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Over 3 million cases of coronavirus reported in Mideast
The number of reported coronavirus cases has gone over 3 million in the Middle East, an Associated Press count showed Friday, with the true number likely even higher. Across the Mideast, there have been over 75,000 deaths attributed to the virus by health authorities, the AP count relying on reported figures by individual countries shows. In the Mideast, the hardest-hit nation remains Iran, which served as the initial epicenter of the virus in the region.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 13:18:49 GMT

5 reasons not to underestimate far-right extremists
Far-right extremists have been in the news, with an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor and rallies like the one the Proud Boys held in Portland in September.With a hotly contested election underway in a polarized society, many people are concerned about violence from far-right extremists. But they may not understand the real threat. The law enforcement community is among those who have failed to understand the true nature and danger of far-right extremists. Over several decades, the FBI and other federal authorities have only intermittently paid attention to far-right extremists. In recent years, they have again acknowledged the extent of the threat. But it’s not clear how long their attention will last.While researching my forthcoming book, “It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the U.S.,” I discovered that there are five key mistakes people make when thinking about far-right extremists. These mistakes obscure the extremists’ true danger. 1\. Some have white supremacist views, but others don’tWhen asked to condemn white supremacists and extremists at the first presidential debate, President Donald Trump floundered, then said, “Give me a name.” His Democratic challenger Joe Biden offered, “The Proud Boys.”Not all far-right extremists are militant white supremacists.White supremacy, the belief in white racial superiority and dominance, is a major theme of many far-right believers. Some, like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, are extremely hardcore hate groups.Others, who at times identify themselves with the term “alt-right,” often mix racism, anti-Semitism and claims of white victimization in a less militant way. In addition, there are what some experts have called the “alt-lite,” like the Proud Boys, who are less violent and disavow overt white supremacy even as they promote white power by glorifying white civilization and demonizing nonwhite people including Muslims and many immigrants.There is another major category of far-right extremists who focus more on opposing the government than they do on racial differences. This so-called “patriot movement” includes tax protesters and militias, many heavily armed and a portion from military and law enforcement backgrounds. Some, like the Hawaiian-shirt-wearing Boogaloos, seek civil war to overthrow what they regard as a corrupt political order. 2\. They live in cities and towns across the nation and even the globeFar-right extremists are in communities all across America.The KKK, often thought of as centered in the South, has chapters from coast to coast. The same is true of other far-right extremist groups, as illustrated by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Map.Far-right extremism is also global, a point underscored by the 2011 massacre in Norway and the 2019 New Zealand mosque attack, both of which were perpetrated by people claiming to resist “white genocide.” The worldwide spread led the U.N. to recently issue a global alert about the “growing and increasing transnational threat” of right-wing extremism. 3\. Many are well-organized, educated and social-media savvyFar-right extremists include people who write books, wear sport coats and have advanced degrees. For instance, in 1978 a physics professor turned neo-Nazi wrote a book that has been called the “bible of the racist right.” Other leaders of the movement have attended elite universities.Far-right extremists were early users of the internet and now thrive on social media platforms, which they use to agitate, recruit and organize. The 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville revealed how effectively they could reach large groups and mobilize them into action.Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have recently attempted to ban many of them. But the alleged Michigan kidnappers’ ability to evade restrictions by simply creating new pages and groups has limited the companies’ success. 4\. They were here long before Trump and will remain here long afterMany people associate far-right extremism with the rise of Trump. It’s true that hate crimes, anti-Semitism and the number of hate groups have risen sharply since his campaign began in 2015. And the QAnon movement – called both a “collective delusion” and a “virtual cult” – has gained widespread attention.But far-right extremists were here long before Trump.The history of white power extremism dates back to slave patrols and the post-Civil War rise of the KKK. In the 1920s, the KKK had millions of members. The following decade saw the rise of Nazi sympathizers, including 15,000 uniformed “Silver Shirts” and a 20,000 person pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1939.While adapting to the times, far-right extremism has continued into the present. It’s not dependent on Trump, and will remain a threat regardless of his public prominence. 5\. They pose a widespread and dire threat, with some seeking civil warFar-right extremists often appear to strike in spectacular “lone wolf” attacks, like the Oklahoma City federal building bombing in 1995, the mass murder at a Charleston church in 2015 and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018. But these people are not alone.Most far-right extremists are part of larger extremist communities, communicating by social media and distributing posts and manifestos.Their messages speak of fear that one day, whites may be outnumbered by nonwhites in the U.S., and the idea that there is a Jewish-led plot to destroy the white race. In response, they prepare for a war between whites and nonwhites.[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]Thinking of these extremists as loners risks missing the complexity of their networks, which brought as many as 13 alleged plotters together in the planning to kidnap Michigan’s governor.Together, these misconceptions about far-right extremist individuals and groups can lead Americans to underestimate the dire threat they pose to the public. Understanding them, by contrast, can help people and experts alike address the danger, as the election – and its aftermath – unfolds.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Alexander Hinton, Rutgers University - Newark .Read more: * Plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor grew from the militia movement’s toxic mix of constitutional falsehoods and half-truths * There’s a history of white supremacists interpreting government leaders’ words as encouragementAlexander Hinton receives funding from the New Jersey Center for Gun Violence Research.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 12:48:29 GMT

From Trump to Trudeau, the escalator is a favorite symbol of political campaigns
In June 2015 Donald Trump rode an escalator into the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City to announce his candidacy for president – an escalator ride that quickly became famous.Politico called it “the escalator ride that changed America,” and The Guardian spoke of “the surreal day Trump kicked off his bid for president” with a “golden escalator ride.”The escalator has long been a symbol of social mobility, of the ease with which Americans have been able to rise to the top of the social and economic hierarchy. For this reason, it has featured in a range of recent political campaigns.For decades the escalator has been a ready symbol in debates over economic inequality and globalization. For many it captures how the economy used to work, how it no longer seems to work and how it might work again. The escalator’s political meaning has shifted over the years – but it’s never gone away, and candidates on both the right and the left love to invoke it. Justin Trudeau’s ascensionIn my work on the cultural history of the escalator, I have been struck by its persistent use in recent years. During Justin Trudeau’s 2015 campaign to become prime minister of Canada, a television ad featured the candidate climbing an escalator the wrong way. Trudeau remains in place until he reverses the escalator’s direction and uses it to propel himself upward. For Trudeau’s Liberal Party, the escalator served as a metaphor for how upward mobility had languished under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. The ad symbolically replaced the 18th-century economist Adam Smith’s metaphor of an “invisible hand” – coined to describe the way that prices seem to rise and fall of their own accord in a capitalist economy – with an escalator. Trudeau’s liberal politics, his campaign promised, were like a “master switch” capable of redirecting the escalator’s flow.For Trudeau’s leftist critics in the opposition New Democratic Party, though, the escalator ad symbolized everything that was wrong with Trudeau’s politics, because it asked voters to trust that globalization and corporate welfare would bring wealth and social mobility. “Stop the Escalator” became a progressive rallying cry of the 2015 campaign.Donald Trump’s television series “The Apprentice” was likewise obsessed with the politics of social mobility. At the end of each episode, contestants were sent either “up to the suite – or down to the street.” To be important is to have access to the corporate boardroom and the penthouse.For Trump, riding the escalator is a symbol of social mobility and power. In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump boasts about how expensive it was to install.The fact that Trump rode down the escalator, rather than up it – as if he were condescending to come down, rather than inviting us to come up – turned the symbol on its head. Criticism of globalizationThe political right around the world has often targeted the escalator. The objection is precisely to its accessibility – that anyone can ride it.In 2014, during the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum over whether to leave the European Union, the populist U.K. Independence Party ran an advertisement depicting an escalator built over the White Cliffs of Dover. The slogan read: “No Border, No Control.”The word “control” here suggests not only an unprotected border, but a broader sense of social disorder, symbolized by the way that the escalator, a mechanical contraption, is depicted invading a pastoral landscape.When Trump announced his presidential run after riding down the escalator into the lobby, he focused on issues of mobility and borders. He complained, infamously, that Mexico was sending America its rapists and drug dealers – that the United States had entered an era in which working-class Americans were stuck in place while migrants, terrorists and drug dealers had become mobile.Implicitly, Trump in 2015 questioned whether America’s engine of social mobility was working for the “right” people. Escalation versus de-escalationThe escalator has shaped political rhetoric more generally. When we refer to the way a conflict escalates, we are using a metaphor that originated with the escalator.The term is of incredibly recent origin. It first emerged in the 1920s as a verb for riding an escalator. And it took on its present meaning only in 1959, in the context of the Cold War.To “escalate” in the context of the Cold War was to take the conflict to the next level. It was not to commit a single act of retaliation but to initiate a new sustained level of violence. “Escalation theory” was intended to slow conflict, to avert an immediate turn toward nuclear war among the global superpowers. Since then, however, “escalation” has mostly served to rationalize never-ending, low-level forms of conflict. Violence, in this way, is ratcheted up and down, escalated and de-escalated, but it never ceases. Modern American politics is characterized by unending escalation. One can cite the wars in Vietnam and, now, Afghanistan. There’s the partisan rhetoric and political brinkmanship over Senate procedures and Supreme Court appointments. There’s police violence. Much of the public debate around these issues is preoccupied with finding “de-escalation” strategies – ways to slow America’s seemingly uncontrollable cycle of conflict and violence. Why escalatorsThe escalator has become such a powerful and pervasive symbol in both politics and speech perhaps precisely because it is a machine. [Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]It operates mechanically, “on its own accord” and without human input, making it a ready symbol for undemocratic, technocratic policymaking that occurs without input from the general public.Trudeau was unfazed by these associations. But the growing popularity of the escalator, as a symbol, on the political right reflects a growing cynicism about democratic governance.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Peter Erickson, Colorado State University.Read more: * Is tax avoidance ethical? Asking for a friend * Trump’s foreign policy is still ‘America First’ – what does that mean, exactly?This article was made possible by a fellowship from the Center for the Study of Origins at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 12:48:07 GMT

Sanctions on Russia to stay whoever wins U.S. vote - Putin ally

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 12:45:46 GMT

Much still to do on Brexit trade deal, EU's Barnier says

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 12:34:20 GMT

Scottish voters' 'loathing' of Boris Johnson main reason for independence support surge, poll says
Scottish voters' "loathing" for Boris Johnson is the main factor behind the recent surge in support for independence, according to an extensive new analysis. A poll by JL Partners conducted last month found 56 per cent support for separation and 44 per cent opposition, a result in line with a series of similar surveys. But it found that the most persuasive argument in favour of independence was "Boris Johnson is not the leader I want to have for my country", a sentiment that 79 per cent of swing voters agreed with. Among the other factors driving the increase in support for separation were Brexit, the UK Government's handling of the pandemic and a desire to settle the independence question once and for all. The poll also showed that Nicola Sturgeon is on course for a landslide win in next May's Holyrood election, with 58 per cent support for the SNP in the constituency vote compared to only 19 per cent for the Tories and 13 per cent for Labour. She has said she will use the contest to seek a mandate for another independence referendum, placing huge pressure on the Prime Minister to hand her the powers to stage another vote. He has pledged to hold Ms Sturgeon to her promise before the 2014 referendum, which the Unionist side won by 55 per cent to 45 per cent, that it was a "once-in-a-generation" vote.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 10:53:43 GMT

Witness testimony in Huawei CFO's U.S. extradition case enters final day
A fifth and final scheduled day of witness testimony in the extradition case of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou in a Canadian court will conclude on Friday, although lawyers for both sides proposed days be added to hear all witnesses. Meng, 48, was arrested by Canadian police on a U.S. warrant in December 2018 while on a layover in Vancouver, bound for Mexico. The United States charged her with bank fraud, accusing her of misleading HSBC about Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's business dealings in Iran, causing the bank to break U.S. sanctions.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 10:09:03 GMT

As anger rises, thousands of Muslims protest French cartoons
Thousands of Muslims, from Pakistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian territories, poured out of prayer services to join anti-France protests on Friday, as the French president’s vow to protect the right to caricature the Prophet Muhammad continues to roil the Muslim world. Demonstrations in Pakistan's capital Islamabad turned violent as some 2,000 people who tried to march toward the French Embassy were pushed back by police firing tear gas and beating protesters with batons. Crowds of Islamist activists hanged an effigy of French President Emmanuel Macron from a highway overpass after pounding it furiously with their shoes.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 09:58:05 GMT

Is Trump the candidate of peace?
There are cases for re-electing President Trump that make sense in their own terms. If your top priorities are tax cuts, immigration restriction, or conservative judges, for example, Trump has proven a remarkably reliable vehicle for achieving those ends. Other cases reflect a willful blindness to reality. Far from draining the swamp, for example, Trump has turned himself into the capital's premier swamp-dweller.But most voters in the middle care about practical results, and from health care to infrastructure to trade, Trump's efforts have been largely feckless and incompetent. Even discounting the glaring failure of his response to COVID-19, an area where plenty of peer countries have not exactly covered themselves with glory, the administration has a very thin record of accomplishment to run on.There's one area, though, where Trump can argue he has genuinely distinguished himself from prior administrations, Democratic and Republican, in a way that should matter deeply to the American people. Trump ran in both the primaries and the general election as the man who would keep America out of unnecessary wars and who would end the ones we were in. He hasn't ended any of our wars yet, but Trump is in fact the first president since Jimmy Carter not to have sent American troops into a new conflict.So it's at least worth hearing out the idea: Is Trump the peace candidate?The claim, made most prominently by Modern Age editor and The Week contributor Daniel McCarthy, rests on three arguments. First, as noted, Trump did not involve America in any new conflicts. For a normal nation, this would not be an extraordinary accomplishment — but for America, it might be. Military intervention has long-since become a way of life in American foreign policy. Even Barack Obama, who was elected on a promise not to get involved in "stupid wars," was convinced to intervene in Libya, with catastrophic results, and it was only at the last moment that he pulled back from a comparable effort in Syria. By contrast, Trump, while he appointed super-hawks like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton to be his advisors, declined to be talked into war with Iran. Shouldn't he get credit for that?Second, while Trump is the last person anyone would call diplomatic, he has been a promiscuous globe-trotter in search of peace deals. He long advocated a rapprochement with Russia, initiated personal diplomacy with North Korea for the first time at the presidential level, and, most notably, facilitated peace agreements between Israel and three Arab states — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan — with the potential for more to come. If this is not the record of a peace-maker, what is it?The third argument is the most important, because it speaks to overall philosophy, not generally considered this president's strong point. But if Trump has a theory of the world, it is that you should make deals that benefit yourself. Applied to foreign policy, this suggests the goal of American foreign policy should not be to improve other countries or to advance some values we hold dear, but to get the best possible deals for America. So if, for example, we can woo North Korea away from confrontation (and out of a pro-Chinese alignment) by soft-pedaling concerns about human rights or missile development, why not do it?Is that peace? If so, Trump has a case. But I don't think it's peace.For one thing, while it's true that Trump did not start a war with Iran, he did take a high-risk gamble in assassinating terrorist mastermind General Qassem Soleimani, and the fact that the gamble has so far paid off doesn't invalidate how risky it was at the time, nor the fact that, in that instance, he did listen to his extremely hawkish advisors. Moreover, Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal that was one of Obama's notable accomplishments, which has, predictably, led Iran to move further toward nuclear potential while shredding any American diplomatic leverage. While Trump has not started any new wars, one of his first acts was to dramatically escalate America's involvement in Saudi Arabia's near-genocidal war in Yemen, a war so unpopular that he had to veto a bi-partisan war-powers resolution to keep fighting. Meanwhile, from North Korea to China to Venezuela, Trump has been as promiscuous with his threats as he has been with his praise of foreign dictators. If he has rarely backed those threats up with military action, that is not a sign of a dove but of a paper tiger.As for diplomacy, while Trump has claimed to want better relations with Russia, it's hard to discern any actual improvement there. Instead, America has torn up arms agreements with Russia in the hopes of adding China to them, a gambit which failed, leaving the future of New Start in serious question. The same can be said about North Korea, where Trump's bold diplomatic opening has led nowhere. Chalk these failures up to conflict between Trump and his subordinates, or to Russian and North Korean determination to pursue their own interests, or what have you — regardless, a stated eagerness for better relations is not the same thing as achieving them, and the achievement is what's lacking.The only area where Trump can legitimately point to peacemaking is between Israel and some of its erstwhile adversaries. But it's important to understand what underwrites this peace. In the case of the Gulf States, it was mutual fear of Iran — stoked by Obama's nuclear deal — that led to a behind-the-scenes working relationship with Israel. And what made it possible to bring that relationship into the open is the weakness of the Palestinian position, and their consequent inability to shape events in the Arab world. Trump surely revealed that weakness by moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, so the world could see that nothing much happened in consequence. If he contributed beyond this, it was by being prepared to ask less than most American presidents would of either party, and to offer more. How is that "America First?"Which leads me to my largest objection to the characterization of Trump as the peace candidate. It's not just that Trump hasn't actually reduced America's military commitments, or ended any of our ongoing conflicts, or improved American relations with any other powers. It's not just that his idea of a good deal is one that benefits America's defense contractors while leaving us more beholden to allies who can offer us little in exchange for our support. It's that the conception of peace implied by this characterization is too thin to deserve the term. Peace is not merely the absence of current conflict. It is the establishment of relations with other powers on a basis that makes conflict less likely over the long term.That is an idea that strikes me as entirely beyond President Trump's comprehension, convinced as he is that life is a constant zero-sum struggle for dominance. Of course, that's one way to characterize international relations as well — perhaps the most realistic one in our fallen world. But it's one that declares "peace" an impossibility, the only hope being either global hegemony, or a dynamic balancing between different powers punctuated by conflict. If the former is no longer realistic (and I agree it's not), then America needs more than ever a shrewd, knowledgeable statesman at the helm, capable of discerning where our true interests lie and maneuvering to advance them as peacefully and cooperatively as possible. A statesman who will only threaten when necessary, but whose threats are always taken seriously.If that sounds like Trump to you, then I've got a heck of a deal on a swamp to sell you.More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 09:55:01 GMT

I don't want Biden to win. I do want Trump to lose.
The 2020 presidential campaign has lasted so long and so much coincided with the preoccupying effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that I began to think of it as a permanent feature of our national politics, the election a future event that would always be a few months away. When the first debate between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden arrived, I was almost taken by surprise — wait, this is happening? Time is moving forward?Evidently it is — the snow already on the ground here in Minnesota convinces me, if nothing else — and Election Day is finally nigh. On Tuesday or, more likely, sometime in the two months after it, we'll know who won. And so, as I write my last pre-election column: I don't want the winner to be Biden. But I do want Trump to lose.I realize, of course, the obvious objection to that pair of sentences: In the race we have, Trump losing means Biden wins. I understand that. I understand, too, the perfect symmetry of partisan conviction that failing to vote for one of these two candidates (whether via an alternative vote or abstention) amounts to a vote for his opponent. I reject that reasoning, though I sympathize with the fear that informs it.But this is not a column about how I'll vote, nor is it some strange attempt to deny the reality that, come January 20, 2021, one of these men will be our president. It is simply my registration of utter discontent with the choice we've been offered for the next four years and, equally, a longing to run far away from the deep dysfunction of the last four.Part of this is about policy, as both candidates have promised to take actions I do not want done in my name. Polling shows very few Americans care about foreign policy this cycle, but I am one of those few, and both candidates have foreign policies I find unconscionable.It's not that there's no difference between them: Biden would be better in diplomacy with Iran and our European allies, for example. But he looks more likely to escalate tensions with North Korea, perhaps to the point of U.S. invasion, the probable consequences of which are horrible to contemplate. Trump dubiously says he'll withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, while Biden wants to leave a permanent U.S. footprint there, ever at risk of stumbling into some new fight. But Trump is also determined to keep facilitating Saudi war crimes in Yemen, while Biden says he'll stop.Though each gets some things right, neither shows any sign of rejecting the past 20 years of global military interventionism and implementing a humane and prudent foreign policy where the goal is not American supremacy but peace. To vote for either candidate is to vote for innocents dead, markets turned to rubble, weddings turned to funerals. That we may expect other advantages of one candidate's victory does not alter that fact.In other policy arenas, too, I find some things to like, usually with caveats, and more to vehemently oppose. In immigration and refugee policy as well as criminal justice reform, I'd prefer Biden. On religious liberty and abortion, I lean toward Trump, though I don't for a second believe he cares a whit about anyone's liberty or life but his own. On health care and fiscal issues, I've reached a point of assuming nothing I'd support will ever happen — I'll be surprised if I live to see a balanced federal budget, and I think Medicare-for-All is a near-term inevitability.I know some would say I should approach this as a math problem, sit down and assign values to all these policies, factor in what I care about most and what the president can actually accomplish, and then give the high scorer my vote. I don't concede that the ethics of this thing can be calculated thus — am I supposed to estimate body counts? What number should I assign to lives ruined but not ended? On some issues, like drones, the candidates' scores would negate each other, but that wouldn't negate the fact of my voting for drone war. Anyway, even if this math were possible, the high score would be sub-zero. This choice is unacceptable.And it's not just policy. Indeed, many of my reasons for wanting the Trump era to end come from outside the bounds of politics proper. Putting Trump at the center of our national life has been disastrous. He's a foghorn of cruelty, lies, and confusion, both exacerbating and benefiting from pre-existent vices in our political culture and weaknesses in our political structures.Social media (and the journalistic instinct that anything said by the most powerful man in the world must be newsworthy) has allowed Trump to insert himself and politics more broadly into so many realms of our life where neither belong. "Trump Derangement Syndrome," of which the president's supporters like to complain, is sometimes a fair charge — but it's also a malady Trump himself actively seeks to aggravate. He delights in any attention, in trolling, in irritation and anger for its own sake, in malice and fantasies of harm. He radicalizes his opponents and degrades his supporters. All is escalation.I recently wrote here at The Week about our country's epistemic crisis, our dangerous uncertainty about whether truth exists, whether it is knowable, and how and from whom it may be known. As I argued then, this crisis has no single point of origin; both big political tribes are implicated, and of course politics always involves lies. Still, Trump has uniquely and "dramatically embraced and accelerated our epistemological crisis through his evident belief that truth is a function of power," as O. Alan Noble recently wrote at Public Discourse, and "[t]here is no way to isolate the effects of a chronically deceptive president."Supporting Trump invites another four years of that acceleration. It is one reason, of many, I want Trump to lose this election. He is an awful president. I only wish we had a chance to get a good one.More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 09:50:01 GMT

Trump is blatantly corrupt
Even if Joe Biden turns out to be irredeemably corrupt — and I am skeptical that would be the case — he is no match for President Trump's epic underhandedness.The president and his allies have spent the last few weeks flogging the notion that Biden is a crime lord masquerading as a politician, accusing the former vice president and his son, Hunter, of sketchy deals involving an array of foreign countries. These accusations haven't gained much traction — perhaps because they are of questionable providence: The New York Post reporters who wrote up a "bombshell" report on Hunter Biden refused to have their bylines appear with the story, a sign they weren't confident in it. And NBC reported on Thursday that a document containing allegations against Hunter was disseminated to a conservative activists by a man who doesn't even exist.So it is difficult to take these allegations seriously. But say, only for the sake of argument, they end up being true. Does that mean anti-corruption voters should turn to Donald Trump as their savior? Of course not.The list of Trump's unscrupulous activities over last four years is too lengthy to be recounted here. So let us take a look at some of revelations that have emerged just this week: * On Thursday, The New York Times reported the Trump administration had soft-peddled its prosecution of a Turkish bank accused of breaking U.S. sanctions law by funneling money to Iran — a scheme Justice Department lawyers believed was helping fund Iran's nuclear weapons program. But Trump has received millions of dollars of income from businesses in Turkey, leading officials to believe the president was looking out for his own best interest, instead of American interests. "He would interfere in the regular government process to do something for a foreign leader," John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, told the Times. "In anticipation of what? In anticipation of another favor from that person down the road." * Before that, on Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that Trump's businesses have taken in at least .5 million from U.S. taxpayers — mostly for the privilege of letting the president hang out and do business on his own property. Expenses ranged from ,000 worth of liquor for White House aides to for the water Trump drank when meeting with the Japanese prime minister. That money is in addition to another .6 million Trump's campaign and fundraising committee paid to his businesses to support the boss' effort to stay in office, the Post reported, "turning campaign donations into private revenue." That isn't illegal. But it doesn't look good, either. "It's extremely unusual," one election law expert said.These latest stories add to what we already know about how Trump has used his authority to pressure Ukraine into undermining Biden's candidacy, to help his friends evade punishment for breaking the law, and to push for the investigation of his enemies. Reports have also indicated that foreign governments used Trump's businesses — and the businesses of his children — to curry favor with the president. Presidents aren't supposed to abuse their power or benefit financially from holding office. Trump has done both.There is a danger of cynicism in this discussion. A friend once told me he didn't mind Trump's corruption so much because he figured all politicians are dishonest and self-dealing. It is likely that the president and his allies throw mud at Biden simply to further that impression. We should expect better from our leaders, of course.So Joe Biden and his family should not be held beyond scrutiny, by the media or voters. And if Biden is elected and then abuses his authority and office to benefit personally and politically, then he should be impeached. Two wrongs don't make a right, after all.But when everything is going to hell, in a country afflicted with both pandemic and polarization, it is best to prioritize taking care of the big problems first, then addressing the smaller challenges. What is (implausibly) alleged against Biden doesn't much compare to all the evidence we have against Trump. If government corruption is your issue, voting for the former vice president seems a better bet.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 09:45:02 GMT

Qatar: Officials behind women exams referred to prosecutors
Qatar said Friday it referred officials at its international airport to prosecutors for possible charges after women aboard Qatar Airways flights faced forced vaginal examinations following the discovery of an abandoned newborn baby. The statement comes as the Australian government has expressed outrage and union workers have threatened not to service Qatar Airways aircraft in Sydney over the Oct. 2 incident. Australia also represents a crucial route for Qatar Airways, the state-owned long-haul carrier based at Hamad International Airport in Doha.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 09:41:00 GMT

China vows to become self-reliant and bolster military after four-day government meeting
China’s leaders vow to become a “self-reliant” technology power and to continue defence capabilities as Communist Party leader Xi Jinping closed a four-day government meeting aimed at outlining policy plans for the next five years. A communique released at the end of the meeting gave a scant outline, and full details aren’t expected until next spring when the country’s parliament meets for its annual session to rubber-stamp the plans. While Beijing has prioritised boosting its advanced technology and manufacturing capabilities over recent years to be less dependent on foreign imports, that push is being renewed as tensions grow with the US. Supply chains for Chinese tech firms have been disrupted after Washington slapped tariffs and restricted access to components. The communique also stressed that China would continue to develop its military, and made clear the government’s would promote peaceful unification with Taiwan. Taiwan, an island of 23 million with a democractic government and its own currency, military, passport and foreign policy, has long been regarded by Beijing as a renegade province. Balancing the peaceful language was the term to “prepare for war,” a phrase last used in relation to five-year policy planning around 1966 – when the Cultural Revolution began. Such rhetoric fits into Beijing’s increasing swagger, running military drills near and around Taiwan in a show of force despite being busy with the coronavirus pandemic this year. Mr Xi’s recent pledge for China to be carbon neutral by 2060 is largely expected to be written into policy plans. But so far, authorities have only said that China would push forward on green and low-carbon development, without giving further details. While the economy has fared “better than expected” amid uncertainty triggered by Covid, officials haven’t indicated whether a growth target will be set. One key part of the meeting that was missing, however, was any hint of who would potentially be Mr Xi’s successor. In 2018, he scrapped China’s two-term limit for state president, allowing him to rule indefinitely. No such limits exist for other top posts, which Mr Xi also holds, such as Communist Party general secretary.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 09:38:22 GMT

New arrest after France church attack, security tightened
Mourners lit candles and prayed silently Friday to honor the three people who were killed in a French church by a young Tunisian, as France heightened security nationwide amid religious and geopolitical tensions around published cartoons mocking the prophet of Islam. Tunisian anti-terrorism authorities opened an investigation Friday into an online claim of responsibility by a person who said the attack was staged by a heretofore-unknown Tunisian extremist group. Around the Mideast and Asia, Muslims offended by the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and French President Emmanuel Macron's firm stance against political Islam held more anti-French protests Friday.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 09:12:31 GMT

Former Turkish PM and veteran politician Mesut Yilmaz dies
Mesut Yilmaz, a former Turkish prime minister and veteran politician who served as premier three times during a tumultuous political era in his country, died Friday at age 72, the official Anadolu news agency reported. Yilmaz led the now-defunct center-right Motherland Party or ANAP from 1991 to 2002 and served as prime minister three times in the 1990s. Two of those premierships lasted only months because of the fall of his coalition governments.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 08:53:55 GMT

Coronavirus: What's happening to the numbers in Africa?
There's been a rise recently in cases and deaths in some areas, but is this a longer-term trend?

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 08:41:20 GMT

Don't Ignore the Good News On Covid-19 From Asia
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- It’s easy to feel that there’s no light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel. Europe’s intensive care wards are filling up again, pushing France and Germany into a fresh round of stay-at-home restrictions and lockdowns — albeit ones designed to be softer than the first. Even countries hit hard by the first wave, such as Italy and Sweden, are seeing rising cases, suggesting herd immunity is a long way off. The U.S. looks to have given up on controlling the pandemic until a vaccine arrives.Yet we shouldn’t ignore the better news from Asia. The strategies pursued by South Korea, Vietnam, China and others do still seem to be paying off. While the total Covid-19 death toll is between 500-700 per million people in France, the U.K., Spain and the U.S., in China and South Korea it is below 10 per million. Cases are a less perfect measure, but there’s a similar observable gap. Wuhan, once the epicenter of Covid-19, is welcoming tourists again.The perception of an Asian advantage in this pandemic often falls prey to essentialist thinking: That somehow the East is doing things the West could never do, and that it’s largely down to profound differences in values, politics and culture. If China is able to contain Covid-19, it must be because of draconian government policy and the social bonds of Confucianism. If Singapore has 28 deaths, credit must lie with Lee Kuan Yew’s founding legacy of authoritarian pragmatism.There are likely far less intangible forces at work. If the key to avoiding more lockdowns is finding a way to “live with the virus” — through widespread testing, tracing of contacts and isolating positive cases to slow transmission — Western countries have made structural, not cultural, errors.Extensive testing was rolled out in Europe after the first wave, but too slowly and too late to avoid delays and bottlenecks. Contact tracers were too few; digital apps were left to wither on the vine. Positive cases didn’t take isolation seriously, because of a lack of enforcement and patchy financial support. These aren’t questions of philosophy, but about implementation of policy. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, admitted as much on Thursday when she said European Union leaders should have acted sooner. Even the famously organized Germans failed to halt the second wave. Compare that with Asia, where public-health systems have proven more robust. South Korea tested early, and often, using walk-in centers and drive-throughs. In Wuhan, the authorities tested 11 million people over 2 weeks. The share of tests coming back positive in South Korea and Vietnam is below 1%; in France and Spain it has risen to 10%.While contact-tracing strategies such as Vietnam’s “third-degree” sweep of personal data — or Hong Kong’s geofencing wristbands — would spook the average Londoner, Europeans failed to implement their own alternatives properly. Between July and August, for example, the number of contacts traced per positive case in France fell to 2.4 from 4.5. If test-and-trace slackens off like this, no wonder we can’t control the virus’s spread.As for the quarantining of positive cases, the decision by China and South Korea to monitor — or imprison, some might grumble — patients with milder cases in special-care centers is worth considering. Keeping people cooped up at home doesn’t seem that much more liberal, especially when people are tempted outside by the need to earn a living. It’s also far less effective, with one study estimating that isolation in institutions could avert almost three times as many cases as home-based isolation throughout an epidemic. The differences between Asia and Europe look more rooted in recent, not ancient, history. Over the past 20 years, Asia has been hit with several epidemics, such as SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2015, which forced countries to adapt and improve their institutions. This also spurred countries to invest in public health: Between 2000 and 2016, Vietnam’s per-capita health spending increased by an average of 9% per year. By contrast, European countries have been shutting hospitals and beds, with financial crises more front of mind than disease.As Europeans start their winter lockdown, they should remember that improvements are achievable. And the good news is that countries are collaborating more at the EU level, on efforts such as rolling out quicker antigen tests and sharing resources. If Asia managed to learn from past pandemics, the West should be able to as well.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the European Union and France. He worked previously at Reuters and Forbes.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 07:30:29 GMT

From Spain to Italy, Europe Is Fed Up with Lockdowns
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- After a summer of hope, Europe looks set for a tragic winter. The dream of keeping the pandemic in check with limited sacrifices is gone. Governments are readying themselves for a new round of tough containment measures.Ireland paved the way a week and a half ago, imposing a national lockdown while keeping schools and essential stores open. France has similarly ordered a shutdown, just a few months after president Emmanuel Macron categorically ruled one out. In Germany, chancellor Angela Merkel has spearheaded a partial lockdown for the month of November, one that will put a stop to leisure activities. Italy has imposed a 6 p.m. curfew for bars and restaurants but could opt for more draconian rules. As new curbs on personal freedom loom, it’s worth asking: Are citizens going to accept them as they did during the first wave of the virus? From Italy to Spain, many are already taking to the streets to protest the impact of restrictions on their financial security. Politicians must find ways to address their concerns or risk a collapse of social cohesion.As I argued in August, more lockdowns were never off the table. Although leaders vowed to tackle a second wave through tracking, tracing and “smart,” localized lockdowns, the rising number of deaths and hospitalizations is giving them no choice but to impose stricter measures. Even Sweden, which opted for a relatively light-touch strategy during the first wave, is now enforcing more restrictions, at least in some areas.The current approach across Europe differs, however, from that taken during the spring. Governments appear desperate to keep open as much of their economies as possible, as they fear a spike in bankruptcies, unemployment and ever larger budget deficits. Spain and Italy are resisting the blanket bans on non-essential activities they had previously adopted. Politicians also want to keep schools open, even though this likely contributes to propagating contagion. Italy has reverted to distant learning for high school kids, but elsewhere on the continent we are not seeing the same widespread school closures we had in the first half of 2020.Still, any lockdown is going to require collaboration from the population. Most European countries benefited from exceptional levels of compliance to stay-at-home orders in the spring. Now, as protests in cities such as Rome and Barcelona show, people’s frustration and rage are growing.To some extent, this is the natural consequence of earlier policies. There was always a risk that people would become tired of staying home, especially if it looked like their efforts weren’t paying off. Generalized lockdowns were always an imperfect long-term containment strategy for the virus, as the economic shock hits citizens hard. It also hits the same people again and again, from waiters to ballet dancers.But European governments have themselves to blame for this wave of discontent. During the spring, they could be excused for being caught off guard. This line of defense no longer holds. As citizens continue to face shortages of tests and hospital beds, many are asking what exactly politicians did to prepare for the colder season. There is also anger that businesses were forced to invest in sanitizers and other health precautions only to then be shut down again. Policy makers should have been more honest about the long-term uncertainty linked to the pandemic, rather than raising expectations of a swift return to normality.Leaders must now do a better job of bringing citizens on board with new restrictions. They must ensure that measures are proportionate and based on scientific advice, and that the public sector does its part to limit the spread of contagion — for example by reducing crowds on public transport. They must do better at communicating the thinking behind their decisions. Finally, they must put together adequate financial support and get it swiftly to those in need. During the first wave, countries such as Germany managed this far more efficiently than others such as Italy.Europe is heading into winter with a tired and scared population. The challenge will be finding a way to fight the pandemic while keeping social peace.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Ferdinando Giugliano writes columns on European economics for Bloomberg Opinion. He is also an economics columnist for La Repubblica and was a member of the editorial board of the Financial Times.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 06:00:15 GMT

'Our heart breaks': South digs out from Zeta's wrath
The remnants of Hurricane Zeta were far from land over the Atlantic on Friday, but people across the South were still digging out from the powerful storm that killed six people. The wind effects of Zeta, which came ashore in Cocodrie, Louisiana, and barreled northeast, were felt all the way from the Gulf Coast to southern New Jersey. At the height of the outages, as many as 2.6 million people were without power across seven states from Louisiana to Virginia.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 05:00:17 GMT

Australian academic moved to notorious Tehran jail
An Australian academic held in Iran for more than two years has been returned to Tehran's notorious Evin prison, friends said Friday, prompting fresh concern about her wellbeing.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 04:42:00 GMT

Election emerges as referendum on race relations in America
Many were Black Americans whose communities were disproportionately devastated by the virus. Police shot and killed Breonna Taylor inside her Kentucky home, and a Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into George Floyd's neck for nearly eight minutes as Floyd gasped, “I can't breathe,” in his final moments. The convergence of the pandemic, joblessness and police brutality has forced the U.S. to confront its centuries-old legacy of systemic racism this year.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 04:41:24 GMT

On virus, Trump and health advisers go their separate ways
A multi-state coronavirus surge in the countdown to Election Day has exposed a clear split between President Donald Trump’s bullish embrace of a return to normalcy and urgent public warnings from the government’s top health officials. It's the opposite of what usually happens in a public health crisis, because political leaders tend to repeat and amplify the recommendations of their health experts, not short-circuit them. “It's extremely unusual for there to be simultaneous contrary messaging,” said John Auerbach, who heads the nonpartisan Trust for America's Health.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 04:32:39 GMT

An Election Day role for National Guard? Maybe, but limited
If any element of the military were to get involved, it would likely be the National Guard under state control. Under limited circumstances, Trump could federalize them, but in that case, they would generally be barred from doing law enforcement.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 04:24:55 GMT

As virus surges, Trump rallies keep packing in thousands
There are no crowds at Disneyland, still shut down by the coronavirus. Thousands of President Donald Trump's supporters regularly cram together at campaign rallies around the country — masks optional and social distancing frowned upon. Trump rallies are among the nation's biggest events being held in defiance of crowd restrictions designed to stop the virus from spreading.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 04:09:11 GMT

Biden marks Iowa rise from caucus collapse to fall contender
When Joe Biden was last in Iowa, his presidential campaign was on the verge of collapse and he was soundly trounced in the caucuses by a former Indiana mayor nearly 40 years his junior. Biden's trip reflects the remarkable arc of his third presidential campaign.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 04:01:08 GMT

Illinois judge to rule on Rittenhouse extradition to Kenosha
The mother of a 17-year-old accused of killing two demonstrators in Kenosha, Wisconsin, is among those slated to testify Friday during a hearing in Illinois to decide if her son should be extradited across the border to stand trial on homicide charges. Kyle Rittenhouse’s lawyers also planned to call an expert on self-defense, a prison-safety consultant and two former homicide detectives in a long shot bid to convince Judge Paul Novak in Waukegan, Illinois, not to turn their client over to Wisconsin authorities. The case has become a rallying point for some conservatives who see Rittenhouse as a patriot who was exercising his right to bear arms during unrest in Kenosha following the shooting of a Black man by a white police officer.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 03:45:25 GMT

UN chief has plan for eventual peacekeeping exit from Congo

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 02:06:06 GMT

China must commit to battery recycling in electric vehicle boom: Greenpeace
China needs to step up the recycling and repurposing of batteries for electric vehicles in order to ease supply strains and curb pollution and carbon emissions, environmental group Greenpeace said on Friday. "We're about to see a tidal wave of old EV batteries hit China," said Ada Kong, Greenpeace East Asia's senior programme manager. "How the government responds will have huge ramifications for Xi Jinping's 2060 carbon neutral commitment."

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 02:04:43 GMT

Africa's week in pictures: 23 - 29 October 2020
A selection of the week's best photos from across the continent and beyond.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 01:48:49 GMT

New Zealand votes to legalize euthanasia but not marijuana
New Zealanders voted to legalize euthanasia in a binding referendum, but preliminary results released Friday showed they likely would not legalize recreational marijuana use. With about 83% of votes counted, New Zealanders emphatically endorsed the euthanasia measure with 65% voting in favor and 34% voting against.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 01:28:07 GMT

Nature loss means deadlier future pandemics, UN warns
Future pandemics will happen more often, kill more people and wreak even worse damage to the global economy than Covid-19 without a fundamental shift in how humans treat nature, the United Nations' biodiversity panel said Thursday.

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:25:32 GMT

N.Korea says shooting death of S.Korean man was self-defensive measure

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 23:48:37 GMT

UN: After 20 years, no equality for women in peace talks
The head of the U.N. agency promoting gender equality told the 20th anniversary commemoration of a resolution demanding equal participation for women in peace negotiations that its implementation has failed, declaring Thursday that women still remain “systematically excluded” from talks to end conflicts where men make decisions affecting their lives. Despite some good initiatives, UN Women's Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told the Security Council that in peace negotiations from 1992 to 2019 only 13 percent of negotiators, 6 percent of mediators, and 6 percent of signatories to peace agreements were women. Germany’s Foreign Office Minister of State Michelle Muntefering called the U.N. resolution adopted on Oct. 31, 2000 “a little revolution” because a united Security Council made clear for the first time that women’s equal participation “is required to maintain world peace and security.”

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 23:28:32 GMT

N.Korea blames Seoul's 'improper control' for death of fisheries official
North Korea on Friday placed blame for its killing last month of a South Korean fisheries official on Seoul's "improper control of the citizen".

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 22:49:32 GMT

AP PHOTOS: Teachers improvise to make hybrid learning work
With state guidelines for social distancing making it impossible for all students to attend classes in person at the same time, educators prepared for a hybrid model of instruction. Educators now deliver their lessons to half empty classrooms as well as computer screens filled with faces of children logged in from home. As they move from desk to desk helping students with their lessons, they also remind those at home to unmute their computers so they can be heard responding to questions.

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 21:20:03 GMT

As virus surges, Trump rallies keep packing in thousands
There are no crowds at Disneyland, still shut down by the coronavirus. Thousands of President Donald Trump's supporters regularly cram together at campaign rallies around the country — masks optional and social distancing frowned upon. Trump rallies are among the nation's biggest events being held in defiance of crowd restrictions designed to stop the virus from spreading.

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 20:52:28 GMT

Police who shot Wallace were improperly trained, family says
The footage from body-worn cameras that was taken as police responded to a call about Walter Wallace Jr. shows him emerging from a house with a knife as relatives shout at officers about his mental health condition, a lawyer for the man's family said Thursday. The video also shows Wallace became incapacitated after the first shot of 14 that two officers fired at him, said lawyer Shaka Johnson, describing footage he said police showed him and other members of Wallace's family before a plan to release it and 911 calls publicly. “I understand he had a knife, but that does not give you carte blanche to execute a man, quite frankly," Johnson told reporters at a news conference outside Philadelphia City Hall.

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 20:01:54 GMT

US to use Iranian fuel sale proceeds to aid terror victims
The Trump administration plans to use proceeds from the sale of fuel confiscated from Iranian tankers to benefit victims of terrorism, officials announced Thursday. The U.S. government in August seized 1.1 million barrels of fuel from four Iranian tankers that were en route to Venezuela. The fuel has since been sold, and officials say the proceeds will go to a special fund for victims of state-sponsored terrorism.

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 19:28:23 GMT

US election roundup: Biden and Trump descend on key battleground of Florida
* Biden tells drive-in event: ‘If Florida goes blue, it’s over’ * President addresses mostly maskless crowd in Tampa stadiumDonald Trump and Joe Biden converged on Florida on Thursday in the final stages of the battle for the swing state, which the president must win to have a realistic chance of holding on to power.“You hold the key,” Biden told a rally in Broward county. “If Florida goes blue, it’s over. It’s over!”The rivals duelled over interpretations of new data, which showed the US economy recovering fast in the third quarter, but still suffering from the impact of the Covid pandemic. And despite Trump’s efforts to push the issue aside, the candidates’ widely different approaches to the pandemic came into focus once more.The Trump campaign broadcast new Spanish-language advertisements showing the president wearing a mask – a tacit admission that his frequent derision of mask-wearing was damaging his standing among at least some of his supporters.But the president’s rally held outside a Tampa football stadium followed the pattern of his campaign, packing thousands of mostly maskless fans together in sweltering heat. Trump used a favourite talking point suggesting that because he recovered from the virus, the coronavirus was not to be feared.“You know the bottom line though? You’re going to get better. You’re going to get better,” Trump told the crowd. “If I can get better, anybody can get better, and I got better fast.”Trump was treated at Walter Reed, one of the country’s best medical facilities with the help of experimental drugs not yet available to most patients. About 228,000 Americans have so far died, and 9 million have been infected.As the president was speaking, health authorities in North Carolina released a statement saying two people had tested positive after attending a Trump rally in Gaston county on 21 October and advising other attendees to monitor their symptoms and get tested if necessary. At the Gaston rally, Trump had mocked coronavirus precautions.The president’s disregard for masks has alienated many elderly voters, who are critical in Florida, where polls show the race to be more or less tied – and whose 29 votes in the electoral college have proved decisive in the past.Most electoral analysts argue that it would be virtually impossible for Trump to hold on to the presidency without winning the state.If Trump wins Florida, it would increase pressure on Biden to win the big battleground states to the north: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The Democratic challenger began the day in Broward county, part of the coastal urban sprawl north of Miami, before crossing the state to Tampa, where he arrived just a few hours after Trump had departed for North Carolina, one of the traditionally Republican strongholds he is trying to defend against a Democratic surge.The Democratic candidate appealed to the region’s large community of military veterans. “Folks, of all the things Donald Trump has said, nothing has bothered me more than what he has said to those who serve in uniform,” Biden told the crowd amid a torrential downpour.He spoke about his late son Beau Biden, who served in Iraq: “He wasn’t a sucker or a loser, he was a patriot, like all of you who served, like your sons, your daughters, your parents and your grandparents. We have to vote for their dignity and the respect that they are due.”As part of the continuing deliberate contrast with the president’s campaign style, the Biden Broward county event was a socially distanced drive-in at a college campus, where supporters were cautioned not to stray more than an arm’s-length from their cars. The evening rally in Tampa was also a drive-in.At the rally, Biden sought to address the state’s Latino communities whose support he has struggled to attract, arguing the Trump administration was “the worst possible standard bearers for democracy” in Cuba and other countries with autocratic leaders.“President Trump can’t advance democracy and human rights for the Cuban people, for the Venezuelan people, when he has embraced so many autocrats around the world,” Biden said.In a new advertisement launched on Thursday, Biden pledged to set up a special taskforce on his first day in office which would be devoted to finding the families of 545 children forcibly separated from their families on the southern US border under Trump immigration policies.Data released on Thursday showed GDP had bounced back dramatically in the third quarter of 2020, 33% on an annualized rate in the third quarter after dropping 31% in the second quarter, but the economy was still nearly 4% down compared with the end of 2019.On Twitter, Trump proclaimed the recovery to be the “Biggest and Best in the History of our Country”. Biden countered that the country was still “in a deep hole” and warned that the recovery was “slowing if not stalling” while benefiting the wealthiest Americans.Handling of the economy is one of the few issues where Trump holds a lead in public opinion, but it is slipping. On Thursday, the Economist magazine endorsed Biden, saying the president “has desecrated the values that make America a beacon to the world”.The Republican party, with its candidate running consistently about 10 percentage points behind nationwide and trailing in most battlegrounds, has focused its efforts in crucial swing states on limiting both voter turnout and the duration of vote counting.On Thursday, those suppression efforts had a mixed day in the courts. The Texas supreme court upheld Governor Greg Abbott’s edict limiting drop box locations for mail-in ballots to one per county. Democrats had argued that the measure was designed to make it harder for voters in big cities. Harris county, which covers most of Houston and has a population the size of New Zealand, had its number of drop boxes reduced from 12 to one.And in Minnesota, a federal appeals court ruled that ballots received after election day should be set aside from others. While a final decision as to whether those late ballots will eventually be counted has yet to be made, the decision could have significant implications in the swing state, infusing chaos and confusion into the election.“Voters should no longer place their absentee ballots in the mail,” Minnesota’s secretary of state, Steve Simon, said. “It is too late for you, practically speaking, to get it back. Don’t risk it.”Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator from Minnesota, also warned voters not to mail in their ballots after the ruling.> BREAKING: Because of LAST MINUTE ruling, Minnesota DO NOT put ballots in mail any more. > In the middle of a pandemic, the Republican Party is doing everything to make it hard for you to vote. Stand up for YOUR rights: > > Vote in-person or take mail-in ballot directly to ballot box https://t.co/rPlAwN8K0q> > — Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) October 29, 2020However, the US supreme court rejected a Republican attempt to stop deadline extensions for accepting absentee ballots in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, of three and up to nine days respectively. Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s new appointee to the court, did not take part in either decision. A court spokesperson said that was because she had not had time to review the case.The president reacted furiously, claiming on Twitter: “A 3 day extension for Pennsylvania is a disaster for our Nation, and for Pennsylvania itself. The Democrats are trying to steal this Election.”Democrats have argued the extensions are essential because of the surge in postal ballots and the cost-cutting measures taken by the Trump-appointed head of the national postal service, which have led to slower delivery times.More than 80 million Americans have cast their ballots, either by voting early in person, or by submitting their absentee ballots, the US Elections Project says.Well before election day, the number of people who have voted so far amounts to 58% of the total turnout during the last presidential election in 2016. At this pace, the US could see its highest voter participation rate in more than a century.Biden is due to campaign in Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota on Friday and then hold a joint rally with Barack Obama in Michigan on Saturday, the first time they will have campaigned side-by-side this year. Trump will also be campaigning in the north on Friday, in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.The former British Brexit politician, Nigel Farage, has been campaigning at the president’s side, appearing in Arizona on Wednesday, where he called Trump “the single most resilient and brave person I have ever met in my life”. The US president returned the favour by describing Farage, who failed in seven attempts to win election to the House of Commons, as “one of the most powerful men in Europe”.Maanvi Singh contributed reporting

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 19:23:38 GMT

Israel lights candles for Rabin 25 years after assassination
Israelis lit thousands of candles on Thursday to mark the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was shot dead by a Jewish extremist as he pursued peace with the Palestinians. The Yitzhak Rabin Center planned to light 25,000 candles in the central Tel Aviv square where he was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995, after addressing a peace rally, and which is now named for him. Israel holds memorial ceremonies to mark the anniversary according to the Jewish calendar.

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 19:14:52 GMT

Turkish Bank Case Showed Erdogan's Influence With Trump
WASHINGTON -- Geoffrey Berman was outraged.The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Berman had traveled to Washington in June 2019 to discuss a particularly delicate case with Attorney General William Barr and some of his top aides: a criminal investigation into Halkbank, a state-owned Turkish bank suspected of violating U.S. sanctions law by funneling billions of dollars of gold and cash to Iran.For months, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey had been pressing President Donald Trump to quash the investigation, which threatened not only the bank but potentially members of Erdogan's family and political party. When Berman sat down with Barr, he was stunned to be presented with a settlement proposal that would give Erdogan a critical concession.Barr pressed Berman to allow the bank to avoid an indictment by paying a fine and acknowledging some wrongdoing. In addition, the Justice Department would agree to end investigations and criminal cases involving Turkish and bank officials who were allied with Erdogan and suspected of participating in the sanctions-busting scheme.Berman didn't buy it.The bank had the right to try to negotiate a settlement. But his prosecutors were still investigating key individuals, including some with ties to Erdogan, and believed the scheme had helped finance Iran's nuclear weapons program."This is completely wrong," Berman later told lawyers in the Justice Department, according to people who were briefed on the proposal and his response. "You don't grant immunity to individuals unless you are getting something from them -- and we wouldn't be here."It was not the first time Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, had fended off attempts by top Justice Department political appointees to disrupt the Halkbank investigation.Six months earlier, Matthew Whitaker, the acting attorney general who ran the department from November 2018 until Barr arrived in February 2019, rejected a request from Berman for permission to file criminal charges against the bank, two lawyers involved in the investigation said. Whitaker blocked the move shortly after Erdogan repeatedly pressed Trump in a series of conversations in November and December 2018 to resolve the Halkbank matter.The president's apparent eagerness to please Erdogan has drawn scrutiny for years. So has the scale and intensity of the lobbying effort by Turkey on issues like its demand for the extradition of one of Erdogan's political rivals, a Turkish religious leader living in self-imposed exile in the United States. Erdogan had a big political stake in the outcome because the case had become a major embarrassment for him in Turkey.At the White House, Trump's handling of the matter became troubling even to some senior officials at the time.The president was discussing an active criminal case with the authoritarian leader of a nation in which Trump does business; he reported receiving at least .6 million in net income from operations in Turkey from 2015 through 2018, according to tax records obtained by The New York Times.And Trump's sympathetic response to Erdogan was especially jarring because it involved accusations that the bank had undercut Trump's policy of economically isolating Iran, a centerpiece of his Middle East plan.Former White House officials said they came to fear that the president was open to swaying the criminal justice system to advance a transactional and ill-defined agenda of his own."He would interfere in the regular government process to do something for a foreign leader," John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, said in a recent interview. "In anticipation of what? In anticipation of another favor from that person down the road."In the case of Halkbank, it was only after an intense foreign policy clash between Trump and Erdogan over Syria last fall that the United States would proceed to lodge charges against the bank, though not against any additional individuals. Yet the administration's bitterness over Berman's unwillingness to go along with Barr's proposal would linger and ultimately contribute to Berman's dismissal.This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Turkish and U.S. government officials, lobbyists and lawyers with direct knowledge of the interactions. Representatives for the Turkish government, Halkbank, and the White House declined to comment.Turkey had mounted an elaborate influence campaign in Washington to deal with Halkbank. It predated Trump's election but came to encompass a broad cast of players, including Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor; Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser; and Brian Ballard, a lobbyist and fundraiser for the president.After senior Turkish government officials lobbied Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trump, Mnuchin pressed the Justice Department not to impose too large a fine on Halkbank because Turkey could not afford it, two federal officials said. Mnuchin's office declined to comment on Halkbank but added that the Treasury and Justice Departments "routinely consult and coordinate" on sanctions cases and fines.Bolton and others said they could not fully explain why Trump seemed so determined to please Erdogan."This was a relationship that was really important for the United States to handle," said Fiona Hill, who oversaw policy on Turkey and Europe for the National Security Council under Trump. "And at every turn, the president kept leaping in, and he wasn't following the strategic threads of the relationship."The Halkbank CampaignTurkey's lobbying campaign had started before Trump took office.During a one-day visit to the country in August 2016 by Vice President Joe Biden, the Turkish president pulled Biden aside under a tree for a private conversation, according to an aide to the vice president on the trip.The investigation of Halkbank, Erdogan claimed, was a "big conspiracy" instigated by his rival Fethullah Gulen, a charismatic Muslim cleric. Gulen left Turkey in the late 1990s and moved to Pennsylvania where, in Erdogan's telling, he plotted an unsuccessful coup attempt just a month earlier, according to a summary of the conversation provided to the Times by the Biden aide.Erdogan asked Biden to remove Preet Bharara, then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. That office was in the early stages of an investigation into Halkbank and had already indicted a Turkish Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab, for helping to orchestrate the sanctions evasion scheme.Erdogan also wanted the Obama administration to remove the judge overseeing Zarrab's case in Manhattan, the Biden aide said. And he wanted Zarrab released and allowed to return to Turkey.According to the Biden aide's account, Erdogan said that if the United States really meant what it said about repairing relations, the case needed to go away.Speaking to reporters before he left Turkey, Biden made clear that there were limits to what the United States could or should do to address Erdogan's requests, including any effort to extradite Gulen."If the president were to take this into his own hands, what would happen would be, he would be impeached for violating the separation of powers," Biden said, with Erdogan at his side.The Turkish president did not give up. He again raised Halkbank with Biden during a visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly and then twice in calls with President Barack Obama in the weeks before he left office in January 2017, aides to Obama and Biden said.In an interview, Bharara said he never heard questions about the Halkbank investigation from anyone at the Obama White House or the attorney general's office.Trump's election brought an immediate shift in Turkey's outreach effort.The Trump family had helped build Trump Towers Istanbul, a successful residential and retail complex that attracted Erdogan to its ribbon-cutting in 2012."I've gotten to know Turkey very well," Trump said in 2015. "They're amazing people. They're incredible people. They have a strong leader."In Turkey, there was confidence that Erdogan's agenda would now win attention and support at the highest levels of the U.S. administration."Top leadership in Turkey felt that Trump would be a tough-minded businessman but a businessman they could work with," Robert Amsterdam, a lobbyist for Turkey, recalled.Indictments and Testimony About ErdoganOnce Trump took office, there were early hints that Erdogan's message was getting through to the White House.The National Security Council asked the Education Department about a network of charter schools, partly funded with federal money, that were said to be linked to Gulen, the Erdogan rival who was living in Pennsylvania. The agency was then asked if the money could be blocked, one official involved in the conversations said. But Education Department officials resisted, saying they did not have the legal authority to stop the funding.The White House encountered a similar lack of enthusiasm at the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, which received requests to investigate Gulen and look for ways to perhaps force him out of the United States, officials involved in the efforts said. The FBI declined to comment.In the meantime, the effort by Turkey to resolve the Halkbank case intensified.Records show that the bank and the Turkish government paid Ballard's lobbying firm .6 million over two years for work on Halkbank and other matters, including meetings and phone calls with the vice president's office, the State Department, members of Congress and Jay Sekulow, one of Trump's personal lawyers.Ballard's team argued that the Halkbank case was a foreign policy matter and that the need to maintain close relations with Turkey, a NATO member, had to be taken into account.But the investigation by the federal prosecutors in Manhattan ground ahead. By early 2018, it had led to the indictments of nine defendants, including Turkey's former economy minister and three Halkbank officials, on charges such as bank fraud and money laundering related to the sanctions evasion scheme.One defendant, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, the bank's deputy general manager for international banking, was tried and, in January 2018, convicted.Zarrab, the gold trader, had pleaded guilty and testified about how the scheme had relied on false documents and front companies and how he had paid millions of dollars in bribes to the economy minister and Halkbank's general manager.He also testified that the operation had Erdogan's knowledge and approval as well as that of Erdogan's son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, who now serves as Turkey's finance minister.When Berman was appointed U.S. attorney in January 2018, prosecutors were turning their focus to the bank itself and the possibility of charging others involved in the scheme.Halkbank's lawyers held repeated talks in 2018 with Berman's office over whether a "global settlement" could be reached. But the two sides were far apart, according to people briefed on the meetings.The prosecutors said they were prepared to allow the bank to avoid indictment if it agreed to pay a heavy fine, reform its operations and make a series of admissions about its conduct, the people who were briefed said.But the bank's lawyers argued that Halkbank and its executives had done nothing wrong, that they had been deceived by Zarrab and that his testimony was untrue. They said the bank would not make the required admissions.There were indications by then that Turkey's arguments were being heard in Washington.At the Treasury Department, Mnuchin considered the violations Halkbank had been accused of to be serious -- and he believed the U.S. government was right to demand that the bank admit wrongdoing, according to one White House official involved in the negotiations.But Mnuchin raised concerns about how large a fine might be imposed on Halkbank. French banking giant Societe Generale agreed that same year to pay U.S. authorities more than billion to resolve charges that it had violated U.S. sanctions against Cuba and bribed officials in Libya, among other accusations.A fine on that scale would threaten the future of Halkbank, lobbyists and lawyers for the bank argued, as did top Turkish officials in conversations with members of the Trump administration. One direct appeal to Mnuchin came from Albayrak, Erdogan's son-in-law.In 2018, Mnuchin reached out about the scale of a potential fine to Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time. Justice Department officials then asked Southern District prosecutors whether the size of the fine they were demanding was negotiable, one lawyer involved in the effort said. The response was affirmative: The amount was less important than securing an admission of wrongdoing."We need an admission of liability" was the message the Manhattan prosecutors sent back to Washington, according to two lawyers involved in the matter.'Well, It Looks Convincing to Me'On the second day of a trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in late 2018 for the annual Group of 20 gathering of world leaders, Trump met with Erdogan for talks intended to be focused on issues like continued tensions over Islamic State group operations in Syria.But the conversation quickly went off course.Erdogan made clear that he was frustrated with the continued pestering by Southern District prosecutors concerning Halkbank, and he wanted Trump to intervene to help wrap up the investigation, Bolton said in the interview.Erdogan handed Trump a copy of a memo written by Halkbank's lawyers explaining why Turkey believed the Justice Department had misconstrued U.S. sanctions law. It argued that Halkbank's trading with Iran was not illegal because it was largely based on trades of gold and food that were not in dollars and did not involve U.S. banks.Trump flipped through the memo quickly, Bolton said."Well, it looks convincing to me," Trump said, according to Bolton, who also recounted the meeting in his recent book.By Bolton's account, Trump also told Erdogan that he wanted to replace the prosecutors in Berman's office in Manhattan, whom Trump considered to be holdovers from the Obama era.Two weeks later, in mid-December 2018, Trump and Erdogan spoke by phone. The president began by assuring Erdogan that the government and Halkbank were close to a resolution, and Erdogan expressed his appreciation, according to Bolton.In Turkey around this time, Erdogan told reporters that Trump, in an earlier conversation about Halkbank, had assured him that Trump "would instruct the relevant ministers immediately" to take care of the matter.Bolton said in the interview that his concern, as he listened to these conversations, was that Turkey and Halkbank now "had a direct channel in the Oval Office -- they weren't going to negotiate in good faith" with the prosecutors. "Why should they?"Trump asked Bolton to speak with Whitaker, the acting attorney general at the time, about the case -- a move Bolton said he did not make, although he added that he did not know if someone else from the White House did.On Dec. 14, the day of the telephone call between Erdogan and Trump, the Justice Department notified the Southern District that Mnuchin, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the attorney general's office would become more involved in the Halkbank case, one Justice Department official said.The prosecutors in Manhattan had just drafted a memo for Whitaker and Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, detailing why the Justice Department should give them the authority to file criminal charges against the bank, two lawyers said.Rosenstein was convinced that the evidence was compelling, perhaps even more so than in other sanctions evasion cases in which the United States had charged banks, lawyers familiar with the investigation said. The memo from the prosecutors also noted that the actions Halkbank was accused of taking were helping to support Iran's economy, which was antithetical to Trump's foreign policy goal of tightening economic pressure on the country.Rosenstein urged Berman to come to Washington to present the Southern District's argument to Whitaker. The goal was not to file charges immediately against the bank. Instead, the plan was to give the Southern District more leverage to squeeze Halkbank to accept a deferred prosecution agreement that included an admission of wrongdoing.But Whitaker, who declined requests for comment, had a long-standing disdain for the Southern District, which has been called the Sovereign District for the way it guards its independence from Washington. In a book published this year, Whitaker wrote that the Southern District always "dreamed up new ways to torment President Trump throughout my tenure at the Department of Justice."Berman arrived at the Justice Department headquarters and reported to Rosenstein's office. But shortly before the meeting was to begin, Rosenstein was summoned to Whitaker's office without Berman.Whitaker told Rosenstein that he did not want the case to move forward and that he wanted the matter shut down, according to lawyers involved in the investigation. Whitaker cited concern that charges against the bank might result in a threat to U.S. forces in Syria, a suggestion that others in the department said they found hard to understand.Justice Department officials decided to ignore Whitaker's edict, concluding that they most likely would outlast Whitaker in the department, since he was serving on an acting basis. They did not see appeasing Erdogan as sufficient justification for closing the investigation.'This Is Not How We Do Things at the Southern District'Barr was confirmed as the new attorney general in mid-February 2019, a few months after Whitaker had pushed to end the case. The prosecutors in Manhattan were encouraged that they might now get the charging authority they wanted.But Erdogan and his top advisers continued to lobby Trump and members of his Cabinet, including Mnuchin and now Barr.One of the appeals came from Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, a Trump family friend who had been closely involved in developing the Trump towers in Turkey and who now leads a Turkey-U.S. business trade group. On a trip to Washington that April, he pressed administration officials about the bank.Discussions between Halkbank and the Southern District continued, according to lawyers involved in the case. But the bank maintained its refusal to admit to wrongdoing and insisted on a deal that would end investigations and drop existing charges.At times, the prosecutors were left with the impression that bank officials felt they had all the leverage because of the relationship between Trump and Erdogan.In mid-June 2019, when Berman met with Barr in Washington, the attorney general pushed Berman to agree to allow the Justice Department to drop charges against the defendants and terminate investigations of other suspected conspirators, according to a former department lawyer familiar with the session.Among the defendants with charges pending were Halkbank's former general manager, Suleyman Aslan, and Turkey's former economy minister, Mehmet Zafer Caglayan.The suggestion that the Justice Department would offer Turkish officials protection from criminal charges, even without their agreement to assist in the investigation, was unacceptable and unethical, Berman argued, according to lawyers close to the investigation. Justice Department policy specifically says that criminal conduct by individuals is not resolved when a company admits wrongdoing."This is not how we do things at the Southern District," Berman told Barr, adding that he would not agree to such a move and that his office would not be part of it.Barr sought to persuade Berman that the so-called global settlement would enforce U.S. sanctions law and avert a rift with an ally in a volatile part of the world.Aykan Erdemir, a former member of Turkey's Parliament and a critic of Erdogan, who was not part of the negotiations, said such a proposal by Barr would be a gift to Erdogan and critical to his political standing in Turkey by eliminating potential criminal charges against members of his inner circle."That is the biggest prize that Erdogan could ever receive," Erdemir said. "Erdogan was not trying to save the bank. He was trying to save his ministers and save himself."The negotiations had reached an impasse. Barr had the power to stop any new criminal charges. But to dismiss any existing cases, the federal prosecutors in Manhattan would need to seek judicial approval.Lawyers in the Justice Department's national security division took over the negotiations, but they also ended up frustrated, people briefed on the matter said.In his recent book, Bolton said he had warned Barr in April 2019 about Trump's penchant to "give personal favors to dictators."In the interview with the Times, Bolton said he did not know the details of Barr's intervention in the Halkbank negotiations. But he said he was disturbed by the tenor of the interaction between Trump and Erdogan related to Halkbank."It was so idiosyncratic, so personal to Trump in the pursuit of personal relationships, that it was very dangerous," Bolton said. "And it does look like obstruction of justice."Just how idiosyncratic became more apparent last October, when Erdogan sent troops into Syria. Trump, who had initially given Erdogan the green light to do so, then faced an intense bipartisan backlash, leading him within days to take a tougher line with Turkey, threatening economic reprisals."You don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy -- and I will," Trump wrote to the Turkish leader Oct. 9, 2019, without elaborating.On Oct. 15, the Justice Department gave the prosecutors in Manhattan approval to file charges against Halkbank, a direct slap at Erdogan.The prosecutors rushed to present evidence before a grand jury and secured a six-count indictment that same day charging Halkbank with money laundering, bank fraud and conspiracy to violate the Iran sanctions. So far, no additional individuals have been charged.When the charges against the bank were announced, Berman said in a statement that the "bank's audacious conduct was supported and protected by high-ranking Turkish government officials, some of whom received millions of dollars in bribes to promote and protect the scheme."In June, eight months after the indictment was returned, Trump fired Berman. Justice Department officials cited his handling of the Halkbank matter, including his blocking of the proposed global settlement, as a key reason for his removal.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 19:08:01 GMT

At least 140 drown in deadliest shipwreck of year
At least 414 people have now died along the same route this year, a U.N. agency said.

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 19:05:00 GMT

'Tsunamis of Misinformation' Overwhelm Local Election Officials
The morning after last month's presidential debate, the phones inside the Philadelphia election offices that Al Schmidt helps oversee rang off the hook.One caller asked whether President Donald Trump's comments hinting at rampant voter fraud in Philadelphia were true. Another yelled about the inaccurate rumor that poll watchers were being barred from polling places. Still another demanded to know what the city was trying to hide.It was just another day at the office for Schmidt, one of Philadelphia's three city commissioners, a job that includes supervising voter registration and elections. Hundreds of people have called in every day for months, many parroting conspiracy theories about the election and lies about how partisan megadonors own the voting machines. Staff members spend hours shooting down the rumors, he said."It's not like we have tens of millions of dollars to spend on communications to battle tsunamis of misinformation that come our way," said Schmidt, 49, whose team has been working up to 17-hour days ahead of Election Day on Tuesday. "It wears on all of us."Election officials across the country are already stretched thin this year, dealing with a record number of mail-in ballots and other effects of the coronavirus pandemic. On top of that, many are battling another scourge: misinformation.Fueled by inaccurate comments from Trump and others, election lies have spread across social media. They include claims that Black Lives Matter protesters incited violence at polling places, that mail-in ballots were dumped, that ballot boxes and voting machines were compromised, and that ballots were "harvested," or collected and dropped off in bulk by unauthorized people.Election officials in places such as Philadelphia, El Paso, Texas, and Santa Rosa, California, are bearing the brunt of the fallout, according to interviews with a dozen of them in seven states. Some have had to contain misinformation-induced voter panic. Others are fighting back by posting accurate information on social media or giving newspaper and television interviews to spread their messages. Many are working longer shifts to debunk the distortions.But their efforts have largely been fruitless, they said. When one rumor is smacked down, another pops up. And the reach of the rumors online is often so vast that the officials said they could not hope to compete."They're definitely overwhelmed," said Isabella Garcia-Camargo, an organizer of the Election Integrity Partnership, a new coalition of misinformation researchers.Since Sept. 8, she said, her group has investigated 182 cases of election-related misinformation, most of which started locally. When mail was found in a ditch in Greenville, Wisconsin, for example, some conservative media outlets inaccurately claimed that Democrats were dumping absentee ballots. In Germantown, Maryland, a video of an election official darkening an oval on a ballot was erroneously used as evidence that voters' preferences were being altered, Garcia-Camargo said.Last week, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an information-sharing partnership, warned election officials about a spate of suspicious emails that impersonated state officials or included links to websites that asked them to verify their password information.The emails, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, did not appear to be part of a coordinated campaign, said Jason Forget, a spokesman for the group. But it was a sign that local officials should "remain vigilant in identifying and reporting suspicious activity to protect the vote," he said.Top state officials who oversee elections said they were also constantly communicating with local authorities about the surge of falsehoods. In Colorado, Jena Griswold, the secretary of state, said her office had held a call with local officials and county clerks this month after the disclosure that Iran was behind threatening emails meant to influence U.S. voters.Griswold said she wanted to ensure that the officials were equipped in case they encountered similar messages and reminded them of the best practices for online security."This is just a tough year for everybody in our office," she said.The experience of Deva Marie Proto, the registrar of voters in Sonoma County, California, has been typical of local election officials. Some mornings, she rises at 5 to answer voter questions on Facebook. She then heads to the county offices in Santa Rosa to lift the morale of the 15 full-time staff members, plus a handful of temporary election workers, who are dealing with people's calls about rumors and conspiracies.One day this month, Proto's office received 1,200 calls, many related to distortions about whether certain ballot drop boxes were real or fake, said Chanel Ruiz-Bricco, a county elections manager.Sonoma County was also a specific target of misinformation last month when conservative media personality Elijah Schaffer posted photos on Twitter of local ballot envelopes that had been discarded at a recycling center. "SHOCKING," he wrote. That prompted people to claim that votes for Republicans were being tossed.In fact, the envelopes were empty and from the 2018 election, Proto said. After voters called in asking about the photos and the local newspaper approached her for comment, the county tweeted about how outdated the envelopes were. Proto said voters had thanked her for the fact check.Schaffer, whose tweet is no longer available, said he hadn't stated that the debris was from this year and had simply wanted people on Twitter to investigate."I didn't make any claims, just inquired to get to the bottom of the story," he said.But the damage had been done. Schaffer's tweet was shared more than 5,400 times across Facebook and Twitter, according to a New York Times analysis. (Twitter eventually locked accounts that shared the post until they deleted it; Facebook added a label saying the post contained false information.) In contrast, Proto's clarification was shared just 1,400 times on Facebook and Twitter.Facebook and Twitter said they had strengthened their policies before Election Day and were referring people to authoritative sources. The companies also said they were talking with state officials, political parties and academics to respond to false rumors about the election.In El Paso County this month, a viral rumor that started on Facebook falsely claimed that ballots cast by voters at the polls could be thrown out if election officials had written on them first. The El Paso County Elections Facebook page debunked the inaccuracy by posting: "Texas election code requires the election judge to initial the back of each ballot before giving it to the voter."But by then, the original post had spread 1,017 times on Facebook. Copies of the post also gathered nearly 27,000 likes and shares on the social network and reached up to 7.6 million people, according to a Times analysis. The post has spread further in text screenshots, in private Facebook groups and in hundreds of Twitter posts.The county's elections administrator, Lisa Wise, said countering falsehoods was difficult "because even if you backtrack to that first person" who spread the misinformation, that person was "probably not going to call the 20 or 30 people" he or she had misled.Asked for comment, Facebook said it had put policies in place to fight voter suppression and removed claims that errant marks invalidate ballots if the state has provided guidance saying otherwise.Lisa Kaplan, the founder of Alethea Group, a company that helps public officials and private clients fight misinformation, said she and her team had tried a proactive approach, sometimes alerting social media companies to copyrighted elements in election misinformation, like background music, so they will remove it."We don't wait for engagement levels of those narratives to get high," Kaplan said. "We definitely take the Whac-a-Mole approach."Philadelphia reassigned at least 40 employees in August and September to help with the election workload but still has only about 20 people answering calls. The false information has hindered workers from replying to other questions about ballots and polling places, said Michelle Montalvo, a deputy commissioner.She has not had time to see friends, and her colleagues have missed time with their children and loved ones, Montalvo said. To unwind, she scrolls through TikTok. At night, she said, she was kept up by the thought of voters, fooled by conspiracy theories into thinking that voting by mail was not secure, showing up en masse on Election Day and overwhelming polling places.Montalvo said she and her colleagues were not looking for sympathy -- just the ability to help people without having to contend with so many lies."There's no end in sight to the conspiracies and misinformation," she said. "We're being attacked for things that we have absolutely no control over."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 19:01:05 GMT

Ransomware can interfere with elections and fuel disinformation – basic cybersecurity precautions are key to minimizing the damage
Government computer systems in Hall County, Georgia, including a voter signature database, were hit by a ransomware attack earlier this fall in the first known ransomware attack on election infrastructure during the 2020 presidential election. Thankfully, county officials reported that the voting process for its citizens was not disrupted.The attack follows on the heels of a ransomware attack last month on eResearchTechnology, a company that provides software used in clinical trials, including trials for COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines. Less than a week after the attack in Georgia was revealed, the FBI warned that cyber criminals have unleashed a wave of ransomware attacks targeting hospital information systems.Attacks like these underscore the challenges that cybersecurity experts face daily – and which loom over the upcoming election. As a cybersecurity professional and researcher, I can attest that there is no silver bullet for defeating cyber threats like ransomware. Rather, defending against them comes down to the actions of thousands of IT staff and millions of computer users in organizations large and small across the country by embracing and applying the basic good computing practices and IT procedures that have been promoted for years. What is ransomware?Ransomware is a form of malicious software, or malware, that typically encrypts a victim’s computer files, holds the files hostage and then demands a payment to send the decryption key that unlocks the files. Individual ransomware payments usually range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, with the expectation that a relatively low dollar amount will motivate the victim to quickly pay the attacker to end the incident. Ransomware attacks frequently begin through email as a typical phishing message purporting to be from someone the potential victim trusts, such as a co-worker or friend. However, emerging types of ransomware exploit existing or recently discovered security vulnerabilities – in other words, they hack in – to gain system access without requiring any user interaction at all.Once a computer system is compromised, there are many things a ransomware attack can do. But the most common outcome is encrypting a user’s data to hold it for a ransom payment. In other cases, ransomware encrypts a victim’s data and the ransomware’s creator threatens to release personal or sensitive information onto the internet unless the ransom is paid. While ransomware attacks can affect any internet user or organization, attackers tend to target entities known for having less-robust cybersecurity defenses, including hospitals, health systems and state or local government computers. But health care remains an enticing ransomware target: In 2019, 759 health care providers in the U.S. were hit. Overall, ransomware attacks cost users and companies over US billion in 2019 as a result of either ransoms paid or through costs incurred in recovering from attacks. Ransomware’s tollThe first high-profile ransomware incident was launched by North Korea in 2017. Using malware called “Wannacry,” the attackers brought the British National Health Service to a paralyzing halt. Hospitals lost access to their computer systems and routine and emergency care was disrupted. But that was a preview of things to come: In 2020, a patient in Germany died after being diverted to another hospital due to a ransomware incident.In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a ransomware attack crippled over 250 medical facilities run by American-based Universal Health Services. At eResearchTechnology, staff conducting COVID-19 clinical trials were locked out of their data and unable to conduct business for nearly two weeks.And it’s not just health care organizations. The city of Atlanta was crippled by ransomware in 2018. Baltimore was similarly paralyzed in 2019. In both cases, city services – from tax collection and business licensing to real estate transactions – were unavailable to citizens. Numerous smaller cities around the world also have been affected by ransomware attacks.However, even organizations with good IT policies and procedures find it extremely costly to investigate and recover from ransomware attacks, whether or not they pay the ransom. For example, an organization’s routine data backup can also inadvertently include ransomware code. This means victims need to ensure they are not restoring the ransomware infection when they reconstruct their systems after an attack. Depending on the victim’s backup procedures, locating a ransomware-free backup can be a very time-consuming process. Ransomware and election 2020The 2016 elections underscored the importance of ensuring the security and integrity of information related to government operations, including elections. Unfortunately, for many state and local governments, ransomware concerns are just another in a long line of issues that cybersecurity teams must contend with during periods of limited budgets and staffing.Much has already been written about the vulnerable and fragile state of America’s election systems, ranging from obsolete operating systems installed on voting machines to insecure networks and systems that exchange and store vote tabulations, to ensuring the protection of voter registration databases. Making this situation more challenging is that many local governments don’t know what’s happening on their networks. A nationwide survey conducted by University of Maryland, Baltimore County researchers in 2016 reported that nearly 30% of local government officials would not know if a cyberattack was affecting them. This lack of awareness means an attack could be well underway and causing havoc before security teams realize it – let alone respond.Despite a growing awareness of the threat, ransomware has the potential to adversely affect the 2020 election. Unfortunately, if state and local election offices haven’t implemented strong cybersecurity protections by now, it’s probably too late to do anything meaningful given that voting is well underway. So it’s no surprise that election offices across America are considering potential nightmare scenarios that include cyberattacks that might disrupt election activities. Fuel for disinformationElections are based on trust – trust in the voting mechanisms and procedures, trust in the voting data and trust in the overall electoral process. But trust in all these items is under active attack by adversaries both at home and from abroad using a variety of influence and disinformation techniques that have become more refined since 2016.Thankfully, ransomware attacks are unlikely to cripple the entire U.S. election given the decentralized nature of voting jurisdictions and systems. However, even a few successful attacks could contribute to disinformation campaigns that erode confidence in the outcome of the election.[Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get expert takes on today’s news, every day.] How to lower the riskAt this point, since the election is already happening, state and local governments should increase the monitoring of their computer systems and implement even more stringent security controls on any devices or computers that might touch election-related networks in any way. Sharing real-time information about threats and working with the DHS, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence election security teams, along with other states’ election offices, also will help keep election officials informed. Additionally, major technology vendors and the U.S. military are taking active steps to disrupt cybersecurity threats, including ransomware, that may target the electoral process. As with most cybersecurity problems, the ransomware threat can be minimized by implementing common-sense best practices – many of which have been recommended for decades but often are not followed. These include keeping systems up to date, ensuring security software is installed and current, monitoring network activities and implementing appropriate IT policies and procedures to include resilient backup practices. For individual users, thinking before clicking an email link – even from people you know – is excellent self-defense to make many ransomware or phishing attacks less likely to succeed. None of these practices is specific to the ransomware threat or election security. But for this and other cyber threats, the best thing to do is continuing to implement and enforce those common-sense, decades-old best practices of information protection that can help guard against the ever-widening range of cyberthreats – including ransomware.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Richard Forno, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.Read more: * Deal with ransomware the way police deal with hostage situations * Ransomware criminals are targeting US universitiesRichard Forno has received research funding related to cybersecurity from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Defense (DOD) during his academic career, and sits on the advisory board of BlindHash, a cybersecurity startup focusing on remedying the password problem

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 18:49:22 GMT

Trump tests limits as Cabinet members fan out to key states
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos planned a “Moms for Trump” rally in her home state of Michigan. The Department of Homeland Security's top official was in Texas to celebrate completion of a section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall. Members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet are logging extra miles as mostly unofficial campaign surrogates in crucial states in the final days before Tuesday's election, blending politics and policy in ways that critics say skirt established norms and may even violate the law.

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 18:30:29 GMT

Report: US knew of problems family separation would cause
Months before the Trump administration separated thousands of families at the U.S.-Mexico border, a “pilot program” in Texas left child-welfare officials scrambling to find empty beds for babies taken from their parents in a preview of bigger problems to come, according to a report released Thursday by congressional Democrats. Documents in the report suggest Health and Human Services officials weren't told by the Department of Homeland Security why shelters were receiving more children taken from their parents in late 2017. It has since been revealed that DHS was operating a pilot program in El Paso, Texas, that prosecuted parents for crossing the border illegally and took their children away to HHS shelters.

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 18:22:48 GMT

Global Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Industry
Global Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market to Reach Billion by 2027. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) estimated at US2. 3 Million in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US Billion by 2027, growing at aCAGR of 19.New York, Oct. 29, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Global Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Industry" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p03704490/?utm_source=GNW 8% over the period 2020-2027. Managed Service, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to record 15.2% CAGR and reach US.2 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After an early analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Hosted Service segment is readjusted to a revised 24.1% CAGR for the next 7-year period. The U.S. Market is Estimated at 7.5 Million, While China is Forecast to Grow at 24.4% CAGR The Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) market in the U.S. is estimated at US7.5 Million in the year 2020. China, the world`s second largest economy, is forecast to reach a projected market size of US5.6 Million by the year 2027 trailing a CAGR of 24.4% over the analysis period 2020 to 2027. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 15.9% and 17.9% respectively over the 2020-2027 period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 16.8% CAGR.We bring years of research experience to this 19th edition of our report. The 151-page report presents concise insights into how the pandemic has impacted production and the buy side for 2020 and 2021. A short-term phased recovery by key geography is also addressed. Competitors identified in this market include, among others, * Brivo Inc. * Centrify Corporation * Cloudastructure Inc. * Datawatch Systems Inc. * Digital Hands * dormakaba Group * Feenics * Fleming Companies * Forcefield Systems Inc. * Gemalto N.V * Honeywell International, Inc. * IBM Corp. * Johnson Controls Inc. * Kastle Systems * Kisi Inc. * M3T Corporation * Microsoft Corp. * Oracle Corporation * Spica International d.o.o. * Symantec Corporation * Vanderbilt Industries GmbH Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p03704490/?utm_source=GNW I. INTRODUCTION, METHODOLOGY & REPORT SCOPE II. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1\. MARKET OVERVIEW Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Recent Market Activity Types of Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) by Deployment Models Hosted Access Control Managed Access Control Hybrid Access Control Classification of ACaaS by Type of Server Hosting Model Rack Server ACaaS Solutions True Cloud ACaaS Key Characteristics of True Cloud ACaaS On-demand Scalability Multi-Tenancy Redundancy Types of Cloud ACaaS Private Cloud AcaaS Solutions Public Cloud AcaaS Solutions Classification of ACaaS by Intended Application Area Logical Access Control as a Service Physical Access Control as a Service Advantages of ACaaS Solution Over Traditional Access Control Systems: Minimum Upfront Capital Costs Low Maintenance Costs Demand Agility Remote Support & Assistance Thin Client Application Customizability Global Outlook Impact of Covid-19 and a Looming Global Recession 2\. FOCUS ON SELECT PLAYERS Brivo Inc. (USA) Centrify Corporation (USA) Cloudastructure Inc. (USA) Datawatch Systems Inc. (USA) Digital Hands (USA) dormakaba Group (Switzerland) Feenics (Canada) Fleming Companies (USA) Forcefield Systems Inc. (Canada) Gemalto N.V (Netherlands) Honeywell International Inc. (USA) IBM Corporation (USA) Johnson Controls Inc. (USA) Kastle Systems (USA) Kisi Inc. (USA) M3T Corporation (USA) Microsoft Corporation (USA) Oracle Corporation (USA) Spica International d.o.o. (Slovenia) Symantec Corporation (USA) Vanderbilt Industries GmbH (Germany) 3\. MARKET TRENDS & DRIVERS The Ever-Present Need for Access Control Provides the Cornerstone for the Growth of ACaaS Omnipresence of Crime Both Physical & Virtual Drive the Importance of Physical & Logical Access Control Systems The Rise & Proliferation of Electronic Access Control Mirrors the Potential In-Store for Access Control Services Outsourcing Access Control Functions Becomes the Order of the Day A Peek Into Why In-House Management of Access Control is No Longer the Right Choice? Networked EACS Systems Makes On-Premise Management Old School Migration to ACaaS, a Disruptive Business & Service Delivery Concept, Becomes All Powerful Outsourcing Through Managed Services: The Most Popular Outsourcing Strategy Cloud Hosted Services Takes Over Traditional Hosted Services Cloud Based ACaaS - The Way of the Future ACaaS Provides New Revenue Opportunities for All Value Chain Participants Recovery in Construction Activity Spurs Demand for Physical ACaaS Growing Establishment of Critical Infrastructure and Intelligent Environments & the Resulting Need for Protection to Benefit Demand for Access Control Services Web Based & Cloud Based Physical Access Control Systems (PACS) Grow in Prominence Rise of Smart Cities & the Ensuing Need for Smart Security Drives Additional Demand for ACaaS Digital Connected Enterprises Drive the Importance of Access Control Connected Enterprises Exhibit Greater Need for Logical Access Control Workforce Decentralization & the Ensuing Demands on Mobility & Connectivity Push Access Control into the Spotlight BYOD Further Catalyzes Security Needs Within an Enterprise Growing Value of Digital Corporate Assets & a Parallel Increase in the Sophistication of Cyber Crime Creates an Urgent Need for Efficient Access Control Services Stringent Physical Security Requirements Create Favorable Environment for Increased Adoption of Access Control Systems & Services Data Protection and Privacy Laws Play a Vital Role in Facilitating the Implementation of Access Controls Growing Prominence of Biometric Technology in Banking and Financial Services Spurs Adoption of Access Control Systems & Services Retail, Hospitality and Manufacturing Sector Promise Increased End-Use Opportunities SMBs: A Major Customer Cluster for ACaaS Asia-Pacific: An Emerging Opportunity for ACaaS Challenges Lack of Adequate Awareness Restrictions on Cloud Storage Across Borders Security & Storage Concerns SLA Compliance Issues Reducing Costs of Traditional EACS Reliability Issues with Telecom Infrastructure 4\. GLOBAL MARKET PERSPECTIVE Table 1: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Global Market Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Thousand by Region/Country: 2020-2027 Table 2: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Shift across Key Geographies Worldwide: 2020 VS 2027 Table 3: Managed Service (Service Type) World Market by Region/Country in US$ Thousand: 2020 to 2027 Table 4: Managed Service (Service Type) Market Share Breakdown of Worldwide Sales by Region/Country: 2020 VS 2027 Table 5: Hosted Service (Service Type) Potential Growth Markets Worldwide in US$ Thousand: 2020 to 2027 Table 6: Hosted Service (Service Type) Market Sales Breakdown by Region/Country in Percentage: 2020 VS 2027 III. MARKET ANALYSIS GEOGRAPHIC MARKET ANALYSIS UNITED STATES Market Facts & Figures US Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share (in %) by Company: 2020 & 2025 Market Analytics Table 7: United States Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Projections in US$ Thousand by Service Type: 2020 to 2027 Table 8: United States Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 CANADA Table 9: Canadian Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Thousand by Service Type: 2020 to 2027 Table 10: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in Canada: Percentage Share Breakdown of Sales by Service Type for 2020 and 2027 JAPAN Table 11: Japanese Market for Access Control as a Service (ACaaS): Annual Sales Estimates and Projections in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 12: Japanese Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Analysis by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 CHINA Table 13: Chinese Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Growth Prospects in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 14: Chinese Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market by Service Type: Percentage Breakdown of Sales for 2020 and 2027 EUROPE Market Facts & Figures European Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market: Competitor Market Share Scenario (in %) for 2020 & 2025 Market Analytics Table 15: European Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Demand Scenario in US$ Thousand by Region/Country: 2018-2025 Table 16: European Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Shift by Region/Country: 2020 VS 2027 Table 17: European Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Thousand by Service Type: 2020-2027 Table 18: European Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 FRANCE Table 19: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in France by Service Type: Estimates and Projections in US$ Thousand for the Period 2020-2027 Table 20: French Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Analysis by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 GERMANY Table 21: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in Germany: Recent Past, Current and Future Analysis in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 22: German Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 ITALY Table 23: Italian Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Growth Prospects in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 24: Italian Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market by Service Type: Percentage Breakdown of Sales for 2020 and 2027 UNITED KINGDOM Table 25: United Kingdom Market for Access Control as a Service (ACaaS): Annual Sales Estimates and Projections in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 26: United Kingdom Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Analysis by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 SPAIN Table 27: Spanish Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Thousand by Service Type: 2020 to 2027 Table 28: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in Spain: Percentage Share Breakdown of Sales by Service Type for 2020 and 2027 RUSSIA Table 29: Russian Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Projections in US$ Thousand by Service Type: 2020 to 2027 Table 30: Russian Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 REST OF EUROPE Table 31: Rest of Europe Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Thousand by Service Type: 2020-2027 Table 32: Rest of Europe Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 ASIA-PACIFIC Table 33: Asia-Pacific Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Thousand by Region/Country: 2020-2027 Table 34: Asia-Pacific Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Analysis by Region/Country: 2020 VS 2027 Table 35: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in Asia-Pacific by Service Type: Estimates and Projections in US$ Thousand for the Period 2020-2027 Table 36: Asia-Pacific Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Analysis by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 AUSTRALIA Table 37: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in Australia: Recent Past, Current and Future Analysis in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 38: Australian Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 INDIA Table 39: Indian Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Thousand by Service Type: 2020 to 2027 Table 40: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in India: Percentage Share Breakdown of Sales by Service Type for 2020 and 2027 SOUTH KOREA Table 41: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in South Korea: Recent Past, Current and Future Analysis in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 42: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Distribution in South Korea by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 REST OF ASIA-PACIFIC Table 43: Rest of Asia-Pacific Market for Access Control as a Service (ACaaS): Annual Sales Estimates and Projections in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 44: Rest of Asia-Pacific Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Analysis by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 LATIN AMERICA Table 45: Latin American Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Trends by Region/Country in US$ Thousand: 2020-2027 Table 46: Latin American Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Percentage Breakdown of Sales by Region/Country: 2020 and 2027 Table 47: Latin American Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Growth Prospects in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 48: Latin American Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Marketby Service Type: Percentage Breakdown of Sales for 2020 and 2027 ARGENTINA Table 49: Argentinean Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Thousand by Service Type: 2020-2027 Table 50: Argentinean Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 BRAZIL Table 51: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in Brazil by Service Type: Estimates and Projections in US$ Thousand for the Period 2020-2027 Table 52: Brazilian Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Analysis by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 MEXICO Table 53: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in Mexico: Recent Past, Current and Future Analysis in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 54: Mexican Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 REST OF LATIN AMERICA Table 55: Rest of Latin America Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Projections in US$ Thousand by Service Type: 2020 to 2027 Table 56: Rest of Latin America Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 MIDDLE EAST Table 57: The Middle East Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Thousand by Region/Country: 2018-2025 Table 58: The Middle East Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Region/Country: 2020 and 2027 Table 59: The Middle East Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Thousand by Service Type: 2020 to 2027 Table 60: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in the Middle East: Percentage Share Breakdown of Salesby Service Type for 2020 and 2027 IRAN Table 61: Iranian Market for Access Control as a Service (ACaaS): Annual Sales Estimates and Projections in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 62: Iranian Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Analysis by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 ISRAEL Table 63: Israeli Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Forecasts in US$ Thousand by Service Type: 2020-2027 Table 64: Israeli Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 SAUDI ARABIA Table 65: Saudi Arabian Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Growth Prospects in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 66: Saudi Arabian Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market by Service Type: Percentage Breakdown of Sales for 2020 and 2027 UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Table 67: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in the United Arab Emirates: Recent Past, Current and Future Analysis in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 68: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Distribution in United Arab Emirates by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 REST OF MIDDLE EAST Table 69: Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market in Rest of Middle East: Recent Past, Current and Future Analysis in US$ Thousand by Service Type for the Period 2020-2027 Table 70: Rest of Middle East Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 AFRICA Table 71: African Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Estimates and Projections in US$ Thousand by Service Type: 2020 to 2027 Table 72: African Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) Market Share Breakdown by Service Type: 2020 VS 2027 IV. COMPETITION Total Companies Profiled: 49 Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p03704490/?utm_source=GNW About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 18:12:00 GMT

Europe Is Locking Down Everything to Keep Schools Open During COVID’s Second Wave
ROME—The Ambrosoni family in the central part of the city here have one computer, painfully slow internet, and three children in elementary school, making learning from home something of a challenge. When schools closed down last March, the children essentially stopped learning, the family says. And the family does not want to see that happen again.“During the first lockdown in the spring, each child had to sacrifice a third of their school day so their siblings could also attend classes,” mom Gabriella, who is still on furlough from the last lockdown, told The Daily Beast. “Which means they all basically lost the last part of the school year.” And with dad Angelo working at a restaurant—now subject to further restrictions and likely new closures—buying two more computers just isn’t in the cards at the moment.The Ambrosoni family struggle is mirrored across Europe, where keeping schools open during new lockdowns in the second wave of the pandemic has been a priority. Not only do smaller housing and spotty infrastructure make at-home learning difficult, but in many southern European countries like Italy, where daycare centers are scarce and grandparents as caregivers are now off-limits due to COVID concerns, schools play a vital role in keeping parents at work.But as European education ministers fight to keep schools open, experts across the continent are warning that while young people do not generally suffer the same consequences of COVID-19, the schools are likely contributing to the rapid spread of the virus. Writing in Bloomberg News, Italian economics analyst Ferdinando Giugliano says the biggest dilemma for governments during the second wave is what to do about schools. “Closing them could lead to a ‘lost generation’ of learners and make it harder for parents to get back to work,” he says. “Keeping them open could further propagate the virus.”So far, the majority of European governments are struggling to find that balance, and with no centralized European policy, the solutions are quite literally all over the map.French President Emmanuel Macron announced a nationwide lockdown Wednesday night after his country topped more than 50,000 new cases in a single 24-hour period over the weekend, but schools for the most part will remain open. “I have decided that we must return to confinement,” he said Wednesday night. “The whole territory is concerned.”The same scenario is playing out in Germany, which is also under new lockdown measures for all leisure activities. There, too, keeping schools open is a priority both to ensure that kids whose families can’t afford multiple computers or who have spotty internet won’t have to sacrifice their children’s education. Addressing the nation to announce new measures on Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel made it clear that “social sacrifices must be made” to ensure schools stay open. “We will do everything so that our children are not the losers of the pandemic,” she said. “School and daycare need to be the most important things.”In Italy, which is also now under new restrictions until Nov. 24 that include the shuttering of gyms and theaters and the early closure of bars and restaurants at 6 p.m., daycare centers and elementary schools are also being prioritized, while high schools now have to teach 75 percent of their curriculum online and stagger entrances to institutions to ensure proper social distancing. Many Italian high school students are, however, streaming their classes on smartphones rather than computers, calling into question the quality of education they are getting. And the policy isn’t nationwide. The southern region of Puglia ordered all schools closed Thursday after several clusters tied to elementary schools emerged. And the region of Campania, where Naples has become a major hot spot this time after having few cases in the first wave, has waffled in its closures, first shutting down all schools in a lockdown and then opening nursery schools and elementary schools as parents struggled to find adequate daycare without them open.Other European countries have admittedly lost the battle to keep in-person learning going. The Czech Republic, which has one of Europe’s highest contagion rates after largely avoiding problems in the first wave, closed schools last week. “I apologize to school directors. I apologize to parents for the permanent uncertainty,” Czech Education Minister Robert Plaga said when making the announcement. “But it’s necessary to do it and to do it fast.”Several studies have pointed to mixed results in whether in-person learning leads to the spread of the virus. A study in Germany by the Institute of Labour Economics in Bonn found no correlation between the opening of its schools in September and the uptick in cases in late October. A similar study in Italy instead found a direct correlation, with more than 2,800 incidents of outbreaks within a month of school starting in mid-September.A database of global superspreader events being kept by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has identified very few incidents within school settings. “Schools should be important given that so many networks come together [there]—with kids, parents, and social life,” Gwen Knight, the project director, told the Financial Times. “But the signal doesn’t seem to be very strong. We are finding it quite hard to find direct evidence of transmission within the school setting, but we are not doing enough testing.”As the second wave envelopes Europe, most government leaders are trying to keep schools open as long as they can, even as most concede that given how fast the virus is spreading, winter holidays will almost undoubtedly start for students much sooner than usual.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.

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 18:08:58 GMT

France to force six-year-old schoolchildren to wear face masks
Schoolchildren aged six and over in France will have to wear face masks in class under new rules rolled out as part of the country's second lockdown that begins on Friday. Jean Castex, the prime minister, announced the draconian move before the national assembly overwhelmingly backed a month of new restrictions that also include strict limits on movement. Only children over 11 have had to wear masks in school until now. New World Health Organisation figures showed Europe accounted for close to half of the 2.8 million global infections in the past week and a third of the 40,000 deaths. As nations continued to slam restrictions back on daily life, Spain extended a state of emergency for another six months, while its Catalonia region said it would seal its borders for 15-days after becoming one of the continent's worst hotspots. In Germany Angela Merkel warned a rancorous parliament that the country faced a “dramatic situation” as it hit a new daily record of 16,744 Covid-19 cases.

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 17:45:36 GMT

23 Eco-Friendly Bedding Brands (& Deals You Can Score On Them)
Although our best intentions are to approach every day as Earth Day, sometimes we need a reminder (and a little green-guidance) in order to lead more eco-conscious lives. In honor of supporting worldwide environmental protection every day, we're tackling an at-home sustainability step that's easy enough to practice in your sleep. We rounded up the top sustainable companies that are redefining our concept of what trendy bedding looks and feels like — along with all the deals you can score by shopping them. The rise in direct-to-consumer bedding brands not only translates to higher quality goods for fairer prices but also to higher quality goods made with fairer environmental practices; from the softest sheet sets made with chemical- and cruelty-free manufacturing to partially biodegradable-fill comforters, certified-organic mattresses, fair-trade pillows, and beyond. In addition to premium eco-friendly products, many of these companies also partner with environmental-protection groups to promote social action, too — whether it's planting a tree per purchase, exploring alternative energy options, practicing people-first employee ethics, and equal pay, or even just minimizing water consumption.Scroll ahead to take a proactive step towards a more sustainable life, starting from the comfort of your own bed.At Refinery29, we’re here to help you navigate this overwhelming world of stuff. All of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. If you buy something we link to on our site, Refinery29 may earn commission.SÕL Organics Deal: 20% off and free shipping all Luxury Organic Bedding, 25% off all Luxury Organic BeddingCode: Provided with email signup, code "FALL"Touted as sustainable, organic, fair-trade, and transparent, SÕL Organics premium bedding is free of everything from pesticides to herbicides, child labor, and discrimination. The company's tagline of, "Making Ethical Luxury Affordable," with, "Equal pay for all," puts an appropriately comforting seal on its fine sateen to percale sheet bundles made from 100% organic and fair-trade-certified cotton.Shop SÕL OrganicsSOL Organics Hemmed Organic Bedding Bundle, $, available at SOL OrganicsNaturepedicDeal: 20% off first purchase, plus 10% off sitewide and free shippingCode: Provided with email signup + code SAVE10With the mission to create products for a safer and healthier sleep, Naturepedic began its journey by producing organic mattresses free of all toxic chemicals. Now 13 years later, the company also stocks a range of high-quality bedding accessories from protector pads to sheets and pillowcases. This luxury sheet set is 400-thread count and is made from 100% organic cotton that is grown without synthetic insecticides, herbicides, or GMOs. Shop NaturepedicNaturepedic Organic Sheets & Pillowcases, $, available at NaturepedicLinotoDeal: off orders over 0Code: Provided with email signupIf you're on the hunt for 100%-linen home essentials, this artisan quality company with a sustainable kick has it handled. Founded and run by Jason Evege, Linoto offers a curated collection of everything from Italy and Belgium-sourced linen sheet sets to towels, kitchenware, and even sleepwear that's thoughtfully crafted in New York and shipped sustainably in recycled plastic-free packaging.Shop LinotoLinoto 100% linen sheet set, $, available at LinotoettitudeDeal: off first purchase of 0 or more with free shipping and returns on orders over Code: Provided with email signupThis CleanBamboo company delivers on its founder's dream of creating bedding that is, "as soft as silk, as sustainable as hemp, as breathable as linen, but at the price of cotton." Each luxurious piece — from sheets to sleepwear and even bath essentials — is sustainably sourced, packaged, and partnered with wider charity efforts. Plus, the site also boasts a fairly stacked Final Sale section.Shop ettitudeEttitude Bamboo Lyocell Sheet Set, $, available at EttitudeBuffy Deal: off first purchase with free shipping and returnsCode: NoneBuffy's super-soft pillows, comforters, and sheet sets are not only made from 100%-natural eucalyptus fibers, but they're also made with cruelty-free and earth-friendly practices — by sourcing recycled water bottles into its eco-friendly fill, the company keeps, "6,000,000 bottles," out of oceans and landfills along with saving, "50 bottles," and, "12 geese," per sustainably-crafted bedding essential.Shop BuffyBuffy The Buffy Cloud, $, available at BuffyParachute HomeDeal: Up to 40% off Last Chance itemsCode: NoneIf you're hunting for luxe decor, premium bath essentials, and bestselling bedding all in one place, Parachute has it covered with its sustainably sourced and socially responsible lineup. The premium DTC brand also partners with the United Nations' Nothing But Nets campaign that provides malaria-prevention nets to communities in need. Shop Parachute HomeParachute Home Waffle Duvet Cover Set, $, available at Parachute HomeCozy EarthDeal: 20%-25% off plus free shippingCode: NoneThis Oprah-approved sustainable brand stocks everything from super-soft and temperature-regulated sleepwear to bedding that's ethically crafted and certified chemical-free. According to the site, its unique blend of organic-bamboo offerings are "50% less humid and degrees cooler than cotton."Shop Cozy EarthCozy Earth Bamboo Sheet Set, $, available at Cozy EarthNest Deal: 15% off Mattresses, 10% off everything elseCode: None, applied at checkout With a company goal of producing goods that are "eco-friendly and provide the highest quality sleep environment" Nest hits the sustainable-luxe bedding nail on the head. Each of the brand's organic products — from mattresses to sheets, pillows, comforters, and even weighted blankets — are USA-made and CertiPUR-US certified (i.e. tested for harmful chemicals).Shop NestNest Bedding Natural Hybrid Latex, $, available at Nest BeddingAvocado MattressThis green-bedding brand specializes in handmade-in-California mattresses that are crafted from premium natural, non-toxic, and organic materials. Each product comes eco-approved with a GREENGUARD Gold certification by UL Environment for low emissions — and 1% of all revenue is donated to non-profit organizations with a focus on sustainability. Shop Avocado MattressAvocado Green Mattress Topper, $, available at AvocadoLayla Sleep Deal: 0 off hybrid mattresses and 0 off memory foam mattresses plus two free memory foam pillowsCode: NoneThis bedding brand uses CertiPUR certified foam along with food-based adhesives and other non-toxic materials to craft everything from its premium flippable foam mattresses to its 100% viscose from bamboo sheet sets. Shop Layla SleepLayla Sleep Memory Foam Mattress, $, available at Layla SleepPrimary Goods Deal: Up to 50% off Last Call limited edition styles Code: NonePrimary's goods are as its brand name suggests: simple but essential. The company offers ethically and sustainably-produced linen sheet sets, pillows, and comforters that are crafted from high-quality materials in soft colors through water and waste-efficient methods.Shop Primary GoodsPrimary Goods the primary set, $, available at Primary GoodspactDeal: 20% off first orders plus free shipping on orders over Code: Provided with email signupThis sustainable company sources only organic, fair-trade, and water-conservational materials for crafting its comfy fashion to bedding essentials. Plus, the site partners with Greenstory to inform customers of exact water amounts saved with each order (e.g. 419.7 gallons for this soft butter-yellow sheet set).Shop pactPACT Room Service Sheet Set, $, available at PACTBoll & Branch Deal: 15% off first purchase of 0 or more plus a 30-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and returnsCode: Provided with email signupBoll & Branch regards itself as, "the first organic, Fair Trade Certified bedding company," with a stacked lineup of consciously-designed mattresses to pillows, bath essentials, and sheet sets that are all ethically-sourced through the company's commitment to sustainable business and people-first ethics (i.e. mandating fair wages and business practices).Shop Boll & BranchBoll And Branch Classic Hemmed Sheet Set, $, available at Boll And BranchAlterra PureDeal: 15% off first ordersCode: Provided with email signupThe modern-minimalist style company practices, "full environmental sustainability," by going chemical-free, achieving organic verifications, and partnering with green-groups (like farm co-ops) to uphold strong social and earth-friendly integrity in the production of every super-soft, and dreamy cotton sheet set.Shop Alterra PureAlterra Pure Organic Cotton Percale Sheet Set, $, available at Alterra PureSweave BeddingDeal: off first order over 0Code: Provided with email signupSweave's bedding offerings are select but with a purpose: each piece is crafted using OEKO-TEX certified textiles (mainly breathable, crisp, and durable eucalyptus fibers) with a lifetime guarantee — and each purchase is matched with the environmental give-back of a eucalyptus-tree planting. Shop SweaveSweave Bedding Core Sheet Set, $, available at Sweave BeddingSnowe HomeDeal: 10% off first ordersCode: Provided with email signupThis simple but stylish brand boasts a lineup of home essentials spanning from premium kitchenware to stone-washed linen bedding and plush bath pieces that all comes Oeko-Tex certified (i.e. tested-for and ensured free-of harmful chemical treatments, like pesticides or lead), packaged in 100%-recycled cardboard, and produced in factories with the highest commitments to social and environmental standards — Snowe's eco-company outlook is that "avoiding dangerous chemicals on our textiles means pouring less chemicals into factories and back into the environment."Shop Snowe HomeSnowe Percale Sheet Set, $, available at SnoweCultiverDeal: off first ordersCode: Provided with email signupThis luxe bedding brand thoughtfully sources and crafts its 100%-natural, European-flax linen pieces (including sheets, loungewear, duvet covers, pillowcases, throws, robes, and much more) through ethical and sustainable practices from sourcing to packaging and even delivery.Shop CultiverCultiver Linen Duvet Cover Set - Cedar, $, available at CultiverCoop Home GoodsDeal: 10% off first ordersCode: Provided with email signupThis bedding site boasts everything from an extensive lineup of shredded memory foam pillows to sheet sets, mattress toppers, and even silk sleep accessories too. Each good is crafted with comfort and sustainability top of mind — using CeriPUR-US materials that meet strict standards for low VOC emissions.Shop Coop Home Goods Coop Home Goods Body Pillow, $, available at Coop Home GoodsSömn HomeThis Canada-based brand makes high-quality sustainable linen bedding in a slew of beautiful shades. Their organic linen fabric is specifically made from flax which is naturally antibacterial and temperature regulating. Shop Sömn HomeSömn Home Linen Comfort Set, $, available at Sömn HomeCoyuchi Founded 25 years ago in Northern California, this clean-living brand's focus on organic farming (i.e. 60% less carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas output than conventional farming) resulted in mindful processing of chemical-free fibers for the softest and most sustainable bedding that the company describes as, "healthier for the home, and healthier for all the elements we need to keep the Earth alive." The toxic dye, chemical, and softener-free goods range from apparel to bed, bath, and beyond essentials that are waste-efficient and luxuriously-comfortable.Shop CoyuchiCoyuchi Organic Crinkled Percale Duvet Cover, $, available at CoyuchiGryphon With the tagline, "Make Your Bed Your Happy Place," Gryphon delivers on luxuriously comfortable bedding you can feel good in and about — each of the brand's products (from sheets to pillowcases and duvet covers) is sustainably-sourced and crafted with environmentally and ethically-friendly practices from recycled and harmful chemical-free materials. Gryphon also claims to reduce water consumption in its production by an impressive, "51.94 million gallons of water year over year."Shop GryphonGryphon Comfort Washed Sheet Set, $, available at Gryphon HomeBearabyThe stylish and sustainable brand behind those chunky-knit weighted blankets you've probably been spotting, well, everywhere. Bearaby prides itself on producing an ocean-friendly, plastic-free alternative to many of the other weighted blankets on the market that use pollutive fillers in their products. Each of Bearby's "Nappers" is crafted from layers of organic cotton and Tencel that are woven together to achieve a natural-weighted finish that is both hypoallergenic and machine washable.Shop BearabyBearaby Tree Napper, $, available at BearabyThe Citizenry This beautiful brand, known for its vibrant lumbar pillows to bohemian-woven rugs and throws, is also home to a line of luxury sustainable bedding that comes certified by the Global Organic Textile Standard — an organization that protects and maintains the highest sustainable and social production standards.Shop The CitizenryThe Citizenry Stonewashed Linen Bed Bundle - Midnight Series, $, available at The CitizenryLike what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?The Most Breathable Sheets For Super Cool SleepWe Actually Slept On These 12 Top-Rated MattressesLinen Sheet Sets That Will Cool Your Hot Body

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 17:37:38 GMT

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