UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a global effort to end hate speech (AP) amid “a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scaremongering” unleashed during the coronavirus pandemic.

Public officials, educators, civil society leaders, and social media companies have important roles to play in “digital literacy” and the removal of hateful content, Guterres said. Some social media companies have increased their policing of hate speech (Tech Crunch) in recent weeks. Guterres denounced an uptick in nationality- and religion-based attacks, increased targeting of migrants and refugees, and efforts to keep aid, human rights, and media workers from doing their jobs. Last month, he said the pandemic was “fast becoming a human rights crisis” (UN).

Washington called for Seoul to contribute $1.3 billion annually to a military cost-sharing deal keeping U.S. forces on the peninsula, an increase of nearly 50 percent, a senior U.S. official told Yonhap.

For CFR’s Asia Unbound blog, Hwang Joonkook discusses what ongoing cost-sharing negotiations could mean for the U.S.-South Korea alliance.

Hong Kong: Charles Li, the head of Hong Kong’s stock exchange, said he plans to step down (WSJ). Li helped build Hong Kong’s profile as a conduit for foreign investment in China and led a failed bid to buy the London Stock Exchange last year.

Bangladeshi authorities are expected to charge eleven people (Al Jazeera) who used social media to criticize the government’s response to the coronavirus under a controversial 2018 law that bans criticism of the country’s founding leader.

The United States plans to remove two Patriot antimissile systems from Saudi Arabia and two others from elsewhere in the Middle East, along with dozens of military personnel. U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal the measures were intended to ease a military buildup meant to counter Iran. 

Yemen: Houthi rebel commander Mohamed Abdel Karim al-Hamran was killed in combat (AP), the rebels said. He is the most senior Houthi leader to be killed this year. 

This CFR Backgrounder looks at Yemen’s military and humanitarian crisis.

An AFP investigation found that misinformation about the coronavirus that is being shared online across Africa often characterizes vaccine research as harmful or part of an effort to kill black people.

Malawi: President Peter Mutharika, whose victory in a May 2019 presidential vote was annulled by the country’s Constitutional Court, registered for the July 2 rerun with new running mate (Al Jazeera) Atupele Muluzi, the son of a former president.

Turkey banned (FT) Citibank, UBS, and BNP Paribas from conducting foreign exchange trades in an attempt to stop the slide of the lira. The currency dropped below levels seen during a 2018 crisis that caused Turkey’s first recession in a decade. 

Europe: An EU spokesperson defended (WaPo) the decision to publish a censored op-ed in a Chinese state-backed newspaper, saying the broader benefit of publishing the message outweighed censorship concerns.

Argentina is weighing plans to set local oil prices (FT) at $45 per barrel, nearly 30 percent higher than international prices for Brent crude, in a push to make a vast shale development in Patagonia economically viable.

Canada: Google partner Sidewalk Labs scrapped (NYT) a plan to build a sensor-laden “city of tomorrow” in the Toronto area that had drawn criticism due to concerns about surveillance. The company’s directors attributed the decision to the economic effects of the coronavirus crisis.

The White House has ordered (Politico) the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to revise safety guidelines the agency prepared on emerging from lockdowns because they were “too prescriptive” and amounted to “countermessaging” of the administration’s push for economies to reopen, a spokesperson said.

For Think Global Health, a CFR initiative, Ali H. Mokdad discusses how different U.S. states can chart their paths out of lockdown.