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Auschwitz director offers to serve jail term for Nigeria 'blasphemy' boy
He has offered to serve part of the jail sentence of a 13-year-old accused of blasphemy in Nigeria.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:36:30 GMT

Japan's new PM says stable Japan-China ties key to region

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:30:29 GMT

Palestinian leader calls for new peace process in UN speech
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday called for an international conference early next year to “launch a genuine peace process” while criticizing the recent decision of two Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel. Abbas seemed to acknowledge the growing international weariness with the decades-old conflict as he delivered the latest in a long series of addresses to the U.N. General Assembly. The Palestinians have rejected President Donald Trump’s proposal to end the conflict, which overwhelmingly favors Israel, and have officially cut off contacts with both the U.S. and Israel.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:29:52 GMT

2 charged for handling of virus outbreak at veterans home
Two former leaders of a Massachusetts home for aging veterans where nearly 80 people sickened by the coronavirus died have been criminally charged for their handling of the outbreak, the state's attorney general said Friday. Former Holyoke Soldiers' Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh and former Medical Director David Clinton were indicted by a grand jury, Attorney General Maura Healey told reporters. "We believe this is the first criminal case in the country brought against those involved in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Healey said.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:19:14 GMT

Putin proposes election non-interference pact with US
Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed Friday concluding a pact with Washington against interfering in one another's elections and internal affairs, just weeks before the US hosts a divisive presidential vote.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 14:51:26 GMT

Largest California wildfire threatens marijuana-growing area
California’s largest wildfire is threatening a marijuana-growing enclave, and authorities said many of the locals have refused to evacuate and abandon their maturing crops even as weather forecasters predict more hot, dry and windy conditions that could fan flames. The wildfire called the August Complex is nearing the small communities of Post Mountain and Trinity Pines, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) northwest of Sacramento, the Los Angeles Times reported. Law enforcement officers went door to door warning of the encroaching fire danger but could not force residents to evacuate, Trinity County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Nate Trujillo said.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 14:47:40 GMT

Coronavirus: Is the rate of growth in Africa slowing down?
The overall rate of increase may be slowing, but there have still been sharp rises in some countries.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 14:36:03 GMT

Abbas asks UN for international Mideast conference next year
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas appealed Friday to the United Nations to arrange an international conference on the peace process, in the wake of Gulf Arab recognition of Israel.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 14:32:32 GMT

The Latest: Abbas asks for launch of 'genuine peace process'
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for an international conference early next year to “launch a genuine peace process” while criticizing the recent decision of two Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel. In an address before the U.N. General Assembly on Friday, Abbas seemed to acknowledge the growing international weariness with the decades-old conflict, saying “I wonder what more I can say after all I’ve said on countless occasions.” The Palestinians have rejected President Donald Trump’s proposal to end the conflict that overwhelmingly favors Israel, and have officially cut off contacts with both the U.S. and Israel.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 14:28:23 GMT

Virginia governor, wife test positive for coronavirus
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced Friday that he and his wife have both tested positive for the coronavirus, though he said he is showing no symptoms. The Democrat, the country’s only governor who is also a doctor, has previously been criticized by some Republican lawmakers who say his restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the virus are too stringent. “We are grateful for your thoughts and support, but the best thing you can do for us — and most importantly, for your fellow Virginians — is to take this seriously,” Northam said.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 14:07:16 GMT

Trump camp hopes Mideast pacts translate to Jewish support
Jewish American voters have leaned Democratic for decades, but Republicans are hoping the recent steps toward normalized relations between Gulf states and Israel — which Trump vigorously touted earlier this month — bolster his appeal to Jewish voters. With battleground states like Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan collectively decided in 2016 by fewer than 200,000 votes, any loss of the Jewish support by Democratic nominee Joe Biden could be pivotal. “Democrats like to say they have a majority of the Jewish vote,” said Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks, whose group is spending million to boost Trump and other GOP candidates in electoral battlegrounds ahead of November.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 14:06:32 GMT

Gen Z’s Radical, Virtual Quest To Save The Planet
It’s time to wake up. On Global Day of Climate Action, VICE Media Group is solely telling stories about our current climate crisis. Click here to meet young climate leaders from around the globe and learn how you can take action. Many people first started paying attention to the youth climate movement in 2018, when now-17-year-old Greta Thunberg began protesting outside Swedish Parliament in her home country. Her small act of civil disobedience had a ripple effect. Students across the globe began striking by refusing to attend classes, which eventually turned into the “Fridays For Future” movement.It may sound like a ploy to get out of chemistry, but it’s not. Gen Z ranks climate change as the most important issue of our time, according to last year’s Amnesty International survey of more than 10,000 members of 18- to 25-year-olds. “Older generations were not out there protesting in the streets on this issue the way Gen Z is,” asserts Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo, PhD, who teaches political science and environmental policy at Christopher Newport University. These under-25 activists have formed organizations like Fridays For Future and Zero Hour, a movement that focuses on helping young people take action. Others have sued their state or even the United Nations. They’ve staged hunger strikes. They’ve performed spoken word poetry. These kids care. A lot. “Younger people see the total mess that Boomers and, to a lesser extent, millennials have left, and they have to figure out how to fix it,” says Jessica Green, PhD, an associate professor focused on climate governance at the University of Toronto. That’s a heavy burden to bear. Many self-report feeling eco-anxiety, or “a chronic fear of environmental doom,” according to the American Psychological Association. “For some Gen Z folks with whom I work, their eco-anxiety is related to a continuation of generations’ worth of oppression,” notes Kristi E. White, PhD, a clinical health psychologist with a focus on how climate change affects well-being. She’s referring specifically to BIPOC communities, which “have always been the most severely impacted by sustainability failures.” Others are confronting the more recent realization that they’re “inheriting many generations’ worth of avoidance and poor stewardship,” she says.While not every young adult is channeling their energy into activism, the post-millennials who are seem particularly ardent. Their attitude is: “The world is falling apart right now, and if you think it’s okay, what’s wrong with you?” Green says. We talked to leading climate activists in the U.S. — most of whom still can’t buy a legal drink — about how they got their start, what their activism looks like mid-pandemic, and why they think the youth are such incredible change-makers. DashDividers_1_500x100 Alexandria VillaseñorAge: 15 Location: New York City, NY Activism History: Founder of Earth Uprising; co-founder of the US Youth Climate Strike, a part of the Fridays for Future movement; filed a complaint against the United Nations, along with Greta Thunberg and 15 other climate activists. On getting her start in activism“When I was young, 5 or 6, I wanted to be a writer. I never would have expected that I’d end up being a climate activist at 15. But in 2018, I started striking at the end of the week as part of Fridays for Future. People called me alarmist and dramatic. I would tell them that, in the future, school wouldn’t matter anymore because we’d be running from multiple crises. And here we are. That future is now. Even if COVID didn’t exist, the entire West Coast couldn’t go because of the air quality. It would be so unsafe. And other places are beginning to see catastrophic events because of climate change. “The fires show us just how quickly we need to take action. I have a lot of family out in California. I was actually there over the last few months, very close to the LNU Lighting Complex fire. I’m very lucky to have been able to leave a few weeks ago. But as an asthma sufferer, I’m still recovering from the smoke inhalation. The scientists are warning us about the future and that it will get so much worse. We should listen to them.” On channeling fear for the future into action “I feel a sense of eco-grief. For me, that means a feeling of sadness and loss. I’m seeing the collapse of our biodiversity. I recently wrote a chapter in the book All We Can Save, and doing that reminded me of the Monarch butterflies in California. When I was growing up every year in the springtime, we’d get just so many butterflies. I’d see them on the playground, and in the fields, and it was always so exciting. But the population has declined drastically in the past couple of years. And so it’s just extremely upsetting to see those things that were very personal, and know that future young people won’t be able to experience them. “One thing that helps my eco-grief is taking direct action. Going out and protesting.”On why younger generations make great activists“Young people are forces when it comes to climate change because we speak very directly and bluntly. We have resources such as technology and social media and use them to our advantage when it comes to organizing and connecting with each other. Especially during the pandemic, we’ve been using social media to our advantage. Doing initiatives and campaigns, and putting pressure on politicians and those in power. “Youth activists think more outside the box, and don’t think just in terms of what’s ‘politically possible.’ It’s not only that we’ll be using the planet the longest — although things will get worse in our lifetime. We’ll see the worst consequences of climate change. “The youth climate movement has also seen how our movement needed to grow and be more intersectional, that it needs to have more people of color and people being affected directly by the climate crisis at the front lines. Because of that, I think that we’ll come out of this pandemic even stronger.”DashDividers_1_500x100 Sophia Kianni Age: 18 Location: McLean, Virginia School: Indiana University, public policy analysis major Activism History: Founder of Climate Cardinals; Youngest member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group On Climate ChangeOn getting her start in activism“I first got into climate activism in sixth grade. My dad and I have a tradition of stargazing together. He’s super into astronomy, and we’d go out every night when I was little and he’d talk to me about the different constellations. But when I was visiting my grandmother’s house in the capital of Iran, Tehran, I went out and couldn’t see the stars because of the air quality. I thought, That’s so sad. “The climate crisis is affecting the Middle East, with temperatures rising more than twice the global average. I was struck by the fact that my relatives weren’t really aware of what was happening and didn’t know about climate change. And so for the past, like, six years, I’ve been translating climate information to help educate them. “And it’s not just my relatives. I found a study that showed only 5% of Iranian university students could properly explain the greenhouse gas effect. I saw there was clearly an issue, and I couldn’t find much climate change education that was available in Farsi, the language they speak. So, I founded Climate Cardinals, where I work with volunteers to translate climate information into 109 different languages. Recently we partnered with the UN’s environmental program to translate their Youth ForNature Manifesto that they’re going to be releasing soon in different languages.” On why younger generations make great activists“I think it’s because we have more to lose. We’re going to be around much longer than the politicians who are in their 60s and 70s who haven’t taken action on the climate crises. They just don’t have as much as stake. Hopefully the rest of us have many years left on this planet, and we don’t want to continue to live knowing it’s getting worse every year.”On going to extremes to raise awareness“Last year, at 17, I got up at 5 a.m. and took an Uber by myself to DC instead of going to school. I was the youngest person and one of the only women to join a week-long hunger strike at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. I was demanding that she take action, and wanted an on camera, hour-long meeting with her to discuss the climate emergency. She was calling the Green New Deal ‘The Green Dream, or whatever.’ I could only join in DC the first day because I couldn’t skip more school, but I continued the hunger strike. I had such a horrible headache by the time I stopped. The first thing I finally had was a strawberry and almond milk smoothie because I didn’t want to overwhelm my body. “Sometimes you have to escalate things to raise awareness, to get people and press to pay attention. And the climate crisis is being escalated every year, so.”On inciting change during a pandemic“There’s no substitute for nonviolent, civil disobedience like the way Fridays for Future was doing with their weekly protests. But there are a lot of ways to continue activism virtually, during COVID. I’ve been very much focused on continuing to grow Climate Cardinals during this time, and our transcriptions can be done from the safety of your home. Anyone who cares about climate change should know there are still ways to get involved, and I’d urge them to take the first step and put themselves out there.” DashDividers_1_500x100 Meghna ShankarAge: 19 Location: Redmond, Washington School: University of Washington, physics and computer science major Activism History: Organizer at Fridays For Future Seattle; Member of Sunrise UWOn getting her start in activism “In fifth grade, I read Al Gore’s book on climate change, Our Choice. The book was a gift from my dad. It got me interested in the cause. Then in high school, I heard about Greta Thunberg’s strike for global action on March 15, 2019, so I started organizing a protest. We walked out, went to our city hall, and spoke to our mayor and our city council president about our concerns about climate change. I believe students in [112 countries] also walked out in solidarity with the movement that day. I think it really shows that many young people are willing to put their education at stake for the sake of their future. “I was so nervous that day because I had never done something like that before. I honestly was known for being a more quiet student, and following the rules. So for me, it was a big deal. I kept striking on some Fridays after that. I remember I would talk to my friends, and some of them would say, ‘Oh, I don’t see why this is such a big issue. I don’t want to skip lunch to come to your protest.’ In high school, there tends to be a lot of apathy coming from students because they don’t want to stand out. You know, they wanted to look cool. But climate change is something you can’t really opt out of.” On inciting change during a pandemic“Since the COVID pandemic, we haven’t been able to strike in person, but Friday For Future has been doing digital campaigns. We’ll do Twitter storms, and create informational graphics for the Global Day Of Action. “But it’s not the same. I think if you don’t see the protests every day, you feel detached after a while. With Fridays For Future, we were able to engage young people in the community who weren’t necessarily able to do more intensive actions like going to policy makers offices or writing letters. Very young children would go to our strikes, and they would just hold up a sign. Anyone could get involved. Now we have to resort to posting photos on our Instagrams every Friday, which isn’t the same as standing outside for an hour. It feels a bit sad, but there are a lot of other youth-led organizations that are filling the gap virtually.” On channeling fear for the future into action “In the back of my head, I’m always thinking about climate change. Because of the fires on the West Coast, I’m looking out my window right now and I can maybe see half a mile away, I can’t really see the mountains. “It’s scary because even adults who claim to support you aren’t doing enough to make change. Mayors, senators — they say ‘oh we’re so proud of what you’re doing, and we support you.’ And they’re happy to take a picture with us, but they don’t really do anything. Or they’ll approve things that increase carbon emissions. They say they’re for climate justice and the next week approve a new cruise ship terminal Seattle. And, right now, that gives me more anxiety than not being able to protest in the streets. It feels like adults are seeing the changes happening around us but nobody cares enough to do something about it. That’s why we have to act.”DashDividers_1_500x100 Zanagee ArtisAge: 20 Location: Clinton, Connecticut School: Brown University, environmental studies and political science Activism History: Co-founder and deputy director of policy at Zero Hour; Fellow for Joe Biden’s campaignOn getting a start in activism “When I was a kid, I loved the beluga whale at the Mystic aquarium in Connecticut. I have a picture of me standing in front of the giant tank with huge whales. I look so tiny. Going to the aquarium back then got me interested in environmental activism. I learned about pollution, and thought, Look at all these amazing sea creatures that are being impacted by plastic in the ocean.”On why younger generations make great activists“The youth climate movement is really about taking our futures into our own hands, but also fighting for people who are facing climate change in the present. Environmental actions of the past were not as radical in calling for systemic overhaul as we are today. But we know that without dismantling the systems at the root of climate change — the patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, and racism — we’ll never be able to have climate justice and have a transition to sustainable energy for the future. “We started Zero Hour to emphasize that we have run out of time to address climate change. You can see rising temperatures in the Arctic, for indigenous communities their lifestyles and livelihoods are changing, you can see desertification, and deforestation happening in the Amazon. We know that this has been happening for at least the past few years now, and that climate change has been a stressor on communities around the world. And so we need to act right now.”On channeling fear for the future into action“I think a worst case scenario for the planet is something that most people are incapable of comprehending. The amount of change to the natural environment that will happen if we don’t act is terrifying. It could look like elongated hurricane and tornado seasons. Or like wildfire spreading from the West coast all throughout the country. We don’t really know for sure, although the climate scientists know a lot. It could look like the apocalypse. That’s why we’re fighting every day. “After I finish at Brown, I’m planning to go to law school, and I’m interested in studying environmental or constitutional law. I want to do this to enhance my powers as an activist. I want to advocate for young people, especially those who are unable to vote, and anyone who I believe is being disproportionately harmed by a system that was not designed to protect them. And I’d like to someday eventually run for elected office.” DashDividers_1_500x100 Delaney ReynoldsAge: 21 Location: Miami, Florida School: University of Miami, marine science and geology major Activism history: Founder of The Sink or Swim Project; member of the Youth Leadership Council of EarthEcho International; Suing the state of Florida; Member of the CLEO Institute’s Leadership CouncilOn getting a start in activism “I grew up in and around the water, learning about sustainability. And because of that, I’ve always had a vast love for the ocean. When I was 8 years old, I actually wrote my first children’s book about ecology based on No Name Key, a super-small island in the Florida Keys where I grew up part-time. As I was researching for that, I began to learn about climate change and how it’d affect the habitat that I love so dearly. I started to become extremely concerned because of how dire the situation seemed to be. I went on to found The Sink or Swim Project, a nonprofit advocacy organization focused on sea level rise and other environmental topics. “It’s sad; my family has lived in Florida for generations, but recently, we’ve started having really bad flooding days every October. They have to close down the park where both my father and I learned how to swim. I hate it, because I want my future kids to follow in my dad and my footsteps and learn to swim there too.” On going to extremes to raise awareness“I’m the lead plaintiff in the Reynolds vs. The State of Florida climate change lawsuit. Seven of my friends and I are suing our state for not upholding duties outlined in the Florida constitution and something called the Public Trust Doctrine. That doctrine says the state has the responsibility to protect our land, the water, and, we believe, also the atmosphere. We’re asking the state to implement laws to help cut back carbon emissions so that we can help protect our atmosphere, because we know that burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is what’s causing the crisis. So we’re basically asking the judge to require that the state do their job. “I have to say, I never expected to sue anyone at the age of 18. Now I’m 21, and we just had our first hearing in June. But we’ve kept pushing on it. It’s been daunting at times, but it’s also really important. We’re seeing the effects of sea level rise, and it’s hurting the coral reefs, the land, and us.” On channeling fear for the future into action“Our family just finished recovering and renovating from Hurricane Irma, which made landfall in 2017 at our home in the Keys. Then we recently had another hurricane, Sally. When she went over the panhandle last week, all we had was some light rain, luckily. But hurricane season is extremely stressful. With a record number of storms forming in the Atlantic, it is a constant reminder of climate change. Warm ocean water is what fuels these hurricanes, so as we continue to warm our planet, these storms will become increasingly more frequent and stronger. That’s scary, and that’s why we have to keep fighting.” Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 14:00:12 GMT

Biden's push for unity faces test with Supreme Court fight
From the opening of his third presidential bid, Joe Biden has argued that he is in a unique position to mend a fractured nation and work — even with Republicans — to “unify the country” into some semblance of consensus. In the week since liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, he's faced pressure from progressives seeking bolder action. President Donald Trump is expected to name his pick on Saturday, launching a confirmation process that may only deepen the nation's sectarian politics.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 13:48:25 GMT

First man cured of HIV infection now has terminal cancer
Timothy Ray Brown, the first person known to have been cured of HIV infection, says he is now terminally ill from a recurrence of the cancer that prompted his historic treatment 12 years ago. Brown, dubbed “the Berlin patient” because of where he lived at the time, had a transplant from a donor with a rare, natural resistance to the AIDS virus. For years, that was thought to have cured his leukemia and his HIV infection, and he still shows no signs of HIV.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 13:46:00 GMT

Witness mandate vex some new mail-in voters in key states
As the pandemic prompts a surge in voting by mail, voters in a handful of states, including the presidential battlegrounds of North Carolina and Wisconsin, are facing a requirement that already is tripping up thousands — the need to have a witness sign their ballot envelope. A lack of a witness signature or other witness information has emerged as the leading cause of ballots being set aside before being counted in North Carolina, with problems disproportionately affecting Black voters in the state, according to an Associated Press analysis of state election data. “People are confused by this whole witness requirement,” said Barbara Beckert, an advocate for Disability Rights Wisconsin, which was part of a lawsuit that unsuccessfully challenged the witness mandate.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 13:34:19 GMT

‘Tehran’ Is an Uncomplicated Look at Global Conflict: TV Review

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 13:00:58 GMT

Kim Jong Un offers 'extremely unusual' apology to South Korea over killing of official
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has offered a rare apology following the killing of a South Korean official.Kim in a message to South Korea on Friday said he's "deeply sorry that an unexpected and unfortunate thing has happened in our territorial waters" after a government official from South Korea was killed at sea by North Korean troops earlier this week, The New York Times reports. The official, South Korea said, was apparently "trying to defect to North Korea" and "was killed by troops in the North who set his body on fire for fear he might be carrying the coronavirus," the Times previously wrote. It was the "first time that North Korea has killed a South Korean citizen in its territory since 2008," the Times added, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in called the official's killing a "stunning and deeply regrettable act that cannot be tolerated." North Korea in its message on Friday reportedly denied that troops burned the body of the official, who they called an "illegal intruder," but did say they burned his flotation device "according to our epidemiological regulations." Institute for National Security Strategy researcher Byun Sang-Jung explained to ABC News that it's "extremely unusual for North Korea to issue a statement of regret so fast," and in fact, according to the Times, this was the first apology to the South issued in Kim's name during his time as North Korean leader. Ewha Womans University international studies professor Leif-Eric Easley told the Times this apology was a "low-cost way of managing a potential crisis situation," adding that it "may also mitigate the deepening of North Korea's pariah status in South Korean public opinion." More stories from theweek.com America needs to hear the bad news first A mild defense of Republican hypocrisy on the Supreme Court Trump is the only one being honest about the Supreme Court fight

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 12:33:52 GMT

Japan's newly minted prime minister steps into UN limelight
Considered something of a lightweight on foreign policy issues, Japan’s new prime minister has spent much of his career in the shadows, supporting previous leader Shinzo Abe with backroom bureaucratic maneuvers and in largely scripted, sometimes prickly dealings with the media. Don’t expect the earth to shake, though, with resounding rhetoric or wildly innovative ideas to improve Japan's rocky ties with the nations it terrorized in WWII or its decades-long economic malaise. Much as he’s done domestically in the week and a half that he’s been prime minister, Suga is eager to emphasize that he’ll continue the foreign policy efforts Abe championed in his nearly eight-year rule, the longest of any Japanese prime minister.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 12:28:27 GMT

Trump Again Sows Doubt About Election as GOP Scrambles to Assure Voters
WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump declined for a second straight day to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost the election, repeating baseless assertions that the voting would be a "big scam," even as leading Republicans scrambled to assure the public that their party would respect the Constitution."We want to make sure that the election is honest, and I'm not sure that it can be," Trump told reporters on Thursday before leaving the White House for North Carolina.The president doubled down on his stance just hours after prominent Republicans made it clear that they were committed to the orderly transfer of power, without directly rebuking him. "The winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th," Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, wrote on Twitter early Thursday. "There will be an orderly transition just as there has been every four years since 1792."Democrats were far less restrained, comparing Trump's comments to those of an authoritarian leader and warning Americans to take his stance seriously."You are not in North Korea; you are not in Turkey; you are not in Russia, President, and by the way, you are not in Saudi Arabia," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. "You are in the United States of America. It is a democracy, so why don't you just try for a moment to honor your oath of office to the Constitution of the United States?"Chris Edelson, an American University professor who has studied the expansion of presidential power during national emergencies, said Trump's comments represented a unique threat to a central pillar of democracy. "It's impossible to underscore how absolutely extraordinary this situation is -- there are really no precedents in our country," he said. "This is a president who has threatened to jail his political opponents. Now he is suggesting he would not respect the results of an election. These are serious warning signs."Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian, said, "This may be the most damaging thing he has ever done to American democracy."Over the past four years, establishment Republicans have tried to adjust to Trump's disruptions, either ignoring his comments or dismissing them as a temporary news-cycle diversion rather than a threat to the democratic process. Republicans appeared on Thursday to be trying to reassure the public about the electoral system while withholding personal criticism of the president, a balancing act that shows their political codependence -- one that has led GOP lawmakers, with few exceptions, to faithfully execute his wishes.Other Republicans, including Sens. Susan Collins and Marco Rubio and Rep. Liz Cheney, followed McConnell on Thursday and issued statements conveying an implicit criticism of the president's stance. "America's leaders swear an oath to the Constitution," Cheney wrote on Twitter. "We will uphold that oath."Trump's comments follow a series of battleground state polls that show him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger. The president's standing has not recovered since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, despite his repeated efforts to focus voters' attention on other issues, from the economy to social unrest to the new Supreme Court vacancy.Trump initially sparked alarm on Wednesday when, asked about a peaceful transition, he said that "we're going to have to see what happens" -- remarks that intensified the growing partisan controversy over the legitimacy of the elections. Trump, as he has many times before, questioned the integrity of the voting system, and he repeated that skepticism Thursday, saying: "We have to be very careful with the ballots. The ballots -- you know, that's a whole big scam."There is no evidence that mailing ballots to voters increases fraud in the voting process, though there have been scattered instances of the Postal Service's failing to deliver ballots among other mail that did not reach its destination.At the Capitol on Thursday, Republican senators and members of the House could not avoid questions from reporters about the president's sentiment, but party members elsewhere exhibited little appetite for engaging in a discussion about them. Just four of the 168 Republican National Committee members responded to emailed questions about Trump's remarks, and just one of the country's 26 Republican governors -- Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas -- agreed to address the issue when contacted through their press offices."Our common commitment to democracy and the rule of law," Hutchinson wrote, "is not dependent upon the actions of any one individual. "Republican congressional aides scrambled to respond to Trump's remarks on Wednesday night, settling on an informal strategy that affirmed broad constitutional principles and trod lightly around Trump, the most powerful and popular member of their party. They also attempted to throw the question back at Democrats by seizing on Hillary Clinton's recent remark, which stopped short of Trump's comment, that Democrats "should not concede the election" until all legal options had been exhausted.Collins, a moderate facing the most challenging reelection fight of her career -- in a state that is becoming more favorable to Democrats -- was the rare Republican to refer directly to Trump as she questioned his actions."I don't know what his thinking was, but we have always had a peaceful transition between administrations," Collins said. "The peaceful transfer of power is a fundamental tenet of our democracy, and I am confident that we will see it occur once again."Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican elections lawyer who retired last month, said Republican senators -- even those who have sought to distance themselves from Trump -- are limited in how much they can criticize a president who remains overwhelmingly popular with the party's base.His leverage over the rank and file is even greater as he prepares to announce a Supreme Court nominee nearly all of them will support," Ginsberg said."The president's comments about the peaceful transfer of power, combined with his need for the ninth justice to carry out his election plans, puts Republican senators on the horns of a dilemma," Ginsberg said.Democrats, seemingly powerless to stop the court nomination, accused Republicans of enabling Trump in the interest of short-term political gain.Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon said his Republican colleagues had an obligation to denounce any suggestion that Trump would not participate in a peaceful transfer of power."Anyone elected who takes an oath to the Constitution has the responsibility to respond and say this is unacceptable," Merkley said in an interview. "This is the way authoritarian dictators operate. They have show elections and they say, 'I win, and I will make sure the results show I win.'"On Wednesday, Trump merged the two story lines involving the court and the legitimacy of the election. He said he expected voting disputes to be decided by the Supreme Court and urged a swift confirmation for a successor to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Two leading Republican senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have echoed the president's call for a swift action on his nominee, citing the court's potential role in deciding the outcome."People wonder about the peaceful transfer of power," Graham said on Fox News on Thursday. "I can assure you, it will be peaceful.""I promise you as a Republican, if the Supreme Court decides that Joe Biden wins, I will accept the result," Graham added. "The court will decide, and if Republicans lose, we'll accept the result."Trump, for his part, does not seem to mind all the criticism -- and appears intent on sowing doubt about the legitimacy of an election he in danger of losing. At the state level, some Republicans were endorsing his position."There is a lot of concern with how the voting process is being managed," said Deborah Billado, the chairwoman of the Vermont Republican Party. "The country was hurled into this mail-in ballot process when everyone knows the integrity of the checklists are in question. Many people do not trust what's happening."And Richard Porter, a Republican National Committee member from Chicago, said the question put to Trump about an orderly transition had been unfair."These questions to the president regarding his willingness to leave office are all trolling him -- premised on and suggestive of the notion that he's a bad, bad guy," Porter said. "Of course he will respect the actual results -- it's a ridiculous question. He's just jerking your chain."Trump has given no indication that his remarks were in jest.Former Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who has been helping Vice President Mike Pence prepare for the upcoming debates, struck a defiant note, writing on Twitter: "Smart candidates never concede anything before an election. They focus on what it takes to win."Sen. Rick Scott of Florida announced that he had introduced legislation that would require every state to count and report its final results "within 24 hours after polls close on Election Day." The federal government has no role in overseeing elections; they are conducted and certified by local officials, who abide by a variety of rules about how and when ballots must be returned in order to be counted in a presidential election.Still, the debate exposed a divide in the party that the flurry of GOP statements -- and attacks on Democrats -- could not obscure, and Trump's comments caused deep uneasiness among some stalwarts of the besieged Republican establishment."This isn't the typical Trump outrage that comes and goes," said Brendan Buck, a former top adviser to House Speaker Paul Ryan, who stepped down in 2019. "Senators are stating their principle here because it's obvious to everyone that he is, in fact, planning to dispute the results if he loses, no matter how lopsided. Calling him names isn't going to stop him, but they are trying to save themselves some trouble later by making clear they're not going to flirt with crazy conspiracies that make a mockery of our democracy."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 12:23:22 GMT

Israeli leaders bicker as virus lockdown goes into effect
Israeli lawmakers cannot agree on legislation governing a tightened nationwide lockdown that took effect Friday, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to propose a state of emergency that would halt weekly demonstrations against him. Earlier this week, the Cabinet agreed to tighten the country's second lockdown in response to a surge in coronavirus cases. The orders went into effect Friday afternoon but must be approved by the Knesset, or parliament, where lawmakers are bitterly split over restrictions on political demonstrations and public prayers during the ongoing Jewish High Holidays.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 12:22:17 GMT

AP PHOTOS: A look at virus's impact as deaths near 1 million
As it marched from East to West this year, the coronavirus pandemic sank economies and transformed social interactions. It shut schools and businesses, stopped the sports and entertainment industries dead in their tracks, and even brought low the Olympic Games. Nearly 1 million deaths have been recorded worldwide to date, according to data tracked by Johns Hopkins University.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 12:21:48 GMT

Kashi Joins Forces With United Nations And Street Art For Mankind On NYC Mural
Kashi, a natural lifestyle pioneer for the past 35+ years, teams up with United Nations and Street Art For Mankind to raise awareness for their shared vision of a world where everyone has access to the food they need. In honor of the UN's 75th anniversary, the commissioned mural will live in midtown Manhattan, blocks from the UN Headquarters at 245 East 44th Street. The UN surveyed over 1 million people on what issues mattered most to them in the future, access to basic services including food was one of the top five priorities. The mural is the first in a historic campaign illustrating one of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals of achieving zero hunger by 2030.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 12:15:00 GMT

Giant rat wins animal hero award for sniffing out landmines
A rat has for the first time won a British charity's top civilian award for animal bravery, receiving the honor for searching out unexploded landmines in Cambodia. Magawa, a giant African pouched rat, was awarded the PDSA’s Gold Medal for his "lifesaving bravery and devotion” after discovering 39 landmines and 28 items of unexploded ordinance in the past seven years, according to the charity. First known as the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, PDSA started as a free veterinary clinic in 1917 and has heroic animals since 1943.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 12:14:22 GMT

At Pentagon, Fears Grow That Trump Will Pull Military Into Election Unrest
WASHINGTON -- Senior Pentagon leaders have a lot to worry about -- Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Iran, China, Somalia, the Korean Peninsula. But chief among those concerns is whether their commander in chief might order U.S. troops into any chaos around the coming elections.President Donald Trump gave officials no solace Wednesday and Thursday when he again refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power no matter who wins the election, and Thursday, he doubled down by saying he was not sure the election could be "honest." His hedging, along with his expressed desire in June to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to send active-duty troops onto American streets to quell protests over the killing of George Floyd, has incited deep anxiety among senior military and Defense Department leaders, who insist they will do all they can to keep the armed forces out of the elections."I believe deeply in the principle of an apolitical U.S. military," Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in written answers to questions from House lawmakers released last month. "In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law, U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the U.S. military. I foresee no role for the U.S. armed forces in this process."But that has not stopped an intensifying debate in the military about its role should a disputed election lead to civil unrest.On Aug. 11, John Nagl and Paul Yingling, both retired Army officers and Iraq War veterans, published an open letter to Milley on the website Defense One. "In a few months' time, you may have to choose between defying a lawless president or betraying your constitutional oath," they wrote. "If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order."Pentagon officials swiftly said such an outcome was preposterous. Under no circumstances, they said, would the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff send Navy SEALs or Marines to haul Trump out of the White House. If necessary, such a task, Defense Department officials said, would fall to U.S. Marshals or the Secret Service. The military, by law, the officials said, takes a vow to the Constitution, not to the president, and that vow means that the commander in chief of the military is whoever is sworn in at 12:01 p.m. on Inauguration Day.But senior leaders at the Pentagon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that they were talking among themselves about what to do if Trump, who will still be president from Election Day to Inauguration Day, invokes the Insurrection Act and tries to send troops into the streets, as he repeatedly threatened to do during the protests against police brutality and systemic racism. Both Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper opposed the move then, and Trump backed down.The concerns are not unfounded. The Insurrection Act, a two-century-old law, enables a president to send in active-duty military troops to quell disturbances over the objections of governors. Trump, who refers to the armed forces as "my military" and "my generals," has lumped them with other supporters like Bikers for Trump, who could offer backup in the face of opposition.Defense Department officials have privately discussed the possibility of Trump trying to use any civil unrest around the elections to put his thumb on the scales. Several Pentagon officials said that such a move could prompt resignations among many of Trump's senior generals, starting at the top with Milley.The Air Force chief of staff, General Charles Q. Brown, the officials said, would also be unlikely to salute and carry out those orders. In the days after the killing of Floyd in police custody, Brown released an extraordinary video in which he spoke in starkly personal terms about his experience as a Black man in America, his unequal treatment in the armed forces and the protests that gripped the country."I'm thinking about protests in my country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, the equality expressed in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that I have sworn my adult life to support and defend," Brown said. "I'm thinking about a history of racial issues and my own experiences that didn't always sing of liberty and equality."Protests and occasional violent confrontations, including one in Portland, Oregon, last month that turned deadly and one in Louisville this week after a grand jury in Kentucky declined to charge any officers in the killing of Breonna Taylor, have continued to roil the country and are further increasing concerns at the Pentagon."The main fear is that Portland is off-Broadway and that Broadway would be something here," said Derek Chollet, who was an assistant secretary of defense under President Barack Obama. "The idea is that you are going to have a lot of kindling out there and Trump is doing nothing to keep that from getting more flammable.''This year, Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor and a Defense Department official under Obama, led a group of about 100 former national security officials and election experts from both parties in exercises to simulate the most serious risks to a peaceful transition of power.In one, they contemplated what would happen if a president ordered National Guard units or active-duty military personnel into cities to "restore order." There was no clear result, but the exercise itself attracted sharp criticism from far-right groups, which accused the organizers of trying to undermine Trump and interfere with the election.Inside the Pentagon, whose leaders are well-known for making plans, Defense Department officials said there had been no preparations for sending active-duty troops into American streets to quell any civil unrest."The planning they should be doing is how to prevent playing a role," said Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and an expert on white nationalist movements.Others who worked at the Pentagon agree."I know that Milley is trying to think his way through, but I have my doubts he can," said John Gans, who served as chief speechwriter to the defense secretary in the Obama administration. "The problem is that when the military doesn't want to do something, they don't like to think about it."He added: "The Pentagon plans for war with Canada and a zombie apocalypse, but they don't want to plan for a contested election. These are huge questions that have an impact on the reputation of the institution."The confrontation in Lafayette Square near the White House in June crystallized for the Defense Department just how close to the precipice the military came to being pulled into a domestic political crisis. That military helicopters and armed members of the National Guard patrolled the streets next to federal agents in riot gear so that the president, flanked by Esper and Milley, could walk across the square to hold up a bible in front of a church prompted outrage among lawmakers and current and former members of the armed forces."It sickened me yesterday to see security personnel -- including members of the National Guard -- forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president's visit outside St. John's Church," Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George W. Bush and Obama, wrote in The Atlantic. "This is not the time for stunts."Both men, but Milley especially, were so sharply criticized by former military and Pentagon leaders for taking part in the walk that they spent the days afterward in serious damage control.Esper held an extraordinary news conference in which he broke with the president and said that active-duty troops should not be sent to control protests. His words so angered Trump that the president had to be persuaded not to fire him, aides said at the time.Milley publicly apologized for the walk across the park. "I should not have been there," he said in a video address to National Defense University. His apology also infuriated Trump.Both men are still in their jobs for now. On Thursday, the general reiterated his position on keeping the military out of the 2020 election when he urged U.S. service members around the world during a video question-and-answer session to "keep the Constitution close to your heart."His words were subtle, but those watching knew what he meant.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 12:09:16 GMT

Mali coup: Bah Ndaw sworn in as civilian leader
The ex-defence minister was picked by the coup leader to head a transitional government until elections.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 12:04:42 GMT

Individuals Can’t Heal The Climate When Capitalism Is The Virus
It’s time to wake up. On Global Day of Climate Action, VICE Media Group is solely telling stories about our current climate crisis. Click here to meet young climate leaders from around the globe and learn how you can take action. We need to talk about our carbon footprint. Not how much of it comes from driving versus eating meat, but the popular concept of dividing up all the greenhouse gases polluting the atmosphere into the fraction that you personally own. Today we have an abundance of handy online calculators and apps that estimate your individual footprint for you. Everyone’s getting involved in the effort; one newly released app called VYVE is even backed by oil giant BP. The app’s home page succinctly captures the motivation behind calculating your footprint: “Take responsibility for your carbon impact.”To be sure, we should take responsibility. A carbon footprint calculator can help bring an overwhelming global crisis into your backyard. You can compare the average carbon footprint of an American (around 16 metric tons CO2e) to that of neighboring Mexico (about 4 metric tons) and grasp that a high-consumption American lifestyle has a much heavier impact on the environment than others do. It can also be a good jumping-off point for those who want to take action but are unsure of what changes they can make in their lives.But we also need to admit that the obsession around personal carbon footprints has been harmful. For too long, the dominant call to action has been encouraging the public to opt-in to a set of different lifestyle habits, through carbon footprint quizzes and by invoking the duty to take charge of your personal contribution. Despite this messaging, 88% of Americans still owned a car in 2015 and car ownership has continued to rise. U.S. airlines carried a record number of passengers in 2019. Even though there’s recently been a lot of coverage on the role of animal products in climate change, as of 2018, only 3% of Americans said they were vegan. In 2018, the U.S. also hit record-high energy consumption.It’s not that shrinking your own carbon footprint isn’t necessary to avoiding climate catastrophe. It is. It’s that, given the state of things, dedicating so much space to the concept clearly hasn’t worked on a wide enough scale. We don’t just need to shave emissions here and there; we need to make them disappear at incredible speed. But according to a Washington Post poll from 2019, most Americans still believe small personal sacrifices will be enough. We have until 2030 before much of the climate damage becomes irreversible due to the triggering of tipping points that can collapse entire ecosystems. The damage is already enormous; more people are being harmed by the climate crisis every year. We’re not on track to keep temperature rise below 2°C of the pre-industrial era, the target set by the Paris Agreement in 2015. More likely, we’ll see a global rise of at least 3°C. Affluent countries like the U.S. need a revolution in the way we live, and that requires systems, not just individual lifestyles, to transform. Even the most commonly recommended lifestyle changes often require people to swim against strong currents. The fact that most Americans rely on personal vehicles over public transportation might lead you to write us off as hopelessly obsessed with gas-guzzling cars — but cultural fixations don’t arise from nowhere. The post-WWII era was dizzy with incentives, policies, and mass infrastructure projects that made owning a car much more feasible and attractive than in other nations. To this day, a stunning variety of laws help maintain a landscape where having your own car is either the safer, cheaper option, or the only option. U.S. cities with well-connected, affordable public transportation remain extremely rare, partly because public works in general are underfunded, but also because groups that have a stake in the auto or fossil fuel industry use their piles of money to help ensure they don’t get built. Even when it comes to reducing energy use in your home, there are larger factors at play that can outweigh the good you’re trying to do. A recent University of Michigan study found that in some states, the climate benefit from households consuming less energy than the national average was erased by their grid’s method of producing electricity being carbon-intensive. In Florida, for example, there’s less need to heat homes in winter, leading to energy savings, but its electricity production is more intensive in producing greenhouse gases than average. Power companies in Florida, as in many other places, have also been fighting wider adoption of renewable energy. The sunshine state only generated 1% of its electricity from solar energy last year.Or take recycling. Americans recycle or compost about 35% of waste. Is the rate so low because of laziness? Maybe partly. But considering that over 90% of the plastic we were told to recycle wasn’t actually recycled — which Pepsi, Coca Cola, Nestle, and others are being sued for right now — it’s not fair to blame individuals.Obsessing about reducing our individual footprints, then, is an exercise in missing the burning forest for the trees. It’s based on the hope that, by pointing it out, an enormous wave of people will be swayed to live differently — and that massive systems and corporations will also support that goal. Maybe this messaging convinces you to shrink your footprint down from 16 metric tons CO2e to 5 metric tons. Annual global greenhouse gas emissions are around 50 billion tons CO2e; only 49,999,999,989 to go. The climate crisis is a problem of mind-breaking scale.And this discourse didn’t come about by accident. Even though scientists began loudly calling for climate action back in 1988, “carbon footprint” wasn’t a well-known concept until BP helped popularize it in the mid-2000s. The premise of a carbon footprint is that we’re all contributing to the emergency — so deal with your share. But what if we aren’t all equally to blame? What would the solution look like then?DashDividers_1_500x100The fact is, climate crisis denial is thriving. Attacks on the science of it may not be as fashionable as they once were, but the footprint of disinformation remains: many Americans are still fuzzy on whether scientists have formed a consensus (there never wasn’t a consensus), and whether climate change is mainly caused by human activity (it is). In 2015, an investigative report by InsideClimate News uncovered evidence that ExxonMobil knew about the climate crisis as early as the late 1970s, thanks to research conducted by its own scientists. Oil companies then spent decades spilling money into the effort of confusing the public. They didn’t need to provide air-tight proof that temperatures weren’t rising, or that it wouldn’t impact the Earth very much. All they had to do was nudge some doubt into the discussion.These days, more of us accept that global warming is happening than in the past. Oil companies have changed their tack too, taking a public stance on how they intend to fight climate change. Instead of poking holes in the science, denial today increasingly takes the form of greenwashing — crafting an image that makes corporations seem more environmentally conscious than their business practices would indicate. But this kind of denial still works by spreading confusion; confusion over the best strategy to combat climate change, confusion over the degree of fossil fuel culpability, confusion over what “environmentally conscious” even means in our late-stage capitalist world.In 2020, you can hardly find a company that hasn’t made a commitment to social and environmental responsibility, whether it’s by partnering with environmental groups across the globe or helping developing nations grow their economy sustainably. Keywords like “innovation” and “growth” get thrown around a lot. In 2000, BP unveiled the slogan “beyond petroleum” and soon launched an ad campaign around the theme that included TV commercials asking people about their carbon footprint and portraying the company as a beacon of progress. But do these amount to real efforts to address the climate crisis?The answer is no, at least according to a recent analysis on the activities of ten major oil companies between 2008 to 2019, including U.S.-owned Chevron and ExxonMobil. The researchers found that none have been moving away from fossil fuels. At best, companies increased their share of natural gas production, which has been extolled as a temporary “bridge” to carbon-free energy because it emits 50% less CO2 than coal. But natural gas is not clean energy. It’s mostly made up of methane, a greenhouse gas that traps heat 86 times more effectively than CO2. Scientists now believe the amount of methane released by extracting natural gas has been underestimated by up to 40%. Currently, millions of abandoned, uncapped gas wells are leaking methane. The 2008-2019 analysis found that “not a single major oil and gas firm has invested more than 0.1% of revenues into renewable energy” during this period. In 2011, BP sold off its solar assets, facing financial difficulties in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It recently announced a commitment to more renewables investment — but whether it pans out remains to be seen.Oil companies haven’t just continued to extract fossil fuels; they’ve been busy constructing new pipelines and developments, which has major implications for future carbon emissions — once a new development is built, it’s likely to be extracting for at least the time it takes to recoup the cost of building it. All ten companies analyzed by researchers “are planning significant expansion of oil and gas assets, totalling some USD.4 trillion in the period 2020-2024.” The podcast Drilled, which describes itself as “a true-crime podcast about climate change,” lays out how the deception of the fossil fuel industry is an obstacle to the systemic change we need. In its first season, it references a 2018 issue of the New York Times Magazine that was wholly dedicated to climate change as a case study in diffusing blame. “The story makes the problem of climate change global,” notes Drilled host and producer Amy Westervelt. “We all failed to act, not just the handful of men in power. The solution, or lack thereof? Individual. It’s human nature. We make short-sighted decisions and there’s nothing we can do to change that.”The fact is that since 1988, just 100 fossil fuel companies have produced roughly 70% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. We know that burning fossil fuels is incompatible with having a future. Yet today, about 80% of energy demand in the U.S. is still met through fossil fuels. To be fair, it’s not solely the fault of oil companies. In 2015 alone, the U.S. government gave the industry 9 billion in subsidies. In 2018, we got the dubious honor of becoming the largest producer of crude oil in the world, thanks to the modern fracking boom. At least 82,000 fracking wells have popped up across the country since 2005.And yet too often, we nod along with blaming the climate crisis vaguely on “human nature.” This fatalistic view isn’t just a dead end, it suggests we apologize for existing at all, especially when coupled with the myth that overpopulation is a leading cause of rising temperatures. Man-made climate change is a modern emergency representing a sliver of the 6,000 years human civilizations have existed. The start of man-made warming coincides with the explosion of industrial capitalism in just a handful of wealthy countries — whose incredible riches were accumulated through the systematic looting of labor and resources from around the world. While we all have to act, the idea that we all shoulder the blame for a crisis spurred by deregulated capitalism doesn’t create solidarity. It’s not showing humility or personal integrity. It only upholds the people and systems that have perpetuated climate change, and creates fog around those who have been most violated by it.DashDividers_1_500x100By seeing climate as a human rights problem, not just an environmental one, a clearer path opens up. For environmental group 350.org, the goal is simple: no more fossil fuels. “The climate change is a systemic crisis, so we need systemic solutions,” says Thanu Yakupitiyage, head of U.S. communications at 350.org. “Ultimately we’re talking about capitalism, right?” she says. “When we talk about consumption, we’re talking about the level at which we consume and the level at which we’re engaged in these capitalist forces.” It’s another reason why corporate greenwashing is dangerous; promoting your product as being “greener” than another one perpetuates the idea that the solution is to consume differently, not consume less.The climate justice movement isn’t new, but it has gained more attention in the past few years. It points to the perpetrators of the crisis, and also demands restitution. At the 2009 U.N. climate change conference, several nations in Latin America and the Caribbean began calling for wealthy nations like the U.S. to pay their climate debt. The logic is that the economic growth of the U.S. has been achieved at the expense of global wellbeing. When we say modern climate change is caused by human activity, we mean economic activity. In its rush to grow fast and never stop growing, the U.S. has single-handedly released a quarter of all the greenhouse gas pollution since 1750. “350 really believes in climate reparations,” says Yakupitiyage. “The fossil fuel industry must pay for the damage they’ve caused to our communities and climate.”Climate change is also entangled with racism and structural violence. In the U.S., people of color are more likely to live in polluted places. An area along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, which has a majority Black population, is known as “Cancer Alley” due to soaring cancer rates connected to the abundance of petrochemical factories. In order to extract resources to be consumed by wealthy economies, indigenous homes and livelihoods are ripped apart. Later, they are often among the earliest to face the consequences of global warming.Then there’s the violence that comes from resistance. According to environmental rights NGO Global Witness, at least 212 environmental activists were killed around the world last year, a vast proportion of them indigenous people defending their land. One of the most infamous acts of environmental violence was committed against the Ogoni Nine in 1995. The nine men were members of the Ogoni ethnic group in southeastern Nigeria and involved in the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), which demanded reparations from the oil industry for polluting their community until they could no longer farm or fish. The government brutally cracked down on protestors, allegedly encouraged by Shell. When four local Ogoni chiefs were killed by a mob, the nine activists, including MOSOP leader Ken Saro-Wiwa, were put on trial and executed by the Nigerian government. Shell has been accused by Amnesty International of helping frame the activists, and according to the testimony of their widows, prosecution witnesses later admitted they had been bribed with money and job offers at Shell.“We really must see the climate crisis as inherently linked to all forms of injustice, from racism to anti-immigrant sentiment,” says Yakupitiyage. Immigration is a lens that Yakupitiyage has particular expertise in. Before she became involved in the climate justice movement around the time of the 2014 People’s Climate March, she was working in immigrant rights. “It’s really important that the climate movement is both calling for the protection and safety of people, and also advocating for people’s right to migrate,” she says. “You see within nations like Bangladesh or India, in places in South America, people moving because of drought or because of floods. It’s estimated that up to 1 billion people will be displaced because of climate change by the year 2050.”Anti-immigration policies deny the reality that a great climate migration has already begun, as well as the cause of it. “Why is it that people are moving in the first place? They’re moving because of the fossil fuel industry and companies in the Global North who’ve made conditions in the Global South even worse,” says Yakupitiyage.Of course, transforming political ideology and holding corporate power accountable isn’t easy. In 1993, 30,000 locals of Lago Agrio, Ecuador filed a landmark class-action suit against Chevron, accusing the company of dumping 18 billion gallons of wastewater and 17 billion gallons of oil into their community. An Ecuadorian court ordered Chevron to pay billion to the plaintiffs in 2011, later reduced to .5 billion. That same year, Chevron filed a fraud case against Steven Donziger, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, claiming he had bribed the judge. According to documents obtained by The Intercept, Chevron sought to demonize Donziger. He was found guilty, disbarred, his bank accounts have been frozen, and he was put under house arrest in August 2019. Since the class-action suit, Chevron has withdrawn all its business from Ecuador, which has made it difficult for the plaintiffs to collect on the .5 billion.Saving the planet will clearly be a herculean effort, but it’s the fight of our lifetime. That’s exactly why the climate justice movement has to grow. The best way to lower your carbon footprint is to stop being an individual and become a part of a movement. It requires demanding more from elected leaders — refusing to settle for “at least it’s better than nothing” — and ensuring that, at the very least, the Green New Deal passes. It means clashing with institutions, recognizing that reducing your individual consumption is important but not the same thing as justice.“It can be intimidating to take on these huge industries,” Yakupitiyage says. “But I think where I found security is in being part of a movement. A movement that has each other’s backs.” When she feels defeated, she finds strength in activists who’ve helped pave the way for a more equitable society, against incredible odds. “Folks like Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde,” she says. “I look at their teachings in terms of what it means to be intimidated, and to be jailed, and to be told that you’re crazy.”When asked whether the fossil fuel industry is intimidated by the climate justice movement, Yakupitiyage’s answer is immediate. “Absolutely.”Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 11:00:48 GMT

Putin says Russia and U.S. should agree not to meddle in each other's elections
President Vladimir Putin called on Friday for an agreement between Russia and the United States to guarantee not to engage in cyber-meddling in each other's elections. In a statement ahead of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, Putin called for a reset between Russia and the United States and said he wanted an agreement between the two countries to prevent incidents in cyberspace. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the aim of tilting it in Donald Trump's favour, including by hacking into the campaign of his rival Hillary Clinton.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 10:54:17 GMT

Terror probe opened after 2 stabbed in Paris; 2 arrests
French terrorism authorities are investigating a double-stabbing outside the former Paris offices of a satirical newspaper where a dozen people were killed in 2015, and two suspects have been arrested in Friday's violence, authorities said. France's counterterrorism prosecutor said authorities suspect a terrorist motive because of the place and timing of the stabbings: in front of the building where Charlie Hebdo was based until the Islamic extremist attack on its cartoonists and at a time when suspects in the 2015 attack are on trial across town. Prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said that the chief suspect in Friday's stabbings was arrested, along with another person.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 10:40:46 GMT

UN: At least 16 drown in migrant shipwreck off Libya coast
At least 16 migrants trying to reach Europe drowned in the Mediterranean Sea when their small dinghy capsized off the coast of Libya, the U.N. migration agency reported Friday, the latest shipwreck to underscore the deadly risks facing those who flee the war-afflicted North African country. Libyan fishermen spotted the sinking boat late Thursday, said the International Organization for Migration, and managed to pull 22 people from the water, including those from Egypt, Bangladesh, Syria, Somalia and Ghana. Three dead bodies were found floating in the water, including one Syrian man and woman, and at least 13 other migrants were missing and presumed drowned, the IOM said.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 10:26:52 GMT

SSI Schaefer Joins the "50 Sustainability and Climate Leaders" Initiative
SSI Schaefer joins the "50 Sustainability and Climate Leaders" initiative, to raise a voice for sustainable, economical, and future-proof material handling solutions. Think Tomorrow. A race we can win - this is the pinnacle of climate conscious companies participating in the 50 Sustainability and Climate Leaders initiative. The initiative, which aims to leverage innovation and sustainable business models, gives a platform for making their contribution to achieving the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) global visibility.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 09:18:00 GMT

Some northern hemisphere countries having difficulty sourcing more flu vaccines - WHO

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 09:08:40 GMT

Judge says 2020 census must continue for another month
A federal judge has stopped the 2020 census from finishing at month's end and suspended a year-end deadline for delivering the numbers needed to decide how many seats each state gets in Congress. The preliminary injunction granted by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in California late Thursday orders the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident to continue through the end of October. Koh said the shortened schedule ordered by the Trump administration likely would produce inaccurate results.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 08:24:34 GMT

Trump Followed Russian Media’s Lead on SCOTUS Prediction
During a White House briefing on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the November presidential election. He elaborated: “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very—we’ll have a very peaceful—there won’t be a transfer frankly, there’ll be a continuation.”During a meeting with Republican attorneys general earlier the same day, Trump predicted that the U.S. Supreme Court would decide the outcome of the forthcoming election. He explained that the rush to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was designed to break any potential tie between the Supreme Court justices.If Russian President Vladimir Putin had a heart, both of Trump’s statements would fill it with unadulterated joy. Russia’s perennial authoritarian is no fan of a “peaceful transfer of power” either, unless it means a smooth transition from him—to himself. As for America, the Kremlin’s state media mouthpieces openly expressed their hopes for deeper racial tensions and civil war. On both fronts, the contentious U.S. president is a gift that keeps on giving. Trump’s divisive public messaging is in perfect alignment with the Kremlin’s preferred course of action.Serendipitously, the Russian state media publicly concluded that the Supreme Court of the United States—including Trump’s nominee—would decide the outcome of the upcoming presidential election, days before the U.S. president made his ominous pronouncements. The Russian state media show Vesti Nedeli, hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov, the CEO of the state news agency Rossiya Sevodnya (Russia Today), may have been the first to issue such a prediction, on Sept. 20.Vesti Nedeli aired a report by the program’s U.S.-based reporter, Valentin Bogdanov, who concluded in part: “The Supreme Court will play a key part [in the U.S. presidential election], if none of the parties are willing to concede defeat (and everything seems to be pointing in that direction). Currently, the conservatives have a majority there—five justices versus four—but Chief Justice Roberts often votes the same way the liberals do, meaning it’s a tie.”On Sept. 21, reporting from the United States for the Russian state TV channel Rossiya-1, news correspondent Denis Davydov also surmised that the Supreme Court would end up determining the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. As for Trump’s potential nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the Russian state media outlet RT has already published an op-ed in support of her candidacy.The timeline for an unusually speedy confirmation process would be nearly unprecedented in modern history. The average number of days from nomination to final Senate vote for nominees since 1975 is 69.6 days (or approximately 2.3 months). Letting it all hang out, Trump admitted that the outcome of the upcoming presidential election was his main reason for his big rush.Kiselyov, who has repeatedly described Trump’s tendency to blurt out his deeply unflattering thoughts as “simple-minded,” undoubtedly had a chuckle three days later when the words of the U.S. president closely mimicked the conclusions of Kremlin propagandists. In an eerie congruence with Russian state media, Trump ranted: “I think this scam that the Democrats are pulling, it’s a scam, this scam will be before the United States Supreme Court and I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation. Just in case it would be more political than it should be, I think it’s very important to have a ninth judge.” As the expert in discrediting democratic institutions and setting up rigged court systems, Putin would surely agree. Perhaps this scenario was even discussed during one of many conversations between the two world leaders, which have become unusually frequent in 2020.On Monday, Trump bragged to his rallygoers: “I like Putin. He likes me.” What’s not to like? Trump refused to condemn the Kremlin for its ongoing interference in the U.S. elections, decided not to confront Putin about Russian bounties reportedly placed on the heads of American soldiers, and uttered nary a peep about the poisoning of prominent dissident Alexei Navalny.But there is a fly in the ointment, it is the Kremlin’s increasing irritation with the U.S. line on Nord Stream 2, a new export gas pipeline from Russia to Europe that is nearing completion. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with German Bild-TV: “We hope that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline won’t be completed. We’re working to make sure we build out a coalition that prevents that from happening.” Putin, who is notoriously thin-skinned about comedic mockery, apparently decided to send in the clowns.The hosts and guests on the Russian state TV show 60 Minutes equated Pompeo’s statement with a declaration of war. Notorious Russian lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky ranted and raved about the U.S. threat to Nord Stream 2, vocally regretting his champagne-soaked celebration of Trump’s 2016 election victory. When Alexei Naumov of the Russian International Affairs Council pointed out that Russia’s continued course of action with respect to Navalny’s poisoning might lead to the shutdown of Nord Stream 2, Zhirinovsky became enraged and threatened to pummel his fellow panelist “to silence him for the rest of his life.”Russian State Media Posts Deepfake Showing Trump as Putin’s StoogeThe same day, RT released a deepfake video featuring the U.S. president in a new job on Russian state television after losing his bid for re-election. The video featured an image that identified Trump as “Putin’s apprentice” and “Putin’s candidate.” There’s a grain of truth in every joke, but since Putin has no perceptible sense of humor, RT’s mockery and Russian state media’s outrage can be read as a coded threat. Trump’s lack of a reaction—as opposed to his constant badgering of political figures and U.S. media outlets—is a reaction in itself. Trump’s inability to stand up to Putin is a cherished commodity for the Kremlin, giving Russia no incentive to take its fingers out of the American pie.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.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 08:12:13 GMT

Trump’s Facebook Advantage Over Biden Is Disappearing
With just over a month to go until election day, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has quietly ramped up its digital advertising, bringing it roughly on par with a behemoth Trump digital ad operation that was central to the president’s 2016 victory.Data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics shows that in total the Biden campaign and its joint fundraising committee, the Biden Victory Fund, spent more on Facebook and Google ads than the Trump campaign and its Trump Make America Great Again Committee in both of the two weeks ending Sept. 20, the latest period for which CRP has complete data. In that final week, the more than .3 million that the Biden camp spent on ads on the two platforms nearly doubled the Trump team’s total spend, the largest lead in weekly advertising spending on those platforms that Biden has posted to date, according to CRP data.All told, the numbers suggest that one of the main ingredients of Trump’s 2016 campaign’s success may not be so effective for him four years later. And, if anything, money is to blame.The Biden campaign’s massive recent fundraising hauls are starting to show up in its digital spending operation. The campaign is already dwarfing Trump’s in television ad spending. But digital advertising is an area where Trump has traditionally been dominant, and where pundits were just recently writing off the Biden campaign entirely—chastising it as a relic of past politics with little appetite for, or understanding of, the digital world.The data suggests that Biden’s team is now making the type of investments that Democratic operatives had hoped for. And though there are different metrics for measuring a campaign’s full digital footprint, CRP’s formula is fairly comprehensive. The site’s numbers encompass both official Facebook pages for Joe Biden and Donald Trump, their running-mates (and, in Trump’s case, a handful of senior campaign aides), as well as the array of pages the campaigns have set up to court various voter demographics, key states, and issue-centric constituencies.Putin’s Troll Farm Busted Running Sprawling Network of Facebook PagesThroughout most of the 2020 cycle, Biden had lagged Trump in digital ad spending, particularly on Facebook, which has been a key platform for Trump campaign efforts in both 2016 and 2020 to fundraise and reach voters outside of traditional media channels. Biden has occasionally overtaken Trump in weekly ad spending on Google and Facebook, CRP data shows, but most of its spikes have coincided with major campaign events on which the Biden team has sought to capitalize, such as his sweeping Super Tuesday victories in March, or his clinching of the Democratic presidential nomination in June.But the Biden campaign has stepped up its spending of late. On Google, in particular, the Biden campaign’s spending topped the Trump campaign’s by more than .1 million during the first three weeks of September, according to CRP data. On Facebook, a huge spike in Trump campaign spending that coincided with the Republican convention late last month has mostly petered out, and in the week ending Sept. 20, Biden’s campaign dropped .4 million more on ads on the platform than Trump’s did.Even that total understates the trend, as it includes one day, Sept. 11, when the Biden campaign largely paused its advertising operation. Facebook ad buy data shows that the Biden campaign spent just ,500 on the platform that day, down from million a day earlier. On Sept. 12, the total was back up to 1,000.It’s hard to overstate Facebook’s importance to Trump’s political operation, historically. In 2016, the platform was central to the campaign’s strategy, and ate up a huge portion of its advertising budget. “Facebook was the 500-pound gorilla, 80 percent of the budget kind of thing,” Brad Parscale, who ran the campaign’s digital operation in 2016 and is a senior aide on the re-elect, told 60 Minutes in 2017.While Biden has managed to close the Facebook gap, he’s also devoted more funds to less prominent platforms that also provide significant reach. Since January, the Biden campaign has dropped more than 0,000 on ads on the platform Snapchat, nearly 10 times the ,000 spent by the Trump campaign, according to Snapchat political ad data. The sums are far smaller, but that Snapchat data shows that those Biden ads were viewed a staggering 146 million times.The leveling out of the two campaigns’ online ad spending likely reflects the substantial changes in their relative financial positions. As Biden has raked in record funds of late, the Trump campaign has found itself in an unexpected cash crunch and lagging Biden in banked funds that it can put to work during the final weeks of the campaign.One Democratic digital operative who reviewed Trump’s campaign ads on Facebook said the campaign’s strategy appears to be geared towards closing that gap. “When I look at their ad strategy it is pretty haphazard and not coordinated and it is primarily being used to raising money because they don’t have any,” the strategist said. “To me, it’s still clear that they are still in a transition mode from [Brad] Parscale to [Bill] Stepien. Because by this point you would be clearly in a persuasion mode, you’d even be in mobilization with the early vote going on. And I think they’re still just trying to raise money.”Facebook Pledges to Rejects Ads Claiming Election Victory Prior to Final TallyBut if digital ad spending is a fundraising tactic, it is also itself a telling indicator of each campaign’s current fundraising capacity. Facebook ads are not just purchased to persuade voters. They’re also, most often, purchased to raise cash. A candidate will likely spend more and more on them if they bring back equal—or more—money in donations. Trump was believed to have a much more sophisticated and impressive grassroots fundraising apparatus than Biden. But the amount of money that Biden is now spending on digital ads—combined with the fundraising reports he and Trump have filed—suggests that the script has been flipped.Biden’s digital fundraising has also likely benefited from the structural makeup of his campaign. Unlike Trump, his campaign has not prioritized in-person voter contacts such as traditional canvassing and door-knocking. While Biden’s campaign committee itself paid more than three times as much as the Trump campaign in staff payroll in August, the Biden campaign’s focus on using digital tools to reach voters means its advertising spending on top digital platforms will likely continue to rise as election day approaches.\-- with reporting by Sam SteinRead 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.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 08:10:43 GMT

Canceled flights strand 25 Easter Islanders for 6 months
For six months now the group has been stranded far across a vast stretch of ocean on Tahiti in French Polynesia. Mihinoa Terakauhau Pont, a 21-year-old mom who is among those stranded, is due to give birth to her second son any day now, but can't have her husband by her side because he's back home. Usually considered a tropical paradise, Tahiti has become a kind of prison to them.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 06:30:25 GMT

AP Interview: Israeli virus czar fights outbreak, politics
When Dr. Ronni Gamzu, one of Israel’s leading public health experts, was named the country's coronavirus czar in mid-July, he was hailed as Israel's best hope for halting a fast-growing number of cases. Two months later, Israel is suffering from one of the world’s worst outbreaks and heading into a tough new lockdown. Sleeping just four hours a night, Gamzu has faced withering criticism from opponents, pushback from Israel's notoriously fractious political leadership and the stark fact that the number of new cases shows no sign of declining.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 06:18:22 GMT

N. Korea's Kim apologizes over shooting death of S. Korean
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un apologized Friday over the killing of a South Korea official who was apparently trying to defect near the rivals’ disputed sea boundary, saying he’s “very sorry” about the incident, South Korean officials said. It’s extremely unusual for a North Korean leader to apologize to South Korea on any issue. Kim’s move will likely de-escalate tensions between the Koreas as it’s expected to ease anti-North sentiments in South Korea as well as mounting criticism of its liberal President Moon Jae-in.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 05:38:49 GMT

The Latest: Taylor's mom: Lack of investigation failed her
A statement from Breonna Taylor's mother says her daughter was failed by a lack of investigation into her fatal shooting by Louisville police officers in March. In a statement read by her sister at a Friday news conference, Tamika Palmer said she did not expect justice from Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Protesters have taken to the streets around the country after the grand jury announced Wednesday that no officers would be charged in Taylor’s shooting death.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 05:33:56 GMT

Biden's low-key campaign style worries some Democrats
The final stretch of a presidential campaign is typically a nonstop mix of travel, caffeine and adrenaline. Since his Aug. 11 selection of California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, Biden has had 22 days where he either didn't make public appearances, held only virtual fundraisers or ventured from his Delaware home solely for church, according to an Associated Press analysis of his schedules. During the same time, President Donald Trump had 24 trips that took him to 17 different states, not counting a personal visit to New York to see his ailing brother in the hospital or weekend golf outings.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 05:17:40 GMT

In despair, protesters take to streets for Breonna Taylor
Some of them raised their fists and called out “Black lives matter!” Others tended to the letters, flowers and signs grouped together in a square in downtown Louisville. All of them said her name: Breonna Taylor. The big question for a town torn apart by Taylor’s death and the larger issue of racism in America was how to move forward.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 05:15:04 GMT

With 'profound sorrow': Ginsburg lies in state at US Capitol
The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is lying in state Friday at the U.S. Capitol, the first woman in American history to do so, in commemoration of her extraordinary life. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it was with “profound sorrow” that she welcomed the liberal icon and opened the private service. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, sat quietly with other elected officials, friends and family.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 05:13:40 GMT

GOP duo reshapes Montana politics to match Trump's vision
Steve Daines is the affable one, the smiler, a consummate salesman who parlayed his corporate success into a meteoric rise through Montana politics and a seat in the U.S. Senate. Together they form a powerful political alliance on the cusp of dominating Montana politics for years to come, pushing the state's Republican Party away from a Western brand of centrism and toward the hard-line partisan agenda of President Donald Trump. Daines, 58, is seeking a second six-year term while Gianforte, 59, is pouring millions of dollars from his private fortune into another run at the governor’s mansion.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 05:04:47 GMT

Trump infuses politics into his choice for the Supreme Court
President Donald Trump is infusing deliberations over his coming nomination of a new Supreme Court justice with political meaning as he aims to maximize the benefit before Nov. 3 and even secure an electoral backstop should the result be contested. Now, as he closes in on a decision on her likely replacement, Trump has used the vacancy to appeal to battleground-state voters and as a rallying cry for his conservative base. Increases in mail, absentee and early voting brought about by the pandemic have already brought about a flurry of election litigation, and both Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden have assembled armies of lawyers to continue the fight once vote-counting begins.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 04:58:40 GMT

Teen charged in Kenosha shootings fights extradition
A 17-year-old in Illinois accused of killing two protesters days after Jacob Blake was shot by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Friday fought his return to Wisconsin to face homicide charges that could put him in prison for life. Kyle Rittenhouse surrendered to police in his home in Antioch, Illinois, a day after prosecutors say he shot and killed two protesters and wounded a third on the streets of Kenosha on Aug. 25. Rittenhouse attorney John Pierce said during a hearing Friday that he intends to fight extradition.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 03:56:46 GMT

UN implores nations to find ways to bring 300,000 stranded mariners home
The United Nations chief on Thursday implored countries to cooperate in repatriating 300,000 stranded mariners who have been stuck at sea throughout the pandemic, some of whom have not been home in a year or more. Working back-to-back 12-hour shifts, often without weekends, the merchant mariners are buckling under the strain — which could have a disastrous effect on the global supply chain, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday. Meanwhile, on land, the lack of ability to get onto the ships has stranded an equal number of mariners who would like to report for duty, Guterres said.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 02:13:43 GMT

North Korea reportedly kills South Korean military official, burns his body
The North Korean military shockingly has lethally gunned down a South Korean government official and then charred his body. “For whatever reason, North Korea cannot justify its soldiers fatally shooting our citizen and damaging his body,” said South Korean presidential official Suh Choo-suk. It is highly unlikely North Korea will admit to any wrongdoing, further corroding already rusting bonds between the two nations, acknowledged political pundits.

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 02:04:40 GMT

American consumers are paying the price for Wall Street’s profiteering in China | Opinion
China was America’s whipping boy again this week. President Trump used his United Nations General Assembly speech to accuse and to threaten Beijing for its role in covering up the early stages of the pandemic. He said that the U.N. “must hold China accountable for their actions.”

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 01:09:48 GMT

RPT-U.N. aviation agency ICAO advises Pakistan to suspend issuance of new pilot licenses

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 23:30:00 GMT

They said it: Leaders at the virtual UN, in their own words
Here, The Associated Press takes the opposite approach and spotlights some thoughts you might not have heard — the voices of leaders speaking at the first all-virtual U.N. General Assembly leaders meeting who might not have captured the headlines and the airtime on Thursday, the third day of the 2020 debate. “It is beyond the shadow of doubt that the United Nations remains more relevant now than it was 75 years ago.”

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 23:05:49 GMT

Africa's week in pictures: 18 - 24 September 2020
A selection of the week's best photos from across the continent and beyond.

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 23:05:37 GMT

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