| Bruised and haunted, US holds tight as 2020 campaigns close Posted: 01 Nov 2020 01:10 PM PST  Just over her mask, Patra Okelo's eyes brimmed with tears when she recalled the instant that a truth about America dawned and her innocence burned away. One moment on Aug. 11, 2017, she thought the tiki torches blazing in the distance at the University of Virginia were "the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, lighting up the darkness." Hundreds of white supremacists carried those torches, sparking 24 hours of fury and death that transformed Charlottesville into an enduring battle cry of the 2020 presidential election.
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| Exclusive: Nigel Farage to relaunch Brexit Party as Reform UK, a new anti-lockdown platform Posted: 01 Nov 2020 12:00 PM PST  The Brexit Party is to be relaunched as an anti-lockdown party called Reform UK, Nigel Farage and Richard Tice will announce on Monday, in a move which could alarm libertarian Conservative MPs. In a joint article for Monday's Telegraph, Mr Farage and Mr Tice declare that "lockdowns don't work", and say their new party will back a policy of "focused protection" from coronavirus only for the most vulnerable, to allow the rest of the population to develop herd immunity. The plans to change the name of the Brexit Party to Reform UK are subject to approval of the Electoral Commission. Papers were submitted to the regulator last week. Reform UK hopes to stand a slate of candidates at May's elections - when the Tories are contesting thousands of shire seats, as well as policing and crime commissioner elections - and the next general election, expected by 2024.
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| Robert Buckland in new row over 'activist' lawyers as he faces Gina Miller-style legal action on Brexit Posted: 01 Nov 2020 11:11 AM PST  Robert Buckland is facing a Gina Miller-style legal action by an Oxford University professor that alleges he has broken his statutory duty to uphold the law over Brexit. The move, backed by one of Britain's top constitutional lawyers and a former Treasury counsel, could force his resignation as Lord Chancellor if upheld by the courts. It threatens to spark a new row between the Government and "activist" lawyers. David Greene, the new president of the Law Society and a major critic of ministers' assaults on "leftie" lawyers, has previously been involved in the case but has stepped aside due to his new role and potential conflict of interest. But defending the rights of lawyers to hold the Government to account, Mr Greene told The Daily Telegraph: "We have deep concerns about references to activist or leftie lawyers doing their job which is to interpret the law as made by Parliament. They are doing no more or less than that." The legal challenge against Mr Buckland is being mounted by Professor Joshua Silver, an Oxford University physicist who invented self-correctable lenses, and is being led by Khawar Qureshi QC, a constitutional expert and former Treasury counsel. They claim that Mr Buckland, a QC, has failed to comply with his statutory duty as Lord Chancellor to respect the law over the internal market bill under which the UK reserves the right to break international law. In a letter to Mr Buckland, they cited his "apparent inaction" in failing to advise the Government not to break law, his "connivance" in a potential breach of the law by voting for the bill, and his indication he would only resign if the Government broke the law "in a way [he] found unacceptable." They said these "all give rise to serious concerns that the Lord Chancellor breached (and continues to breach) his constitutional and statutory duty." They have given Mr Buckland until November 4 to respond - and will then decide whether to proceed with a judicial review that would make his position "untenable" if it found him to have breached his statutory duty. Tory and legal sources claimed it was a "frivolous" politically-motivated move and pointed to previous action by Professor Silver who reported then Home Secretary Amber Rudd to West Midlands Police for a hate crime while giving her speech to the Tory party conference. One source claimed Mr Greene's involvement in the case was "highly inappropriate" and "brazenly partisan" as then vice president of the Law Society. But Professor Silver said: "It seems to me that the present Government is now violating the rule of law. I am naturally hopeful the Government will acknowledge it is making a mistake, and change its course before its conduct has to be examined by the Courts." The bill gives the Government the powers to change the Brexit departure deal in potential breach of international law. Two Government law officers resigned in protest: Sir Jonathan Jones, the Treasury solicitor, and Lord Keen, the UK's law officer for Scotland. After a Tory revolt, ministers agreed an amendment that it could only use the powers to change the Brexit departure deal with prior approval of MPs. Mr Greene - who also advised on the article 50 case against the Government - said he did not personally deal with the case although his firm did. It had now been taken on by another firm. A spokesman for Mr Buckland declined to comment.
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| Brexit trade talks to go on in Brussels from Monday Posted: 01 Nov 2020 10:34 AM PST |
| Hint of menace from China’s new routemap Posted: 01 Nov 2020 09:22 AM PST  While Americans decide their political fate this week by vote, the Chinese had their fate decided for them behind closed doors last week at a fortified nomenklatura hotel run by the People's Liberation Army and famously used for show trials during the Cultural Revolution. The Communist Party's Fifth Plenum – setting out China's economic and strategic path until 2035 – has ramifications for the world that may ultimately matter as much as the outcome of the US election. The routemap marks a strategic rupture with the China we have come to know since Deng Xiaoping relaxed the Party's authoritarian grip 40 years ago and ushered in a flowering of free enterprise. Xi Jinping's regime is reverting to the Maoist doctrine of "autarkist self-sufficiency", with an added hint of menace in the language of Thursday's Plenum communique. The text revives the potent term "prepare for war", last evoked in a five-year plan during the late 1960s, coupled with a declaration that China will achieve military parity with the US within seven years. The Fifth Plenum leitmotif is "dual circulation strategy". It is ostensibly a plan to move further up the development ladder, switching from reliance on external trade to reliance on the vast internal market of 1.4bn people – on the face of it a sensible policy, long-suggested by the World Bank. But the language masks a deeper shift: a revived national quest for self-sufficiency in core technology, energy supply, and food production, the trifecta of critical dependencies that leave China vulnerable to an external blockade. It is driven by fears that a US-led alliance will step up the pressure and exploit the West's strategic leverage, as is already happening with advanced semiconductor chips. "Dual circulation is just a fancy term for Chinese decoupling," said George Magnus from Oxford University's China Centre. Party officials deny that China is dialling down the American relationship or turning its back on globalisation. "Complete decoupling is a lose-lose for both countries, and for the world. It is not realistic at all," said Han Wenxiu from the Central Finance and Economic Commission. Beijing undoubtedly wants to keep attracting western capital. It hopes to enmesh US banks and funds in the Chinese financial system through the Shanghai Connect pipeline, calculating that this will make it harder for Washington to cut China out of the dollarised global payments system should conflict reach that point. Yet the deeper thrust of policy under Xi Jinping is a return to Maoist economic management and the asphyxiation of the free market, with commissars lodged inside private companies, and the ideological poisons of the West mostly kept at a safe distance.
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| Ivory Coast election: Opposition demands 'civil transition' Posted: 01 Nov 2020 09:11 AM PST  The call for a "civil transition" follows a boycotted presidential election marked by violence.
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| Israel's Netanyahu praises Trump policies ahead of election Posted: 01 Nov 2020 08:04 AM PST  Israel's leader on Sunday praised President Donald Trump's Mideast policies, even as he avoided openly taking sides ahead of the U.S. presidential election. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters that U.S. bipartisan support has been "one of the foundations of the American-Israeli alliance."
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| French churches honor Nice attack victims; 6 detained Posted: 01 Nov 2020 07:52 AM PST  Churches around France held Sunday services honoring three people killed in an Islamic extremist attack at Notre Dame Basilica in the city of Nice that pushed the country into high security alert, while police questioned six suspects in the case. Nice Archbishop Andre Marceau was preparing for a special nighttime service in the basilica to purify it following Thursday's fatal knife attack, and then to pay homage to the victims and to mark All Saints' Day, when many Christians around the world honor the dead. Priests in the Saint-Sulpice Church in Paris and elsewhere in France mentioned the attack during their All Saints' services, which were exceptionally allowed to go ahead despite a new monthlong virus lockdown that started Friday in France.
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| Experts: Police brutality, racism pushing Black anxiety Posted: 01 Nov 2020 07:34 AM PST  The events of 2020 already had Eddie Hall on edge. Then, the troubles of a nation in turmoil landed on Hall's doorstep in suburban Detroit in September when racist graffiti was scrawled on his pickup truck and shots were fired into his home after his family placed a Black Lives Matter sign in their front window. The attacks on Hall's home were investigated as a hate crime and 24-year-old white neighbor, Michael Frederick Jr., eventually was arrested and charged with ethnic intimidation and other crimes.
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| Supreme Court changes fuel moves to protect abortion access Posted: 01 Nov 2020 07:22 AM PST  A vast swath of West Texas has been without an abortion clinic for more than six years. Planned Parenthood plans to change that with a health center it opened recently in Lubbock. It's a vivid example of how abortion-rights groups are striving to preserve nationwide access to the procedure even as a reconfigured Supreme Court — with the addition of conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett — may be open to new restrictions.
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| Under Trump, citizenship and visa agency focuses on fraud Posted: 01 Nov 2020 07:06 AM PST  The head of the agency handling citizenship and visa applications was surprised when he faced blowback for cutting a reference to the U.S. being a "nation of immigrants" in its mission statement. The son of a Peruvian immigrant added language about "protecting Americans" instead. L. Francis Cissna argued that America is indisputably a nation of immigrants but that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' mission statement wasn't the place to say so.
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| More US patients to have easy, free access to doctor's notes Posted: 01 Nov 2020 07:02 AM PST  More U.S. patients will soon have free, electronic access to the notes their doctors write about them under a new federal requirement for transparency. Many health systems are opening up records Monday, the original deadline. At the last minute, federal health officials week gave an extension until April because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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| US vote to shape how world warms as climate pact exit looms Posted: 01 Nov 2020 06:59 AM PST  What happens on election day will to some degree determine how much more hot and nasty the world's climate will likely get, experts say. The day after the presidential election, the United States formally leaves the 2015 Paris agreement to fight climate change. A year ago, President Donald Trump's administration notified the United Nations that America is exiting the climate agreement.
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| Anti-France protests continue, as Macron seeks understanding Posted: 01 Nov 2020 06:20 AM PST  Hundreds of protesters in Pakistan on Sunday burned effigies of France's leader and chanted anti-French slogans, as President Emmanuel Macron tried to send a message of understanding to Muslims around the world. Smaller demonstrations in Lebanon, Turkey and India followed on anti-France protests across the Muslim world last week that were mostly led by Islamist groups. The renewed protests came after President Macron's interview late Saturday in which he said that he understood the shock Muslims felt at caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
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| GOP tries to save its Senate majority, with or without Trump Posted: 01 Nov 2020 04:58 AM PST  Senate Republicans are fighting to save their majority, a final election push against the onslaught of challengers in states once off limits to Democrats but now hotbeds of a potential backlash to President Donald Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill. Fueling the campaigns are the Trump administration's handling of the COVID-19 crisis, shifting regional demographics and, in some areas, simply the chance to turn the page on the divisive political climate. Control of the Senate can make or break a presidency.
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| UK says 4-week coronavirus lockdown may have to last longer Posted: 01 Nov 2020 04:47 AM PST  A new national lockdown in England may have to last longer than the planned four weeks if coronavirus infection rates don't fall quickly enough, a senior government minister said Sunday. The lockdown announced Saturday by Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to run from Thursday until Dec. 2. Cabinet minister Michael Gove said it was the government's "fervent hope" that the lockdown would end on time, but that could not be guaranteed.
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| Fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh region drags on into 6th week Posted: 01 Nov 2020 04:26 AM PST  Fighting over the separatist territory of Nagorno-Karabakh entered a sixth week Sunday with Armenian and Azerbaijani forces blaming each other for new attacks. Nagorno-Karabakh officials accused Azerabaijan of targeting the towns of Martuni and Martakert with military aviation and firing missiles at the town of Shushi. Explosions were also heard in Stepanakert, the region's capital, officials said.
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| France: Suspect in priest's shooting freed, search widens Posted: 01 Nov 2020 02:07 AM PST  French police on Sunday released an initial suspect in the shooting of a Greek Orthodox priest and widened their search for the gunman who critically wounded the priest as he closed the door to his official residence at a church in the city of Lyon. The Lyon prosecutor's office said a man who was arrested shortly after Saturday's shooting was released after they found no evidence of his involvement, suggesting that the clergyman's assailant remained at large. The priest remained in critical condition after being shot with a hunting rifle, said a police official, who was not authorized to be publicly named according to police policy.
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| When death seems everywhere: some coping suggestions Posted: 01 Nov 2020 02:02 AM PST |
| ESSAY: Contemplating death in a year when it feels closer Posted: 01 Nov 2020 02:00 AM PST |
| AP Explains: Why France sparks such anger in Muslim world Posted: 01 Nov 2020 01:55 AM PST  Many countries, especially in the democratic West, champion freedom of expression and allow publications that lampoon Islam's prophet. Its brutal colonial past, staunch secular policies and tough-talking president who is seen as insensitive toward the Muslim faith all play a role. As France steps up security and mourns three people killed in a knife attack at a church on Thursday – the latest of many attributed to Islamic extremists in recent years -- here's a look at some of the reasons the country is under fire.
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| Algeria referendum: A vote 'to end years of deviousness' Posted: 01 Nov 2020 01:50 AM PST  The referendum is to cement democratic reforms but some activists say real change is not being made.
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| Merkel's CDU to elect new leader in mid-January Posted: 01 Nov 2020 01:54 AM PDT  German Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party will elect its new leader in mid-January after a planned vote in early December was pushed back because of a surge in coronavirus infections.
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| Sword-wielding man arrested after Halloween deaths in Quebec Posted: 31 Oct 2020 11:22 PM PDT  A man dressed in medieval clothing and armed with a Japanese sword was arrested Sunday on suspicion of killing two people and wounding five others on Halloween near the historic Château Frontenac hotel in Quebec City. The attack on randomly chosen victims went on for nearly 2 1/2 hours while police pursued the man armed with a katana throughout the city's downtown core on foot, Quebec Police Chief Robert Pigeon said. Quebec's prosecutor's office said Carl Girouard, 24, faces two counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder.
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| 70-year-old pulled out alive in Turkey as quake toll hits 75 Posted: 31 Oct 2020 10:24 PM PDT  Rescue workers in western Turkey extricated a 70-year-old man from a collapsed building Sunday, some 34 hours after a strong earthquake in the Aegean Sea struck Turkey and Greece, killing at least 75 people and injuring close to 1,000. The minister tweeted that the survivor, Ahmet Citim, told him, "I never lost hope." The earthquake was centered in the Aegean northeast of the Greek island of Samos.
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| Biden works to push Black turnout in campaign's final days Posted: 31 Oct 2020 09:08 PM PDT  Joe Biden was spending the final days of the presidential campaign appealing to Black supporters to vote in-person during a pandemic that has disproportionally affected their communities, betting that a strong turnout will boost his chances in states that could decide the election. Biden was in Philadelphia on Sunday, the largest city in what is emerging as the most hotly contested battleground in the closing 48 hours of the campaign. "Every single day we're seeing race-based disparities in every aspect of this virus," Biden said at the drive-in event, shouting to be heard over the blaring car horns.
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| How the controversial Nile dam might fix Sudan's floods Posted: 31 Oct 2020 06:03 PM PDT  Egypt and Ethiopia are at loggerheads over the mega dam, with Sudan literally stuck in the middle.
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| Our Coronavirus World Is Undernourished Posted: 31 Oct 2020 05:08 PM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Bumper harvests and healthy stockpiles coming into 2020 have helped the world dodge the worst of food-security worries triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. Staples have been plentiful enough — and oil cheap enough — to avoid a repeat of the 2007-2008 crisis, and supply lines have held. Nutrition has suffered anyway. That's the result of migrant laborers being kept home, children being shut out of school and workers losing jobs, in both emerging and developed markets. The economic consequences will linger.Just over a decade ago, low stocks, bad crops and high crude prices (which drive up demand for biofuels and increase input costs) combined to cause crippling food inflation. Export bans also played a part. It's cheering that such an outcome has been averted this time, in an otherwise grim year. There have certainly been glimpses of panic. Consumers rushed to empty supermarket shelves in the early months, while the likes of Vietnam, one of the world's largest rice exporters, and Kazakhstan, a major producer of wheat and flour, imposed restrictions on shipments. There were disruptions, too, most notably when labor-intensive slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants became infection hot spots.Yet the global system has proved remarkably resilient overall, with trade continuing and international cooperation prevailing, as Aurelia Britsch, head of commodities research at Fitch Solutions, points out. The context of ample food stocks and low prices helped, Britsch says; the picture might have been very different had the coronavirus hit in 2011. It's a welcome achievement nonetheless, given four-fifths of us are fed at least in part by imports.The bad news is that pressures aren't easing. Prices are still modest in historical terms, but China has boosted purchases of late — pork production is normalizing after a huge African swine fever outbreak, and feed demand is rising — while wary, import-dependent governments like Egypt have been accumulating reserves. Unseasonable weather in the U.S. has hurt the crop outlook there, while droughts have hit Russia and South America. Contained global food costs haven't stopped inflation spikes in India, Pakistan and elsewhere, as supply disruptions hit.With lockdowns coming back as coronavirus cases surge in the northern hemisphere, global nutrition looks likely to get worse before it gets better. More worrying is that while food production and stocks have remained sufficient, household budgets haven't. Even before the pandemic, the world was hungry. A report published in July by the United Nations's Food and Agriculture Organization and others estimated almost 690 million people were underfed in 2019 — up by 10 million from the previous year, and by nearly 60 million in five years. Close to 750 million of us, or nearly one in 10, didn't have reliable access to sustenance.The pandemic has made that pain more acute, and nowhere more so than in emerging markets, with its armies of informal and migrant workers. The Asian Development Bank estimated in August that the global economy could lose more than $100 billion in remittances in 2020, and Asia and the Pacific alone could see transfers from abroad that are a fifth below 2018 levels, in large part because of lower sums from the Middle East. Tourism and leisure, significant earners for many countries, have been battered, while oil-exporting economies have found national coffers emptier as crude languishes.Countries as varied as Indonesia and Brazil face a double burden with populations that are both underfed and overweight, thanks to cheap, widely available, ultra-processed food. This is a malnutrition time-bomb for public health and for the global economy that is getting worse under the pressures of 2020. Simply, nutritious food is too costly for more than 3 billion people. The July UN report puts a healthy diet, with costly dairy, fruit, vegetable and protein, at five times the price of meeting energy needs with starch.The phenomenon isn't confined to the least affluent countries. In the U.S., food banks have seen a surge in demand, while in the U.K., soccer star Marcus Rashford has stepped in to campaign for free meals for children while schools were closed. The trouble with such widespread malnutrition is that the health and wider economic consequences persist. Decades of academic studies show there are costs to having citizens who are both underfed and overweight, not least due to associated illnesses such as diabetes. The World Bank has previously put the figure for Indonesia at 2% to 3% of gross domestic product. Beyond the cost of hospital admissions, there's the lost potential of children whose growth is affected by a poor diet. Stunting, a marker of under-nutrition, tends to correlate with weaker cognitive development and earning potential.Free meals for schoolchildren are a good place to start. A study published in the Lancet journal last year cited improvements in body mass indexes and height from school breakfast programs. A illustrative analysis of research done in Guatemala, Indonesia and Nigeria suggested that the benefits of such projects to improve diets outweighed the costs thanks to increased education, future earnings and avoiding premature mortality through obesity. In Indonesia, the return was more than four times the cost, and that was before the latest cataclysm hit. Governments should take note.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Clara Ferreira Marques is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering commodities and environmental, social and governance issues. Previously, she was an associate editor for Reuters Breakingviews, and editor and correspondent for Reuters in Singapore, India, the U.K., Italy and Russia.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Powerful typhoon lashes Philippines, killing at least 10 Posted: 31 Oct 2020 04:13 PM PDT  A super typhoon blew into the eastern Philippines with disastrous force Sunday, killing at least 10 people and triggering volcanic mudflows that engulfed about 150 houses before weakening as it blew away from the country, officials said. Typhoon Goni blasted into the eastern island province of Catanduanes at dawn from the Pacific with sustained winds of 225 kilometers (140 miles) per hour and gusts of 280 kph (174 mph), threatening some provinces still recovering from a deadly typhoon that hit a week ago. Goni barreled through densely populated regions and threatened to sideswipe Manila, which shut down its main airport, but shifted southward Sunday night and spared the capital, the government weather agency said.
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| Minority US contact tracers build trust in diverse cities Posted: 31 Oct 2020 07:28 AM PDT  When a contact tracer called the Iraqi woman to say her 18-year-old daughter tested positive for the coronavirus and could quarantine for free in a hotel, the woman panicked — recalling the family's terror of risking separation forever during their flight from Baghdad after a bomb killed her brother. The contact tracer, Iraqi immigrant Ethar Kakoz, had made a similar harrowing journey using smugglers to get out of Iraq after her parents were told she could be kidnapped. Kakoz is among a growing legion of ethnically and racially diverse contact tracers hired by local health departments to help immigrants, refugees and minorities protect themselves during a pandemic that has disproportionately affected people of color.
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