Markets in capital closed after new Covid-19 cases

the Republican presidential nomination in Jacksonville on August 27.

That day will mark the 60th anniversary of what is called “Ax Handle Saturday”, when a white mob wielding ax handles began a riot over black youth attempting to order food from a whites-only lunch counter in the Florida city.

Black community and political leaders are calling on Trump to at least change the date of an Oklahoma rally kick-starting his return to public campaigning, saying that holding the event on Juneteenth, the day that marks the end of slavery in America, is a “slap in the face”.

Trump campaign officials discussed in advance the possible reaction to the Juneteenth date, but there are no plans to change it despite fierce blowback.

Harris and Tulsa civic officials were among the black leaders who said it was offensive for Trump to pick that day – June 19 – and that place – Tulsa, an Oklahoma city that in 1921 was the site of a fiery and orchestrated whiteon-black attack.

“To choose the date, to come to Tulsa, is totally disrespectful and a slap in the face to even happen,” said Sherry Gamble Smith, president of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street Chamber of Commerce, an organisation named after the prosperous black community that white Oklahomans burned down in the 1921 attack.

At a minimum, Gamble Smith said, the campaign should “change it to Saturday the 20th, if they’re going to have it.”

Trump announced the rally plan Wednesday afternoon. It comes as his harsh law-and-order stance appears to fall increasingly out of sync with a growing concern over police abuse of African-americans after the killing of Floyd in Minneapolis. | Reuters and AP

BEIJING shut six major wholesale food markets yesterday and delayed plans for some students to return to school after China’s capital reported new coronavirus infections for a second day running.

The new cases yesterday involved two men working at a meat research centre who had recently visited the markets, state media said. It was not immediately clear how they were infected. Thursday’s case, in a different part of the city, was the capital’s first in nearly two months.

The coronavirus is believed by many to have emerged at a seafood market in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, in December.

Both the newly infected men, aged 25 and 37, had had no contact with people from Hubei or travellers from overseas in the last 14 days, state media said. The research facility where the men worked, the China Meat Food Comprehensive Research Centre, in Fengtai district in the south of Beijing, remained open yesterday, according to the state-run Beijing Daily.

The Beijing city government said it had dropped plans to reopen school on Monday for students from the first to third grades because of the new cases. | Reuters