Great explorers you’ve probably never heard of

Florence Baker: the polyglot slave girl turned intrepid explorer

The Transylvanian-born orphan was sold to an English traveller, with whom she discovered the wonders of Africa, married and fought to abolish slavery


Marcel Theroux Sun 31 May 2020
 

Lady Florence Baker, pictured in London in about 1870. Photograph: Henry Maull/Alamy

Passport details
Lady Florence Baker, née Flora Barbara Maria von Szász, or Sass. Born 6 August 1841 in Nagyenyed, then in the Kingdom of Hungary, now Aiud in present-day Romania.

Claim to fame
The details of Florence Baker’s early life are sketchy – fordramatic reasons. As an orphan she was sold into the Ottoman slave trade, and in 1859 found herself on the auction block in Vidin, in present-day Bulgaria. Blonde, blue-eyed and polylingual, she caught the eye of English traveller Samuel Baker, who bought her.

Baker, a middle-aged widower, took her with him as he headed to Africa to search for the source of the Nile. Along the way, Florence learned Arabic, brokered peace when their team of locals mutinied, and nearly died of sunstroke. They didn’t find the source of the Nile, but she and Samuel were the first Europeans to see Murchison Falls and Lake Albert in Uganda. When Samuel went back to England in 1865 to be knighted, she went with him as his wife. Explorer David Livingstone wrote snarkily: “Baker married his mistress at Cairo and by all accounts she deserved it after going through all she did for him.” It’s said that a scandalised Queen Victoria refused to receive them at court. Between 1870 and 1873, the Bakers made another expedition to east Africa to try to suppress the slave trade – presumably a cause Florence felt strongly about.

Supporting documentation
Florence kept diaries of her travels in English, but has been overshadowed by her husband and still lacks a definitive biography. In the writings of others – Samuel especially – she emerges as a person of enormous resourcefulness and sangfroid, whether serving afternoon tea to guests in the jungle or preparing a last-ditch defence against the king of Bunyoro’s army.

Distinguishing marks
It may just be the long exposure times of 19th-century photography, but pictures of Florence portray an icy calm and imperturbability.

Last sighted
Widowed in 1893, Florence lived until 1916 at Sandford Orleigh, the Bakers’ estate in Devon, and was doubtless gratified when the Daily News called her “a refined English lady”.

Intrepidness rating
Florence, like Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, was blessed with resilience that seems to require supernatural explanat

China, Iran mock US amid ongoing riots: 'I can't breathe'


Sam Dorman
MAY 30, 2020

China fired back at the United States' concerns with Hong Kong's freedom by pointing directly at the racial unrest that has exploded in America, simply tweeting, "I can't breathe".

© REUTERS/Eric Thayer TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY A demonstrator looks on during a rally near the White House against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd in Washington, D.C. U.S. May 30, 2020. REUTERS/Eric Thayer TPX IMAGES OF THE DAYhttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-iran-mock-us-amid-ongoing-riots-i-can-t-breathe/ar-BB14Oon0

Tweets from Hua Chunying, a foreign ministry spokesperson, came as the U.S. struggles with nationwide riots that have erupted in response to George Floyd's death in Minneapolis.

Her "I can't breathe" attack touched a nerve as both Floyd and Eric Garner -- both unarmed black men -- uttered that expression moments before they died, while facing what many believe was excessive force by police.

State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortegus had castigated China for the way it treated Hong Kong protesters. "Freedom-loving people around the world must stand with the rule of law and hold to account the Chinese Communist Party, which has flagrantly broken its promises to the people of Hong Kong," Ortagus said.

US, UK CALL FOR ACTION AT UN SECURITY COUNCIL OVER CHINA'S HONG KONG CRACKDOWN

"I can't breathe." pic.twitter.com/UXHgXMT0lk— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) May 30, 2020

That tweet was just the latest in an apparent strategy of China accusing the U.S. government of hypocrisy as it faced criticism for the way it countered pro-Democracy protests in Hong Kong. Most recently, President Trump has announced that he would block Hong Kong's trading privileges after China's ceremonial parliament voted to bypass the semi-autonomous territory in enacting national security legislation.

In another tweet, Hua posted a segment from RT, which is funded by the Russian government, blasting the U.S. for supporting violent protests in Hong Kong while denouncing rioters as "thugs."

ORTAGUS CALLS OUT CHINA FOR 'BREAKING THEIR WORD' IN HONG KONG: 'WE'VE SEEN THE EROSION OF RULE OF LAW'

Iran similarly attacked the U.S., tweeting an altered press release in which the State Department attacked Iran amid ongoing protests in 2018.

"Some don't think #BlackLivesMatter," Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said. "To those of us who do: it is long overdue for the entire world to wage war against racism. Time for a #WorldAgainstRacism."

Hua also suggested the U.S. employed similar regulations and likened Hong Kong to China's "hand."

CHINA'S NATIONAL SECURITY BILL FOR HONG KONG THREATENS LIBERTIES, AUTONOMY: US, WESTERN POWERS

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo set the stage for Trump’s announcement by notifying Congress on Wednesday that Hong Kong no longer has the high degree of autonomy that it is guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” framework.

China, Iran mock US amid ongoing riots: 'I can't breathe'

Trump said Friday that his administration would begin eliminating the “full range” of agreements that had given Hong Kong a relationship with the U.S. that mainland China lacked, including exemptions from controls on certain exports.

“China has replaced its promised formula of one country, two systems, with one country, one system,” he said, echoing statements by pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.






 A NYPD police car is set on fire as protesters clash with police during a march against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, U.S., May 30, 2020. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz TPX  

50 SLIDES © Eduardo Munoz/Reuters 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-iran-mock-us-amid-ongoing-riots-i-can-t-breathe/ar-BB14Oon0

A Hong Kong government statement accused Trump and his administration of smearing and demonizing the government’s duty to safeguard national security and called allegations that the security law would undermine individual freedoms “simply fallacious.”

“President Trump’s claim that Hong Kong now operated under ‘one country, one system’ was completely false and ignored the facts on the ground,” the statement said.

Separately, Hong Kong Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng told reporters that it was “completely false and wrong” to say the territory was losing its autonomy.

Trump's exit from WHO met with dismay from global health experts

“The U.S. government has gone rogue at a time of humanitarian emergency”

 Karla Adam  USA Today MAY 30, 2020

LONDON —Global health experts and government officials joined in criticism Saturday over President Trump's plans to cut ties with the World Health Organization and funnel U.S. money elsewhere.

In the remarks made in the Rose Garden on Friday, Trump blamed China for the covid-19 pandemic and accused Beijing of effectively controlling the WHO and pressuring it to “mislead the world.”

The United States is the single biggest financial contributor to the U.N. agency, and its exit will hit its budget even as it struggles with a global pandemic that has resulted in more than 364,000 deaths.

Trump said that the annual $400 million that the U.S. contributes to the organization will be redirected “to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs” without giving specifics.

Jens Spahn, Germany’s health minister, tweeted in English on Saturday that Trump’s decision to sever ties with the organization was “a disappointing backlash for International Health.”

Spahn added that the WHO “needs reform” if it is to make “any difference for the future.” Germany will take over the rotating E.U. presidency in July and the minister said finding a way for the European Union to “take a leading role and engage more financially” with the U.N. agency would be prioritized.

South Africa’s health minister, Zweli Mkhize, called Trump’s move “unfortunate.”

“Certainly, when faced with a serious pandemic, you want all nations in the world to be particularly focused … on one common enemy,” he told reporters, according to the Associated Press.

A spokesman for the British government said the WHO had an “important role to play in leading the international health response” to the pandemic. “We have no plans to withdraw our funding,” the statement said.

The European Union urged Trump to reconsider

In a joint statement, E.U. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said that “as the world continues to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the main task for everyone is to save lives and contain and mitigate this pandemic.”

“Now is the time for enhanced cooperation and common solutions,” the statement added. “Actions that weaken international results must be avoided. We urge the U.S. to reconsider its announced decision.”

A number of scientists and global health experts also stepped forward to voice their support for the organization.

© Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images A photo on May 29, 2020 shows a sign of the World Health Organization at its headquarters in Geneva.


In Australia, Peter Doherty, the founder of the Doherty Institute, whose modeling has played a role in the government’s response to the crisis, tweeted that the WHO is “central to the global fight against COVID-19.” He added that the “leadership has seemed overcautious in some of its statements,” but added that “much of the real, essential work of the WHO” goes on at lower, professional levels.

Gail Carson, director of network development at the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium, warned that a pandemic was “not the time” to make health political.

Richard Horton, the editor of the Britain-based Lancet medical journal, which has not shied away in its criticism of Trump’s handling of the crisis, wrote: “We give our 100% support to the World Health Organization at this time of crisis.”

“The U.S. government has gone rogue at a time of humanitarian emergency,” he added.

Elon Musk and SpaceX pull off another feat few thought possible
Christian Davenport


Cape Canaveral, Fla. — The goal was always to fly humans. So even when SpaceX built a spacecraft designed to fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station — but not astronauts — the designers added a curious feature designed to make a point: a window.

© Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL - MAY 30: SpaceX founder Elon Musk jumps for joy at a gathering following NASA commercial crew astronauts Doug Hurley (L) and Bob Behnken blast off from historic Launch Complex 39A aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the crew Dragon capsule bound for the International Space Station. (Photo by Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

Inside SpaceX, that window became a symbol of its larger ambitions and a reminder to its workforce that human spaceflight was the ultimate goal, the reason Elon Musk started the company to begin with, as it works to eventually get people to Mars.

Since its founding in 2002, SpaceX has achieved remarkable feats few thought possible. It was able to design rockets that not only propelled their payloads to orbit, but landed back on Earth to be reused.

It launched the Falcon Heavy, a monster of a rocket with three boosters and 27 engines. It opened up the Pentagon’s launch market, which for a decade had been dominated by a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

But for all the successes over the years, and all the hype the company has generated along the way, it had never flown a single person.

Until Saturday.

At 3:22 p.m., SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from the same launchpad that sent Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon in 1969. On board were two of NASA’s finest, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, a pair of friends whose job was to test the systems of the Dragon spacecraft.

While the launch was delayed on Wednesday because of bad weather, Saturday’s flight went off without a hitch on a steamy Florida afternoon, and the spacecraft achieved orbit, sending Behnken and Hurley on a trip to catch up to the International Space Station, whizzing around the globe at 17,500 mph.

With the successful flight, SpaceX now joins rarefied company. Only three nations have sent humans to orbit. And while NASA has for years relied on contractors to build the rockets and spacecraft that have flown its astronauts, this launch was done under an unusual arrangement. Under what NASA calls its “commercial crew program,” it is relying on two contractors, SpaceX and Boeing, to design and build spacecraft to ferry its astronauts to the space station.

While NASA oversees the program and has deep insight into the rockets and spacecraft, the companies own and operate the hardware, not NASA.

For NASA, the launch was validation that the private sector could handle the immense burden of human spaceflight — an endeavor many, even those inside the space agency, believed never should have been outsourced to the private sector.

For SpaceX, it is a tremendous victory, and it now becomes the first private company to fly people to orbit. (Virgin Galactic, the venture founded by Richard Branson, has twice flown people to the very edge of space and back, in up-and-down suborbital flights.)

During a post-launch news conference, Musk was emotional, his voice catching.

“I’m really overcome with emotion, and it’s really hard to talk,” he said. “We have not yet docked, and of course we need to bring them back safely. So it’s a lot of work to do. But it’s just incredible.”

He said that on Wednesday, when the launch was scrubbed due to bad weather, his adrenaline was running at “100 percent.” But then when the flight didn’t go off “it went to zero. I collapsed and slept the longest I had in probably a year.”

By Saturday, the feeling had changed dramatically. Musk felt calm and relaxed, ready to go, even though the skies were threatening again.

“I didn’t feel nervous. I felt like it was going to work,” he said.

Initially, Musk only gave SpaceX a 10 percent chance of succeeding as a company. And as for the people who doubted SpaceX, Musk said he thought their “probability assessment was correct. Fortunately, fate smiled upon us and brought us to this day.”

The goal now is to make human spaceflight routine. Saturday’s mission was a test flight, the first flight of the Dragon spacecraft with humans on board. And SpaceX will focus on Sunday’s docking with the space station, and then eventually ensuring Behnken and Hurley come back safely.

It’s hoping to fly another mission with astronauts to the station by Aug. 30, though officials have said that date is tentative and will likely change.

Beyond flying humans to the station in low Earth orbit at about 240 miles high, SpaceX ultimately wants to fly people to the moon, some 240,000 miles away. It recently won a contract from NASA to build a spacecraft capable of landing humans on the lunar surface.

Ultimately, though, Musk wants to send humans to Mars, a hugely ambitious goal.

To do that, the company is working on a next-generation spacecraft, known as Starship, that ultimately SpaceX hopes would be able to fly dozens of people to deep space.

On Friday, the day before achieving its historic flight with astronauts, a Starship prototype blew up on the test stand at the company’s facility in Boca Chica, Tex. It was a huge explosion, sending a fireball into the sky, that was reminiscent of the failed attempts of SpaceX’s early days, when three of its Falcon 1 rockets failed to reach orbit.

At the time, many looked at those failures as evidence that SpaceX would never be successful, let alone be able to fly people to orbit.

But SpaceX pressed on, undeterred.

'How are we here again?' Black America on edge after police killing of George Floyd

By Jenny Jarvie and Melissa Etehad, Los Angeles Times


ATLANTA — It was as if someone had lighted a fuse.

Almost as soon as a cellphone video appeared on social media showing a black man struggling to breathe — and finally going silent — with his neck under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer, black Americans in the city’s Longfellow neighborhood took to the streets calling for justice.

Within days, the city was smoldering as protestors started fires and torched stores and a police station. Demonstrations swiftly spread to Los Angeles, where activists blocked a highway, and Atlanta, where protesters set a police vehicle on fire and smashed the windows of the CNN Center.

Watching it all play out on the news, Christie Peters, a 43-year-old real general contractor in Atlanta, cried for three days straight.

“It’s just a lot to carry,” she said. “I think it just comes from a place of feeling ineffectual, because what you’re asking black people to do is have faith in a system where almost every position of power in this system is led by people who look like, speak like, vote like the very people who are perpetrating this against us.

“So how do you have faith in that system?”

It did not help that, like many Americans, she had spent the past months cooped up indoors, out of work and on edge amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“With 40 million people unemployed, this is a powder keg waiting to explode,” she said. “I feel fatigued every day. I think it’s just mental exhaustion about the unknown future of this country.”

Amid the anxiousness of living through a pandemic that has disproportionately killed minorities, the death of George Floyd at the hands of police quickly became a symbol of what many say is the nation’s failure to deliver on its promise of equality.

The altercation between the 46-year-old Floyd and Minneapolis police was set in motion before sunset Monday, when officers responded to a call from a convenience store south of downtown. An employee at Cup Foods reported that a man had tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill.

Not long after police officers arrived, Floyd was dead.







a car on fire in a parking lot: After a peaceful march of hundreds to the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta on Friday, May 29, 2020, protestors returned to the area around the CNN Center and confronted police amid outrage over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.10 SLIDES © Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/TNS

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/how-are-we-here-again-black-america-on-edge-after-police-killing-of-george-floyd/ar-BB14NXXp#image=BB14NXXp_1|1

After a peaceful march of hundreds to the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta on Friday, May 29, 2020, protestors returned to the area around the CNN Center and confronted police amid outrage over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The video was released hours later. For many, it brought back memories of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died in 2014 in New York after police placed him in a chokehold face down on the sidewalk.

Both men had cried out the same words: “I can’t breathe.”

“We keep thinking, ‘How are we here again?’” said Margaret Sullivan, the 32-year-old host of a Minneapolis radio show that highlights marginalized voices.

Sullivan started her “Ms Margaret Live” show on KFAI Radio in March 2016, inspired by the fatal shooting just months before of 24-year-old Jamar Clark in north Minneapolis. Four months later, Philando Castile was shot by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minn., five minutes from where she lives.

“We are outraged because Philando should have been the case to stop all of this,” Sullivan said Friday. “So for us, as Minnesotans, to have this happen back-to-back, it’s not new. We have been screaming about this.”

Carol Anderson, chair of African American Studies at Emory University, said she was struck by the cavalier manner in which the officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck.

As people screamed at the officer to stop, his message was clear, she said: “‘We can do this to you with impunity.’”

“We have a nation that consistently criminalized blackness, that has systematically denied the humanity of black people,” Anderson said.

In Minneapolis, city leaders, white and black, stressed that protesters were right to be angry.

“All throughout America and right here in Minneapolis, we feel as if there was a knee on all of our collective necks, a knee that says ‘black life does not matter,’” Andrea Jenkins, the City Council’s vice president, said Thursday. “I am a part of this system to help to take that knee off of our necks.”

Jenkins, who is black, urged the mayor to declare a state of emergency calling racism a public health issue.

“Till we name this virus, this disease, that has infected America for the past 400 years, we will never ever resolve this issue,” she said.

The political tension heightened Friday morning when President Donald Trump took to Twitter to call the protesters “thugs” and threaten to take military action to bring Minneapolis “under control.”

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump tweeted.

By the end of Friday, the officer who pinned Floyd down, Derek Chauvin, was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

“Third-degree is a Band-Aid” Sullivan said. “It needs to go all the way. We are not letting up because we’ve seen this too many times.”

The sense of deja vu was felt by black Americans across the country.

In 2013, black activists took to the streets across the nation to protest a Florida jury’s decision that found George Zimmerman not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, in 2012.

In 2014, rallies were held for Eric Garner. Then for John Crawford, a 22-year-old black who was shot dead by police in Ohio after he was seen carrying a toy gun. Then for Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager who was killed outside an apartment complex in Ferguson, Mo.

Sullivan described Floyd’s death as a tipping point, coming not just after so many other local cases of police injustice but at a time when the coronavirus has built up anxiety and highlighted the health and economic disparity between blacks and whites.

“COVID-19 is affecting us at higher rates and job loss too,” she said. “People are barely making it, so we are already at a higher stress. In black culture, when something happens, we all gather, we come together and lean on each other, and we couldn’t do that, so that adds to all that separation, anxiety and stress.”

As the virus spread, data began to show that black people were not only feeling the economic impact more, but hospitalized and dying at much higher rates than whites. That data, public health experts said, reflect deep-rooted social and economic inequalities.

DeRay Mckesson, a Black Lives Matter activist who hosts “Pod Save the People,” said Floyd’s death was an example of Minneapolis’ policy failure.

Unlike in many other cities, the police department does not ban neck restraints, allowing certain types if the person is actively resisting arrest and more extreme holds — which can render somebody unconscious — if the person is “exhibiting active aggression” or an officer’s life is in danger.

“These are not isolated incidents,” Mckesson said. “These are the results of a system that was designed to produce these outcomes.”

As with most of the high-profile cases of police violence, Floyd’s death became a national story only because it was captured on raw video captured by cellphone, he said.

Many activists were quick to link Floyd’s death to a long list of recent injustices in states as far afield as Kentucky and Georgia.

Thursday night, seven people were shot in downtown Louisville, Ky., as they protested the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who was shot when the police raided her apartment in March.

The gunfire during the protests “came from within the crowd, not from police officers,” said Mayor Greg Fischer.

Earlier this month, protests erupted in Brunswick, Ga., and then spread across the nation after a video showed a white father and son confront and fatally shoot Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, as he jogged in a Georgia neighborhood. That incident happened in February, but it was not until the video was released and the protests swelled that the white men were arrested and charged with felony murder.

In Atlanta, Christie Peters said she didn’t think many white people really understood the level of anxiety she and her husband felt as they watched the video of a grown man being choked by police or read news stories of a woman who’d been shot in her home.

“I have never committed a crime and I still am terrified,” she said. “That should not be in a place where I pay taxes, where I have every financial and legal responsibility as a citizen, but I don’t have full rights and protections. I don’t see blue-eyed, blond-haired Marcia getting killed in her bed. That doesn’t happen.”

———

(Jarvie reported from Atlanta and Etehad from Los Angeles. Chris Megerian contributed to this report.)

———

©2020 Los Angeles Times

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

AOC castigates cops for ramming protesters in Brooklyn: 'NO ONE gets to slam an SUV through a crowd of human beings’

NY COPS DO A CHARLOTTESVILLE 
By CATHY BURKE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
MAY 30, 2020


A disturbing cop confrontation with an angry crowd in Brooklyn protesting the fatal police arrest of a black Minnesota man drew the ire of progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Saturday night, who raged,“NO ONE gets to slam an SUV through a crowd of human beings.”(Obtained by Daily News)

A disturbing cop confrontation with an angry crowd in Brooklyn protesting the fatal police arrest of a black Minnesota man drew the ire of progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Saturday night, who raged,“NO ONE gets to slam an SUV through a crowd of human beings.”

The incident came when a small crowd at Flatbush and St. Mark’s in Brooklyn hauled a steel barrier to the middle of the street, blocking an NYPD vehicle.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was appalled, tweeting, "NYPD officers just drove an SUV into a crowd of human beings.”(Jeff Bachner/New York Daily News)

The Twitter video shows another cop vehicle pulling up alongside and slowly pushing through the throng, with protesters scattering and one seen clinging to the hood of the vehicle.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was appalled, tweeting, "NYPD officers just drove an SUV into a crowd of human beings.”

"They could‘ve killed them, &we don’t know how many they injured. NO ONE gets to slam an SUV through a crowd of human beings. @NYCMayor these officers need to be brought to justice, not dismissed w/“internal reviews.”

The confrontation came during a third day of protests around the country over the death of George Floyd, who died after former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin kept him pinned, kneeling on his neck, for over eight minutes. Chauvin has been charged with murder and manslaughter.

Mayor de Blasio, speaking at a live press conference late Saturday, blamed the pockets of violence on a small group of determined outsiders who came to “create chaos.”

He promised to look into the video of cops driving through the protesters but also stressed that it was important to “start at the beginning," when demonstrators surrounded the car “to do violence.”

The situation was escalating, he said, and police needed to get out of the area quickly.

When Astrologer Bejan Daruwalla Said COVID-19 Will End By May 21

Bejan Daruwalla's son Nastur Daruwalla, who is also an astrologer, has said the next year will be the best year for India.

Updated: May 31, 2020 1:41 PM IST

By India.com News DeskEmail

Edited by Poulomi GhoshEmail

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Bejan Daruwalla

New Delhi: After noted astrologer Bejan Daruwalla passed away in Friday at the age of 88, reportedly from COVID-19, the video of the astrologer predicting the end of the virus by May 21 is being widely circulated. 

In this video, he could be seen predicting that the coronavirus situation will end by May in India. Interestingly, the ministry of home affairs has released a unlock 1.0 guideline to be maintained from June — from June 8 to be specific. Also Read - 'Unlock 1' in Gujarat: New Set of Relaxations Announced | Read Guidelines Here

  Also Read - Mann ki Baat: From COVID-19 to Locust Plague, Here's PM Modi's Message to All Indians | Top Highlights

In beginning of Apr 2020, 90 year old Bejan Daruwalla predicted that Covid-19 disease will almost end by mid May.He passed away today because of Covid-19 infection at a private hospital in Ahmedabad #BejanDaruwalla pic.twitter.com/KZWLP9gbp0 

— BOJack (@SinceMarch2010) May 29, 2020

The other predictions of the famous astrologer including that of PM Modi’s political success etc., are also being widely discussed on various platforms of social media.
Bejan Daruwalla’s son Nastur Daruwalla, who is also an astrologer, has said the next year will be the best year for India. “India, despite its poverty and joblessness, will rise like a phoenix. Next year will be the best year for India and the country will soon emerge as a superpower,” Nastur Daruwalla said to TOI.

BLACK LYNCHING MUST GO

I CAN'T BREATHE MURAL

A mural depicting George Floyd is pictured at Mauerpark in Berlin, Germany. Photograph: Christian Mang/Reuters

Viral photo shows line of white people WOMEN 
between police, black protesters at Thursday rally

A photo from Thursday night's protest in downtown Louisville appears to show a line of white women, arms locked, standing between Louisville Metro Police officers and black protesters.

© Tim Druck A line of almost all white women formed between police officers and black protesters at Thursday night's rally in downtown Louisville calling for justice in the death of Breonna Taylor.

It quickly went viral, shared on social media by organizations like the Kentucky National Organization for Women, where it was shared more than 100,000 times on Facebook.

"This is a line of white people forming a barrier between Black protesters and the police. This is love. This is what you do with your privilege," the post states.

Tim Druck, a Louisville photographer, captured the moment at the rally, where people called for justice in the death of Breonna Taylor, who was shot in her apartment in March by Louisville police during a no-knock warrant.

Druck, who showed up to take photos of the protest around 9 p.m. Thursday, said a small police presence arrived to block off intersections downtown as the crowd grew.

According to Druck, Chanelle Helm, a lead organizer for Black Lives Matter Louisville, said to white protesters using a bullhorn: "If you are going to be here, you should defend this space,” and instructed people to form the line facing police at 6th and Jefferson streets.

"She was asking for white folks to use their privilege, and put their bodies between police and the other demonstrators," Druck said. "And people responded. They didn’t, they didn't need to be convinced. Everybody willingly and enthusiastically did it."


"She was asking for white folks to use their privilege, and put their bodies between police and the other demonstrators," Druck said. "And people responded. They didn’t, they didn't need to be convinced. Everybody willingly and enthusiastically did it."

Druck snapped one quick photo with his iPhone, which went viral on social media, and another with his Nikon, to capture the striking moment.

As a "Girl Dad," Druck said he was proud to see the line of women at the protest, where his wife and daughter were also in attendance. 

Kentucky National Organization for WomenToday 


Kentucky National Organization for Women May 28 at 8:55 PM ·

6th and Jefferson in Louisville. This is a line of white people forming a barrier between Black protestors and the police. This is love. This is what you do with your privilege. #NoJusticeNoPeace #SayHerName #BreonnaTaylor
Photo credit: Tim Druck