Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is calling the lawmakers back into session from a summer recess to vote on funding for the U.S. Postal Service as the new postmaster general proposes cost-cutting measures.Democrats fear that the cuts in service are aimed at delaying the delivery of mail-in ballots in the November 3 presidential election.FILE – U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, left, is escorted to a meeting in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Aug. 5, 2020.Postmaster General DeJoy is a wealthy Republican donor and a Trump appointee. He has yet to say if he will testify. But Schumer says he should be removed if he “refuses to come before Congress.”White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows denies charges that Trump is trying to manipulate the voting process.“The president of the United States is not going to interfere with anybody casting their votes in a legitimate way whether it’s the post office or anything else,” Meadows told CNN Sunday.But he says the White House is afraid that an avalanche of mail-in ballots will postpone the results of the 2020 election.  “A number of states are now trying to figure out how they are going to go to universal mail-in ballots,” Meadows said. “That’s a disaster where we won’t know the election results on Nov. 3 and we might not know it for months, and for me that’s problematic because the Constitution says that then a Nancy Pelosi in the House would actually pick the president on Jan. 20.”The number of mailed-in ballots is expected to skyrocket this year because voters may be afraid to stand in line at polling stations to vote in person during a pandemic.  As US Expands Mail-in Voting, Delays in Results Could Sow Doubt Due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, a growing number of U.S. states are expanding options for voting by mail instead of in person for the November presidential election. Voting by mail has a long history in the U.S., dating back to the Civil War. However, President Donald Trump claims mail-in voting will lead to election fraud or months of uncertainty following the vote.  White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara reports.Nine of the 50 states are planning to conduct their voting in November almost exclusively by mail. Millions of voters in other states can get a mail-in ballot if they ask for one. Trump and first lady Melania Trump have already requested mail-in ballots in their adopted home state of Florida.Trump has said there is a difference between a mail-in ballot and an absentee ballot that is needed when a voter will be away from his precinct on Election Day.Many analysts say there is no evidence that voting by mail gives one party an advantage over the other and says making it harder to cast a ballot through the mail could backfire on the Republicans, who tend to be older voters who may prefer to vote by mail rather than in person in a pandemic.
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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday chose to delay New Zealand’s national elections by four weeks as the country deals with a new coronavirus outbreak in its largest city, Auckland.The election had been scheduled for Sept. 19 but will now be held on Oct. 17.Under New Zealand law, Ardern had the option of delaying the election for up to about two months.New Zealand PM Extends Auckland LockdownOfficials now report 29 coronavirus cases stemming from cluster of four infections found TuesdayOpposition parties had been requesting a delay after a virus outbreak in Auckland last week prompted the government to put the city into a two-week lockdown and halted election campaigning.Before the latest outbreak, New Zealand had gone 102 days without any known community transmission of the virus, and life had returned to normal for most people, who were going to restaurants, sports stadiums and schools without fear of getting infected. The only known cases during that time were returning travelers who were quarantined at the border.Officials believe the virus was reintroduced to New Zealand from abroad but haven’t yet been able to figure out how it happened. The Auckland outbreak has grown to 49 infections, with authorities saying they believe the cases are all connected, giving them hope the virus isn’t spreading beyond the cluster.New Zealand Scrambles to Trace COVID-19 Cases as Numbers Grow Health director-general reports 13 new cases from four discovered Tuesday Ardern said in making her decision, she had first called the leaders of all the political parties represented in the parliament to get their views.”Ultimately I want to ensure we have a well-run election that gives all voters the best chance to receive all the information they need about parties and candidates, and delivers certainty for the future,” Ardern said.She said she wouldn’t consider delaying the election again, no matter what was happening with any virus outbreaks.Opinion polling indicates Ardern’s Labour Party is favored to win a second term in office. 
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The U.N. Development Program warns a lot of toxic waste, potentially dangerous to health and the environment, was discharged when 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded at the port of Lebanon’s capital Beirut nearly two weeks ago. U.N. officials say they do not know the magnitude of the problem and are assessing the types of debris — bricks, steel, glass — unleashed by the blast.   Rekha Das is U.N. Development Program crisis adviser.  Speaking on a video link from Beirut, she says hazardous waste, medical waste and electronic waste also must be taken into account.   “We have to find out what is dangerous and what is not dangerous, what can be recycled and what cannot be recycled,” said Das. “And, if it cannot be recycled, then where can it be safely disposed.  Lebanon already had a huge solid waste crisis before the blast.  The blast has added another massive long-term dimension to this crisis.”   Lebanon: Drone Images Show Devastated Beirut Drone footage filmed Thursday, August 13, shows countless destroyed buildings, hundreds of shattered windows and a still-smoldering Beirut port. In addition to the waste and contamination on land, Das says work is going ahead to assess the environmental impact of the blast on the Mediterranean Sea.  She tells VOA, the U.N. is collaborating with the European Union and experts on toxic and general waste to evaluate the situation.She says this mission is not easy to accomplish because of the difficulty and risks involved in accessing the sites.“There is still bricks and roofing that falls down from roofs and windowpanes,” said Das. “So, we have to be careful ourselves when going in and careful — you know, protect the engineers that we are working — the syndicate of engineers, our EU colleagues and everybody has to take this step by step.”   Das says the magnitude of the problem is particularly great because waste management issues existed and were neglected in the country well before the explosion blew away much of what had been Lebanon’s beautiful capital, Beirut, by the sea.  
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Out on her first day of knocking on doors in the Bay Area, the census taker had limited success getting people to answer the questions on the 2020 census.Residents at only two homes answered all the questions about how many people lived there, what their relationships were and their sex, age, race and whether they’re Hispanic. No one was home at three households, residents at two homes wouldn’t give her the time of day, and the rest only answered some questions.Workers on the front-lines of the massive effort trying to count everyone in the U.S. have faced unprecedented obstacles in the last phase of the 2020 census: people wary of talking to strangers in a pandemic and distrustful of government; a shortened schedule; administrative snafus, and nagging concerns about the quality of the protective equipment they’ve received.The California census taker and others interviewed by The Associated Press asked not to be identified for fear of losing their jobs — they are prohibited by the bureau from talking to reporters. Up to a half million census takers started hitting the streets last week to knock on the doors of around 56 million homes that haven’t yet responded to the 2020 census. The AP talked to two census takers in California, two in Alaska and one each in Florida and Massachusetts, and the concerns they raised were similar.A 2020 census letter and a multilingual guide mailed to a U.S. resident in Fairfax, Virginia, March 12, 2020. (Photo: Diaa Bekheet)Following her training, the California census taker tried to establish a rapport by smiling frequently, but that chemistry was hampered by her mask. She also told them she was just trying to do her job in an effort to win them over. She was taken aback by how reluctant people were last Tuesday, either for privacy reasons or distrust of the government.At a couple of houses, she knew the family, but even then they didn’t want to be interviewed by her, though they were happy to share neighborhood gossip.Several census workers said they wished the personal protective equipment the Census Bureau gave them was of higher quality. The census takers, also called enumerators, were given white cloth masks, some made by underwear manufacturer HanesBrands, and a small bottle of bourbon-scented hand sanitizer made by a distillery in Oklahoma. Census takers also were told to conduct interviews outside as much as possible and maintain 6 feet (2 meters) of distance from people they interview.The Florida enumerator said her mask was flimsy and too big for her face. One of the California census takers described the masks as “stretchy” and lacking a filter. A spokeswoman for the Census Bureau said the masks conformed to CDC guidelines, were washable and could be reused up to 10 times.Johnny Zuagar, who is president of a union that represents permanent census workers but not the temporary census takers, said he thought the Census Bureau did the best it could on masks, given the competition from other companies in ordering 2.4 million masks.”They are trying to do something unprecedented,” said Zuagar, president of Census Council 241.The census helps determine how $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed and how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets.Some of the census takers said the training they received was fraught with administrative confusion. The Florida census taker received a phone call two weeks ago, asking her to show up for an in-person training session across town 10 minutes before it was supposed to start. A week later, after she met her supervisor, she still had not been able to start her online training sessions because she was switched into another group of enumerators and her new supervisor had not yet contacted her.One of the California census-takers said he was sent an email notice about a virtual training session hours after it was supposed to have taken place. No one told the Massachusetts census taker he needed to bring his Social Security card or passport for in-person training.The Massachusetts census taker said he had been disappointed in the way his supervisor was communicating with him.The 2020 census has been whip-lashed by a constantly changing schedule. The door-knocking phase was supposed to start in May and wrap up at the end of July, but the pandemic pushed the start for most census takers back to August with a deadline for wrapping up the head count at the end of October.But the Census Bureau recently announced it would end the count a month early, at the end of September, after requests for deadline extensions stalled in Congress. The inaction in the Republican-controlled Senate coincides with a memorandum President Donald Trump issued last month to try to exclude people living in the U.S. illegally from being part of the process for redrawing congressional districts.Census takers this year have to reach 8 million more homes than they did in 2010, and they have only six weeks instead of the 10 weeks they did a decade ago, according to an analysis by the Center for Urban Research at CUNY. Forty-eight senators, including Alaska’s two Republican senators, last week sent a letter to Senate and House leaders urging them to extend the deadlines.The Alaska census taker worried that lopping off a month from the schedule would sabotage the count.In Idaho, Wendy Jaquet, who is co-chairing that state’s census efforts, says she’s already seeing the impact of the door-knockers as the state’s response rate has edged up this week.”That has made me more encouraged,” Jaquet said.Census advocates and some U.S. Census Bureau officials have said the extensions were needed, not only to get the work done, but also to avoid confusing people about when the census was ending.”We are fearful that a lot of undercounted communities will not complete it because they think it ends Oct. 31,” said Sabeen Perwaiz, who is leading an alliance of nonprofits in effort to increase census participation in Florida. “We absolutely think there will be some confusion in communities.
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Thousands of Puerto Ricans on Sunday got a second chance to vote for the first time, a week after delayed and missing ballots marred the original primaries in a blow to the U.S. territory’s democracy. More than 60 of the island’s 110 precincts opened following a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that stated a second round of voting would take place at centers that never opened on Aug. 9 or did not remain open the required eight hours.The ruling permanently left out voters like Eldy Correa, a 67-year-old retiree who went to her voting center in the southwest town of Cabo Rojo three times last Sunday and desisted only to find out later that it opened late.“They took away our right to vote,” she said, adding that she was upset with the president of the elections commission despite his apologies. “Sorry for what? That doesn’t resolve anything.”The primaries for the pro-statehood New Progressive Party pit Gov. Wanda Vázquez against Pedro Pierluisi, who was Puerto Rico’s representative to Congress from 2009 to 2017. He also briefly served as governor after former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló resigned last year following huge protests sparked by a profanity-laced chat that was leaked. However, the island’s Supreme Court ruled that Vázquez, former justice secretary at the time, was next-in-line to become governor since there was no secretary of state.Meanwhile, three candidates are running for the main opposition Popular Democratic Party, which sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr asking that his department investigate the debacle. Puerto Rico Sen. Eduardo Bhatia is running against Isabela Mayor Carlos Delgado and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, known for her public spats with U.S. President Donald Trump.The two main parties also have demanded that elections commission president Juan Ernesto Dávila resign. Dávila has said it would be irresponsible to do so amid the primaries, and that he would only consider the petition afterward. Officials have blamed the chaos of the Aug. 9 primaries on ballots arriving late to the elections commission and trucks laden with materials not leaving until the day of the primaries, when usually they depart one or two days before. Dávila has said the ballots arrived late because of the pandemic, Tropical Storm Isaias and a last-minute request from both parties to print more of them. 
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The U.S. Agency for Global Media is paying tribute to Zofia Korbońska, a member of the anti-Nazi resistance movement who later worked for the VOA Polish service, on the 10th anniversary of her death.  Korbońska, born in Warsaw in 1912, was a member of the Police Underground Army, which fought against the Nazis.   “On a daily basis, she risked her life writing and coding secret shortwave radio transmissions sent from Poland to the Polish government-in-exile in London. A number of her dispatches that reached the free world were broadcast back into occupied Europe by the BBC,” said a statement from USAGM, which oversees VOA and other U.S.-funded broadcast entities. “In addition to her clandestine radio work, Korbońska was also a partner in the work of her husband, Stefan Korboński, the leader of Poland’s anti-Nazi civil resistance and the last head of the Polish Underground State.” After the end of World War Two, both Korbońska and her husband were arrested in Poland by the NKVD Soviet secret police.  They were released after several interrogations.  They escaped to Sweden in 1947 before eventually finding refuge in the United States. In 1980, Korbońska began a more than three-decade career with VOA’s Polish service, using the pen name “Zofia Orlowska” to protect her family and friends back home.  She wrote and recorded occasional programs in the 1980’s after her retirement. She died in Washington on August 16, 2010. Poland slipped to number 62 on Reporters Without Borders annual ranking of countries press freedom in 2020.  The group said Warsaw’s moves to criminalize defamation and other policies are impacting freedom of expression of independent media outlets. It says some courts are using a criminal code article that allows journalists to be sentenced to up to a year in prison for defamation, which is encouraging self-censorship by the media.
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A Japanese bulk carrier that struck a coral reef last month off the Mauritius coast broke apart Saturday afternoon, the country’s National Crisis Committee said in a statement.Images taken by the Maxar satellite company showed the damage on the Japanese-owned MK Wakashio and the oil spill around the vessel.The ship hit the reef on July 25 and began spilling about 1,000 tons of oil, endangering corals, fish, and other marine life.Emergency teams were immediately sent to pump the remaining 3,000 tons of oil off the ship.As of Saturday, an estimated 90 tons of fuel oil was still on board, according to Mauritius authorities.Mauritius declared an environmental emergency last week.Some scientists called the accident the island’s worst ecological disaster but said the full impact of the oil spill is still to be determined.Mauritius government said in a statement Friday that it would seek compensation from “the owner and the insurer” of MK Wakashio owned by Nagashiki firm, for “all losses and damages” caused by the spill for the cost of the cleanup.The Japanese firm has pledged to “sincerely” respond to Mauritius’ request for compensations.   
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U.S. scientists say they have isolated infectious particles of the coronavirus as much as 4.8 meters away from hospitalized patients.The scientists said the widely accepted 2-meter distance advised to observe social distancing provides a “false sense of security” and could result in large groups of people being exposed to the disease. The study, conducted at the university of Florida Health Shands Hospital, has not been peer reviewed.A saliva test to detect COVID-19 that was developed by Yale and paid for by the NBA won U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval Saturday for emergency use.SalivaDirect, the fifth saliva test approved by the FDA for the disease, uses spit from people who think they have the coronavirus, People make their way along The Strip, the University of Alabama’s bar scene, Aug. 15, 2020, in Tuscaloosa, Ala. More than 20,000 students returned to campus for the first time since spring break.The decline, which occurred after months of increases in testing, may be linked to fewer people seeking tests as confirmed cases have leveled off following spikes this summer and people opting out of testing because of long wait times and delays in getting results.As of Sunday morning, there were more than 21 million COVID-19 cases worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 5.3 million cases were in the U.S., followed by Brazil, with 3.3 million.India said early Sunday it had 63,490 new reports of COVID-19 cases in a 24-hour period, with 944 deaths.India’s has recorded more than 2.5 million infections and almost 50,000 deaths from the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University.Texas, one of the Sunbelt states hit hard by the coronavirus, has seen its average daily test number fall nearly 9% since the end of July, according to The COVID Tracking Project.While Texas has made some progress against the outbreak, deaths remain high, an average or more than 210 a day in the past 14 days, and the rolling average of people who test positive for the coronavirus is 16%. That positivity rate could be a sign that not enough tests are being done. A rate of less than 10% is one indicator of robust testing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.A visitor wearing a face mask walks near a banner showing precautions against the coronavirus at the Gyeongbok Palace, one of South Korea’s well-known landmarks, in Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 16, 2020.In South Korea, more stringent social distancing restrictions were announced Saturday in Seoul and surrounding areas, where coronavirus cases have surged following successful efforts contain its spread. Beginning Sunday, nightclubs, movie theaters and other high-risk places will be closed if they do not enforce preventive measures.In Spain, dozens of people in Barcelona’s Torre Baro community were tested for COVID-19 Saturday after a spike in cases in the working-class neighborhood. Health officials hope to identify asymptomatic cases in hard-hit areas to break any chains of transmission.Also, in Italy, the cruise ship MSC Grandiosa will begin a voyage to the Mediterranean on Sunday, after it and four other cruise ships were idled by the coronavirus pandemic in Civitavecchia, one of the world’s busiest ports.The five ships can hold a total of 26,000 people. The four other ships will also resume operations soon, positioning Italy as the epicenter of an effort to resume cruises worldwide.
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President Donald Trump intends to withdraw the nomination of William Perry Pendley to head the Bureau of Land Management, a senior administration official said Saturday — much to the relief of environmentalists who insisted the longtime advocate of selling federal lands should not be overseeing them.Pendley, a former oil industry and property rights attorney from Wyoming, has been acting as the director of the agency for more than a year under a series of temporary orders from Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. Democrats alleged the temporary orders were an attempt to skirt the nomination process, and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and conservation groups have filed lawsuits to have Pendley removed from office.Trump announced Pendley’s nomination to become the bureau’s director in June. A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, confirmed Saturday that the president intended to withdraw that nomination.“Good!” Bullock, a Democrat, tweeted Saturday. “William Perry Pendley wants to sell off our public lands – and has no business being in charge of them.”The bureau oversees nearly a quarter-billion public acres in the U.S. West and much of the nation’s onshore oil and gas development.The White House did not offer an explanation for the decision, which is not expected to become official until the Senate returns to session. The Interior Department said in a statement that the president makes staffing decisions and that Pendley continues leading the agency as deputy director for programs and policy.Pendley, who in a 2017 essay argued that the “Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold,” spent three decades as president of the nonprofit Mountain States Legal Foundation, which has worked on behalf of ranchers, oil and gas drillers, miners and others seeking to use public lands for commercial gain.Among the cases Pendley worked on was one challenging grizzly bear protections on national forest land. In another, he sought to validate an energy developer’s claim to drill for oil on land considered sacred by the Blackfeet Indian Tribe near Glacier National Park in Montana. A federal appeals court rejected the effort two months ago.The author of books that include “War on the West: Government Tyranny on America’s Great Frontier,” he has criticized environmentalists as extremists and expressed support for Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, whose family has engaged in armed standoffs with federal agents.In his announcement of the nomination, Trump said Pendley had “worked to increase recreational opportunities on and access to our Nation’s public lands, heighten concern for the impact of wild horses and burros on public lands, and increase awareness of the Bureau’s multiple-use mission.”The Interior Department has disputed the notion that Pendley wants to sell off federal lands, saying the Bureau of Land Management has acquired 25,000 acres under his leadership.While acting as director, Pendley has overseen the relocation of most of the bureau’s jobs from Washington to various locations in the West, including its new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado — a move conservationists consider an effort to weaken the agency.The agency has also sought to ease rules for oil and gas drilling that were adopted under the Obama administration. One recent proposal, which would streamline requirements for measuring and reporting oil and gas produced from federal land, is projected to save energy companies more than $130 million over the next decade.“William Perry Pendley has been unfit to lead the Bureau of Land Management every day since he was appointed acting director in 2019,” Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, said in an emailed statement. “The fact that he was nominated this June and not withdrawn until millions of Americans and elected officials spoke out illustrates the wrongheaded priorities of this administration.”Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, called for the Trump administration to remove Pendley from his job as acting director of the agency.“Withdrawing William Perry Pendley’s nomination confirms he couldn’t even survive a confirmation process run by the president’s allies in the Senate. Keeping him on the job anyway shows the depth of disdain Secretary Bernhardt and President Trump have for the Constitution,” Rakola said. “The Bureau of Land Management director is a Senate-confirmed position for a reason. Whoever is in charge of one-tenth of all lands in America must be approved by the Senate, and these bald-faced attempts to evade the Senate’s advice-and-consent duties cannot stand.”  
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In one of Edmond Kok’s creations, a 3D visualization of a spiky coronavirus bursts out of a face mask. Another mask uses a plastic takeout container to remind people of the environmental cost of food deliveries.A design inspired by a Thai temple symbolizes people missing their favorite holiday destinations because of travel restrictions.Edmond Kok, a Hong Kong theater costume designer and actor, wears a rubber duck face mask in Hong Kong, Aug. 6, 2020.A Hong Kong actor and costume designer, Kok has had little theater work during the pandemic but found creative opportunity in the now-ubiquitous face mask.He has crafted more than 170 masks inspired both by the pandemic and Hong Kong’s political problems.They’re not worn as illness prevention but as pieces of art.Kok’s creations also address fears in Hong Kong that China is taking away the greater freedoms that residents of the territory have compared to the mainland. Under a new national security law, people have been arrested for displaying or chanting slogans deemed as advocating independence from China.Edmond Kok, a Hong Kong theater costume designer and actor, wears a face mask modeled on a clown face and bow tie in Hong Kong, Aug. 6, 2020.A mock gloved hand covers one mask, illustrating the struggle to express one’s voice freely. A security camera represents a fear of surveillance, and eyeballs, a fear of being watched or censored.“I really want to document different things that happened in our lives,” he said.After the pandemic ends, Kok hopes he and others will revisit their experiences through his masks. He has posted photos of them on Instagram and other social media platforms. Edmond Kok, a Hong Kong theater costume designer and actor, wears a face mask designed to look like fruits in Hong Kong Aug. 6, 2020. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he will try a controversial “snapback” to force a return of U.N. sanctions against Iran, after the Security Council rejected Washington’s bid to extend the arms embargo against the Islamic republic.
 
“We’ll be doing a snapback,” the president said, referring to the contested argument that the U.S. remains a participant in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — despite Trump’s withdrawal from it — and therefore can force a return to sanctions if it sees Iran as being in violation of its terms.
 
The president said the U.S. will make its move next week.  
 
Trump also said at the press conference at his private golf course at Bedminster, New Jersey, he would “probably not” participate in the 5 + 1 summit with Iran proposed by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
 
Putin called Friday for an online summit of the leaders of the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany and Iran over a possible extension of the international embargo on arms sales in Tehran.
 
It was in this so-called 5 + 1 configuration that the Iran nuclear agreement was negotiated and concluded with Iran, which Trump then denounced.
 
“Probably not, I think we will wait until after the election,” Trump said when asked about his possible participation in this summit.
 
The Trump administration’s defeat Friday at the Security Council highlighted its isolation on Iran since Trump withdrew from the accord in 2018.
 
Only two of the Council’s 15 members voted in favor of the U.S. resolution.  
 
Washington’s European allies all abstained, Russia and China voted against it, and Iran mocked the Trump administration for winning the support of just one other country, the Dominican Republic.
 
Trump argued Saturday that Iran was a “different ballgame” now and that the country no longer has the funds to sponsor terror.
 
“Iran wants me to lose so badly” in November’s presidential election, he added.
 
If Trump follows through, the snapback could plunge the Council into one of its worst diplomatic crises, experts warn.  
 
European allies have been skeptical on whether Washington can force sanctions and say the attempt may delegitimize the Security Council.
 
The embargo on conventional arms is to expire on Oct. 18.
 
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Thousands of demonstrators in Belarus took to the streets again Saturday to demand that the country’s authoritarian leader resign after a presidential vote they called fraudulent. In response, the president declared that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had agreed to provide security assistance to restore order if Belarus requested it.President Alexander Lukashenko spoke Saturday evening several hours after a phone call with Putin as he struggled to counter the biggest challenge yet to his 26 years in power.Saturday was the seventh consecutive day of large protests against the results of the country’s Aug. 9 presidential election in which election officials claimed the 65-year-old Lukashenko won a sixth term in a landslide. Opposition supporters believe the election figures were manipulated and say protesters have been beaten mercilessly by police since the vote.Harsh police crackdowns against the protesters, including the detention of about 7,000 people, have not quashed the most sustained anti-government movement since Lukashenko took power in 1994.  The demonstrators rallied Saturday at the spot in the capital of Minsk where a protester died this week in clashes with police. Some male protesters pulled off their shirts to show bruises they said came from police beatings. Others carried pictures of loved ones beaten so badly they could not attend the rally.People hold old Belarusian national flags while gathered at the place where Alexander Taraikovsky died during clashes protesting election results, in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 15, 2020.Lukashenko did not specify what sort of assistance Russia would be willing to provide. But he said, “when it comes to the military component, we have an agreement with the Russian Federation,” referring to a mutual support deal the two former Soviet republics signed back in the 1990s.”These are the moments that fit this agreement,” he added.Both the European Union and the U.S. government say the presidential election in Belarus was flawed.  Lukashenko’s main opponent in the vote, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, fled to Lithuania the day after the election, knowing that several previous presidential challengers have been jailed for years on charges that supporters say were trumped up. Other potential challengers, blocked by election officials from running, fled the country before the vote.A funeral was held Saturday for Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester who died Monday in the capital of Minsk under disputed circumstances. Belarusian police said he died when an explosive device he intended to throw at police blew up in his hand.But his partner, Elena German, told The Associated Press that when she saw his body in a morgue Friday, his hands showed no damage and he had a perforation in his chest that she believes is a bullet wound.Hundreds of people came to pay their last respects to Taraikovsky, who lay in an open casket. As the coffin was carried out, many dropped to one knee, weeping and exclaiming “Long live Belarus!”Video shot by an Associated Press journalist on Monday shows Taraikovsky with a bloodied shirt before collapsing on the ground. Several police are seen nearby and some walk over to where Taraikovsky is lying on the street and stand around him.  The video does not show why he fell to the ground or how his shirt became bloodied, but it also does not show that he had an explosive device that blew up in his hand as the government has said.About 5,000 demonstrators gathered Saturday in the area where Taraikovsky died. They laid a mass of flowers in tribute, piling into a mound about 1.5 meters (5 feet) tall, as passing cars blared their horns.”It’s awful to live in a country where you can be killed at a peaceful protest. I will leave, if power isn’t changed,” said 30-year-old demonstrator Artem Kushner.Men carry a coffin with the body of Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old demonstrator who died Aug. 10, 2020, amid clashes while protesting election results, during his funeral ceremony in central Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 15, 2020.Earlier Saturday, Lukashenko rejected suggestions that foreign mediators become involved in trying to resolve the country’s political crisis.  “Listen — we have a normal country, founded on a constitution. We don’t need any foreign government, any sort of mediators, ” Lukashenko said at a meeting with Defense Ministry officials. He appeared to be referring to an offer from the leaders of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to help resolve the political crisis in Belarus, a nation of 9.5 million people.But he did discuss the situation in a call Saturday with Putin, the first publicly known direct contact between the two leaders since the election. A Kremlin statement said Putin and Lukashenko both expressed hope for a quick resolution to the tensions.”It is important that these problems are not used by destructive forces aimed at causing injury to the cooperation of the two countries in the framework of the union state,” the Kremlin said.Russia and Belarus reached an agreement in 1997 about closer ties between the neighboring ex-Soviet countries in a union that stopped short of a full merger, although that has collided with recent disputes between the countries and Lukashenko’s suspicions that Putin’s government wants to absorb Belarus.  Protests about the political crisis in Belarus were also held Saturday in the Czech Republic and in front of the Belarusian Embassy in Moscow.The brutal suppression of protests in Belarus has drawn harsh criticism in the West. European Union foreign ministers said Friday that they rejected the election results in Belarus and began drawing up a list of officials in Belarus who could face sanctions over their role in the crackdown on protesters.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday that he was glad to see that some protesters in Belarus had been freed but that it was not enough. He also said the presidential election in Belarus fell short of democratic standards.  “We’ve said the elections themselves (in Belarus) weren’t free. I’ve spent the last days consulting with our European partners,” he said Saturday at a news conference in Warsaw with his Polish counterpart.”Our common objective is to support the Belarusian people. These people are demanding the same things that every human being wants,” Pompeo said. “We urged the leadership to broaden the circle to engage with civil society.”
 
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