Turkey’s decision to revert the historic landmark, Hagia Sophia, to a mosque has sparked global outrage. But perhaps more than anywhere else, it has touched a nerve in Greece. The government in Athens is trying to mobilize international support for sanctions to be imposed against Turkey.The Greek government has billed the move to turn Hagia Sophia a mosque again a provocation and a grave historic mistake. Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said leading diplomats are scrambling to block Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s decision and that the coming week will be pivotal in that pursuit.Dendias said it’s becoming increasingly clear that Erdogan is bent on reviving the Ottoman era, asserting himself and Turkey as the kingmaker of the region, and defying both international law and codes of conduct.He said Greek diplomats would be teaming up in a round of crisis talks in the next few days, to chart out a course of action on the recasting of Hagia Sophia.An architectural masterpiece, the massive 1,500-year-old structure was the seat of Eastern Christianity for a thousand years before Ottoman Turks conquered its host city, then known as Constantinople.The conquest marks one of the darkest moments of Greek history, leading to the persecution of thousands of Christian Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks. Hagia Sophia was converted to a mosque and many of its stunning religious mosaics were removed or painted over.Helene Ahrweiler, a Greek and world authority on Byzantine history said history is repeating itself.Erdogan’s decision, she said, marks a second fall of the Byzantine empire. Ahrweiler said the move is such an affront to Christianity that she would not be shocked to learn that the marvelous mosaics left on the temple’s walls have started shedding tears over it.From Pope Francis in the Vatican to Patriarch Kirill in Russia, to the White House, to the Kremlin, the move has sparked a huge outcry.But Greece is going a step further, trying to rally international support for sanctions against Erdogan and his government.Constantinos Filis, an expert in international relations, said it’s unlikely Athens will find the backing it wants from its U.S. and EU allies.He said it’s a Turkish domestic decision. And while Greeks may feel offended by it, he said, Athens cannot take any form of unilateral action — it needs a bloc of allies by its side.Fillis said it’s questionable whether the European Union or U.S. President Donald Trump would be willing to go to bat for Greece on this issue and risk a rift with Turkey’s leader.In recent days, though, leading European leaders have started to consider Greece’s call for sanctions, as Erdogan announced plans to proceed with controversial energy drilling in the eastern Mediterranean.Turkey said it may start the drilling in the next few days, just before it opens Hagia Sophia for public prayers.Greek government sources told VOA that Germany is trying to defuse the growing tensions by trying to bring Greek and Turkish representatives to the negotiating table.But the stakes remain high, and Greece isn’t taking any chances. Foreign Minister Dendias said the Greek military is already on high alert, fearing even a spark of conflict from Turkey.Greece is ready to defend its rights and sovereignty to the full, he said, adding that it’s not a matter for negotiation.  
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A fire broke out at the cathedral of Saint Pierre and Saint Paul in the city of Nantes in Western France early Saturday morning.About 100 firefighters from Loire-Atlantique were called to the scene, authorities said.The head of the fire department said the fire was centered on the main organ of the cathedral, which was destroyed.  The platform on which the organ sits was said to be unstable and in danger of collapse.The cause of Saturday’s fire is yet unknown.This is not the first time that Nantes’ Gothic cathedral, built between the 15th and 19th centuries, has been damaged by fire. On January 28, 1972, the roof of the cathedral was severely damaged.  That incident followed work being done by a roofer.The cathedral was reopened to worship in May 1985, after more than 13 years of work. 
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Argentine President Alberto Fernández announced Friday that COVID-19 lockdown restrictions will be gradually lift starting Saturday.Fernández spoke at an official event, accompanied by Axel Kicillof, governor of Buenos Aires province and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, mayor of Buenos Aires.”Between July 18 and August 2 we will be trying to return to normal life in this new world, in this different world that requires different care and we will do it gradually,” he said.Fernández warned, however, that the country had not yet won the battle against the coronavirus pandemic that has so far infected more than 110,000 people in Argentina and killed about 2,100.Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta said that the situation in the Argentine capital was encouraging, adding that in the last 25 days the average number of infections remained stable between 900 and 1,000 per day.”We are going to enable activities progressively,” he said. “In terms of work, we are going to reopen shops gradually starting with neighborhood business. We will also open some personal services such as hairdressing salons and some professional activities such as lawyers.”Argentina’s COVID-19 lockdown began on March 20 and has been one of the longest in the region.Lifting the restrictions consists of a six-stage plan, the first of which will cover the next two weeks.Meanwhile, schools remain closed and public transportation will continue to be available to essential workers in the food, safety, and health sectors.
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The White House will not allow any Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials, including Director Robert Redfield, to testify before a House Education and Labor Committee hearing next week on reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic.Bobby Scott, the Democratic chairman of the House committee, said in a statement, “It is alarming that the Trump administration is preventing the CDC from appearing before the Committee at a time when its expertise and guidance is so critical to the health and safety of students, parents and educators.”A White House spokesman said, “Dr. Redfield has testified on the Hill at least four times over the last three months. We need our doctors focused on the pandemic response.”President Donald Trump has said he wants schools to open with fill time in-classroom learning and has threatened to withhold federal funding from municipalities that do not do so.The president, however, has received pushback on that goal from teachers unions, parents and politicians concerned about the safety of opening schools during a coronavirus pandemic.
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A U.S. federal district court has ruled that California’s coordination with Canada’s Quebec province in a cap and trade carbon emissions market is constitutional, a blow to the Trump administration made public in a filing late on Friday. In October, the Trump administration sued California for entering a climate agreement with Quebec, saying the state had veered out of its lane in linking with a market in another country and had no right to conduct foreign policy. The decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California this week said the Trump administration had “failed to identify a clear and express foreign policy that directly conflicts with California’s cap-and-trade program.” President Donald Trump, a Republican, has pursued a policy of maximizing fossil fuel output while slashing environmental regulations. He intends to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change. California, the most populous U.S. state and one of the 10 largest economies in the world, has long positioned itself as a leader on taking action against climate change. It agreed with Quebec in 2013 to link markets that aim to cut emissions of gases blamed for warming the planet. The Trump administration has suffered several major losses in the courts on environmental issues and energy pipelines. This week a federal judge in California blocked the administration’s plan to roll back a rule that would slash methane emissions from oil and gas operations on federal lands. The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the ruling on California’s carbon emissions market. Environmentalists cheered the decision. “The federal government should be doing everything in its power to fight climate change, not fighting the states that are leading the way,” said David Pettit, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council   
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Nearly a third of more than 40 large companies seeking U.S. bankruptcy protection during the coronavirus pandemic awarded bonuses to executives within a month of filing their cases, according to a Reuters analysis of securities filings and court records.Under a 2005 bankruptcy law, companies are banned, with few exceptions, from paying executives retention bonuses while in bankruptcy. But the firms seized on a loophole by granting payouts before filing.Six of the 14 companies that approved bonuses within a month of their filings cited business challenges executives faced during the pandemic in justifying the compensation.Even more firms paid bonuses in the half-year period before their bankruptcies. Thirty-two of the 45 companies Reuters examined approved or paid bonuses within six months of filing. Nearly half authorized payouts within two months.Eight companies, including J.C. Penney Co. Inc. and Hertz Global Holdings Inc., approved bonuses as little as five days before seeking bankruptcy protection. Hi-Crush Inc., a supplier of sand for oil-and-gas fracking, paid executive bonuses two days before its July 12 filing.$10 million in payoutsJ.C. Penney — forced to temporarily close its 846 department stores and furlough about 78,000 of its 85,000 employees as the pandemic spread — approved nearly $10 million in payouts just before its May 15 filing. On Wednesday, the company said it would permanently close 152 stores and lay off 1,000 employees.The company declined to comment for this story but said in an earlier statement that the bonuses aimed to retain a “talented management team” that had made progress on a turnaround before the pandemic.The other companies declined to comment or did not respond. In filings, many said economic turmoil had rendered traditional compensation plans obsolete or that executives getting bonuses had forfeited other compensation.Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group in March temporarily closed all of its 67 stores and in April furloughed more than 11,000 employees. The company paid $4 million in bonuses to Chairman and Chief Executive Geoffroy van Raemdonck in February and more than $4 million to other executives in the weeks before its May 7 bankruptcy filing, court records show.FILE – Workers install a sign for the Neiman Marcus department store at the Hudson Yards development in New York, March 8, 2019.Neiman Marcus drew scrutiny this week on a plan it proposed after filing for bankruptcy to pay additional bonuses to executives. The company declined to comment.Hertz — which recently terminated more than 14,000 workers — paid senior executives bonuses of $1.5 million days before its May 22 bankruptcy, in part to recognize the uncertainty they faced from the pandemic’s impact on travel, the company said in a filing.Whiting Petroleum Corp. bestowed $14.6 million in extra compensation to executives days before its April 1 bankruptcy. Shale pioneer Chesapeake Energy Corp. awarded $25 million to executives and lower-level employees in May, about eight weeks before filing for bankruptcy. Both cited fallout from the pandemic and a Saudi-Russian oil price war, which they said rendered their incentive plans ineffective.ObjectionsReuters reviewed financial disclosures and court records from 45 companies that filed for bankruptcy between March 11, the day the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and July 15. Using a database provided by BankruptcyData, a division of New Generation Research Inc., Reuters reviewed companies with publicly traded stock or debt and more than $50 million in liabilities.Such bonuses have long spurred objections that companies are enriching executives while cutting jobs, stiffing creditors and wiping out investors. In March, creditors sued former Toys ‘R’ Us executives and directors, accusing them of misdeeds that included paying management bonuses days before its 2017 bankruptcy. The retailer liquidated in 2018, terminating more than 31,000 people.FILE – A child grabs a “Star Wars” toy at the Toys “R” Us Times Square store in the Manhattan borough of New York, Nov. 26, 2015.A lawyer for the executives and directors said the bonuses were justified, given the extra work and stress on management, and that Toys ‘R’ Us had hoped to remain in business after restructuring.In June, congressional Democrats responded to the pandemic-induced wave of bankruptcies by introducing legislation that would strengthen creditors’ rights to claw back bonuses. The bill — the latest iteration of a proposal that has long failed to gain traction — faces slim prospects in a Republican-controlled Senate, a Democratic aide said.Firms paying pre-bankruptcy bonuses know they would face scrutiny in court on compensation proposed after their filings, said Clifford J. White III, director of the U.S. Trustee Program, a Justice Department division charged with monitoring bankruptcy proceedings. But the trustees have no power to halt bonuses paid even days before a company’s bankruptcy filing, he said, allowing firms to “escape the transparency and court review.”Dodging bonus restrictionsThe 2005 bankruptcy legislation required executives and other corporate insiders to have a competing job offer in hand before receiving retention bonuses during bankruptcy, among other restrictions. That forced failing firms to devise new ways to pay the bonuses, according to some restructuring experts.After the 2008 financial crisis, companies often proposed bonuses in bankruptcy court, casting them as incentive plans with goals executives must meet. Judges mostly approved the plans, ruling that the performance benchmarks put the compensation beyond the purview of the restrictions on retention bonuses. The plans, however, sparked objections from Justice Department monitors who called them retention bonuses in disguise, often with easy milestones.Eventually, companies found they could avoid scrutiny altogether by approving bonuses before bankruptcy filings. Dozens of companies have approved such payouts in the last five years, said Brian Cumberland, an executive compensation expert at consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal who advises companies undergoing financial restructurings.FILE – A Ford Mustang is returned to an Oakland, Calif., Hertz location, Sept. 12, 2005.Companies argue the bonuses are crucial to retaining executives whose departures could torpedo their businesses, ultimately leaving less money for creditors and employees. Now, some companies are bolstering those arguments by contending that their business would not have cratered without the economic turmoil of the pandemic.The pre-bankruptcy payouts are needed, companies say, because potential stock awards are worthless and it would be impossible for executives to meet business targets that were crafted before the economic crisis. The bonuses ensure stability in leadership that is needed to hold faltering operations together, the firms contend.Some specialists argue the bonuses are hard to justify for executives who may have few better job options in an economic crisis.“With double-digit unemployment, it’s a strange time to be paying out retention bonuses,” said Adam Levitin, a professor specializing in bankruptcy at Georgetown University’s law school.Closed stores, big bonusesJ.C. Penney has not posted an annual profit since 2010 as it has struggled to grapple with the shift to online shopping and competition from discount retailers. The 118-year-old chain, at various points, employed more than 200,000 people and operated 1,600 stores, figures that have since been cut more than half.On May 10, J.C. Penney’s board approved compensation changes that paid top executives, including CEO Jill Soltau, nearly $10 million. On May 13, Soltau received a $1.7 million long-term incentive payment and a $4.5 million retention bonus, court filings show.The annual pay of the company’s median employee, a part-time hourly worker, was $11,482 in 2019, a company filing shows.J.C. Penney filed for bankruptcy two days after paying Soltau’s bonuses. At a hearing the next day, a lawyer for creditors argued the payouts were designed to thwart court review. The payouts were timed “so that they didn’t have to put it in front of you,” said the lawyer, Kristopher Hansen, addressing U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones.Jones — who is also overseeing the Whiting Petroleum, Chesapeake Energy and Neiman Marcus cases — told Reuters that such bonuses are “always a concern” in bankruptcy cases. “That said, the adversarial process demands that parties put the issue before me before I can take action,” he added, emphasizing he was speaking of general dynamics applicable to any case. “A comment made in passing by a lawyer is not sufficient.”In its statement earlier this year, J.C. Penney said the bonuses were among a series of “tough, prudent decisions” taken to safeguard the firm’s future.Dennis Marten, a shareholder who said he once worked at a J.C. Penney store, disagrees. He has appeared at court hearings pleading for an investigation of the company’s leadership.“Shame on her for having the gall to get that money,” he said of Soltau.
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The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA have released the Images of the sun taken with the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager and Extreme Ultraviolet Imager of the Solar Orbiter spacecraft are seen in a combination of photos released by NASA, July 16, 2020.The campfires could help explain why the corona, the Sun’s upper atmosphere, is 300 times hotter than the solar surface.Of the Solar Orbiter’s 10 instruments, six are imaging devices, each studying a different aspect of the sun.The Solar and Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) exposed zodiacal light — light from the sun reflecting off interplanetary dust. To capture it, the imager had to dim the sun’s light to one-trillionth of its normal brightness.The Polar and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) mapped the sun’s magnetic field. Four instruments meant for measuring the space environment immediately surrounding the spacecraft yielded data about the presence of carbon, oxygen, silicon and other heavy ions in the solar wind from the inner heliosphere.Although the coronavirus pandemic forced mission control at the European Space Operations Center in Germany to close down for more than a week, and all but essential personnel worked from home, the ESA and NASA were ready for the first solar pass in June.“We didn’t expect such great results so early,” said Daniel Muller, ESA’s Solar Orbiter project scientist. “These images show that the Solar Orbiter is off to an excellent start.”“This is just the beginning of the long epic journey of Solar Orbiter,” Muller said.
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On Red Carpet this week, a new mural dedicated to the Black Lives Matter movement is being painted in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood and in Nigeria, how a young artist is hoping to help bring justice to victims of sexual violence with her paintings. Also, what has South African singer Bongeziwe Mabandla been up to while quarantined? These stories and more on the show this week.
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​. Daily DebunkClaim: U.S. deaths from COVID-19 are down “tenfold.”Verdict: FalseRead the full story at: FactCheck.org Social Media Disinfo A patient has his temperature taken with a non-contact infrared thermometer on arrival at Freshney Green Primary Care Centre in Grimsby, Britain June 9, 2020.”Infrared thermometers won’t blind you, damage your neurons nor affect your meditation,” Poynter, July 2.​Factual Reads on CoronavirusA Coronavirus Vaccine: Where Does It Stand?
Scientists say they see steady progress and are expressing cautious optimism that a vaccine could be ready by spring.
— Kaiser Health News, July 16
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​. Daily Debunk”What is contact tracing, and how does it work with COVID-19?”, Associated Press, July 14.​Social Media Disinfo ScreenshotClaim: WHO no longer recommends self-isolation and social distancing to prevent COVID-19 transmission.Verdict: FalseRead the full story at: Agence France-PresseFactual Reads on CoronavirusBabies’ Mysterious Resilience to Coronavirus Intrigues Scientists
COVID-19 is often mild in infants. Learning why could help scientists better understand the disease—and point the way toward possible treatments
— Scientific American, July 14Coronavirus: How fast is it spreading in Africa?
Africa is seeing coronavirus cases rapidly increasing and deaths rising, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). We’ve looked at the situation across the continent, and examined which countries are of most concern.
— BBC, July 14
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