CURFEWS IN MAJOR US CITIES LIKE LOS ANGELES, CHICAGO AS RACE PROTESTS

ESCALATE

Curfews were imposed on major US cities as clashes over police brutality

erupted across America with demonstrators ignoring warnings from President

Donald Trump that his government would stop the violent protests "cold."

Minneapolis, the epicenter of the unrest, was gripped by a fifth consecutive

night of violence on Saturday with police in riot gear firing tear gas and

stun grenades at protesters venting fury at the death of George Floyd, an

unarmed black man, during an arrest in the city on Monday.

Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta were among two dozen cities ordering people

to stay indoors overnight as more states called in National Guard soldiers

to help control the civil unrest not seen in the United States for years.

From Seattle to New York, tens of thousands of protesters took to the

streets demanding tougher murder charges and more arrests over the death of

Floyd, who stopped breathing after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin

knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Police and protesters clashed in numerous cities including Chicago and New

York, with officers responding to projectiles with pepper spray while shop

windows were smashed in Philadelphia.

Multiple arrests were reported by US media in Minneapolis, Seattle and New

York as rallies continued through the night.

Trump blamed the extreme left for the violence, including widespread looting

and arson in Minneapolis, saying rioters were dishonoring the memory of

Floyd.

"We cannot and must not allow a small group of criminals and vandals to

wreck our cities and lay waste to our communities," the president said.

"My administration will stop mob violence. And we'll stop it cold," he

added, accusing the loose-knit militant anti-fascist network Antifa of

orchestrating the violence.

Demonstrators nationwide chanted slogans such as "Black Lives Matter" and "I

can't breathe," which Floyd, who has become a fresh symbol of police

brutality, was heard saying repeatedly before he died.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said he was mobilizing the state's entire

13,000-strong National Guard to deal with rioters who have looted shops and

set fires in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

All major freeways leading into Minneapolis were closed Saturday night with

military helicopters overhead as the state braced for more rioting, arson

and looting, with locals saying much of the violence was being perpetrated

by outsiders.

SPACEX SAFELY DELIVERS ASTRONAUTS TO THE ISS

Just under 19 hours after launching from Florida, NASA astronauts Bob

Behnken and Doug Hurley arrived at the International Space Station aboard

SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule on Sunday, marking the first U.S. space capsule

to do so with a crew since 2011.

After a tense automatic docking sequence successfully linked Crew Dragon to

the station's docking adapter, the station's current crew greeted Behnken

and Hurley at an on-schedule hatch opening at 1:02 p.m. EDT. The critical

milestone kicks off the crew's potentially months-long stay in the orbital

laboratory.

"It's been a real honor to be just a small part of this nine-year endeavor

since the last time a United States spaceship has docked with the

International Space Station," Hurley said upon a successful "soft-docking."

TRUMP INVOKES LAW-AND-ORDER TO PUT PROTESTS AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY OVER

COVID-19

President Donald Trump has seized on destructive nationwide protests against

police brutality to portray himself as an icon of law and order, eschewing

the soothing role past presidents have adopted in similar moments as he

seeks to turn the election-year conversation from his widely panned handling

of the coronavirus outbreak.

The president on Sunday blamed the protests on Antifa, a loosely organized

leftist movement that is a frequent target of conservative critics, and said

he would declare the group to be terrorists. His political advisers believe

the move pressures his re-election challenger, former Vice President Joe

Biden, to either agree with the president -- splitting with the

demonstrators -- or side with people that some White House officials regard

as rioters.

But in choosing to seize on calm the political and racial divisions inflamed

by the death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis police custody last

week, the president risks alienating those U.S. voters looking for a leader

who will console and unify. The coronavirus outbreak that Trump has sought

to relegate to a back burner, meanwhile, continues to infect upwards of

1,000 Americans daily.

By painting himself as a purveyor of law-and-order confronting political

enemies he's depicted as incompetent or crazed radicals, the president seeks

to recreate the 2016 formula that put him in the White House, when the

enthusiasm of Trump's "forgotten Americans" overwhelmed a dispirited and

divided center and left.

But even some in Trump's camp worry this may be one crisis too many for a

president who has seemed to thrive on them. Even as the protests rage,

voters are also enduring a coronavirus death toll that's exceeded 100,000

and a U.S. economy in tatters.

And people willing to take to the streets in the middle of a pandemic will

surely show up to vote in November, one person close to Trump's campaign

fretted.

NEW CHINESE LAW HAS HONGKONGERS DASHING FOR EXIT

The promulgation of new security law for Hong Kong by China has resulted in

a sharp increase in inquiries for immigration from the former British colony

especially the city's residents who emigrated en masse there when it

returned to the Chinese control in 1997.

Immigration consultants have fielded hundreds of new calls since China's

legislature - the National People's Congress (NPC) - unveiled the

controversial plan on May 21, bypassing the local legislature, Hong

Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Sunday.

The new law under which China can establish the presence of its security

forces in Hong Kong for the first-time evoked strong protests from thousands

of local people. The protests were expected to be intensified in the coming

weeks.

Some are accelerating their decision to buy property overseas, while others

are cutting their asking price for local properties, immigration consultancy

firms in Hong Kong said. "The day after that proposal, we received over a

hundred calls," said Andrew Lo, chief executive at Anlex, a Hong Kong-based

immigration consultancy firm. "People are restless. They ask if they can

leave the next day," he told the Post.

Requests for emigration advice have jumped as a result, breaking a lull

caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to Midland Immigration

Consultancy.

While the latest number in applications for good citizenship is not yet

available, analysts expect them to rise with political temperature, the

report said.

"People who were just engaging us on basic information before are now firmly

committing by putting down deposits," Gillott said.

TALKS WITH U.S. FUTILE, SAYS NEW IRAN SPEAKER

Iran's new Parliament Speaker said on Sunday that any negotiations with

Washington would be "futile" as he denounced the death of a black American

that has led to violent protests across the U.S. Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, a

former commander of the Revolutionary Guards' air force, was elected Speaker

on Thursday of a chamber dominated by ultra-conservatives following February

elections.

The newly formed Parliament "considers negotiations with and appeasement of

America, as the axis of global arrogance, to be futile and harmful," he said

in his first major speech to the chamber. Mr. Ghalibaf also vowed revenge

for the U.S. drone attack in January that killed Qasem Soleimani. "Our

strategy in confronting the terrorist America is to finish the revenge for

martyr Soleimani's blood," he told lawmakers, pledging "the total expulsion

of America's terrorist army from the region".

Ghalibaf called for ties to be improved with neighbours and with "great

powers who were friends with us in hard times and share significant

strategic relations", without naming them.

The 58-year-old Ghalibaf is a three-time presidential candidate who lost out

to the incumbent Hassan Rouhani at the last election in 2017.

The newly elected speaker had also served as Tehran mayor and the Islamic

republic's police chief before taking up his latest post.

In a tweet on Saturday, he slammed what he called the United States' "unjust

political, judicial, and economic structure".

This had been "pumping war, coups, poverty, indiscrimination, torture,

fratricide and moral corruption to the world, and racism, hunger,

humiliation, and 'choking by knee' in its own country for hundreds of

years", Ghalibaf said.

"What can one call it if not the Great Satan?" he added, using Iran's term

for its arch enemy.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif echoed his remarks on Twitter.

CHINA REPORTS 16 NEW CORONAVIRUS CASES VS 2 A DAY EARLIER

China reported 16 new coronavirus cases for May 31, the highest since May 11

and up from 2 cases reported a day earlier, the country's health commission

reported.

The National Health Commission said in a statement that all of the new cases

were so-called imported infections involving travellers from overseas.

The mainland also reported 16 new asymptomatic cases - those who are

infected but do not show symptoms - compared with 3 a day earlier.

The total number of confirmed cases now stands at 83,017, while the death

toll remained unchanged at 4,634.

POLICE DISPERSE ANTI-BOLSONARO PROTESTERS IN BRAZIL

Police said they used tear gas to disperse demonstrators in Brazil's largest

city on Sunday as groups protesting and supporting President Jair Bolsonaro

neared a clash.

The demonstration by several hundred black-clad members of football fan

groups in Sao Paulo appeared to be the largest anti-Bolsonaro street march

in months in a country that has become an epicenter of the spreading

COVID-19 pandemic.

Many of the protesters chanted "Democracy!" as they marched.

The executive secretary of the military police, Alvaro Batista Camilo, said

police fired tear gas to keep the groups apart after some Bolsonaro backers

carrying what he called a neo-Nazi flag approached the protesters.

Supporters of the president have gathered weekly to back the president and

his calls for easing restrictions on movement, gatherings and work.

Police didn't immediately have information about any arrests or injuries.

Brazil has reported more than half a million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and

more than 28,000 deaths - figures widely considered understatements due to a

lack of adequate testing.

Police also used tear gas against anti-Bolsonaro demonstrators who clashed

with pro-government groups in Rio de Janeiro.

Bolsonaro himself turned out to meet backers in the capital, Brasilia,

mounted on a federal police horse. He wore no mask despite a decree by the

Federal District's government making that practice mandatory in public.