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Category: Politics

Belarusian opposition leader, Maria Kolesnikova, is abducted in Minsk

Belarusian opposition leader, Maria Kolesnikova, is abducted in Minsk

Politico reports: The Belarusian opposition accused the nation’s authorities of “terror” after Maria Kolesnikova, a vocal critic of President Alexander Lukashenko, was abducted in downtown Minsk on Monday morning. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Lukashenko’s main rival during the August election, said in a statement from Lithuania that “the regime is engaged in terror.” “The authorities are wrong when they think it will stop us,” she said. “The more they intimidate, the more people will go out. We will continue to fight, we…

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Redirect military budgets to tackle climate change and pandemics

Redirect military budgets to tackle climate change and pandemics

Denise Garcia writes: Despite threats to human existence from climate change, biodiversity loss and a pandemic that’s devastating economies and paralysing societies, countries still spend recklessly on destructive weapons for wars they will never fight. As an academic who advises the United Nations on arms control and the military uses of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, I have long argued that nations should prioritize ‘human security for the common good’ over military spending. That means ensuring people can live to…

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Trump fixates on the promise of a vaccine — real or not — as key to reelection bid

Trump fixates on the promise of a vaccine — real or not — as key to reelection bid

The Washington Post reports: President Trump is so fixated on finding a vaccine for the novel coronavirus that in meetings about the U.S. pandemic response, little else captures his attention, according to administration officials. Trump has pressed health officials to speed up the vaccine timeline and urged them to deliver one by the end of the year. He has peppered them with questions about the development status and mass-distribution plans. And, in recent days, he has told some advisers and…

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A rural Virginia community thought it could escape the pandemic but now has among the highest number of new cases in the state

A rural Virginia community thought it could escape the pandemic but now has among the highest number of new cases in the state

The Washington Post reports: In the brightest red corner of Virginia, where “Trump Digs Coal” signs dot the Appalachian mountain hollers, Jerry Estep first brushed off the coronavirus as an urban plague. Now he won’t leave home in this tiny town, population 980, without a mask. “I was just going out like normal, but that’s not normal no more,” said Estep, 77, a retired florist with longtime health woes that could make a case of the coronavirus especially lethal. “I…

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‘Reign of terror’: A summer of police violence in Los Angeles

‘Reign of terror’: A summer of police violence in Los Angeles

The Guardian reports: Los Angeles police officers have continued to kill civilians at alarming rates and under questionable circumstances in the last three months, despite a summer of unprecedented activism and growing political pressure from lawmakers. Most recently, two deputies with the Los Angeles sheriff’s department (LASD) fatally shot a bicyclist, 29-year-old Dijon Kizzee, who was fleeing after officers tried to stop him for an alleged “vehicle code” violation. The killing on Monday of yet another Black man in South…

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Here’s what the media must do to fend off an election-night disaster

Here’s what the media must do to fend off an election-night disaster

Margaret Sullivan writes: You might think that 2000 would have adequately prepared the media — and the American public — for the complete unpredictability of what may happen in November 2020 as a nation votes in the midst of a pandemic with a sitting president who is busy creating mistrust in the system and threatening not to accept a defeat. But there’s not much reason for confidence. Recall the 2018 midterms when some media figures rushed to judgment again. “It’s…

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Five years after the migration crisis, Merkel, not Trump, seems vindicated

Five years after the migration crisis, Merkel, not Trump, seems vindicated

Ishaan Tharoor writes: “I’ll put it simply,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared at the end of August 2015. “Germany is a strong country. … We can handle this.” “This” was an epochal influx of migrants and refugees, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Their exodus from the Levant and North Africa had led to chaotic scenes in countries along Germany’s borders, through which tens of thousands of people were making a trek to greater safety after entering Europe in Greece…

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Covid-19 has killed more law enforcement officers this year than all other causes combined

Covid-19 has killed more law enforcement officers this year than all other causes combined

CNN reports: More police officers have died from Covid-19 this year than have been killed on patrol. That’s according to the Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP), a nonprofit organization that tracks law enforcement fatalities in the line of duty. At least 101 officers have died from Covid-19, while at least 82 have died by other means, as of Thursday, according to ODMP. The organization is working to verify an additional some 150 officers who are presumed to have died after…

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Why Trump supporters can’t admit who he really is

Why Trump supporters can’t admit who he really is

Peter Wehner writes: To understand the corruption, chaos, and general insanity that is continuing to engulf the Trump campaign and much of the Republican Party right now, it helps to understand the predicate embraced by many Trump supporters: If Joseph R. Biden Jr. wins the presidency, America dies. During last week’s Republican National Convention, speaker after speaker insisted that life under a Biden presidency would be dystopian. Charlie Kirk, the young Trump acolyte who opened the proceedings, declared, “I am…

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How Trump draws on campaign funds to pay legal bills

How Trump draws on campaign funds to pay legal bills

The New York Times reports: President Trump was proudly litigious before his victory in 2016 and has remained so in the White House. But one big factor has changed: He has drawn on campaign donations as a piggy bank for his legal expenses to a degree far greater than any of his predecessors. In New York, Mr. Trump dispatched a team of lawyers to seek damages of more than $1 million from a former campaign worker after she claimed she…

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Trump: Americans who died in war are ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’

Trump: Americans who died in war are ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’

Jeffrey Goldberg writes: When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true. Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people…

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Most Americans think Trump’s response to the protests across the U.S. is making the situation worse

Most Americans think Trump’s response to the protests across the U.S. is making the situation worse

ABC News reports: A significant majority of Americans believe President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on the unrest in parts of the country is making matters worse — with even members of his own party divided on his approach — a new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday finds. Trump’s attempt to reframe the race against former Vice President Joe Biden around “law and order,” does not appear to be breaking through. Over half of the country — 55% — in the new…

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Michael Forest Reinoehl, suspect in Portland shooting, is killed during arrest

Michael Forest Reinoehl, suspect in Portland shooting, is killed during arrest

The New York Times reports: Law enforcement agents shot and killed an antifa supporter on Thursday as they moved to arrest him in the fatal shooting of a right-wing activist who was part of a pro-Trump caravan in Portland, Ore., officials said. The suspect, Michael Forest Reinoehl, 48, was shot by officers from a federally led fugitive task force during the encounter in Lacey, Wash., southwest of Seattle, according to four law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation. As part…

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Will Americans ever learn the full story about Trump’s relationship with Russia?

Will Americans ever learn the full story about Trump’s relationship with Russia?

Anne Applebaum writes: Fate offered Peter Strzok a place in history that he never sought. The son of an Army officer, Strzok also served in the United States military before joining the FBI’s counterintelligence operation in 1996. He excelled at his job: In 2001, he was part of the team that tracked and arrested a network of Russian “illegals” who had been living in the U.S. for many years under deep cover. But those were not the cases that brought…

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Women are more effective leaders than men in tackling the pandemic, the data shows

Women are more effective leaders than men in tackling the pandemic, the data shows

By Supriya Garikipati, University of Liverpool and Uma S Kambhampati, University of Reading Over the last few months, there has been much discussion of leadership during the pandemic. What constitutes good leadership? Who has performed better and which countries have been worse? One pattern that emerged early on was that female leaders were seen to have handled the crisis remarkably well. Whether it has been New Zealand under Jacinda Ardern or Taiwan under the presidency of Tsai Ing-Wen or Germany…

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Here’s why BuzzFeed News is now calling QAnon a ‘collective delusion’

Here’s why BuzzFeed News is now calling QAnon a ‘collective delusion’

BuzzFeed News reports: What is QAnon? It’s not easy to describe, but one thing we know to be true: It’s not a conspiracy theory — it’s bigger. What started as a thread on the anonymous message board 4chan has long since entered the mainstream: Questions about QAnon have been asked in the White House press room, and a Q follower is poised to be voted into Congress later this year. When QAnon started appearing several years ago, journalists fumbled to…

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