| Merkel, German states consider tougher COVID-measures -document Posted: 15 Nov 2020 04:22 PM PST |
| Buying a baby on Nairobi's black market Posted: 15 Nov 2020 03:58 PM PST  Africa Eye uncovers a thriving market for children stolen to order in Kenya's capital.
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| Tigray crisis: Why Ethiopia is spiralling out of control Posted: 15 Nov 2020 03:26 PM PST  The warring sides in Tigray see history very differently, and that could cost tens of thousands of lives.
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| The foods that do the most damage to our climate Posted: 15 Nov 2020 01:00 PM PST  Emissions from food systems around the world are stopping us from hitting key climate change targets of lower temperatures, according to a recent report in Science. A conservative estimate by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations puts agriculture's contribution to total greenhouse gas emissions at 14.5 percent. It's easy to point a finger at the massive scale of livestock or rice production, two enterprises that pump large amounts of methane into the atmosphere as a byproduct.
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| Britain's Johnson in self-isolation; has no virus symptoms Posted: 15 Nov 2020 12:54 PM PST  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is self-isolating after being told he came into contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus, officials said Sunday. "He will carry on working from Downing Street, including on leading the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic," a statement from his office said. Johnson met with a small group of lawmakers for about a half-hour on Thursday, including one who subsequently developed coronavirus symptoms and tested positive.
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| AP FACT CHECK: Trump wrong on Georgia voter signature checks Posted: 15 Nov 2020 12:48 PM PST  President Donald Trump has wrongly claimed that Georgia election officials are unable to verify signatures on absentee ballot envelopes because of a legal settlement known as a consent decree. THE FACTS: There is nothing in the consent decree that prevents Georgia election clerks from scrutinizing signatures.
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| Boris Johnson's self-isolation order overshadows agenda 'reset' Posted: 15 Nov 2020 12:33 PM PST  Boris Johnson has entered 14 days of self-isolation after coming into contact with an MP who had coronavirus, throwing his plans for a "reset" of his Downing Street operation into disarray. The Prime Minister had intended to set out his "personal ambition" for the country this week as he sought to regain the initiative in the wake of the turmoil in Number 10. But instead he must spend the next fortnight in his Downing Street flat, cut off from his staff and unable to make planned public appearances. He must also oversee the final days of Brexit trade deal negotiations from his flat. Mr Johnson was contacted by NHS Test and Trace and told that Tory MP Lee Anderson, who attended a meeting in Downing Street on Thursday, had tested positive for Covid-19. The last time Mr Johnson self-isolated he was heavily reliant on Lee Cain, his director of communications, to run his office, but Mr Cain is no longer working in Number 10, having resigned last week. He was told to leave the building on Friday though he is still employed until mid-December. The news will raise fresh questions about the policy of mandatory self-isolation, as the Prime Minister has already had coronavirus and there are so far hardly any cases of anyone in the world getting it twice.
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| Iran says opposition leader tested positive for coronavirus Posted: 15 Nov 2020 11:37 AM PST |
| Boris Johnson's chief of staff will not be an MP with their own supporters, say insiders Posted: 15 Nov 2020 11:15 AM PST  Boris Johnson's chief of staff should be a free agent without their own supporters, Number 10 insiders have said, amid concerns about Sajid Javid forming a new faction in Downing Street if he was appointed in the role. Following a week of infighting in Downing Street that ended with the resignation of Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain, Mr Johnson is looking for a chief of staff who can help unite his party and heal apparent divisions between backbenchers and Number 10. Mr Javid, the former Chancellor who ran against Mr Johnson in last year's Tory leadership election, was tipped for the role amid suggestions his experience in Government and on the Tory back benches would give MPs an ally in Downing Street. But officials are said to be concerned Mr Javid would come with an existing group of supporters and detractors in Parliament. Mr Javid was endorsed in last year's leadership race by Jeremy Wright and Caroline Nokes, who both served in Theresa May's Government, and Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader. Although a decision on the role is thought to be some way off, Mr Johnson is minded to choose a popular Conservative with a clean slate, sources suggested on Sunday. A senior Tory MP on Friday warned Mr Javid would be seen as a "person with an agenda of their own" rather than a Boris Johnson loyalist. It is possible that Mr Johnson will appoint a sitting MP in the role, but an unelected official with the support of Tory members is thought to be the more likely choice. Among the other frontrunners are Nikki Da Costa, Downing Street's director of legislative affairs, who orchestrated Mr Johnson's prorogation of Parliament in a bid to pass his Brexit deal. Ms Da Costa is a Brexit supporter but not a member of the so-called "Vote Leave" club of officials who worked on the 2016 referendum campaign under Mr Cummings. Matthew Elliot, who was the campaign's chief executive, is also thought to be in the frame. Henry Cook, Michael Gove's special advisor, has been tipped for the role, and is thought to stand a chance of uniting factions in the party. He is considered an ally of Carrie Symonds, who spoke out against Mr Cummings and Mr Cain, who resigned as Downing Street Director of Communications last week. David Canzini and Mark Fullbrook, who are both close allies of Sir Lynton Crosby, a political strategist linked to Mr Johnson, are considered possible candidates for the job. Mr Johnson has asked his chief strategic adviser, Lord Udny-Lister, to be his new "interim chief of staff". Lord Udny-Lister plans to leave Government in the new year, suggesting Mr Johnson will need to appoint a permanent official before January.
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| SpaceX launches 2nd crew, regular station crew flights begin Posted: 15 Nov 2020 10:07 AM PST  SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on Sunday on the first full-fledged taxi flight for NASA by a private company. The Falcon rocket thundered into the night from Kennedy Space Center with three Americans and one Japanese, the second crew to be launched by SpaceX. It is due to reach the space station late Monday and remain there until spring.
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| Shepherd Bushiri: Preacher flees South Africa ahead of fraud trial Posted: 15 Nov 2020 10:01 AM PST  The self-styled prophet says he skipped bail and left South Africa because he had received death threats.
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| Moldova election could see shift away from Moscow and first female president taking power Posted: 15 Nov 2020 09:59 AM PST  Moldovans on Sunday voted in a presidential election that will determine whether the ex-Soviet nation remains allied with Russia or seeks closer ties with the European Union. Exit polls put centre-right, pro-EU candidate Maia Sandu in the lead after she won a surprise victory in the first round vote two weeks ago, forcing Kremlin-backed incumbent Igor Dodon into a run-off. Moscow has been vocal in its support for Mr Dodon, with Russian President Vladimir Putin making a personal appeal to Moldovans last month to return the leader for a second term. The Russian intelligence service has meanwhile accused the US of preparing for a "revolution" in Moldova and backing protests in the event of a Mr Dodon win. The vote comes amid unrest in what Russia traditionally considers its field of influence, with mass demonstrations in Belarus against the Kremlin-allied dictator Alexander Lukashenko, and popular protests bringing down the leadership of Kyrgyzstan. But analysts say the economy and corruption are more likely to influence Moldovan voters' decisions than geopolitical concerns. Moldova, already one of the poorest countries in Europe, has seen its economy battered by the coronavirus pandemic, following a number of political crises and corruption scandals. Reports of voter fraud have tainted previous elections in the country of 3.5 million, wedged between Romania and Ukraine, and drawn tens of thousands out onto the streets to protest. Ms Sandu, an ex-prime minister who would be Moldova's first female president, has raised the spectre of fraud again in this election. A former economist for the World Bank, Ms Sandu wants the country to join the European Union and has promised to defend Moldova's interests against Russia. She is popular among the many Moldovans who have left the country to work abroad, whose support gave her the edge over Mr Dodon in the first round of voting. Mr Dodon and his rival have traded insults throughout the campaign, with the president accusing Ms Sandu of being "hysterical", and the challenger in turn calling him a "great thief". They ran against each other in 2016, with Mr Dodon winning in a second round.
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| Anis Rahmani: Head of a major Algerian media group jailed Posted: 15 Nov 2020 09:24 AM PST  He is the latest in a series of powerful figures in the ousted president's entourage to be jailed.
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| Allegra Stratton attacks 'unpleasant' Downing Street officials following Cummings resignation Posted: 15 Nov 2020 09:12 AM PST  The new face of Downing Street, Allegra Stratton, has criticised a group of Boris Johnson's former advisers for treating people "discourteously and unpleasantly", following the exit of Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain from Number 10. Ms Stratton, a former journalist who has been selected by the Prime Minister to front Downing Street's televised news briefings, is a key member of the anti-Cummings faction of Mr Johnson's administration. Alongside Carrie Symonds, Mr Johnson's girlfriend, Ms Stratton objected to a culture of negative briefing by Downing Street officials. Ms Stratton was left in tears on Saturday after briefings from sources loyal to Mr Cummings and Mr Cain suggested she had orchestrated a coup against them. Other briefings suggested Ms Stratton was not the Prime Minister's first choice to fill the Downing Street press secretary role. She told the Observer: "I am upset because I was only ever trying to do the right thing by the country. And the country does not want to be run by people in No 10 who treat people discourteously and unpleasantly." Another source in the Cummings camp revealed Ms Symonds was privately nicknamed "Princess Nut Nut" by some officials. Open warfare between rival factions in Downing Street began after it was reported that Mr Johnson intended to report Mr Cain as his chief of staff, a powerful position at the Prime Minister's side. Ms Stratton, Ms Symonds and other advisers objected to Mr Cain's appointment, while Mr Cummings supported it, The Telegraph understands. Mr Cain is a member of the so-called "Vote Leave" faction of Downing Street officials, who know Mr Johnson and each other from the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign, which Mr Cummings led. The dispute between rival groups ultimately led to Mr Cain and Mr Cummings' resignation, although it is understood both may continue to work for the Government from home until the end of the year. Ms Stratton's comments on Sunday were the first she has made publicly on the subject. Friends of the adviser - who previously worked on the image of the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak - said she believed there was a "laddish" culture in Downing Street. Mr Cain denies briefing journalists against her. Mr Johnson's choice of a new chief of staff will affect the balance of power in Downing Street after the apparent victory of the Symonds/Stratton faction over the "Vote Leave" group. The Prime Minister was on Sunday urged to appoint a figure that would be popular with his own backbenchers, many of whom have looked on in dismay at the infighting in Downing Street at a crucial point in the Government's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Sir Charles Walker, vice-chair of the 1922 committee of Tory MPs, told Times Radio: "I'm meant to pick up on colleagues' concerns and the concerns were that actually we don't feel part of this journey and that's not a good place for a government to be in. "When you don't feel part of a journey problems start to arise. "It's just a feeling that there are people at Number 10 who are interested in what we think and want to relay what we think back to the Prime Minister who can't always be in the tea room and around."
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| 'We may not succeed', says UK's chief Brexit trade negotiator Posted: 15 Nov 2020 09:08 AM PST  The UK's chief negotiator has warned "we may not succeed" in securing a Brexit trade deal as he made a surprise arrival in Brussels for renewed talks. Lord Frost signalled that he would not be deviating from Boris Johnson's "red lines" amid speculation that the departure of Dominic Cummings from No 10 could herald concessions. He said there had been "some progress in a positive direction" but admitted there were still "significant" differences between the UK and EU on fishing and the level playing field. His tone was echoed by Simon Coveney, the Irish Foreign Minister, who said a deal was "very doable" but also "very difficult" and could be scuppered by deadlock over fishing, with the EU demanding 50 per cent of the catch in British waters and the UK sticking at 20 per cent. Mr Coveney also repeated the EU's warning that it would not ratify any deal unless clauses in the Internal Market Bill overriding the Brexit divorce terms were dropped, although he also suggested that issue will "disappear" if there is a wider trade deal.
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| Algerian president finishes virus treatment, undergoes tests Posted: 15 Nov 2020 08:54 AM PST  Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has finished his treatment for COVID-19 in an undisclosed location in Germany, and is undergoing medical tests, his office said Sunday. Amid growing concern in Algeria about the 74-year-old president's health, his office issued a statement Sunday saying: "The medical team accompanying him confirms that the president has completed the recommended treatment protocol after having contracted COVID-19, and is currently undergoing medical tests." The statement didn't provide details about his condition or his location, or indicate when Tebboune might return to Algeria.
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| Her Abuse Was a 'Family Matter,' Until It Went Live Posted: 15 Nov 2020 08:38 AM PST  Lhamo, a Tibetan farmer in southwestern China, lived her life mostly outdoors and shared it online, posting videos of herself cooking, singing and picking herbs in the mountains around her village. By this fall, she had about 200,000 followers, many of whom praised her as cheerful and hardworking.Over 400 of them were watching one evening in mid-September as Lhamo, 30, streamed a video live from her kitchen on Douyin, the Chinese version of the TikTok app. Suddenly, a man stormed in and Lhamo screamed. Then the screen went dark.When Lhamo's sister Dolma arrived at the hospital a few hours later, she found Lhamo struggling to breathe, her body covered with burns. The police in Jinchuan County, where she lived, are investigating Lhamo's ex-husband on suspicion that he doused her with gasoline and set her on fire.Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times"She looked like a piece of charcoal," said Dolma, who, along with her sister and many other Tibetans, goes by one name. "He burned almost all her skin off."Lhamo died two weeks later.Her case, one of several that have gained national attention this year, reflects the shortcomings of China's legal system in protecting women from domestic violence -- even when they repeatedly seek help, as Lhamo did.Public outrage has helped some get justice, including a woman in Henan province who was denied a divorce until she posted video evidence of her abuse. But for many women like Lhamo it comes too late.In July, a man in the eastern city of Hangzhou was arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife after her dismembered remains were found in a communal septic tank. Late last month, video footage went viral that appeared to show a man in Shanxi province beating his wife to death in front of bystanders.More than 900 women have died at the hands of their husbands or partners since China's law against domestic violence was enacted in 2016, according to Beijing Equality, a women's rights group.The domestic violence law promised police investigations and easier access to restraining orders, but enforcement is spotty and punishments are light in a society that stigmatizes divorce and pressures victims of abuse to keep silent. Activists say many police officers are not properly trained to handle domestic violence cases. In the countryside, where Lhamo was from, victims often lack social support networks and are less educated about their rights.Just one day after Lhamo's death, Xi Jinping, China's top leader, told a U.N. conference on women that the "protection of women's rights and interests must become a national commitment."The Chinese internet seized on the speech. And soon, people were calling for stronger enforcement of the domestic violence law using the hashtag LhamoAct. Within a day, the hashtag had been censored on Weibo, one of China's most popular social media platforms. Other hashtags condemned the failure of the police to prevent Lhamo's murder, including StopNotActing and PunishNotActing.Wan Miaoyan, a women's rights lawyer in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, said she hoped the backlash from Lhamo's case would result in better enforcement of the law."But why does it take a tragedy and a victim to sacrifice herself in such a bloody way before we make progress on law enforcement?" she said.Lhamo was from a remote village in the region of Aba, called Ngaba by Tibetans. Born into poverty, she made a living picking herbs in the mountains. As a child, she was kind and optimistic, her sister said. When Lhamo was 18, she met a man named Tang Lu from a nearby village. Before long they were married, and Lhamo moved in with his family and gave birth to two boys, who are now 3 and 12.Dolma said she had seen bruises on her sister's face and body many times over the years. Lhamo often fled to their father's house to recover from her injuries, which Dolma said included a dislocated elbow.Tang did not respond to multiple messages on his Douyin account asking for comment. Dolma said she did not have phone numbers for him or his relatives.Lhamo divorced Tang in March. But he immediately pushed her to remarry, Dolma said, threatening to kill their children if she refused. Lhamo called the police twice but they ignored her pleas for help, her sister said. The couple remarried.Two weeks later, when Lhamo went to the police again after Tang tried to hurt her and Dolma, the authorities said that since she had chosen to remarry him, "this is your personal family matter." The officer said there was nothing they could do, according to Dolma.The Jinchuan County police department did not respond to a request for comment.In May, Dolma said, Tang tried to choke Lhamo and threatened her with a knife.She sought help from the local chapter of the All-China Women's Federation, the government agency in charge of protecting women's rights. Dolma said her sister cried later as she recounted when an official dismissed her injuries, saying other women were worse off.An employee at the Jinchuan County Women's Federation confirmed that Lhamo had visited the office and said there was an investigation underway.Lhamo refused to give up, Dolma said. She filed for divorce again and hid with relatives as she waited for court approval.In early June, Tang went looking for Lhamo at Dolma's house. When Dolma wouldn't tell him where her sister was, he hit her in the left eye. Dolma was hospitalized for almost two weeks for bone fractures, according to a copy of the medical report viewed by The New York Times. She said she reported the incident to the police but they only briefly questioned Tang and let him go.A court granted the couple's second divorce a few weeks later, awarding Tang full custody of their two sons. Lhamo spent most of the summer deep in the mountains picking herbs. On Sept. 12, two days before the attack that would kill her, she posted a video saying she was coming home.Tang, who was also severely burned, is being investigated on suspicion of homicide. That is cold comfort for Dolma."It's too late to talk about these things now," she said. "If they had taken it seriously at that time and disciplined or punished him, we wouldn't be in this situation today."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Azerbaijan hits out at Armenians burning their homes as they flee conquered territory Posted: 15 Nov 2020 08:37 AM PST  Azerbaijan on Sunday postponed taking control of a territory ceded by Armenian forces in a cease-fire agreement, but denounced civilians leaving the area for burning houses and committing what it called "ecological terror." The cease-fire ended six weeks of intense fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region and territories outside its formal borders that had been under the control of Armenian forces since 1994. The agreement calls for Azerbaijan to take control of the outlying territories. The first, Kelbajar, was to be turned over on Sunday. But Azerbaijan agreed to delay the takeover until Nov 25 after a request from Armenia. Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev said worsening weather conditions made the withdrawal of Armenian forces and civilians difficult along the single road through mountainous territory that connects Kelbajar with Armenia. After the agreement was announced early Tuesday, many distraught residents preparing to evacuate set their houses ablaze to make them unusable to Azerbaijanis who would move in. "Armenians are damaging the environment and civilian objects. Environmental damage, ecological terror must be prevented," Mr Hajiyev said. Prior to a separatist war that ended in 1994, Kelbajar was populated almost exclusively by Azerbaijanis. But the territory then came under Armenian control and Armenians moved in. Azerbaijan deemed their presence illegal. "The placement and settlement of the Armenian population in the occupied territory of the Kelbajar region was illegal ... All illegal settlements there must be evicted," Mr Hajiyev said. The imminent renewal of Azerbaijani control raised wide concerns about the fate of Armenian cultural and religious sites, particularly Dadivank, a noted Armenian Apostolic Church monastery that dates back to the ninth century. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev assured Russian President Vladimir Putin, who negotiated the cease-fire and is sending about 2,000 peacekeeping troops, that Christian churches would be protected. "Christians of Azerbaijan will have access to these churches," Mr Aliyev's office said in statement Sunday. Azerbaijan is about 95 per cent Muslim and Armenia is overwhelmingly Christian. Azerbaijan accuses Armenians of desecrating Muslim sites during their decades of control of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding territories, including housing livestock in mosques.
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| Biden Wants to Be the Climate President. He'll Need Some Help From Xi Jinping. Posted: 15 Nov 2020 08:24 AM PST  If Joe Biden wants to be known as the first climate president of the United States, he will have to engage his biggest rival on the world stage: President Xi Jinping of China.Biden and Xi, though, are locked in a very difficult relationship that makes climate cooperation a bit like a couple in divorce court trying to plan their child's wedding. And, unfortunately for the American president-elect, he won't be starting from a position of strength.Xi's China, which Friday ended days of conspicuous silence on the election result by congratulating Biden, dominates the production of clean energy goods, including solar panels and electric vehicles.Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York TimesThe Chinese president faces none of the domestic political chaos that confronts Biden and potentially impedes the president-elect's ability to implement some of his most ambitious campaign promises on climate change. And Xi has already deflated Biden's ability to project the United States as a climate leader by announcing, in September, an ambitious, albeit vague, target to draw down China's carbon emissions to net-zero by 2060."Kind of trolling the U.S.," said Alex Wang, a law professor at UCLA who follows Chinese climate law and policy.Trolling aside, the world needs China and the United States to get it together in order to minimize the damage of global warming -- and to do it quickly, especially considering the momentum that has been lost because of the coronavirus pandemic. Global climate negotiations that had been scheduled to take place this week in Glasgow, Scotland, where countries were to declare revised targets to tackle climate change, are now postponed by a year because of the virus.China and the United States are indispensable to those negotiations.The countries represent the two biggest economies, two leading military powers and the two biggest sources of the climate problem, together producing 40% of the greenhouse gases that currently go up into the atmosphere and heat the planet to dangerous levels. So how effectively Biden and Xi can pivot their economies away from fossil fuels is crucial to stemming global warming, shaping global markets for clean technologies and nudging other major emitters -- India, Indonesia, Russia and Brazil -- to do their part.But the relationship between the two countries is at its lowest point in a half-century. There's conflict over trade. China's human rights abuses are hard for Washington to ignore, and growing nationalist sentiment in both countries makes diplomacy politically tougher.Kelly Sims Gallagher, who helped organize two major meetings on climate change between former President Barack Obama and Xi, predicted that collaboration would be difficult but not impossible. She said climate change offered Biden and Xi a real opening to work together.Both aspire to take their countries to a net-zero emissions economy by roughly midcentury, noted Gallagher, now a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and both are eager to influence international climate diplomacy. Their converging interests, she and other analysts said, could spur healthy competition over clean energy technology and, in turn, drive down prices of renewable power for the rest of the world."I think it is a genuinely possible area of cooperation," Gallagher said. "The danger is if the United States dithers and fails to get its house in order and China solidifies its market position in clean energy. Then we, the United States, lose the opportunity to benefit our economy and our workers from the clean-energy economy."Analysts of U.S.-China relations said Biden would have to make big moves, fast. He would need to one-up Xi with a more ambitious net-zero target, which means removing from the atmosphere whatever greenhouse gases that the United States emits. He would also have to restore key environmental protection measures gutted by the Trump administration and bolster the U.S. clean energy industry with some combination of regulations and incentives.Biden promised to do all this in his campaign, but many of those promises will be extremely challenging to fulfill if the Senate opposes them. He has signaled that addressing climate change will be one of the centerpieces of a raft of policies, from agriculture to transportation. Biden has also hinted that he would take a tough stance on China on a host of foreign policy issues, and it remains to be seen how effective he can be in bringing traditional U.S. allies into line for a united front on China.Perhaps his toughest agenda item, several analysts said, is how Biden can recast America's role in the world, including what alternatives the country can offer to the fossil fuel projects that Xi supports through his signature global infrastructure building program, known as the Belt and Road.This week, the Biden transition team said the president-elect had discussed climate change in initial conversations with several European and Asia-Pacific allies. Despite the Chinese Foreign Ministry statement Friday, Xi has not called on Biden since the election.Xi faces his own tests. China's emissions continue to grow, even as those of United States have declined significantly since 2005, though falling short of the reductions that the United States had promised under the Paris accord. China's emissions are on a path to continue growing until 2030; only after that is it expected to decline, and rapidly, according to a government-backed research group.That's nowhere near what's needed to get the world to the ultimate goal of the Paris climate accord, which is to prevent global average temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by letting countries set their own emissions targets every five years and exerting diplomatic peer pressure on each other to be more ambitious.An analysis by two research organizations, the Asia Society Policy Institute and Climate Analytics, to be issued next week but reviewed by The New York Times, concludes that China would have to peak its carbon emissions by 2025, five years earlier than the country has promised, and phase out coal by 2040 in order to keep global temperatures close to the upper limits laid out in the Paris Agreement.The test of Xi's climate ambitions rests in large part on China's next five-year plan, an economic road map for the country that is due in the spring. It remains to be seen how that plan will handle China's addiction to coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, which supplies the bulk of the country's electricity despite its expansion of solar and wind power.China is the world's biggest coal consumer. It accounts for the world's largest fleet of new coal-fired power plants, according to research and advocacy group Urgewald. Four of the world's top coal plant builders are Chinese.China's five-year plan will come out shortly after Biden comes into office and issues his own road map to reengineer the U.S. economy for the era of climate change. That, several diplomats and analysts said, could spur a virtuous competition."There would be a race to the top of a low-carbon world," said Byford Tsang, a China specialist at E3G, a London-based research group.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Feuding in Downing Street as UK faces Covid, Brexit challenges Posted: 15 Nov 2020 08:13 AM PST  As British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces the challenges of soaring virus deaths and looming Brexit talks, two of his closest aides have resigned amid reports of bitter infighting.
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| 900 reported arrested in Belarus protests Posted: 15 Nov 2020 08:12 AM PST  A human rights group in Belarus said more than 900 people were arrested Sunday in protests around the country calling for authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko to step down. The demonstrations continued the wave of near-daily protests that have gripped Belarus since early August. In the capital Minsk, police wielded clubs and used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse thousands of demonstrators.
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| Poll workers contract virus, but Election Day link unclear Posted: 15 Nov 2020 07:10 AM PST  Despite painstaking efforts to keep election sites safe, some poll workers who came in contact with voters on Election Day have tested positive for the coronavirus, including more than two dozen in Missouri and others in New York, Iowa, Indiana and Virginia. Because COVID-19 is spreading rapidly in the U.S., there is no way to determine yet whether in-person voting on Election Day contributed to the surge, public health experts said. In most places, poll workers were required to wear masks.
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| Trump seems to acknowledge Biden win, but he won't concede Posted: 15 Nov 2020 07:05 AM PST  President Donald Trump on Sunday appeared to acknowledge for the first time that Joe Biden won the White House, but made clear he would not concede and would keep trying to overturn the election result. Trump's statements came in tweets that included several baseless claims about the Nov. 3 vote, which state and federal officials say was safe and secure. Trump, without using Biden's name, tweeted that "He won," something Trump had not said before publicly, though he said the Democrat's victory was only "in the eyes" of the media.
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| Prince Charles champions post-Brexit ties on German visit Posted: 15 Nov 2020 06:42 AM PST  Britain's Prince Charles on Sunday said bonds between his country and Germany would "remain strong" as he visited Berlin against a backdrop of increasingly tense Brexit talks.
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| In a moment of turmoil, US Catholic bishops meet virtually Posted: 15 Nov 2020 05:02 AM PST  A hard-fought presidential election has caused sharp divisions in their own ranks. "The shadow of the McCarrick report hangs over this meeting," said John Gehring, Catholic program director at a Washington-based clergy network called Faith in Public Life.
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| What mandate? Biden's agenda faces a divided Congress Posted: 15 Nov 2020 04:49 AM PST  President-elect Joe Biden wants to "restore the soul of America." First, he'll need to fix a broken and divided Congress. Biden is rushing headlong into a legislative branch ground down by partisanship, name-calling and, now, a refusal by some to acknowledge his win over President Donald Trump.
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| Rebel leaders who inked deal with government return to Sudan Posted: 15 Nov 2020 03:46 AM PST  Sudan's rebel leaders returned to the capital, Khartoum on Sunday, signaling the first major steps toward implementing a peace agreement with the government that aims to end the country's decades-long civil war. Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of Sudan's ruling sovereign council, welcomed leaders of the Sudan Revolutionary Front as "partners and peacemakers" upon their arrival from South Sudan. The front — a coalition of several armed groups centered in the western Darfur region, South Kordofan and Blue Nile — inked a peace agreement with the transitional government on Oct. 3 after months of arduous negotiations in South Sudan's capital, Juba.
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| Tigray crisis: Why there are fears of civil war in Ethiopia Posted: 15 Nov 2020 02:39 AM PST  Tensions between Tigray and the federal government threaten to boil over into a serous conflict.
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| How Ronald Reagan’s Coded Racism Paved the Way for Trump Posted: 15 Nov 2020 01:58 AM PST  A former entertainment personality decides, in his later years, to go into politics. To curry favor with the Republican Party whose nomination he seeks, he cozies up to red-state extremists and evangelicals via a healthy dose of racist dog whistles. He couples that with decrying communists, liberalism, and anyone out in the streets protesting for social justice. To top it off, he then aligns himself with corporate America, running on a pro-free market, anti-regulation, tax-cutting ticket that aims to benefit the 1-percenters who make up the most powerful portion of his base—and help keep him and his family living in the lap of luxury.Sound familiar? Of course it does, although in this instance, I'm not talking about our outgoing president, Donald Trump, but our 40th commander-in-chief, Ronald Reagan.Such similarities are hard to miss in The Reagans, Matt Tyrnauer's four-part Showtime docuseries (premiering Sunday, Nov. 15) about the beloved (by some) Republican president and his wife Nancy. A skillful assemblage of archival footage and talking-head interviews with former colleagues, journalists, and scholars, it casts a critical gaze at the Gipper, investigating his rise to power—and subsequent ability to charm the mainstream even through tumultuous times—from a sober remove, free from the magnetic spell he cast over the public during his tenure as California's governor (1967-1975) and in the Oval Office (1981-1989). While it sometimes undercuts itself by leaning too heavily on certain voices, it's a valuable examination of a leader whose legacy is more complicated than it often appears, and whose political career established the foundations upon which the present Republican Party is built. A Connecticut Mom Was Slaughtered. Everyone Was a Suspect.Central to Tyrnauer's portrait are the concepts of storytelling and myth-making. After growing up during the Great Depression, which his parents survived thanks in large part to FDR's New Deal, Reagan parlayed his good looks and charisma into cinema stardom—or, at least, into numerous B-movie parts and roles that took advantage of his handsome stoutness. Thanks to bad eyesight, he wasn't able to enlist in WWII, but from the beginning—and, to some extent, with the help of gossip columnist Louella Parsons—he was able to fashion a persona predicated on all-American wholesomeness by appearing in wartime propaganda movies, Westerns, and Knute Rockne, All American, which allowed him to figuratively fulfill his gridiron dreams. He was a self-made man who willed himself into being a celebrity. As his son Ronald Reagan Jr. opines, "We're all the heroes of our own stories. He was just a little better at it than most people, I think."Reagan sought, at every turn, to blur the boundary between the myth of himself and that of the nation, until the two were wholly intertwined and indistinguishable from one another. That's true about his run for California governorship, in which he presented himself as a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-esque good-guy outsider, just as it's true about Nancy's careful construction of their image as clean-cut, moral conservatives cast in a 1950s mold, with all the traditional gender dynamics (and racial intolerance) that came with it. More of a performer than a policy wonk (at series' end, he admits, "There have been times in this office when I've wondered how you could do the job if you hadn't been an actor"), Reagan comes across as a figure who both embodied and perpetuated myths as a means of getting ahead, whether that was with regard to civil rights (and his routine spiel about Jackie Robinson) or his famous contention that "Government is the problem."The Reagans skews more heavily toward the president than his power-behind-the-throne wife, who's depicted as cunning, doting, and devoid of any ideology of her own. The Ron and Nancy revealed here are shrewd, old-fashioned, in love with (and beholden to) the rich, and willing to do and say whatever was necessary to achieve their ends. Time and again, they created their own reality as a way of asserting control and masking the truth, and they were so successful in that endeavor that even when their objectionable conduct came to light—notably, with the Iran-Contra scandal—Reagan managed to escape catastrophe with his popularity, and legacy, intact. As underscored by this history lesson, Reagan continues to be defined less by any specific position or decision (or triumph, such as overseeing the end of the Cold War) than by the alternately tough yet fatherly aura he exuded, and the sunshiny image he presented of a flourishing America on the cusp of being great again.The Reagans censures Reagan for his pandering to racists through "Southern Strategy" coded language about "states' rights," demonizing Black women as "welfare queens," for his refusal to confront the AIDS crisis in a timely and compassionate fashion, and for his and Nancy's reliance on quack astrologer Joan Quigley for advice on virtually every important aspect of their lives. Seeking to examine the man rather than the legend, it condemns by crediting him with transforming the Republican Party into its current iteration: pro-business, pro-status quo, pro-intolerance, and pro-right-wing religiosity. Those attacks are launched with precision, although if there's a shortcoming to Tyrnauer's docuseries, it's that the most pro-Reagan speakers featured—Chief of Staff James Baker, Chief Political Strategist Stu Spencer, Grover Norquist—are rarely heard from during those extended passages that take Reagan to task. It's as if Tyrnauer doesn't want to complicate his portrait by hearing what acolytes think about such topics.This isn't a plea for both-sides-ism. Rather, it's to say that critical arguments are often strengthened by the idiocy, ugliness, or emptiness of those in the other camp, and The Reagans feels less assured of itself by frequently refusing to let Reagan cohorts and admirers comment on his unseemly actions (when this does happen, such as Baker exclaiming "They broke the law" about Iran-Contra, it bolsters the series' denunciation). Nonetheless, Tyrnauer's thorough non-fiction effort serves as an insightful corrective to the one-dimensional Reagan hero-worship in which so many conservatives partake. It attempts to understand yesterday from the more temperate perspective of today, and in doing so, exposes startling and disheartening parallels—be it Reagan's courting of deplorables, Dr. Anthony Fauci's critique of an administration that callously ignored a health crisis to the tune of thousands of lives, or the sight of Walter Cronkite and his CBS news pals foolishly laughing at the idea of a future Joe Biden presidency.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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| Israel advances plans in sensitive east Jerusalem settlement Posted: 15 Nov 2020 12:59 AM PST  A settlement watchdog group said Sunday Israel is moving ahead with new construction of hundreds of homes in a strategic east Jerusalem settlement that threatens to cut off parts of the city claimed by Palestinians from the West Bank. The group, Peace Now, said the Israel Land Authority announced on its website Sunday that it had opened up tenders for more than 1,200 new homes in the key settlement of Givat Hamatos in east Jerusalem.
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| Ethiopia’s Tigray leader confirms firing missiles at Eritrea Posted: 14 Nov 2020 11:18 PM PST  The leader of Ethiopia's rebellious Tigray region has confirmed firing missiles at neighboring Eritrea's capital and is threatening more, marking a huge escalation as the deadly fighting in northern Ethiopia between Tigray forces and the federal government spills across an international border. Tigray regional President Debretsion Gebremichael, in a phone interview Sunday with The Associated Press, wouldn't say how many missiles were fired at the city of Asmara on Saturday, but said it was the only city in Eritrea that was targeted. "As long as troops are here fighting, we will take any legitimate military target and we will fire," he said, accusing Eritrea of sending troops into the Tigray region and denying reports that Tigray regional forces have entered Eritrea.
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| Israeli military strikes Hamas targets in Gaza after rockets Posted: 14 Nov 2020 10:43 PM PST |
| Hurricane Iota heads for already battered Central America Posted: 14 Nov 2020 10:10 PM PST  Iota rapidly gained strength after becoming the 13th hurricane of the Atlantic season Sunday, threatening to bring more dangerous winds and rains to Nicaragua and Honduras — countries recently clobbered by Category 4 Hurricane Eta. Nicaragua's government said authorities had begun evacuating some people near the country's border with Honduras, an area that forecasts said likely would be in Iota's path. Iota became a Category 2 hurricane late Sunday afternoon, and the U.S. National Hurricane Center warned it would likely be an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm when it approached the Central America mainland late Monday.
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| Violent clashes in DC after Trump backers' election protest Posted: 14 Nov 2020 09:55 PM PST  After several thousand supporters of President Donald Trump protested the election results and marched to the Supreme Court, nighttime clashes with counterdemonstrators led to fistfights, at least one stabbing and more than 20 arrests. Several other cities on Saturday also saw gatherings of Trump supporters unwilling to accept Democrat Joe Biden's Electoral College and popular vote victory as legitimate. The demonstrations in the nation's capital went from tense to violent during the night and early Sunday.
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| Peru's interim president resigns as chaos embroils nation Posted: 14 Nov 2020 09:22 PM PST  Peru's interim president resigned Sunday as the nation plunged into its worst constitutional crisis in two decades following massive protests unleashed when Congress ousted the nation's popular leader. In a short televised address, Manuel Merino said Congress acted within the law when he was sworn into office as chief of state Tuesday, despite protesters' allegations that legislators had staged a parliamentary coup. Peruvians cheered the decision, waving their nation's red and white flag on the streets of Lima and chanting "We did it!" But there is still no clear playbook for what comes next.
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| U.S., Israel worked together to track and kill al-Qaida No. 2 Posted: 14 Nov 2020 07:16 PM PST  The United States and Israel worked together to track and kill a senior al-Qaida operative in Iran earlier this year, a bold intelligence operation by the two allied nations that came as the Trump administration was ramping up pressure on Tehran. Four current and former U.S. officials said Abu Mohammed al-Masri, al-Qaida's No. 2, was killed by assassins in the Iranian capital in August.
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| Director of World Food Program warns of severe famines in 2021 Posted: 14 Nov 2020 06:24 PM PST  David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program, a United Nations branch, said billions of dollars are needed to fight off "famines of biblical proportions in 2021," according to The Associated Press. The World Food Program received the Nobel Peace Prize last month in recognition of its efforts to fight the surge in food insecurity unleashed by the coronavirus crisis. Beasley said that it was particularly valuable for his organization to receive the award amid a cascade of distractions, including the U.S. election.
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| Mexico reaches 1 million virus cases, nears 100,000 deaths Posted: 14 Nov 2020 05:29 PM PST  Mexico on Saturday topped 1 million registered coronavirus cases and nearly 100,000 test-confirmed deaths, though officials agree the number is probably much higher. How did Mexico get here? What is more, officials in Mexico claim science is on their side.
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