| Zimbabwe journalist: 'I was jailed for a month for exposing corruption' Posted: 11 Oct 2020 04:26 PM PDT  A whistle-blower comes face-to-face with the consequences of his actions in a Zimbabwean high-security prison.
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| RPT-FEATURE-China expects to meet poverty alleviation goal, sustainability the next test Posted: 11 Oct 2020 04:00 PM PDT |
| Security guard jailed in deadly shooting at Denver protests Posted: 11 Oct 2020 11:34 AM PDT  A private security guard working for a local TV station was jailed for investigation of first-degree murder in the deadly shooting of another man during dueling right- and left-wing protests in downtown Denver, police said Sunday. Matthew Dolloff, 30, was taken into custody in connection with a clash that took place Saturday afternoon in Civic Center Park. A man participating in what was billed a "Patriot Rally" slapped and sprayed Mace at a man who appeared to be Dolloff, the Denver Post reported, based on its photographs from the scene.
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| EU countries preparing for no-deal Brexit and potential 'chaos' Posted: 11 Oct 2020 10:51 AM PDT  EU member states are wargaming strategies for no-deal Brexit, including the possible resumption of negotiations with the UK after the deadline passed. One senior diplomatic source at an influential member state said that there was a risk that the two sides were too entrenched in their positions to get a deal before the deadline. While admitting that the schism would be painful, the senior diplomat said it could concentrate minds on both sides. "We will have a period of chaos, but if we need to see how things evolve and how much it hurts before politicians come to their senses, then so be it," the diplomat said. "There is nothing that says that just because there is a no deal there can never be trade negotiations again," the diplomat said. "We could have a scenario where it will not work out in time, but sometime in the future." Another EU source insisted that there would be no resumption of trade negotiations with Brussels in the aftermath of no deal. Instead Britain would be forced to strike bilateral agreements with individual member countries to mitigate the economic impact. The European Commission has pushed for a coordination role on those bilateral deals to ensure they do not harm other member states' interests. Other sources said that eventually UK-EU trade negotiations would have to resume with the European Commission, which handles negotiations on behalf of the bloc, after no deal on January 1. But they warned a chastened UK would be faced with exactly the same demands over the level playing field when they returned to the negotiating table. The only difference would be the UK would have less goodwill and leverage, they claimed. Boris Johnson has said he will walk out of Brexit talks if a deal is not "in sight" by the EU summit on October 15, before the EU's end-of-month deadline, but that threat is not taken seriously in Brussels. The Prime Minister has promised to stay in regular contact with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, as negotiations hurtle towards the endgames. Michel Barnier is expected to avoid getting drawn into the details of potential compromises at the European Council, especially over fishing rights, where the EU has softened from its initial negotiation position. France and Denmark are particularly alert to any suggestion that their fishermen could suffer as a result of Brexit, which will be an inevitable consequence of any compromise on fishing rights.
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| South Korea worries about missile shown in North Korea military parade Posted: 11 Oct 2020 10:29 AM PDT |
| Trump claims he's free of virus, ready for campaign trail Posted: 11 Oct 2020 09:40 AM PDT  President Donald Trump on Sunday declared he was ready to return to the campaign trail despite unanswered questions about his health on the eve of a Florida rally meant to kick off the stretch run before Election Day. In a memo released Saturday night by the White House, Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley said Trump met the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria for safely discontinuing isolation and that by "currently recognized standards" he was no longer considered a transmission risk. The memo did not declare Trump had tested negative for the virus.
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| SARS ban: Nigeria abolishes loathed federal special police unit Posted: 11 Oct 2020 08:57 AM PDT  It comes after footage of federal officers killing a man was shared online, sparking unrest.
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| Israeli army teams up with hospital amid new COVID-19 crisis Posted: 11 Oct 2020 08:42 AM PDT  The Israeli military on Sunday opened a new coronavirus unit in a converted parking garage at a hospital in northern Israel, in a first-of-its-kind effort by the army to assist the country's overloaded health care system. The unit, set up at Haifa's Rambam Health Care Campus, will utilize some 100 military doctors, nurses and other medical personnel working alongside hospital staff. It is the first time the army has deployed its medical personnel to treat Israeli civilians in the country's history.
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| Biden harnesses history to describe urgency of 2020 campaign Posted: 11 Oct 2020 08:34 AM PDT  Joe Biden goes bigger. The Democratic nominee portrays 2020 as an entanglement of social, economic, political, environmental and public health crises as threatening to America's stability as the Civil War and the Great Depression. Biden points to the presidents of those times -- Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt -- for inspiration, even using one of the nation's most hallowed battlefields, where Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address in 1863, as a backdrop for his closing argument against President Donald Trump.
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| Iran-backed militias offer truce for US pullout from Iraq Posted: 11 Oct 2020 08:21 AM PDT |
| Taking Page From Authoritarians, Trump Turns Power of State Against Political Rivals Posted: 11 Oct 2020 08:17 AM PDT  President Donald Trump's order to his secretary of state to declassify thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails, along with his insistence that his attorney general issue indictments against Barack Obama and Joe Biden, takes his presidency into new territory -- until now, occupied by leaders with names like Putin, Xi and Erdogan.Trump has long demanded -- quite publicly, often on Twitter -- that his most senior cabinet members use the power of their office to pursue political enemies. But his appeals this week, as he trailed badly in the polls and was desperate to turn the national conversation away from the coronavirus, were so blatant that one had to look to authoritarian nations to make comparisons.He took a step even Richard Nixon avoided in his most desperate days: openly ordering direct immediate government action against specific opponents, timed to serve his reelection campaign."There is essentially no precedent," said Jack Goldsmith, who led the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush and has written extensively on presidential powers. "We have a norm that developed after Watergate that presidents don't talk about ongoing investigations, much less interfere with them.""It is crazy and it is unprecedented," said Goldsmith, now a professor at Harvard Law School, "but it's no different from what he has been saying since the beginning of his presidency. The only thing new is that he has moved from talking about it to seeming to order it."Trump's vision of the presidency has always leaned to exercising the absolute powers of the chief executive, a writ-large version of the family business he presided over. "I have an Article II," he told young adults last year at a Turning Point USA summit, referring to the section of the Constitution that deals with the president's powers, "where I have the right to do whatever I want as president, but I don't even talk about that."Now he is talking about it, almost daily. He is making it clear that prosecutions, like vaccines for the coronavirus, are useless to him if they come after Nov. 3. He has declared, without evidence, that there is already plenty of proof that Obama, Biden and Clinton, among others, were fueling the charges that his campaign had links to Russia -- what he calls "the Russia hoax." And he has pressured his secretary of state to agree to release more of Clinton's emails before the election, reprising a yearslong fixation despite having defeated her four years ago.Presidential historians say there is no case in modern times where the president has so plainly used his powers to take political opponents off the field -- or has been so eager to replicate the behavior of strongmen. "In America, our presidents have generally avoided strongman balcony scenes -- that's for other countries with authoritarian systems," Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, wrote on Twitter after Trump returned from the hospital where he received COVID-19 treatment and removed his mask, while still considered contagious, as he saluted from the White House balcony.Long ago, White House officials learned how to avoid questions about whether the president views his powers as fundamentally more constrained than those of the authoritarians he so often casts in admiring terms, including Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. They have something in common: Trump's State Department has criticized all three for corrupting the justice systems in their countries to pursue political enemies.Pompeo has always bristled when reporters have asked him to explain what the world should believe when it reads Trump's most authoritarian-sounding tweets. He answers that what distinguishes the United States is that it is a "rule of law" nation, and then often turns the tables on his questioners, charging that even raising the issue reveals that the reporters are partisans, not journalists, intent on embarrassing Trump and the United States.But his anger is often wielded as a shield, one that keeps him from publicly grappling with the underlying question: How can Washington take on other authoritarians around the world -- especially China, Pompeo's nemesis -- for abusing state power when the president of the United States calls for political prosecutions and politically motivated declassifications?"We've never seen anything like this in an American election campaign," said R. Nicholas Burns, a former undersecretary of state who is now an informal adviser to Biden. "It reduces our credibility -- we look like the countries we condemn for nondemocratic practices before an election.""I have worked for nine secretaries of state," Burns said. "I cannot imagine any of them intervening in an election as blatantly as what we are seeing now. Our tradition is that secretaries of state stay out of elections. If they wanted to release Hillary Clinton's emails, they could have done it in 2017, 2018 or 2019. It is an abuse of power by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo."Another career diplomat who served as both ambassador to Russia and deputy secretary of state, William J. Burns, said that what Trump had ordered is "exactly the kind of behavior I saw so often in authoritarian regimes in many years as an American diplomat.""In dealing with Putin's Russia or Erdogan's Turkey, we would have protested and condemned such actions," he said. "Now it's our own government that's engaging in them."The result," said Burns, now the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "is the hollowing out of our institutions at home and deep corrosion of our image and influence abroad."In the current cases, it is unclear whether Trump will get his wish -- or whether his loyal appointees will slow-walk his requests. There is some evidence they are already looking for escape hatches.Pompeo, the administration's most conspicuous ideologue, Trump's most vocal loyalist and a lawyer, was clearly taken aback when the president expressed displeasure, saying he was "not happy" that the State Department had not released emails sent through Clinton's home server."You're running the State Department, you get them out," the president told Fox Business in an interview this week. "Forget about the fact that they were classified. Let's go. Maybe Mike Pompeo finally finds them."Pompeo, one of his aides said Saturday, was in a box: The complaint about Clinton's home server was that she was risking exposing classified emails by not using the State Department email system -- a system Russia had already infiltrated -- yet Trump was demanding that they be released in full. Just days before, he had announced, over Twitter, that he was using his executive power to declassify all of them, without redactions."We've got the emails," Pompeo responded on Fox News. "We're getting them out. We're going to get all this information out so the American people can see it."But he also hinted that many of Clinton's emails, mostly those that were stored on the State Department's own system, have already been posted on the agency's website, after an unusually diligent effort by the department to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests from Trump's supporters. (They are often heavily redacted -- to the point of containing no content -- despite the president's order to the contrary.)"We're doing it as fast as we can," Pompeo told Dana Perino, a Fox News anchor who once served as President Bush's press secretary. "I certainly think there'll be more to see before the election."Pompeo clearly understands the problem: Even if he makes all of them public, they are unlikely to satisfy the president. Last year, the State Department's own inspector general found that while Clinton had risked compromising classified information, she did not systematically or deliberately mishandle her emails.William Barr may face an even greater challenge in satisfying the president. No attorney general since John Mitchell, who served Nixon and brought conspiracy charges against critics of the Vietnam War, bent the Justice Department more in a president's direction. And Nixon himself, while urging the IRS to audit political opponents, stopped short of publicly calling for individual prosecutions. Yet in February, Barr told ABC News that Trump "has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case." At the same time, he complained that the president's tweets about the Justice Department "make it impossible for me to do my job."Now, clearly, the president has asked Barr to act in a criminal case -- and not in a quiet phone call. Instead, he did it on Twitter and Fox News, expressing his deep disappointment with his second attorney general, for essentially the same reason he fired his first one, Jeff Sessions: insufficient blind loyalty.His complaint appears to have been driven by Barr's warning to the White House and other officials that there are likely to be no indictments before the election from the investigation being run by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut. Durham is searching for evidence that the inquiry into Russia was a politically motivated effort to undercut his presidency.Trump says the case is clear-cut. He told Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host to whom he gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the last State of the Union address, that Durham has had "plenty of time to do it.""Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes -- the greatest political crime in the history of our country -- then we'll get little satisfaction, unless I win," Trump said on Fox Business."If we don't win," he said, "that whole thing is going to be dismissed."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Kyrgyz parliament votes in convicted kidnapper Sadyr Japarov as the country's new prime minister Posted: 11 Oct 2020 07:58 AM PDT  Kyrgyzstan's parliament has installed Sadyr Japarov, a convicted kidnapper, as the country's new prime minister less than a week after protesters broke him out of prison. Immediately after parliament on Saturday approved his premiership, Mr Japarov called for President Sooronbai Jeenbekov to resign. This would allow him to consolidate power and complete Kyrgyzstan's third revolution in 15 years. "I met with Sooronbai. He said he would resign and leave," local media quoted him as saying. Under Kyrgyzstan's constitution Mr Japarov, a firebrand nationalist convicted in 2017 of kidnapping a regional official in a case which he says was politically motivated, will take over as president if Mr Jeenbekov quits, and also be the prime minister, because there is currently no parliamentary speaker. His promotion goes some way to filling a power vacuum in Kyrgyzstan since a disputed parliamentary election triggered protests that overwhelmed police, forced the government to resign and Mr Jeenbekov, Kyrgyz president since 2017, to flee the capital. Former Soviet Kyrgyzstan has few natural resources but between 2001-14 the United States had operated a military base near Bishkek which it used as a stage post to send soldiers and kit to Afghanistan. Western policymakers' main worry now is that instability in Kyrgyzstan could unsettle Central Asia which holds important oil, gas and mineral reserves and borders Russia, China, Afghanistan and Iran.
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| Senators weigh COVID risk for Barrett Supreme Court hearing Posted: 11 Oct 2020 07:42 AM PDT  Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett vows to be a justice "fearless of criticism" as the split Senate charges ahead with confirmation hearings on President Donald Trump's pick to cement a conservative court majority before Election Day. Barrett, a federal appeals court judge, draws on faith and family in her prepared opening remarks for the hearings, which begin Monday as the country is in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump chose the 48-year-old judge after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon.
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| Parents who used surrogates driven out of Russia amid crackdown on 'non-traditional' families Posted: 11 Oct 2020 07:10 AM PDT  Single men who became fathers via surrogacy are fleeing Russia as conservative politicians seek to entrench big heterosexual families with two parents as the only socially approved form of household. Alexander, a single father from Moscow, fled Russia after seeing a story on the state news agency TASS that authorities were planning on arresting single men who used surrogacy to have children. "The investigators are planning to arrest more suspects including single Russian men who used surrogate mothers to have babies via IVF treatment," an official quoted in the story said last week, alleging that the men were not eligible to use surrogacy services "because of their non-traditional sexual orientation". "I saw that news story and messaged my friends: I thought I was dreaming. It was insane," Alexander who asked his last name to be withheld for security reasons told the Telegraph. "I bought plane tickets for the easiest-to-reach destination and left." A recent criminal case which accused Russia's top fertility doctors of child trafficking has unleashed the wrath of conservative politicians, zeroing in on single men who became parents thanks to surrogate mothers. Surrogacy is legal in Russia but that did not stop the country's top investigative body, the Investigative Committee, from bringing child trafficking charges against nine people, including four fertility doctors, claiming that they "violated the Russian legislation regulating the use of assisted reproductive technology." The investigation was launched after police registered the death of a newborn in a flat outside Moscow in January. The child, born to a surrogate mother, was kept at the apartment while his biological parents were dealing with paperwork. The baby later died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Case files reviewed by the Telegraph show how the criminal probe has tilted towards anti-gay sentiment. An investigator in recent questioning of Taras Ashitkov, a highly respected obstetrician and member of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, asked the doctor before he was jailed if he had noticed if one of the men who used surrogacy services "behaved in a strange way" or "showed any signs of homosexuality." A few other single men who became parents via surrogacy have fled Russia in recent days, spooked by official threats, according to attorney Konstantin Svitnev who said that a few more people received calls from investigators but have not been officially summoned for questioning. Russian law explicitly allows IVF treatments for couples and single women struggling to carry a pregnancy. It makes no mention of single fathers, however, which made it possible for Mr Svitnev to successfully defend the parenting rights of hundreds of single men, citing the Russian Constitution which bars any form of discrimination. There are no legal grounds to go after single parents in Russia even if they happen to be gay but President Vladimir Putin's increasingly conservative rhetoric in recent years emboldened a large number of politicians to push for legislation effectively discriminating LGBT people and prioritising traditional heterosexual marriage.
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| Biden visit Monday caps push into Ohio, once a longshot Posted: 11 Oct 2020 07:04 AM PDT |
| Ex-members of religious group mixed on Barrett nomination Posted: 11 Oct 2020 06:48 AM PDT |
| Conservative PAC draws charges of racism in Missouri Posted: 11 Oct 2020 06:42 AM PDT  O'FALLON, Mo. (AP) — A conservative political action committee in Missouri is facing accusations of racism after posting a website that uses images of violent protests and photos of Black politicians to attack the Democratic candidate for governor on her support for police. Nicole Galloway, Missouri's state auditor, is trying to unseat Republican Gov. Mike Parson, a former sheriff running on a "law-and-order" platform. The website recently set up by the Uniting Missouri PAC has the heading, "Nicole Galloway's anti-policing allies" and says, "If you want to know where Galloway stands, look at who she supports."
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| GOP governors in spiking states strain for silver linings Posted: 11 Oct 2020 06:21 AM PDT  Hospitalizations from COVID-19 have hit their highest points recently throughout the Midwest, where the growth in new cases has been the worst in the nation. "In South Dakota, we didn't take a one-size-fits-all approach and the results have been incredible," Gov. Kristi Noem told lawmakers in her state, which Johns Hopkins University says ranks second in the country for new cases per capita. Oklahoma's governor has been effusively upbeat about progress against the virus, despite what figures compiled by public health experts and a White House task force show.
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| Emergency meeting held in South Korea after North Korea parades new missiles Posted: 11 Oct 2020 05:21 AM PDT  An emotionally-charged speech given by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the event — held to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the North's ruling Workers' Party — was discussed, South Korea's presidential office said in statement. The new weapons which included a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) and Seoul's defense capabilities against them were also talked about, that statement said. Separately, a spokesman for the South Korean defense ministry said Sunday it had expressed "concern" over North Korea's disclosure of weapons and was analyzing the new weapons in detail alongside Washington.
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| Emergency meeting held in South Korea after North Korea parades new missiles Posted: 11 Oct 2020 05:21 AM PDT  Intercontinental ballistic missile displayed by North Korea on Saturday is one of the biggest in the world in terms of range, one expert told NBC News.
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| Dem challenger in SC Senate race raises record $57 million Posted: 11 Oct 2020 05:13 AM PDT  South Carolina Democrat Jaime Harrison has shattered congressional fundraising records, bringing in $57 million in the final quarter for his U.S. Senate campaign against Republican incumbent Lindsey Graham as the GOP tries to retain control of the chamber in the Nov. 3 election. Harrison's campaign said Sunday the total was the largest-ever during a single three-month period by any Senate candidate.
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| Fake asteroid? NASA expert IDs mystery object as old rocket Posted: 11 Oct 2020 04:49 AM PDT  The jig may be up for an "asteroid" that's expected to get nabbed by Earth's gravity and become a mini moon next month. Instead of a cosmic rock, the newly discovered object appears to be an old rocket from a failed moon-landing mission 54 years ago that's finally making its way back home, according to NASA's leading asteroid expert. "I'm pretty jazzed about this," Paul Chodas told The Associated Press.
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| Jamaicans in Florida energized by Harris on 2020 ticket Posted: 11 Oct 2020 04:48 AM PDT  President Donald Trump and Joe Biden are entering the final stretch of the campaign in a fierce battle for Latino voters who could sway the results in Florida and determine who wins the White House. Voters in this Democratic stronghold are eager to defeat Trump, but say they are even more energized to turn out in support of California Sen. Kamala Harris, Biden's running mate whose father is Jamaican. "The fact she has a lineage means you are going to see a lot of Jamaicans voting even if they were not doing so before," said Antoinette Henry, director of corporate relations at the Dutch Pot Jamaican Restaurant, a company with several locations in South Florida.
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| Precedent, recusal, Roe: A court nomination viewer's guide Posted: 11 Oct 2020 04:29 AM PDT  A scant two weeks after her nomination, Judge Amy Coney Barrett goes before a Senate committee that's bitterly split along partisan lines over whether the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death should be filled now or should await the winner of the Nov. 3 presidential election. The Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings are taking place on an accelerated timeline because President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans want her on the bench by Election Day. Barrett was introduced as the nominee at a Rose Garden ceremony linked to a cluster of virus cases, including those of Trump and his wife, Melania.
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| Azerbaijan, Armenia report shelling of cities despite truce Posted: 11 Oct 2020 04:11 AM PDT  Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of attacking large cities overnight in violation of the cease-fire deal brokered by Russia that seeks to end the worst outbreak of hostilities in the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region. The Azerbaijani authorities said Sunday that nine civilians have been killed and over 30 wounded after Armenian forces fired missiles overnight on Ganja, Azerbaijan's second-largest city, and hit a residential building. According to Azerbaijan's Prosecutor General's office, the city of Mingachevir also came under missile attacks early Sunday.
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| Hong Kong braces for Monday deadline as Trump's report puts HSBC, lenders back into sanctions spotlight Posted: 11 Oct 2020 02:30 AM PDT  Hong Kong's financial sector could soon find itself back in the middle of an uncomfortable tug of war between China and the United States over Beijing's imposition of a controversial national security law for the city in late June.The Trump administration is facing a deadline on Monday to identify, in a report to the US Congress, individuals who facilitated the "erosion" of Beijing's obligations under the Basic Law. Critics argue the sweeping powers under the national security law impinge on long-held freedoms guaranteed in the city's mini-constitution.Trump issued an executive order on July 14 ending Hong Kong's special economic status, while the US government enacted the Hong Kong Autonomy Act to punish officials accused of curbing the city's autonomy, as well as the financial institutions that do business with them. The State Department has 90 days to designate them, after which banks will have 12 months to end all business relations.Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the big stories originating in China.HSBC, Standard Chartered, and other financial institutions in Hong Kong will be watching the report closely as they could potentially face sanctions themselves. Under the Act, US officials are required later this year to name financial institutions who engaged in "significant transactions" with anyone named in the report.It is the latest example of the US flexing its muscle through the threat of secondary sanctions on businesses to put maximum pressure financially on governments to achieve diplomatic goals. In the process, American authorities are making more risky transactions that would normally be routine - and still perfectly legal in many jurisdictions, according to compliance experts.For global lenders with large retail operations in Hong Kong, such as HSBC and Standard Chartered, the risk of running afoul of American authorities is particularly acute as the flow of global trade underpins their bottom lines.Since the law was enacted, HSBC has lost 15.6 per cent of its market value while Standard Chartered suffered 12 per cent on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Both underperformed an 8.8 per cent drop in an index tracking major banking stocks in the city.Potential sanctions against financial institutions can range from bans on senior executives travelling to the US to losing access to US dollar clearing functions."It comes down primarily to the prominence of the US dollar," said Bharath Vellore, a managing director for Asia-Pacific at risk compliance firm Accuity. "If you are a bank and you are cut out of US dollar settlement, that's basically a death knell for the financial institution."On Thursday, the US issued sanctions against 18 major Iranian banks as it seeks to further pressure the Iranian government over terrorism financing and nuclear proliferation. The move would essentially cut off Iran from the global financial system and has been widely criticised by humanitarian officials as it would greatly reduce the country's ability to import needed food and medicines."Our maximum economic pressure campaign will continue until Iran is willing to conclude a comprehensive negotiation that addresses the regime's malign behaviour," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor is one of 11 Hong Kong and mainland officials sanctioned by American authorities over the city's national security law. Photo: Nora Tam alt=Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor is one of 11 Hong Kong and mainland officials sanctioned by American authorities over the city's national security law. Photo: Nora TamThe ability of the US to place sanctions on bad national actors existed for years, but American officials have increasingly used the threat of secondary sanctions on businesses in recent years to try to stave off the flow of funds to nations already facing existing bans, such as Iran or North Korea, or force countries to address alleged human rights abuses, such as China and Russia.China's Bank of Dandong was banned from the US financial system in 2017 after American authorities accused it of helping North Korea evade sanctions. Last year, a US judge held three Chinese banks in contempt of court for failing to comply with subpoenas in an inquiry into North Korea sanctions violations.This year, the Trump administration blacklisted dozens of Chinese companies over allegations of the use of forced labour of the minority Mulism Uygur population in Xinjiang or their purported ties to China's military. Those companies have included a unit of one of the world's largest garment producers and a supplier to Tommy Hilfiger, Patagonia and Nike.The use of secondary sanctions has furthered US policy goals, but caused a "transatlantic political divergence" between the US and its allies in Europe and created greater compliance uncertainty for private-sector companies, the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, and financial industry trade group UK Finance said last year.Hong Kong national security law official English version:"Due to the power of the US dollar, breadth of the US market, and dominance of the US financial system, even the threat of secondary sanctions prompts many non-US companies to change their behaviour to avoid the risk of such sanctions," the Atlantic Council's Samantha Sultoon and Justine Walker, then-director of sanctions policy at UK Finance, wrote in the September 2019 report."The potential of secondary sanctions has also prompted further de-risking as reputable multinational firms adjust their risk appetite and hedge against possible punitive action from Washington."At Accuity, for example, the company's client base moved from mostly banks and insurers five years ago to a much broader base of non-financial companies, including retailers and casinos, as firms are increasingly worried of breaching US sanctions rules, according to Vellore.The sanctions risk for companies operating in Hong Kong rose since the adoption of a broad-based national security law for the city, according to analysts.Riot police fire tear gas during an anti-government rally in Wong Tai Sing on National Day in October 2019. Photo: James Wendlinger alt=Riot police fire tear gas during an anti-government rally in Wong Tai Sing on National Day in October 2019. Photo: James WendlingerMany of businesses heavily reliant on the city to their bottom lines, such as HSBC, Standard Chartered and Swire Pacific, came out in favour of the law, saying they hoped it brought stability to a city racked by months of anti-government protests and the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. The move by those companies to publicly support the law was heavily criticised by US and UK politicians.In August, the US issued sanctions against 11 Hong Kong and mainland officials, including Chief Executive Carrie Lam Yuet-ngor and the city's current and former police commissioners, over the national security law. Those individuals are likely to be included in the US State Department's report to Congress.As tensions worsened by the world's two biggest superpowers this year, global banks in the city reviewed their client lists and some cut ties with so-called political exposed persons who could be targets of US actions.For example, Commissioner of Police Chris Tang Ping-keung transferred his mortgage from HSBC to Bank of China (Hong Kong) days ahead of the sanctions designation and Lam said she is having trouble using her credit cards since the sanctions were announced, which she has called a "meaningless" inconvenience.The US has since accused HSBC of maintaining banking relationships with individuals facing American sanctions, while cutting off access to Hong Kong executives of Next Digital, the publisher of Apple Daily.HSBC is heavily reliant on future growth in mainland China and Hong Kong as part of a massive restructuring plan and chief executive Noel Quinn said as part of its half-year results in August that the bank follows "the laws and regulations of all of the countries in which we operate and will continue to do that".American banks and other lenders in Hong Kong must "carefully walk a tightrope" to comply with US sanctions and not damage their businesses in the mainland as China's financial services industry further opens up, according to Fitch Ratings.They also face the potential of running afoul of the national security law, which prohibits sanctions or blockades of Hong Kong or mainland China. Nationalistic tabloid Global Times has said HSBC could be included on an "unreliable entities" list being drafted by Beijing because of help it provided US prosecutors in an investigation into Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies."Further US sanctions on Chinese or Hong Kong-based individuals could lead to reputational issues," Fitch analysts Monsur Hussain and Grace Wu said in a September 22 research note. "Extension of sanctions to corporates with strong links to the Chinese state, or [state-owned enterprises], would add credit risk in addition to issues of reputational risk, which might incentivise these banks to manage their credit risk more tightly towards counterparties that could be affected."The "most problematic" scenario for Hong Kong lenders would be if the US imposes sanctions on systemically important, state-owned banks and effectively cuts then off from the US financial system."However, this is felt to be an unlikely course of action due to the extremely high likelihood of tit-for-tat repercussions from the Chinese state," the Fitch analysts said.This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2020 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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| SKorea worries about missile shown in NKorea military parade Posted: 11 Oct 2020 02:19 AM PDT  South Korea on Sunday urged North Korea to commit to its past disarmament pledges while expressing concerns over the North's unveiling of a suspected new long-range missile during a military parade. During celebrations marking the 75th birthday of its ruling party in Pyongyang on Saturday, North Korea paraded a variety of weapons systems, including two missiles that were disclosed for the first time to a foreign audience. One is what appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile that is larger than any of the North's known ICBMs, and the other would likely be an upgraded version of a missile that can be fired from submarines.
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| ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus pens support for Day of the Girl Child Posted: 11 Oct 2020 01:34 AM PDT  ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus grew up in at a time when his education was valued more than his sister's, and he wants it to be different for girls around the world. "I've been surrounded by women, strong women for a long time," Ulvaeus said, speaking about the need to empower female voices ahead of Sunday's International Day of the Girl Child. The day "it should be a cause for celebration, but the sad thing is that this girl child deserves so much more than the old men who rule the world are prepared to give her," Ulvaeus wrote in a piece to support the day that he first shared with The Associated Press.
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| Nagorno-Karabakh truce under severe strain as both sides allege violations Posted: 11 Oct 2020 12:02 AM PDT |
| The Crisis of Conservatism Posted: 11 Oct 2020 12:00 AM PDT |
| India cases cross 7 million as experts warn of complacency Posted: 10 Oct 2020 09:12 PM PDT  India's confirmed coronavirus toll crossed 7 million on Sunday with a number of new cases dipping in recent weeks, even as health experts warn of mask and distancing fatigue setting in. The Health Ministry registered another 74,383 infections in the past 24 hours. India is expected to become the pandemic's worst-hit country in coming weeks, surpassing the U.S., where more than 7.7 million infections have been reported.
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| Graham, Harris share spotlight as Barrett hearings begin Posted: 10 Oct 2020 09:11 PM PDT  Senate Republicans are vowing a quick confirmation for President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, as the party — undeterred by coronavirus infections or other distractions — rushes to put conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the high court before the Nov. 3 election. The hearings are likely to be a hybrid of in-person questioning and some participation via video after three GOP senators — including two on the committee — contracted the virus. The GOP-led panel has held more than 20 hearings during the pandemic as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continues his drive to confirm conservative judges.
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| Kim throws down gauntlet with huge new ICBM: analysts Posted: 10 Oct 2020 09:03 PM PDT  The gargantuan new missile North Korea put on show at a military parade is an explicit threat to US defences and an implicit challenge to both the current and next American president, analysts say, warning Pyongyang could test the weapon next year.
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| 'We can’t lose our momentum:' Louisiana vows to rebuild Posted: 10 Oct 2020 09:00 PM PDT  Back-to-back hurricanes in the space of six weeks left parts of Louisiana blanketed Sunday with tarpaulins, mangled metal and downed power lines — but not necessarily despair. Utility crews fanned out across the battered southwestern part of the state to restore electricity in the wake of Hurricane Delta, and residents began returning home along roads lined with debris and houses missing roofs. A 70-year-old woman in Iberia Parish died in a fire likely caused by a natural gas leak following damage from Hurricane Delta, the Louisiana Department of Health said Sunday.
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| Guard in custody after man dies in shooting at protests Posted: 10 Oct 2020 07:45 PM PDT |
| Tentative settlements in WVa veterans' hospital deaths Posted: 10 Oct 2020 06:07 PM PDT  Tentative settlements have been reached in several civil lawsuits filed on behalf of the families of veterans who died at a West Virginia hospital where a former nursing assistant admitted to intentionally killing seven people with fatal doses of insulin. The settlements were disclosed by U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on Saturday as well as in federal court filings stemming from the deaths of six veterans at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg. Manchin said in a statement that the tentative settlement "is further evidence that the VA and the Clarksburg VAMC were negligent in the murders that happened under their watch."
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