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Britain’s prime minister told parliament on Wednesday that a COVID-19 test, track and tracing system would be in place by June 1. 
Responding to a question from opposition Labor Party Leader Keir Starmer, Boris Johnson said the government has already recruited 24,000 trackers and will have another thousand in place by that date. He said they will be able to trace the contacts of 10,000 new cases a day. 
Starmer had accused Johnson of “abandoning” virus tracking and leaving a huge hole in Britain’s COVID-19 defenses. 
Tracking and tracing involves testing vast numbers of people, identifying those who test positive, isolating them and tracking those who have come into direct contact with them.  
Johnson told the lawmakers the country will be able to test up 200,000 people per day by the end of the month.  
The Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 resource center reports that currently, Britain has 35,422 deaths and more than 250,000 confirmed cases of the disease caused by the coronavirus. 
 
 
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Croatia’s President Zoran Milanovic on Wednesday scheduled a parliamentary election in the European Union nation for July 5.  Milanovic formally set the date for the ballot after Croatia’s lawmakers voted earlier this week to dissolve parliament.The Balkan country of around 4.2 million people has been easing lockdown measures against the new coronavirus after a drop in new cases.Croatia’s ruling conservatives are facing a challenge from a liberal opposition alliance after losing the presidential election in January.  The former Yugoslav republic has one of the weakest economies in the 27-nation EU after going through a war in the 1990s’.
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Spain’s prime minister appears before parliament on Wednesday to ask for its endorsement to extend the state of emergency that his government has used to rein in the country’s coronavirus outbreak that has killed at least 27,000 people.  
It would be the fifth two-week extension to the state of emergency, which is currently set to expire on Sunday. The government wants to extend it until June 7.  
“The path we are on is the only one that can possibly beat the virus,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told a chamber with only a handful of members to limit contagion risks. “Thanks to all the parliament members who have supported the state of emergency because with their vote they have saved thousands of lives.”  
Since the start of the national lockdown on March 14, Spain has lowered a rampant COVID-19 virus contagion rate that was well over 20% to under 1% over the past week. More than 230,000 infections have been confirmed by laboratory tests in Spain.
Sánchez argues that Spain still needs to keep a tight, centralized control over the health situation as it starts to loosen restrictions and restart economic activity. Small shops have reopened in most of the country, but not in hard-hit Madrid and Barcelona.
The vote is expected to be close, although Sánchez’s minority government made up of his Socialists and an anti-austerity party has maintained the important backing of the center-right Citizens party and Basque regionalist party PNV.  
Sánchez’s support has been waning with every vote to extend the state of emergency, which gives the government the power to restrict constitutional rights such as free movement and assembly — key to its sanitary lockdown. The main opposition conservative Popular Party and the far-right Vox party have said they will vote “No.”
Both right-wing parties accuse the government of being responsible for the impact of the pandemic that threatened to collapse the nation’s health system managed by Spain’s regions until the state of emergency centralized all efforts.  
“You are like a headless chicken running around not knowing what to do,” Popular Party leader Pablo Casado told Sánchez. “To endorse your extension would be irresponsible.”  
Catalonia separatist parties, meanwhile, are clamoring for the end to what they consider an interference of the national government in their affairs.
The Citizens party gave its support after the government reduced its original petition of wanting a one-month extension and settling for two weeks. PNV was appeased by the government increasing the role of the regions in decision-making.
“Stop using the pandemic to seek political gains,” Citizens spokesman Edmundo Bal said. “We are facing a possible second outbreak. We need to move forward in an orderly manner.”
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Here’s a look at how Muslims worldwide are marking Ramadan, a month of fasting, prayer and reflection, during the Pandemic.
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The United Nations has hailed the arrest of a wanted Rwandan genocide suspect, Felicien Kabuga, who appeared before a Paris court under heavy police protection on Tuesday.Kabuga’s court appearance came three days after French police arrested the 84-year-old at his apartment in the Paris suburb of Asnieres-sur-Seine, where officials say he had been living under a false identity.  The date of arrest and a red cross are seen written on the face of Felicien Kabuga, one of the last key suspects in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, on a wanted poster at the Genocide Fugitive Tracking Unit office in Kigali, Rwanda, on May 19, 2020.Experts say French legal procedures could take several weeks or more, before Kabuga can then be transferred for trial. That’s expected to come before a special body that inherited outstanding cases from the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which closed in 2015. That tribunal indicted Kabuga on seven counts, including genocide. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said she hoped Kabuga’s arrest would encourage other states to hunt down other top genocide suspects still at large.  United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet attends a session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Feb. 27, 2020.Rights and genocide survivor groups have likewise hailed Kabuga’s unexpected arrest.  Lawyer Patrick Baudouin, honorary president of the International Federation for Human Rights, said it’s in France’s interest to ensure Kabuga is tried as soon as possible, given the years gone by and his advanced age.Once a powerful and wealthy businessman, Kabuga had been on the run across Europe and Africa for more than a quarter-century.   He is accused of financing militia groups who helped carry out the 1994 killings of some 800,000 Rwandan Tutsi and moderate Hutus. He also co-owned Radio Milles Collines, whose broadcasts fed hatred against the Rwanda’s Tutsi minority.   One investigator told Reuters news agency the coronavirus lockdown in France and elsewhere in Europe left them time to focus on Kabuga’s trail. They reportedly traced him through internet clues left by his children, who rented the apartment where he lived.  It’s uncertain how and when he came to France, but neighbors have told local media they saw him around for several years, and he kept a low profile.  Some activists want a fuller explanation of why it took so long to find Kabuga. Baudouin said his trial might also shed light on other genocide suspects. The genocide has long cast a shadow on French-Rwandan relations, with Kigali accusing Paris of complicity. Ties have improved in recent years. Last year French President Emmanuel Macon appointed an expert commission to look into France’s role in the killings, with a report due next year.  For the first time in April, France officially commemorated the Rwandan genocide that took place 26 years ago.   
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Online retail giant Amazon was resuming operations Tuesday at its six warehouses in France. They were temporarily closed in a labor dispute over working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic.Amazon “is working on a progressive reopening from May 19” in France, it told the French news agency (AFP) in a statement, after unions also said the agreement had been reached on the conditions for restarting operations. The unions said about 50 percent of the workers would be allowed back on a voluntary basis. Amazon is expected to be back to full staffing by June 2.The online retailer had been locked in a battle with labor unions which had argued that not enough was done to mitigate the coronavirus risk for staff. Employees had needed to process a flood of orders amid the almost two-month nationwide lockdown that ended on Monday.Last month, an appeals court upheld a ruling that sharply curtailed Amazon’s operations and ordered management to review safety measures. The court said only essential items – office equipment, groceries, medical and personal care products could be delivered in the meantime.Amazon said it was impossible to comply with the order, and completely shut down the six sites from mid-April, although it maintained full pay for employees.In a statement, France’s CFTD labor confederation told AFP the outcome of the negotiations with Amazon was “an important step in the adaptation of this company to the culture of our country, to its rules, and to the requirements for a sustainable and dignified workplace.” 
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Human rights activists are urging the government of Greece to release 276 unaccompanied migrant children from police detention cells. Human Rights Watch is leading the appeal, saying the children’s continued detention is a breach of both local and international laws.
Back in November, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis launched an ambitious campaign, promising to leave no migrant child unprotected. 
 
And in the months that followed, hundreds of them  trapped in Greece, alone for up to a year, have been resettled to the heart of Europe, re-uniting with their families.  But news of their ordeal has not stopped more migrants from making their way to the country from Turkey. FILE – Migrants walk past makeshift tents outside the perimeter of the overcrowded Moria refugee camp on the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos, Greece, March 11, 2020.But news of their ordeal has not stopped more migrants from making their way to the country from Turkey. 
 
And now the international Human Rights Watch group warns there are more minors being kept behind bars in Greece than when Mitsotakis made his “No Child Alone” pledge, bringing the total number of detained migrant children to nearly 300. 
 
Eva Cosse of the Human Rights Watch group says all of the minors in question are being kept in police cells and detention centers without real cause — mainly because refugee camps across the country remain overcrowded. The activist tells VOA such conditions make the migrant children so much more vulnerable. 
 
“They are detained in dirty police center cells, usually in the basement of police stations with no access to natural light, no access to a clean facility. And some times they are detained with older, adult detainees which puts them at risk of exploitation and abuse,” said Cosse.  FILE – A boy walks among pairs of shoes at the premises of an NGO next to the Moria camp for refugees and migrants, on the island of Lesbos, Greece, March 9, 2020.The United Nations’ refugee agency has voiced similar concerns, especially as refugee flows surged by nearly 300 percent last year, reaching 60,000 — twice the number of those who managed to sneak into Greece in 2018. 
 
But since then, inflows had decreased dramatically largely because of increased patrols along the Aegean waterway that separates Greece from Turkey. Both countries have also closed their borders to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, making it more difficult for smugglers to sneak into Greece, an EU-member state. 
 
But the grim facts concerning migrant minors remain staggering. 
 
State and U.N. statistics show that they count 5,000 in Greece, double their number two years ago. 
 
Just one in five live in special, secured facilities. The overwhelming majority left to linger in overcrowded refugee camps where Just one in five live in special, secured facilities. The overwhelming majority left to linger in overcrowded refugee camps where some of the children have said they have been bitten by scorpions, rats and snakes, and preyed upon by organized criminal gangs and sex traffickers. 
 
Most alarmingly, aid workers warn, a fifth of the minors documented since entering the county have gone missing, leaving no trace or track of their whereabouts behind. Greek migration officials contacted by VOA in Athens were not available for comment. 
 
But with the coronavirus crisis subsiding and Greece, like other countries, relaxing border controls, experts fear migration flows will surge anew, and aggravate conditions, especially for the children. 
 
  
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