ambassador William Roebuck, deputy special envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, told reporters last Wednesday in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasaka.  For months, the U.S. has been mediating negotiations between the two Kurdish sides to obtain agreement on a political framework that will allow them to participate in a joint administration for northeast Syria. Following the announcement, the U.S. Embassy in Syria issued a statement, saying the initial agreement will cover governance, administrative cooperation and protection. “The United States welcomes this as an important step towards greater understanding and practical cooperation, which will benefit the Syrian Kurdish people, as well as Syrians of all components,” the embassy said in a statement last week. The U.S. Embassy in Damascus suspended its operations in 2012 following a Syrian government crackdown on protesters during the early days of the country’s civil war. But the embassy maintains contact with the Syrian public through social media.   Stabilizing NE Syria Nicholas Heras, a Middle East expert at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, says the U.S. wants to align the Syrian Kurdish parties in order to stabilize northeast Syria, as Washington continues its campaign against IS. “A major U.S. goal is to diversify the political actors in northeast Syria and to provide a Turkish-approved Syrian Kurdish party with the opportunity to participate in governance and security in northeast Syria,” he told VOA. “Uniting the Syrian Kurdish factions is a local move with geopolitical implications for U.S. policy on Syria and the U.S.-led effort to execute counter-ISIS operations,” Heras said, using another acronym for Islamic State. Considered close to Turkey, the ENKS has expressed willingness to participate in the local administration established by the PYD. “The success of this agreement depends on how much the U.S. can support it while investing in our region politically,” said Sulaiman Oso, an ENKS leader.  Other Kurdish officials say such unity efforts are important to protect the gains they have made against IS and other militant groups throughout the Syrian civil war. “Turkey and the Syrian regime are trying to damage our gains, but we have been able to create a consensus amongst ourselves, which will prevent these actors from exploiting our divisions,” Mazloum Abdi, general commander of SDF, told VOA.  Turkish objection Heras says the push by the U.S. for Syrian Kurdish unity “could also assuage Turkey’s concerns about a PYD-dominated order in northeast Syria sufficiently to forestall future Turkish military action against the SDF.” Turkey views the YPG and PYD as extensions of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been engaged in a decades long war with Turkish armed forces for greater Kurdish rights. The PKK is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara and Washington. In the past two years, Turkey and its allied Syrian militias have seized several Kurdish towns in northern Syria that were previously held by the YPG. In what appeared to be a response to the recent Syrian Kurdish talks, Turkish officials said that any organizations that work with the PKK will be considered legitimate targets, including the ENKS. “Whatever their names are, those who are with the YPG-PKK are not different in our eyes from the YPG-PKK, and they are legitimate targets,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with CNN Turk television last week. Two days after the Syrian Kurdish unity announcement, the Turkish military launched a campaign against what Turkey calls elements of the PKK militant group in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. Ilhan Tanir, an editor with the Turkish website Ahval News, believes Turkey will focus its efforts on spoiling the unity talks.  “We have already seen that Ankara, both by threatening ENKS and bombing Iraqi Kurdistan, has shown it is unhappy with the talks and will do more to halt such a joint administration,” Tanir told VOA. But Kurdish officials believe a solid partnership between the different factions in Syria would strengthen their political status at the regional level.   “It will ultimately protect our region from threats by other states who accuse the PYD of being a PKK affiliate,” Oso said of the ENKS.   VOA’s Namo Abdulla contributed to this report from Washington. 
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“You just don’t get it,” one young man told me as I stepped over a pile of trash to enter 19-year-old Mohammed’s single room in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. “People die in their homes here all the time.” That was 10 years ago, and the young man, a Somali refugee, was frustrated because I was concerned with a single dying boy while the entire refugee community was barely surviving.  It was before the uprising in Yemen, before the war, before the humanitarian crisis and before the coronavirus pandemic. It was back when things were not as bad. Now, there is almost no help left for refugees, and families say they would rather risk exposure to the coronavirus than starvation. “If my mother stays home, she cannot feed us,” says Aayah Mohammed Osman, a teenage Somali refugee in Sanaa. “But if she goes to work [as a house cleaner], she also may bring home the virus.” Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
Yaser Rashad Abdul-Mosa, an 18-year-old Somali born in Yemen says since the pandemic began, locals have become more hostile to refugees on May 28, 2020 in Sanaa. (VOA/Naseh Shaker)Nowadays, the hostility from some locals toward refugees has intensified, says Yaser Rashad Abdul-Mosa, an 18-year-old Somali who was born in Yemen. One of the first deaths from the virus was a Somali refugee found in a Sanaa hotel. “People started saying that we brought the disease here,” says Abdul-Mosa, appearing close to tears. “They say, ‘Why did you come here?’ ” Before the pandemic, he adds, racism was apparent, but not as hostile. “They called me, ‘Hey, blackie!’ ” he says. “But now they say, ‘Hey, slave! You should wear a mask because you are infected with the virus.’ ”  Poverty When a nearby charity organization discovered Mohammad living alone, unable to stand to go the bathroom, or usually to even sit up, they set up a system. Refugees learning English at the organization were already required to do community service to “pay” for classes.  Feeding, bathing or even checking in on Mohammad would count as service hours. He survived for a couple of weeks with their help. But in 2020, there is no help. Many aid organizations have long since left Yemen and others are attending to one of Yemen’s many other ongoing emergencies. Besides refugees, 3.6 million people are internally displaced from Yemen’s five-year-old war and 80% of the population needs aid.  The country as a whole is often called the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” And for everyone, including refugees, the pandemic has made things much worse.  Ali Mohammed Adam fled the Somali war in 2006. Life in Yemen has never been harder than since the pandemic began, he said on May 28, 2020 in Sanaa. (VOA/Naseh Shaker)“Life has never been harder than since the coronavirus crisis,” says Ali Mohammed Adam, a 32-year-old from Somalia who used to hand wash cars on the streets for a living. Now he has no work. “We need food and basic household items.” Dwindling aid A few weeks after students started checking in on Mohammed, his condition worsened. The head of the charity organization drove him to a hospital hours away and paid for food, treatment and someone to watch him. Even then, many Yemeni hospitals were barren, and if a patient didn’t have someone to go out to buy medicine and food, they would go untreated and hungry. Since then, thousands of hospitals have been destroyed by the war. Now the only major aid organization left serving refugees is the UNHCR and it has been cutting services, like cash assistance and emergency shelters. International funding is scarce, says Beuze, of the UNHCR, as the world’s economy reels from the pandemic. Soon they may have to also lay off local staff and stop field visits for lack of protective gear, he adds.  “[Refugees] are really on the fringe of society,” Beuze says. “Without this support, they are left to resort to negative coping mechanisms.” He means they will eat less, children will drop out of school and some may be forced into prostitution or child weddings. On May 10, 2010, Mohammed died in that hospital after the people hired to watch him left without an explanation. Later that day, I got an email from the organization.  “I’m unsure at this point what was the real cause of his death,” read the note. “It’s disappointing to me that between all of our NGOs, we could not save this one person’s life.” And this was before, when there was help, when things were not as bad.
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Classic rock music, red Make America Great Again hats, and Republican leadership punctuated President Donald Trump’s rally Tuesday in Phoenix, Arizona, for conservative youth.  The rally — the president’s second since the COVID-19 flu outbreak — began with Donald Trump Jr. lauding his father’s “tough” stance on China and taking issue with Black Lives Matter protests.Young People Turned Out to Protest. Now, Will They Vote?  Voters under 30 have historically turned out to vote at much lower rates than older voters, though the 2018 midterm elections saw the highest turnout in a quarter-century among voters ages 18-29 “That’s why it’s so awesome for me to see young people like yourselves in this room here and engaged,” Trump Jr. said. “They are doing what they can to silence you. They are doing what they can to oppress you. They are doing what they can to intimidate you,” Trump Jr. said to the hall of students at the Dream City Church.   “But you don’t have to be. You can go out there and do what’s right, you can go out there and fight for your country,” he said. Tuesday’s event was assembled for members of Students for Trump (S4T) and its parent organization, Turning Point Action. The youth vote is expected to make a major impact on the 2020 election. That voting bloc — a combination of millennials and members of Generation Z — has outgrown the older baby boomer generation in potential votes. Plenty of Signs Surging Youth Vote Will Play Major Role in 2020 US Election  Key issues include college debt, affordable health care, gun violence,  climate change and economy    The crowd was estimated at 3,000 young conservatives who are part of S4T and supporters of the president’s reelection. Broadcast and streamed online, the rally’s only camera shot focused on who was talking on stage.Rep. Matt Gaetz just spoke to a packed house at a “Students For Trump” event in Phoenix. I spy 4 people with masks on from crowd shot. Arizona health officials say ICU beds, ventilators, impatient beds, cases all just reached new daily highs. pic.twitter.com/hERQa1URBy
— Eric Shackelford (@ABC7Shack) FILE – Donald Trump Jr. speaks before President Donald Trump arrives, at Dream City Church in Phoenix, June 23, 2020.There are 47 million 18- to 29-year-olds who are eligible to vote in the 2020 election, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civil Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University in Massachusetts.  Fifteen million of them have turned 18 since the last presidential election, according to CIRCLE.    FILE – President Donald Trump speaks to a group of young Republicans at Dream City Church in Phoenix, June 23, 2020.“You guys keep doing what you’re doing, stay engaged, stay in the fight,” Trump Jr. said near the end of his speech. “Get out there, do it, keep fighting, I promise you we’ll be back in the action again.”  Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk also spoke.  “Now is the time for courage, now is the time for all of our young students out there to fight like we have never fought before,” Kirk said. “Now is time for us to say … that our country is the greatest country to ever exist in the history of the world.”  He introduced Trump as “God Bless the USA” played in the background. As the song ended, the crowd chanted “USA” in a cheer to the president. “I’m thrilled to be in Arizona with thousands of patriotic young Americans who stand up tall for America and refuse to kneel to the radical left,” said Trump.  Trump reminded the young crowd to vote for him in November and to speak up against mail-in ballots.  Jack Bishop, a student from North Carolina State University, took to the podium to express his fears about “conservative censorship,” which he said was “happening all across the country, all the time.”“It’s our duty as conservatives to stand up and to fight for our rights and to fight for our nation and to fight for our guy,” Bishop said. “We’re going to win this election, we’re going to take back the House, we’re going to keep the Senate and we’re going to get four more years of the best presidency of my lifetime.” Those watching the rally online expressed their comments in sidebars and on social media.  “Honored to watch the next generation of American patriots,” tweeted Twitter user @Tiffany_Shedd. “I am awed by your courage, convictions, and love of America. @TrumpStudents #GodBlessAmerica”  Honored to watch the next generation of American patriots. I am awed by your courage, convictions, and love of America. @TrumpStudents#GodBlessAmericapic.twitter.com/LvtzRfaUE5
— Tiffany Shedd (@Tiffany_Shedd) June 24, 2020“Growing up, my idols were either Ronald Reagan, or George H.W. Bush, Teddy Roosevelt, or F.D.R. … as these kind of all embodied the ideas of statesmanship and what I understood a president to act like,” said self-described conservative Preston Brailer in a video for @Republican Voters Against Trump. “They didn’t allow their egos to get in the way of creating a more perfect union,” he said, describing the leaders he admired.  “President Trump goes counter to pretty much everything I just said. … He generally, from what I gather, serves to sow division at every turn in order to galvanize his base. I personally don’t think our country will be at its best, nor do I think it will be allowed to heal and kind of recover from the political discourse and division that we suffer from all too often today.” Young conservative @PrestonBrailer (CA) knows Donald Trump is not fit to be president
“I don’t think our country will be at its best, nor do I think it will be allowed to heal … from the … division that we suffer from … until President Trump is out of office …” pic.twitter.com/drKc2ZETkK
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@RVAT2020) June 24, 2020
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A U.S. Justice Department spokesman said Wednesday U.S. Attorney General William Barr has agreed to testify before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee next month as the panel probes the alleged politicization of the department. The Democratic-led panel has been conducting hearings regarding how Barr and his Justice department have interfered with investigations into possible wrongdoing by U.S. President Donald Trump or issued rulings favorable to the president. House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) speaks during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Policing Practices and Law Enforcement Accountability on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 10, 2020.In his opening remarks, Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler said Barr’s “work at the Department of Justice has nothing to do with correcting injustice. He is the president’s fixer. He has shown us that there is one set of rules for the president’s friends, and another set of rules for the rest of us.” Republicans on the Committee spoke out in defense of Barr. When Barr testifies, one case the committee will no doubt question him about concerns Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.   Last month, Barr issued a decision to drop charges against Flynn, who had been convicted of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador. Earlier Wednesday a U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the justice department’s decision after a judge chose not to immediately act on the decision. Barr was named attorney general last year, replacing Jeff Sessions. 
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The World Health Organization expects that within the week, the 10 millionth case of COVID will have been confirmed.Speaking Wednesday at his regular briefing from Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that in the first month of the pandemic, there were fewer than 10,000 COVID cases reported to his organization, and in the last month, there have been almost 4 million.Latin America is World’s New Coronavirus Epicenter Death toll in region surpasses 100,000  Tedros called the expected 10 million-case milestone a “sobering reminder” that there is an urgent responsibility to do everything possible available to stop the spread of the virus.Tedros also said the WHO supported the decision made this week by the government of Saudi Arabia week to limit the number of pilgrims who can participate in this year’s hajj. He said that while he understood it was not an easy decision to make, it was “another example of the hard choices that all countries must make to put health first.”Saudi Arabia to Hold ‘Very Limited’ Hajj Due to Virus The kingdom’s Ministry of Hajj said only people of various nationalities already residing in the country would be allowed to perform the large pilgrimage, which is set to begin this year at the end of JulyHe said that as some countries start to reopen their societies and economies, questions about how to hold gatherings of large numbers of people safely have become increasingly important.”
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Despite churches in Nigeria emerging from lockdown to once again hold weddings, they’re trying to cut down on the number of guests. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has led many couples to get married online through video conferencing platforms bug Nigeria’s large wedding industry, which is geared towards entertaining large numbers of guests, is struggling to adjust to the new reality. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.Camera: Emeka Gibson 
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U.S. President Donald Trump hosts Polish President Andrzej Duda at the White House Wednesday, as Duda finds himself locked in a surprisingly tight race for reelection back home.Polish voters will decide in four days whether the right-wing president will serve a second term in office.Duda, a close ally of Trump, reportedly hopes that Trump will announce more U.S. military assistance for Poland, which has expressed a need for more military support since Russia’s 2014 annexation of nearby Crimea.The hastily arranged meeting comes after Trump’s sudden announcement earlier this month to cut U.S. troops in Germany from 34,500 to 25,000, triggering speculation that Trump could decide to reassign some of them to Poland.Polish media reports say the U.S. could also provide fighter jets and military cargo planes.A senior U.S. official said it would be premature to discuss troop deployment in Europe.Michal Baranowski, the director of the German Marshall Fund, a Washington-based non-partisan public policy think tank, said Duda hopes his meeting with Trump will increase his prospects of reelection.“President Duda will have an opportunity to look very presidential and that’s, I think a big part of this,” he said.Baranowski added that the meeting, Trump’s first with a foreign leader since the coronavirus pandemic was declared in March, could also bolster support for Trump in Polish American communities in swing states before the U.S. presidential election in November.While Duda is currently the frontrunner in the Polish election, Rafal Trzaskowski, a centrist opposition candidate, has been catching up in the polls.Commentator Boguslaw Chrabota wrote in the Rzeczpospolita daily newspaper that Duda was “desperately looking for a triumphant ending” to his campaign.But Chrabota also said the meeting with Trump carried “considerable risk” if he promises to use large amounts of taxpayers’ money to pay for U.S. military hardware.Poland has agreed in recent years to buy fighter jets, rocket launchers and missiles from the U.S. and has closely aligned itself with Trump. 
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U.S. and Russian negotiators signaled progress Tuesday in talks on a possible replacement to a nuclear arms reduction treaty due to expire next February. But there are significant hurdles ahead — including China’s opposition to being included in the talks.At issue is the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, restricting the number of deployed nuclear warheads held by the U.S. and Russia, the world’s two biggest nuclear powers.  U.S. negotiator Marshall Billingslea says working group discussions may take place in late July or early August, paving the way for a possible second round of talks in Vienna.  “We did indeed hold productive talks with Russia. Indeed, the talks were so productive that we found enough common ground to warrant the establishment of several technical working groups to dive further into the details of what a future trilateral arms control agreement should look like,” Billingslea said.But there are major sticking points moving forward. Washington wants any new deal to subject China to restrictions — and include all nuclear weapons, not just strategic weapons.  Beijing, with an estimated fraction of the U.S. and Russian arsenal, has repeatedly refused to join the talks. The differences between Washington and Beijing were highlighted this week in clashing Twitter postings and official comments by the two sides.  For its part, Russia says other nuclear powers, including France and Britain, should join future talks, but on a voluntary basis.  Heading the Russian delegation, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also noted progress in Vienna, according to Russia’s TASS news agency, but also that “substantial differences” remained.  The discussions in the Austrian capital are the first between Moscow and Washington on their nuclear arsenals after more than a year’s break.  President Donald Trump has withdrawn from several U.S. treaties with Russia, including those on overflights and intermediate-range nuclear forces.  The New START treaty can be extended another five years, if both sides agree. Experts say that could pave the way for a wider-ranging and more stringent deal. Without the treaty, Washington and Moscow could be left without any significant limits on their nuclear weapons for the first time in decades.  
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