As US and China force consulates to close, the risk of missteps and spiraling tensions rises
Updated 1015 GMT (1815 HKT) July 24, 2020
For almost two decades after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the only formal contact between Washington and Beijing was through occasional meetings in Geneva and Warsaw.
"We treated each other as adversaries," former United States diplomat Henry Kissinger said last year, on the fortieth anniversary of the normalization of relations with China. "We had no normal way of contacting the Chinese government at all except there was an embassy in Warsaw in which both sides could communicate messages to each other and in which the ambassadors met occasionally. There were 152 meetings of the Warsaw Ambassadors who never reached an agreement on anything."
Turkish MPs to vote on bill that could block Facebook and Twitter
Law would give authorities power to regulate content on large social media sites
Bethan McKernan in Istanbul and Alex Hern
Turkey’s parliament is preparing to vote on a bill that would effectively block sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube unless they comply with strict new regulations, as Ankara significantly steps up its efforts to control social media content.
The draft legislation would force social media companies with more than 1 million daily users in Turkey to establish a formal presence in the country or assign an in-country representative who would be legally accountable to the Turkish authorities.
Companies or their representatives would then be required to respond within 48 hours to complaints about posts that “violate personal and privacy rights” and require international companies to store user data inside Turkey. If they do not comply, authorities will be able to levy steep fines of up to $1.5m (£1.2m) and throttle sites’ bandwidth by up to 90%, effectively making them unusable.
Sudan uncovers mass grave likely connected to thwarted 1990 coup
It is the second mass grave from Bashir's rule to be discovered in two months
Sudanese authorities have found a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of 28 army officers shot in a foiled coup attempt against former president Omar al-Bashir in 1990, the public prosecutor said late on Thursday.
It was the second Bashir-era mass grave uncovered in as many months.
Bashir's repressive rule collapsed last year, when the military ousted him after months of street protests.
Opinion: Trump's shock and awe White House survival plan
Donald Trump has reached for a tried-and-tested means to win reelection in the face of falling popularity. But he hasn’t declared war on foreign countries. He’s declared war on his own people, says DW’s Ines Pohl.
Things haven't been looking good for Donald Trump — COVID-19 has America in its grips, more and more people are becoming infected and the country's morgues are filled beyond capacity. Semis with refrigerated trailers to keep bodies cool in the summer heat have become a regular sight at the nation's hospitals.
Still, the president has aimlessly insisted that he bears no responsibility, going so far as to suggest citizens inject themselves with disinfectant and, until very recently, even made fun of the idea of wearing face masks. That behavior not only angered his opponents, support within his own Republican party is also beginning to show cracks.
MEAT INDUSTRY CAMPAIGN CASH FLOWS TO OFFICIALS SEEKING TO QUASH COVID-19 LAWSUITS
FACTORY FARMING INTERESTS, facing potential legal risks for allegedly failing to protect workers from coronavirus-related risks, are among the many business interests now backing efforts to obtain special immunity from legal liability.
In April, as meat supply chains came under enormous pressure to continue producing food during the pandemic, factory farms became some of the first hot spots for the rampant spread of the coronavirus. Nearly 100 workers at a variety of meat-processing plants across the country have died of Covid-19 and several thousand have been infected across the industry, a crisis that has spurred lawsuits alleging that the meat industry has failed to protect workers.
Tokyo Olympics: Coronavirus risk raises questions over 2021 Games
For some athletes, today was the last chance to take part in the Tokyo Olympics.
They are too old, too exhausted or too financially stretched to wait for another year, after the pandemic forced its postponement.
One of them is 35-year-old Tetsuya Sotomura. When I met him on a sweltering afternoon earlier this week he was still hard at it in a converted factory building in a north Tokyo suburb, flying high into the air, spinning and tumbling on a massive trampoline.
Back in 2008 Tetsuya placed 4th at the Beijing Olympics, just missing a bronze medal. Since then he's fought injury that put him out of London in 2012 and Rio in 2016. Tokyo was to be his last hurrah, a hometown Olympics to end his trampolining career on a high. But another year is just too much.
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