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Foreign students fret over being sent home after U.S. visa rule

Foreign students fret over being sent home after U.S. visa rule

KRISTINA COOKE, MIMI DWYER and HUMEYRA PAMUK WHEN the phone rang Tuesday morning, Raul Romero had barely slept. The 21-year-old Venezuelan, on a scholarship at Ohio's Kenyon College, had spent hours pondering his options after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Monday that international students taking classes fully online for the fall semester would have to transfer to a school with in-person classes or leave the country. A college employee called Romero to say he would not be immediately affected, but warned that a local outbreak of COVID-19 could force the school to suspend in-person classes during the year. If…
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Brazil’s Bolsonaro catches coronavirus, shrugs off health risks

Brazil’s Bolsonaro catches coronavirus, shrugs off health risks

ANO MANO and LISANDRA PARAGUASSU BRAZILIAN President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday he tested positive for the novel coronavirus after months minimizing the severity of the pandemic and defying medical experts, even as the virus has killed more than 66,000 people in his country. The right-wing populist gave the news to reporters at his official residence standing just inches away from him, adding to criticism of his cavalier approach to the outbreak in Brazil, the world's worst outside the United States. Even as he announced his infection, the 65-year-old former army captain dismissed the dangers of the virus and credited…
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U.S. civil rights pioneer, congressman John Lewis dies

U.S. civil rights pioneer, congressman John Lewis dies

PATRICIA ZENGERLE JOHN Lewis, a pioneer of the civil rights movement and long-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives, has died. Lewis, a member of Congress from Atlanta who had announced in December that he had advanced pancreatic cancer, was 80. "He loved this country so much that he risked his life and his blood so that it might live up to its promise," former President Barack Obama said in a statement. "And through the decades, he not only gave all of himself to the cause of freedom and justice but inspired generations that followed to try to live…
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Obama takes aim at Trump in fiery eulogy for Civil Rights icon John Lewis

Obama takes aim at Trump in fiery eulogy for Civil Rights icon John Lewis

RICH McKAY and  NATHAN LAYNE IN a fiery eulogy for longtime U.S. Representative John Lewis on Thursday, former President Barack Obama took a series of thinly veiled shots at the actions of his successor that he said tore at the legacy of the Black civil rights icon being laid to rest. The funeral for Lewis, who played an instrumental role in passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, came on the same day Republican President Donald Trump suggested the Nov. 3 election could be delayed. Trump has also waged a war against mail-in ballots, a tactic critics say is aimed…
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U.S. to withdraw about 12,000 troops from Germany but nearly half to stay in Europe

U.S. to withdraw about 12,000 troops from Germany but nearly half to stay in Europe

PHIL STEWART and  IDREES ALI  THE U.S military on Wednesday unveiled plans to withdraw about 12,000 troops from Germany, in the fallout from President Donald Trump's long-simmering feud with Berlin but said it will keep nearly half of those forces in Europe to address tension with Russia. Trump announced his intention last month to cut by about a third the 36,000-strong U.S. troop contingent in Germany, faulting the close U.S. ally for failing to meet NATO's defense spending target and accusing it of taking advantage of the United States on trade. "We don't want to be the suckers any more,"…
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As Biden VP pick nears, Susan Rice slams Trump for being soft on Russia’s Putin

As Biden VP pick nears, Susan Rice slams Trump for being soft on Russia’s Putin

JASON LANGE FORMER U.S. national security adviser Susan Rice, who is on Joe Biden's shortlist to be his running mate, has criticized President Donald Trump for failing to question Russian leader Vladimir Putin about reports Moscow paid bounties for the killing of U.S. troops. "He is absolutely a failure as our commander in chief," Rice told the ABC network in an interview. "He has got some very bizarre, very inexplicable reason for always giving Putin the benefit of the doubt." Trump said in an interview on Tuesday with "Axios on HBO" that he never questioned Putin about U.S. intelligence reports…
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Hanna pummels Texas coast with strong winds, heavy rain

Hanna pummels Texas coast with strong winds, heavy rain

ADREES LATIF HANNA, the first hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic season, left a trail of destruction along the Texas coast on Sunday, downing power lines, flooding streets and toppling 18-wheeler trucks as torrential rains threatened the area. Hanna came ashore on Padre Island on Saturday afternoon as a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity and later made a second landfall in Kenedy County, Texas. It swept through a part of the state hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic. By Sunday, it had weakened to a tropical depression. Powerful winds from Hanna knocked over at least three…
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Germany rejects Trump’s proposal to let Russia back into G7 -foreign minister

Germany rejects Trump’s proposal to let Russia back into G7 -foreign minister

GERMANY has rejected a proposal by U.S. President Donald Trump to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin back into the Group of Seven (G7) most advanced economies, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a newspaper interview. Trump raised the prospect last month of expanding the G7 to again include Russia, which had been expelled in 2014 following Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region. But Maas told Rheinische Post that he did not see any chance for allowing Russia back into the G7 as long as there was no meaningful progress in solving the conflict in Crimea as well as in…
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Crossing the Alabama bridge for final time

Crossing the Alabama bridge for final time

CHRIS ALUKA BERRY  THE body of civil rights icon John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Sunday, decades after his "Bloody Sunday" beating there drew a national spotlight to the struggle for racial equality. A military honor guard carried his American flag-draped casket from Brown Chapel AME Church to a horse-drawn carriage, which crossed the rose-petal strewn bridge where the battering of Lewis by a white state trooper during a voting rights demonstration in 1965 became a focal point of the movement. The carriage driver wore black top hat and a white face mask to guard against spread of…
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N.Korea declares COVID-19 emergency in border town

N.Korea declares COVID-19 emergency in border town

SANGMI CHA and JOSH SMITH NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared an emergency and a lockdown in a border town after a person suspected of being infected with the novel coronavirus returned from South Korea after illegally crossing the border, state media said on Sunday. If confirmed, it would be the first case officially acknowledged by North Korean authorities. Kim convened an emergency politburo meeting in response to what he called a "critical situation in which the vicious virus could be said to have entered the country", the North's KCNA state news reported. A person who defected to South…
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