Two U.S. energy companies announced Sunday they have canceled a planned natural gas pipeline project that faced opposition from landowners, activists and environmental advocates. Dominion Energy and Duke Energy said in a statement, “A series of legal challenges to the project’s federal and state permits has caused significant project cost increases and timing delays.” The pipeline was meant to run from the state of West Virginia and carry natural gas to customers in neighboring Virginia and in North Carolina. The companies said it would both lower costs for consumers and allow the retirement of coal power plants. But opponents said the project would harm wildlife and the environment with construction leveling trees and some ridge tops, and with the pipeline going under the Appalachian Trail that is popular with hikers. Delays in obtaining necessary permits had already ballooned the cost from its original estimate of $4.5 billion to $8 billion.  First announced in 2014, the project was also years behind schedule. 
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Saudi Arabia has issued health protocols for this year’s upcoming Hajj pilgrimage.  The restrictions announced Sunday by the kingdom’s Center for Disease Prevention and Control are designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.  Saudi Arabia said last month that only a limited number of people would be allowed to perform Hajj this year.   The kingdom had previously announced the banning of the attendance of Muslims from abroad this year, the first time that has happened in modern times.   The safety measures announced Sunday include: the wearing of masks at all times, at all sites; maintaining the social distance of at least a meter and a half between each pilgrim; the banning of touching or kissing the Kaaba;  using only provided previously sterilized stones for the “stoning the devil” ritual that will be performed with only 50 pilgrims at a time; and  *the limiting of no more than 10 pilgrims to the 50 square meters of space allocated for tents.   
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Croatia’s ruling center-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) convincingly won a parliamentary election Sunday, held at a time of rising coronavirus infections and a sharp economic downturn because of the pandemic.The official results after about 60% of votes were counted gave the HDZ 68 seats in the 151-seat parliament, while its top opponent, the Social Democrats (SDP) and its small allies, secured 43 seats.Nationalist and euroskeptic bloc Domovinski Pokret (Homeland Movement), led by popular singer Miroslav Skoro, came in third with 15 seats, followed by the conservative Most (Bridge) party with eight seats and leftist Mozemo (We can) with six seats.The HDZ will now seek partners to form yet another ruling coalition, which analysts believe should not be too difficult given its strong performance.”They have a pretty comfortable position now as they may be able to choose their partners and may not need to negotiate with their opponents on the right-wing spectrum of the political scene,” political analyst Berto Salaj told state television.The HDZ leader and incumbent Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said the victory brought with it an obligation to work hard.”Croatia is facing serious challenges which require from us responsibility, knowledge and experience. That is exactly what we have offered to the Croatian voters,” he said addressing his party supporters.The new government will have an uphill task to keep a grip on the coronavirus while trying to restore the economy, which is expected to shrink about 10% this year. Tourism revenues are forecast to slump 70%.Croatia has reported a relatively small number of COVID-19 infections, a little over 3,000 cases and some 100 deaths so far, but infections have accelerated in the past two weeks, with the daily number of new cases peaking at about 80. 
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As scandal-plagued Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands trial for corruption, his 28-year-old son has emerged as a driving force in a counterattack against critics and the state institutions prosecuting the longtime Israeli leader.A favorite of the prime minister’s nationalistic base and far right leaders around the world, Yair Netanyahu has become a fixture in the news, clashing with journalists on social media, threatening lawsuits against his father’s adversaries and posting online content deemed so offensive that Facebook briefly suspended his account.  In the past month alone, he has called to banish minorities from Tel Aviv, tweeted a discredited conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and intimated that a critical Israeli broadcast journalist slept her way into her coveted job.But his toughest broadsides have been directed at the Israeli media, judiciary and law enforcement for conducting what he has called a leftist, ideological crusade to topple his father. He’s called for the attorney general to be investigated for his “crimes,” compared the police chief to fictional mob boss Tony Soprano and described investigators as the Stasi, Gestapo and “the political police of the Israeli junta.”It’s part of a campaign, echoed to a lesser degree by his father, that critics warn is eroding public faith in Israel’s democratic institutions.”We would love to just disregard him as a curiosity, as this difficult kid who keeps embarrassing his father. But the truth is there is evidence that he is very influential,” said Raviv Drucker, a well-respected investigative TV reporter and favorite target of the Netanyahus, whom both father and son recently tweeted they would like to see imprisoned. “He holds very extreme positions and it affects the prime minister’s actions.”Though he holds no official position, Yair Netanyahu is considered a key adviser and the mastermind of his father’s increasingly confrontational social media strategy.Benjamin Netanyahu faces charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of corruption cases stemming from ties to wealthy friends. He denies the charges, which follow years of scandals swirling around the family.For years, it was his wife, Sara, who drew most of the fire because of her extravagant tastes, misuse of state funds and alleged abuse of her staff. But recently, his eldest son has taken center stage. He’s figured prominently in various scandals while earning a reputation of living a life of privilege at taxpayers’ expense.Australian billionaire James Packer, one of the figures in the prime minister’s corruption indictments, reportedly gave the younger Netanyahu gifts that included stays at luxury hotels in Tel Aviv, New York and Aspen, Colorado, as well as the use of his private jet and dozens of tickets for concerts by Packer’s former fiancée, Mariah Carey. Nir Hefetz, a former Netanyahu aide turned state witness against him, told police that Yair Netanyahu was the major instigator of the bribery case against his father.Yair Netanyahu has also sparked controversy by posting an anti-Semitic caricature aimed at his father’s critics, vulgarly confronting a woman who told him to pick up after his dog at a park, and tweeting that he hoped elderly leftist protesters would die of COVID-19.The prime minister has been forced to denounce some of his son’s behavior, like a particularly lewd outing to a strip club with wealthy friends. But generally, he staunchly defends his son.Anshel Pfeffer, a columnist for the Haaretz daily and author of a recent biography of the prime minister, said Yair Netanyahu enables his father to test boundaries of what the public will accept.”If he goes too far, they can say it’s only Yair,” he said. “It gives him deniability, creates a gray area and blurs the lines on what the prime minister is saying on record.”Yair Netanyahu was 4 when his father first became prime minister in 1996 and has grown up in the limelight. During his compulsory army service, he was assigned as a liaison to foreign media. He was once court-marshaled for taking an unauthorized furlough.He’s volunteered for local animal welfare organizations and briefly worked as a social media director for an Israeli NGO providing legal services to victims of Palestinian attacks. But he was put on leave after attacking Israel’s figurehead president for advocating Jewish-Arab coexistence.As a private citizen, Yair Netanyahu has published op-eds for Breitbart, gone on U.S. and European speaking tours and voiced support for right-wing extremists in the U.S. and Europe. He has earned their praise in return.Supporters claim he is a victim of the same people targeting his father. But the media have largely ignored his older half-sister Noa and his younger brother Avner, an unassuming 26-year-old university student who generally keeps to himself.Yair Netanyahu, who still lives with his parents and declined to comment, claims to have no political aspirations. In his lone interview to Israeli media, he lamented last year to the pro-Netanyahu Channel 20 about the cost his family pays for their status. He said the three years his father was out of politics in the early 2000s were their happiest ever.”My father decided to put the good life he had aside and get back into all this mud because of his calling,” he said. “My only political involvement is what you see on my private Facebook and Twitter.”On Twitter, where he has more than 80,000 followers, he lashes out dozens of times a day and his feed often dictates the following news cycle. Facebook blocked his account for 24 hours in 2018 for sharing banned content and writing that he would prefer an Israel without Muslims.His brand of provocation has proved irresistible to politicians, journalists and commentators alike, many of whom have been drawn into bouts of mudslinging with him. Even so, at least a half dozen of his former targets refused to comment, citing his unofficial role and litigious nature.
 
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Governor Larry Hogan in the eastern U.S. state of Maryland rebuked Baltimore city officials on Sunday for allowing demonstrators to topple a statue of Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer who first landed in the Americas in 1492.About 300 cheering protesters attached chains to the statue in Baltimore’s Little Italy neighborhood Saturday night and yanked it down, breaking it in pieces and heaving them into the city’s Inner Harbor.While a national holiday honors Columbus in the U.S. each October, leftist protesters have increasingly vilified him, viewing him as a symbol of colonialism and exploitation of Indigenous people in what 300 years later became the United States. His statue has been knocked down in other U.S. cities as well.Protesters just took down the Christopher Columbus statue in Baltimore’s Little Italy. pic.twitter.com/ViPk5eKOtz
— Louis Krauss (@louiskraussnews) July 5, 2020Hogan, in a statement, said, “While we welcome peaceful protests and constructive dialogue on whether and how to put certain monuments in context or move them to museums or storage through a legal process, lawlessness, vandalism, and destruction of public property are completely unacceptable.“That is the antithesis of democracy and should be condemned by everyone, regardless of their politics,” the Republican governor said. “Baltimore City leaders need to regain control of their own streets and immediately start making them safer.”The Baltimore demonstration was one of numerous street protests in recent weeks that have targeted statues of key figures from the country’s troubled racial history, chiefly Civil War generals who seceded from the United States in the 1860s and fought a losing war to uphold slavery in the southern part of the country.  The demonstrations were an outgrowth of protests against police abuse of minorities in the aftermath of the May 25 death of a Black man, George Floyd, in police custody in Minneapolis. A police officer has been charged with second-degree murder. 
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The practice of mining precious metals and stones from the Earth dates as far back as recorded human history. The prized possessions of previous eras give clues to a culture’s technological advancement. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports on a mineral-mining operation recently discovered in underwater caves in Mexico.
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Pope Francis on Sunday threw his support behind a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a halt to conflicts to facilitate the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday unanimously adopted the resolution after more than three months of negotiations calling for “an immediate cessation of hostilities in all situations” on the Security Council’s agenda.”The request for a global and immediate cease-fire, which would allow that peace and security necessary to provide the needed humanitarian assistance is commendable,” the pope said after his weekly Angelus prayer at St. Peter’s in Rome.”I hope that this decision will be implemented effectively and promptly for the good of the many people who are suffering.”May this Security Council resolution become a courageous first step towards a peaceful future.”The resolution was the Security Council’s first statement on the pandemic and its first real action since the outbreak started.Repeatedly blocked by China and the United States, which opposed a reference in the text to the World Health Organization (WHO), the resolution aims to support an appeal in March by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for a global ceasefire.It “calls upon all parties to armed conflicts to engage immediately in a durable humanitarian pause for at least 90 consecutive days, in order to enable the safe, unhindered and sustained delivery of humanitarian assistance.”
 
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Britain is close to a 500 million pound ($624 million) supply deal with Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline for 60 million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, the Sunday Times reported.Clinical trials are due to start in September and Sanofi has said it expects to get approval by the first half of next year, sooner than previously anticipated.More than 100 vaccines are being developed and tested around the world to stop the COVID-19 pandemic and governments are racing to secure supplies of vaccines even before their efficacy is proven.A supply agreement with Sanofi and GSK would be Britain’s second such deal, after it said it would buy 100 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.Sanofi was not immediately available to comment, while a spokesman for GSK declined to comment. Both have both said they are prioritizing quality over speed in developing a vaccine.”The Government’s Vaccines Task Force is actively engaging with a wide range of companies both in the UK and abroad to negotiate access to vaccines,” a spokeswoman for Britain’s business ministry, said, without confirming if Sanofi or GSK were among them.The Sunday Times report said that Britain was considering taking an option to buy the vaccine should it work in human trials, and would see the amount paid in stages.Sanofi is working on two possible COVID-19 vaccines, one of which uses an adjuvant made by GSK to potentially boost its efficacy, and has said it has capacity to produce up to 1 billion doses a year.Its timeline for clinical trials is behind the likes of Moderna Inc, the University of Oxford in collaboration with AstraZeneca Plc, and an alliance of BioNTech and Pfizer Inc, whose projects all grabbed headlines by moving to human trials as early as March.Sanofi has received financial backing from the United States and caused a stir in its home base of France after its British CEO Paul Hudson signaled that Europe was being too slow in supporting work on a vaccine, hinting U.S. patients might get any vaccine it develops first.The EU is also seeking a deal with Sanofi, and has invited Britain to join its efforts to buy vaccines for the bloc.($1 = 0.8011 pounds) 
 
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A report in The New York Times says a group of 239 scientists from 32 countries will publish an open letter to the World Health Organization in a scientific journal this week. The scientists want WHO to revise its recommendations about how to avoid coronavirus infection.The scientists say the coronavirus is airborne, meaning virus particles can hover in the air in indoor spaces and infect people when the particles are inhaled.The WHO has said the virus is spread through larger respiratory droplets from an infected person’s coughs and sneezes, but which drop out of the air quickly because of their size.If the virus is airborne, the Times said, “the consequences for containment will be significant.” New preventive measures would include wearing masks indoors, “even in socially distant settings;” and mandatory N95 masks for healthcare workers to “filter out even the smallest respiratory droplets as they care for coronavirus patients.”In addition, ventilation systems would need to be overhauled to “minimize recirculating air.”The Times account said that after reviewing internal WHO emails and interviews with 20 scientists, including some WHO consultants, the picture that emerges of the agency is one that “despite good intentions, is out of step with science.”The New York Times reported that the recent surge in new victims after the reopening of businesses and offices “increasingly” confirms “what many scientists have been saying for months: The virus lingers in the air indoors, infecting those nearby.” 
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At least 16 people are dead and 13 are missing after torrential rains hit Japan’s southern island of Kyushu public broadcaster NHK reported on Sunday.In addition, at least 17 other people were in a state of “cardio-respiratory arrest,” a term used by medical personnel in Japan before a doctor officially certifies a person dead.Saturday’s heavy rains in the Kumamoto prefecture of central Kyushu triggered floods and landslides. The rains also caused power outage and cut off water supplies.Authorities have ordered more than 200,000 people to evacuate and have urged those in emergency shelters to wash their hands and observe social distancing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.Speaking to reports Sunday, Disaster Management Minister Ryota Takeda said “We will do our utmost to prevent the spread of the infection and make lives of those who had to flee their home as comfortable as possible.”Takeda made the statement after visiting a gymnasium in Kumamoto’s Hitoyoshi town where 600 residents are sheltered.The Japan Meteorological Agency warned residents to be on alert, as more rain is forecast. 
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