The News Roundup—International (The 1A) 2020-05-22

Sao Paulo, Brazil is the latest coronavirus epicenter. Health officials blame a lack of lockdown procedures for the climbing death rate. While President Donald Trump has been friendly to Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro before, he is now considering a travel ban.

And Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has laid out the company’s plans to remove misinformation from the website. Meanwhile, Twitter has become the battleground in an information war against China. According to NBC, 90,000 tweets about COVID-19 were sent out by Chinese state media since the start of April. The tweets supported a conspiracy theory that the virus was made in a lab by the U.S. government.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is pulling out of all standing peace agreements with Israel. This is due to Israel pushing to annex more Jewish settlements in the West Bank. In other Middle Eastern news, Syrian war criminals were taken to trial by Germany late last month. The two ex-military officials are accused of participating in torture that left 58 people dead. The body representing the Syrian people hope this will inspire more trials of Syrian war criminals in Europe.

We’ll talk all this and more during the international edition of the News Roundup.
Interview:
https://the1a.org/segments/the-news-roundup-international-2020-22-05/