| Guinea elections: Alpha Condé takes on Cellou Dalein Diallo again Posted: 17 Oct 2020 05:12 PM PDT  A divisive new constitution allows Alpha Condé to stand again, amid political and ethnic tensions.
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| Pretenders to Merkel's crown go head-to-head in debate Posted: 17 Oct 2020 05:07 PM PDT  The three men vying to lead German Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party took each other on in an online debate Saturday in a bid to revive a race that has been knocked off course by the coronavirus pandemic.
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| Give China a Cheer for Making Polluters Pay Posted: 17 Oct 2020 05:00 PM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- China's ambitious pledge to decarbonize by 2060 requires the world's top polluter to dramatically raise the cost of spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. A long-awaited national carbon market that is finally set to begin trading this year will be less demanding and more limited than initially anticipated, if draft plans are a guide. It's worth welcoming anyway.Beijing could have done better. Support from the top, plus an unparalleled ability to push through change at scale, give the country a significant advantage. At the same time, China's command-economy traits make it tough to apply a market-based solution, especially one that isn't producing the right numbers elsewhere either. For one, power market reform is a work in progress. Moreover, China remains a developing economy on many measures, and its regions don't always move at the same speed. Carbon markets generally work by setting a limit, then allowing companies to trade allocated allowances. It encourages good practice, as those that cut back can sell their surplus; Others have to buy credits, and costs should rise with time. The plan in China is now years late. While initially designed to include major industrial sectors, it will be limited to power generation — less ambitious, even if coal-fired plants account for almost half of China's carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel combustion. It's set to focus on carbon intensity. Allocations and opt-outs look generous, according to a proposal seen last month.In fact, the picture is a little more encouraging than that suggests. That's not just because of existing experimental markets that have been in place since the 2010s, or because of political pressure ratcheting up, though both will help.At the most basic level, China is at least moving in the right direction. That's some comfort, in a world that has abjectly failed so far to put an appropriately onerous price on negative externalities. Currently, the World Bank estimates only a fifth of emissions are covered by pricing initiatives, meaning the vast majority of the planet's polluters pay nothing at all. And almost half of what is priced has a cost of less than $10 per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent — hardly enough to press anyone to act. One key ingredient for accurate carbon prices is a tough and credible future limit, so that, once discounted back, they make sense today. With China's pledge to hit a peak in 2030 and then carbon neutrality by 2060, that now exists. There is certainly a risk that the emissions market gets stuck in transit, lingering in this limited first stage. Yet the tough deadline set publicly by President Xi Jinping in September, along with signals sent since — plus China's clear desire to take a global leadership role at a time when momentum is shifting — make that less likely.China's national carbon market, the world's largest, has repeatedly fallen at various administrative, political and technical hurdles. If the aim was just to cut emissions fast, there would have been more effective policy tools — simply mandating closures and upgrades, say. It would have been beneficial to leave the portfolio in the hands of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, and not the Ministry of Ecology and the Environment.But, as Li Shuo of Greenpeace points out, that's not the only measure of success. So far, an unprecedented data collection push has already forced companies to count emissions, the first step toward building a carbon cost into future planning. The availability and quality of data have improved, which in turn improves efficiency — as well as providing baselines for policy makers.China's pilot programs offer encouragement too, as the largest increase trading volume, dabble in innovation and explore allowance auctions, a source of future revenue to help cushion the cost of going green. That's a welcome contribution, given estimates that put the cost of transitioning to carbon-neutrality within a few decades at $5.5 trillion.It's worth remembering that China has other ways to put a high price on carbon, as it shifts away from an energy mix dominated by fossil fuels, with a relatively young fleet of coal-fired power plants. A blanket carbon tax hasn't been seen as palatable, for political and practical reasons. Yet as Lina Li, China ETS and climate policy expert at Berlin-based consultancy Adelphi explains, experience elsewhere suggests that could still be introduced as part of a hybrid system, in which large emitters are covered by trading, and smaller ones by a tax.China needs to be pressed to aim high when it comes to carbon trading and pricing. Others will be encouraged to follow. For now, it just needs to get started. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Clara Ferreira Marques is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering commodities and environmental, social and governance issues. Previously, she was an associate editor for Reuters Breakingviews, and editor and correspondent for Reuters in Singapore, India, the U.K., Italy and Russia.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| UK's Gove says Britain 'well prepared' for a no-deal Brexit - Sunday Times Posted: 17 Oct 2020 04:58 PM PDT |
| Conservatives staging free speech rally attacked by critics Posted: 17 Oct 2020 03:21 PM PDT  A free speech demonstration staged by conservative activists quickly fell apart in downtown San Francisco on Saturday after several hundred counterprotesters surged the area, outnumbering and attacking those gathered, including knocking one in the mouth. A photographer working for The Associated Press witnessed an activist with Team Save America taken away in an ambulance and an injured San Francisco police officer on the ground by San Francisco's United Nations Plaza. Team Save America organized the rally to protest Twitter, which it said squelches conservative speech.
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| Macron 'using Brexit talks to boost standing in France' Posted: 17 Oct 2020 01:14 PM PDT  Emmanuel Macron is using the post-Brexit trade talks to shore up his domestic standing in France, UK sources have claimed, as they labelled talks with the EU "performance art". British sources said the French president was prioritising concerns about his political future over agreeing a free trade agreement with the UK, as he came under pressure from Marine Le Pen, the far-Right leader. Ministers privately claim that it could take "years" for the UK to return to the negotiating table if the current transition period ends without a trade agreement on Jan 1. Senior Tories have warned EU leaders not to expect to reopen talks next spring – by which point they believe the UK could already have experienced the worst effects of ending the transition period without a deal. On Friday, Boris Johnson accused European leaders of having "abandoned the idea of a free trade deal" and told the country to "get ready" for a no-deal outcome in the negotiations after his Oct 15 deadline for reaching an agreement passed. Senior Brexiteers praised the move, with John Redwood, the former trade secretary, claiming: "The UK will prosper more with no deal than with a bad deal." Lord Frost, the UK's chief negotiator, told his counterpart, Michel Barnier, to call off a planned trip to London for talks this week, after EU leaders issued a joint summit statement calling on the UK to offer compromises on several areas, including fishing rights in UK waters.
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| Angela Merkel warns severity of COVID resurgence ‘will be decided by our behavior’ Posted: 17 Oct 2020 12:52 PM PDT  Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed to her fellow Germans on Saturday when she encouraged them to work together — through staying apart — to reduce the spread of coronavirus amid new spikes. In her weekly video podcast, the politician referred to the "difficult months" ahead, noting that the state of the country in coming months is subject to measures employed now, The Associated Press reports. The Robert Koch Institute, Germany's disease control center, announced Saturday that a record 7,830 new cases had been reported overnight.
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| As lockdown eases, Israelis again gather against Netanyahu Posted: 17 Oct 2020 12:46 PM PDT  Thousands of Israelis demonstrated outside the official residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday night, resuming the weekly protest against the Israeli leader after emergency restrictions imposed as part of a coronavirus lockdown were lifted. The protests were curtailed last month after Israel imposed new lockdown measures in response to a new virus outbreak. The emergency regulations blocked Israelis from traveling to Jerusalem to protest and allowed people only to attend smaller demonstrations within one kilometer (half a mile) of their home.
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| Trump leans into fear tactics in bid to win Midwest states Posted: 17 Oct 2020 11:14 AM PDT  President Donald Trump leaned into fear tactics Saturday as he accused the left of trying to "erase American history, purge American values and destroy the American way of life" in a late reelection pitch to voters in Michigan. "The Democrat Party you once knew doesn't exist," Trump told voters in Muskegon, Michigan, ahead of a rally in Wisconsin — two states in the Upper Midwest that were instrumental to his 2016 victory but may now be slipping from his grasp. As he tried to keep more voters from turning against him, Trump sought to paint Democrats as "anti-American radicals" on a "crusade against American history."
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| Omar Bashir: ICC delegation begins talks in Sudan over former leader Posted: 17 Oct 2020 11:03 AM PDT  The International Criminal Court accuses ousted President Omar al-Bashir of genocide and war crimes.
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| Organizers exhort women to vote for change at US rallies Posted: 17 Oct 2020 11:01 AM PDT  Thousands of mostly young women in masks rallied Saturday in the nation's capital and other U.S. cities, exhorting voters to oppose President Donald Trump and his fellow Republican candidates in the Nov. 3 elections. The latest of rallies that began with a massive women's march the day after Trump's January 2017 inauguration was playing out during the coronavirus pandemic, and demonstrators were asked to wear face coverings and practice social distancing. Rachel O'Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women's March, opened the event by asking people to keep their distance from one another, saying that the only superspreader event would be the recent one at the White House.
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| Who Was 'El Padrino,' Godfather to Drug Cartel? Mexico's Defense Chief, U.S. Says Posted: 17 Oct 2020 07:27 AM PDT  MEXICO CITY -- American law enforcement agents were listening in as Mexican cartel members chattered on a wiretap, talking about a powerful, shadowy figure known as El Padrino, or The Godfather.Agents had been closing in on him for months, suspecting that this central figure in the drug trade was a high-ranking official in the Mexican military.All of a sudden, one of the people under surveillance told his fellow cartel members that El Padrino happened to be on television at that very moment. The agents quickly checked to see who it was -- and found it was the Mexican secretary of defense, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, according to four American officials involved in the investigation.In that moment, the authorities say, they finally confirmed that the mystery patron of one of the nation's most violent drug cartels was actually the leader in charge of waging Mexico's war against organized crime.It was a stunning display of how deep the tendrils of organized crime run in Mexico, and on Thursday night Cienfuegos was taken into custody by the American authorities at the Los Angeles airport while traveling with his family.Even for Mexico, a country often inured to the unrelenting violence and corruption that have gripped it for years, the arrest was nothing less than extraordinary, piercing the veil of invincibility that the nation's armed forces have long enjoyed.Cienfuegos, Mexico's defense minister from 2012 to 2018, is being charged with laundering money and trafficking heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana from late 2015 through early 2017, according to an indictment unsealed in the Eastern District of New York on Friday.The charges are the result of a multiyear sting that investigators called Operation Padrino. Officials say that Cienfuegos helped the H-2 cartel, a criminal group that committed horrific acts of violence as part of its drug smuggling business, with its maritime shipments. In exchange for lucrative payouts, officials say, Cienfuegos also directed military operations away from the cartel and toward its rivals.The news not only casts a pall over Mexico's fight against organized crime, but also underscores the extent of corruption at the highest levels of government. Cienfuegos was defense minister throughout the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who left office two years ago.The damage to Mexico is hard to overstate. The general's arrest comes only 10 months after another top Mexican official -- who once led the Mexican equivalent of the FBI -- was indicted in New York on charges of taking bribes while in office to protect the Sinaloa drug cartel, one of Mexico's most powerful criminal mafias.That official, Genaro Garcia Luna, served as the head of Mexico's Federal Investigation Agency from 2001 to 2005, and for the next six years was Mexico's secretary of public security, a Cabinet-level position. In that role, he had the task of helping the president at the time, Felipe Calderon, create the nation's strategy to battle drug cartels.If the men are convicted, it means that two of the highest-ranking and most widely respected commanders ever to oversee the war on drugs in Mexico were working with organized crime -- helping the very cartels that continue to kill record numbers of Mexicans.The two cases call into question the American role in the drug war as well. For years, U.S. officials have helped shape and fund Mexico's strategies, and they have relied on their Mexican counterparts for operations, intelligence and broad security cooperation. If the allegations hold up, some of those same Mexican leaders were playing a double game."The difficulty in working in Mexico where you have this level of corruption is that you never really know who you're working with," said Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. "There's always a concern that Mexican law enforcement could compromise you, or compromise an informant, or compromise an investigation."Both Garcia Luna and Cienfuegos served at the top of the government when homicides spiked to historic levels, drug cartels waged war and military operations were expanded.A mercurial presence, Cienfuegos symbolized the prominent role the military plays in Mexico. Commanders are granted an extraordinary amount of autonomy, seldom bowing to political pressures and typically enjoying protection by the president."There has never been a minister of defense in Mexico arrested," said Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister. "The minister of defense in Mexico is a guy that not only runs the army and is a military man, but he reports directly to the president. There is no one above him except the president."Because of that power and autonomy, analysts and others have long suspected some top leaders of corruption. But with their elevated status, no one dared investigate -- at least not in Mexico."This is a huge deal," said Alejandro Madrazo, a professor at CIDE, a university in Mexico. "The military has become way more corrupt and way more abusive since the war on drugs was declared, and for the first time they may not be untouchable -- but not by the Mexican government, by the American government."On Friday, responding to the arrest, Mexico's current president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, both defended the military and decried the bad actors in it. But it was unclear whether Lopez Obrador would step back from his heavy reliance on the military, whose role has expanded during his administration to include everything from construction to public security.Mexico's military has been a central part of the nation's domestic security since the crackdown on drug cartels began in 2006, with soldiers deployed to regions overrun by organized crime. The secretary of defense oversees that effort.The use of soldiers trained in combat but not in policing has brought problems well beyond corruption. With the military front and center in the fight against narcotics trafficking, the Mexican government has never built an effective police force.In December 2017, Mexico passed a security law cementing the military's role in fighting the drug war, outraging the United Nations and human rights groups. They warned that the measure would lead to abuses, leave troops on the streets indefinitely and militarize police activities for the foreseeable future.Cienfuegos played a crucial role in convincing politicians to pass the law, which gave the military legal permission to do what it had been doing for a decade without explicit authorization. At one point, he threatened to withdraw his troops from the streets, arguing they were not trained for domestic security and were exposed legally.But Cienfuegos also defended the military, saying it was the only institution effectively confronting organized crime. As drug violence rocketed, he asked again and again that the federal government provide a legal framework to protect the forces."Today the crimes we are dealing with are of another level and importance; they involve a lot of people, sometimes entire families, and we are acting without a legal frame," Cienfuegos said in March 2018. "Without it, our help is impeded."The military has repeatedly been singled out for human rights abuses and the use of excessive force, including accusations of extrajudicial killings that dogged the armed forces throughout Cienfuegos' tenure as defense minister.His arrest does not appear to have been a joint operation with the Mexican government. It reaches back to an American-led investigation in late 2013 of a Mexican drug cartel run by Fausto Isidro Meza Flores, a successor to the once powerful Beltran-Leyva drug organization, according to two American law enforcement officials.Even though a group of American agents was able at the time to identify Cienfuegos as a corrupt partner in the Meza Flores organization, there was pushback from other American and Mexican law enforcement agencies, and Cienfuegos was never fully investigated, one of the officials said.But by 2015, the official said, pressure to do something about Cienfuegos increased. At least two separate American wiretaps began to pick up chatter about a powerful underworld figure who was referred to as "Padrino" and was believed to be Cienfuegos.The wiretaps had targeted the Sinaloa cartel and the H-2 cartel, a smaller criminal organization connected to Meza Flores' group, the former official said.The U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn has in recent months become ground zero for cases related to official corruption in Mexico.Prosecutors there have not only charged Garcia Luna and two of his former associates, Ramon Pequeno and Luis Cardenas Palomino, but have also prosecuted Edgar Veytia, the former attorney general of the state of Nayarit. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison last October for conspiring with the H-2 cartel.The case against Cienfuegos helps illustrate in some ways why it has been so difficult for Mexico to take the lead in these investigations.Among the findings by U.S. authorities: Cienfuegos was actively corrupting other Mexican officials by introducing high-level cartel members to those willing to swap bribes for favors.At one point, court records say, he alerted the cartel that there was a U.S. investigation into their activities, prompting them to kill a fellow member they falsely believed to be sharing information with the authorities.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Black immigrants find camaraderie, divide amid protests Posted: 17 Oct 2020 06:13 AM PDT  Inspired by the global protests against systemic racism and police brutality, Nigerian American blogger Nifesimi Akingbe donned a black shirt that read "I am Black history," and began recording a video. Akingbe then went on to list her frustrations about racism in America and directed her message to Black immigrant communities like her own: This is your battle, too. Akingbe, of suburban Baltimore, is among the many young Black immigrants or children of immigrants who say they are speaking out for racial equity while also trying to convince older members of their communities that these issues should matter to them, too.
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| Rural Midwest hospitals struggling to handle virus surge Posted: 17 Oct 2020 06:08 AM PDT  Rural Jerauld County in South Dakota didn't see a single case of the coronavirus for more than two months stretching from June to August. "All of a sudden it hit, and as it does, it just exploded," said Dr. Tom Dean, one of just three doctors who work in the county. As the brunt of the virus has blown into the Upper Midwest and northern Plains, the severity of outbreaks in rural communities has come into focus.
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| Exclusive: Interpol facing Parliamentary inquiry over concerns UAE 'torture' chief may get top job Posted: 17 Oct 2020 05:42 AM PDT  Russia is a "criminal state" which is "abusing" the powers of Interpol, MPs will be told this week, amid concerns that a UAE security chief accused of presiding over 'torture' will become the organisation's new head. The global police and crime organisation is facing a Parliamentary inquiry over concerns that it is vulnerable to manipulation by 'rogue' member states including Russia, China and the UAE. The Foreign Affairs Committee will hear from Bill Browder, the British financier and arch critic of Vladimir Putin, who has been subject to eight interpol arrest notices by Russia on "trumped up" charges over the 'poisoning' of a Kremlin whistleblower - all of which have been refused. Interpol should "suspend access of serial abusers like Russia to its databases," he will say on Tuesday. "Britain should work with its allies – the US, Canada, Australia, the European Union, and others on withholding funds if Interpol refuses to reform," he will add. The organisation has come under increased scrutiny after its president Meng Hongwei was disappeared by Chinese authorities and sentenced to 13 years in prison on bribery charges in 2018. Russia's Alexander Prokopchuk was lined up as a presumptive successor but has been accused of abusing Red Notices. His election was likened to "putting a fox in charge of the henhouse" by US officials who helped block his leadership bid. Earlier this month, the Telegraph revealed that a United Arab Emirates security head accused of presiding over the 'torture' of a British academic is a frontrunner for the role, and could be elected in December. Major General Nasser Ahmed Al-Raisi has been accused of serious human rights violations in the Middle East, including against British citizens Matthew Hedges and Ali Ahmad, and Interpol has been warned it could lose credibility if he is chosen to be its President. He has never responded to claims. American-born Browder has spent more than a decade fighting to uncover Russian money laundering after once being the country's largest foreign investor. His lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was killed in a Moscow jail in 2009, and Mr Browder pushed through the Magnitsky Act in the US which barred a number of officials from entering America, as well as having their assets frozen.
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| ICC prosecutor arrives in Sudan to discuss Darfur charges Posted: 17 Oct 2020 05:42 AM PDT  The International Criminal Court's prosecutor arrived in Sudan late Saturday to discuss cooperation with local authorities over bringing to trial those internationally wanted for war crimes and genocide in the country's Darfur conflict, the Sudanese official news agency said. Prime Minister Abdallla Hamdok's office said in a statement that ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and other court officials would stay in Sudan until Wednesday.
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| AP FACT CHECK: Trump sees what others do not in the pandemic Posted: 17 Oct 2020 05:33 AM PDT  President Donald Trump sees in the pandemic what he wants to see. Regard for the facts is not a hallmark of Trump's campaign for the Nov. 3 election or of his presidency. As for Trump's claim that he's done an amazing job on the pandemic, that's part of a record in office that voters are judging now and until polls close for the Nov. 3 election.
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| Iran announces its virus death toll passes 30,000 Posted: 17 Oct 2020 03:34 AM PDT  Iran announced Saturday that its death toll from the coronavirus has passed the milestone of 30,000, in what has been the Mideast region's worst outbreak. Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari announced that the total death toll from the outbreak had reached at least 30,123. Iran has been struggling with the coronavirus since announcing its first cases in February, with more than 526,000 confirmed cases to date.
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| New virus restrictions in Europe; Merkel warns of hard days Posted: 17 Oct 2020 03:34 AM PDT  Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans to come together like they did in the spring to slow the spread of the coronavirus as the country posted another daily record of new cases Saturday. Meanwhile, new restrictions went into effect in several other European nations in an effort to staunch the resurgence of the pandemic. In Paris and eight other French cities, restaurants, bars, movie theaters and other establishments were being forced to close no later than 9 p.m. to try to reduce contact among people.
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| For Trump, city where 'bad things happen' looms large Posted: 17 Oct 2020 02:52 AM PDT  When President Donald Trump told the world that "bad things happen in Philadelphia," it was, in part, a blunt assessment of his party's struggles in the nation's sixth-most populous city. For decades, Philadelphia has been the cornerstone of Democratic victories in the battleground state — producing Democratic margins so massive that winning statewide has been a longshot for most Republican presidential candidates.
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| Armenia, Azerbaijan announce new attempt at cease-fire Posted: 17 Oct 2020 02:50 AM PDT  Armenia and Azerbaijan on Saturday announced a new attempt to establish a cease-fire in their conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh starting from midnight, a move that comes a week after a Russia-brokered truce frayed immediately after it took force. Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994. Russia, which has a security pact with Armenia but has cultivated warm ties with Azerbaijan, hosted top diplomats from both countries for more than 10 hours of talks that ended with the initial cease-fire agreement.
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| Can Jacinda Ardern’s Landslide Re-Election Convert Stardom into Concrete Reform? Posted: 17 Oct 2020 02:09 AM PDT  As a Kiwi overseas you soon get used to the questions. From trendy Colombian nightclubs, to dingy departure lounges of East African airports and bustling Turkish bazaars, as soon as people hear you're from New Zealand, they're eager to share their unbridled enthusiasm for Jacinda Ardern."We are so grateful for what she did for the Muslim community," one middle-aged Somalian construction worker told The Daily Beast while sipping coffee in an open-air market in Djibouti. Her celebrity truly reaches all corners of the globe.Even NZ's biggest exports aren't immune. Sam Neill, the face of the global Jurassic Park phenomenon told TIME magazine: "Wherever I go people say, 'You think we could have Jacinda this week? Could we just borrow her for a while?'"Ardern has become celebrated all over the world for her spectacular handling of the coronavirus pandemic and last year's Christchurch mosque shooting. On Saturday early results were showing her overwhelmingly re-elected with around 50% of the vote.So will we finally see the transformational government Kiwis have been promised? When she was first elected PM in 2017, Ardern promised a game-changing government that would create a "fairer, more just New Zealand."On many of her policy pledges, her government has performed poorly.So how do you explain the electoral tidal wave that has swept over New Zealand on Saturday? If early results hold, Labour will hold a majority government for the first time in the history of New Zealand's MMP electoral system. The polls suggested a landslide, but it seems they underplayed it. It is a thumping endorsement of her management of the one issue that has dominated the campaign—Ardern's leadership in the COVID-19 pandemic.In New Zealand, life is already back to normal. Kiwis watch the rest of the world with a mixture of horror and pity. Children pile into schools without worry, young people dance and drink their nights away in packed clubs and bars. Thousands just watched the All Blacks play the Australian rugby team in a packed stadium with not a mask in sight. Social distancing measure considered mandatory in the rest of the world are seen as eccentric here.'Aunty Jacinda,' as she's fondly known, is given full credit for this. She enforced a clear plan that she communicated with efficacy and empathy. "Go hard and go early" was her motto, enlisting the New Zealand population as her "team of 5 million." Eliminate the virus and we could get life back to normal as quickly as possible.While many world leaders dithered over their response to the pandemic, Ardern took decisive action. She ordered one of the world's harshest lockdowns and slammed the borders shut. These tough but effective measures allowed New Zealand to eliminate the virus almost completely. Only tough border restrictions remain. When a local outbreak in August threatened to undo all of this progress, her government snapped into action, locking down Auckland literally overnight. Again, the virus was quashed. She was praised by the World Health Organization, The Lancet, and feted by media all around the world. Bloomberg called it a "masterclass in crisis management." She did all of this as a woman in the macho, male-dominated environment of New Zealand politics, and she turned 40 less than three months ago.Even before COVID-19 hit us, her compassionate and sensitive responses to the horrendous mosque massacre in Christchurch, as well as a volcanic eruption that killed 21 people on White Island, earned her global esteem. It was more than just kind words that marked her responses. Within a week of the shooting she pushed through New Zealand's most significant gun control bill in a generation. Even at the lowest moments of her government, her ratings for personal leadership and her reputation for honesty remained high. The conservative National party by contrast has been treated to a mostly dismal year in opposition and cycled through three leaders in less than two months. Yet her ability to lead in a crisis is matched by a record on public policy that is decidedly mixed. It is hard to recall that less than a year ago, in the same month that she graced the cover of TIME magazine, she fell behind in polls to a deeply disliked opposition leader. Her personal popularity was flagging and major initiatives on climate change, child poverty, infrastructure and affordable housing had floundered. She had promised a 'transformational' government that would change the lives of those left behind in New Zealand society. Auckland, New Zealand's biggest city, has some of the most expensive housing anywhere in the world, which has precipitated a large cost of living crisis. As it has accelerated in prices, New Zealand property has become a magnet for well-heeled overseas investors.In her last election campaign in 2017, Ardern promised strong action on affordable housing. Chief among these schemes was Kiwibuild, a well-meaning if politically naïve scheme to build 100,000 affordable houses in ten years, which has now been abandoned. Construction experts in New Zealand always thought it was a pipe dream, but the promise was politically popular. Another infrastructure project, a light rail system in Auckland, has struggled to get off the ground.The COVID crisis has allowed Ardern to focus the election on her leadership style, and in a world gone mad, Jacinda's empathy, pragmatism and frankly her sanity give Kiwis great comfort. Our leader does not suggest that the virus will disappear, maybe with the help of a little bleach. Nor do we have a fiendishly complex set of restrictions that vary so much even the British Prime Minister who makes the rules can't tell you what they are.Yet there are also a number of deeply rooted issues in New Zealand society that its international reputation abroad has allowed to be covered up. New Zealand has by far the largest teen suicide and childhood obesity rates in the 41 countries of the developed world. In terms of health and wellbeing, defined by UNICEF as "neonatal mortality, suicide, mental health, drunkenness and teen pregnancy" it languishes with Bulgaria and Chile in the bottom four. These are some statistics you never see in New Zealand's glossy tourist brochures. The problems affect all of society, but primarily fall on disadvantaged youth from Maori and Pacific Island backgrounds.In her first election, Ardern promised a $5.3 billion New Zealand dollar (around $3 billion USD) 'Families Package' to cut child poverty by 50 per cent over her parliament. Yet the numbers remain stubborn.There has been no statistically significant reduction in child poverty since Labour took office. Too many of New Zealand's poorest children still go to school hungry. There is still the odd Jacinda-skeptic, even if most of the public ones are just the politicians trying to run against her. They grumble that she was playing the pandemic on easy mode—an isolated country with a small, spread out population made it easy to slam shut the borders and eliminate the virus. She was too young and inexperienced they claim, having ascended to lead the Labour party merely four weeks before the 2017 election. This forced her to make pie in the sky policy pledges with little knowledge of how they would play out in practice. Perhaps Ardern's biggest self-criticism would be over climate change. A millennial woman seemed ideally placed to tackle what she described as the "crisis of our generation." Climate change was, she said, "our nuclear free moment." This meant a clear chance for New Zealand to use its moral leadership on an issue of conscience and be an example to the world. After a series of compromises both with her coalition partners and the National Party, she ended up with a tough sounding Zero Carbon Bill that experts say will do almost nothing to reduce New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions. The climate crisis has barely appeared as an issue in the leadership campaign. What three years ago was the world's great existential crisis has been relegated by more pressing concerns. Professor Bronwyn Hayward, a lead author on the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report and a political scientist at the University of Canterbury, says NZ politicians have chosen to play this election safe. "It isn't just Jacinda, both major parties have avoided structural reform and are competing for the center ground," she told The Daily Beast. "By and large the campaign has been very conventional, thinking about economic growth as the driver of the COVID recovery, for Labour an emphasis on investment on education and training with some concessions to low carbon work, and a gradual transition to some greener energy. But policy wise, she is really an incrementalist." Ardern has earned global acclaim and serious political power at home with her quick response to the world's greatest pandemic in a century. Now she has a chance to cure the epidemics of poverty and inequality that have plagued New Zealand society for generations. Professor Hayward says: "After tonight, once we settle the election, the really hard work starts."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Merkel urges Germans to reduce contacts and travel to curb coronavirus Posted: 17 Oct 2020 01:50 AM PDT |
| Transit shutdowns fail to deter Thai pro-democracy protests Posted: 17 Oct 2020 01:41 AM PDT  Pro-democracy activists in Thailand staged a fourth straight day of high-profile protests in the capital on Saturday, thwarting efforts by the authorities to stop them, including a shutdown of the city's mass transit systems. Unlike protests a day earlier, in which police used a water cannon to disperse protesters, Saturday's demonstrations were peaceful, with no reports of any clashes by the time participants started heading home in the evening. The protesters are calling for Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha to leave office, the constitution to be amended to make it more democratic and the nation's monarchy to undergo reform.
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| Suspect in teacher's beheading in France was Chechen teen Posted: 17 Oct 2020 01:05 AM PDT  A suspect shot dead by police after the beheading of a history teacher near Paris was an 18-year-old Chechen refugee unknown to intelligence services who posted a grisly claim of responsibility on social media minutes after the attack, officials said Saturday. France's anti-terrorism prosecutor's office said authorities investigating the killing of Samuel Paty in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Friday arrested nine suspects, including the teen's grandfather, parents and 17-year-old brother. Paty had discussed caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad with his class, leading to threats, police officials said.
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| After Lebanese revolt's fury, waning protests face long road Posted: 17 Oct 2020 12:05 AM PDT  A year ago, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese took to the streets protesting taxes and a rapidly deteriorating economic crisis. A spontaneous and hopeful nationwide movement was born, denouncing an entire political establishment that had for decades pushed Lebanon toward collapse. Today, as crises multiply and the country dives deeper into uncertainty and poverty, protests seem to have petered out.
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| Leftist versus hardliner in Turkish Cypriot leadership vote Posted: 16 Oct 2020 11:18 PM PDT  Turkish Cypriots vote on Sunday in a leadership runoff that could decide whether they retain more control over their own affairs or steer even closer to an increasingly domineering Turkey. Veteran incumbent Mustafa Akinci, 72, backs the long-held federal framework for a deal with rival Greek Cypriots to reunify ethnically divided Cyprus.
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| Low-key Democrat tries to hang onto Senate seat in Michigan Posted: 16 Oct 2020 10:16 PM PDT  Call him low-key, understated, maybe even "boring." First-term Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan is betting voters care more about his effectiveness, as he desperately fights to keep a seat his party is counting on to take the Senate majority. The bespectacled, bearded 61-year-old former investment adviser is a rare Senate candidate this cycle, a Democrat running in a battleground state Donald Trump carried in 2016.
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| Trump plays down virus as he steps up pitch for second term Posted: 16 Oct 2020 10:04 PM PDT  Gone are the days when President Donald Trump held forth daily at the White House podium flanked by members of his coronavirus task force. The White House won't say when Trump last met with the task force. In the week since he emerged from coronavirus isolation, Trump has demonstrated new determination to minimize the threat of the virus that has killed more than 215,000 Americans and complicated his chances of winning another four years in the White House.
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| International Law Can’t Solve the Greco-Turkish Island Problem Posted: 16 Oct 2020 10:00 PM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Kastellorizo is one of those places that might become a cause for war even though most people couldn't find it on a map.The combatants would be Greece and Turkey, formally NATO "allies" but in reality perennial foes since the sloppy unraveling of the Ottoman Empire. And their war would be less about the island as such than about the Mediterranean waters said to belong to it. That's because underneath the sea bed, there may be lots of oil and gas.Kastellorizo derives from "red castle," after its landmark as seen in the evening light. Known to the Turks as Meis, the island is a charming place inhabited by a few hundred people. After a lively history — Byzantine, Maltese, Ottoman and so forth — it was transferred in 1947 by the victors of World War II from the defeated Axis power Italy to Greece. This all but guaranteed trouble forever after.Just look at a map. Kastellorizo is far away from mainland Greece and also quite distant from Greece's Aegean islands. But it's literally swimming distance from the Turkish coast. At the risk of exaggeration, from Ankara's point of view, it's a bit as though an international conference had transferred New York's Staten Island to China.This situation wasn't so bad as long as not much was going on in the open seas south of the coastline shared by Turkey and Kastellorizo. But now hydrocarbons are being discovered all around the eastern Mediterranean. The question has become: Who will get to drill in this part of the sea, Greece or Turkey?This is where international law gets complicated. Greece claims much of those waters, citing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, in force since 1994. UNCLOS generally foresees countries asserting their sovereignty over 12 nautical miles (22 km) from their coasts. Beyond these "territorial waters," they also get another 12 nautical miles as a "contiguous zone" of control. And they can establish an "exclusive economic zone" for 200 nautical miles from shore. This also includes the "continental shelf" — that is, the seabed below and whatever oil and gas may be in it.The Greeks, who are signatories to UNCLOS, therefore argue that their little outlier of Kastellorizo should project its own 200 nautical miles southward. After connecting some lines to other Greek islands, they want a map that would cut the exclusive economic zone Turkey desires roughly in half.Unsurprisingly, Turkey isn't happy about that. And — like the U.S., incidentally — it never signed UNCLOS. It's still expected to obey what's known as "customary" law, which is basically the weight of precedent and established practice. But it can't be dragged to an international tribunal against its will.That's too bad in a way, because UNCLOS is actually quite flexible in such circumstances, says Robin Churchill, an expert at Scotland's University of Dundee. In 2012, for instance, a court settled a similar dispute between Nicaragua and Colombia by granting only the 12-nautical-mile territorial zone to several Colombian islands that would have unduly sliced up the Nicaraguan economic zone. The outcome was accepted as "equitable."The eastern Mediterranean is a harder case. UNCLOS, also dubbed a "constitution for the oceans," runs into limitations in such a crowded sea. All the continental shelves of the surrounding countries overlap. And those nations share histories of ancient grudges. The Greco-Turkish conflict, for instance, has a tortuous offshoot on the island of Cyprus, where an ethnically Greek republic in the south and an ethnically Turkish one in the north can't agree on anything, except that they also want that gas.The worst way forward is the one currently in the offing: a cynical game that may eventually be decided by brute force. Greece is doing a deal with Egypt that conflicts with another one between Turkey and Libya, and so on. Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this week sent, yet again, a research ship accompanied by navy frigates into the contested waters. At one point this summer the Turks rammed a Greek ship, at another they were stared down by a French frigate and two fighter jets.It's tempting for Europe to simply line up behind Greece, as my colleague Ferdinando Giugliano urges. It's a fellow member of the European Union, after all. By contrast, Erdogan is the region's bete noir, stirring up trouble from Syria to Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, while cracking down on civil liberties at home.Unreasonable and aggressive as Erdogan is, however, the West should admit that Turkey has half a point when it complains that the Greek position on Kastellorizo is "maximalist." Based on the spirit of UNCLOS, says Churchill, the cutting up of Turkey's exclusive economic zone to such an extent seems unfair. To avoid war, therefore, the West should make Erdogan an offer.One idea I like is to use Europe's own experience after World War II as inspiration. In the 1950s, old enemies France and Germany placed coal and steel — the industries of warfare — under a joint authority that guaranteed shared access and benefits. Out of this "Schuman plan" grew what is today the EU. And what coal and steel were then, oil and gas are now.Something similar could work in the eastern Mediterranean, if only its ancient enemies could also rise above their feuding and grasp their responsibility to prevent war. With luck, Europe will transition from brown to green energy fast enough so that nobody will even need all that dirty stuff under the sparkling blue sea anyway.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Andreas Kluth is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist. He's the author of "Hannibal and Me." 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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| GOP senator mispronounces Kamala Harris' name at Trump rally Posted: 16 Oct 2020 06:28 PM PDT  Republican Sen. David Perdue mocked Kamala Harris, his Senate colleague and the Democratic vice presidential nominee, on Friday by repeatedly mispronouncing her name at a Georgia rally for President Donald Trump. A spokesperson for Perdue said the first-term senator "didn't mean anything by it." Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are among the top Republicans who have repeatedly mispronounced it.
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| White House: Tennessee mask mandate 'must be implemented' Posted: 16 Oct 2020 04:33 PM PDT  The White House quietly told Tennessee early this week that "a statewide mask mandate must be implemented" to curb its growing spread of COVID-19, strong instructions that the White House and governor did not discuss publicly before the report emerged in a records request. The Oct. 11 state report for Tennessee, where Republican Gov. Bill Lee has let counties decide whether to require masks in public, first came to light in a records request by WUOT-FM. The Associated Press obtained the report from the Knox County Health Department afterward.
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| New Zealand's Ardern wins 2nd term in election landslide Posted: 16 Oct 2020 04:02 PM PDT  New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won a second term in office Saturday in an election landslide of historic proportions. With most votes counted, Ardern's liberal Labour Party was winning 49% of the vote compared to 27% for its main challenger, the conservative National Party. Labour was on target to win an outright majority of the seats in Parliament, something that hasn't happened since New Zealand implemented a proportional voting system 24 years ago.
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