Sunday, 31 May 2020

Secret Service Rushed President Trump Into White House Bunker as Hundreds Protested Outside



(WASHINGTON) — Secret Service agents rushed President Donald Trump to a White House bunker on Friday night as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the executive mansion, some of them throwing rocks and tugging at police barricades.

Trump spent nearly an hour in the bunker, which was designed for use in emergencies like terrorist attacks, according to a Republican close to the White House who was not authorized to publicly discuss private matters and spoke on condition of anonymity. The account was confirmed by an administration official who also on condition of anonymity.

The abrupt decision by the agents underscored the rattled mood inside the White House, where the chants from protesters in Lafayette Park could be heard all weekend and Secret Service agents and law enforcement officers struggled to contain the crowds.

Friday’s protests were triggered by the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after he was pinned at the neck by a white Minneapolis police officer. The demonstrations in Washington turned violent and appeared to catch officers by surprise. They sparked one of the highest alerts on the White House complex since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 .

“The White House does not comment on security protocols and decisions,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere. The Secret Service said it does not discuss the means and methods of its protective operations. The president’s move to the bunker was first reported by The New York Times.

The president and his family have been shaken by the size and venom of the crowds, according to the Republican. It was not immediately clear if first lady Melania Trump and the couple’s 14-year-old son, Barron, joined the president in the bunker. Secret Service protocol would have called for all those under the agency’s protection to be in the underground shelter.

Trump has told advisers he worries about his safety, while both privately and publicly praising the work of the Secret Service.

Trump traveled to Florida on Saturday to view the first manned space launch from the U.S. in nearly a decade. He returned to a White House under virtual siege, with protesters — some violent — gathered just a few hundred yards away through much of the night.

Demonstrators returned Sunday afternoon, facing off against police at Lafayette Park into the evening.

Trump continued his effort to project strength, using a series of inflammatory tweets and delivering partisan attacks during a time of national crisis.

As cities burned night after night and images of violence dominated television coverage, Trump’s advisers discussed the prospect of an Oval Office address in an attempt to ease tensions. The notion was quickly scrapped for lack of policy proposals and the president’s own seeming disinterest in delivering a message of unity.

Trump did not appear in public on Sunday. Instead, a White House official who was not authorized to discuss the plans ahead of time said Trump was expected in the coming days to draw distinctions between the legitimate anger of peaceful protesters and the unacceptable actions of violent agitators.

On Sunday, Trump retweeted a message from a conservative commentator encouraging authorities to respond with greater force.

“This isn’t going to stop until the good guys are willing to use overwhelming force against the bad guys,” Buck Sexton wrote in a message amplified by the president.

In recent days security at the White House has been reinforced by the National Guard and additional personnel from the Secret Service and the U.S. Park Police.

On Sunday, the Justice Department deployed members of the U.S. Marshals Service and agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration to supplement National Guard troops outside the White House, according to a senior Justice Department official. The official could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

___

Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

at

After Anonymous Promises Retribution for George Floyd’s Death, Minneapolis Police Website Shows Signs It Was Hacked



The Minneapolis Police Department’s website has shown signs of a hack since late Saturday, days after a video purported to be from the hacktivist group Anonymous promised retribution for the death of George Floyd during an arrest.

Websites for the police department and the city of Minneapolis were temporarily inaccessible on Saturday as protesters in cities around the U.S. marched against police violence aimed at black Americans.

By Sunday morning, the pages sometimes required visitors to submit “captchas” to verify they weren’t bots, a tool used to mitigate hacks that attempt to overwhelm pages with automated requests until they stop responding.

Officials with the police department and the city didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Anonymous posted a video on their unconfirmed Facebook page on May 28 directed at the Minneapolis police. The post accused them of having a “horrific track record of violence and corruption.”

The speaker, wearing a hoodie and the Guy Fawkes mask that’s a well-known symbol of the group, concludes the video with, “we do not trust your corrupt organization to carry out justice, so we will be exposing your many crimes to the world. We are a legion. Expect us.”

The video was viewed almost 2.3 million times on Facebook over the weekend, during which violence swept the U.S. as protesters clashed with law enforcement and National Guard troops.

While many demonstrations have been peaceful, others have devolved into rioting. Several cities issued curfews and police have at times turned their rubber bullets and mace on the activists and on journalists covering the protests.

President Donald Trump on Sunday cast blame on the media for stoking the violence that’s followed the death of Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minnesota police custody.

at

D.C. Mayor Urges President Trump to Stop Writing Divisive Tweets and Help the Country Heal



On Sunday, the mayor of Washington, D.C., called upon President Donald Trump to stop writing tweets that she says divide the country as nationwide protests against police brutality continued, sparked by the death of a Minneapolis man, George Floyd.

Hours after communities across the country were rocked by sometimes-violent confrontations between law enforcement and protesters, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said on Meet the Press that officials on every level of government must work to “heal the hurt that people are feeling.” For President Donald Trump, Bowser said that this should begin with his messages on social media.

On Twitter, in the week since Floyd’s death, Trump has warned protesters that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” and cautioned demonstrators at the White House that “the most vicious dogs” guarded the property.

 

Bowser and the President, who have long had a contentious relationship, exchanged barbs Saturday after the President criticized the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia’s response to protests near the White House.

President Donald Trump tagged the mayor in a tweet on Saturday, saying that she had refused to permit the D.C. Police to “get involved” with the protesters at the White House on Friday. The Secret Service said in a statement that same day that Metropolitan Police actually were on the scene during the demonstration.

Bowser responded to the President, during a press conference on Saturday, insisting that the D.C. police had assisted the Secret Service, “like we have done literally dozens of times at Lafayette Park.” She also criticized the President’s “vicious dogs & ominous weapons” tweet for evoking the era of segregation.

On Twitter, she wrote, “There are no vicious dogs & ominous weapons. There is just a scared man. Afraid/alone… I call upon our city and our nation exercise great restraint even while this President continues to try to divide us.”

“I think that the President has a responsibility to help calm the nation, and he can start by not sending divisive tweets that are meant to hearken to the segregationist past of our country,” Bowser said to host Chuck Todd on Sunday. She added that in communities across the country, “There are people who are angry, and people who are hurting. And some not doing it in ways that are helpful to our cause. But we still have to acknowledge that hurt and that anger.”

at

Target Temporarily Closing 105 Stores in 10 States as Nationwide Protests Continue



Target is temporarily closing 105 stores in 10 states after several were broken into during protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last week.

The company is closing 46 stores in California and 33 in Minnesota, where the company is based and where the protests over Floyd’s death began. Target is also closing some stores in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York, Georgia, Oregon, Michigan and Texas.

Floyd, who was black and handcuffed, died while being arrested by Minneapolis police for suspicion of passing a counterfeit bill on May 25. Cellphone video showed that a white officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes while Floyd pleaded for air and eventually stopped moving. Chauvin now faces murder and manslaughter charges. The other three officers who took part in the arrest were fired, but they haven’t been charged.

Minneapolis-based Target didn’t say how it chose which stores to shutter or how long they will remain closed.

“We are heartbroken by the death of George Floyd and the pain it is causing communities across the country,” Target said in a statement. “Our focus will remain on our team members’ safety and helping our community heal.”

Target said employees at stores that are closed will be paid for up to 14 days, including premiums they are earning due to the coronavirus pandemic. They will also be able to work at Target locations that remain open.

at

Trump’s Divisive Instincts Helped Him Win White House. Where Will They Take America Now?



On a night when protests over racial injustice erupted into violent clashes across the country and multiple fires burned and store windows were smashed just two blocks from his bedroom in the White House, President Trump did not address the nation or try to calm a country grieving over the twin injuries of police brutality and a pandemic that has disproportionately hit minorities.

Instead he got political.

Trump wrote on Twitter just after 10 p.m. Saturday that the National Guard had been “released” in Minneapolis, “to do the job the Democrat Mayor couldn’t do.” Shortly after noon the next day, Trump played the political card again, writing, “Other Democrat run Cities and States should look at the total shutdown of Radical Left Anarchists in Minneapolis last night.”

It was a striking response to what appeared to be a turning point in the contentious era of racial tensions Trump has done so much to foment. Thousands of people marched peacefully in more than 70 cities across the country Saturday, and city leaders blamed the vandalism and arson on small groups. As of Sunday morning, about 5,000 National Guard troops were activated in 15 states and Washington, D.C. “in response to civil disturbances,” according to a statement from the National Guard Bureau.

Inside the White House, Trump’s aides are debating how the President should respond to the violence and how far Trump should follow his decades-old instinct to back the police and minimize claims of racial bias. Some aides have floated the idea of Trump giving a stand alone address to the nation, but so far, Trump has held off. On Sunday, Fox News’ Griff Jenkins suggested that President Trump should make a speech to the country. “I really believe it is time for President Trump to do an Oval Office address,” said Jenkins on Fox and Friends.

One White House official who spoke to TIME has advised against Trump making a speech. “I don’t think speeches are productive at this point, action is what’s needed,” says the official. Trump ran as “a law and order guy” and should stick to that, the official says, adding: “Any politician that tolerates this at the state, local or federal level including the President looks weak, looks weak because they are weak.”

Another advisor believes the violent outbursts, while disturbing and painful for the country, will ultimately play to Trump’s political advantage. “Really makes you want tough, Republican leadership,” a second White House official says. “I don’t care what your position is on anything else. People do not want their streets to be lit on fire and not feel safe in their homes,” says the official.

The focus on transparently political interests, from the President down to his aides and campaign staffers, is unsurprising five months before the election. From the beginning of Trump’s political career, he has repeatedly found political rocketfuel by pressing on the most divisive issues in America. He questioned President Obama’s citizenship. He said Mexico is sending “rapists” to the U.S. He criticized NFL players who took a knee during the national anthem to protest discriminatory police practices. He waded into the debate over Confederate monuments saying there are “very fine people” on “both sides.”

Now, as countrywide protests have surged following George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis, Trump has turned up the heat again, stoking the flames rather than seeking to put them out. Earlier on Saturday, Trump wrote on Twitter that the Secret Service had been prepared with the “most vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” for use against protestors and seemed to egg on a confrontation with his supporters by saying Saturday would be “MAGA NIGHT” at the White House.

The clashes, and Trump’s response to them, have driven stories off the front pages about the rising COVID-19 death toll and his clumsy handling of the pandemic response. Trump’s leadership during the pandemic has taken a bite out of Trump’s approval rating, a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday found. Trump’s approval rating with that poll had slipped slightly to 45 percent, down from 48 percent approving in March. The poll found Biden had widened his lead over Trump among registered voters, who favor Biden 53 to 43 percent.

Now Trump finds himself on more familiar ground: he always seems more comfortable politically when he’s driving toward a controversy rather than running from one. And that reflex is rewarded in the fervor of his base. Enthusiasm among potential Trump voters was higher than among Biden supporters in the Post-ABC poll, with 87 percent saying they were enthusiastic about supporting Trump and 64 percent were “very enthusiastic.” For Biden, 74 percent of supporters described themselves as enthusiastic and 31 percent as “very enthusiastic.”

President Trump “never understood what it was to be a healer, he never sought that, because that wasn’t his playbook,” says Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University. “He gained power by dividing us, not uniting us.”

Before returning to the White House Saturday afternoon, Trump was in Cape Canaveral, Florida to watch the launch of astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley into Earth’s orbit, a historic achievement that was drowned out by the widespread unrest in the country. Speaking after the successful takeoff, Trump called the death of George Floyd “a grave tragedy” that “should never have happened.” Trump described himself as “as a friend and ally to every American seeking justice and peace” and then turned to a stark warning, saying, “In America, justice is never achieved at the hands of an angry mob. I will not allow angry mobs to dominate. It won’t happen.”

But it is Trump’s reflex for division rather than his law and order talk that threatens to raise the stakes as violence mounts and racial tensions rise. With economic, racial, and political divisions deepening by the day, the country is left wondering just how far he is willing to go five months before the election, and what the cost will be.

at

Israeli Defense Minister Apologizes for Death of Unarmed Palestinian Man by Police



(JERUSALEM) — Israel’s defense minister apologized on Sunday for the Israeli police’s deadly shooting of an unarmed Palestinian man who was autistic.

The shooting of Iyad Halak, 32, in Jerusalem’s Old City on Saturday, drew broad condemnations and revived complaints alleging excessive force by Israeli security forces.

Benny Gantz, who is also Israel’s “alternate” prime minister under a power-sharing deal, made the remarks at the weekly meeting of the Israeli Cabinet. He was sat near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who made no mention of the incident in his opening remarks.

“We are really sorry about the incident in which Iyad Halak was shot to death and we share in the family’s grief,” Gantz said. “I am sure this subject will be investigated swiftly and conclusions will be reached.”

Halak’s relatives said he had autism and was heading to a school for students with special needs where he studied each day when he was shot.

In a statement, Israeli police said they spotted a suspect “with a suspicious object that looked like a pistol.” When he failed to obey orders to stop, officers opened fire, the statement said. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld later said no weapon was found.

Israeli media reported the officers involved were questioned after the incident as per protocol and a lawyer representing one of them sent his condolences to the family in an interview with Israeli Army Radio.

Lone Palestinian attackers with no clear links to armed groups have carried out a series of stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks in recent years.

Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups have long accused Israeli security forces of using excessive force in some cases, either by killing individuals who could have been arrested or using lethal force when their lives were not in danger.

Some pro-Palestinian activists compared Saturday’s shooting to the recent cases of police violence in the U.S.

at

‘I Don’t Think There’s Systemic Racism’ Among Law Enforcement, National Security Adviser O’Brien Tells CNN



United States National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said on Sunday that he doesn’t think systemic racism is an issue in U.S. law enforcement agencies.
After days where massive protests organized in cities across the country against the murder of George Floyd, O’Brien told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he doesn’t “think there’s systemic racism” amongst the police. Instead, he argued that there are some “bad cops” who may be racist or poorly trained. He argued while there are “some bad apples” among police officers, the majority of police officers are “great Americans.”

“I think 99.9% of our law enforcement officers are great Americans, and many of them are African American, Hispanic, Asian,” O’Brien said. “They’re working the toughest neighborhoods, they’ve got the hardest jobs to do in this country. And I think they’re amazing, great Americans and they’re my heroes.”

O’Brien said the “bad cops” must “be rooted out, because there’s a few bad apples that are giving law enforcement a terrible name. And there’s no doubt that there’s some racist police. I think they’re the minority.”

“I’m just so proud of the way our law enforcement professionals are protecting us and handling the situation with restraint. And we love our law enforcement, but we do have to get rid of those like the dirty cop that killed George Floyd,” said O’Brien.

at

SpaceX’s Dragon, Carrying 2 Astronauts, Docks at International Space Station



(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — SpaceX delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA on Sunday, following up a historic liftoff with an equally smooth docking in yet another first for Elon Musk’s company.

With test pilots Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken poised to take over manual control if necessary, the SpaceX Dragon capsule pulled up to the station and docked automatically, no assistance needed.

It was the first time a privately built and owned spacecraft carried astronauts to the orbiting lab in its nearly 20 years. NASA considers this the opening volley in a business revolution encircling Earth and eventually stretching to the moon and Mars.

The docking occurred just 19 hours after a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off Saturday afternoon from Kennedy Space Center, the nation’s first astronaut launch to orbit from home soil in nearly a decade.

Thousands jammed surrounding beaches, bridges and towns to watch as SpaceX became the world’s first private company to send astronauts into orbit, and ended a nine-year launch drought for NASA.

A few hours before docking, the Dragon riders reported that the capsule was performing beautifully. Just in case, they slipped back into their pressurized launch suits and helmets for the rendezvous.

The three space station residents kept cameras trained on the incoming capsule for the benefit of flight controllers at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Gleaming white in the sunlight, the Dragon was easily visible from a few miles out, its nose cone open and exposing its docking hook as well as a blinking light. The capsule loomed ever larger on live NASA TV as it closed the gap.

Hurley and Behnken took over the controls and did a little piloting less than a couple hundred yards (meters) out as part of the test flight, before putting it back into automatic for the final approach. Hurley said the capsule handled “really well, very crisp.”

SpaceX and NASA officials had held off on any celebrations until after Sunday morning’s docking — and possibly not until the two astronauts are back on Earth sometime this summer.

NASA has yet to decide how long Hurley and Behnken will spend at the space station, somewhere between one and four months. While they’re there, the Dragon test pilots will join the one U.S. and two Russian station residents in performing experiments and possibly spacewalks to install fresh station batteries.

In a show-and-tell earlier Sunday, the astronauts gave a quick tour of the Dragon’s sparkling clean insides, quite spacious for a capsule. They said the liftoff was pretty bumpy and dynamic, nothing the simulators could have mimicked.

The blue sequined dinosaur accompanying them — their young sons’ toy, named Tremor — was also in good shape, Behnken assured viewers. Tremor was going to join Earthy, a plush globe delivered to the space station on last year’s test flight of a crew-less crew Dragon. Behnken said both toys would return to Earth with them at mission’s end.

An old-style capsule splashdown is planned.

After liftoff, Musk told reporters that the capsule’s return will be more dangerous in some ways than its launch. Even so, getting the two astronauts safely to orbit and then the space station had everyone breathing huge sighs of relief.

As always, Musk was looking ahead.

“This is hopefully the first step on a journey toward a civilization on Mars,” he said Saturday evening.

at

Accenture’s Julie Sweet Has The World’s CEOs On Speed Dial. Here’s A Chance To Listen In



(Miss this week’s The Leadership Brief? This interview below was delivered to the inbox of Leadership Brief subscribers on Sunday morning, May 31; to receive weekly emails of conversations with the world’s top CEO’s and business decision makers, click here.)

As CEO of Accenture, Julie Sweet is plugged into how the world’s CEOs are responding to the current moment. Accenture is one of the world’s largest consulting and professional services firms, and its clients include 91 of the Fortune Global 100. Sweet, 52, spends her days as something of a CEO whisperer, talking to chief executives around the world, both downloading and sharing key insights into how companies are adapting to the new reality. And much of what she is hearing (and advising) is surprising.

For one, she warns that companies planning to save money on office space by permanently having some portion of their employees to remote work may be making a big mistake. “Personal engagement remains essential for long-term success,” says Sweet. “Don’t fall in love with the savings on real estate.”

And despite anti-China national political rhetoric and Beijing’s tightening grip on Hong Kong, Sweet says there is a rush to invest in China and Asia, where the crisis hit earlier. “China is being very resilient,” says Sweet. (Accenture has 15,000 employees there and most are back to work.) “We have a lot of companies who are stopping investment here and trying to do more investment there. You see countries like South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan address the crisis much better. This could be a real boon to the Asia markets.”

Also, she worries about the economy and how much the stimulus spending is masking the extent of the pain. “There’s this thing that’s coming around the corner where unless you believe the economic recovery is going to be fast enough, the stimulus money is going to end before there’s been a recovery, and we cannot predict how that is then going to affect things.”

Sweet grew up in Orange County, Calif. As a student, Sweet was a star debater and went on to Columbia Law School and became one of the early female partners in a New York law firm’s corporate law department. She worked on deals and advising boards, until joining Accenture in 2010 as general counsel. Lawyers are trained to be learners, she says, and each quarter Sweet sets herself a learning goal. Please read on to find what she is teaching herself now.

Subscribe to The Leadership Brief by clicking here.

(This interview with Accenture CEO Julie Sweet has been condensed and edited for clarity).

You talk to a lot of CEOs. What is the one thing you are consistently hearing from them about the path forward?

It’s how do you outmaneuver uncertainty. Every CEO would tell you right now that what is driving them crazy is real uncertainty that we can’t control.

So that’s the hardest thing for you right now?

The uncertainty. I was just talking to a CEO this morning in Europe. Right now, people are lulled a little bit because of the stimulus. A lot of it really smoothed things both in Europe and in the U.S. because the unemployment has been very generous. He was like, “Look, Julie, soon this is going to end. And people are going to start being laid off.”

Pivoting comes up a lot now, with companies rightly proud of how quickly they have pivoted. Is there a danger in moving too quickly or is this an overdue correction?

On balance, this is good because there are many companies and industries where their survival long-term really required them to be moving faster than they were. So I think that’s great.

So fewer meetings and layers of approval will be one aspect of the new normal?

[CEOs] are saying ‘Wait a minute—my organization, when we were all together, they’d do five prep meetings before they came to talk to me. Now we’re not doing that anymore.’ So the organization is taking out layers and hierarchies. In a distributed workforce, it’s not as easy to say I’m going to have all these different meetings.

Any worries about the current speed of business?

Every CEO would tell you right now that what is driving them crazy is real uncertainty that we can’t control.Here’s my concern. We weren’t ready pre-crisis globally to address the re-skilling need that automation is going to bring. As a reaction to what’s happening, you’re going to have hyper-automation because you have to. If you have to bring your supply chain, your manufacturing, home because you’re now at risk, or for regulation, you’re going to do so in a way that’s highly automated. We are at 15 to 20% of what could be automated. We’re going to see the speed of that rapidly ramp up, and the worry I have is that we weren’t ready beforehand for re-skilling, and we now need to pivot. How are we going to bring government, companies, and not-for-profits together to address that, with equal speed? We’re not seeing that.

Reskilling is hard.

It’s really hard. And no one’s talking about that yet. We have to globally get real focused on this very fast.

Will the consulting model change? When will your teams start working for weeks on end in client offices again?

With density in offices going down, it’s very unclear how fast clients are going to want to be co-creating with their outside partners versus needing the space for their own people in a world where they can’t have as much density.

Will that be a lasting change?

I do think it will be permanently changed. In our mental model, we believe that for a prolonged period of time, what we’ve managed to do quite successfully, which is remote innovation and collaborating with our clients remotely, will continue, with the ability at times to get together. Our business is being changed because patterns of travel amount will be changed.

So remote work and a smaller real estate footprint is the future?

I say this to anyone who will listen, personal engagement face-to-face remains a critical part of success. And we should all be careful to not tilt too much: Don’t fall in love with the savings on real estate. While it was an incredible insight that you can innovate remotely, it is not a long-term answer. Personal engagement remains essential for long-term success.

So you are not ripping up your leases?

No, in fact, we went too far [cutting back on office space] in the ’90s in certain countries like the U.S., and over the last 5 years, we have steadily added to our real estate footprint in order to create innovation spaces with our clients.

Let’s talk about the new sexiest topic in business: supply chains. Do you think we took just-in-time, keeping inventories at low levels, too far? And how do you see that changing?

I don’t think we were wrong in just-in-time. What you now have is you’re going to have much more automation.

What changes are businesses going to make to ensure that they can get the parts and materials they need to make their products?

You basically are going to have four things happening. You’re going to have regulation that forces companies to bring certain things back. The second thing is you’re going to have a different relationship with the smaller suppliers, where you see more financing and more help with security because by definition, if you have to move to suppliers who are near your factories, and they’re not the scaled ones, they have security issues, they have financing issues. The third thing that’s going to happen is you are going to see an acceleration of what were kind of emerging technologies to address different ways of manufacturing, and change those supply chains. 3D printing is a different way of doing just-in-time, right? And the fourth thing that you’re going to see, I believe, is a revisiting of the trade alliances. Mexico became a very important place to manufacture. All the U.S. companies—it’s been there for years but they were using China. Now the conversation is, “We need to go to Mexico. Not move from China.”

What is your CEO network saying about the future of globalization and global trade? Is this a setback for globalization?

The pandemic just emphasized the critical interconnection of our economies, which no one believes is going to truly be unwound.

Subscribe to The Leadership Brief by clicking here.

Where does China fit in?

China is being very resilient. We have a lot of companies who are stopping investment here and trying to do more investment there. You see countries like South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan address the crisis much better.

This could be a real boon to the Asia markets and people having to pivot to growth and do more investment there. To take advantage of the consumer base there. And so a lot of CEOs—we’re having discussions on what might be some underlying competitiveness changes, and how do we make sure that Europe remains a viable market, right? That the U.S. stays on top of innovation.

You speak Mandarin. You’ve done a lot of business in China: What are you hearing from your sources on the ground there?

We have 15,000 people there. Our operations there are almost completely back to normal. That being said, there’s been a big shock to the system and China manufacturing is heavily dependent still on demand outside of China.

It’s certainly been resilient, and we are seeing demand to access that market.

How do you manage in this stressful, anxious environment?

Calmness is absolutely critical. At the end of the day, we can’t control a lot, and so I’m very direct: “Here’s where I need you to do this because it is within our control.” And then I respond to the other things as “You’ve got to be calm when you get the bad news that you can’t control because it doesn’t help to add more stress.”

Do you get discouraged at being the only woman in meetings? Are you in the room a lot where you’re the only woman in a meeting?

It very much depends on the country. It’s just vastly different in Japan versus the U.S. versus various countries in Europe. Right? So, in the U.S. I’m often not the only woman. The only time I get discouraged is if in fact no one’s talking about it.

How are you doing on gender balance at Accenture?

China is being very resilient. We have a lot of companies who are stopping investment here and trying to do more investment there.We set a goal for 50-50 (of the total work force) by 2025, and we’re on track. We set a goal for 25% of our managing directors to be women by 2025, which is industry leading, and we’re on track. And remember, we’re tech. This is not a walk in the park.

You were a champion debater as a student. Did you like arguing for or against a proposition?

I did like negative more than affirmative. It was more fun. When you’re doing the negative, you have to respond on your feet because the affirmative lays out the case and I just loved the challenge of having to quickly digest and respond. And it’s probably a bit of my DNA, and why I became a lawyer and why I’ve thrived in a world of so much change because I like that challenge.

Speaking of learning, I understand that you assign yourself a learning goal each quarter. What have you focused on previously and what is your current focus?

My first quarter was all about digital manufacturing. The second quarter was 5G, which is a very important technology that just got more important. And right now, I’m going deeper on Cloud because the crisis has so accelerated the journey to the Cloud. I’m learning about hybrid Cloud.

What was your life like growing up and what lessons from your parents do you still find yourself relying on today as you lead a big organization?

I grew up very modestly. My dad did not graduate from high school. My mom graduated from college my freshman year in college. My dad painted cars for a living. But they had an amazing optimism and belief that if you worked hard, you could do anything. And I think that sense of optimism, with a work ethic, has been a really big part of my life. I once coined the phrase, “fearless but prepared.” You don’t just take risks for risk-taking. I’d say that though as a leader today, one of the most important lessons was the one my father gave me when I left school to go to college. I grew up in a very different environment and my dad said, “Don’t be afraid you’re leaving us behind and you’re going to go experience these things. That’s what I want from you. But never forget where you came from.”

And the way I translate that today as a business leader is that we all have to go into these new places: We’ve got to digitize. It’s going to have tough effects on our workforce, on our communities. But we have to do that. But the equivalent of “don’t forget where you came from” is “you cannot forget our people.”

SWEET’S FAVORITES

BUSINESS BOOK: Colin Powell’s It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership. It’s one of my favorite leadership books.

AUTHOR: Martin Gilbert.

APP: Waze. I am terrible at directions.

[newsletter-leadership]

at

Thousands in London Join Cities Across the U.S. in Protesting the Death of George Floyd



(LONDON) — Thousands gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to express their outrage over the death of a black American while in police custody in Minnesota.

Demonstrators clapped and waved placards as they offered support to U.S. demonstrators.

The crowd gathered despite government rules barring crowds because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

at

Here’s What New on Amazon Prime in June 2020



Amazon Prime’s movie offerings in June include both recent box-office hits like the whodunit thriller Knives Out and old favorites like Dirty Dancing. The streaming platform also adds several family-friendly films this month, including Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are, which will touch the hearts of both little ones and their grown-ups. It’s available to stream on June 30.

New releases available for purchase or rental this month include Late Night director Nisha Ganatra’s feel-good dramedy The High Note, which stars Tracee Ellis Ross as a pop superstar considering some major career moves and Dakota Johnson as her overworked personal assistant with ambitions of her own. Pete Davidson’s semi-autobiographical, Judd Apatow-directed dramedy The King of Staten Island, which centers on his young adulthood in Staten Island after losing his firefighter father, will also be available to buy or rent starting June 12.

Here are all the series and movies available on Amazon Prime Video this month.

Here are the new Amazon Prime Video originals in June 2020

June 5

Gina Brillon: The Floor Is Lava

June 19

7500

June 26

Pete the Cat: Season 2

Here are the movies streaming on Amazon Prime Video in June 2020

June 1

Dirty Dancing

Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights

Fair Game

Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell

Futureworld

Grown Ups

How To Train Your Dragon

Incident At Loch Ness

Joyride

Kingpin

Nate And Hayes

Sex Drive

Shrek Forever After

The Cookout

The Natural

Trade

Wristcutters: A Love Story

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan

June 3

Takers

June 7

Equilibrium

June 12

Child’s Play

Knives Out

June 15

The U.S. vs. John Lennon

June 18

Crawl

June 27

Guns Akimbo

June 30

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

One For The Money

Spy Kids

Spy Kids 3: Game Over

The Gallows Act II

Where The Wild Things Are

Here are the TV shows streaming on Amazon Prime Video in June 2020

June 1

Air Warriors: Season 1

Annie Oakley: Season 1

Doc Martin: Season 1

Dragnet: Season 1

Finding Your Roots: Season 1 Forsyte Saga: Season 1

Growing up McGhee: Season 1

Liar: Season 1

Professor T: Season 1

Roadkill Garages: Season 1

Saints and Sinners: Season 1

Super Why: Season 1

SWV Reunited: Season 1

The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague

The L Word: Season 1

The L Word: Generation Q: Season 1

The Saint: Season 1

Wackey Races: Season 1

Work in Progress: Season 1

June 21

Life In Pieces: Seasons 1-4

Here are the new movies available for rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video in June 2020

June 12

The King of Staten Island

at

Here’s Everything New on Netflix in June 2020—And What’s Leaving



June brings the eagerly anticipated returns of many of Netflix’s original series, including the fifth season of Queer Eye, which drops on June 5. This time around, the Fab Five head to Philadelphia to help 10 people looking to change their lives for the better, ranging from a gay clergyman struggling with his sexual identity to a new working mom trying to find balance. Also hitting the streaming platform this month are new seasons of Dating Around, The Politician, 13 Reasons Why and Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj.

While this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee has been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, you can relive its past thrills with the new original documentary Spelling the Dream, debuting June 3, which follows four hopeful competitors as it explores Indian American students’ unique success in the competition. Other original documentaries joining the platform this month are Athlete A, which delves into the sexual abuse scandal surrounding USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, and Home Game, which takes an in-depth look at sports across the world.

There’s also an abundance of films coming to the platform. Spike Lee remixes the war movie narrative with his original film, Da 5 Bloods, in which four black vets return to Vietnam to confront the ugly truth about the war they fought and the way they were received when they came back home. Other noteworthy movies to catch this month on Netflix are Lady Bird, Frost/Nixon, and Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution.

Here’s everything new on Netflix this month—and everything set to leave the streaming platform.

Here are the Netflix originals coming to Netflix in June 2020

June 2

Fuller House: The Farewell Season

True: Rainbow Rescue

June 3

Spelling the Dream

June 4

Baki: The Great Raitai Tournament Saga

Can You Hear Me / M’entends-tu?

June 5

13 Reasons Why: Season 4

Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai

The Last Days of American Crime

Queer Eye: Season 5

June 7

Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj: Volume 6

June 10

Curon

Lenox Hill

Reality Z

June 12

Da 5 Bloods

Dating Around: Season 2

F is for Family: Season 4

Jo Koy: In His Elements

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: Season 2

Pokémon Journeys: The Series .

The Search

The Woods

June 13

Alexa & Katie Part 4

June 14

Marcella: Season 3

June 17

Mr. Iglesias: Part 2

June 18

A Whisker Away

The Order: Season 2

June 19

Babies: Part 2

Father Soldier Son

Feel the Beat

Floor Is Lava

Lost Bullet

Girls from Ipanema: Season 2

One-Way To Tomorrow

The Politician: Season 2

Rhyme Time Town

Wasp Network

June 23

Eric Andre: Legalize Everything

June 24

Athlete A

Crazy Delicious

Nobody Knows I’m Here / Nadie sabe que estoy aquí

June 26

Amar y vivir

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Home Game

June 30

Adú

BNA

George Lopez: We’ll Do It For Half

Here are the TV shows and movies coming to Netflix in June 2020

June 1

Act of Valor

All Dogs Go to Heaven

Bad News Bears

Cape Fear

Casper

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clow Card

Cardcaptor Sakura: Sakura Card

Clueless

Cocomelon: Season 1

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

The Healer

Inside Man

Lust, Caution

Observe and Report

Priest

The Silence of the Lambs

Starship Troopers

The Boy

The Car (1977)

The Disaster Artist

The Help

The Lake House

The Queen

Twister

V for Vendetta

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

West Side Story

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan

Zodiac

June 2

Alone: Season 6

Garth Brooks: The Road I’m On: Season 1

June 3

Killing Gunther

Lady Bird

June 5

Hannibal: Season 1-3

June 6

Queen of the South: Season 4

June 8

Before I Fall

June 10

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow: Season 5

Middle Men

My Mister: Season 1

June 11

Pose: Season 2

June 12

ONE PIECE: Alabasta

ONE PIECE: East Blue

ONE PIECE: Enter Chopper at the Winter Island

ONE PIECE: Entering into the Grand Line

June 13

How to Get Away With Murder: Season 6

Milea

June 15

Underdogs

Baby Mama

Charlie St. Cloud

The Darkness

Frost/Nixon

June 17

An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn

June 21

Goldie

June 22

Dark Skies

June 26

Straight Up

June 29

Bratz: The Movie

Here’s what’s leaving Netflix in June 2020

June 1

The King’s Speech

June 3

God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness

June 4

A Perfect Man

June 7

Equilibrium

From Paris with Love

June 9

Mad Men: Season 1-7

June 10

Standoff

June 11

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: Series 1

June 12

Dragonheart

Dragonheart 3: The Sorcerer

Dragonheart: A New Beginning

Dragonheart: Battle for the Heartfire

June 13

Cutie and the Boxer

June 16

The Stanford Prison Experiment

June 22

Tarzan

Tarzan 2

June 24

Avengers: Infinity War

June 27

Jeopardy!: Celebrate Alex Collection

Jeopardy!: Cindy Stowell Collection

Jeopardy!: Seth Wilson Collection

June 29

The Day My Butt Went Psycho!: Season 1-2

June 30

21

The Amityville Horror

The Andy Griffith Show: Season 1-8

Blow

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Brooklyn’s Finest

Center Stage

Chasing Amy

Cheers: Season 1-11

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Chloe

Click

Cloverfield

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Duchess

Elizabeth

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Ghost Rider

Happyish: Season 1

Here Alone

Inception

Instructions Not Included

The Invention of Lying

Julie & Julia

Kate & Leopold

Kiss the Girls

The Last Samurai

Limitless: Season 1

Little Monsters

Mansfield Park

The Mask of Zorro

The Matrix

The Matrix Reloaded

The Matrix Revolutions

Minority Report

Patriot Games

Philadelphia

The Polar Express

Race to Witch Mountain

The Ring

Scary Movie

Sliver

Stuart Little 2

Tremors

Tremors 2: Aftershocks

Tremors 3: Back to Perfection

Tremors 4: The Legend Begins

Tremors 5: Bloodline

What Lies Beneath

Yes Man

at

Saturday, 30 May 2020

Trump Suggests ‘MAGA’ Fans Gather at White House, While Threatening to Clamp Down on Demonstrations With Military



President Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to rally at the White House, inviting a potentially dangerous mix of protesters after people angry about the death of an unarmed black man in Minnesota police custody skirmished with the Secret Service on Friday.

He threatened “the unlimited power” of the U.S. military to clamp down on demonstrations, tweeting from Air Force One as he traveled to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for the launch of a SpaceX spacecraft. The military is “ready, willing and able” to assist, Trump said earlier.

In a series of tweets early on Saturday, Trump also seemed to revel in the potential for violence outside the White House, warning that Friday’s protesters would have been met by “the most vicious dogs” and “most ominous weapons” had they dared to breach the fence around the property.

He depicted Secret Services agents as eager to battle the demonstrators, and later issued an appeal to his supporters to assemble: “Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???”

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser rebuked the president in her own series of tweets, calling him “a scared man. Afraid/alone” and saying she stood with people peacefully protesting the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis this week.

Those demonstrations were not altogether peaceful, though. The Secret Service said in a statement that it arrested six people and that “multiple” personnel from the agency were injured when protesters assaulted them with “bricks, rocks, bottles, fireworks and other items.”

Videos from Friday’s demonstration showed protesters chasing journalists from the park and throwing objects at officers wearing riot gear, and Secret Service officers responding with pepper spray.

Contrary to Trump’s assertion that Bowser “wouldn’t let the D.C. police get involved,” the Secret Service said the city’s police and U.S. Park Police were also on the scene of the protests.

Call for Restraint

Bowser called a press conference on Saturday to discuss the situation. “I call upon our city and our nation to exercise great restraint, even while the president tries to divide us,” she said.

Trump told reporters he had “no idea” if his boosters would assemble on Saturday night at the White House.

“I heard that MAGA wanted to be there — that a lot of MAGA was going to be there,” Trump said as he departed the White House, using the acronym for “Make America Great Again.”

Washington on Friday entered “Phase One” of its reopening from coronavirus stay-at-home restrictions. Large gatherings of people are currently prohibited.

Trump also tweeted that “ANTIFA and the Radical Left” were stoking protests against Floyd’s death, a day after saying he understood the “pain” that demonstrators were feeling. “Antifa,” short for anti-fascist, is sometimes used to describe militant left-wing activists.

Attorney General William Barr made a brief televised statement to make similar comments, tying the protests to “groups of outside radicals and agitators exploiting the situation.”

“It is a federal crime to cross state lines or to use interstate facilities to incite or participate in violent rioting. We will enforce these laws,” Barr said. He took no questions.

Minnesota officials, including the state’s Democratic governor, echoed Trump’s suggestion that organized agitators were exploiting anger about the death of Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed black man.

“The situation in Minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of George Floyd,” Governor Tim Walz said. “It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear and disrupting our great cities.”

Video showed a white police officer in Minneapolis kneeling on Floyd’s neck to the point the arrested man could no longer breathe. The officer, Derek Chauvin, was arrested Friday and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

In Washington, demonstrators gathered in a park across from the White House around dusk on Friday, briefly causing the compound to be locked down. It was just one of a string of protests around the country, from Atlanta to Oakland, California.

Safe Inside

Trump said he “watched every move” of Friday’s protests outside the White House, and couldn’t have felt more safe.”

Had protesters breached the complex’s fence, they would have faced “the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons,” Trump said. “That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least.”

Bowser said in her briefing that Trump’s reference to attack dogs was “no subtle reminder to African-Americans of segregationists that let dogs out on women, children and innocent people in the South.” She called the comments “an attack on humanity.”

Friday night’s protests came on a day after Trump appeared to threaten violence against certain demonstrators, tweeting overnight that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

The phrase echoed a remark made in 1967 by a white Miami police chief when announcing tougher policing policies for the Florida city’s black neighborhoods. In a rare reversal, Trump later said his tweet wasn’t intended as a threat, but merely meant to discourage looting that has historically coincided with violence.

Trump also said he’d spoken with Floyd’s family and that he understood the hurt and pain of demonstrators.

“We have peaceful protesters, and support the rights for peaceful protesters,” Trump said Friday. “We can’t allow a situation like in Minneapolis to descend further into lawless anarchy and chaos.

at

Infected Workers and Supply Shortages: Why America’s Auto Industry Is Slow to Restart



(DETROIT) — The U.S. auto industry’s coronavirus comeback plan was pretty simple: restart factories gradually and push out trucks and other vehicles for waiting buyers in states left largely untouched by the virus outbreak.

Yet the return from a two-month production shutdown hasn’t gone quite according to plan. For some automakers, full production has been delayed, or it’s been herky-herky, with production lines stopping and starting due to infected workers or parts shortages from Mexico and elsewhere.

“There’s a lot that can go wrong in bringing people back into the plants to try to build very complicated assemblies,” said Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry and labor at the Center for Automotive Research, an industry think tank.

Most automakers closed factories in mid-to-late March when workers began to get sick as the novel coronavirus spread. The factories started to reopen on one or two shifts in mid-May as state stay-home restrictions eased, with automakers touting safety precautions that include checking workers’ temperatures, certification by workers that they don’t have symptoms, social distancing, time between shifts and plastic barriers where possible to keep workers apart.

Still, some workers got COVID-19, although it’s not known where they were infected. In some cases they still came to work, forcing companies to close plants temporarily for cleaning. In at least one case, a worker at a seat-making plant near Chicago got the virus, forcing a shutdown and cutting off parts. General Motors had to delay adding shifts at truck plants because the Mexican government wouldn’t allow full parts factory restarts until June 1.

Ford seemed to be hit the hardest, pausing production a half-dozen times in Dearborn, Michigan; Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri; to disinfect equipment and isolate workers who may have come in contact with those who tested positive.

Honda and Toyota each reported brief production pauses to disinfect equipment when a small number of workers became infected. GM and Fiat Chrysler said they have not shut down production lines due to infected workers.

None of the automakers would give exact numbers of workers who have become ill since plants were restarted. The United Auto Workers union said Ford and GM have had at least a half-dozen cases, while Fiat Chrysler has had five. At least 25 UAW members employed by the Detroit Three have died from the virus this year, but it’s not clear where they caught it.

Dziczek says the on-and-off work stoppages will make it difficult for automakers to meet any increased demand.

“I think this is the way this is going to be for a while,” she said. “You need to have the confluence of healthy workers, a healthy supply chain and healthy demand all at the same time.”

U.S. auto sales have tanked since the virus began spreading in March, with sales in April down 46% from a year ago. Analysts are forecasting an improvement in May, but still a year-over-year decline of more than 30%. Cox Automotive predicts that May pickup truck sales will be down 18% from a year ago.

Despite those declines, automakers are reporting depleted supplies at some dealers, especially for pickup trucks in the Midwest.

Assembly lines at Ford’s 4,000-worker pickup factory in Dearborn, Michigan, have been closed twice due to workers with the virus or union fears that the shutdowns weren’t long enough.

The UAW local at the plant filed a grievance against the company seeking a full shutdown and testing of every worker, said Gary Walkowicz, a local bargaining committeeman. The local also wants a 24-hour waiting period after equipment is disinfected to restart the plant.

GM spokesman Brian Rothenberg said it’s being vigilant about making sure companies follow safety protocols.

“We have advocated for as much testing as possible and full testing when it’s available,” he said.

Ford procedures, following newer recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and epidemiologists, say equipment is safe within minutes of being disinfected. In some instances the company has waited several hours before bringing workers back.

“We are requiring our workforce to follow these protocols in our facilities – and encouraging them to do the same outside of work,” Ford spokeswoman Kelli Felker said.

GM announced that production will get closer to normal starting Monday as it adds shifts “to meet strengthening customer demand and strong dealer demand.” A company statement said three pickup truck assembly plants will go from one to three shifts, while three SUV plants in the U.S. and Canada will go from one shift to two.

At GM’s pickup truck factory in Fort Wayne, Indiana, worker Andrea Repasky was waiting for the call to return to work on the third shift.

“I’m ready to go back, as long as everyone is cautious and stays safe,” she said. “We have to go back sometime, right?”

Fellow workers have told her that GM is doing all it can to protect workers from the virus as they return to work, Repasky said. Yet she knows infected people might unintentionally spread the virus if they don’t have symptoms.

“I don’t know that anyone anywhere can really make it so we don’t catch it,” she said.

at

China’s Communist Party Says U.S. Actions on Hong Kong Is ‘Doomed to Fail’



(BEIJING) — The mouthpiece newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party said Saturday that the U.S. decision to end some trading privileges for Hong Kong “grossly interferes” in China’s internal affairs and is “doomed to fail.”

The Hong Kong government called President Donald Trump’s announcement unjustified and said it is “not unduly worried by such threats,” despite concern that they could drive companies away from the Asian financial and trading center.

An editorial in China’s official People’s Daily newspaper said that attempts at “forcing China to make concessions on core interests including sovereignty and security through blackmailing or coercion … can only be wishful thinking and day-dreaming!”

Trump’s move came after China’s ceremonial parliament voted Thursday to bypass Hong Kong’s legislature and develop and enact national security legislation on its own for the semi-autonomous territory. Democracy activists and many legal experts worry that the laws could curtail free speech and opposition political activities.

China had issued no official response as of late Saturday, but earlier said it would retaliate if the U.S. went ahead with its threat to revoke trading advantages granted to Hong Kong after its handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997.

“This hegemonic act of attempting to interfere in Hong Kong affairs and grossly interfere in China’s internal affairs will not frighten the Chinese people and is doomed to fail,” the People’s Daily said.

In Hong Kong, small groups of Beijing supporters marched to the U.S. Consulate on Saturday carrying Chinese flags and signs protesting “American interference in China’s internal affair” and calling Trump “shameless and useless.”

Elsewhere in the city, youthful activists including Joshua Wong held a news conference to welcome Trump’s announcement and try to downplay any economic fallout.

Tensions between the U.S. and China over Hong Kong have increased over the past year, with the U.S. defending pro-democracy protesters who clashed with police last year and China vilifying them as terrorists and separatists.

“It is now clear that Hong Kong is caught in the middle of major China-U.S. tensions,” said Tara Joseph, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. “That is a real shame for Hong Kong and it will be a challenge in the months ahead.”

Joseph said there were many unanswered questions about how the trading relationship will unravel and predicted that “it won’t be like flipping a switch.”

U.S. 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.

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 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.

She also criticized the U.S., saying “any other state that tries to use coercion or whatever means with a view to interfering with the sovereign right of a state to pass its own national security law is arguably infringing on the principle of non-intervention under public international law, and that is not acceptable.”

Washington’s response could include U.S. travel bans or other sanctions on officials connected with the crackdown on last year’s pro-democracy protests, including members of the Hong Kong police force.

“Whatever attempt at suppressing or intimidating Hong Kong officials there may be, I think it won’t succeed, because we believe what we are doing is right,” said John Lee, Hong Kong’s secretary for security.

China decided to impose a national security law on the city after successive Hong Kong governments were unable or unwilling to do so themselves because of stiff public opposition. The one attempt to do so in 2003 was abandoned in the face of major protests.

Beijing’s resolve to move forward appears to have been hardened by the months of anti-government protests last year and a determination to prevent them from coming back this summer.

at

SpaceX’s Crewed Launch Puts America Back in an Elite Group of Spacefaring Nations



You never know what you’ve got til it’s gone. And if you don’t believe that, consider the national jubilation at 3:22 PM EDT Saturday afternoon, when an American rocket carrying an American crew lifted off from American soil for the first time since 2011, carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station (ISS). The successful launch comes just a few days after Wednesday’s initial attempt was scrubbed due to weather.

The last time there was this kind of U.S. hoopla for a mere flight to low-Earth orbit might have been the first time, on February 20, 1962, when John Glenn became the first American to orbit the planet. Orbital flight has since become routine, with 135 missions flown by the space shuttle fleet alone. But when the last shuttle was retired in 2011, America became a grounded nation—even a humbled nation—reduced to hitching rides aboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft at a cool $80 million a seat. So Saturday’s launch, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft, sends one signal more powerfully than any other: when it comes to space, America is back.

“This is a big moment in time,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a press conference earlier this week. “It’s been nine years since we’ve had this opportunity.”

It’s not just the fact that America is flying again, it’s the way that it’s flying. Saturday’s launch was the result of 10 years of work under NASA’s commercial crew program, an initiative begun in 2010 to get the space agency out of the business of flying astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit and turn the job over to private companies. NASA would then buy the services of the commercial providers like any other customer, freeing up the space agency to concentrate its human-exploration efforts on crewed missions to the moon and Mars. The space agency concedes that for today’s flight it is in many ways the junior partner.

“SpaceX is controlling the vehicle, there’s no fluff about that,” said Norm Knight, a NASA flight operations manager, in a conversation with the Associated Press.

But in truth, the program was never truly as private-sector as it seemed. After NASA selected both SpaceX and Boeing to develop and build the new crew vehicles, it paid the companies $6.8 billion—$2.6 billion to SpaceX and $4.2 billion to Boeing—in research and development funding, and contracted with them to ferry cargo and crew to the space station once they had built working ships.

Both companies were supposed to begin flying crews as early as 2016, and both are clearly well behind schedule. Boeing looked like it might be the first out of the gate after the uncrewed test launch of its CST-100 Starliner in December 2019. But while the spacecraft made it safely both to orbit and back home, a software failure caused it to use too much maneuvering fuel, preventing it from achieving its principal objective of docking with the ISS. Boeing now needs to repeat the uncrewed flight—and get it right this time—before it will be permitted to carry astronauts. That left the field clear for SpaceX to be first—an opening it took advantage of with Saturday’s launch.

Credit for SpaceX’s big win goes in large measure to the company’s proven line of hardware, including its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. Counting its maiden flight in June 2010, it had 83 launches before today’s, in some cases ferrying satellites to orbit for paying customers, in other cases making cargo runs to the ISS. Part of the secret of the Falcon 9’s reliability is its simplicity. Rather than design entirely different rockets for different payload sizes, SpaceX goes by a simple more-is-better rule. Its first rocket, the Falcon, used a single engine, powered by kerosene and liquid oxygen. The Falcon 9, true to its name, uses a cluster of 9 of the same engines; and the Falcon Heavy, the bruiser of the SpaceX fleet, lifts off under the power of a whopping 27 engines, arranged in three clusters of nine.

What further sets the Falcon 9 apart from its competitors—such as United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V or Europe’s Ariane 5—is its reusable first stage. Instead of just dumping the spent stage in the ocean when the rocket is partway to space, SpaceX designs its first stages to fly back to a landing platform and touch down on extendable legs, allowing them to be refurbished and re-used. So far, there have been 41 such successful landings, and 31 first stages have flown more than once. The result: cost savings. SpaceX advertises its services at $62 million per launch, compared to $165 million for Atlas or Ariane.

The Dragon spacecraft is similarly reusable. The Cargo version of the spacecraft has been flown 22 times—21 of which involved resupply missions to the space station. Nine of the launches have involved vehicles that already had undergone at least one previous flight. The interior space of the Crew Dragon is configurable to hold from two to seven astronauts. It stands 8.1 m (26.7 ft) tall and is 4 m (13 ft) wide. That’s a big jump over the old Apollo spacecraft at 3.2 m (10.5 ft) tall and and 4 m (13 ft) across. And again, while the very purpose of the commercial crew program was get the government out of the business of designing spacecraft for low-Earth orbit, no one pretends that with NASA’s own astronauts in the seats, the space agency itself would not be at least a collaborator in the design process.

“[SpaceX] had this vision of how the Crew Dragon should look, feel and operate,” says John Posey, lead engineer for NASA’s Crew Dragon team. “But we had two-way communication as we started building components, testing components, test flying components, just making sure that we were always working together and coming in towards the best, optimized solution.”

Behnken and Hurley were good choices for the maiden Dragon mission. Both are veterans of two space shuttle missions, and Hurley, fittingly, was one of the crew members aboard the final space shuttle mission in 2011. Despite all that, once they reach the ISS, they will be just two more crew members, the 64th such crew to launch to the station in the 20 years it has been continuously occupied. They will join NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, getting the station’s crew complement closer to its customary six.

Behnken’s and Hurley’s stay will be relatively short, as space station visits go. They will remain aboard for at least a month, though in no case will they remain for longer than 110 days, since the current Crew Dragon is not rated for a longer stay in the punishing environment of space. (Ultimately, the Dragon will be required to be certified for a 210-day stay.) Part of what will determine when the two new arrivals will come home will be the progress Boeing makes in developing its Starliner. There are only two docking ports aboard the station; one is now occupied by the Russians’ Soyuz rocket and the other will accommodate the Dragon. If Starliner is ready for its scheduled uncrewed test flight before the Dragon’s 110 days are up, Behnken and Hurley will have to climb aboard and clear out to make room.

But all of that is for later. Today is for savoring the simple fact that the U.S. has once again rejoined the family of space-faring, astronaut-launching, future-gazing nations. The nation that for generations led the world in the exploration of space is now poised to reclaim that mantle.

at