Group items tagged

The counterfeit products are being marketed to people who need to board planes, cross borders,

just like on the real ones

"vendors are capable of pumping out fake vaccination cards by the thousands, if not tens of thousands,

negative Covid-19 test results for $25 (or "buy 2, get the third for free").

roll-outs are slow in many countries, and people are tired of lock-downs and curfews,

"If people can easily get hold of a fake passport to avoid restrictions, then they will

Supporters of the referendum, led in part by a group calling itself Friends of the Constitution, say they are trying to make sure the Covid-19 legislation doesn’t set a precedent for future emergencies

Still, the referendum has the potential to be a hard-fought campaign—perhaps as close as last year’s vote on whether to provide more leeway for hunters and farmers to kill wolves if they stray too close to pasture lands or villages. Swiss voted narrowly against more hunting, by 52% to 48%

Tencent said it began testing facial recognition technology in April to verify the ages of avid nighttime players and has since used it in 60 of its games. In June, it prompted an average of 5.8 million users a day to show their faces while logging in, blocking more than 90 percent of those who rejected or failed facial verification from access to their accounts.

In the case of video games, the government has long blamed them for causing nearsightedness, sleep deprivation and low academic performance among young people. The 2019 regulations also limited how much time and money underage users could spend playing video games.

"The restricted access decision was made out of an abundance of caution to protect the health and safety of our guests, employees and community," the Freemont Street Experience webpage read.

Meanwhile, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava announced the city's existing midnight curfew would be extended to 1 a.m. on New Year's Eve, giving revelers the opportunity to visit bars and restaurants a bit later.

Event coordinator Corky Dozier told the paper: "No fireworks, nothing, not this year, which would have been our 35th anniversary. The orange even went up even after 9/11, but we just can't take the chance."

Numerous videos shared online showed how the noise of protesters could be heard from inside the Senate and House chambers. In an hours-long siege, the rioters tore through the building, breaking windows, attacking police and ransacking lawmakers' offices. Lawmakers, staffers, reporters and other Capitol building workers were forced into hiding while heavily armed police and federal agents rallied a response.

D.C. officials said one woman was shot by a Capitol Police officer amid the chaos. Three others died after separate medical emergencies,

Police also responded to reports of suspicious packages discovered on Capitol grounds and in other areas of the city. Two pipe bombs left at the Republican National Committee headquarters and the Democratic National Committee headquarters were discovered by police and safely detonated, police said.

Yet, there were few arrests in relation to the scope of the unrest as of Wednesday night, despite clear evidence on video of hundreds of rioters gaining access to the Capitol and damaging government property.

Police arrested 70 people on charges related to unrest from Wednesday through 7 a.m. Thursday, Washington's Metropolitan Police Department said. Most of those arrests were for violating curfew, with many also facing charges of unlawful entry

D.C. police will be releasing information later Thursday asking the public's help identifying individuals who breached the Capitol so that they "can be held accountable," he said.

Videos taken of the chaos appeared to show, at best, an unprepared police force easily overrun by rioters or, at worst, one that appeared to acquiesce to the mob. Unverified videos shared on social media showed a police officer taking selfies with some rioters who entered the Capitol, and another appeared to show officers moving barricades to allow a large crowd of people to approach the building.

According to D.C. law, Metropolitan Police can only make arrests on Capitol grounds with the consent or at the request of Capitol Police.

Lawmakers already promised a full investigation into the actions by Capitol Police Wednesday.

The FBI has set up a tip line website for information tied to the riots. The agency said it's seeking information to "assist in identifying individuals who are actively instigating violence in Washington, D.C."

Stephanie Grisham, the chief of staff for first lady Melania Trump, submitted her resignation effective immediately. As did White House social secretary Anna Cristina Niceta and White House press aide Sarah Matthews.Deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger reportedly also resigned Wednesday, according to Bloomberg News.

And some could face more serious charges, including in the death of Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who was overpowered by rioters who, according to two law enforcement officials, struck his head with a fire extinguisher. He was rushed to the hospital and died on Thursday.

He also rebutted the notion of any involvement in the violence by left-wing antifascist agitators, whom Mr. Trump’s supporters have falsely tried to blame.

“The goal here is to identify people and get them,” Mr. Kohl said.The Washington police have also arrested dozens, mostly on charges of unlawful entry and curfew violations.

One of the most serious federal cases involved Lonnie L. Coffman of Falkville, Ala. In the bed of his truck, officers found what they described as an M4 assault rifle and magazines loaded with ammunition. They also found rags, lighters and 11 glass Mason jars filled with a liquid later identified as gasoline.

The images of Mr. Barnett were “shocking” and “repulsive,” said Jeffrey A. Rosen, the acting attorney general.

Prosecutors charged the leader and founder of the Hawaii chapter of the far-right Proud Boys group, Nicholas Robert Ochs, with unlawful entry after he posted a picture on Twitter from the Capitol and told a CNN reporter that he had gone inside.

A pair of pipe bombs found on Wednesday afternoon outside the Democratic and Republican Party headquarters, blocks from the Capitol, contained crude mechanical timing devices, according to an official familiar with their initial examination, suggesting they were intended to be detonated. It was not clear when they were meant to explode.

Other close allies of the president made similar comments at the rally. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said that Republicans should back Mr. Trump’s efforts to undo the election result or face consequences. “We’re coming for you,” he said.

Incitement of a riot is a misdemeanor crime in Washington that carries up to 180 days in prison or a $1,000 fine, but the maximum sentence increases to 10 years if victims suffer serious bodily harm or serious property damage occurs.

Goni was the 18th tropical cyclone to hit the country this year, which faces an average of 20 typhoons annually. And number 19 could come later this week: Tropical Storm Atsan, officials said, entered the Philippine Area of Responsibility early Sunday.

Citing local officials, Reuters reported that the 10 recorded fatalities and three people reported missing were all in the region of Bicol, which encompasses the southern part of Luzon. Nine of those deaths were in the province of Albay.

The AP reports that in one Albay community, the typhoon triggered volcanic mudflows that "engulfed" about 150 houses.

Philadelphia officials issued a citywide curfew on Wednesday after consecutive nights of protests — which at times turned violent — following the fatal police shooting of a 27-year-old Black man, Walter Wallace Jr. He was holding a knife when police shot him.

"By looting, people are not only hurting retail businesses that have struggled in the midst of the pandemic, but they're doing a great disservice to the many others who want to exercise their First Amendment rights by protesting,"

City officials said Wednesday afternoon that 81 people had been arrested during the previous night's demonstrations, including 53 for burglary, seven for disorderly conduct and eight accused of assaulting police.

Police will soon release 911 tapes, body camera footage

City officials urged residents in certain districts to remain indoors Tuesday night due to "widespread demonstrations that have turned violent with looting."

A racially diverse crowd came together Tuesday evening at Malcolm X Park, not far from the West Philadelphia neighborhood where Wallace was killed.

The gathering featured speeches and preceded a march, Philadelphia member station WHYY reported, adding that one speaker noted there were "far too many comfortable white people here tonight."

"Stop this looting and stop and stop burning our city down," the elder Wallace told CNN. "It's not going to solve anything," he said. "I don't want to leave a bad scar on my son and my family with this looting and chaos stuff." Wallace's killing was captured on cellphone video and posted to social media, where it went viral.

Family reportedly called for an ambulance, not police

A police spokesperson said Monday that officers were responding to a report of a man with a knife. They ordered Wallace to drop the weapon, saying that he "advanced towards officers." Both officers fired their guns at Wallace. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Mr. Trump devoted Saturday to four rallies across the state, and he and Mr. Biden planned campaign events for the final 48 hours of the race as well, with a wave of prominent Democrats and celebrities slated to arrive

In Pennsylvania in particular, the possibility of extended court battles and confusion hangs over the race, with the state Republican Party hoping the Supreme Court will reconsider its decision last week to allow the state to continue receiving absentee ballots for three days after Election Day.

The Texas Supreme Court denied an effort by Republicans to throw out more than 120,000 votes that had been cast at drive-through locations in Harris County, an increasingly Democratic area anchored in Houston.

in Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday, Mr. Trump claimed, inaccurately, that the result of the election was always determined on Election Day. “We should know the result of the election on Nov. 3,” he said. “The evening of Nov. 3. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it should be. What’s going on in this country?”

Mr. Trump entered the final hours of the race in a worse position here than he was four years ago, when Pennsylvania was seen as Hillary Clinton’s firewall. This time, Mr. Biden has a lead of six points, according to a new New York Times/Siena College poll released Sunday, and is working to create multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes.

Mr. Trump’s lagging position in the race was evident in his grueling travel schedule that had him shoring up votes in five states he won four years ago — Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.His final rally of the day was scheduled for 11 p.m., and risked violating a midnight curfew in Miami-Dade County.Mr. Biden, by contrast, set his sights squarely on Pennsylvania on Sunday, an approach he will repeat again Monday, along with a foray into Ohio, a state Mr. Trump won handily in 2016 but that polls show could be more competitive now.

Mr. Biden countered with his own warning later Sunday, saying, “The president is not going to steal this election.”

Mr. Biden’s Philadelphia events kicked off a last push through the state over the final two days. On Monday, Mr. Biden, Senator Kamala Harris and their spouses are expected to campaign in five media markets, hoping to cement support across a sprawling coalition and to keep Mr. Trump’s margins down in parts of western Pennsylvania that propelled him to victory in 2016.“My message is simple,” Mr. Biden said Sunday. “Pennsylvania is critical in this election.”

Democrats are well aware of how devoted Mr. Trump’s core base remains. In Macomb County in Michigan, where the president held his first rally Sunday, Irwin Patterson was selling Trump merchandise at a makeshift roadside store.

He also embraced the actions of some of his supporters in Texas who had surrounded a Biden campaign bus with their vehicles on Saturday, in an apparent attempt to slow it down and run it off the road. Mr. Trump claimed the vehicles were “protecting his bus, yesterday, because they are nice.”

Compared with other swing states, such as Florida, far fewer early ballots have already been cast in Pennsylvania and, according to the U.S. Elections Project, as of Sunday there were more than 350,000 absentee ballots that had been requested by Democratic voters that had yet to be returned.

That lead, however, isn’t enough to make Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans feel fully confident about the state of the race in Pennsylvania.

The Trump campaign ads running in Pennsylvania have been overwhelmingly centered on economic messages, mainly jobs and taxes.

Pennsylvania saw its unemployment rate fall to 8.1 percent in September, according to the Labor Department, nearly identical to the national rate of 7.9 percent.

“That blue wall has to be re-established,” Mr. Biden said in another recent Pennsylvania campaign appearance. He said that winning the state meant a “great deal to me, personally as well as politically.”

Pennsylvania has long loomed large in the psyche of the Biden campaign. Mr. Biden, a Scranton native, gave his first speech of his presidential campaign in Pittsburgh, and he chose Philadelphia for his campaign headquarters, before the pandemic hit.

Pennsylvania’s economy is emerging from the pandemic recession but still has a long road ahead to its pre-crisis state. Like the nation, it has seen a two-track recovery that has left small businesses and low-earning workers behind.

PHILADELPHIA — As the national early vote climbs past a staggering 93 million and challenges to the electoral process intensify across states, President Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. are barreling into Pennsylvania and turning it into the top battleground in Tuesday’s election, with Democrats flooding in with door-knockers and Republicans trying to parlay Mr. Trump’s rallies into big turnout once again.

Pennsylvania has more Electoral College votes, 20, than any other traditional battleground except Florida, and Mr. Trump won the state by less than one percentage point in 2016.

Mr. Biden is ahead with a modest margin in recent polls, and is trying to cut into the president’s turnout in rural counties. But Mr. Trump’s rallies have energized many Republican voters, and his team is already preparing legal challenges over the vote if it ends up being close.

“Every day is a new reminder of how high the stakes are, how far the other side will go to try to suppress the turnout,” Mr. Biden said as he campaigned here Sunday. “Especially here in Philadelphia. President Trump is terrified of what will happen in Pennsylvania.”

Some Trump supporters also turned disruptive on Sunday: Vehicles bearing Trump flags halted traffic on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey; local officials said the motorcade backed up traffic for several miles. In Georgia, a rally for Democrats that had been scheduled was canceled, with organizers citing worries over what they feared was a “large militia presence” drawn by Mr. Trump’s own event nearby.

Mr. Biden, by contrast, set his sights squarely on Pennsylvania on Sunday, an approach he will repeat again Monday, along with a foray into Ohio, a state Mr. Trump won handily in 2016 but that polls show could be more competitive now.

Throughout his final sprint of rallies, Mr. Trump has moved to baselessly sow doubt about the integrity of the electoral process.

Democrats are well aware of how devoted Mr. Trump’s core base remains. In Macomb County in Michigan, where the president held his first rally Sunday, Irwin Patterson was selling Trump merchandise at a makeshift roadside store.

Later, he tweeted in response to the news that the F.B.I. was investigating the incident that “in my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong,” adding that federal authorities should be scrutinizing antifa instead.

Of the three big Northern swing states Mr. Trump won by a hair four years ago, the once reliably blue state of Pennsylvania is the one his advisers believe is most likely within his reach. That’s in large part because of the support of rural voters and Mr. Biden’s call for eventually phasing out fossil fuels, an unpopular stance for many voters in a state with a large natural gas industry.

The Trump campaign ads running in Pennsylvania have been overwhelmingly centered on economic messages, mainly jobs and taxes. The campaign’s most aired ad in Pennsylvania over the past week has been a negative ad claiming Mr. Biden will raise taxes (he has said he will raise taxes for those making over $400,000).

But the Biden campaign has not ceded the subject to the president, with 14 different ads on air that touch on jobs and the economy. Its most aired ad in Pennsylvania over the past week featured a Biden speech outlining his plans for pandemic recovery, including jobs. Another ad directly rebuts the Trump campaign’s attacks on his tax plan.

Pennsylvania saw its unemployment rate fall to 8.1 percent in September, according to the Labor Department, nearly identical to the national rate of 7.9 percent. That is a significant improvement from the 16.1 percent unemployment it posted in April. But the state still had 380,000 fewer jobs in September than it did in September of 2019, and there are 18 percent fewer small businesses open here compared to a year ago, according to data compiled by the economists at Opportunity Insights.

Earlier in the week, Dr. Scott Atlas, a scientific adviser to President Trump, mocked the idea that older relatives would be put at risk over the holiday weekend, although there is ample medical evidence that seniors are much more likely to become ill if they are exposed to the virus and to die if they become sick.

An estimated 55 million Americans had planned to travel for the holiday, according to AAA Travel. But rising coronavirus infections, new quarantine rules and increased unemployment have combined to deter travelers in the past few weeks, and that number will be at least 10 percent lower now, the largest year-over-year decrease since 2008.

The C.D.C.’s warning runs counter to messages from administration officials, who have denounced concerns that Thanksgiving celebrations will speed the virus’s spread.

Officials in California on Thursday announced a curfew aimed at trying to quickly curb a surge of new coronavirus infections. Nearly all of the residents of the nation’s most populous state will be barred from leaving their homes to do nonessential work or to gather from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and a member of Mr. Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board, warned that a Thanksgiving feast was the perfect setting for spreading the virus.

Colleges have encouraged students — many returning home for the remainder of the semester — to take a coronavirus test before they depart, but C.D.C. officials do not endorse testing before gathering for Thanksgiving.

The C.D.C.’s advice went so far as to urge people to speak in low voices, because shouting — or singing — can spread the virus. Only one person should serve the food, federal officials said.

There are so many families like the Iloanyas who are caught between pain and hope, because their sons and brothers were arrested by SARS and they fear the worst, knowing the reputation of SARS, but still they dare to hope in the desperate way we humans do for those we love.

the protesters insisted on not having a central leadership, it was social rather than traditional media that documented the protests, and, in a country with firm class divisions, the protests cut across class

The protests were peaceful, insistently peaceful, consistently peaceful.

But the Nigerian government tried to disrupt their fund-raising.

Twelve hours after soldiers shot peaceful protesters, Mr. Buhari still had not addressed the nation.

The Lagos State government accused protesters of violence, but it defied common sense that a protest so consistently committed to peaceful means would suddenly turn around and become violent.

At about noon on Oct. 20, 2020, about two weeks into the protests, the Lagos State governor suddenly announced a curfew that would begin at 4 p.m., which gave people in a famously traffic-clogged state only a few hours to get home and hunker down.

Government officials reportedly cut the security cameras, then cut off the bright floodlights, leaving only a darkness heavy with foreboding. The protesters were holding Nigerian flags, sitting on the ground, some kneeling, some singing the national anthem, peaceful and determined.

A blurry video of what happened next has gone viral — soldiers walk toward the protesters with a terrifyingly casual calm, the kind of calm you cannot have if you are under attack, and they shoot, not up in the air, which anyway would still be an atrocity when dealing with peaceful protesters, but with their guns at arm level, shooting into a crowd of people, shooting to kill.

The Nigerian state has turned on its people. The only reason to shoot into a crowd of peaceful citizens is to terrorize: to kill some and make the others back down.

From the capital city of Abuja to the small town of Ogbomosho, state agents attacked and beat up protesters

In the first week of the protests, the president sent out a tweet and then gave a flaccid speech about ending SARS

soldiers fired on crowds of protesters, inflaming Nigerians who were already concerned about police use of violence against the demonstrators.

The catalyst seemed to be an Oct. 3 video that appeared to show the unprovoked killing of a man by black-clad SARS officers in Ughelli, a town in southern Delta state. Nigerian officials said the video, which was widely shared over social media, was fake and arrested the person who took it — inciting even more anger.Demonstrations erupted in Lagos, the nation’s biggest city, and elsewhere around the country, driven by calls from people — many of them young — demanding that the government dismantle SARS.

President Muhammadu Buhari, seeing that the protests were serious and spreading, agreed on Oct. 12 to disband SARS, calling his decision “only the first step in our commitment to extensive police reform in order to ensure that the primary duty of the police and other law enforcement agencies remains the protection of lives and livelihood of our people.”

The anger of the protesters seems to have only increased — especially after the deadly suppression of a peaceful demonstration in Lagos on Tuesday, compounded by a 24-hour curfew decree and the deployment of Nigeria’s military forces to quell further demonstrations.

The movement bears striking similarities to demonstrations in the United States this year amid the outcry over police brutality after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But Mr. Devermont said an important difference is that the Nigerian protesters are not demanding a defunding of the police — if anything, he said, they want more resources devoted to helping improve policing in their country.

After a night of largely peaceful protests around the country with some brief clashes near the White House, Trump has tweeted or retweeted 40 times since 5:52 a.m. He said he's "done much more for our Black population" than 2020 rival Joe Biden or "any President in U.S. history, with the possible exception" of Abraham Lincoln, trained his ire at the media, promoted baseless conspiracy theories about his predecessor, called for "LAW AND ORDER!" and congratulated Randy Feenstra, who bested Iowa Rep. Steve King in Tuesday's primary.

"We have to get the police departments, everybody has to do better," Trump said, "This is a long term problem, this didn't happen today."

With its pages and pages of statistical charts, Race Traits helped catapult Hoffman into national and international prominence as the “dean” of American statisticians. In his day, Hoffman “achieved greatness,” assessed his biographer. “His career illustrates the fulfillment of the ‘American dream.’”

e don’t see any American dream,” Malcolm X said in 1964. “We’ve experienced only the American nightmare.”

A nightmare is essentially a horror story of danger, but it is not wholly a horror story. Black people experience joy, love, peace, safety. But as in any horror story, those unforgettable moments of toil, terror, and trauma have made danger essential to the black experience in racist America. What one black American experiences, many black Americans experience. Black Americans are constantly stepping into the toil and terror and trauma of other black Americans

Because they know: They could have been them; they are them. Because they know it is dangerous to be black in America, because racist Americans see blacks as dangerous.

To be black and conscious of anti-black racism is to stare into the mirror of your own extinction.

Ask the souls of the 10,000 black victims of COVID-19 who might still be living if they had been white. Ask the souls of those who were told the pandemic was the “great equalizer.” Ask the souls of those forced to choose between their low-wage jobs and their treasured life. Ask the souls of those blamed for their own death. Ask the souls of those who disproportionately lost their jobs and then their life as others disproportionately raged about losing their freedom to infect us all. Ask the souls of those ignored by the governors reopening their states.

The American nightmare has everything and nothing to do with the pandemic. Ask the souls of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd. Step into their souls.

History ignored you. Hoffman ignored you. Racist America ignored you. The state did not want you to breathe. But your loved ones did not ignore you. They did not ignore your nightmare. They share the same nightmare.

Your loved ones are protesting your murder, and the president calls for their murder, calls them “THUGS,” calls them “OUT OF STATE” agitators. Others call the violence against property senseless—but not the police violence against you that drove them to violence. Others call both senseless, but take no immediate steps to stem police violence against you, only to stem the violence against property and police.

Mayors issue curfews. Governors rattle their sabers. The National Guard arrives to protect property and police. Where was the National Guard when you faced violent police officers, violent white terrorists, the violence of racial health disparities, the violence of COVID-19—all the racist power and policy and ideas that kept the black experience in the American nightmare for 400 years?

perhaps the worst of the nightmare is knowing that racist Americans will never end it. Anti-racism is on you, and only you. Racist Americans deny your nightmare, deny their racism, claim you have a dream like a King, when even his dream in 1967 “turned into a nightmare.”

Black people are supposed to be feared by all, murdered by police officers, lynched by citizens, and killed by COVID-19 and other lethal diseases. It has been proved. No there there. Black life is the “hopeless problem,” as Hoffman wrote.

In the first nationwide compilation of racial crime data, Hoffman used the higher arrest and incarceration rates of black Americans to argue that they are, by their very nature and behavior, a dangerous and violent people—as racist Americans still say today.

Hoffman compiled racial health disparities to argue that black Americans are, by their very nature and behavior, a diseased and dying people. Hoffman cataloged higher black mortality rates and showed that black Americans were more likely to suffer from syphilis, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases than white Americans.

While black Americans view their experience as the American nightmare, racist Americans view black Americans as the American nightmare.

Racist Americans, especially those racists who are white, view themselves as the embodiment of the American dream. All that makes America great. All that will make America great again. All that will keep America great.

Their American dream—that this is a land of equal opportunity, committed to freedom and equality, where police officers protect and serve—is a lie. Their American dream—that they have more because they are more, that when black people have more, they were given more—is a lie. Their American dream—that they have the civil right to kill black Americans with impunity and that black Americans do not have the human right to live—is a lie.

Take Minneapolis. Black residents are more likely than white residents to be pulled over, arrested, and victimized by its police force. Even as black residents account for 20 percent of the city’s population, they make up 64 percent of the people Minneapolis police restrained by the neck since 2018, and more than 60 percent of the victims of Minneapolis police shootings from late 2009 to May 2019. According to Samuel Sinyangwe of Mapping Police Violence, Minneapolis police are 13 times more likely to kill black residents than to kill white residents, one of the largest racial disparities in the nation. And these police officers rarely get prosecuted.

A typical black family in Minneapolis earns less than half as much as a typical white family—a $47,000 annual difference that is one of the largest racial disparities in the nation. Statewide, black residents are 6 percent of the Minnesota population, but 30 percent of the coronavirus cases as of Saturday, one of the largest black case disparities in the nation, according to the COVID Racial Data Tracker.

In April, many Americans chose the racist explanation: saying black people were not taking the coronavirus as seriously as white people, until challenged by survey data and majority-white demonstrations demanding that states reopen. Then they argued that black Americans were disproportionately dying from COVID-19 because they have more preexisting conditions, due to their uniquely unhealthy behaviors. But according to the Foundation for AIDS Research, structural factors such as employment, access to health insurance and medical care, and the air and water quality in neighborhoods are drivers of black infections and deaths, and not “intrinsic characteristics of black communities or individual-level factors.”

Americans should be asking: Why are so many unarmed black people being killed by police while armed white people are simply arrested? Why are officials addressing violent crime in poorer neighborhoods by adding more police instead of more jobs? Why are black (and Latino) people during this pandemic less likely to be working from home; less likely to be insured; more likely to live in trauma-care deserts, lacking access to advanced emergency care; and more likely to live in polluted neighborhoods? The answer is what the Frederick Hoffmans of today refuse to believe: racism.

However, "police often react towards the crowd as a whole" - and if people feel that the police use of force against them is unjustified, this increases their "us versus them" mentality.

Experts highlight a series of police tactics that were seen as heavy-handed - including the firing of large amounts of tear gas at young protesters - as moves that galvanised protesters and made them more confrontational.

Moral psychology can help explain why some protests turn violent, says Marloon Moojiman, an assistant professor in organisational behaviour at Rice University.

Looting and vandalism can be more targeted than you think

In the US, hundreds of businesses have been damaged, and there has been widespread looting in LA and Minneapolis over the weekend.

He says there is "a long history of targeting, or selectivity", in vandalism and looting. "In the LA uprisings, you'd often see 'minority owned' spray painted on minority businesses, so that people would bypass those."

Public order experts say that for the police, being seen as legitimate and able to engage protesters in dialogue is key.

Prof Hunt says this week's US riots are the most serious ones since 1968 - after Martin Luther King was assassinated.

two officers confronted Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old with a history of mental health problems. A lawyer for the family said that he was experiencing a crisis that day and that the family told officers about it when they arrived at the scene

Gov. Tom Wolf called in the National Guard. On Wednesday, the city declared a 9 p.m. curfew.

The shooting and its aftermath were guaranteed to ratchet up tensions in a country already on edge.

The White House blamed the “liberal Democrats’ war against the police” for the destruction that followed the protests

Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Kamala Harris lamented Mr. Wallace’s death and condemned the looting that followed, but added that none of this would be solved with a president who fanned “the flames of division in our society.”

To vote is to believe that problems can be solved, and the election has presented a stark division as to how best solve a litany of national problems, including racial divisions and the coronavirus pandemic.

The Philadelphia police have for many years been criticized by community activists for excessive use of force against people of color.

“The department has a long history of abusive behavior, violent behavior and brutality when it comes to residents in this city, and more specifically, when it comes to Black and brown Philadelphians,”

the A.C.L.U. found that Black people in the city are more than 50 percent more likely to be stopped by the police without reasonable suspicion than white people are, and 40 percent more likely to be frisked without reasonable suspicion.

Efforts to strengthen accountability have gained some steam in Philadelphia since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May set off a national outcry over abusive policing practices

But the debates about how to improve police accountability are only made more complicated by what happened on Tuesday night nearly a dozen miles away from where crowds were protesting in Mr. Wallace’s name

While testing has been comparatively limited, the continent appears to have bucked the doomsday predictions of global health experts. The telltale signs of severe outbreaks seen elsewhere — crowded hospitals and a spike in deaths — have emerged in only a handful of African countries. Surveys done by the World Health Organization have found negligible excess mortality rates in most African countries, reducing suspicion that many covid-19 deaths are going uncounted.

even as more research emerges, public health experts caution that the explanation for why Africa’s caseload has remained low will be complicated.

“It is highly unlikely that there is a single, definitive answer as to why this is the case,” said Ngoy Nsenga, a Congolese epidemiologist and the WHO’s program manager for emergency response in Africa. “Youthful populations, warmer climates, less time indoors, less traveling, less obesity and diabetes, immunities derived from other diseases — even other coronaviruses — are all playing a part, we think. But what distinguishes Africa from other places like Brazil that might share those factors, but were still hard-hit, are our human interventions.”

Those interventions have exacted immense economic damage, however, and with many African governments not seeing uncontrolled growth in cases, they have been rolled back in many places.

Health officials, however, caution that the threat is far from over — even if hospitals aren’t filling up.

“During the holiday season, there will be a tendency for large movement from capital cities to villages, remote areas, for people to connect with families. That might drive the pandemic,”

Ndongo Dia, head of the respiratory virus diagnostic laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, isn’t sure why Senegal dodged the worst of the pandemic.

The nation has garnered widespread praise for its quick response, which included sealing its border, rolling out four-hour tests while Americans waited days for results, and imposing a curfew until infections slowed.

Beyond that, Dia said, “our luck is the composition of our population. The number of severe cases is going to be much lower compared to the northern countries, where there are more elderly people.”

Death rates have been higher in South Africa, Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia, where a larger percentage of the population is over the age of 65. Those four countries make up two-thirds of all coronavirus deaths in Africa.

Preliminary analyses done by the WHO indicate that Africans may be twice as likely to experience covid-19 without any illness, and that more than 80 percent of cases on the continent have been asymptomatic — a far higher percentage than elsewhere in the world.

“It is not different strains — that I can refute. We have a network of laboratories all over the continent and the world,” he said. “We have sequenced from many places, we haven’t seen dramatically different strains here.”

Our minds are asymmetric judges, applying harsher moral judgment to present and future transgressions than past ones. It is as if the past becomes blurry. We even tend to blame the victim of a past event more than we blame the victim of a future one.

Third, our minds struggle with the negative emotions that our country’s complicated past gives rise to.

Research shows we are drawn to a sentimental form of history—nostalgia—which leads us to feel more loved, more protected, and even more competent in our ability to start and maintain relationships.

Nostalgia is often tied to the identities that we care most deeply about, such as our family or national identity. And, nostalgia is big business—in fashion, advertising, music and tourism, among other things.

Second, our minds tend to overplay sweet memories that favor our ancestors from the past.

When we learn about historical atrocities, particularly ones that expose our limited knowledge, contradict the narratives we believe, or implicate our own ancestors, we might experience shame, guilt, disbelief or anger. In response, we have a natural desire to pull away from the new knowledge and perhaps even refute it, rather than try to better understand it.

Fourth, our minds want to pick either a beautiful or a brutal narrative.

Contradictions, though, pocket our history, beginning with forefathers who had an extraordinary vision of equality, and simultaneously enslaved other humans

Our minds resist the paradoxes that characterize our country’s past. It’s so much less psychologically painful to pick one path than to grapple with both ideas at the same time.

Tools to useWhile the past is in the past, we can address the psychological challenge, however formidable, in the present. We have tools that will help, and I anticipate (and hope) that our debates will take on more psychological nuance as we shift from arguments over whether to explore our history more fully to how to do it.

For example, research shows the importance of returning to our values again and again as a way of inoculating us from setbacks

The daily arguments over curfews or messy rooms or study habits can cause us to shut down (“Do whatever you want”) or double down (“I’m your parent and you’ll do what I say”). Instead, it’s helpful to remind ourselves and our children that a parent has three jobs—to teach them, to protect them and to love them. Just doing that can ground us, and enable us to stay engaged, resilient and calm.

Similarly, when we confront a historical event, it can help to reflect on questions like, “Which American ideals do you most value?” and, “How do you hope others see your country?

You can even write out your responses, share them with others, and reread what you have written. Think of it as a values booster shot

Say, for instance, that you deeply value freedom. Keeping this value in your thoughts can help you notice the ways in which this country has delivered on the promise of freedom in important ways. But it also enables you to consider the disheartening realizations when those freedoms are not upheld.

esearch by Wendy Smith and others shows that we are capable of embracing paradox, rather than rejecting it. It doesn’t always come naturally. But we simply need to give ourselves permission to allow multiple truths to coexist.

In a paradox mind-set, we allow both of these things to be true. When both are true, we can challenge our either/or assumptions, and be more creative in finding solutions.

When you spot the paradox, allow both things to be true and observe if your mind shifts from solving the unsolvable puzzle (reconciling how can both of these things be true) to more deeply processing the knowledge that you may otherwise have pushed away. This is the greater resilience and creativity that comes with a paradox mind-set.

We simply need to accept that the formidable challenge will require us to be intentional in our approach.

In doing so, we become what I call “gritty patriots.” Psychologist Angela Duckworth defines grit as “passion and perseverance in pursuit of a meaningful, long-term goal.” Love of country is not something we are entitled to; it is something we work toward, with grit.