World this week
US President Donald Trump is to hold his first re-election campaign rally for several months in Tulsa, Oklahoma on the date that African Americans celebrate the end of slavery. The rally will take place on 19 June, known as "Juneteenth". In 1921 the city of Tulsa was the site of one of the worst massacres of black people in US history.
The news follows weeks of anti-racism protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black man, in police custody. The Trump campaign, referring to the date of the rally, said his Republican Party was proud of its role in winning the Civil War and ending slavery. Mr Trump's rallies, seen as vital for energising his base, were suspended due to the coronavirus outbreak in March. He faces re-election in November but is lagging behind his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, in the polls.
Technology giant Amazon has banned the police from using its controversial facial recognition software for a year. It comes after civil rights advocates raised concerns about potential racial bias in surveillance technology. This week IBM also said it would stop offering its facial recognition software for "mass surveillance or racial profiling".
The decisions follow growing pressure on firms to respond to the death in police custody of George Floyd. Amazon said the suspension of law enforcement use of its Rekognition software was to give US lawmakers the opportunity to enact legislation to regulate how the technology is employed. "We've advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge," Amazon said in a statement.
A Norwegian court has sentenced a gunman to 21 years in prison - with a minimum term of 14 years - for killing his teenage step-sister and opening fire at a mosque. Philip Manshaus, 22, opened fire at the al-Noor Islamic Centre in Baerum, west of the capital Oslo, last August. Several shots were fired in the mosque but nobody was seriously hurt. Manshaus was overpowered before police arrived.
It was treated as an act of far-right racist terror. Police found evidence that Manshaus was inspired by Brenton Tarrant, accused of deadly attacks on two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch in March 2019. Tarrant has pleaded guilty to 51 charges of murder in New Zealand. The 14-year minimum sentence for Manshaus is more than the minimum 10 years in the case of Anders Behring Breivik, the right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011. Norway increased the minimum sentences for such cases in 2015.
India's financial capital, Mumbai, has recorded 51,000 cases of Covid, taking it past the peak in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged. The news comes amid a surge of infections in India, which has 266,598 confirmed cases. Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, has 90,000 of them. Infections are also spiking in the capital Delhi, where authorities have said they expect to see more than half a million cases by the end of July.
The surge coincides with India's decision to relax restrictions after three months of a stringent lockdown that was intended to curb the spread of the virus. On 8 June, shopping malls, places of worship and offices were allowed to reopen. Before that, shops, market places and transport services had all been allowed to operate as well. But experts say that there was no other option but to lift the lockdown, which exacted a massive economic toll on the country.
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