VOA常速英语:美国多州撤销口罩令,拜登震怒

This is VOA news. Reporting by remote, I'm David Byrd. Myanmar security forces dramatically escalated their crackdown on protests against last month's coup, killing at least 38 protesters. U.N. special envoy Christine Schraner Burgener says that is the highest daily death toll since the February 1 takeover, exceeding the 18 that the U.N. human rights office said were killed on Sunday. "Today it was the bloodiest day since the coup happened on the 1st of February. We had today - only today - 38 people died. We have now more than over 50 people died since the coup started." The military has justified the coup, saying that its complaints of voter fraud in the November 8 elections were ignored.

A down day on Wall Street, with all three major indices closing in negative territory. The Dow Jones Industrials dropped 0.39 percent, the S&P 500 lost 1.31 percent and the NASDAQ fell by 2.7 percent.

President Biden is calling out to Republican governors who have relaxed mask mandates and other virus restrictions. AP's Sagar Meghani has more. The president says the nation's "on the cusp" of fundamentally changing the pandemic's nature. "... the last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking ..," saying he hopes everybody has realized by now masks make a difference. "It's critical, critical, critical, critical" and "it's a big mistake" to end mask mandates after being asked about Texas's Greg Abbott and Tate Reeves in Mississippi doing just that. Reeves replied with a tweet that "Mississippians don't need handlers," adding "I guess I just think we should trust Americans, not insult them." Sagar Meghani, Washington.