About 20 U.S. professional basketball teams will convert their venues into pandemic-safe voting centers for the 2020 presidential election. The move is part of a deal with the NBA players, who briefly halted their participation in the season-ending playoffs to protest racial injustice and police brutality. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports the latest arena to announce its plans is New York City’s Barclays Center, home to the Brooklyn Nets.
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President Donald Trump created controversy this week by appearing to urge his supporters to vote twice, through mail and in person, to test the election system and ensure their votes count. Voting more than once is illegal, and the president’s comments have been slammed by critics, including Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this story from Biden’s home state of Delaware.Producers: Bakhtiyar Zamanov, Bronwyn Benito.
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Masked security agents dragged students off the streets and bundled them into vans as new protests broke out against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Saturday on the fourth weekend since his disputed re-election.
 
Up to 30 people were detained for taking part in unsanctioned protests, Russian news agency TASS quoted the Minsk police as saying.  Draped in red-and-white opposition flags, students staged protests in several places in the capital, including outside the Minsk State Linguistic Institute where police had arrested five people on Friday, local media footage showed.
 
Elsewhere masked men dragged away students who had gathered at an eatery in Karl Marx Street in the center of Minsk, while some of the protesters shouted “tribunal!,” according to footage shown by news outlet TUT.BY.
 
Thousands of women later held a separate march through Minsk in the afternoon, shouting “hands off the children” as one of their slogans.
 
A former Soviet collective farm manager, Lukashenko has struggled to contain a wave of mass protests and strikes since he won a sixth term at an election last month that opponents say was rigged. He denies electoral fraud.
 
Lukashenko has previously dismissed the coronavirus pandemic as a “psychosis” that could be tackled by drinking vodka and taking saunas.
 
But on Saturday he appeared to chide the protesters for spreading the disease.
 
“We stagger through the streets, rubbing against each other,” he said at a televised government meeting. “Where’s the social distancing and so on in that? We’re doing everything we can to delay the moment when we say goodbye to this disease. That’s unacceptable.”
 
Thousands took part in protests that coincided with the start of the school year on Tuesday. At the Minsk State Linguistic Institute, students sang “Do you hear the people sing,” a protest anthem from the musical “Les Miserables.” 
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Serbia and Kosovo signed a U.S.-brokered agreement in Washington Friday to normalize economic relations.
 
Reached after two days of talks, the document also included plans for Israel and Kosovo to establish diplomatic relations and for Belgrade to move its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.
 
President Donald Trump who also signed the document at the White House ceremony, called the agreement “historic,” adding that “after a violent and tragic history and years of failed negotiations, my administration proposed a new way of bridging the divide.”   
 
“By focusing on job creation and economic growth, the two countries were able to reach a major breakthrough,” Trump said.President Donald Trump’s special envoy on Serbia and Kosovo Richard Grenell speaks during a signing ceremony, with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic sitting at a desk in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Sept. 4, 2020.Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti called the agreement a significant step forward.   
 
“Of course, speaking about politics, we haven’t resolved our problems. There are still a lot of differences between us, but this is a huge step forward,” Vucic said.   
 
“And I’m once again profoundly grateful to you [Trump] and to your people that you successfully got us here. And we didn’t speak about many items that we signed today but for us it’s very important that we are going to have a unified economic zone in an entire Western Balkans which will bring us to the real economic results for the benefit and for the sake of all our people,” Vucic added.
 
Hoti said the agreement was a “great achievement.”
 
“I think, absolutely this is a great moment for Kosovo and for the region. I think we’ve made a huge step forward toward full normalization of relations that should lead eventually to mutual recognition between the two countries,” Hoti said.Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti, seated, listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, Sept. 4, 2020.“We are fully committed to work together to improve people’s lives, to create new jobs in the region. And we fully believe in your [Trump’s] administration. We share the same values of freedom, democracy and open market economy. So, we are looking forward to start implementing this agreement as soon as possible,” Hoti said.
 
Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, who co-hosted the talks at the White House along with Richard Grenell, Trump’s special envoy for the peace talks between Kosovo and Serbia, struck an optimistic tone for the countries’ way forward.  
 
“I think today is about normalization of economic ties. And it’s really a fantastic step for the two peoples have taken, both Kosovo and Serbia. It’s taken a lot of effort. I think that’s a first step,” O’Brien said.
 
Grenell said that it remains to be seen “if the concentration on economics and job creation can ‘unstick’ the political claims by both sides.  
 
“I think one of the great parts of this agreement is over the next year, we have a freeze on the recognition and derecognition campaigns. That means over this next year, we can see job growth and job creation really take hold in the region. And then a year from now, judge us on where the political process goes,” Grenell said.
 
Former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s rival in the U.S. presidential election, responded to a question from VOA about the agreement by saying that “normalization of relations among countries is a … by and large, and almost every instance a good thing,” stressing that “Kosovo should be an independent country. Not a part of Serbia.”   
  ‘A new approach?’   
 
The U.S. effort to get Kosovo and Serbia to agree to cooperate on a range of economic fronts to attract investment and create jobs has been led by Grenell, who has called the economic approach “flipping the script,” and has focused on incentivizing the two countries’ citizens, especially youth.   
 
Grenell Friday gave credit to Trump for a “creative” approach and stressed that the deal could not have been reached by Washington insiders who have been stuck for years.
    
“I’m telling you that the only way that this agreement could have happened is from an outsider,” Grenell said at a press briefing with O’Brien and Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.    
   
The deal includes rail and transit agreements, including one that would clear the way for the first flight between Pristina and Belgrade, the two countries’ capitals, in 21 years.   
   
On Monday, Hoti and Vucic are scheduled to go for talks to Brussels, where the European Union has been mediating the talks between Kosovo and Serbia for over a decade.
 
U.S. officials have been in close touch with EU officials on the issue of normalizing economic relations between Serbia and Kosovo, Grenell said Friday.
     Main challenge to normalization remains  
 
The White House talks were not without surprises. While the White House had said the talks would be about economic issues, on Thursday, after the first morning session of the talks a Serbian delegation member, Finance Minister Sinisa Mali, said that they were presented with a document that included “mutual recognition” between the countries.   
 
Grenell retweeted a Twitter post referring to Mali’s comments, writing “Not True.”Not true. https://t.co/oDyaqs7ZvJ— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) September 3, 2020At the end of the first day of talks, Vucic confirmed what Mali had said, responding to a question by the VOA Serbian. “If you asked me whether Serbia will accept mutual recognition, which was mentioned at some draft proposals, it won’t work for Serbia,” he said.  
 
The signed documents did not include a “mutual recognition” clause.   
 
Grenell told Newsmax Friday that there had been some surprises at the talks but that neither “side was that surprised”.  
 
“Surprises are good. They press the sides to do more. We had some surprises, but I don’t think either side was that surprised. They like to pretend before the media that they are more surprised than they actually are,” he said. A woman walks past graffiti on a wall reading: “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia,” in Belgrade, Serbia, Sept. 4, 2020.At the heart of the dispute between the former foes, is Serbia’s refusal to recognize Kosovo’s independence, which it declared unilaterally in 2008.  
 
Most Western nations – including the United States – have recognized Kosovo. Russia and China have not.   
 
Vucic and Hoti’s Washington comments on the subject show a difficult road is ahead.   
 
Hoti said he sees the economic agreement as one step toward recognition.   
 
“We see this as a big step towards final resolution, which is mutual recognition. I have stated publicly, that for us this indicates a big achievement towards finalization of an agreement with Serbia,” he told VOA.    FILE – Kosovo’s flags decorate a street as people walk during its 12th independence anniversary, in the capital Pristina, Feb. 17, 2020.However, Vucic said after the signing that the pact is a bilateral agreement with the United States, rather than Kosovo, aiming to fend off criticism at home that an agreement with its former province would be interpreted as recognizing it.   
 
Damon Wilson, a vice president of the Atlantic Council said the political issues “cannot be buried.”
 
“Ultimately what we are talking about is a comprehensive resolution, a settlement that provides for normalization,” he told VOA Albanian this week.  Diplomatic pre-election win?  
 
The announcement appears to provide Trump with a diplomatic victory ahead of the November presidential election.  
 
“This meeting has become by now a part of Trump’s electoral campaign, with the White House looking for a foreign policy accomplishment that will produce an event and a photo opportunity for President Trump as a peace broker,” said Majda Ruge, a fellow with Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and with the European Council for Foreign Relations
 
Wilson though, said Kosovo and Serbia are not exactly front-page news in the United States.  
 
“It’s not exactly the leading issue for vote-getters across our country, and it is not likely to really factor too much into electoral calculations in that sense,” he said.  
 
While it is early to say how a change in the White House would affect this issue, Democratic and Republican administrations’ policy towards the Balkans have usually had a “sense of continuity,” Wilson said.   
 
“We want to see that there is a bipartisan commitment to U.S. engagement in the Western Balkans and that’s something that we want to nurture and sustain,” he said.   
 VOA White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara, Burim Goxhuli from VOA’s Albanian Service, Milan Nesic and Ivana Konstantinovic from VOA’s Serbian Service contributed to this report.  
 
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Officials in Bangladesh said Saturday that at least 11 people have died following a blast likely caused by a leak in a gas pipeline at a mosque outside Dhaka during evening prayers Friday.The Dhaka Tribune reported that 26 people are being treated at Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery in Dhaka.The victims have burns covering at least 60% to 70% of their bodies, according to Fatullah police station Officer-in-Charge Aslam Hossain.Narayanganj Fire Service’s Deputy Assistant Director Abdullah Al Arefin said apparently all six air conditioners on the mosque’s ground floor exploded.  He said fire officials suspect “that gas had leaked from the pipeline and accumulated inside as the windows were closed. The explosion was probably triggered due to sparks when someone tried to switch on or off the ACs or fans.”  
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President Donald Trump has directed the Office of Management and Budget to crack down on federal agencies’ anti-racism training sessions, calling them “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”OMB director Russell Vought, in a letter Friday to executive branch agencies, directed them to identify spending related to any training on “critical race theory,” “white privilege” or any other material that teaches or suggests that the United States or any race or ethnicity is “inherently racist or evil.”The memo comes as the nation has faced a reckoning this summer over racial injustice in policing and other spheres of American life. Trump has spent much of the summer defending the display of the Confederate battle flag and monuments of Civil War rebels from protesters seeking their removal, in what he has called a “culture war” ahead of the November 3 election.Meanwhile, he has rejected comments from Democratic nominee Joe Biden and others that there is “systemic racism” in policing and American culture that must be addressed.Vought’s memo cites “press reports” as contributing to Trump’s decision, apparently referring to segments on Fox News and other outlets that have stoked conservative outrage about the federal training.Vought’s memo says additional federal guidance on training sessions is forthcoming, maintaining that “The President, and his Administration, are fully committed to the fair and equal treatment of all individuals in the United States.”“The President has a proven track record of standing for those whose voice has long been ignored and who have failed to benefit from all our country has to offer, and he intends to continue to support all Americans, regardless of race, religion, or creed,” he added. “The divisive, false, and demeaning propaganda of the critical race theory movement is contrary to all we stand for as Americans and should have no place in the Federal government.”  
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More than a week after Category 4 Hurricane Laura ripped through the southwestern corner of Louisiana, state officials report more than 230,000 residents remain without power Friday. Another 175,000 are without water.“People around the country don’t realize how bad it is here,” Michelle Lee of Lake Charles, Louisiana, told VOA. “Entergy says we won’t have power for four or five weeks. Some people say they don’t think it’ll be until November.”Gov. John Bel Edwards said Thursday that power has been restored for nearly 400,000 people, but that the remaining outages would likely be the hardest ones to fix. The reason for this, he said, was that thousands of miles of electrical wires, thousands of utility poles and many hundreds of transmission towers were damaged by the storm.Lake Charles officials said this is a main reason residents have been unable to return to the city of 80,000, which was hit early August 27 with winds of more than 240 kph — the most powerful hurricane to reach Louisiana since 1856.“Why come back right now if you don’t have to?” Lee said. “I have friends who are in hotel rooms in New Orleans and Texas, and why not? A hot shower is a lot better than what we’ve got here. There are people in Lake Charles living in homes with a tree through the roof and with no water or power. I know people who are sleeping in cots on their porch or in tents in their backyard.”Edwards estimated that more than 11,000 people are being sheltered by the state, some in large emergency shelters, but the majority in hotel rooms in cities around Louisiana.Lee said she tried to find a place for herself and her two dogs but didn’t have any luck.“At first I was told I could find a place to stay in Baton Rouge, so I drove there, but then they said, ‘No, go to Metairie.’ So I drove to Metairie and they said, ‘No, go to Alexandria.’ It was a mess,” Lee said.The lucky oneAfter driving more than 800 miles during the evacuation, Lee was afraid her old car might die, stranding her and her dogs. She was also worried about missing work at an auto repair shop if she couldn’t return to Lake Charles.“I don’t have a lot of great options,” she said. “I didn’t want to go into one of the big shelters, because I didn’t think it was safe with COVID. Even if I managed to find an open hotel room, as far as I can tell, the emergency vouchers are gone, and that would be a lot of money for me to pay out of pocket.”Michelle Lee says the RV park she calls home looked ‘like a war zone’ after Hurricane Laura tore through. (Courtesy Michelle Lee)She decided to try her luck back home.Just three days after the hurricane, Lee and her dogs returned to the RV park they’d lived in since Lee’s daughter left for college. (Lee playfully calls it “the cheap life.”) She was horrified by what she saw.“When I left before the storm on Wednesday, there were 20 RVs in the lot,” she said. “When I got back, there were only two that were livable. The rest were tipped over on their sides, or had been split completely in half. It looks like a war zone.”Fortunately for Lee, one of the RVs still habitable was her own. She is now living in her wind-damaged motorhome with her two dogs, as well as a couple and their dog whose RV was destroyed. Lee doesn’t have running water, and the only electricity they have is when they run the generator, which Lee says is getting expensive.“It’s another $150 a week to run the generator, the RV is kind of crowded and I’d really like a warm shower, but I still think I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said. “At least I’m home and I can go to work.”Far from homeOlivia Dean also evacuated the day before the storm. She and the nearly 15 family members and friends she’s traveling with, including her grandparents and several uncles, have yet to make it home, though.She said they have been unable to get an emergency voucher to cover their housing costs. This has forced them to move from one hotel to another across Texas as they search for more affordable options.“I can’t believe how much these hotels are costing us,” Dean said. “But, stuck between a pandemic and a disaster, we don’t really have a better option.”Dean said the group is eager to return home so they can go to work and check on their property. They are finding it difficult, however, to get information that would tell them if it’s safe to return.“I was able to find one stranger on Facebook to go by the property and take a picture so we knew what the damage was like,” she said, referring to the social media groups that pop up in the wake of disasters to help get information and assistance to victims.Olivia Dean hasn’t been able to go home. She knows her apartment house lacks water, and she says she doubts the building has power. (Courtesy Olivia Dean)She said she knows her building lacks water, either because it has been turned off or it is contaminated. She also doubts her apartment building has power because no one in that area has electricity unless they use a generator.“One of the buildings looks like the roof and side were torn off, but ours looks like it might be OK. We can’t really tell,” Dean said.For natural disaster victims like Dean and Lee, the lack of information causes the most frustration, they said.“The governor said the disaster wasn’t as bad as expected, but that’s tough to hear when you know so many people who have lost everything,” Dean said. “Nobody wants to hear how bad it isn’t right now. It’s bad enough.”Lee agreed, adding she worries that statements like that from local officials will lead to less urgency for the rest of the country to help rebuild the region.“We might not be as well-known as New Orleans or New York or Miami, but we have 78,000 people here and most don’t have power,” Lee said. “I’m worried people will hear what the governor says and think maybe we don’t need the help. But, trust me, we do.”In a press conference Thursday, Gov. Edwards acknowledged the progress that has been made clearing debris, but noted that the storm “left a long trail of devastation and just catastrophic damage.”Olivia Dean hasn’t been able to go home. She knows her apartment house lacks water, and she says she doubts the building has power. (Courtesy Olivia Dean)“We clearly have a very, very long way to go,” he said, adding that “this is very much going to be a marathon, not a sprint.”For residents like Lee and Dean, the marathon has just begun.“It’s going to be weeks until I see any sort of assistance from FEMA,” Lee said. “An inspector hasn’t even made it to our RV park, so my application is still pending. I’m just hanging on the best I can until I get some help — that’s all I can do.” 
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The White House is defending its efforts to protect the November presidential election from outside interference following a revelation that Russian “malign … actors” have been echoing President Donald Trump’s repeated warnings about potential election fraud.”We’re going to do everything we can to protect the sanctity of our election,” U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told reporters Friday, adding the White House and the president have taken “unprecedented action” to protect the November vote.National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien speaks to reporters outside of the West Wing of the White House in Washington on May 21, 2020.”We’ve made it very clear to the Chinese, to the Russians, to the Iranians and others that haven’t been publicly disclosed that anyone who tries to attempt to, that anyone who attempts to interfere with American elections will face extraordinary consequences,” he said.The assurances follow the release Thursday of a leaked Department of Homeland Security bulletin saying Russia is stoking fears that expanded mail-in voting will lead to a flawed election result.“Since at least March 2020, Russian malign influence actors have been amplifying allegations of election integrity issues in new voting processes and vote-by-mail programs,” according to the Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center William Evanina speaks during the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit in Washington, Oct. 31, 2017.“We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment,’” National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina said in the August 7 statement.“Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television,” he added.Evanina also said both China and Iran would prefer to see a Biden victory.Beijing sees Trump as “unpredictable,” Evanina said, adding that Chinese officials understood the range of influence operations they have set in motion “might affect the presidential race.””The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information & intellectual property & to our economic vitality is the counterintelligence & economic espionage threat from #China” @FBI Dir Christopher Wray tells @HudsonInstitute— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) July 7, 2020Trump, who has been frustrated by allegations that Moscow helped him win in 2016, has repeatedly dismissed suggestions Russia would like to see him win.“We’ve taken stronger action against Russia than any other country in the world,” he told reporters late Friday during a wide-ranging briefing at the White House, while also arguing the threat from Russia has been exaggerated.”It is interesting that everybody’s always mentioning Russia,” Trump told reporters. “I don’t mind you mentioning Russia, but I think probably China, at this point, is the nation you should be talking about, much more so than Russia.”U.S. officials have been promising that despite the myriad concerns, the upcoming presidential election will be “the most secure election in modern history,” though they have warned that unlike in past elections, final results may be delayed by what they expect will be a large number of mail-in ballots. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials have also said there is no intelligence to suggest any foreign country or anyone in the U.S. is actively trying to use mail-in ballots to rig the presidential election.
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George Washington University is investigating the case of a history professor who allegedly admitted to fraudulently pretending to be a Black woman for her entire career.In a blog post that has gained international attention, a writer claiming to be Jessica Krug, a GW associate professor of history, writes that she is in fact a white Jewish woman.”I concealed my past as a white Jewish child from the residential suburbs of Kansas City in favor of several black identities that I was not allowed to claim: first Black from North Africa, then African-American , and finally Black from the Bronx, of Caribbean origin,” wrote this woman, who is fair-skinned.Krug did not respond to a request on her blog page for comment. The university declined to comment, but said in a tweet, “We are aware of the post by Jessica Krug and are looking into the situation. We cannot comment further on personnel matters.”The blog post expresses deep remorse, calling the deception, “the very epitome of violence, of thievery and appropriation.”The writer blames “unaddressed mental health demons” dating to childhood and says she frequently thought of confessing the deception, “but my cowardice was always more powerful than my ethics.”Krug’s biography on the GW website lists imperialism and colonialism and African American history among her areas of expertise. Her writings center heavily on issues of African culture and diaspora.Social media furorThe post caused an immediate furor on social media, with Black academics, writers and activists recalling their interactions with Krug.Hari Ziyad, editor of the online publication RaceBatr, which had published Krug’s writings, wrote on Twitter that Krug had confirmed the details of the blog post to him in a phone call Thursday morning. He described Krug as “someone I called a friend up until this morning when she gave me a call admitting to everything written here.”Ziyad wrote that the Krug claimed to be Afro-Caribbean from the Bronx.Krug’s public persona comes across in a video testimony to a New York City Council hearing on gentrification from June. Referring to herself as Jess La Bombalera, Krug refers to “my Black and brown siblings” in the anti-gentrification movement and criticizes “all these white New Yorkers” who “did not yield their time to Black and brown indigenous New Yorkers.”The case is similar to that of Rachel Dolezal, a Washington state NAACP civil rights leader, who identified as Black but was biologically white.This article includes material from Reuters and AFP.
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El Salvador President Nayib Bukele vehemently denied allegations of collusion Friday after a report circulated by the online media outlet El Faro said his government had been engaging in talks with one of the country’s most prolific gangs.El Faro reported Friday that it had obtained a cache of government documents, including prison logs and prison intelligence reports, that show government officials engaging in talks with members of the MS-13 gang since last June.The report alleges Bukele’s involvement with the gang stems from an effort to lower the country’s notoriously high murder rate and boost support for his campaign before the midterm elections in exchange for privileges in prison.Attorney General Raúl Melara, whose office is independent of the Bukele presidency, said in an interview with a local television station that his office would be investigating the claims.The 39-year-old former businessman won the race for the presidency in 2019, despite not being from either of the country’s historically dominant parties, after campaigning as a law-and-order candidate. He quickly earned recognition for the steady decline of El Salvador’s murder rate.Imprisoned gang members, wearing protective face masks, look out from behind bars during a media tour of the prison in Quezaltepeque, El Salvador, Sept. 4, 2020.El Salvador’s homicide rate has declined steadily from 104 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 to 36 per 100,000 in 2019. The 2019 rate is still seven times the rate of the United States, according to U.S. State Department data.Bukele took to Twitter to proclaim his innocence and target his critics, who he said “invented a novel” with the story after exhausting other attacks against him. As a means of disputing the allegations of collaboration with the gangs, Bukele cited criticisms that his administration was a dictatorship that has committed human rights violations against gangs in the region.“The Salvadoran people are happy that after a civil war and 30 more years of crime, they can live in a much safer country than before,” he tweeted Friday. Bukele says his critics are just changing the narrative. “Now, the government is not bad with the terrorists, but good.”The allegations against Bukele’s administration are not the first time Salvadoran officials have been accused of engaging with the country’s gangs. Former President Mauricio Funes was granted asylum in Nicaragua in 2016 after facing similar accusations. Funes has denied he negotiated with MS-13.On Friday, Melara said on a local news show, “There are politicians and ex-politicians prosecuted for negotiations with the gangs. Rumors have arisen that this situation is happening again, and we are going to investigate. No one can take advantage of the institutionality to negotiate with terrorists.”
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Chadwick Boseman was remembered as a hometown hero who brought a sense of pride to his native Anderson, South Carolina.The city paid tribute to Boseman in a public memorial on Thursday evening. The actor, who became widely popular through “Black Panther,” was honored after he died last week at the age of 43 following a private four-year battle with colon cancer.A viewing of “Black Panther” was held at an outdoor amphitheater where people practiced social distancing. Most attendees wore masks, while others — mostly kids — dressed up in Black Panther costumes.Some artwork of Boseman was displayed onstage during the tribute.A man watches the movie “Black Panther” during a Chadwick Boseman tribute in Anderson, S.C., Sept. 3, 2020.”He is the epitome of Black excellence,” said Deanna Brown-Thomas, the daughter of legendary singer James Brown and president of her father’s family foundation. She remembered when Boseman visited her family in Augusta, Georgia, before the actor portrayed her father in the 2014 film “Get on Up.”Boseman was a playwright who acted and directed in theater before playing the Marvel Comics character King T’Challa in “Black Panther,” which became one of the top-grossing films in history. He also wowed audiences in his portrayal of other Black icons, including Jackie Robinson in “42” and Thurgood Marshall in “Marshall,” and shined in other films such as Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods.”Brown-Thomas joked about how her family teased Boseman for being too tall to play her father. But she said Boseman was perfect for the role, admiring his humility as a high-profile actor.”He wasn’t Hollywood, and that’s what I loved about him,” she said.Khloe Murray, 5, of South Carolina holds her Black Panther doll during a Chadwick Boseman tribute in Anderson, S.C., Sept. 3, 2020.Anderson mayor Terence Roberts said people around town always knew Boseman would be special.”You know, he was always reading and always trying to get better,” Roberts said. “So from a work ethic point of view, it just doesn’t happen overnight. He showed us that we’ve got to hone our skills and just persevere.”In Anderson, a city of about 28,000 people, “there’s deep sadness and grief, but it has a bounce out of it that is such inspiration,” city spokeswoman Beth Batson said. That’s because Boseman inspired so many people in the community, she said.”It has been amazing to watch the grief, so to speak, blossom,” she said. “Now young people say ‘what can I do, what can I be.'”Pastor Samuel Neely said Boseman was active in church, speech and debate. The pastor said he baptized Boseman. He also praised Boseman for having high character.”Even though he plays these different people, I still see the person I knew as a child,” said Neely, who was Boseman’s childhood pastor. “When I see him, it’s almost like seeing my own child. He’s still Chad.”Thursday’s tribute was not a funeral, and members of Boseman’s immediate family did not plan to be in attendance, Boseman’s publicist, Nicki Fioravante, said in a statement.”On behalf of the Boseman family, we appreciate the community’s outpouring of love and admiration for Chadwick,” Fioravante said. 
 
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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: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: Gasoline can be used as a disinfectant against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.Verdict: FalseRead the full story at: FactRakers Social Media DisinfoScreenshot Circulating on social media: Claim that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “quietly updated” its COVID-19 data “to admit that only 6%” of all the U.S. deaths recorded actually died from the virus.Verdict: FalseRead the full story at: Reuters Factual Reads on CoronavirusChildren Across Europe Are Going Back to School. Here’s How 3 Countries Are Managing It
Around the world, students are returning to school as countries experiment with new educational models and social distancing protocols to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
— Time, September 2Coronavirus research updates: Even octogenarians develop potent antibodiesNature wades through the literature on the new coronavirus — and summarizes key papers as they appear.
— Nature, September 1
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