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Minneapolis, May 31: The full Minnesota National Guard was activated for the first time since World War Two after four nights of civil unrest that has spread to other U.S. cities following the death of George Floyd, a black man shown on video gasping for breath as a white Minneapolis policeman knelt on his neck.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said the deployment was necessary because outside agitators were using protests over Monday’s death of George Floyd to sow chaos and that he expected Saturday night’s demonstrations to be the fiercest so far.

From Minneapolis to several other major cities including New York, Atlanta and Washington, protesters clashed with police late on Friday in a rising tide of anger over the treatment of minorities by law enforcement.

“We are under assault,” Walz, a first-term governor elected from Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, told a briefing on Saturday. “Order needs to be restored. ... We will use our full strength of goodness and righteousness to make sure this ends.”

He said he believed a “tightly controlled” group of outsiders, including white supremacists and drug cartel members, were instigating some of the violence in Minnesota’s largest city, but he did not give specific evidence of this when asked by reporters.

As many as 80% of those arrested were from outside the state, Walz said. But detention records show just eight non-Minnesota residents have been booked into the Hennepin County Jail since Tuesday, and it was unclear whether all of them were arrested in connection with the Minneapolis unrest.

The Republican Trump administration suggested civil disturbances were being orchestrated from the political left.

“In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized and driven by anarchic and left extremist groups - far-left extremist groups ... many of whom travel from outside the state to promote violence,” U.S. Attorney William Barr said in a statement.

In an extraordinary move, the Pentagon said it put military units on a four-hour alert to be ready if requested by Walz to help keep the peace.

Activists staged another round of protests on Saturday in at least a dozen major U.S. cities coast to coast, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Atlanta, New York and Atlanta.

In the nation’s capital, hundreds of demonstrators assembled near the Justice Department headquarters, then marched toward the U.S. Capitol, chanting, “Black lives matter,” and “I can’t breathe,” a rallying cry echoing Floyd’s dying words.

Many later ended up near the White House, where they faced off with shield-carrying police, some mounted on horseback.

The streets of Minneapolis were largely quiet during daylight on Saturday, though several National Guard armoured personnel carriers were seen rolling through town.

On Friday, in defiance of a newly imposed curfew, Minneapolis protesters took to the streets for a fourth night - albeit in smaller numbers than before - despite the announcement hours earlier of murder charges filed against Derek Chauvin, the policeman seen in video footage kneeling on Floyd’s neck.

Three other officers fired from the police department with Chauvin on Tuesday are also under criminal investigation in the case, prosecutors said.

The video of Floyd’s arrest - captured by an onlooker’s cellphone as he repeatedly groaned, “please, I can’t breathe” before becoming motionless - triggered an outpouring of rage that civil rights activists said has long simmered in Minneapolis and cities across the country over persistent racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system.

‘PAINS ME SO MUCH’

The mood was sombre on Saturday in the Minneapolis neighbourhood of Lyndale, where dozens of people surveyed the damage while sweeping up broken glass and debris.

“It pains me so much,” said Luke Kallstrom, 27, a financial analyst, standing in the threshold of a fire-gutted post office. “This does not honour the man who was wrongfully taken away from us.”

Some of Friday’s most chaotic scenes were in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, where police armed with batons and pepper spray made more than 200 arrests in sometimes violent clashes. Several officers were injured, police said.

In Washington, President Donald Trump said on Saturday that if protesters who gathered the night before in Lafayette Square, across from the White House, had breached the fence, “they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen.”

CHAOS IN ATLANTA

In Atlanta, Bernice King, the youngest daughter of slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., urged people to go home on Friday night after more than 1,000 protesters marched to the state capitol and blocked traffic on an interstate highway.

The demonstration turned violent at points. Fires burned near the CNN Center, the network’s headquarters, and windows were smashed at its lobby. Several vehicles were torched, including at least one police car.

Rapper Killer Mike, in an impassioned speech flanked by the city’s mayor and police chief, also implored angry residents to stay indoors and to mobilize to win at the ballot box.

“But it is not time to burn down your own home.”

Floyd, a Houston native who had worked security for nightclubs, was arrested on suspicion of trying to pass counterfeit money at a store to buy cigarettes on Monday evening. Police said he was unarmed. An employee who called for help had told a police dispatcher that the suspect appeared to be intoxicated.

In a striking coincidence, Floyd and Chauvin had both worked security at the same Latin nightclub in Minneapolis, though it was unlikely they ever interacted, former owner Maya Santamaria, who sold the El Nuevo Rodeo club in January, told Reuters.

Santamaria said Floyd worked inside the club on certain nights, supporting other staff with security. She said Chauvin, who worked outside the club as an off-duty cop for 16 years, had a reputation for roughing up customers, but she considered him responsible and a friend.

New Delhi, Apr 23: The nationwide lockdown in India which started about a month ago has impacted nearly 40 million internal migrants, the World Bank has said.

The lockdown in India has impacted the livelihoods of a large proportion of the country's nearly 40 million internal migrants. Around 50,000 60,000 moved from urban centers to rural areas of origin in the span of a few days, the bank said in a report released on Wednesday.

According to the report -- 'COVID-19 Crisis Through a Migration Lens' -- the magnitude of internal migration is about two-and-a-half times that of international migration.

Lockdowns, loss of employment, and social distancing prompted a chaotic and painful process of mass return for internal migrants in India and many countries in Latin America, it said.

Thus, the COVID-19 containment measures might have contributed to spreading the epidemic, the report said.

Governments need to address the challenges facing internal migrants by including them in health services and cash transfer and other social programmes, and protecting them from discrimination, it said.

World Bank said that coronavirus crisis has affected both international and internal migration in the South Asia region.

As the early phases of the crisis unfolded, many international migrants, especially from the Gulf countries, returned to countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh until travel restrictions halted these flows.

Some migrants had to be evacuated by governments, such as those of China and Iran, it said.

Before the coronavirus crisis, migrant outflows from the region were robust, the report said.

The number of recorded, primarily low-skilled emigrants from India and Pakistan rose in 2019 relative to the prior year but is expected to decline in 2020 due to the pandemic and oil price declines impacting the Gulf countries.

In India, the number of low-skilled emigrants seeking mandatory clearance for emigration rose slightly by eight percent to 368,048 in 2019.

In Pakistan, the number of emigrants jumped 63 per cent to 6,25,203 in 2019, largely due to a doubling of emigration to Saudi Arabia, it said.

According to the bank, migration flows are likely to fall, but the stock of international migrants may not decrease immediately, since migrants cannot return to their countries due to travel bans and disruption to transportation services.

In 2019, there were around 272 million international migrants.

The rate of voluntary return migration is likely to fall, except in the case of a few cross-border migration corridors in the South (such as Venezuela-Colombia, Nepal-India, Zimbabwe South Africa, Myanmar-Thailand), it said.

Migrant workers tend to be vulnerable to the loss of employment and wages during an economic crisis in their host country, more so than native-born workers.

Lockdowns in labour camps and dormitories can also increase the risk of contagion among migrant workers.

Many migrants have been stranded due to the suspension of transport services. Some host countries have granted visa extensions and temporary amnesty to migrant workers, and some have suspended the involuntary return of migrants, it said.

Observing that government policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis have largely excluded migrants and their families back home, the World Bank said there is a strong case for including migrants in the near-term health strategies of all countries, given the externalities associated with the health status of an entire population in the face of a highly contagious pandemic.

The Bank said governments would do well to consider short, medium and long-term interventions to support stranded migrants, remittance infrastructure, loss of subsistence income for families back home, and access to health, housing, education, and jobs for migrant workers in host/transit countries and their families back home.

The pandemic has also highlighted the global shortage of health professionals and an urgent need for global cooperation and long-term investments in medical training, it said.

New Delhi, Mar 14: Excise duty on petrol and diesel was on Saturday hiked by ₹3 per litre as the government looked to mop up gains arising from fall in international oil prices.

Special excise duty on petrol was hiked by ₹2 to ₹8 per litre incase of petrol and to Rs 4 incase of diesel, an official notification said.

Additionally, road cess on petrol was raised by ₹1 per litre each on petrol and diesel to ₹10.

The increase in excise duty would in normal course result in a hike in petrol and diesel prices but most of it would be adjusted against the fall in rates that would have necessitated because of slump in international oil prices.