International

World News 9^th September
Worse and worse in Belarus (country between Russia, Poland Ukraine).  The President is a dictator who has been in power for 27 years.  They had an election which everyone says was rigged, so that the woman (Svetlana) who probably won was made to lose. Then when people started to protest in the streets they forced Svetlana to leave the country with threats on her family.  Now a second woman (Maria)who worked with her was grabbed off the street by masked men and taken to the border where they tried to make her go to Ukraine.  She tore up her passport and threw the pieces out of the window so they could not get her across the border.  Nobody knows where they took Maria after that.  It is a very bad situation.
There was a big fire at a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos.  Thousands of people had to get out.  Police say people are safe but tents were burned down.  The camp has 12 thousand people – it is only supposed to have 3 thousand people.  The living conditions there are very poor.   Last week they found that 35 people had the virus.
Governments in countries across Europe are trying to persuade young people to be more careful and to stick to the rules.  In Spain they say a quarter of virus cases are people aged 15 to 29 years.  They have a new campaign called “this is not a game” which shows young people how serious the problem is, if they catch the virus and pass it on.
Trump is holding meetings with hundreds of people – no masks, no distancing. He makes jokes about the social distancing.  It seems crazy as US has 6.3 million cases and nearly 190 thousand deaths.