| Global Dimethyl Terephthalate Industry Posted: 21 Aug 2020 05:45 PM PDT |
| Global Ethylene Industry Posted: 21 Aug 2020 05:05 PM PDT |
| Mexico's famous floating gardens reopen after virus shutdown Posted: 21 Aug 2020 04:54 PM PDT  The famous "floating gardens" of Xochimilco reopened to visitors Friday after a five-month lockdown for the coronavirus pandemic. The canals that run through man-made islands created by the Aztecs on what is now the south side of Mexico City provide a popular day trip for tourists, with flat-bottom boats plying the water and mariachis playing music. Seeking to reassure people, the borough government cleaned and disinfected the flower-decked boats and docks, and enforced special hygiene rules, but there were few tourists or revelers for the reopening.
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| Global Methylene Chloride Industry Posted: 21 Aug 2020 04:25 PM PDT |
| Global Oxalic Acid Industry Posted: 21 Aug 2020 03:45 PM PDT |
| Iran sanctions: nearly all UN security council unites against 'unpleasant' US Posted: 21 Aug 2020 03:35 PM PDT  Letters from 13 of 15 members underscore US isolation as it seeks to 'snap back' measures against TehranThe extent of US isolation at the UN has been driven home by formal letters from 13 of the 15 security council members opposing Trump administration attempts to extend the economic embargo on Iran.The letters by the council members were all issued in the 24 hours since the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, came to the UN's New York headquarters to declare Iran in non-compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal.Under that deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), comprehensive UN sanctions on Iran would be restored 30 days after the declaration. But almost every other council member has issued letters saying that the US has no standing to trigger this sanctions "snapback" because it left the JCPOA in May 2018.The US has said it is still technically a participant because it is named as one in a 2015 security council resolution endorsing the JCPOA. The argument was rejected by France, the UK and Germany even before Pompeo made his declaration.Since then, Reuters reported that it had seen letters from Russia, China, Germany, Belgium, Vietnam, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, South Africa, Indonesia, Estonia and Tunisia, all rejecting the US position.Only the Dominican Republic has yet to issue a formal letter on the subject. Last week the Caribbean state was the only security council member to back the US when it tried to extend an arms embargo on Iran. Pompeo visited the island two days after that vote.Council members who normally consider themselves US allies on most issues said they would have supported Washington if a compromise had been found, in which the arms embargo could have been extended for a limited time period. The defeat of the US resolution on the embargo led directly to Pompeo's legal gambit to try to snap back UN sanctions.Diplomats at the UN said the depth of US isolation was in part a reflection of the abrasive style used by Pompeo, who accused Europeans of choosing to "side with the ayatollahs", and the US ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, a political appointee."The Americans were actually being over the top in their ridiculousness," one diplomat said."The underlying point here is that most countries on the security council basically agree with the US that Iran is not a nice country and it having nuclear weapons and more arms is not a good thing," the diplomat said. "But the Americans misplayed their hand so often, so aggressively, that they isolated themselves from people not on policy, but on just being unpleasant."
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| US dismisses opposition to restoring UN sanctions on Iran Posted: 21 Aug 2020 02:56 PM PDT  The Trump administration on Friday dismissed near universal opposition to its demand to restore all U.N. sanctions on Iran, declaring that a 30-day countdown for the "snapback" of penalties eased under the 2015 nuclear deal had begun. U.S. allies and foes have joined forces to declare the action illegal and doomed to failure, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. special envoy for Iran Brian Hook strongly disagreed and questioned the motives of those who object.
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| Quarantines, closures: Confusion reigns as schools reopen Posted: 21 Aug 2020 02:22 PM PDT  For countless families across the country, the school year is opening in disarray and confusion, with coronavirus outbreaks triggering sudden closings, mass quarantines and deep anxiety among parents. Schools in at least 10 states have had students and staff test positive for the virus since they began opening. The outbreaks have occurred in a variety of school settings: marching bands, high school football teams, elementary classrooms, high schools.
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| Birth of panda cub provides 'much-needed moment of pure joy' Posted: 21 Aug 2020 02:22 PM PDT  Delivering a "much-needed moment of pure joy," the National Zoo's giant panda Mei Xiang gave birth to a wiggling cub Friday at a time of global pandemic and social unrest. An experienced mom, "Mei Xiang picked the cub up immediately and began cradling and caring for it," the zoo said in a statement. Panda lovers around the world were able to see the birth on the zoo's Panda Cam.
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| Global High Selenium Yeast Industry Posted: 21 Aug 2020 01:45 PM PDT |
| Bannon partners had history of cashing in on Trump movement Posted: 21 Aug 2020 01:25 PM PDT  One is a triple-amputee Iraq war veteran who ran news sites stoking right-wing rage, often with exaggerated stories. Another owns a company that sells Donald Trump-themed energy drinks. The men charged along with former White House strategist Steve Bannon in a scheme to skim hundreds of thousands of dollars from a crowd-funded project to build a border wall came together through a shared devotion to Trump and a sometimes checkered history of trying to make money off his political movement.
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| NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week Posted: 21 Aug 2020 01:20 PM PDT  None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. THE FACTS: False posts circulating on Facebook and Twitter claim that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has proposed a staggering tax increase for families making $75,000 a year.
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| Global Purified Terephthalic Acid Industry Posted: 21 Aug 2020 12:45 PM PDT |
| Biden rips into Trump for not standing up to Putin amid suspicions he ordered the poisoning of Russia's top opposition leader Posted: 21 Aug 2020 12:43 PM PDT  "Donald Trump continues to cozy up to Russia while Putin persecutes civil society and journalists," Biden tweeted.
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| Libyan commander: Head-of-state status grants legal immunity Posted: 21 Aug 2020 12:07 PM PDT |
| He Was Iran's Homegrown Tech Star. The Guards Saw a Blackmail Opportunity. Posted: 21 Aug 2020 12:02 PM PDT  A prominent Canadian Iranian software engineer at Facebook, a superstar among technology students in Iran, traveled to Tehran in January to visit his family. It was a trip that would upend his life.A few weeks later, the engineer departed under what he now describes as a coerced deal to act as an informant for Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the powerful arm of Iran's military.The engineer, Behdad Esfahbod, 38, said he was arrested by Revolutionary Guard intelligence agents on the streets of Tehran, held in solitary confinement for seven days and psychologically tortured into promising to cooperate, which he never did. He has since struggled as his mental health, marriage and career fell apart. He said he had considered suicide.Esfahbod, who now lives in Edmonton, Alberta, and has since quit his job at Facebook, where he earned $1.5 million annually, broke his silence this week in an essay published on the website Medium.His self-described descent into the clutches of Iran's intelligence apparatus has touched an angry nerve among Iranians at home and abroad. Many view his story as part of a deeper malaise afflicting the country: The most promising young Iranian minds see their futures elsewhere, and are viewed with suspicion at home.A graduate of the Sharif University of Technology, the country's version of MIT, Esfahbod won a silver and gold medal in the International Olympiad in Informatics. His groundbreaking work for the past two decades has been instrumental in making non-English writing scripts available to web and Android users the world over.Esfahbod's work at Facebook as well as companies like Google and Red Hat has made it possible to type and read in Persian, Arabic and languages of Asia and Southeast Asia, according to several technology experts.Iranian officials did not respond to requests for comment about Esfahbod's ordeal as described in his Medium essay, which he later confirmed in an interview. Messages left with Iran's United Nations Mission in New York were not returned. Facebook declined to comment.As Esfahbod tells it, plainclothes agents of the Revolutionary Guard intelligence wing snatched him as he awaited a taxi and took him to a special section of Tehran's Evin Prison. They confiscated his laptop, phone, Iranian and Canadian passports and credit cards, and forced him to surrender the passwords to all his accounts. They downloaded 15 years of personal and professional digital history.He was blindfolded and interrogated for long hours twice a day. His handler threatened to harm his brother and sister and keep him imprisoned for 10 years for spying if he did not cooperate. When he requested a lawyer, the agents laughed and reminded him he was in the custody of the Revolutionary Guard where words like lawyer carry no weight.He broke, he said."I was disillusioned. I am not a political activist; all I was doing was trying to take my skill and education back to help. They said I was welcome to do that as long as I was an informant for them," Esfahbod said in the interview.His arrival and detention in Iran coincided with political turmoil that might have enhanced his value to the country's intelligence operatives. The United States had just assassinated a top Iranian general in Iraq. Iran had responded with a ballistic missile attack on two U.S. bases in Iraq and what it has described as the errant shooting down of a Ukrainian jetliner departing Tehran that carried Canadian citizens and many Iranians like Esfahbod, including 16 Sharif alumni."They told me you have a brother in America. You have a sister here. Remember the airplane we shot down? Remember we said it was human error? Same thing could happen to you and your family," Esfahbod said in the interview.His captors, he said, were mostly interested in gaining information about the Iranian technology community abroad, especially internet activists and engineers working on programs that help Iranians circumvent filters and gain access to secure connections.They asked him to go out to dinner and have drinks with his contacts back in America and then report back. When he agreed, Esfahbod said, they released him.For months afterward Esfahbod, who has a form of depression known as bipolar-2 disorder, suffered from anxiety and paranoia. He could not be alone, work or socialize. He constantly dreaded that someone was following him. He was on and off medical leave, he said, and his mental health deteriorated.In June, Iranian agents contacted him on Instagram and called him multiple times. When he did not respond, they contacted his sister and demanded he call them. He did not oblige.His ordeal has reverberated widely among Iranians, inciting outrage as an example of what they call the risk to those who return home from abroad only to be labeled a national security threat.By targeting technology experts, Iranian authorities appear to be casting a net that goes beyond the activists, dissidents and journalists typically in their sights. Iranian intelligence agents and hackers have attempted to steal the identities of Facebook users for surveillance purposes. The State Department has offered rewards on its Persian-language Twitter feed for information about what it has described as cybercriminal attempts to meddle in U.S. elections.Esfahbod's ordeal in particular "has caused a shock wave in the activist and internet freedom community," said Mehdi Yahyanejad, a California-based internet freedom activist working on anti-censorship technology.Yahyanejad said that the community had always suspected that Iran would send agents to conferences to spy on participants."Knowing that they are now pressuring high-profile individuals in the community to spy for them is very scary," he said.In Iran's own technology circles, Esfahbod is regarded as a guru, someone young engineers and coders aspire to emulate. He had visited Iran at least once a year, his schedule brimmed with meetings at startups and tech companies. He was also invited to speak at universities, and students packed lecture halls to hear about his work.The reaction to his arrest has been fierce among Iranian social media users."I am exploding with anger after hearing what they have done to Behdad Esfahbod," read a Twitter post by an Iranian identified as Mohamad Hossein Hajivandi. Another Twitter user, Ali Rastegar, wrote: "Why is there no limit to your crimes and crap? Isn't anyone allowed to be successful in another country and not spy for you?"Esfahbod's struggle is far from over. Iran's judiciary has sent him a summons, delivered to his sister's house in Tehran, giving him a few days to report to the Revolutionary Court on allegations of threatening national security. He now says he will never be able to return to Iran, which means he cannot see his niece or help care for his aging father."They chase the best and brightest first into exile because of lack of opportunities at home," said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based group. Then, he said, Iran's authorities "target the diaspora for vicious political gain and attempts to turn the community against each other."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| US buildings closed in Portland after car-bomb threat made Posted: 21 Aug 2020 11:43 AM PDT  At least two federal buildings in Portland have been closed and the FBI is investigating after a car bomb threat was made, the officials said Friday. The threat, which was received Thursday, warned of the intention to use a car bomb to target federal property in Portland, according to two law enforcement officials. Investigators are trying to determine whether the threat is credible, the FBI said in a statement.
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| How Alexei Navalny revolutionized opposition politics in Russia, before his apparent poisoning Posted: 21 Aug 2020 11:09 AM PDT  The harrowing videos of Alexei Navalny, a blogger who has captured popular frustration in Russia, screaming in agony on Aug. 20, 2020 before being removed unconscious from a plane to a waiting ambulance, demonstrate the Kremlin's increasing reliance on coercion to control dissent.This attack is not the first Navalny has endured. In 2017, he was doused with a green antibiotic that compromised his vision. In 2019, while in jail for organizing protests, he suspected he had been poisoned. Navalny has also been wrongly convicted on charges of financial wrong-doing three times. Although he was released to prevent him from becoming a national martyr, his brother and co-defendent, Oleg, served three and a half years in jail.Throughout this period, the Kremlin worked to discredit Navalny without making him a martyr.My book "Elections, Protest, and Authoritarian Regime Stability: Russia 2008-2020," reveals the nature of Navalny's threat to the Kremlin – one strong enough to make the claims that he has been poisoned credible. Focus on corruptionWhen he came onto the national stage 2010, Navalny brought a new type of opposition to Russian politics. He is in tune with popular concerns and able to find common ground across nationalist and liberal activists. He calls for removing President Vladimir Putin through elections, while articulating a new vision for Russia. Navalny's importance is not about popularity. The Kremlin's arrests and disinformation campaigns have raised enough suspicions among voters that polling shows he would not win a national election, even in the unlikely event of a fair fight. Instead, Navalny's challenge to Putin's regime rests on his innovative ideas and organizing strategies that have made him a force in Russian politics. He began as a lawyer, challenging the large Russian energy companies by buying stock and thus gaining the right to attend shareholders' meetings. He used his access to defy corporate leadership and release documents to demonstrate malfeasance. He established The Anti-Corruption Foundation – now labeled a Foreign Agent by the Kremlin – which collected citizens' reports of corrupt practices. His RosYama project, literally "Russian Hole," allows citizens to go online to report potholes – a widespread, chronic problem in Russia – and track the government response.Navalny amplifed his anti-corruption fight in 2011, when he labeled Putin's political party, United Russia, the "Party of Crooks and Thieves". When these efforts contributed to mass protest against electoral fraud, Navalny was at the fore. Addressing an unprecedented crowd in 2011, he said, "I see enough people here to take the Kremlin and [Government House] right now but we are peaceful people and won't do that just yet."He joined the movement's Coordination Council and forged ties across the diverse opposition with the goal of reforming Putinism.His canny use of social media has given thousands of Russians – both old and, especially, young – new insight and ways to protest against their government. New model of oppositionNavalny drew on the resources of these protests–activists, themes, online fund-raising strategies and new coalitions–to build an opposition strategy that links elections and a variety of forms of protest. He brought together an impressive team of young activists who challenge the regime at every step of the election process, from party formation to candidate registration and vote counting. Volunteers go door-to-door or accompany candidates to meet voters on their daily commutes or in apartment courtyards. They build temporary structures, called "cubes," on busy streets, where they educate voters about policy. Campaign leaders urge activists to share online messages offline with those who do not use the internet. New electoral technologiesWhen he fell ill, Navalny was campaigning on behalf of a new generation of local candidates. By demonstrating that Russian elections are little more than performances of the state's capacity to manufacture votes, the Navalny team reveals the lack of choice and accountability in the system.In summer 2019, this strategy led to significant protests after the regime barred almost all of the opposition candidates in Moscow's municipal elections. When the government cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrators, Navalny's team built a web-based way to identify any candidate who shared its values and urged voters to support that candidate – even if the candidate was in a party that they detested.Recent work by political scientists Mikhail Turchenko and Grigorii Golosov demonstrate that Navalny's "Smart Vote" strategy made a real difference in Russias's 2019 local elections, helping to defeat nearly a third of Putin-aligned candidates in Moscow. Navalny's team was gearing up to do the same thing in the September 2020 vote. [Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter and get expert takes on today's news, every day.] Social media innovationNavalny's creative use of new media is not limited to pothole repairs and voting apps. Beginning in 2006, he wrote a popular blog on the Live Journal social networking service. When the Kremlin shut down his blog in 2012, he reinvented his social media presence.The Anti-Corruption Foundation produced a short film, "Don't Call Him Dimon," that lampooned former President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev by showing his vast sneaker collection and flying a drone over his duck pond. Like ducks, sneakers became symbols of the opposition. The expose revealed the myth of Medvedev as an honest leader.The exposes have continued on Navalny's YouTube channel. His broadcasts have probed Russian intervention in U.S. elections, the Kremlin's failure to provide COVID relief and rigged Russian elections. These stories challenge the narrative presented in Russian state media, combating the regimes' systematic disinformation campaign. Inspiring a new generationNavalny's efforts have captured the imagination of young Russians and demonstrated the effects of generational change. Following "Don't Call Him Dimon," tens of thousands of young people took to the streets, shocking a country that believed Putin's opposition was played out. Months later, they flocked to join Navalny's presidential campaign organization. Navalny knew the dangers of being the face of opposition to the Putin regime. The day before he fell ill, he joked with young supporters that his death would do more harm to the Kremlin than his activism. It's clear that Russians – who have taken to Twitter to urge him to hold on – don't want to test that hypothesis.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * With prizes, food, housing and cash, Putin rigged Russia's most recent vote * Belarus, explained: How Europe's last dictator could fallRegina Smyth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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| Brussels making Brexit negotiations 'unnecessarily difficult', UK's chief negotiator says Posted: 21 Aug 2020 10:47 AM PDT  Brussels has made Brexit negotiations "unnecessarily difficult" by insisting that the UK signs up to state aid and fisheries rules, David Frost has warned. The UK's chief negotiator said that "any further substantive work" was being delayed by Brussels' creating roadblocks out of the two particular areas of concern. It comes as Mr Frost's EU's counterpart Michel Barnier accused the British Government of "wasting valuable time" in trade talks with the European Union. After the seventh round of Brexit talks ended in deadlock, a senior negotiating official for the UK insisted that "it's not us that's slowing it down". The source said: "The process block now is the EU's insistence that we must accept their position on state aid and fisheries before we can talk about anything else. We're obviously not going to do that. "We are ready to talk about everything and it's not us that's slowing things down." The official said that EU negotiators were "still insisting that we must accept arrangements that are rather like the Commons Fisheries Policy". EU negotiators have demanded a status quo deal, which would allow their fleet the same access to UK waters as if Britain was not leaving the CFP, while Britain has demanded a Norway-style fishing deal with annual negotiations on fishing quotas. "It's in their hands to move to a more realistic position that recognises us as an independent coastal state," the UK source added. The seventh round of free trade negotiations were overshadowed by rows over migration and the rights of British haulage firms to operate inside the EU single market. Road haulage is one policy area that has repeatedly been singled out by the EU's chief Brexit negotiator where the UK is trying to obtain "single market-like benefits". "Why should we give access to our roads to road transport firms, which would not be subject to the same rules in terms of minimum standards and safety?", Mr Barnier asked. "The need for a level playing field is not going to go away," he added. "It is a non-negotiable precondition to grant access to our market."
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| Iran agrees inspection deal with UN nuclear watchdog at two nuclear sites Posted: 21 Aug 2020 10:46 AM PDT  Iran has offered to allow UN nuclear inspectors to visit two controversial nuclear sites as part of its diplomatic charm offensive to have the international arms embargo against Tehran lifted, The Daily Telegraph can reveal. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN-sponsored body responsible for monitoring Iran's nuclear activities, has been highly critical of the Iranian regime over its refusal to cooperate with inspectors over claims that it has undertaken illicit activities at two nuclear facilities. The IAEA took the unprecedented step earlier this year of issuing a special report publicly rebuking Iran for its non-cooperation on a number of key nuclear issues, and denying inspectors access to two key Iranian nuclear installations at Marivan and Amad, which inspectors believe have been used for developing and storing nuclear material and form part of Iran's clandestine nuclear weapons programme. Iran has consistently refused to allow the IAEA access to the sites despite signing the 2015 nuclear deal with the US and other major world powers.
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| Putin's top critic is permitted to leave Russia after suspected poisoning Posted: 21 Aug 2020 10:43 AM PDT  Numerous critics and opponents of Putin have been poisoned. Alexei Navalny's team believe he's the latest victim.
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| Russian doctors agree to let Kremlin critic go to Germany for treatment after denying he was poisoned Posted: 21 Aug 2020 10:39 AM PDT  Russian doctors on Friday said they would allow fierce Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny to be transported to Germany for medical treatment after they denied it was poison that landed him in a coma. The 44-year-old opposition leader initially fell ill Wednesday during a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk back to Moscow, prompting an emergency landing in Omsk, according to his spokesperson. As a longtime critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he has often found himself at the center of bullying and targeted harassment campaigns.
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| Irate, protesters in Iraq's south torch parliament offices Posted: 21 Aug 2020 10:38 AM PDT  Protesters torched parliament offices in Iraq's oil-rich south on Friday following days of inaction by the government after two activists were assassinated. Demonstrators burned the outer gate of the entrance to the parliament building in Basra province, the area that produces the lion's share of Iraq's oil.
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| Mali coup: Thousands take to Bamako streets to celebrate Posted: 21 Aug 2020 10:34 AM PDT  President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta was forced to resign on Tuesday after being detained by soldiers.
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| Appeals court won't step in for now on Trump tax records Posted: 21 Aug 2020 10:32 AM PDT  A federal appeals court said Friday it wouldn't step in right away to delay New York prosecutors' effort to get President Donald Trump's tax records, potentially leaving the Supreme Court as his most promising option to block prosecutors' subpoena. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Trump's request to immediately put Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.'s subpoena on hold while Trump appeals to try to get it invalidated. The appeals court said it would hold a hearing on the request for a delay, but not until Sept. 1.
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| After Hagia Sophia, Turkey turns another museum into mosque Posted: 21 Aug 2020 10:06 AM PDT |
| Syracuse students suspended in latest crackdown by colleges Posted: 21 Aug 2020 10:06 AM PDT  Syracuse University has suspended 23 students following a large on-campus gathering, the latest example of college crackdowns on the kind of socializing that can spread the coronavirus and sink plans for in-person learning this semester. Syracuse officials announced the disciplinary action late Thursday and said they were reviewing security camera footage to identify additional students seen on video crowding into the campus Quad Wednesday night in violation of rules limiting crowds and requiring masks. The gathering drew a sharp rebuke earlier from Vice Chancellor J. Michael Haynie, who said participants had undercut efforts to make residential learning possible.
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| Russia Allows ‘Poisoned’ Putin Critic Alexey Navalny to Fly to Germany For Treatment Posted: 21 Aug 2020 10:04 AM PDT  MOSCOW—As Russia's most prominent opposition figure, Aleksey Navalny, lay in a coma on Friday after a suspected poisoning, a fierce tug-of-war raged between his family and authorities over whether he could be flown to Germany for additional medical treatment. Finally, on Friday night, Russian doctors relented and allowed Navalny to leave the country "on his wife's responsibility." All day, while a German air ambulance waited at the airport in the Siberian city of Omsk, Russian doctors at the hospital where Navalny was being treated and law enforcement agencies had refused to allow him out of Russia. Navalny's wife appealed to President Vladimir Putin in a letter to allow her husband's medical evacuation, but still the negotiations dragged on. (The Kremlin did not ban Navalny from traveling abroad after a previous attack. Somebody doused him with brilliant green antiseptic, damaging his eye, outside of his Anti-Corruption Fund, or FBK, in 2017. Shortly after the attack, Navalny underwent an eye surgery in Madrid.)Now, Navalny's family will get the chance to seek treatment for him in Berlin.Navalny Poison 'Is Dangerous to Those Treating Him'In the meantime, pro-Kremlin publications, some quoting anonymous sources, downplayed the possibility of poison and unspooled a long list of possible reasons why a healthy 44-year-old could have suddenly collapsed in a coma. Alternative causes and diagnoses for Navalny's coma proliferated on state media: He "ate or took something the evening before" was one idea, or "he drank moonshine." Other reports, which suggested the stricken opposition leader is a drug addict, angered even his critics.Ksenia Sobchak, a socialite who ran as a token candidate in the last presidential election from which real opposition figures were excluded, often disagreed with Navalny in political debates. But she defended her rival on Friday: "I have no doubts that this is a political reprisal, and reading about him getting 'drunk on moonshine in the village' is simply disgusting," Sobchak wrote on social media. "Alexey was never seen drunk and there was no question of drugs at all. I am still horrified by the video of his voice on the plane: it's just awful. There are no words to describe the feelings of horror and helplessness in front of such a despicable reprisal."The Kremlin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, initially said that Navalny would not leave Russia as the doctors treating him in Siberia thought the flight could be "a threat to life," so long as there is no clarity about what caused Navalny's sickness. Navalny's friends and supporters insisted that what actually threatened his life was poison in the tea he drank at a café in the airport before boarding his flight on Wednesday night. The politician lost consciousness on the plane early in the morning on Thursday. Video shot by another passenger showed him moaning in pain.The director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, Ivan Zhdanov, told journalists that he and his colleagues were in the head doctor's office when a representative of the local transport police entered the room with a cell phone in her hand and said, "Here is the substance they found in him." Zhdanov asked the name of the substance. "She told us it was classified information but that the substance was deadly dangerous for life, threatening not just Aleksey's life but also everybody around him, everybody should be wearing protective costumes." The intensive care unit treating Navalny has been flooded by police, according to Zhdanov.The head doctor at the hospital, Aleksander Murakhovsky, admitted to reporters that some chemicals had been discovered on the opposition leader's nails and on his clothes. But he said that the chemicals, which he did not name, had nothing to do with Navalny's coma. He later said "metabolic disorders" had caused the coma. The chief editor of Russia Today, a pro-Kremlin outlet, Margarita Simonyan, immediately posted: "They should have given him a spoon of sugar on the plane, nothing would have happened."The Siberian doctors insisted that the conditions and doctors at their hospital were "not any worse," than at the Charité hospital, where Germany was going to provide medical treatment for Navalny. Charité is a leading university hospital in Berlin, treating 152,693 inpatient cases a year. In contrast, photographs of the Omsk hospital, posted by Navalny's press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, showed toilets covered in corrosion, holes in the walls, and missing paint and tiles. By evening, after a day of standoffs over the evacuation, the situation sounded completely bizarre: Navalny's family and supporters said they felt as if they were trying to organize his escape from prison and not transportation from one hospital to another.Navalny's wife, Yulia, spoke to journalists outside the hospital. She was breathing heavily: "I tried to see doctors in the intensive care but some people wearing overcoats inside forced me out in a brutal way," she said. Doctors had stopped talking with her four hours before. "They hide the German doctors from us, this is an outrageous situation. It is obvious that something is being kept in secret from us. We demand they give us Aleksey immediately, so we could take him to doctors who we trust."Navalny's personal doctor denied he had diabetes. After seeing the video of Navalny screaming in pain on the plane, Russian doctors both in Moscow and St. Petersburg expressed their doubts about low blood sugar being the cause of Navalny's coma. "As a rule, a fairly healthy person does not have hypoglycemia unless they starve for two days and work out." Navalny did not starve himself in Siberia. He met with local opposition politicians, and continued his corruption investigation of Tomsk governor Sergey Zhvachkin; he had tea in Tomsk's airport.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| US says France, Britain 'abdicating duty' on Iran Posted: 21 Aug 2020 09:49 AM PDT  The US accused China and allies Britain and France Friday of "abdicating their duty" as it held firm on its solitary push to maintain an arms embargo and restore broader UN sanctions on Iran.
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| Global Cubic Boron Nitrates Industry Posted: 21 Aug 2020 09:45 AM PDT |
| Cyprus motorcyclists hold protest ride over police curbs Posted: 21 Aug 2020 09:43 AM PDT |
| Watchdog: Census lacks door knockers needed for 2020 count Posted: 21 Aug 2020 08:52 AM PDT  The U.S. Census Bureau is short by more than 25% of the door knockers needed for the 2020 census, according to its watchdog agency, and it's about to let go of its least productive census takers. Both developments highlight persistent questions about whether the bureau has enough manpower to get a complete and accurate head count under an accelerated time frame preferred by the Trump administration. Bureau officials, though, say they are pleased with the progress made by census takers and are on pace to finish the job.
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| Global Formic Acid Industry Posted: 21 Aug 2020 08:25 AM PDT |
| Senegal seeks to move huge ammonium nitrate stock from Dakar port Posted: 21 Aug 2020 08:10 AM PDT  The Dakar stockpile is almost as big as that which exploded in Beirut, causing massive destruction.
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| Mounting US deaths reveal an outsize toll on people of color Posted: 21 Aug 2020 08:06 AM PDT  As many as 215,000 more people than usual died in the U.S. during the first seven months of 2020, suggesting that the number of lives lost to the coronavirus is significantly higher than the official toll. As of the end of July, the official death toll in the U.S. from COVID-19 was about 150,000. People of color make up just under 40% of the U.S. population but accounted for approximately 52% of all the "excess deaths" above normal through July, according to an analysis by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the criminal justice system.
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| Coronavirus: How fast is it spreading in Africa? Posted: 21 Aug 2020 07:41 AM PDT  The rate of increase in cases may be slowing down, but do we know the true scale of the outbreak in Africa?
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| Europe Picks the Greater Evil in UN Iran Sanctions Vote Posted: 21 Aug 2020 07:31 AM PDT |
| Libya crisis: Rival authorities announce ceasefire Posted: 21 Aug 2020 07:28 AM PDT  The announcement for a nation riven by violence since 2011 is hailed by the UN.
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| Greek officials say UAE warplanes to arrive for joint drills Posted: 21 Aug 2020 07:26 AM PDT |
| Coronation review – Ai Weiwei's harrowing coronavirus documentary Posted: 21 Aug 2020 07:20 AM PDT  The artist-activist has secretly assembled a powerful and artful look at how the pandemic was handled in ChinaIn the west, governmental response to the coronavirus has been marked by sluggishness, miscommunication and widespread disorder at the highest institutional levels. From the Trump White House to Johnson's Number 10, citizens have been left in the dark or left to die as official policy and implemented containment programs offer far too little, too late. But in Asia, it would seem that they did everything right. Swift and sweeping action "flattened the curve" and kept one of Earth's most populous countries to a casualty count under 5,000 – a figure dwarfed by the death toll in the United States.The harrowing new documentary Coronation, made remotely and in secret by the artist-activist Ai Weiwei while stuck in Europe, conducts a slow-cinema investigation of how the cradle of this pandemic rose to best it. An assortment of amateur cinematographers in the viral epicenter of Wuhan captured stunning and terrible footage of a city plunged into crisis, their contributions organized under Ai's pointed, critical vision. In these meditations from an emergency, he arranges a dualistic picture of modern China as a force of great might, for better and for worse. The formidable national apparatuses that empowered the Chinese people to mobilize themselves and minimize the damage cut both ways, illustrating the hazards of a heavily centralized federal system along with its potential to do good. Ai frames this global cataclysm as an exacerbating force, a trial by fire that accents and amplifies the already-simmering tensions between the individual and the state. Through this mosaic of common life in an uncommon time, he asks the troubling question of whether submission must be the cost of protection.The film bills itself as the first feature-length documentary about the coronavirus, an up-to-the-minute rush job produced and edited over the past few months. And while this haste meant sacrificing some of the meticulousness of the film-maker's designs — his favored drone photography doesn't have so much of the mesmerizing mandala quality on display in his previous doc Human Flow – it's remarkable how he maintains his elements of style despite secondhand shooting. In his signature legato long takes, he pieces together a grand image of the planet from intimate snapshots of its smallest tragedies. He trains his gaze first on the Wuhan landscape itself, its expanses of ruin bathed in a rigor-mortis grey, and then on the people surviving within it.Many of them wrestle with a quandary now faced all over the world, as personal freedom and public security have started to feel like opposing forces. An early passage follows a couple attempting to drive back into Wuhan, their movements regulated and restricted. It's easy to understand why these measures have been put into place, and yet it's difficult to accept the side-effect of increased surveillance, unintended or no. Much of the Chinese counteroffensive involves the collecting and control of information with unprecedented precision. The government knowing where everyone and everything is at any given time sounds like a dystopia, but it may also be the most effective and efficient way of quelling a plague.The scale and authority of the Chinese state enabled its agencies to deploy street-cleaning robots and erect labyrinthine hospital facilities practically overnight, and yet those same qualities made assistance widely inaccessible on a person-by-person basis. We meet a grieving son, forced to slog through a bureaucratic thicket just to take ownership of his father's ashes. More Kafkaesque still, a temporary construction worker leaves Wuhan only to find he cannot return to his home of Henan or re-enter the city from which he came, with no remaining option but to live out of his car. (A heartbreaking one-line footnote in the press kit states that he did gain entry to Henan after filming completed, where he then took his own life.)A more explicitly ideological component takes shape in the second hour, crystallized in an argument over politics and media between an older former revolutionary and her more pragmatic son. She rejects the quarantine outright as a clear violation of her liberties, while he tries to reconcile his belief in the President Xi Jinping's plan with his healthy skepticism about his messaging. Variations on their generational conflict play out less directly all over the film; a cheery instructor teaches a group of young people a dance routine encouraging washing of the hands in one scene, and in another, a demonstration blends allegiance to the party and commitment to the cause of safety into a single nationalist spirit.Alternating between a disarming urban beauty and a grim techno-surrealism of hoverboards and thermometer guns, Ai memorializes a moment of far-reaching consequence. Even after the virus has been eradicated, its manmade consequences will continue for decades. He posits this unnatural disaster as an inflection point for the ongoing struggle between obedience and individuality that his entire career has tracked – a glimpse of apocalypse not from arbitrary physical ruin, but from an organized campaign. He sounds a universal alarm: while we're just trying to get through, they're trying to get all they can. * Coronation is available to rent digitally worldwide here
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| Putin's nemesis: Who is the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny? Posted: 21 Aug 2020 07:03 AM PDT  The most prominent opposition figure in Vladimir Putin's Russia is fighting for his life. Navalny has led nationwide protests against the authorities, repeatedly challenged members of the president's United Russia party and set up a network of campaign offices across the country. Thousands have attended his protest rallies.
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| Global Household Cleaners Industry Posted: 21 Aug 2020 06:25 AM PDT |
| Peace envoy, ex-Sen. George Mitchell diagnosed with leukemia Posted: 21 Aug 2020 06:16 AM PDT |
| U.S. will aim to block Russia, China from violating Iran sanctions -Pompeo Posted: 21 Aug 2020 06:14 AM PDT |
| Kremlin critic to remain in Siberian hospital until condition stabilises - chief doctor Posted: 21 Aug 2020 06:07 AM PDT |
| Trump says Democrats' convention was 'gloomiest' in history Posted: 21 Aug 2020 06:02 AM PDT  President Donald Trump sought to cast a more positive light on his presidency Friday after four days of bashing at the Democratic National Convention, saying that where Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden sees "American darkness," he sees "American greatness." Trump was anxious for his turn in the spotlight after the four-day Democratic National Convention, which was culminated by Biden describing "a perfect storm" hitting the nation under Trump's watch as a result of the pandemic, the jolt to the economy that it delivered and racial unrest after the killing of George Floyd. It comes as Republicans are still finalizing plans for Trump's four-night show next week — in part in response to the virtual Democratic event.
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| Russian hospital claims Putin critic Navalny wasn't poisoned, bars his medevac to Germany Posted: 21 Aug 2020 05:46 AM PDT  The Russian opposition leader who is in a coma, possibly after being poisoned, is reportedly not being allowed to transfer out of a state-run hospital.Alexei Navalny, prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was hospitalized this week after he suddenly became ill on a flight to Moscow from Siberia, and his spokesperson said that "We suspect that Alexei was poisoned by something mixed into [his] tea." On Friday, Navalny's spokesperson said he is not being permitted to transfer out of the state-run hospital where he's being treated, describing this refusal to let him leave as "an attempt on his life," CBS News reports. Doctors from Germany already arrived with the intention of transferring Navalny, according to The Wall Street Journal.The hospital is claiming that Navalny's condition is too unstable for him to be transferred, The New York Times reports. Doctors also claim that "no poisons or traces of their presence" were found in Navalny's body and that "we do not believe that the patient has suffered poisoning," asserting that he suffered from "a sudden drop in blood sugar" due to a "metabolic disorder," per CBS.But Navalny's wife, Yulia Navalnaya, alleges that officials aren't allowing him to be transported out of the hospital because they hope "to make the chemical substance that is in Alexey's body disappear," CNN reports. She added that "we of course cannot trust this hospital and we demand for Alexey to be given to us, so that we could have him treated in an independent hospital whose doctors we trust." Navalny's spokesperson also said, per the Journal, that the Russian doctors, "of course, didn't make the decision, but the Kremlin did."More stories from theweek.com The DNC's stirring eulogy for Joe Biden Lori Loughlin sentenced to 2 months in prison for role in college admissions scandal Trump initially responds to Biden's acceptance speech with brevity and correct grammar
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| Mali's coup is cheered at home but upsets neighbours Posted: 21 Aug 2020 05:30 AM PDT  Crowds cheered the ousting of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta but regional allies are not happy.
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