| BTS Faces Backlash in China Over Korean War Comments Posted: 12 Oct 2020 05:47 PM PDT |
| Climate change spurs doubling of disasters since 2000: UN Posted: 12 Oct 2020 05:10 PM PDT  Climate change is largely to blame for a near doubling of natural disasters in the past 20 years, the United Nations said on Monday.
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| Hong Kong Market Finds Hope in Xi's Tea Leaves Posted: 12 Oct 2020 05:00 PM PDT |
| 3 Weeks To Go And Putin Could Still Help Trump, Ex-Administration Official Says Posted: 12 Oct 2020 04:28 PM PDT  Trump accepted Putin's help in 2016, refused to tell him to stay out of the 2018 midterms, and extorted Ukraine based on Russian propaganda in 2019.
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| End Sars protests: The young Nigerians who forced the president to back down Posted: 12 Oct 2020 04:17 PM PDT  Nigeria's EndSARS protests gathered momentum online, but burst onto the streets to force a change.
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| Rights groups oppose China, Russia, Saudis on UN rights body Posted: 12 Oct 2020 03:21 PM PDT |
| Defiant Trump defends virus record in 1st post-COVID rally Posted: 12 Oct 2020 02:00 PM PDT  Defiant as ever about the coronavirus, President Donald Trump on Monday turned his first campaign rally since contracting COVID-19 into a full-throated defense of his handling of the pandemic that has killed 215,000 Americans, joking that he was healthy enough to plunge into the crowd and give voters "a big fat kiss." There was no social distancing and mask-wearing was spotty among the thousands who came to see Trump's return to Florida. "Under my leadership, we're delivering a safe vaccine and a rapid recovery like no one can even believe," Trump insisted.
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| Takeaways: Coronavirus at center of Supreme Court hearings Posted: 12 Oct 2020 01:16 PM PDT  The coronavirus won't surrender the national stage to anyone — not to President Donald Trump, Judge Amy Coney Barrett or majority Republicans holding the power to confirm nominees to the Supreme Court. The disease that's killed more than 213,000 people in the United States dominated the Senate hearings that opened Monday in Washington. From the start, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were on the defensive about rushing Barrett's confirmation before the Nov. 3 election.
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| Sars ban: Two dead in Nigeria police brutality protests Posted: 12 Oct 2020 12:53 PM PDT  Protests against police brutality continue despite the announcement that a notorious unit is disbanded.
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| Roberta McCain, John McCain's mother, dies at 108 Posted: 12 Oct 2020 12:31 PM PDT  Roberta Wright McCain, the mother of the late Sen. John McCain who used her feisty spirit to help woo voters during his 2008 presidential campaign, has died. A spokesperson for daughter-in-law Cindy McCain says Roberta McCain died Monday. "It is with great sadness that I announce the death of my wonderful Mother In-law, Roberta McCain," Cindy McCain posted on Twitter.
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| Biden makes big push in Ohio, once seen as long shot for him Posted: 12 Oct 2020 11:59 AM PDT  Joe Biden made two campaign stops Monday in Ohio, attempting to expand the battleground map and keep President Donald Trump on the defensive in a state long thought to be out of reach for Democrats after Trump's wide margin of victory there four years ago. The Democratic presidential nominee stressed an economic message and touted his own record while casting Trump as having abandoned working-class voters who helped him win Rust Belt states that put him in the White House in 2016. The president's reelection campaign countered that few expected Trump to win Ohio so comfortably four years ago and that he would repeat a similar upset on Election Day.
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| Trump vs. Biden: Where they stand on health, economy, more Posted: 12 Oct 2020 11:46 AM PDT  President Donald Trump, like many fellow Republicans, holds out tax reductions and regulatory cuts as economic imperatives and frames himself as a conservative champion in the culture wars. Biden, for his part, is not the socialist caricature depicted by Trump.
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| Plot to kidnap Michigan's governor grew from the militia movement's toxic mix of constitutional falsehoods and half-truths Posted: 12 Oct 2020 11:17 AM PDT  The U.S. militia movement has long been steeped in a peculiar – and unquestionably mistaken – interpretation of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and civil liberties. This is true of an armed militia group that calls itself the Wolverine Watchmen, who were involved in the recently revealed plot to overthrow Michigan's government and kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. As I wrote in "Fracturing the Founding: How the Alt-Right Corrupts the Constitution," published in 2019, the crux of the militia movement's devotion to what I have called the "alt-right constitution" is a toxic mix of constitutional falsehoods and half-truths. Private militiasThe term "militia" has many meanings. The Constitution addresses militias in Article 1, authorizing Congress to "provide for organizing, arming and disciplining, the Militia." But the Constitution makes no provision for private militias, like the far-right Wolverine Watchmen, Proud Boys, Michigan Militia and the Oath Keepers, to name just a few. Private militias are simply groups of like-minded men – members are almost always white males – who subscribe to a sometimes confusing set of beliefs about an avaricious federal government that is hostile to white men and white heritage, and the sanctity of the right to bear arms and private property. They believe that government is under the control of Jews, the United Nations, international banking interests, Leftists, Antifa, Black Lives Matter and so on. There is no evidence of this.On Oct. 8, the FBI arrested six men, five of them from Michigan, and charged them with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer. Shortly thereafter, state authorities charged an additional seven men with, according to the Associated Press, "allegedly seeking to storm the Michigan Capitol and seek a "civil war." Included were the founders and several members of the Wolverine Watchmen. As revealed in the FBI affidavit accompanying the federal charges, the six men charged claimed to be defenders of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, some of the men in April had participated in rallies in Lansing, the state capital, where armed citizens tried to force their way onto the floor of the State House to protest Governor Whitmer's pandemic shut-down orders as a violation of the Constitution by a "tyrannical" government intent upon sacrificing civil liberties in the name of the COVID-19 fight. According to the FBI's affidavit, the conspirators wanted to create "a society that followed the U.S. Bill of Rights and where they could be self-sufficient." Militia members imagine themselves to be "the last true American patriots," "the modern defenders of the United States Constitution in general and the Second Amendment in particular."Hence, the Bill of Rights – and especially the Second Amendment, which establishes the right to bear arms – figure prominently in the alt-constitution. It is no accident that the initial discussions about overthrowing Michigan's so-called tyrannical governor started at a Second Amendment rally in June. According to most militias, the Second Amendment authorizes their activity and likewise makes them free of legal regulation by the state. In truth, the Second Amendment does nothing to authorize private armed militias. Private armed militias are explicitly illegal in every state. No restrictions on rightsAdditional foundational principles of militia constitutionalism include absolutism. Absolutism, in the militia world, is the idea that fundamental constitutional rights – like freedom of speech, the right to bear arms and the right to own property – cannot be restricted or regulated by the state without a citizen's consent. The far right's reading of the First and Second Amendments – which govern free speech and the right to bear arms, respectively – starts from a simple premise: Both amendments are literal and absolute. They believe that the First Amendment allows them to say anything, anytime, anywhere, to anyone, without consequence or reproach by government or even by other citizens who disagree or take offense at their speech.Similarly, the alt-right gun advocates hold that the Second Amendment protects their God-given right to own a weapon – any weapon – and that governmental efforts to deny, restrict or even to register their weapons must be unconstitutional. They think the Second Amendment trumps every other provision in the Constitution. Another key belief among militia members is the principle of constitutional self-help. That's the belief that citizens, acting on their inherent authority as sovereign free men, are ultimately and finally responsible for enforcing the Constitution – as they understand it. Demonstrating this way of thinking, the men arrested in Michigan discussed taking Gov. Whitmer to a "secure location" in Wisconsin to stand "trial" for treason prior to the Nov. 3 election. According to Barry County, Michigan Sheriff Dar Leaf – a member of the militia-friendly Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officer Association – the men arrested in Michigan were perhaps not trying to kidnap the governor but were instead simply making a citizen's arrest. Leaf, who appeared at a Grand Rapids protest in May of Gov. Whitmer's stay-at-home order along with two of the alleged kidnappers, mistakenly believes that local sheriffs are the highest constitutional authority in the United States, invested with the right to determine which laws support and which laws violate the Constitution. The events in Michigan show how dangerous these mistaken understandings of the Constitution can be. There will be moreThe Wolverine Watchmen are not a Second Amendment militia or constitutional patriots in any sense of the word. If they are guilty of the charges brought against them, then they are terrorists. [Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter.]The FBI and Michigan law enforcement shut down the Watchmen before an egregious crime and a terrible human tragedy unfolded. But as I concluded just last year in my book, "there is little reason to think the militia movement will subside soon."Unfortunately, I did not account for the possibility that President Trump would encourage militias "to stand back and stand by," which seems likely to encourage and embolden groups that already clearly represent a threat. Expect more Michigans.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * Lessons from embedding with the Michigan militia – 5 questions answered about the group allegedly plotting to kidnap a governor * The Constitution doesn't have a problem with mask mandatesJohn E. Finn 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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| Carcinogens could be added to bread in post-Brexit US trade deal, campaigners warn Posted: 12 Oct 2020 10:54 AM PDT  Carcinogens could be added to bread if United State's food standards are accepted post-Brexit, say campaigners as they warn of risks beyond chlorinated chicken. Activists from the Save British Farming Campaign fear the UK may have to accept lower food standards to secure a future US trade deal with cheaper imports undercutting domestic farmers. Protesters, mounted on tractors, demonstrated yesterday outside the Houses of Parliament against the Government's Agricultural Bill, arguing the legislation does not protect current food and animal welfare standards.
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| Indian workers in Libya released after monthlong abduction Posted: 12 Oct 2020 09:53 AM PDT |
| California GOP says it owns unofficial ballot drop boxes Posted: 12 Oct 2020 09:27 AM PDT  California's Republican Party on Monday acknowledged owning unofficial ballot drop boxes that state election officials said are illegal. After receiving reports about the drop boxes in three counties, California's secretary of state issued a memo Sunday telling county registrars these boxes were illegal and that ballots must be mailed or brought to official voting locations. "In short, providing unauthorized, non-official vote-by-mail ballot drop boxes is prohibited by state law," the memo said.
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| Climate change largely to blame for a near doubling of natural disasters since year 2000, says UN Posted: 12 Oct 2020 09:21 AM PDT  Climate change is largely responsible for a doubling in the number of natural disasters since 2000, the United Nations said on Monday, warning that the planet was becoming uninhabitable for millions of people. Three quarters of a billion more people were impacted by disasters over the past two decades than in the twenty years before, the UN's office for disaster risk reduction said. Calling humanity "wilfully destructive", it said the data was a wake-up call to governments who have failed to take the threat of climate change seriously or to prepare for a growing number of natural disasters. "It is baffling that we willingly and knowingly continue to sow the seeds of our own destruction, despite the science and evidence that we are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people," the authors said. The report found that there were 7,348 major recorded disaster events between 2000 and 2019, compared with 4,212 between 1980 and 1999. Climate-related disasters explained the bulk of the rise, increasing from 3,656 to 6,681. Floods and storms were the most common events. The incidence of flooding more than doubled, from 1,389 to 3,254. Mami Mizutori, the UN's representative for disaster risk reduction, said NGOs and emergency services were "fighting an uphill battle against an ever-rising tide of extreme weather events".
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| Kilimanjaro: Fire breaks out on Africa's tallest mountain Posted: 12 Oct 2020 08:17 AM PDT  In Tanzania, efforts to put out the blaze on Kilimanjaro have been hampered by strong winds.
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| Ethiopia profile - Timeline Posted: 12 Oct 2020 08:08 AM PDT  A chronology of key events in the history of Ethiopia from the 2nd-century Kingdom of Axum to the present day.
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| Alarming Levels of Hunger Highlight Scale of Challenge to Achieve 'Zero Hunger' by 2030 - Global Hunger Index Report Posted: 12 Oct 2020 07:41 AM PDT  Alarming Levels of Hunger Highlight Scale of Challenge to Achieve 'Zero Hunger' by 2030 - Global Hunger Index ReportPR NewswireNEW YORK, Oct. 12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The world faces an immense mountain if it is to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development goal of 'Zero Hunger' by 2030.
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| France vows to show 'no weakness' in Brexit fishing fight Posted: 12 Oct 2020 07:38 AM PDT  Emmanuel Macron will show "no weakness" during tough trade negotiations over Brexit fishing rights, his Europe Minister warned on Monday. Boris Johnson told the French President that progress had to be made in fisheries if a free trade agreement was to be struck when the two leaders spoke on Saturday morning. The Prime Minister threatened to quit the negotiations if the "shape" of a trade deal is not in sight by Thursday's EU summit. "We will not accept a bad deal and a bad deal in fisheries in particular," said Clément Beaune, a close ally of Mr Macron, "We will have no weakness on this issue of fisheries, that is clear." Mr Beaune warned the UK and his EU allies that Paris would not allow French fishermen to be sacrificed just to get the free trade agreement over the line as the French government urged businesses to prepare for all scenarios, including no deal. Michel Barnier, the bloc's chief negotiator, last week told EU ambassadors it was not "feasible" to keep the same access to UK waters they had before Brexit and urged them to compromise. Mr Beaune said, "The fishing sector [...] must not be isolated or mistreated in these negotiations because it is important for the British but it is also very important for France. "It is crucial for France, for all the EU, that we will defend our interests, the interests of our fishermen and women, in this negotiation," he said. EU boats land about eight times more fish in UK waters than British fishermen do in EU waters but the UK is dependent on the European export market. France can expect support from countries such as Belgium, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands. Other countries, including Germany, believe the prize of a zero tariff trade deal is not worth losing for an industry that represents a relatively small part of the economy. Negotiations resumed on Monday in Brussels and are expected to continue until Wednesday before the European Council meeting, which Mr Macron will attend, on Thursday afternoon. A UK official said, "There is still a significant gap on fish. The EU needs to show more realism if there is going to be a deal."
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| With virus spiking, Jordan's king swears in new Cabinet Posted: 12 Oct 2020 07:22 AM PDT |
| Big turnout as early in-person voting starts in Georgia Posted: 12 Oct 2020 07:22 AM PDT  The chance to cast ballots on Georgia's first day of in-person early voting Monday had thousands of people waiting for hours to make their voices heard. Eager voters endured waits of six hours or more in Cobb County, which was once solidly Republican but has voted for Democrats in recent elections, and joined lines that wrapped around buildings in solidly Democratic DeKalb County. With record turnout expected for this year's presidential election and fears about exposure to the coronavirus, election officials and advocacy groups have been encouraging people to vote early, either in person or by absentee ballot.
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| How Trump’s China Trade Deal Steered His Response to COVID Posted: 12 Oct 2020 07:17 AM PDT  The president of the United States suggested that people inject disinfectants into their lungs.If there was a single moment that clarified everything about Donald Trump and his presidency, and the bargain Republicans made four years earlier when they put him in office and then again early in 2020 when, despite his impeachment, they kept him there, that was it. Thursday, April 23, 2020, at 6:14 p.m. in the evening.No, it wasn't the worst thing that Donald Trump did during his pandemic response. It probably doesn't even make the top ten worst things. In truth, the self-evident stupidity in even suggesting such a thing made it, ironically enough, probably one of the best things in his response, because it revealed ever so much about him and his entire administration, and all in such a few seconds.Yes, he had said many, many, many idiotic things before, as documented ad nauseam previously, but never about something that was literally killing more than a thousand Americans a day. Suddenly in a span of 200 words over 66 seconds, the emperor's new clothes disappeared on live television.No amount of spinning and explaining could undo what was now obvious: Clearly, Donald Trump had no business whatsoever to be in that job.* * *That April 23 press conference, of course, merely provided the quick and easy sound bite for television networks and, later, the attack ads.Obviously, no rational human being was going to mainline Lysol on Donald Trump's say-so. (Just to protect themselves from legal liability from Trump supporters who never got the memo and continue to take him both seriously and literally, manufacturers of Lysol, Dettol, and other cleansers quickly put out warnings to consumers that, no, under no circumstances should they inject, ingest, or otherwise introduce these branded cleaning products into their bodies.)The inane statement—made complete by the pained efforts of coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx, a medical doctor, to maintain a neutral expression—was just the final breaking point. The true dereliction of duty on the pandemic had begun four months earlier. As Trump was facing impeachment in the House and then a removal trial in the Senate, what remained of his attention was focused on his trade agreement with China, which he saw as critical to his re-election.Because while Trump had spoken frequently and with authority about the United States' trade relationship with the rest of the world for several decades, the fact remained that he had and continues to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the topic. In his mind, if Country X imports more from Country Y than it exports to Country Y, that is proof that Country X is "losing" that trade "battle," and that Country Y is "ripping off" Country X.This is, of course, ridiculous on its face. Just about every American has a negative balance of trade with the local supermarket. Does that mean that Wegman's and Publix and Albertson's are ripping us all off?As in so many other areas, Trump sees the world around him as a zero-sum game. There is no such thing as a mutually beneficial partnership. There are only winners and losers. And in Trump's telling, China had been "ripping us off" for years, because of horrible presidents who had let it happen.Trump's views on international trade back when he was a reality game show host or a New York City condo salesman really had no import, one way or the other. But as president, he decided he would get tough on China and imposed huge tariffs on Chinese imports, which had enormous repercussions both for American manufacturers suddenly facing higher costs for raw materials as well as for consumers buying everything from clothes to electronics. What Trump apparently had not counted on was the Chinese retaliating with tariffs of their own—targeted specifically at the people whose support Trump would need to win a second term: farmers in the Midwest.China's import tax on American soybeans and pork, among a host of other products, was designed to hit Trump where it hurt, and hurt it did. Yes, he has lied about how he used the billions of dollars "collected from China"—a lie; American tariffs are paid by Americans—to make the farmers whole with bailouts—another lie; the bailouts came nowhere close to making up for their lost earnings.Generally speaking, farmers have tended to vote Republican, as most people in rural America have done in recent decades. But as the trade war dragged on from the summer of 2018 for a full year and into the autumn before Trump's re-election year, farmers' support for Trump began to soften. Michigan and Pennsylvania, two of the three "Blue Wall" states that Trump had unexpectedly won by the narrowest of margins in 2016, were already looking like they would vote against Trump this time. And Wisconsin, the most rural of the three, was suffering from a wave of farm bankruptcies on top of a manufacturing slump with exporters facing retaliatory tariffs, all thanks to Trump's trade war. What's more, Iowa, which he had easily won but whose big pork industry had been hammered by Chinese tariffs, was starting to look shaky, as were other agricultural states.So, as the end of 2019 neared, Trump's zeal to ink a "deal' with China and boost farm exports began rising exponentially, until it essentially became all-consuming. So all-consuming, in fact, that when China in the final stages of the negotiations insisted on a provision triggering a reopening of talks in the event of a natural disaster or other unforeseen event, Trump's team either didn't notice or didn't care.* * *Imagine if George W. Bush had downplayed not just one warning in one intelligence briefing about al Qaeda wanting to hit the United States, but more than a dozen of them. Now imagine that rather than downplaying the warnings in his intelligence briefings, he had simply refused to take the briefings in the first place.Starting in mid-December, with that odd demand by China for force majeure language in a trade agreement, through alarms from Taiwanese authorities in late December about a mysterious outbreak of pneumonia-like cases on the mainland through explicit warnings from U.S. national security agencies starting in early January, Donald Trump ignored it all.International trade agreements between major countries are not like business contracts between two companies. "Act of God" provisions are not generally included in them, because nations, particularly large ones like China, are big enough that a flood or a drought in one region is likely not going to affect the country's ability to import or export as a whole. The massive Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated under Barack Obama did not have one, for example. Nor the deal with South Korea updated under Trump.The fact China was demanding one should have been a clue that something was up. And, of course, something was up. In late October or November, strange cases of a SARS-like respiratory illness were cropping up in Wuhan. Reports about it were circulating in the area by late November and more broadly by mid-December. One person close to the White House told me the United States had an extremely good idea what was happening and when, because one of our intelligence agencies had a source actually working in Wuhan's virology lab.By the end of December, the new disease was out in the open, with Taiwanese health officials warning the world that China was experiencing a bad outbreak. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services were on high alert over the New Year's break. The Washington Post reported that the disease and its risk to America made its first appearance in Trump's "President's Daily Brief" in the first days of January.It was followed by multiple additional warnings throughout that month in the package of intelligence reports of threats from around the world collated each morning specifically for the president's eyes, with the warnings getting more dire as the weeks progressed.Of course, a "President's Daily Brief" is only useful if the president reads it.* * *During the first five days of January, Trump was wrapping up his two-week golf vacation at his Palm Beach resort, Mar-a-Lago. Not a single intelligence briefing was scheduled during that entire stretch. The first one on his schedule in 2020 was January 6. Indeed, in a month that saw the explosion of the world's worst health crisis since 1918, Donald Trump received just nine intelligence briefings.To be clear, getting intelligence briefings and taking appropriate action based on them is not a minor, if-there's-time-for-it sort of thing for a president. It is literally his damned job.Not for Donald Trump. He has loads of time for watching television, hours and hours of it, each morning, and then tweeting about what he has just seen. He has time to call his various rich friends from New York, the members of his various golf clubs, to solicit their thoughts on everything from Kim Jong Un's intentions to the actions of the Federal Reserve, but he doesn't have time for the singular responsibility that a president, and no one else in the federal government, is entrusted with?Every previous president going back to the start of the PDB has taken the role seriously. George W. Bush received his early each morning. Barack Obama preferred to have it loaded onto his iPad by 6 a.m. each day and would have read it by the time of his in-person briefing later in the morning. Trump, on a good week, will receive two briefings, and even those, as The New York Times reported in an extraordinary warning to the public from the intelligence community, are contentious affairs, with Trump frequently telling briefers that they are wrong and going off on random, time-wasting tangents.And as January proceeded, Trump made it plain that he was not interested in hearing about a deadly viral outbreak in China, particularly since asking questions about it could jeopardize his all-important trade deal. And so it was that on January 13, 14, and 15, with top Chinese officials on White House grounds for the signing of his trade agreement, no one in the Trump administration pressed them for details about the worsening situation in Wuhan.In fact, Trump's fixation with the agreement, which rolled back some tariffs in exchange for China agreeing to purchase large quantities of farm goods, continued even past the signing. When asked about the virus in the coming weeks, Trump continually praised China and its leader, Xi Jinping, personally.On Jan. 22, the first day Trump spoke publicly about the coronavirus, he told Fox News there was nothing to worry about. "It's all taken care of. And China is working very hard on the problem. We spoke about it and China is working very hard on it.""China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus," Trump wrote two days later in a Twitter post. "The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!"Even two months later, Trump still had only kind words for China's dictator. "Look, I have a very good relationship with President Xi and they went through a lot. You know some people say other things. They went through a lot. They lost thousands of people. They've been through hell," he told reporters on March 24.And when he was not praising China, he was pretending that the virus wasn't a problem at all, or that it might have been a problem if he hadn't successfully stopped it from coming into the country with his China travel ban that he instituted despite opposition from other countries, the Democrats, and even many in his own administration."We're doing an awfully good job, I think, with what we're doing," he said in late March.It was only later in the spring, as the U.S. death toll started climbing dramatically, that Trump changed tacks and began attacking Xi. "They should have never let this happen," Trump said in a May 13 Fox Business interview. "I make a great trade deal and now I say this doesn't feel the same to me. The ink was barely dry and the plague came over. And it doesn't feel the same to me…. Right now I don't want to speak to him."Unsurprisingly, virtually all of his claims were false. By the time he finally imposed restrictions on people entering the United States who had been in China during the previous two weeks, nearly fifty other nations had by that point taken that action. U.S.-flagged airlines had already stopped flying from China on their own because of the outbreak. And his own experts were not only telling him to institute travel restrictions from China, but from Europe as well, where the disease was rapidly spreading by mid-January. Trump and some of his Cabinet members resisted the European restrictions because of the shock they would send through the markets.Indeed, Trump's entire response from January 22, when he first mentioned the outbreak, right through March 16, when he finally appeared to take it seriously, seemed guided by just two motivations. The first was to avoid spooking the stock market, which Trump seemed convinced was going to bring him a second term with its historically high valuations. And the other was to avoid angering Xi Jinping, who could on a moment's notice renege on his promise to buy American farm products, which would threaten Trump's standing in several key states.The heights of absurdity to which Trump took this became manifest in late February, when he lost his mind over comments by the CDCs' Nancy Messonnier on a conference call with reporters. She matter-of-factly stated that she had discussed the near-certain arrival of the disease in the United States with her children, and the changes it would require in all of their daily lives, and how she thought all Americans needed to similarly prepare.Trump was on his way back from a visit to India when he heard of her statements and the stock market's resulting plummet, its second in as many days. He demanded that his top aides get out and retract her warning. Upon his return on February 26, still unhappy that his "all is well" message was not taking hold, he made his first very foray into the White House briefing room since taking office for an unplanned news conference, where among many other things, he offered this prognosis: "When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done."Over the coming two weeks, Trump was in the briefing room on a near daily basis. He continued to claim that the virus was under control, that he had done a phenomenal job, and that all would soon be back to normal, with the soaring economy he had created with record-low unemployment and a record-high stock market, and that he would roll to an easy re-election. In this time, he continued his rallies—including one in South Carolina where he claimed that all the concern about the virus was another Democratic/news media "hoax" ginned up to hurt his re-election—and hosted gatherings of hundreds at Mar-a-Lago. (One of those wound up an impromptu coronavirus party, with a number of people in the entourage of visiting Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro testing positive in the coming days.)It was only on March 16 that his attitude seemed to change, following both an in-person plea from Fox News' Tucker Carlson to take the pandemic seriously followed a week later by estimates from his top health officials showing that, in the absence of any preventative measures, as many as 2.2 million Americans would die. So it was on that Monday that a noticeably sober Trump finally endorsed the "15 Days to Slow the Spread" guidelines produced by his CDC, finally acknowledged the seriousness of the threat, and conceded that it was not, in fact, "a hoax."* * *It did not have to be this way.In fact, with any somewhat normally functioning adult—someone chosen at random from a convenience store checkout queue, say, or a subway car—anyone willing to listen to basic facts and make reasonable decisions based on those facts, things could have been dramatically different.If the president had bothered to take his intelligence reports seriously in the first days of January, the United States could have prepared for the arrival of the virus rather than just belatedly react to it. The production of face masks, surgical gowns, and gloves could have been ramped up immediately. Hospitals could have been warned to prepare for a flood of respiratory cases. Even more important, a functioning test could have been developed and mass produced, allowing early cases to be found and isolated. Their contacts could have been traced and monitored. Most important of all, the public could have been put on guard early and enlisted in a national effort to contain the disease to the handful of cities where it had made its first appearance.These are not hypothetical steps. They were taken by other countries: South Korea and Germany, for example. The South Korean model was probably not replicable here. The MERS outbreak there in 2015 had given its government valuable recent experience, and the coronavirus outbreak was largely confined to a particular religious community, making it easier to isolate. On the other hand, there was no reason that the United States could not have had an experience similar to Germany's. There, as of mid-summer, 109 people per million had died compared to 428 in the United States.And it was not as if the necessary expertise to do these things did not reside in our country. It did. On February 4, 2020, Jeremy Konyndyk, who worked on the Obama administration's widely praised Ebola response in 2014, wrote in the Washington Post that the time to prepare for a possible pandemic was now. A week earlier, on January 28, Scott Gottlieb, Trump's former head of the Food and Drug Administration, wrote a similar piece with nearly identical recommendations for the Wall Street Journal. Tom Bossert, Trump's former homeland security adviser, was sounding those same alarms to anyone who would listen.That universe of listeners, however, did not include the one person who mattered most: the occupant of the Oval Office.To the contrary, Trump made it clear that he was not remotely interested in the virus and was absolutely opposed to taking any steps that could hurt the stock market or the economy. For three years he had rebranded the steadily growing economy that Obama had left him as the best economy in the history of the world and was certain that it would carry him to a second term. Acknowledging that there was a genuine danger in this disease risked spooking investors, and therefore stock prices and, in his mind, hurting his chances for a second term.This real-time aversion to the facts came atop the underlying damage Trump had already done to the nation's pandemic response infrastructure that had been built up by his predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.Bush in his second term, having dealt with a bird-flu scare, said one of his biggest fears was a pandemic that the world simply was not prepared for. Obama, dealing with the financial crisis as he took office in January 2009, was immediately hit with the H1N1 swine flu that spring. In his second term there was a major Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which he responded to by sending help to the affected areas to contain the disease there. The lessons learned in that crisis led him to institutionalize the response protocol, so it would not have to be re-engineered the next time. A pandemic coordinator was added to the National Security Council, overseeing a team that resided within the various federal agencies, from Health and Human Services to the United States Agency for International Development. Officials put together a "playbook" detailing the steps to take in the event of a pandemic. During the transition to the Trump administration, Obama's public health officials even staged a "table-top" pandemic exercise for their incoming counterparts.Trump and his people had no use for any of this. Under Trump's third national security adviser, John Bolton, he eliminated the pandemic response position from the NSC, thereby degrading the profile and efficacy of the entire team. And during 2018 and 2019, Trump eliminated two-thirds of the Beijing-based CDC officials whose job it was specifically to monitor for potential outbreaks in China. And when the coronavirus began its spread, Trump and his top aides ignored the pandemic playbook as well as the lessons from the transition training session.The rationale behind most of these decisions was simple: If Obama did it, it must be bad. That was the foundational principle to Trump's rise within the GOP, and he continued living it in the White House, from climate change to trade to Iran to, as it turns out, our ability to cope with a deadly pandemic.* * *The wholesale trashing of previously acquired knowledge and expertise was bad enough, but the Trump team then compounded that with additional failures. Choosing not to ramp up the production of protective gear or to alert hospitals was a function of Trump's message that the virus was nothing to fear. But the deadliest mistake of all was likely the CDC's failure to adopt a functioning coronavirus test when it became available in late January, and its insistence instead on developing its own. When that process was badly bungled, the result was a crucial, one-month delay before a test was in widespread use across the country.Why this happened remains unexplained. German researchers made the protocol for a working test available to the world on January 16. That became the test the World Health Organization began giving to countries without the medical infrastructure to produce their own. Trump administration officials, though, refused to use that test, even as an interim measure, and pushed ahead to develop one independently. It is true the CDC has long been proud of its reputation as the world leader in public health, and perhaps the decision to wait for its own test was merely a function of that institutional pride. At the same time, Trump's simmering feud and irritation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and his overarching "America First" rhetoric was obviously well known at the agency, and certainly within its top ranks of political appointees. Their reluctance to explain why they went with a German test to their boss at the White House may well explain their decision to accept a short delay.As it turned out, unfortunately, the delay was not short. The original CDC test, shipped out three weeks after the German protocol was published but hyped as more precise because it tested for three pieces of the virus's genetic code, rather than the German test's two, contained a fatal flaw. The component of the test for that third piece of code was repeatedly producing erroneous results. Finally, nearly a month later, the CDC announced a fix: ignore that third component, and just go with the other two—meaning the Trump administration's America First test wound up no more precise than the one the rest of the world had been using for five weeks.The consequences of this delay were nothing short of catastrophic. Had public officials been able to test for the virus widely across the country in late January, they would have been able to isolate those places where "community spread" was already taking place and acted accordingly. Elder care facilities, where nearly half of all the coronavirus fatalities have come from, could have been locked down early. Quarantines of individuals exposed to those infected might have been possible, with adequate and early testing.But through most of February, our country had none of that. Our public health officials were flying blind. Anthony Fauci, head of the infectious disease program at the National Institutes of Health, conceded afterward that not taking the German test was a mistake. "If you look back and Monday morning quarterback, it would have been nice to have had a backup," he told CNN in March.By the time our own test was widely available, the damage was done. The virus had spread from New York and Seattle and Los Angeles, those cities where the early cases had started, all over the country. It was too late to isolate individual cases and trace their contacts. Too many people were already infected. The only recourse left was to mandate large-scale stay-at-home orders in order to slow the spread of the disease and prevent the pandemic from overwhelming all of the nation's hospitals at once.* * *Where America wound up by late summer, with 180,000 dead and millions sickened, was not a pre-determined outcome. Again, things did not have to go this way. They did not go this way in Germany. Indeed, had Trump handled the outbreak the way Merkel did, well over a hundred thousand who have died from the disease would be alive right now.More of interest to Trump and a significant chunk of his supporters is that having effectively dealt with the virus would have also allowed the country to minimize the damage to the economy. Had it actually been contained in a few major cities, the rest of the nation could have largely gone about its business. We would not have needed to endure double-digit unemployment and a deep hit to gross domestic product, all while adding several trillions to the national debt.But that economic pain—which will continue, by the way, for years to come—was a direct and predictable result of Trump's spending a full month ignoring the virus entirely, and then seven additional weeks pretending it was not really serious or that his actions had prevented it from coming into the country.This incompetence bordering on criminal malfeasance continued largely apace after a brief pause in the days following that March 16 news conference. Trump's insecurities and vanities turned what should have been a daily briefing by experts into a two-hour monologue cum political rally cum therapy session, starring himself. It was from there that he pushed his public health experts to embrace a malaria drug as a coronavirus cure. It was from there he elevated son-in-law Jared Kushner, fresh off a failed mission to deliver Middle East peace, to run the White House coronavirus response. And it was from there where he riffed on his various medical theories, including, most famously, about injecting disinfectants and bringing "very powerful light" into the body as possible cures.The practical effect of this nonsense was that there was no national leadership at all. Whether you and your family lived or died from this disease had far more to do with the governor your state happened to have elected, and how much that particular person needed Donald Trump's support going forward. With a few exceptions—Idaho, Ohio, for example—this meant that Republican-led states were far less likely to have adopted meaningful stay-at-home directives early on, when they would have done the most good.Trump himself, meanwhile, quickly grew bored of the pandemic, particularly after his advisers eventually persuaded him that his marathon news conferences were the cause of his slipping poll numbers. Trump had believed that his daily on-camera performances were giving him a huge advantage over Democrat Joe Biden, and frequently cited the ratings they were getting. But Americans, after initially rallying around their president, as they are wont to do in a crisis, began bailing on him as his inanity became obvious.So it was that by late April, Trump essentially declared victory over the disease and decided to move on. The White House coronavirus task force ended its daily meetings. Top aides, following his cue, switched their focus to "re-opening" the economy and talking up favorable employment and retail sales statistics. Trump personally insisted on resuming the only part of politics or the presidency that appeared to give him any real joy, his campaign rallies. Even as Oklahoma's coronavirus numbers increased, Trump scheduled a rally in Tulsa for mid-June.In terms of political strategy, the location was mystifying. The state's voters had favored him over Clinton by 36 points in 2016. It was nearly completely surrounded by equally Republican states. It didn't matter. The campaign and Trump himself bragged about receiving over a million requests for tickets to a 19,000-seat venue, only to have just 6,200 turn up.In a telling Fox Business interview just days later, Trump claimed the virus would "just disappear" and that the economy would soon take off and recover all the jobs it had lost—language nearly identical to what he was saying about the pandemic in March and April.More broadly, his message was simple : The virus was the fault of China, Obama, Biden, Democratic governors and mayors, the news media, Nancy Pelosi, anyone and everyone other than him, who, the way he told it, had done everything correctly even when facing naysayers, and whose actions prevented millions of American deaths, perhaps even "billions," as he once claimed. And by mid-June, with less than five months to go before election day, coronavirus was officially somebody else's problem. He was done with it.As Maryland's Republican governor, Larry Hogan, described it in a mid-July Washington Post op-ed, Trump's failure to lead left every state on its own. "It was clear that waiting around for the president to run the nation's response was hopeless," Hogan wrote. "If we delayed any longer, we'd be condemning more of our citizens to suffering and death. So every governor went their own way, which is how the United States ended up with such a patchwork response."* * *When the virus has finally receded, as eventually it will, perhaps it will leave behind a chastened electorate.Back in 2015 and 2016, one of the most common things I heard from Trump supporters was that he would shake things up. They didn't care that he had no experience in government or in running a large organization—in fact, this lack of experience was a tremendous attribute. They wanted him to be the bull in the china shop. They wanted him to overturn tables and break things.Well, they got what they wanted, and all the rest of us have to live with the mess.As it turns out, there are real-world consequences to mocking and driving off expertise. Oil and gas companies, pipeline companies, industries of all sorts, and Republicans generally, in fact, loved that Trump ignored the scientific consensus on climate change to make it easier for them to make money. What they didn't anticipate, perhaps, was that his disdain of science went well beyond areas where it stood to benefit them personally.Trump offered as clear a warning as can be imagined when he took his Sharpie to that hurricane forecast map. He had no respect for trained meteorologists who had spent years and years studying tropical revolving cyclones—in his view, his judgment about the hurricane's likely path was just as valid as theirs.So it was with the pandemic. He was fine with eliminating the Obama-era response measures because if Obama had done them, they were, by definition, bad. As to subsequent warnings by his own public health officials about the threats posed by a pandemic… well, what did experts really know, anyway? Since he never takes anything seriously until it directly threatens him, he was not at all concerned when his administration failed to rebuild the national medical supplies stockpile. He didn't pay attention when reports started circulating about a new disease in China. He didn't bother taking intelligence briefings that specifically warned him of the virus's unique dangers. In short, he failed to do any of the basic things that any even half-way competent leader would have and should have done.This is what the know-nothings inflicted upon us all when they supported a man who was both profoundly ignorant yet proudly opinionated. The rationale behind this was that only such a person would be able to take on "the establishment" and return power to "the people."Burn it all down, they said, and then cheered Trump on as he did so, and put all of our lives at risk.* * *This rage against the system is understandable, on some level. People see economic inequality and social injustice and the simple answer is that it's all corrupt, that it truly is all rigged. Indeed, if there's any single factor explaining Trump's success with a segment of voters who supported Obama previously, it's the persistence of these ideas.It's such an easy charge to toss out, if you're a politician running to "shake things" up. People who spend a normal amount of time thinking about politics—which is to say, very little—are receptive to this message, and those who don't pay attention to politics at all are downright hungry for it. Trump sensed this and played on it, claiming, amazingly, that only he could end the corruption because he had so often taken advantage of it in years past. That by giving campaign contributions to politicians over all those years, he had bought their loyalty for the day he needed a favor.This argument, in fact, meshed perfectly with the message that Bernie Sanders had been selling to Democratic voters. The political system was stacked against them, and the average American had no voice.It was an effective message, for both Sanders and Trump. It also happened to be false.While it is true that there is occasionally corruption at all levels of government, there is nowhere near the systemic rot that so many Americans seem to want to believe exists. Maybe this is a function of better access to campaign-finance data—it is now easier than ever to determine how much campaign money Politician X has received from Special Interest Y, and journalists as well as opposing candidates are quick to draw a connection from a particular vote to a particular set of campaign contributions.What most Americans don't realize is just how many competing interests there are, and just how expensive even House races have become. A typical re-election campaign can run several million dollars. A contested race in a competitive district can run over $10 million. Are there people who honestly believe that bundled donations of $10,000 or even $50,000 are going to put a member of Congress in the back pocket of any given interest group? If you had to raise $1,000 for a charity event, are you going to be forever beholden to someone who gives you $10?It is true that being a longtime fundraiser or a prodigious "bundler" gets your calls answered, often by the members' chiefs of staff or even the members themselves. What is not true is that those answered calls always get the desired action.Because here is the dirty little secret behind the Washington lobbying game that those with a vested interest—the registered lobbyists—don't want anyone to know: Angry constituents are already the most feared group on Capitol Hill.The Bernie Bros and the conspiracy theorists don't want to believe it's true, because it takes away all manner of excuses rooted basically in apathy or laziness. But all you have to do is watch how closely a member of Congress monitors phone calls and emails logged in the Washington and district offices. Individual notes and unscripted calls are weighted more heavily, but every contact from the district is recorded and tallied. If there are enough of them to indicate that voters back home feel strongly about any given issue, that almost always outweighs the desire of a "special interest" asking for a contrary position.Granted, most issues are not going to generate much or perhaps even any interest from the typical voter. Most issues Congress deals with—other than ceremonial things like naming post offices—are about one business interest trying to tweak rules to gain a small advantage over a competing business interest or to obtain some public benefit at less than market cost. And most voters are quite understandably uninterested in those skirmishes.It's in situations like those that lawmakers are most likely to side with that lobbyist who has been the prodigious fundraiser or the loyal campaign contributor. Yet in those cases where the prodigious fundraiser or loyal contributor is asking for a vote on something that a vocal group back home opposes, the answer from the member or the chief of staff is almost always: "Sorry, I can't help you on this one."A perfect example of the limits of campaign contributions is abortion. Notwithstanding the claims from the most committed activists on both sides—and setting aside the paychecks many of these activists derive from their activism—abortion is not "big business" for anyone involved. Performing abortions, or referring patients to doctors and clinics who perform them, is not really a profit center. Nor are "crisis pregnancy centers" or adoption agencies.Despite this, there is hardly a more contentious issue or one that sees more grassroots lobbying. If the model of Congress as a completely corrupt entity serving only the business elites was correct, abortion would get virtually no attention from lawmakers at all.Yet it does. That should tell us something.On top of that, the converse is also often true. Well connected people who want something and try to use their connections frequently get squat for their efforts. Exhibit A for this could well be one Donald J. Trump, who for years in Florida paid one of Tallahassee's top lobbyists tens of thousands of dollars per year to get the state government to permit him to open a casino. The idea never moved an inch, despite the lobbying, despite all of Trump's campaign contributions to Florida Republicans. They were happy to take his money, but casino gambling was not a popular idea in Florida, and they weren't about to use even an ounce of capital just to please Trump.* * *In other words, and unsurprisingly, Trump lied about his ability to get politicians to do "whatever the hell you want them to do," as he famously told the Wall Street Journal back in the summer of 2015, a claim he repeated days later in that first Republican debate.But that has been part and parcel of his entire con in politics. His campaign adopted the slogan "Drain the Swamp," but Trump has done no such thing. He has openly funneled millions of both tax dollars and campaign dollars into his own pocket. He has put his daughter and son-in-law in unprecedented positions of power. He and his staff routinely campaign from White House grounds and during "official" visits around the country, using taxpayer resources.He is, hands down, the most openly corrupt president in a century, and quite possibly since the founding. And the way he tries to hide that corruption? By claiming that this is normal, that everyone is just as corrupt and just as dishonest as he is.More important, it is also how he hides the trait that, in the end, has proven fatal to so many Americans: his fundamental incompetence and lack of judgment. Trump failed to take the basic, obvious steps than any rational adult—and even most rational children—would have taken in his position. That's the main point about being president. You don't have to be a renowned meteorologist or macroeconomist or epidemiologist. You just have to listen to them and base your decisions on their advice when the time comes.Trump has failed to do that, time after time in any number of areas, but most consequentially for most Americans in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. And while in some cases his failures have been due to his lack of interest, in the instance of the pandemic, it was because taking the appropriate actions would have gone against his personal interest, which was to maintain the economy and stock market through November 3 to assure himself a second term. That was the reason he didn't want to upset China's dictator, whom he was relying upon to buy more farm products to undo the effects of Trump's own trade war. It was also the reason he didn't aggressively push coronavirus testing early on. To do so would have uncovered more cases, which would have spooked consumers and investors alike.Astonishingly, Trump even admitted all this at his fiasco of a rally in Tulsa: "When you do testing to that extent you're going to find more people, you're going to find cases. So I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'"His staff later said he was only joking. More than two hundred thousand dead Americans, and counting, say otherwise.* * *Any other politician—scratch that; any other human being would have seen the pandemic as both a responsibility and an opportunity.As president, it is literally your job to lead the country through something like this, whether you want to or not. Americans were expecting this and hoping Trump would rise to the occasion. That is the reason his approval ratings initially went up—not because they thought he had done a good job to that point, but because they wanted him, and the country, to do well and be safe.Trump, naturally, drew exactly the wrong lessons from that polling bump, attributing it instead to his marathon "news conferences" he had been staging from the White House briefing room in lieu of the rallies that he could no longer hold. And, naturally, the more he talked, the more average Americans realized just how ignorant and dangerous he truly was, peaking with that famous April 23 medical advice to inject disinfectants into the lungs and get ultraviolet or "very powerful light" into the body. Somehow.The great irony is that had Trump been capable of leading, and had done even a halfway competent job, he could have cruised to re-election as the nation's savior, without ever leaving the White House. It could have been a straightforward Rose Garden strategy, with minimal campaigning, leading to another four years.It's what any of the other candidates running in 2016, in either party, would have done. It's what any normal, adult human being would have done.That Trump was unwilling and unable even to try tells Americans everything they need to know.Excerpted and adapted from The Useful Idiot and published with permission.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. 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| As a pandemic presses on, waves of grief follow its path Posted: 12 Oct 2020 07:07 AM PDT  From her COVID-19 infection and isolation — self-imposed in hopes of sparing her husband, folk-country legend John Prine — to his own devastating illness and death, she's had more than her share in this year like no other. Illness and death are the pandemic's most feared consequences, but a collective sense of loss is perhaps its most pervasive. Around the world, the pandemic has spread grief by degrees.
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| Cannabis Countdown: Top 10 Marijuana And Psychedelics Industry News Stories Of The Week Posted: 12 Oct 2020 06:58 AM PDT  Welcome to the Cannabis Countdown. In This Week's Edition, We Recap and Countdown the Top 10 Marijuana and Psychedelics Industry News Stories for the Week of October 5th - 11th 2020.Without further ado, let's get started.* Yahoo Finance readers, please click here to view full article.10\. Headaches, Bad Trips, Flashbacks, Psychosis: Addressing the Dark Side of PsychedelicsTreatments Using Psychedelics Have Gained Momentum Over the Last Year, as More Companies Are Courting Investor InterestOne of those companies, Compass Pathways (NASDAQ: CMPS), made headlines across mainstream media recently as the first Psychedelic medicine company to be listed on a major U.S. stock exchange, the NASDAQ.READ FULL DARK SIDE OF PSYCHEDELICS ARTICLE9\. How Psychedelics Ease the End-of-Life PathwayThat "What's Next?" Question is at the Heart of the Anxiety and Depression in Patients Facing End-of-Life ScenariosDiscussions about the use of Psychedelics for end of life therapy center on the positive events of the experience, even addressing critical questions that help broaden the understanding of this last mission all humans embark on: What happens after we die?READ FULL PSYCHEDELICS END-OF-LIFE ARTICLE8\. Senate Candidates in Three States Pressed On Marijuana Issues at DebatesMarijuana Was on the Minds of the Moderators of Three Separate U.S. Senate Election Debates in One DayIncumbent senators and their challengers in Colorado, South Carolina and Texas were all pressed to share their Cannabis policy views on Friday. Here's what the candidates said.READ FULL CANNABIS AT DEBATES ARTICLE7\. Why Psychedelics Therapy for People of Color Needs Workable SolutionsWhy Are Psychedelics Therapies the Realm of the Privileged White Class?That has been a question that more and more people are asking as they build their Psychedelics businesses. And in fact, within that question lies two other questions.READ FULL PSYCHEDELICS THERAPY ARTICLE6\. Ontario's Besting of Illicit Market Prices May Indicate a Long-Term Market ChangeThe Canadian Cannabis Market is Celebrating a Recent Stretch of Successful ResultsThe country's adult use market saw sales reach a record CA$231 million in July, driving the market value to almost CA$2.8 billion. July also saw Ontario's government-controlled online dispensary, Ontario Cannabis Store, report that it had gotten dried flower prices below the illicit market during the first quarter.READ FULL ONTARIO CANNABIS ARTICLE5\. Red White & Bloom's Platinum Vape to Expand into Promising New Cannabis MarketWith Platinum Products Already Sold in Over 750 Retail Locations Throughout Michigan, California and Oklahoma, PV is Now Set to Enter the Arizona MarketArizona's medical Marijuana market is booming and is projected to generate 2020 sales of up to $915 million. Red White & Bloom (OTCQX: RWBYF) will be well-positioned to capitalize on the possible new Arizona adult-use Cannabis market should the voters approve Proposition 207 at the November 3, 2020 election.READ FULL RED WHITE & BLOOM ARTICLE4\. U.S. Government Supports Removing Marijuana From Strictest Global Drug ScheduleThe U.S. Government is Backing a World Health Organization (WHO) Recommendation to Remove Marijuana From the Most Restrictive Global Drug Scheduling CategoryHowever, it's opposing separate cannabis reform proposals, including one to clarify that CBD is not under international control. At a United Nations (UN) Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) meeting in Vienna on Thursday, Patt Prugh, attorney-advisor at the U.S. State Department, said that the cannabidiol proposal threatens to "introduce legal ambiguities and contradictions that would undermine effective drug control."READ FULL MARIJUANA REFORM ARTICLE3\. Illinois Continues Record-Breaking Marijuana Sales Streak, New State Data For September ShowsFor the Fifth Month in a Row, Illinois is Again Reporting Record-Breaking Marijuana SalesDespite the coronavirus pandemic, Illinois has seen escalating Cannabis sales month-over-month. In September, consumers purchased more than 1.4 million Marijuana products worth a total of nearly $67 million. Almost $18 million of those sales came from out-of-state visitors.READ FULL ILLINOIS CANNABIS ARTICLE2\. The Case for Funding Psychedelics to Treat Mental HealthScientists Are Developing Psilocybin, the Active Ingredient in Magic Mushrooms, into a Treatment for DepressionPsilocybin, the active ingredient in Magic Mushrooms, is being investigated as a potential treatment for depression. Meanwhile, the drug MDMA (also known as ecstasy) is being studied for use in people with post-traumatic stress disorder.READ FULL PSYCHEDELICS MENTAL HEALTH ARTICLE1\. Vermont Becomes 11th State to Legalize Recreational MarijuanaThe Adult-Use Marijuana Club of the United States Just Grew to 11 with the Addition of VermontThe news, which sets the stage for yet more growth of the U.S. Cannabis industry, was hailed by the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) as a major victory, especially considering that Vermont is only the second state in the nation to legalize adult-use via the legislature and not at the ballot box. Illinois did so in 2019.READ FULL VERMONT CANNABIS ARTICLEPhoto by Esteban Lopez on UnsplashSee more from Benzinga * Options Trades For This Crazy Market: Get Benzinga Options to Follow High-Conviction Trade Ideas * Cannabis Countdown: Top 10 Marijuana And Psychedelic Stock News Stories Of The Week * Cannabis Countdown: Top 10 Marijuana and Psychedelics Industry News Stories of the Week(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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| Black churches mobilizing voters despite virus challenges Posted: 12 Oct 2020 06:32 AM PDT  For the Rev. Jimmy Gates Sr., the 2008 presidential election year was one to remember — and not just because it yielded a historic result as the nation elected its first Black president. The pastor of Zion Hill Baptist Church in Cleveland recalls how, on the last Sunday of early voting before the general election, he and his congregation traveled in a caravan of packed buses, vans and cars to the city's Board of Elections office and joined a line of voters that seemed to stretch a mile. In recent election cycles, Black church congregations across the country have launched get-out-the-vote campaigns commonly referred to as "souls to the polls."
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| Belarus ramps up crackdown on protests, detains over 700 Posted: 12 Oct 2020 05:14 AM PDT  Authorities in Belarus said Monday they detained 713 people during mass protests a day earlier against the reelection of the country's authoritarian leader in a disputed election — the harshest crackdown in weeks on demonstrators. In a separate statement, the ministry threatened to use firearms against the protesters "if need be," saying that the rallies "have become organized and extremely radical." Despite the detentions, protests in Belarus continued Monday, with the elderly taking to the streets in several Belarusian cities, demanding Lukashenko's resignation.
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| Trump's Campaign Talk of Troop Withdrawals Does Not Match Military Reality Posted: 12 Oct 2020 04:46 AM PDT  When President Donald Trump said on Twitter last week that all U.S. troops in Afghanistan might be home by Christmas, he was reiterating a goal that has eluded him for years -- and most likely hoping that when it comes to ending military deployments, voters will give him more credit for his messaging than for his results.Trump has long vowed to leave Afghanistan and, more broadly, to conclude what he calls the United States' "endless wars" across the Middle East, reviving a core theme from his 2016 campaign that some data suggests could have played a crucial role in his election.But with about three months left in his first term, Trump has not welcomed home the last U.S. soldier from anywhere. While he has withdrawn thousands of troops from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, thousands more still risk their lives there -- a source of clear frustration for a president hoping to impress voters with unequivocal, unprecedented results.And although his defenders insist he deserves credit for avoiding any major new U.S. interventions, making him the first president in decades to do so, Trump has deployed thousands of additional soldiers to the Persian Gulf in response to growing tensions with Iran, which some analysts warn could spill into a hot war if he is reelected. He has also done little to scale down major U.S. military bases in places like Qatar and Bahrain."The missing piece here is that tens of thousands of forces are deployed all across the Middle East, supporting ongoing operations in the region and beyond," said Dana Stroul, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "The president has even increased the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia. None of those forces have been withdrawn over the course of his term. His rhetoric does not match the reality of U.S. forces deployed across the Middle East today."Still, Trump believes that even the perception of progress toward removing most Americans from harm's way overseas will help his chances of reelection on an "America First" platform. He and his campaign surrogates have repeated that message at every turn, from his rallies to the Republican National Convention in August to his Twitter account."I'm bringing our troops back from Afghanistan. I'm bringing our troops back from Iraq. We're almost out of almost every place," he said during a town hall event in September that was broadcast on ABC News. At a campaign rally more than a week later, the president vowed to "keep America out of these endless, ridiculous, stupid foreign wars in countries that you've never even heard of."He reprised the theme in a tweet hours before returning to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center last week. "PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH (BRING OUR SOLDIERS HOME). VOTE!" Trump wrote as the world obsessed over his coronavirus diagnosis.Trump now presides over about 10,000 ground troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria combined, only slightly less than the number he inherited at the end of the Obama administration. Deployments ordered by Trump caused that number to rise as high as 26,000 by late 2017, according to a Pentagon report, before falling steadily in recent months.After President Barack Obama left just under 10,000 troops in Afghanistan, Trump ordered about 3,000 more to the country in 2017 before beginning a drawdown that has resulted in about 4,500 there today. He also increased troop levels in Syria, where U.S. forces have battled the Islamic State group, from about 500 under Obama to nearly 2,500 before dropping to a current level of 750. In Iraq, troop numbers were virtually unchanged from the end of the Obama era until last month, when the Pentagon said it would cut nearly half its forces there, to 3,000.Denouncing and vowing to end foreign interventions was a potent message four years ago, according to a June 2017 academic study, which found "a significant and meaningful relationship between a community's rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump" in the 2016 election. The study's authors, Douglas Kriner of Cornell University and Francis Shen of the University of Minnesota Law School, concluded that if three states narrowly carried by Trump -- Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin -- "had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House."Former Vice President Joe Biden makes for a less useful foil than did Clinton, however. Although Biden also supported the Iraq War, he is less closely associated with the conflict than Clinton was. Biden was also a skeptic of subsequent military actions, arguing inside the Obama administration against a troop surge in 2009 for Afghanistan and opposing the U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011.On his campaign website, Biden focuses his foreign policy platform on rebuilding the United States from within through measures like education reform, more humane immigration policies and voting rights protections. Echoing Trump, Biden also promises to "end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, which have cost us untold blood and treasure," saying he "will bring the vast majority of our troops home from Afghanistan and narrowly focus our mission on al-Qaida and ISIS."Perhaps seeking a clearer contrast with his opponent, Trump upped the ante last week, surprising senior military and civilian officials with an evening tweet accelerating his timeline for a U.S. exit from Afghanistan."We should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Women serving in Afghanistan home by Christmas!" Trump wrote Wednesday, seeming to undercut a February deal with the Taliban that committed the United States to a full withdrawal by next May only if the Afghan insurgent group met important conditions. The tweet also came just hours after Trump's national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, told an audience that the United States would reduce its forces to 2,500 by early next year.The White House had no official comment, but a senior administration official speaking on background said that Trump had made a clear statement and that the government was obliged to carry out the commander in chief's wishes.Senior military officials, however, say they have received no formal orders to reduce U.S. forces in Afghanistan beyond 4,500 by the end of November.Philip Gordon, who was the coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf region in the Obama administration, called the tweet evidence that political impulses, not strategic thinking, were behind Trump's management of the military."You can't give him credit for successfully handling the drawdown. It's been chaotic and inconsistent and completely unpredictable," Gordon said. He recalled the way Trump had repeatedly vowed to withdraw the modest contingent of U.S. forces from Syria, forcing Pentagon planners to scramble for solutions that have preserved a few hundred troops meant to counter Russian and Iranian influence, although Trump now boasts that the troops are now there to "keep the oil.""It's too few troops to achieve anything there -- and it's just enough to get in trouble, as we've seen with the recent dust-ups between U.S. and Russian forces on patrols," said Ed King, president and founder of Defense Priorities, a nonpartisan Washington group that calls for a smaller U.S. military presence overseas. After seven U.S. service members were injured when their armored vehicle was rammed by a Russian one in August, the Pentagon sent another 100 soldiers to the country, increasing the U.S. total there to 750.King expressed disappointment that Trump had not made more progress toward removing all U.S. troops from combat zones. But he placed much of the blame on others, like Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton, and added that "the hope is, with the right personnel who can implement some of the rhetorical aims that Trump has voiced, that some of these policies might actually come to fruition."But others warn that in a second Trump term, the opposite could be true.Gordon, author of a new book about failed U.S. efforts to achieve "regime change" in the Middle East, said that the president's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran was unlikely to topple the country's government or force it to abandon its nuclear program. That could leave a reelected Trump forced to use military action to prevent an Iranian bomb."And that would be the end of the end of the 'forever wars,'" Gordon said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Why Big Oil Should Vote for Joe Biden Posted: 12 Oct 2020 04:00 AM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Oil executives are just like you and me: They worry about the election.A Biden administration would absolutely kill our industry.Such comments from oil and gas chiefs featured in the Dallas Fed's latest sector survey. It is received wisdom that, if elected president alongside a few more Democratic senators, an administration led by Joe Biden would sacrifice the industry on the altar of the Green New Deal. After all, Biden says one thing but he's secretly just Bernie with better hair and teeth, right?Actually, any oil and gas executive with an eye on the decade ahead rather than their next quarter has good reason to hope Biden wins. Washington's battle over replacing the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court gets to the heart of why.First, though, a gentle nudge for the American oil business toward self-reflection.Commanding 14% of the S&P 500 when Barack Obama was first sworn in as president, energy's weighting had sunk to about half that when President Donald Trump took his oath. Today, it's close to being a rounding error.This industry drilled itself into a ditch regardless of who sat in the Oval Office. Unlike oil and gas investors, the CEOs who are frequently rewarded for growth at all costs and insulated from sometimes catastrophic overreach have mostly done just swimmingly. One reason Trump's "energy dominance" agenda didn't halt the long decline is that its Soviet-tractor-quota approach merely encouraged the industry's worst self-harming impulses.Elsewhere in that Dallas Fed survey, participants were asked for their primary goals over the next six months. The top two answers: maintain or grow production — amid a historic oil glut and with balance sheets that look like they've been fracked themselves. This industry could use a little less dominance and a lot more discipline.Keep this in mind when Biden is decried as the sector's nemesis. Which brings us to the election and that Supreme Court seat.Americans who think climate change either isn't real or is overblown are in a small and shrinking minority. There is a partisan divide, of course, with Democrats overwhelmingly accepting climate change as a real threat. Still, a majority of Republicans also believe climate change is happening (though only a minority blame human activities) and that carbon emissions should be regulated as a pollutant.(1)Moreover, millennial and Gen-Z Republicans show more concern about climate change and support for renewable energy than the elder cohort.Republican leadership, however, is of a different mind. This starts at the top, with a president who has long expressed doubt climate change is real and muses aloud on wind turbines causing cancer. It is emblematic of a party that long since gave up on late Senator John McCain's carbon cap-and-trade proposals in 2008 and this year adopted a policy platform consisting of little more than an arrow pointing at Trump with the slogan "what he said."Gestures toward the issue are made for appearances' sake; in his recent debate with Senator Kamala Harris, Vice President Mike Pence deployed the studiedly beige phrase "the climate is changing." But there simply is no consequential policy debate about climate change occurring within the GOP.This has become the firewall for fossil fuels against meaningful climate policy as the disconnect with public opinion widens, with the Republican-controlled Senate a critical defense. Fossil-fuel production is relatively concentrated within the U.S. — 80% of it comes from just nine states(2) , according to ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington-based analysis firm. And while 18 senators might not seem like much, as ClearView points out they are significant when the filibuster rule prevents passage of legislation without 60 votes. Fossil-fuel production accounts for more than 1% of GDP in a further seven states and for some smaller proportion in many more. All this, plus partisan cohesion regardless of direct fossil-fuel exposure, has made pulling together a blocking minority eminently doable.But the filibuster hangs by a thread, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's push to seat Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court, cementing a 6-3 right-wing majority, could trigger its demise altogether. Several Democratic presidential candidates called explicitly for the end of the filibuster on the campaign trail, often linking it directly to addressing climate change.Biden didn't, and it seems doubtful he would push a Democratic senate in this direction over climate policy. What could change that? How about a naked power play by an outgoing president and Senate to tilt the least-democratic branch of government their way for a generation, threatening things that probably would constitute a tipping point even for Biden: the Affordable Care Act, access to abortion, voting rights.For all its complexities, there is a simple way to think about what happens on November 3. If Trump loses, then all the Republican never-Trumpers will be able to say told-ya-so. If Biden loses, then progressives will say the same thing to Democratic leadership. For the oil and gas industry, a Trump loss likely means the Senate flips too.Yet with Biden in the White House and the incumbent Democratic leadership still mostly in charge, the chances of a sweeping, AOC-style Green New Deal would be diminished. Climate change measures would still be enacted in some form — not least as part of a post-Covid stimulus effort — but likely more along the lines of an actual transition rather than abrupt disruption.And adult management of the Covid-19 crisis and a large economic stimulus, along with tighter restrictions on fracking on federal land and methane emissions, could support oil and gas prices from both the demand and supply side, at least in the short term.A Trump win, with Republicans maintaining their slender grip on the Senate, might still seem preferable to oil and gas CEOs. This is short-sighted. The Green New Deal is itself a reaction to decades of obstruction by oil and gas interests and their Republican allies against even incremental measures to address climate change. As the clock ticks by, and the wildfires and hurricanes intensify, so climate change's mindshare among Americans grows — and so does frustration with inaction.If the industry's strategy to deal with this is simply to retreat ever further into a fortress built on the quirks of the U.S. political system, then it had best hope the other side, post-Biden and with gloves discarded utterly, never gains power and abolishes those quirks. That is the logic of the raw power politics revealed so brazenly in the Republican push for Barrett just four years after stonewalling Merrick Garland on spurious grounds now being ignored (not to mention rampant voter suppression, with oil-capital Houston an epicenter in this cycle).Indeed, such defensive thinking is implicit in McConnell's relentless focus on judicial appointments — the court-packing's already happened, folks — rather than actual legislating. Confident parties fight to win power and use it; fearful parties make a grab for power and obsess over how to keep it.The industry faces a choice between getting on board with a smoother transition, with more emphasis on market-based solutions, or keeping with Republicans' maximalist, but minority, position until political fortunes inevitably change — at which point mandates like California's gasoline-car ban will drop like bricks. The first option entails risk management; the second is a gamble with lengthening odds. Spencer Dale, chief economist at BP Plc, noted the risk for the industry in a recent presentation about future energy demand:If the required reductions in carbon emissions cannot be met through energy efficiency or fuel switching, the only other way they can be achieved in this scenario is via widespread energy rationing. That is, policies which stop or restrict energy-using outputs or activities – generating significant economic costs and disruption.Oil majors such as BP find it easier (though not easy) to take a longer view; the E&P companies active in shale are more concerned with surviving the next 12 months. Even so, the larger ones should also have an interest in putting the industry on a more sustainable footing, not least because the costs of, say, doing the right thing on methane emissions would force many marginal competitors to consolidate or disappear.This is the lesson of energy's decline into index obscurity. Even with so much extraneous help — rising demand, OPEC+, reinstated Iran sanctions, zero interest rates, free flaring in Texas, Trump's regulatory rollback, unpriced carbon emissions — the industry has foundered. What exactly is required to make it work? A Supreme Court ruling that everyone must own two SUVs?Whether they realize it or not, those decrying the prospect of a Biden administration forcing the fossil-fuels business to finally internalize the costs of climate change are implicitly admitting this business cannot survive without massive subsidies. And one suspects the overlap between them and those folks who dismiss renewables with tired stuff like "but Solyndra!" is reasonably extensive.Similarly, if the industry only sees a future for itself via its political allies setting judges against majority opinion and making energy just another front in the culture wars, then it has lost the moral authority to help shape the inevitable transition. The line linking decades of discrediting scientific findings on climate as elitist oppression and our current moment, in which a sick president mocks masking against a deadly disease, may be a dotted one, but it is there. Rather than a dead end for the industry, Biden represents an off-ramp.(1) Source: "Democratic and Republican Views of Climate Change (2018)", Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.(2) They are: Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, Wyoming. Calculated as per total production of coal, natural gas and oil in BTUs in 2016. Source: "Swipe Right For A Green New Deal", ClearView Energy Partners (March 2019).This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy, mining and commodities. He previously was editor of the Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column and wrote for the Financial Times' Lex column. He was also an investment banker.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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| Iran shatters its single-day record for virus deaths, cases Posted: 12 Oct 2020 03:55 AM PDT  For the second day in a row, Iran shattered its single-day record for new deaths and infections from the coronavirus, with 272 people confirmed dead among more than 4,200 new cases on Monday. Like in many other countries, the spiraling outbreak in Iran reflects the government's contradictory virus response. This month, as the daily recorded death toll reached the triple digits, authorities announced tighter restrictions for the hard-hit capital of Tehran.
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| Lebanon names team for maritime border talks with Israel Posted: 12 Oct 2020 03:43 AM PDT  Lebanon announced on Monday the names of its delegation that will hold indirect talks later this week with Israel over the disputed maritime border between the two countries. The announcement by President Michel Aoun's office comes two weeks after Lebanon and Israel reached an agreement on a framework for the U.S.-mediated talks. The talks are scheduled to begin Wednesday at the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping force in the southern Lebanese border town of Naqoura.
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| Armenia, Azerbaijan report attacks despite cease-fire deal Posted: 12 Oct 2020 03:08 AM PDT  Armenia and Azerbaijan on Monday accused each other of attacks over the separatist territory of Nagorno-Karabakh despite a cease-fire deal brokered by Russia to try to end the worst outbreak of hostilities in the region in decades. Armenian Defense Ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanian said Azerbaijani forces were "intensively shelling the southern front" of the conflict zone on Monday morning. Nagorno-Karabakh officials said Azerbaijan directed a "large number of forces" to the area of Hadrut, a town in the south of the region, and reported "large-scale hostilities" there.
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| Israeli government approves normalization deal with UAE Posted: 12 Oct 2020 02:43 AM PDT  The Israeli government unanimously approved the country's recently signed normalization agreement with the United Arab Emirates on Monday ahead of a ratification vote by parliament. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement following his weekly Cabinet meeting that he spoke over the weekend with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. "We talked about co-operations that we are advancing — in investment, tourism, energy, technology and other fields," Netanyahu told the Cabinet, with Israeli and Emirati flags flanking the conference table.
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| Lithuania's center-right heads toward an election win Posted: 12 Oct 2020 02:41 AM PDT  Lithuania's opposition conservative Homeland Union party claimed victory Monday in the first round of the country's general election, winning 23 seats in 141-seat parliament as the center-right opposition appears on track to win the vote, defeating the ruling four-party coalition. The Farmers and Greens Union, which forms the backbone of the Baltic nation's current ruling coalition, finished second with 16 seats outright and many fewer candidates making it into the second round of voting being held on Oct. 25. Two liberal parties — the Freedom Party and the Liberal Movement — considered likely allies in a future center-right coalition, claimed a total of 14 seats.
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| 2020 Watch: Is it too late for Trump to turn things around? Posted: 12 Oct 2020 02:23 AM PDT  President Donald Trump returns to the campaign trail this week after an 11-day absence in what is likely his last opportunity to reset his beleaguered presidential reelection bid. With Election Day just three weeks away and millions of Americans already voting, the Republican president is trailing Democrat Joe Biden by a significant margin in major national polls and narrowly in make-or-break swing states including Pennsylvania and Florida. Biden continues to face challenges of his own, including nagging questions about whether he would "pack" the Supreme Court, but the extraordinary drama surrounding Trump's campaign as the pandemic surges continues to overshadow Biden's liabilities.
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| AP Photos: 'I got stories.' A life of troubles and love Posted: 12 Oct 2020 01:34 AM PDT  BIDWELL, Ohio (AP) — "I got stories," Tasha Lamm said when we first met her, in a little town in Appalachian Ohio. This story is part of the Looking For America project, produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
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| Huhtamaki donation helps clean plastics from the Mithi River in Mumbai, India Posted: 12 Oct 2020 12:00 AM PDT |
| Emmanuel Macron Fishes For a Brexit Victory Posted: 11 Oct 2020 11:41 PM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- European diplomats are awkwardly shuffling their feet in anticipation of a headstrong, unpopular leader crashing Brexit trade talks just as a tentative deal looks in sight. No, not U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson — France's Emmanuel Macron.The 42-year-old president is sticking to his guns on the contentious issue of post-Brexit fishing rights, much to the distress of European Union partners keen to identify concessions as time runs out for a breakthrough, according to my Bloomberg News colleagues.France wants to preserve the status quo for its fishing fleets, some of which rely on British waters for 75% of their catch. The U.K., sensing an advantage, is offering renegotiated, time-limited rights instead. The Macron administration insists this is "unacceptable," and says that letting the talks fail — while an undesirable outcome — would be better than making unreasonable concessions.If reaching a trade deal were purely a matter of economic logic, the newspaper pages dedicated to this fight would have been discarded as fish wrapping long ago. At 650 million euros ($768 million), the value of the EU's fish caught in British waters is a drop in an ocean of trillions of euros in annual bilateral trade. And for all the European reliance on the bounty of the North Sea, the U.K. also depends on the EU single market as a destination for 75% of its fish exports. The benefits of a quid pro quo deal on fishing quotas in return for market access — in financial services, for example — looks like such a no-brainer that it has its own Wikipedia entry. But this is about more than the price of sole. Emotion and politics are at play here. The prospect of "taking back control" of a 200-mile aquatic zone speaks to Brexiters who want to settle a bunch of scores in the open sea, from competition with rival fleets to the decline of Britain's coastal towns. And it chimes with the U.K.'s narrow reading of sovereignty as the ability to roll back restrictions on freedom of action, regardless of the cost, as seen in its draft law that breezily breaks the terms of last year's Brexit deal.For Macron, the stakes are high too. Giving up control over where French fleets can go means potentially driving them into unprofitable and crowded waters alongside boats from the Netherlands, Belgium and elsewhere. Politically, it would mean enduring a symbolic trade defeat for blue-collar communities in the year of Covid-19, with the Gilets Jaunes protests still fresh in French minds. And it would make a mockery of France's own vision of sovereignty: Projecting power via a less British, less liberal, more dirigiste EU.The more allies like Germany nudge France to compromise for the sake of a deal, the more Macron will dig in to take a willfully disruptive — and potentially lonely — stance. Much like his defense of maritime borders in the face of saber-rattling from Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or his dismissal of NATO as "brain-dead," Macron sees Brexit as an opportunity for foreign-policy grandeur. France often finds itself in the role of "stinging" Germany into action, according to Thomas Gomart of French think tank Ifri. The British no doubt hope to exploit divides between France and Germany. It wouldn't be the first time Angela Merkel has kept Macron in check. But the European Parliament, whose consent is needed to ratify any deal, is keeping close watch. The chair of its fisheries committee, Pierre Karleskind, tells me he opposes further concessions in the face of the U.K.'s threat to "maritime sovereignty."Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said last week that in the end it might be the Brits who have to compromise. They still face a lot of distrust over state-aid policies and law breaches. Even if Macron often stands alone in speaking the discourse of power, the bloc's 27 members are broadly on the same page, according to Christian Lequesne, a professor at Sciences Po. Nobody, not even Macron, is pushing for "no-deal." But then again, such an outcome isn't spoken about in Brussels with the same fear as in 2019. If it's at risk of happening at all, the strange Brexit mix of sovereignty and seafood is very much to blame.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the European Union and France. He worked previously at Reuters and Forbes.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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| Japan vows to boost missile defense after North Korea parade Posted: 11 Oct 2020 11:00 PM PDT  Japan vowed Monday to bolster its missile deterrence capability to respond to threats by North Korean weapons that are becoming "more diverse and complex," as displayed during a military parade held by the North over the weekend. While some experts say the weapons could have been mock-ups of missiles under development, the exhibits appear to signify North Korea's continuous upgrading of its weapons capabilities during stalled nuclear diplomacy with the U.S. "In order to respond to threats that are diversifying and complex, we will firmly work to strengthen our comprehensive missile deterrence capability," Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told a regular news conference Monday.
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| DC charters offer innovations in pandemic-era education Posted: 11 Oct 2020 09:33 PM PDT  Returning to school in the nation's capital during the pandemic has proven to be an ongoing experiment in learning — and not just for students. Tall, three-sided partitions were set up at Meridian Charter School to protect students against COVID-19 — until administrators learned that the enclosures wouldn't do much to prevent spread of the virus. Now the cardboard is optional, but more than half of the students still use them as personalized organizers — taping up calendars, decorations and schedules.
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| Graham's last stand? Senator leads Barrett court hearings Posted: 11 Oct 2020 09:23 PM PDT  Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is wielding the gavel in the performance of his political life. Once a biting critic of President Donald Trump, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman on Monday launched confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett in a bid to seal a 6-to-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. For Graham, the Republican Senate majority and Trump himself, the hearings three weeks before Election Day could be a last stand.
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| Trump's task: Resetting campaign that GOP fears is slipping Posted: 11 Oct 2020 09:20 PM PDT  President Donald Trump is running out of time to recover from a series of self-inflicted setbacks that have rattled his base of support and triggered alarm among Republicans who fear the White House is on the verge of being lost to Democrat Joe Biden. The one-two punch of Trump's coronavirus diagnosis and his widely panned debate performance also has Republicans worried they could lose control of the Senate. With just over three weeks until Election Day, Senate races in some reliably red states, including South Carolina and Kansas, are competitive, aided by a surge in Democratic fundraising that has put both the Republican Party and Trump's own campaign at an unexpected financial disadvantage.
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| Barrett vows fair approach as justice, Democrats skeptical Posted: 11 Oct 2020 09:03 PM PDT  Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett presented her approach to the law as conservative and fair on Monday at the start of fast-tracked confirmation hearings, while angry Democrats, powerless to stop her, cast her as a threat to Americans' health care coverage during the coronavirus pandemic. With her husband and six of their seven children behind her in a hearing room off-limits to the public and altered for COVID-19 risks, Barrett delivered views at odds with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose seat President Donald Trump nominated her to fill, likely before Election Day. "Courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life," declared the 48-year-old federal appeals court judge, removing the protective mask she wore most of the day to read from a prepared statement.
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| Lawyer: Denver security guard acted in self-defense Posted: 11 Oct 2020 09:01 PM PDT  An armed security guard for a television station who is suspected of fatally shooting a man following an altercation after opposing protests was acting in self-defense when he opened fire, a lawyer representing his family said Monday. Matthew Dolloff, 30, was being held in jail for investigation of first-degree murder following Saturday afternoon's shooting near Civic Center Park as protesters filed out of the park following the demonstrations — a "Patriot Muster" and a "BLM-Antifa Soup Drive" counterprotest. Doug Richards, who said he is representing Dolloff's family, said the man who was shot reached into his shirt which made Dolloff fear for his safety, leading him to shoot.
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