WASHINGTON (The Hill) – Three quarters of Black Americans say they are worried that they or someone they love will be physically attacked because of their race, according to a new poll. A new Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that 75 percent of Black Americans polled are worried that they or someone they care about will be physically harmed because they are Black, a development that comes one week after a fatal shooting in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y. Seventy percent of Black Americans polled said they believed half or more white Americans hold white supremacist beliefs compared to 19 percent who believed fewer than half white Americans do. Two-thirds of those polled said white supremacy is a bigger problem today compared to five years ago. In comparison, 28 percent said the size of the problem is the same, while five percent said it was a smaller problem today. Respondents were also asked about their feelings following the Buffalo shooting, in which a suspect, who is white, allegedly shot and killed 10 people and injured three others. Eleven of the 13 victims were Black, and the suspect allegedly espoused the racist “great replacement theory.”  

 

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SUNAMGANJ (AFP) – Northeast Bangladesh’s worst floods in nearly 20 years began receding on Sunday, but rescue workers were struggling to help millions marooned by extreme weather across the region that has killed around 60 people. Floods are a regular menace to millions of people in low-lying Bangladesh and neighboring northeast India, but many experts say that climate change is increasing the frequency, ferocity and unpredictability. In the past week after heavy rains in India, floodwater breached a major embankment in Bangladesh’s Sylhet region, affecting around two million people, swamping dozens of villages and killing at least 10. Arifuzzman Bhuiyan, head of the state-run Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre, told AFP that the floods had hit some 70 percent of Sylhet district and about 60 percent of neighboring Sunamganj. “It is one of the worst floods in the region,” he told AFP. But he said the situation would improve further in the next few days after heavy rains stopped. Police said that a scuffle broke out in the rural town of Companyganj on Saturday as authorities stepped up relief operations for the roughly two million people hit.

 

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WASHINGTON (TASS) – General Mark Milley, chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the risk of a serious conflict between great powers is increasing. “We are facing, right now, two global powers: China and Russia, each with significant military capabilities, and both fully intend to change the current rules-based order,” he told a class of the U.S. Military Academy in West Point at a graduation ceremony, TASS reported. The United States is entering a world that’s becoming more unstable. The world you are being commissioned into has the potential for serious international conflict between great powers, he continued. “And that potential is increasing, not decreasing,” he added. On February 24 Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in response to a request for help by the heads of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, but aims to demilitarize and de-Nazify the country. The U.S. and its allies retaliated by imposing sweeping sanctions on Russia and boosted arms supplies to Kiev.

 

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BEIJING (AFP) – Shanghai partially restarted public transport Sunday, signaling a gradual reopening after nearly two months sealed off from the outside world. China’s largest city has been almost entirely locked down since April, when it became the epicenter of the country’s worst coronavirus outbreak since the early days of the pandemic. Unlike other major economies, Beijing has dug in its heels on a zero-COVID approach of stamping out clusters as they emerge, though this has become increasingly difficult with the infectious Omicron variant. But as new infections have slowed Shanghai has cautiously eased restrictions, with some factories resuming operations and residents in lower-risk areas allowed to venture outdoors. Four of the city’s 20 subway lines will restart on Sunday along with some road transport, officials announced this week, forming a “basic network covering all central urban areas.” Those who take public transport will have to show a negative COVID test within 48 hours and have a “normal temperature”, they added on Saturday. But despite broader attempts to ease curbs, the central Jing’an district returned to a lockdown on Sunday, according to an official notice.

 

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SOUTH BEND (The New York Post) – Two people were killed and three others severely hurt in a shooting in the U.S. state of Indiana on Saturday, police said. Cops responded at 3:20 p.m. to a house on Rosemare Court in Goshen, about 40 minutes east of South Bend. One man was pronounced dead at Goshen Hospital, another was declared dead at the scene, authorities said in a Facebook post. Two women were airlifted to a trauma hospital in Fort Wayne, while a third was brought to a trauma hospital in South Bend, cops said. The shooting is believed to be “targeted, not gang-related, and there does not appear to be any further threat of danger to the community at this time,” police said. None of the victims have been publicly identified. Goshen is a city of about 200,000 in the north central part of the state, about 25 miles southeast of South Bend, the home of University of Notre Dame.