Canada
Border closure with US extended to June 21
TORONTO — Canada and the U.S. have agreed to extend their agreement to keep the border closed to non-essential travel to June 21 during the coronavirus pandemic.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday the border is a source of vulnerability, so the agreement will be extended by another 30 days. The restrictions were announced on March 18 and were extended in April.
“This will keep people in both of our countries safe.” Trudeau said.
Israel
Dig near Western Wall yields chambers
JERUSALEM — Israeli archaeologists on Tuesday exhibited a recently uncovered, unusual series of 2,000-year-old chambers carved out of the bedrock beneath the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem.
People are also reading…
The Israel Antiquities Authority’s excavations are uncovering new sections of a sprawling network of ancient subterranean passageways running alongside a contested Jerusalem holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
Archaeologists began excavating a large, late Byzantine building located around 120 feet from the base of the wall last year. Beneath the plain white mosaic tiled floor of the monumental structure, they discovered a series of small chambers hewn out of the bedrock. Fragments of clay oil lamps and limestone cups helped date the subterranean rooms to around 2,000 years ago.
Mexico
Group: Capital deaths triple official virus toll
MEXICO CITY — A registry of death certificates in Mexico City suggests there were 4,577 cases where doctors mentioned coronavirus or COVID-19 as a possible or probable cause of death, more than three times the official death toll in the city.
The federal government acknowledges only 1,332 confirmed deaths in Mexico City since the pandemic began, less than a third as many as the investigation revealed.
Russia
War games scaled down amid pandemic
MSCOW — Russia’s foreign minister said Tuesday that Moscow has scaled down its military drills amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Sergey Lavrov said the Russian military also has decided not to conduct any war games near the country’s borders with NATO member nations during the outbreak.
Moscow has repeatedly voiced concern over the deployment of NATO forces in the Baltics, describing it as a threat to its security. Russia and the alliance also have blamed one another for conducting destabilizing military exercises near the borders.
Germany
Court disallows foreign monitoring
BERLIN — Regulations allowing Germany’s foreign intelligence service to monitor the communications of reporters working abroad and others violate the country’s constitution and must be changed, Germany’s highest court ruled Tuesday, deciding in favor of journalists’ rights group Reporters Without Borders and others.
The complaint against the foreign intelligence service, the BND, came after a law was changed allowing the agency, starting in 2017, to collect and evaluate communications from foreigners abroad without having to provide legal justification.
In the complaint, Reporters Without Borders, Germany’s GFF civil rights association, as well as several journalists and others argued that blanket telecommunications surveillance meant that German reporters, and others, working with colleagues in other countries could also be spied upon, in violation of the constitution.
Wire reports