Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed the White House and Senate Republicans to negotiate quickly Monday to renew expiring federal unemployment benefits for more than 16 million Americans who are out of work because of the coronavirus pandemic.As the administration of President Donald Trump and Senate leaders prepared to release a $1 trillion coronavirus aid package, Pelosi called for them to immediately come to her office in the U.S. Capitol to work out a deal with Democrats who want a $3 trillion spending plan to bolster the faltering U.S. economy.“Time is running out,” Pelosi said. “If Republicans care about working families, this won’t take long.”But in fractious Washington, Republicans and Democrats are at odds over the continuing amount the federal government should pay unemployed workers, in addition to the less generous amounts they receive from state governments.The national government has paid millions of jobless workers an extra $600 a week for the last four months, but the stipend expires on Friday. The White House and Republicans want to cut two-thirds of the payments down to $200 a week, while Democrats are pushing to continue the current $600 figure through the end of 2020.White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow talks to reporters at the White House, Tuesday, April 7, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)White House aides said Sunday the lower amount, along with state assistance, would give workers about 70% of the wages they once earned before being laid off, a figure Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow called “quite generous.”The two political parties also disagree on other coronavirus assistance, who should get more money and how much. They also are debating whether to grant legal immunity to businesses and their employees from being sued for possibly infecting customers with the coronavirus, as Republicans are proposing over Democratic opposition.With the Friday deadline looming, the White House and Republican lawmakers have called for passage of a limited coronavirus aid package, with the rest of the details of the assistance hammered out over the coming weeks. But Pelosi has balked at a piecemeal approach.”We can move very quickly with the Democrats on these issues,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday.But Pelosi attacked the more limited Republican aid plan.“Children are hungry, families cannot pay the rent, unemployment is expiring, and the Republicans want to pause again and go piecemeal,” Pelosi said.”We have stood ready to negotiate for more than two months,” she said. She implored them to come to her office “and get the job done.”Republicans have objected to continuing the larger unemployment payments because more than half of the U.S. jobless workers collected more in unemployment benefits than they were earning while employed.A May survey also showed that about a fifth of unemployed workers rejected their employers’ offers to return to work because their unemployment checks were higher than their wages on the job.Nearly 147,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, while more than 4.2 million have been infected, with both figures the highest national totals across the world. 
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U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien has tested positive for COVID-19, the White House announced on Monday.  O’Brien, who heads the National Security Council, “has mild symptoms and has been self-isolating and working from a secure location off site. There is no risk of exposure to the President or the Vice President,” according to a White House statement.  
“The work of the National Security Council continues uninterrupted,” the statement added.  
O’Brien, who is 54, is the highest-ranking member of the administration of President Donald Trump known to have been infected with the coronavirus.  FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump stands in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House with U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany.Previous White House aides who tested positive for COVID-19 include a personal valet for Trump, as well as Katie Miller, who is Vice President Mike Pence’s top communications aide.Last week, the cafeteria at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House and containing the offices of the vice president and the National Security Council, was closed after a cafeteria employee tested positive for the virus.Also last week, a Marine assigned to the presidential helicopter squadron was diagnosed with COVID-19.   Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., also tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting the couple to leave early from the president’s Mount Rushmore speech during the July 4th holiday weekend.There has been no immediate comment about O’Brien’s diagnosis from the president, who is to travel to the state of North Carolina on Monday to visit a bio-technology center that manufactures components of a potential COVID-19 vaccine.  O’Brien has been working from home for the past week, according to officials, after having traveled to Europe to meet with counterparts to discuss China.The national security adviser is frequently in contact with the president, although it is not known when was the last time they met. O’Brien and Trump appeared together publicly during a July 10 visit to the U.S. Southern Command in Miami.  More than 4.2 million people in the United States have tested positive for the coronavirus – the most of any country. About 147,000 are confirmed to have died in the country of COVID-19.
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Many large U.S. cities that kept people out of jail at the apex of the COVID-19 outbreak did so without seeing a spike in crime, according to a new study that looks at the relationship between crime and efforts to reduce jail populations during the pandemic.The report, released Monday by the The front entrance of Federal Medical Center prison in Fort Worth, Texas, May 16, 2020. Hundreds of inmates inside the facility have tested positive for COVID-19 and several inmates have died with numbers expected to rise.Concern that the releases posed a public safety risk appear to have been overblown. ACLU researchers found that cities that reduced arrests and jail numbers did not see an uptick in crime. Twenty-four out of the 29 county jails it studied reduced their populations from 5% to 40% in March and April. All saw decreases in crime. The data was compiled by the Vera Institute of Justice.“When analyzing decarceration rates and crime trends together, the analytics team found no correlation,” the report says. “More decarceration was not associated with more crime.”That crime rates fell even as prisoners were let loose does not mean some did not re-offend, a phenomenon known as recidivism. Roseberry said that while it was “certainly possible” that some of the released inmates may have re-offended, it was not something the ACLU team examined.”More importantly, any risks of re-offending need to be weighed against the risk of an individual dying of COVID-19 in jail or prison,” Roseberry said. “It is also plausible that many did not re-offend, especially as we didn’t detect any abnormal spikes in crime.”Studies have shown that the odds of re-offending decline with age. Levin noted that states such as Oklahoma and Iowa conduct individualized assessments to determine an inmate’s release eligibility and reduce recidivism. Michigan more than halved its jail population this spring without seeing a marked increase in crime.“For the most part, what we’ve seen is pretty encouraging,” Levin said.As COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the United States, authorities should continue their decarceration policies, the ACLU said.“We should continue to reduce incarceration as this COVID-19 crisis continues, and cases rise and fall,” the report says. “And we should never go back to the old normal, even after COVID-19 passes.” 
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Worsening relations between the United States and China threw Asian markets into a mixed state and sent gold to a record high Monday. The Nikkei index in Tokyo had dropped 0.5% at the time of its closing bell. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong lost 0.1%, while Shanghai’s Composite was little changed.   Sydney’s S&P/ASX index was down less than 0.1%. The KOSPI in Seoul is up 1.1%, and Taipei’s TSEC soared 2.3%.  The Sensex in Mumbai is 0.3% lower in late afternoon trading. Gold is selling at a record $1,931.10 per ounce as investors looked to park their money in safe haven assets after the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, China was forced to close in retaliation by Beijing for the closure of its consulate last week in Houston, Texas. In oil trading, U.S. crude was selling at $41.14 per barrel, down 0.3%, and Brent crude was selling at $43.17 per barrel, also down 0.3%. All three major U.S indexes were trending positively in futures trading Monday. 
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South Korea has acknowledged that a North Korean defector, who had been accused of rape in the South, may have sneaked past South Korean border guards before apparently swimming back to his North Korean homeland. At a briefing Monday, South Korean military officials said they found the man’s bag near a drainage ditch he apparently used to get under a barbed wire fence on the northeastern island of Ganghwa, which is separated from North Korea by a portion of the Han River Estuary.  The 24-year-old, who fled North Korea in 2017, had recently been accused of raping another defector and was the subject of an arrest warrant in the South, according to South Korean media reports. He had also recently lost his job, the reports say.  But South Korean health officials said the re-defector was not registered as a COVID-19 patient or as someone who had come in contact with infected individuals. That undermines North Korea’s accusation that the man may have brought the coronavirus into the communist country.  Apparently referring to the same person, North Korean state media on Sunday said a “runaway” suspected to be carrying the coronavirus returned to the North on July 19th “after illegally crossing the demarcation line” that separates the two Koreas.  It was the first time North Korea has acknowledged a possible coronavirus infection. North Korea has declared a state of emergency and imposed a lockdown around Kaesong City, the border town where the re-defector was found.  Why admit it now? Even though 16 million coronavirus infections have been reported worldwide, North Korea had long insisted it was completely free of the virus – a claim most outside observers said was practically impossible. North Korea shares a 1,400-kilometer-long border with China, where the virus originated. Although the North formally closed its borders in February, much of its trade with China is informal and hard to control. Many analysts said North Korea may be using the incident to finally acknowledge a coronavirus outbreak, even while blaming South Korea. South Korean army soldiers spray disinfectant to help reduce the spread of the new coronavirus in a class at Cheondong elementary school in Daejeon.“This would make for an extremely convenient way for the regime to admit the existence of COVID-19 in the country,” wrote Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein, a North Korea specialist at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.  “The message is: our anti-epidemic measures, such as closing the northern border, were flawless. But one case still slipped through the cracks,” he said. “Having a first confirmed case coming in from the south relieves the regime of any awkwardness vis-a-vis China.”  The move could also have a domestic message, says Go Myong-Hyun, a research fellow at the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “They’re trying to send a message that North Korea is under siege, that there is a lot of infection going on outside of North Korea, and that the regime is trying their utmost to keep the country clean and effective,” he said.  In recent months, North Korea has hurled aggressive rhetoric at the South, accusing it of prioritizing relations with Washington over Pyongyang. “It goes along with the spin that South Korea is not to be trusted,” says Go. “They are trying to attach this negative image of an infection, virus, and pandemic along with South Korea and the defectors at the same time.” Border security lapses The defector incident has also raised concerns about possible security lapses along the 250-kilometer border that separates North and South Korea. A politburo meeting convened Saturday by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un chastised the “loose guard performance in the frontline area” where the runaway occurred and vowed possible “severe punishment,” according to state media. When North Koreans flee their country, they usually do so via the border with China, since the border between North and South Korea is one of the most heavily fortified in the world. But somehow the defector at the center of North Korea’s coronavirus claims appears to have crossed the inter-Korean border twice.  The defector, surnamed Kim, detailed his 2017 escape from North Korea in a pair of YouTube interviews last month with another defector.  “I decided to escape because of poverty,” he said in the interview that surfaced Monday.  Kim said it took more than seven hours to reach South Korea. The journey, he said, included crossing a minefield, going through barbed wire and electric fences, and swimming across the Han River.  The number of North Korean defectors reaching the South has steadily fallen in recent years, as North Korea and China tighten border controls. The coronavirus has only made things more difficult. During the second quarter of this year, the number of incoming defectors reached an all-time low, with only 12 reaching the South. North Koreans who have fled to the South rarely return. Since 2015, only 11 North Korean defectors have gone back to the North, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said Monday.  
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More than one million people in Phnom Penh face the risk of increased flooding and loss of livelihoods as wetlands in the Cambodian capital are destroyed to build apartments and industries, human rights groups warned on Monday. Developments – including the ING City township – will reduce the Tompoun wetlands to less than a tenth of its 1,500 hectares (5.8 sq miles), and lead to the eviction of more than 1,000 families who live on its edge, activists said in a report. It would also impoverish thousands of families who farm and fish in the wetlands in the city of 1.5 million people. “The wetlands sustain local communities and play a vital role in Phnom Penh’s waste management and flood prevention,” said the report from Equitable Cambodia, LICADHO, the Cambodian Youth Network and land rights group Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT). “Millions of Cambodians will likely be affected by the potentially devastating impacts of destroying the wetlands.” Phnom Penh, situated on the banks of the Tonle Sap, Mekong and Bassac rivers, is already highly vulnerable to floods, particularly in the rainy season from June to October. Lakes and wetlands such as floodplains, mangroves and marshes regulate water flow, minimize flooding, purify water and replenish groundwater, said Diane Archer, a senior research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Bangkok. “City authorities should recognize wetlands as an important resource to be protected and integrated into the urban environment,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Yet in many cities, expansion takes place without the necessary enforcement of urban planning or in-depth environmental impact assessments,” she said. Across rapidly expanding Asian cities, demand for land for housing and office blocks has put greater pressure over land. Cambodia has endorsed the international convention on wetlands protection, yet about half its wetlands have disappeared over the last 15 years, according to conservation group Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT). In Phnom Penh, 15 of 25 lakes have been infilled, with about a third of the Tompoun wetland infilled so far, STT said. Dredging the more than 100 million tons of sand needed for infilling poses added risks to communities and the environment, said Eang Vuthy, executive director of Equitable Cambodia. “Given that millions will be affected, in-depth studies and public consultations are needed,” he said. A spokesman for the government said the reclamation was necessary for the city’s development, and that an environment impact assessment had been done. “A canal is being built to divert excess water, and there is a wastewater treatment plant. Some relocations are necessary, but they have been given ample time to move,” said Phay Siphan. In Phnom Penh, nearly 4,000 families were evicted in 2007-08 from their homes around Boeung Kak – “boeung” is lake in Khmer – as it was filled in for a business district. Authorities must now prioritize public interest, said Vuthy. “A balanced model that protects the rights of people and the environment with urban development is possible, but only with meaningful consultation and research,” he said. 
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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is blaming the surge in coronavirus cases in Arizona, Florida and Texas on two conservative-leaning newspapers – The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post. Cuomo told reporters Sunday that the infection rate in New York – the nation’s former COVID-19 epicenter – is low because of what he says was an “intelligent, phased reopening.” He said what both papers have recommended for the rest of the country has proved to be a failure. “The Wall Street Journal, New York Post — they continue to beat a horse that is dead. …‘The infection rate is low; reopen faster,’” Cuomo said. “Florida listened to the New York Post. Texas listened to the Wall Street Journal. Arizona listened to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. That was wrong. That was wrong.” Cuomo said 500 people tested positive and three died Saturday in New York while the new cases in Florida, Texas and Arizona number in the thousands.  A New York Post editorial Sunday night blamed Cuomo’s administration for an order in March that nursing homes accept patients even if they have COVID-19, a policy the newspaper called “nuts” and possibly responsible for needless deaths. “If we’re annoying him that much, it means one thing — he knows we’re right,” the paper said. Florida reported another 9,300 COVID-19 cases Sunday, moving it into second place among U.S. states with the highest number of cases. California, the most populous U.S. state, is on top; New York is third followed by Texas.  Health experts blame the leap in the number of cases on businesses and public attractions reopening too soon and not enough people wearing masks and social distancing.Health care workers take information from people in line at a walk-up COVID-19 testing site during the coronavirus pandemic, in Miami Beach, Fla., July 17, 2020.The manager of Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins postponed his team’s return to Florida by one day, meaning instead of being able to practice for the team’s opening home game against the Baltimore Orioles on Monday, the Marlins will arrive at the ballpark just hours before the game.  Several Marlins players who tested positive for COVID-19 are in quarantine in Philadelphia. “There’s nothing we can really do,” Marlins pitcher Robert Dugger said. “It’s out of our control. We just do the best we can with the masks and social distancing and all that, and hope for the best.”  Baseball opened its 2020 season last week, three months late, and will play 60 games instead of the usual 162. Fans are, for now, not allowed in the ballparks.  Spain is safe for tourists, it said Sunday, rebuking Britain for imposing a two-week quarantine on all travelers entering the country from Spain because of the coronavirus pandemic.  “Spain is safe, it is safe for Spaniards, it is safe for tourists,” Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya told reporters. She said Spain would try to persuade Britain to exclude the Balearic and Canary Islands from the quarantine measure, contending that the prevalence of the virus in the two popular travel destinations was much lower than in Britain itself. A year ago, Britons made up about a fifth of foreign visitors to Spain, meaning the British quarantine could deal a blow to the Mediterranean country’s efforts to jump start its economy after months of lockdown because of the virus. But the number of COVID-19 cases has risen in Spain in the last few weeks, prompting Britain to announce late Saturday it was taking Spain off its safe-travel list. Hours later, the quarantine took effect. It immediately upset travelers, with one British tourist saying, “Everyone is panicking.” South Africa reported 12,000 new coronavirus cases Sunday. Its response to the pandemic, however, is being hampered by corruption allegations surrounding its $26 billion economic relief package. An investigation is under way.  South Africa has the fifth largest number of COVID-19 infections in the world, with more than 434,000 cases.   The U.S. has the most cases at 4.2 million, followed by Brazil with 2.3 million, India with 1.3 million, and Russia with more than 800,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. 
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An American woman accused of attempting to provide material support to the al-Qaida terror group was arrested last week in the U.S. city of Phoenix, in the southwestern state of Arizona.
 
Jill Marie Jones of Chandler, Arizona, was arrested Wednesday at the Phoenix airport before she could travel to join al-Qaida, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement Friday.
 
According to a criminal complaint filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Jones was in communication with two FBI undercover agents, one of whom she believed to be a member of al-Qaida. During her conversations with the purported al-Qaida member, Jones agreed to send him money to buy scopes for rifles that would be used by al-Qaida to kill American soldiers.
 
In May, Jones gave the purported al-Qaida member $500 using a prepaid gift card for the purpose, the FBI complaint said.
 
“Jones purchased tickets to fly overseas to join al-Qaida in Afghanistan, but due to airport closures, she changed her flights to go to Turkey instead,” the Justice Department statement said, adding that “Jones planned to then travel on to Syria.”
 
Daryl Johnson, a former senior domestic terrorism analyst at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, says these types of arrests continue to occur in the U.S.
 
“Every year we see a dozen or so of these arrests where people are attempting to flee the country to be foreign fighters or providing material support to terrorism overseas,” he told VOA.
 
Johnson said many of these arrests are made through “sting operations” where FBI agents pose as al-Qaida or Islamic State operatives to engage with terror suspects.
 Travel plans   
 
According to the FBI criminal complaint, in one of the conversations with the undercover FBI employee, Jones discussed traveling to the Afghan province of Kunduz to join al-Qaida militants, following advice from an unknown contact who was in online communication with her.
 
A U.N. Security Council report released Saturday said al-Qaida is still active in 12 Afghan provinces. Other militant groups, such as Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), are also active in Kunduz, the report said.
 
In another conversation with the undercover FBI employee, Jones expressed her support for al-Qaida.
 
Travel restrictions related to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic didn’t seem to deter Jones from wanting to travel to join al-Qaida, the FBI complaint added.
 
In another conversation with the undercover FBI employee, she discussed on June 13 the possibility of traveling to Turkey and then to Syria to join Hurras al-Din group.
 
Hurras al-Din is an extremist group based in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib. The jihadist faction is considered al-Qaida’s Syria affiliate.
 Online radicalization
 
Analyst Johnson said many al-Qaida affiliates around the world have been producing online propaganda materials specifically designed to target Americans.   
 
“A lot of Americans can get radicalized and introduced to these extremist beliefs just by watching social media sites like YouTube,” he said, noting that, “al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has an extensive American outreach.”
 
Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born al-Qaida propagandist, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen in 2011, was reportedly behind the publication of the Inspire Magazine, an English-language online magazine that sought to spread al-Qaida’s extremist ideology.   
 
The magazine “is still available online for people to read its past issues to get ideas as it was written specifically for an American audience,” Johnson told VOA.
 
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President Donald Trump won’t be throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium next month after all.Trump tweeted Sunday that he won’t be able to make the trip because of his “strong focus” on the coronavirus, vaccines and the economy. Trump said in the tweet: “We will make it later in the season!”  He had announced at a briefing Thursday on Major League Baseball’s opening day that he’d be at Yankee Stadium on Aug. 15 to throw out the first pitch.Trump has been trying to show voters that he is taking the virus seriously by holding briefings and canceling Republican convention events set for Jacksonville, Florida. Florida is among several states where the virus is raging. 
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