ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS
Israel's Netanyahu mulls two-phase West Bank annexation, newspaper says
Reuters•June 17, 2020



Israel's Netanyahu mulls two-phase West Bank annexation, newspaper says
Houses are seen in the Jewish settlement of Itamar, near Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank


JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is weighing a limited initial annexation in the occupied West Bank, hoping to quell international opposition to his pledge of wide territorial moves, an Israeli newspaper said on Wednesday.

Netanyahu has said a U.S. peace plan, which envisages Israel retaining its settlements in the West Bank, provides an "historic opportunity" to extend Israeli sovereignty to them and to the Jordan Valley area.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in a 1967 war. Palestinians hope to establish a state in those areas and say the peace blueprint announced by President Donald Trump in January kills that prospect.

Israel Hayom, a pro-Netanyahu daily widely seen as reflecting his views, said the right-wing leader was now looking at the possibility of annexation in two phases.

It said Netanyahu, who has set July 1 for the start of a cabinet debate on the issue, was considering annexing only small settlements in phase one and, after renewing calls to Palestinians for peace talks, then annexing the remaining ones.

Netanyahu's annexation pledges have raised stiff opposition from the Palestinians, Arab countries and European nations, and Israeli officials say Washington has yet to agree to the move.

Wasel Abu Youssef, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said potential phasing of annexation made no difference. "Netanyahu is trying to confuse the international position which rejects annexation and the world will not be fooled by such a proposition," he said.

The newspaper said Netanyahu does not anticipate a strong punitive response from Europe for annexation, despite vocal opposition, nor does he see it as substantially damaging Israel's ties with the Arab world.

Nonetheless, by limiting annexation initially, he hopes to signal that Israel is attentive to international criticism, Israel Hayom said.

It attributed its report to sources that have held discussions with Netanyahu in the last few days, but did not identify them. Netanyahu's office declined to comment.

Most countries view Israeli settlements in occupied territory as illegal. 

Israel rejects this.


(Reporting by Maayan Lubell and Ali Sawafta; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Andrew Cawthorne)

UAE official: Israel annexation may draw calls for one state

ILAN BEN ZION,Associated Press•June 17, 2020

In this Feb. 20, 2020 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the area where a new neighborhood is to be built in the East Jerusalem settlement of Har Homa. A senior Emirati official warned Wednesday, June 17, 2020 that Israel's planned annexation of parts of the West Bank could lead Arab states to call for a single binational state for Israelis and Palestinians. (Debbie Hill/Pool Photo via AP, File)


JERUSALEM (AP) — A senior Emirati official warned Wednesday that Israel's planned annexation of parts of the West Bank could lead Arab states to call for a single bi-national state for Israelis and Palestinians.

The Arab minister’s remarks, delivered to an influential Washington think tank, struck a new setback to Israel's hopes of normalizing relations with the Arab world and added to the increasingly vocal international opposition to the Israeli annexation plan.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the strategically important Jordan Valley. Such a unilateral move would dash Palestinian hopes of establishing a viable independent state.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and has built dozens of settlements that are now home to nearly 500,000 Israelis. The Palestinians seek the territory as the heartland of their future state. Most of the international community considers Israel’s West Bank settlements illegal under international law.

Anwar Gargash, the United Arab Emirates's minister of state for foreign affairs, told the Washington-based Middle East Institute that his country is committed to dialog and the two-state solution to the decades-long conflict. But he added that “ultimately, I personally believe that if we are going where we are going today, and we lose the possibility of really implementing a two-state solution, we will really be talking about equal rights and one state."

A binational state of Israelis and Palestinians would mean an end to Israel's goal of being a democracy with a solid Jewish majority.

Israel has cultivated close, but clandestine, ties with several Arab states, including the UAE, because of their shared concern about Iran. Those warming relations have manifested themselves publicly with Israeli ministers visiting the UAE, Israeli athletes attending sports events and some quiet business ties.

Israel only has formal diplomatic relations with Egypt and Jordan, which also have both strongly criticized the annexation plan.

On Tuesday, Gargash told the American Jewish Committee that “the UAE is clearly against any annexation as being proposed by the current Israeli government.”

Last Friday, Yousef Al Otaiba, the Gulf state's ambassador to the U.S., published an editorial in a leading Israeli newspaper warning that annexation of occupied territory would “upend” Israel’s efforts to improve ties with Arab countries.

Also on Wednesday, Gargash said “less than 100” Emirati soldiers remain in Yemen amid a Saudi-led war on the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels that hold the capital, Sanaa.

The UAE began to withdraw in July 2019 from the yearslong war in the Arab world’s poorest nation amid international criticism of a campaign that saw airstrikes kill civilians and prisoners tortured.

TRUMP PURGES VOICE OF AMERICA
Trump-appointed chief of U.S. global broadcasting fires agency heads in major reshuffle

Head of Radio Free Europe among those fired; Voice of America director quit Monday

Published: June 17, 2020 By Associated Press

The Voice of America building Monday in Washington. ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The new chief of U.S.-funded international broadcasting on Wednesday fired the heads of at least three outlets he oversees and replaced their boards with allies, in a move likely to raise fears that he intends to turn the Voice of America and its sister outlets into Trump administration propaganda machines.

U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack informed those he dismissed in email notices sent late Wednesday just hours after he had sought to play down those concerns in an email to staff saying he is committed to ensuring the independence of the broadcasters who are charged with delivering independent news and information to audiences around the world.

Two congressional aides said that among those removed from their positions were the head of Radio Free Asia, Bay Fang, the head of Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, Jamie Fly, and the head of the Middle East Broadcasting Network, Alberto Fernandez. The director and deputy director of the Voice of America, Amanda Bennett and Sandy Sugawara, had resigned from their positions on Monday.

Pack, a conservative filmmaker and one-time associate of President Donald Trump’s former political adviser Steve Bannon, said in a notices to those fired that he was taking the step consistent with his authority as the new CEO of the overall agency. It gave no reason for his decision.

He added in the notices that he expected the agency’s new board of directors, chaired by himself, to approve the decision. In a separate message, Pack also announced that he had removed all the current members of the broadcasters’ respective boards and installed his own team, with officials from various agencies, including the Office of Management and Budget and Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The firings came after Pack had tried to allay mounting concerns about his intentions at the agency in an email to staff in which he said he is “committed to maintaining the agency’s independence and adhering to VOA’s charter and the principles.”

The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, denounced the firings as an “egregious breach” of the agency’s mission. Menendez had led an unsuccessful fight to block or at least delay Pack’s confirmation.

“As feared, Michael Pack has confirmed he is on a political mission to destroy the USAGM’s independence and undermine its historic role,” Menendez said. “The wholesale firing of the agency’s network heads, and disbanding of corporate boards to install President Trump’s political allies is an egregious breach of this organization’s history and mission from which it may never recover.”

VOA had come under severe criticism from Trump and his supporters for its reporting on China and the coronavirus pandemic, and the resignations came as Trump made clear he wanted a change in VOA’s leadership.

Pack began his role just last week after a contentious Senate confirmation process during which Democrats questioned his fitness for the post.
“I am fully committed to honoring VOA’s charter, the missions of the grantees, and the independence of our heroic journalists around the world,” Pack wrote in the email.

“I think we all agree the agency has an important mission, and we are being called on to perform it at an historically important time,” he said. “My goal is to provide leadership that will help each of you further that mission.”

That mission has been made more critical as “America’s adversaries have stepped up their propaganda and disinformation efforts. They are aggressively promoting their very different visions of the world,” he wrote.

Pack had previously worked for the agency under earlier incarnations as well as the PBS parent Corporation for Public Broadcasting and reminded his new employees of those experiences during which he said he had “learned the importance of building a team that works toward a common purpose.”

Pack said his first priority is to raise employee morale, which has taken a hit in recent months with attacks from the White House and came to a head on Monday when VOA Director Bennett and her deputy announced their resignations, saying that Pack is entitled to have people of his choice in important positions.

Trump and his supporters have been sharply critical of coronavirus reporting by the outlet that ran counter to the administration narrative on China’s response to the outbreak. The White House went so far as to blast VOA in a press statement and directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to not cooperate with its journalists, an unusual attack on a venerable organization that has sought to be an objective source of news despite its government ties.

While not unexpected, the departures of Bennett and Sugawara sparked fears of a significant purge of U.S. Agency for Global Media management. Late Tuesday, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., warned Pack publicly against targeting career officials.
“My fear is that USAGM’s role as an unbiased news organization is in jeopardy under (Pack’s) leadership,” Engel said in a statement. “USAGM’s mission is ‘to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy’ — not to be a mouthpiece for the president in the run up to an election ... And Mr. Pack needs to understand that USAGM is not the Ministry of Information.”

CHLORINATED CHICKEN 
US-European trade talks stalled over 'unsafe' American food

AFP•June 17, 2020

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, pictured testifying on Capitol Hill on June 17, 2020, dismissed concerns over food standards as "thinly veiled protectionism" (AFP Photo/POOL)More

Washington (AFP) - US trade talks with the European Union and Britain have stalled in part due to suspicions of poor American food standards, Washington's chief negotiator said Wednesday.

"I think there's a desire to make things work through, but for whatever reason we haven't made much headway," US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

"There is a sense in Europe, which I think is shared -- hopefully not as deeply with (Britain) as it is with Europe -- that American food is unsafe."

He dismissed the worries however as "thinly veiled protectionism."

These are "very difficult issues with Europe and they will be very difficult issues with the United Kingdom. Also I'm hopeful ... that we'll work our way through them."

Lighthizer claimed that the United States "has the best agriculture in the world" as well as "the safest, highest standards.

"I think we shouldn't confuse science with consumer preference," he said.

He said agriculture had been at the center of all recent trade negotiations and was "a huge, huge winner" for Americans in the new United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement (USMCA), and also in agreements reached with China and Japan.

With Britain, however, "we will have agricultural problems" in negotiations, he warned.

Lighthizer vowed that there would be no compromise regarding US agricultural exports.

"We either have a fair access for agriculture or won't have to deal with either one of them," he said.

US-EU trade talks have been stalled for months, locked in disputes over subsidies to Boeing and Airbus and digital taxation as well as agriculture.

In early May, Britain and the United States began negotiations for an "ambitious" free trade agreement to be implemented after the post-Brexit transition period at the end of the year.

High British taxes on the US tech sector is also a sore point in talks.

President Donald Trump is seeking a sweeping trade agreement, Lighthizer said.

THE POLITICS OF GRIEVANCE

As U.S. walks away from talks on digital services tax, Lighthizer says other nations were aiming to ‘screw America’

Published: June 17, 2020 By Victor Reklaitis

Democratic congressman says: ‘My concern is that the administration is about to start another trade war’

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer testifies at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Wednesday.

‘I agree completely with what we did at the OECD. The reality was they all came together and agreed that they’d screw America, and that’s just not something that we’re ever going to be a part of.’— U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer

Those comments came Wednesday from U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing, as he discussed the latest twist in a long-running fight over taxes on digital services.

President Donald Trump has previously threatened what he called “substantial reciprocal action” for such taxes in France and other countries, suggesting the U.S. could slap tariffs on French wine.

France had accepted a delay for the taxes on tech giants such as Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +0.98% on the condition that a deal be achieved on the issue within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But while Lighthizer on Wednesday said there is “clearly room for a negotiated settlement,” the trade representative added that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin recently made the decision to suspend talks. Mnuchin reportedly told his counterparts in other countries that negotiations are at an impasse.

Read more:Tech giants face global push for digital taxes

Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas grilled Lighthizer on the issue during the hearing, which focused on the Trump administration’s trade policies and was followed later Wednesday by a similar hearing before the Senate Finance Committee.

“The better solution is an international agreement that determines how digital-service companies are taxed,” Doggett said. “My concern is that the administration is about to start another trade war of the type that we have found damaging in the past.”

‘Cooped-up’ millennial traders have sparked a new pandemic — it won’t end well, warns Princeton economist

Published: June 17, 2020 By Shawn Langlois

There's a whole new breed of trader out there. GETTY

‘Don’t confuse day traders with serious investors. Serious investing involves broad diversification, rebalancing, active tax management, avoiding market timing, staying the course, and the use of investment instruments such as ETFs with very low fees... Don’t be misled with false claims of easy profits from day trading.’

That’s Burton G. Malkiel, Princeton economist and Wealthfront’s Chief Investment Officer, sharing his thoughts Wednesday on what he describes as “the day-trading pandemic.”

Malkiel, who wrote the widely read investment book, “A Random Walk Down Wall Street,” blamed a sudden surge of inexperienced traders on the new reality facing the younger generation.

“The coronavirus has wrought devastating harm to the health of our nation and to the vibrancy of our economy,” he wrote. “With respect to financial markets, it has also given rise to a full-blown mania. Individuals, cooped up at home, working remotely on flexible schedules, with no social activities and no live sports to watch and bet on, have increasingly turned to day trading in the stock market.”

Malkiel explained that millennials and members of Gen Z, lured in by low-cost fintech firms like Robinhood, have led to the extreme volatility in stock prices. He cited two of the most popular stocks on Robinhood’s trading platform as examples of the kind of risk that these traders are fine with taking: FANGDD Network Group DUO, -1.86% , a Chinese online real-estate company, and Hertz HTZ, +2.56% , the bankrupt rental-car giant. Both have been all over the map.


Billionaire Leon Cooperman agrees with Malkiel’s stance. The “Robinhood markets are going to end in tears,” he said during CNBC’s show “Halftime Report” on Monday.


Lately, mom-and-pop investors have outperformed pros like Cooperman and mutual funds, according to a research report from Goldman Sachs GS, -1.62% .


But how long can that last?

Malkiel cited several longer-range studies that show how poorly these active traders tend to do in the stock market. One from the University of California showed that individual traders on the Charles Schwab trading platform substantially underperformed the market over a six-year period. In fact, the more they traded during the period, the more they lagged the index funds.

A more recent study out of Brazil showed that only 3% of day traders actually managed to turn a profit, and less than 1% made more than the Brazilian minimum wage.

Read: Trader commits suicide after racking up more than $700,000 in debt

“I have no argument with those who like to gamble,” Malkiel wrote. “But legions of new day traders have poured new money into stocks without a care for the risks involved, clearly unaware of Buffett’s maxim that ‘It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.’”

At last check Wednesday, stocks were looking at another positive trading session following the prior week’s freefall, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.64% , S&P 500 SPX, -0.36% and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite COMP, +0.14% all inching higher.

Alcoa Corp. AA, said Wednesday that it plans to begin on June 25 a formal process at its San Ciprian aluminum facility in Spain that could lead to up to 534 jobs being cut. 

The company said it had started in May talks with the workers' representatives regarding the "significant and unsustainable circumstances" at the plant. Alcoa said the aluminum smelter has suffered "significant and recurring financial losses," which the company expects to continue. 

The alumina refinery at San Ciprian is not affected by the restructuring. 

The stock, which was indicated up fractionally in premarket trading, has rallied 65.0% over the past three months, while the S&P 500 SPX, -0.36% has climbed 23.6%.

HEY HEY USA

HOW MANY AMERICANS

DID TRUMP KILL TODAY

Coronavirus update: U.S. death toll edges above 117,000; Oklahoma is one of 9 states that are still setting case records

Published: June 17, 2020 By Ciara Linnane

U.S. Steel warns of greater-than-expected loss, while mattress maker Tempur Sealy says orders rebounded in May and June


Photo: Timothy Clary, AFP GETTY IMAGES

The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus illness COVID-19 climbed above 117,000 on Wednesday, amid reports that nine states are recording either single day record numbers of cases or their highest seven-day new case averages, indicating they are not managing to contain the spread.

Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina and Texas are seeing infections climb, according to a Washington Post analysis. The news comes a day after Vice President Mike Pence said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that worries about a second wave of cases later in the year were “overblown” and due to the media trying to scare Americans.
His comments were dismissed by health care experts, who continue to urge people to wear face masks, wash their hands frequently and socially distance to avoid further economic hardship and unnecessary deaths.

“Dr. Pence would not be someone I’d go to for a medical checkup, or for medical advice,” said Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic minority leader

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, said he would not be attending the rally in Tusla, Oklahoma planned for Saturday by President Donald Trump, telling the Daily Beast that he is in the high-risk category given he is 79 years old.

Fauci also said the current talk of a second wave of infections is redundant as the U.S. is still dealing with the first wave. “We are seeing infections to a greater degree than they had previously seen in certain states, including states in the southwest and in the south,” Fauci said. “I don’t like to talk about a second wave right now, because we haven’t gotten out of our first wave.”
See also:‘We’re still in a first wave,’ Fauci says, noting precautions can prevent second wave of coronavirus

Fauci said he is nervous about states that are reopening aggressively, especially when he sees images on TV of people gathering closely in bars with no masks. Regarding the Tulsa rally, he said outside is better than inside, no crowd is better than a crowd, and a crowd is “better than big crowd.”

The Trump campaign is planning to hold the rally indoors in a 19,000-seat arena, that has canceled all other events through the end of July. The campaign has acknowledged the risk of infection by insisting that those who attend sign legal waivers absolving Trump and his staff of any blame, if people get sick or are injured.

The virus is spread by droplets of moisture that are released when people cough, sing or shout and it moves rapidly in indoor spaces. Trump rallies tend to include a lot of cheering, shouting and chanting. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its guidelines for reopening safely on Friday, and identified the highest risk of spreading the virus as stemming from, “large in-person gatherings where it is difficult for individuals to remain spaced at least 6 feet apart and attendees travel from outside the local area.”


See:Considerations for Daily Life and Considerations for Events and Gatherings

A group of Tulsa city residents and business owners filed a suit seeking to bar Trump from hosting the rally, but their suit was denied by a judge, according to media reports.

Read:There’s a one-in-three chance of a ‘massive’ disaster that could be worse than COVID-19, says Deutsche Bank
Latest tallies

There are now 8.3 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide and at least 445,468 people have died, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University. At least 4.0 million people have recovered.
The U.S. has the highest case tally in the world at 2.15 million and the highest death toll at 117,290.

Brazil is second with 923,189 cases and 45,241 deaths. The U.K. has 300,715 cases and 42,238 fatalities, the highest in Europe and the third highest in the world.

A chart published Wednesday by Our World in Data was the subject of social media buzz, as it showed the difference in the rolling three-day average of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the European Union and the U.S.

EU countries moved faster to enforce restrictions on movement when the pandemic first created hot spots in Spain and Italy and has made far greater progress in flattening its infection curve than the U.S. The EU has a population of 446 million, compared with the U.S. population of about 330 million.

China, where the illness was first reported late last year, is introducing further restrictions on movement in Beijing, a city of about 21.5 million, after a fresh cluster of cases that is understood to be linked to a wholesale food market. Officials have barred unessential travel, canceled hundreds of flights and suspended schools, the Guardian reported.

Health authorities reported 31 new cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday, bringing the total number of new infections to 137 in just six days. The outbreak could cause more disruption than the initial one in the city of Wuhan, which has a population of 11 million.

See: Beijing cancels 60% of flights to contain fresh coronavirus outbreaks: report

“A lockdown of Beijing would be a Wuhan on steroids, being a governmental and commercial centre of China, and much more massive on any measure then Wuhan,” said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst, Asia Pacific, at foreign exchange services company OANDA. “The economic implications would be profound in China, and by default, the rest of Asia.”

See: Coronavirus tally: Global cases of COVID-19 at 8.19 million, 444,076 deaths and 6 U.S. states see record new cases

What’s the economy saying?

There was good news for the housing market on Wednesday in numbers from the Commerce Department, showing construction of new houses rose 4.3% in May. Housing starts climbed to an annual rate of 974,000 last month from a five-year low of 934,000 in April, to mark the first increase since January. Construction rose as the reopening U.S. economy and ultra-low mortgage rates drew buyers and spurred builders to speed up work.

Economists polled by MarketWatch forecasted starts to rise to a 1.13 million rate. That’s how many new homes would be built in a year if the level of construction was the same each month.

Although the increase was less than expected, a sharp rise in builder permits indicates construction is on track to expand more rapidly soon. Permits to build new houses jumped 14.4 % to a 1.22 million annual pace.

Read also: Retail sales surge a record 17.7% in May, but coronavirus wounds still visible

“We aren’t much bothered about the undershoot in starts,” wrote chief economist Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics. “The outlook is very positive, given the astonishing surge in mortgage demand.”

Not everyone was sanguine.

“Interest rates are going to stay low for a long time, but they are staying that way because of record numbers of unemployed. And that will be the biggest constraint on stronger housing activity,” said senior economist Jennifer Lee of BMO Capital Markets.

What are companies saying?

U.S. Steel Corp. X, -10.41% disappointed investors with the news that its second-quarter losses would be much worse than expected after a “significant” portion” of steelmaking operations have been idled during the quarter as a result of the pandemic.

The company reiterated its view that the second quarter will mark the bottom for the year, with demand starting to show improvement in June.

Results for the company’s flat-rolled business are expected to be “significantly lower” than the first quarter as a result of the pandemic, but demand has begun improving. The tubular business remains “challenged,” however, with demand for welded and seamless pipe declining significantly, as rig counts continue to decline and oil prices remain low.

There was better news from mattress company Tempur Sealy International Inc. TPX, +5.10% , which reported a strong rebound in orders in May and early June after a “very difficult” April.

See: COVID-19 will force older workers into early retirement

“This has been a very difficult period to forecast as shelter-in-place orders and other COVID-19 related issues impact the bedding market,” Chief Executive Scott Thompson said in a statement. “But there is no question that post-April order trends have been strong.”

The improvement has been broad-based across geographies, driving by improvements in the wholesale channel and robust growth in e-commerce, he said.

Elsewhere, companies rushed to issue debt mostly in the form of bonds, continuing a trend seen for months as they seek to bolster liquidity during the downturn.

Here are the latest things companies have said about COVID-19:

• Abercrombie & Fitch Co. ANF, -7.63% is planning to offer up to $300 million of senior secured notes that mature in 2025. Proceeds will be used to repay an existing senior secured term loan facility, to repay part of the outstanding borrowings under its Amended ABL Facility to pay fees.

• Alcoa Corp. AA, is planning to begin on June 25 a formal process at its San Ciprian aluminum facility in Spain that could lead to up to 534 jobs being cut. The company started in May talks with the workers’ representatives regarding the “significant and unsustainable circumstances” at the plant. The aluminum smelter has suffered “significant and recurring financial losses,” which the company expects to continue. The alumina refinery at San Ciprian is not affected by the restructuring.

• Chembio Diagnostic System Inc. shares CEMI, -60.82% tumbled after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoked an emergency use authorization for its antibody test. An antibody test doesn’t test for a current COVID-19 infection; it instead assesses whether an individual has been exposed or been previously infected with the virus. The FDA has concerns about the accuracy of the test, which was one of the first serologic tests to receive emergency authorization during the COVID-19 pandemic, on April 14. The test reportedly generates “higher than expected” false results.” The company previously said it plans to distribute the test in the U.S. and abroad, and it had announced a public offering in May to raise about $27.5 million, saying it would use proceeds in part to support the manufacturing and commercialization of the test.

Read:Why do so many Americans refuse to wear face masks? Politics is part of it — but only part

US Black Small-Business Owners Left Out of PPP Fight to Stay Afloat
   
Black small-business owners have faced hurdles accessing the Paycheck Protection Program. Here’s how the African-American owners of Mahogany Books in Washington, D.C., have kept their small business afloat.
 Photo: Zach Wood for The Wall Street Journal

BILL BARR'S BUCCANEERS 

Justice Department proposes limiting internet companies’ protections

Action follows Trump’s executive order seeking to weaken broad immunity enjoyed by Facebook, Twitter and other platforms

Published: June 17, 2020 By Brent Kendall and John D. McKinnon

BLOOMBERG NEWS/LANDOV
The Justice Department proposed a rollback of legal protections that online platforms have enjoyed for more than two decades, in an effort to make tech companies more responsible in how they police their content.

The department’s changes, unveiled Wednesday, are designed to spur online platforms to be more aggressive in addressing illicit and harmful conduct on their sites, and to be fairer and more consistent in their decisions to take down content they find objectionable, a Trump administration official said.

The Justice Department proposal is a legislative plan that would have to be adopted by Congress.

The move represents an escalation in the continuing clash between the Trump administration and big tech firms such as Twitter Inc. TWTR, -0.83%, Alphabet Inc.’s Google GOOG, +0.58% GOOGL, +0.42% unit and Facebook Inc. FB, -0.05%.


An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.

THE DEMENTED RODENT RETURNS

‘More police officers are shot and killed by blacks than police officers kill African-Americans,’ claims former New York Mayor Giuliani

"TRUTH IS NOT TRUE"

‘I think logically, 99%, if not more, of the police contact with the public is appropriate,’ Giuliani says

THE BIGGEST RAT IN NEW YORK CITY 


Rudy Giuliani in a ‘Fox News’ appearance. FOX NEWS/YOUTUBE
‘More police officers are shot and killed by blacks than police officers kill African-Americans.’

That’s former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani offering his perspective to Fox News on rising concerns that police disproportionately kill black Americans.

“The unarmed shootings — which are the ones that are the troublesome ones — there are only 9 of them against blacks — 20 against whites in 2019. So that‘ll give you a sense. Meanwhile, there were 9,000 murders of blacks, 7,500 of which were black-on-black,” Giuliani told Fox’s Ed Henry during a recent interview.

The comments come as President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order calling on police departments to adopt stricter use-of-force standards and create a database to track officer misconduct amid an eruption of social unrest in America over racial inequality and the treatment of blacks by law enforcement after a number of recent incidences.

Protests across the globe have been ignited by the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man who perished in police custody on May 25 in Minneapolis as a white police officer drove his knee into his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

Giuliani, however, described the reaction to the incidences and calls to defund the police as “created” and “almost hysterical.”

“I think logically, 99%, if not more, of the police contact with the public is appropriate,” said the former mayor, a Trump confidant and lawyer.

The statistics rattled off by Giuliani, a New York district attorney and federal prosecutor before becoming mayor, however, drew a rebuke from the Washington Post, who refuted his claims, making the case that “black Americans are more likely to be shot and killed by police when unarmed than are whites.”
The paper argued, drawing from its own database, that there were 55 incidents in which police shot and killed unarmed individuals last year, not the 9 that Giuliani notes. The newspaper goes on to say that of some 1,002 deaths at the hands of law enforcement last year, 250, or 25%, were of black people, while noting that 48 police offers died over the same period, citing data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Check out the complete Giuliani interview on Fox below:

Meanwhile, lawmakers on Capitol Hill were locking horns over congressional moves to reform policing, with Senate Republicans putting forth legislation that was viewed as less stringent than the House bill on policing expected to be approved later Wednesday.