Halloween During Pandemic: Costumes, Candy at a Distance

Ghosts, skeletons, princesses and black cats roamed the streets as usual this Halloween, but they kept their distance, wore face coverings and carried hand sanitizer in their quest for treats.As with everything else this year, the pandemic left its mark on Halloween. Parades, parties and haunted houses were canceled because of bans on large gatherings and concerns that spooky celebrations could spread the coronavirus.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
People walk past social-distancing markers meant to help prevent the spread of the new coronavirus as they trick-or-treat for Halloween, Oct. 31, 2020, in downtown Overland Park, Kan.In Glen Allen, Virginia, just outside Richmond, neighbors left individually wrapped bags of candy on tables at the ends of driveways to avoid having dozens of kids coming to their doors and sticking their hands in the same candy bowls.Matt Cheadle, 35, a furniture designer, called it “extremely” socially distanced trick-or-treating.Still funParker, his 5-year-old son, was going as Yoshi, the green dinosaur from the Mario Kart video game series, and the chance to show off his costume and get candy is all he’s talked about recently.”He’s already had so much taken away from him this year,” Cheadle said. “We think this is a small compromise for Halloween. The little kiddos will still dress up, they’ll still get to go driveway to driveway, but not door to door.”Jane Hassebroek helps her sister Lydia dye her hair for a costume for Halloween at their home, as the coronavirus disease outbreak continues, in New York, Oct. 31, 2020.Halloween comes as coronavirus cases are surging in many parts of the country, and health officials warn of the potential for even higher numbers this winter.More than 230,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the country, and total U.S. cases surpassed 9 million on Friday, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. In the past two weeks, more than 78,700 new virus cases have been reported each day on average, up from about 55,100 in mid-October, according to Johns Hopkins.So, many cities and towns issued guidelines for celebrating Halloween safely.New York City’s health department recommended avoiding large groups, haunted houses and bobbing for apples — “Keep your spit to yourself,” it said in an advisory. Officials urged people instead to focus on safe activities like pumpkin carving, home decorating, outdoor scavenger hunts and virtual costume parties.NY parade canceledLots of festivities were canceled, including the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, a nearly 50-year tradition that typically draws tens of thousands to the streets of Manhattan. Organizers staged a virtual puppet parade instead.In New Hampshire, where coronavirus cases are also on the rise, emergency management officials in Coos County recommended residents not participate in door-to-door trick-or-treating or group events. Trick-or-treating was called off entirely in Pittsburg, a town of about 900 in the northern part of the state.Betsy Curtin and her sons were also skipping it for safety’s sake. Instead, it was a visit to their grandparents’ houses in costume — 7-year-old Alex as Batman and 9-year-old Charlie as Captain America — then back home for pizza and a movie.”I only bought Kit Kats for them, so I’ve officially ruined their weekend,” Curtin said. “Hoping the grandparents come through with specialty chocolates.”

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Ivory Coast Votes for President in Test of Political Stability

Ivory Coast citizens went to the polls Saturday, even as some opposition supporters — heeding a call from two rival candidates of President Alassane Ouattara for a boycott over his bid for a third term — tried to disrupt the vote.Abidjan’s streets were quiet and largely empty, in contrast to the sometimes violent run-up to the election. The vote is seen as a test of stability in Ivory Coast, which is the world’s top cocoa producer and has one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies.Voting went smoothly with orderly lines at polling stations in a number of districts, Reuters witnesses said.But in the city’s Blockhauss neighborhood, around 20 young men blocked the entrance to a school, preventing would-be voters from entering until police dispersed the group.”It’s civil disobedience,” said Bienvenue Beagre, 31, one of the youths trying to obstruct the vote. “He’s done two terms and needs to go away.”It was not immediately clear if significant numbers were not participating in the vote or how the call for a boycott was playing out in the rest of the country.Clashes, fatalitiesElection-linked street clashes have killed 30 people since August and brought back memories of the 2010 election, which Ouattara won but which unleashed a brief civil war that killed 3,000 people when his predecessor, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to step down.The recent violence has pitted the 78-year-old president’s supporters against those of his opponents. Ouattara’s critics say that he is breaking the law by running again because the constitution limits presidents to two terms and that he is jeopardizing the country’s hard-earned economic gains.Ouattara says he can run again under a new constitution approved in 2016 and is doing so only because his handpicked successor died unexpectedly in July. He is seen as likely to win.Ouattara’s two main rivals, former President Henri Konan Bedie and former Prime Minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan, have called for an election boycott. Affi N’Guessan has told supporters to blockade polling places. The government has said it has deployed 35,000 soldiers and police officers for election day.Critics call Ouattara’s candidacy a new blow to West African democracy following a military coup in Mali in August and a successful third-term bid this month by the president of Guinea, Alpha Conde.

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Philippines Evacuates Nearly 1M as 2020’s Strongest Typhoon Approaches

Officials evacuated almost a million residents in the southern part of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon as a Category 5 storm, the world’s strongest this year, was set to make landfall Sunday.Typhoon Goni, with 215-kph (133-mph) sustained winds and gusts of up to 265 kph (164 mph), will bring violent winds and strong rains, state weather and disaster officials said.It is among the strongest typhoons to hit the Philippines since Haiyan, which killed more than 6,300 people in 2013.”We are having a hard time with COVID-19, and then here comes another disaster,” Senator Christopher Go, the top aide of President Rodrigo Duterte, told a virtual news conference.Local executives should ensure that the virus does not spread in evacuation centers, he said.Officials began pre-emptive evacuations, with Albay province moving 794,000 residents to safety, Ricardo Jalad, executive director of the national disaster agency, said at a news conference.In Manila and nearby Bulacan province, roughly 1,000 COVID-19 patients housed in large isolation tents could be transferred to hotels and hospitals, Jalad said.The Philippines has the second-highest numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths in Southeast Asia, behind only Indonesia, with 380,729 cases and 7,221 deaths.Molave’s victimsTyphoon Molave last week killed 22 people, mostly through drowning in provinces south of Manila, which is also in the projected path of Goni, the 18th tropical storm to hit the country this year.The main island of Luzon accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, which fell into recession in the second quarter, and half of the population of more than 108 million.Relief goods, heavy machinery and personal protective equipment are already positioned in key areas, Filipino Grace America, mayor of Infanta town in Quezon province, told DZBB radio. “But because of the COVID-19 pandemic, our funds for calamity concerns and expenses are insufficient,” the mayor said.Local officials canceled port operations and barred fishers from setting sail. Airlines canceled dozens of flights.Another typhoon, Atsani, with 55-kph sustained winds and gusts of up to 70 kph, is gaining strength just outside the Philippines.An average of 20 typhoons, bringing heavy rains that trigger deadly landslides, hit the Philippines annually.

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Armenia, Azerbaijan Trade Fresh Accusations of Karabakh Shelling 

Armenia and Azerbaijan once more accused each other of bombing residential areas on Saturday, in defiance of a pact to avoid the deliberate targeting of civilians in and around the mountain enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.   Shelling was reported by both sides within hours of the latest agreement to defuse the conflict, reached after talks in Geneva between the two countries’ foreign ministers and envoys from France, Russia and the United States.   The agreement with the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group fell short of what would have been a fourth ceasefire since fighting began on Sept. 27. The death toll in the worst fighting in the South Caucasus for more than 25 years has surpassed 1,000 and is possibly much higher.   Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but is populated and controlled by ethnic Armenians. About 30,000 people were killed in a 1991-94 war in the region.   The Nagorno-Karabakh Emergency and Rescue Service said the central market in Stepanakert, the enclave’s largest city, had come under fire and that large parts of it had been burned.   Armenia’s defense ministry said several civilians had been wounded in attacks on the city of Shushi, 15 km (9 miles) to the south, while the human rights ombudsman in Nagorno-Karabakh said a civilian in Martuni region had died when a shell hit his home.   Azerbaijan’s defense ministry denied these accusations. It said that the regions of Terter, Aghdam and Aghjabedi had come under artillery fire, as had Gubadli, a town between the enclave and the Iranian border that was taken by Azeri troops this week. Azerbaijan’s recent advances on the battlefield, which also extends to seven surrounding regions, have reduced its incentive to strike a lasting peace deal and complicated international efforts to broker a truce.   The conflict has also brought into sharp focus the increased influence of Turkey, an ally of Azerbaijan, in a former Soviet region considered by Russia to be within its sphere of influence. Russia also has a security alliance with Armenia.  In response to a request by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to outline the extent of Moscow’s support, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it would provide “all assistance required” should the conflict spill onto “the territory of Armenia” — land that is outside the current conflict zone.   Nagorno-Karabakh’s army says 1,166 of its soldiers have been killed since Sept. 27. Azerbaijan, which does not disclose its military casualties, updated its civilian death toll to 91. Russia has estimated as many as 5,000 deaths on both sides.  

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WFP Boosts Aid to Kenyan Urban Poor Because of Pandemic 

The World Food Program is increasing cash assistance to hundreds of thousands of Kenya’s urban poor, hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.  Meanwhile, the World Health Organization says Kenya has recorded 52,612 cases of coronavirus, including 964 deaths.  COVID-19 thrives and spreads easily in crowded urban settlements and poor sanitary conditions.  In Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, about 60% of the population of 4.4 million live in slums, vulnerable to viral infections and contagious diseases.   World Food Program spokesman Tomson Phiri says an estimated 1.7 million people living in these areas are short of food and lack nutrition because of the COVID-19 pandemic.    “Now, with new cases that are surging across the urban centers in Kenya, we fear that many more in COVID-19 hot spot counties may need our assistance,” said Phiri.    In response to this food and nutrition crisis, Phiri says WFP is rolling out cash assistance for more than 400,000 people in Nairobi and Mombasa.  He says people will receive a $40 monthly stipend.  This is enough to cover up to half the food needs for an average family of four.   Phiri says many more people who have lost jobs and income due to the pandemic need aid.  However, he notes WFP does not have the money to help them.  He says the agency’s $64 million emergency appeal is only 36% funded.   With adequate international support, he says WFP would be able to provide food assistance to 725,000 needy people in Nairobi’s informal settlements and other hot spots.  However, with the amount of cash on hand, he says WFP only can reach out to the most vulnerable households.      

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Cameroon Mourns 7 Children Killed at School 

Cameroon observed a day of national mourning Sunday, with the central African state’s flag flying at half-staff and millions of people taking to the streets, mosques, and churches to condemn barbarism and killing. People are also asking for investigations to be opened and for suspected killers and those promoting the separatist crisis that has killed 3,000 people in four years to face justice.Oumarou Mallam Djibril, a Muslim cleric, leads prayers at an ecumenical service at the Multi-Purpose Sports Complex in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé. Among the nearly 1,000 civilians who have come out to observe the day of national mourning is 40-year-old Catholic, Stephen Ngwa.  Ngwa says his younger sister’s daughter was killed when gunmen attacked a school in the English-speaking southwestern town of Kumba on October 24. He says the pain inflicted on innocent citizens by the separatist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions is unbearable. “These acts of barbarism should not continue again,” he said. “I want to use this opportunity to once more plead with boys and girls who are carrying guns in the North West and South West to drop their guns, for we are tired. This is not our portion.” Choir members in OK? Yaoundé, besides praying for the killed children, asked God to bring peace back to Cameroon’s English-speaking regions. The government, along with Cameroon’s Ecumenical Service for Peace, mosques, and Catholic, Baptist and Presbyterian churches reported that similar services took place all over the country. The military held ceremonies in memory of the slain children. Radio and TV stations broadcast special programs in their memory.  An empty classroom is seen following a shooting at a school in Kumba, Cameroon, Oct. 24, 2020, in this screen grab obtained from a social media video.Marie Theres Abena Ondou, Cameroon’s minister of women’s empowerment and the family says Africa should reflect on and condemn the massacre of children at the school in Kumba. She says the killing of Cameroonian children who only wanted education is unconscionable.  “Let us go back to June 16, 1976, when young Hector Pieterson, who was only 12 years old, was killed in his school during the mass killing of Soweto in South Africa,” she said. “Since then this date has been established as the Day of the African Child. On October 24, 2020, it was not just one child. Where did these children go wrong? What crime did they commit?” Gunmen stormed the Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy on October 24, killing seven children between the ages of nine and 12. Cameroon officials blamed Anglophone separatists for the attack. Separatists said the military killed the children to give their fighters a bad name.   Cameroon has been marred by protests and violence since 2016, when English-speaking teachers and lawyers took to the street to denounce the overbearing influence of French in the bilingual country. The central government in Yaoundé responded with a military crackdown and separatists took weapons, claiming that they were defending English-speaking civilians. Violence in the Anglophone regions has claimed more than 3,000 lives and caused the displacement of more than 530,000 civilians, according to the United Nations. The Norwegian Refugee Council reported in June, that Cameroon tops the list of the most neglected crisis on the planet since 2019.    

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Officials: US Special Forces Rescue American Held in Nigeria 

U.S. special forces rescued an American citizen who had been kidnapped by armed men in an operation Saturday in northern Nigeria that is believed to have killed several of his captors, U.S. officials said. 
 
Forces including Navy SEALs rescued 27-year-old Philip Walton, who had been abducted on Tuesday from his home in neighboring southern Niger, two U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity, adding that no U.S. troops were hurt. 
 
A diplomat source in Niger said Walton is now at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Niamey. 
 
“Big win for our very elite U.S. Special Forces today,” U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter. 
 
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox News that the Trump administration had over the years rescued 55 hostages in 24 countries. 
 
The Pentagon confirmed the operation but did not provide the identity of the hostage. 
 
Walton, who kept camels, sheep and poultry and grew mangoes near the border with Nigeria, was kidnapped by six men armed with AK-47 assault rifles who arrived on motorcycles at his home in southern Niger’s Massalata village early on Tuesday. 
 
His wife, young daughter and brother were left behind. 
 
Reuters has reported that the perpetrators appeared to be from the Fulani ethnic group, and that they spoke Hausa and some English. They demanded money and searched the family’s home before leaving with Walton. 
 
Niger, like much of West Africa’s Sahel region, faces a deepening security crisis as groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State carry out attacks on the army and civilians, despite help from French and U.S. forces. 
 
Four U.S. soldiers were killed in an ambush in Niger in 2017, sparking debate about the United States’ role in the sparsely populated West African desert that is home to some of the world’s poorest countries. 
 
At least six foreign hostages are being held by Islamist insurgents in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Islamists have collected millions of dollars in ransom payments in recent years. The U.S. government has frequently criticized other countries for paying. 
 
    

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Security Remains High in France After Deadly Knife Attack at Church in Nice 

Security throughout France was high Saturday after this week’s deadly stabbings at a church in Nice as President Emmanuel Macron tried to ease tensions in the country. French leaders have termed Thursday’s incident an Islamist terrorist attack after the perpetrator shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) as he decapitated a woman and killed two others in Notre Dame Basilica in Nice. Thursday’s attack followed the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty earlier this month after the republication of the Prophet Muhammad by the Paris-based satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.  Macron triggered protests in the Muslim world after the murder of Paty, who showed a cartoon of Prophet Muhammad to his class, by saying France would never renounce its right to caricature. On Saturday, though, Macron sounded a more empathetic tone in an interview with Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera. “I can understand that people could be shocked by the caricatures, but I will never accept that violence can be justified,” Macron said. 
 
Meanwhile, French authorities detained a third man for questioning Saturday in connection with the Islamist knife attack at Notre Dame Basilica in the southern French city of Nice that left three people dead. 
 
The man, a 33-years-old, was present during a police search Friday at the home of a second young Tunisian man suspected of being in contact with the attacker. 
 
France, Tunisia and Italy are jointly investigating to determine the motive of main suspect Ibrahim Issaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian, and whether he acted alone and whether his act was premeditated. 
 
French police have three people in custody for questioning after they found two telephones on the suspect after the attack. 
 
The first man, age 47, was detained Thursday night after police reviewed surveillance footage and observed the person next to the attacker on the day before the attack. 
 
A second detained subject, 35, suspected of contacting Ibrahim Issaoui, the day before the attack, was arrested Friday. 
 
Macron said earlier in the week he would increase the number of troops deployed to protect schools and churches from 3,000 to 7,000. Indonesian President Joko Widodo, meanwhile, strongly denounced the attacks and remarks Macron made on Oct. 21, when he said Paty “was the victim of a conspiracy of stupidity, hate, lies … hate of the other … hate of what we profoundly are.” “The comments could divide the unity of the world’s religious communities at a time when the world needs unity to curb the COVID-19 pandemic,” Widodo said Saturday during a televised news conference in Jakarta.   Tunisian authorities are reportedly investigating whether a group called the Mahdi Organization carried out the attack. The state news agency TAP reported Friday investigators were also trying to determine whether the group exists and that the probe is based on claims of responsibility on social media.   Issaoui, who transited Italy last month en route to France, remains in critical condition in a French hospital after being wounded by police as they arrested him.   Three people were killed in Thursday’s attack. French anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said a 60-year-old woman was decapitated, and a 55-year-old man, the church sexton, had his throat slit. Forty-four-year-old Brazilian national Simone Barreto Silva was stabbed several times before fleeing to a nearby bistro, where she raised the alarm before succumbing to her wounds.     Issaoui was not on Tunisia’s list of suspected militants and was not known to French intelligence services.   Ricard said Issaoui arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa on September 20 and traveled to Paris on October 9.   He said Issaoui was carrying a copy of the Quran. The knife used in the attack was found near him and two other knives not used in the attack were found in a bag that belonged to him.   French leaders have termed Thursday’s incident an Islamist terrorist attack and raised the country’s security alert to its highest level.   

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Britain Poised to Join France, Germany in Locking Down  

For weeks, Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, has resisted mounting calls to impose a national lockdown as coronavirus cases have risen inexorably, saying that closing the country for a second time this year would be a “disaster.” But the British leader appeared poised Saturday to join his counterparts in France, Germany and Belgium in ordering a nationwide shutdown.  
 
New national lockdown restrictions could be imposed in England as early as next week. Wales announced a lockdown last week, and Scottish leaders say the next few days will be critical for Scotland to avoid a lockdown north of the border with England, too.  
 
The British prime minister met his top Cabinet members Friday to discuss toughening restrictions in light of worsening coronavirus infection rates and rising hospital admissions. 
 
Cabinet ministers had been chorusing all week that another lockdown wasn’t likely, saying a regional tiered strategy they have been following for weeks would work. “We are confident we’ve got the right measures in place — which is not to have a blanket approach,” said Britain’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab.  
 FILE – Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he speaks during a virtual news conference on the ongoing situation with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at Downing Street, London, Oct. 12, 2020.Johnson had previously warned that a second national lockdown would be like checking into “Hotel California” with no end in sight once it had been entered, a riff on a 1977 song by the rock band the Eagles. But “alarming data,” according to government insiders, has shifted his opinion. 
 
Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer for England, warned Downing Street Thursday the coronavirus was out of control and that hospitals are at risk of being overwhelmed. 
 
The government’s main scientific advisory group, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, known as SAGE, also has been cautioning ministers that the pandemic is on course to breach the “reasonable worst-case scenario” it had previously outlined. 
 
Projection modeling had suggested that under a tiered regional lockdown approach, daily infections in England would run at between 12,000 and 13,000. The actual numbers, however, are now running more than four times more, with confirmed daily cases between 43,000 to 74,000. 
 FILE – A passenger in a car receives a novel coronavirus test at a drive-in COVID-19 testing facility set up at the Chessington World of Adventures Resort, in Chessington, southwest of London, Oct. 20, 2020.Daily COVID-19-related deaths are now approaching 200 in England, twice the level projected under the previous worst case scenario. On Friday, top infectious disease expert and government adviser Jeremy Farrar tweeted that to bring the coronavirus under control “we have to act now.”  
 
He added: “The best time to act was a month ago but these are very tough decisions, which we would all like to avoid. The second-best time is now.” 
 
Opposition politicians and many government advisers had been clamoring for several weeks for a two-week so-called “circuit breaker” lockdown, a brief shutdown. But ministers had opted for a lighter-handed approach that has seen them impose tougher restrictions on regions as flare-ups occur. But earlier this month, Patrick Vallance, the government’s leading scientific officer, had warned publicly he doubted the regional strategy would work to curb rising case numbers. 
 
London University’s Imperial College warned midweek that case numbers have been picking up speed in the south of England to match big jumps in northern England. One of their models projected that about 96,000 people would become infected in England daily without a national lockdown.  
 
Johnson’s U-turn comes just days after Germany, France and Belgium opted to impose national lockdowns.FILE – Waiters are seen inside “La Chicoree” restaurant a few minutes before the start of the late-night curfew introduced as part of coronavirus restrictions, in Lille, France, Oct. 16, 2020.French President Emmanuel Macron said midweek he had to “brutally apply the brakes” and announced the banning of social gatherings, the closure of restaurants and bars, and a prohibition on non-essential travel, with citizens only allowed to leave home for essential work or medical care. “The virus is circulating at a speed that not even the most pessimistic forecasts had anticipated,” he said.  
 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Wednesday a lockdown would take effect November 2 and last until November 30, with restaurants and bars only allowed to provide carry out service. Beginning Monday, all theaters, gyms, swimming pools, and movie theaters will be closed. Merkel said Germany’s health system “can still cope” with current cases, but “at this speed of infections it will reach the limits of its capacity within weeks.” 
 
Italy has so far held out from imposing a formal national lockdown, but pandemic rules have been toughened, promoting violent protests in Milan, Turin, Naples and Rome.  
 
On Thursday, European Union leaders pledged to cooperate on the latest lockdowns, hoping to avoid the border closures seen earlier this year when the pandemic first struck the continent. During a three-hour videoconference, the bloc’s 27 heads of state and government also discussed developing plans for the swift manufacture and distribution of vaccines. 
 
“I want to stress that I understand how tired and worried everyone is,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at a news conference after the video-conference concluded. “We are all wondering when we will come out of this crisis. But now is the time for patience, for determination and for discipline from all of us, from governments right down to each of us individually,” she added. 
 
The EU has earmarked $257 million to help fund the transfer of COVID-19 patients across borders to help prevent hospital systems in the bloc from being overwhelmed. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 10 million Europeans are now infected with the virus.       

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Former James Bond Actor Sean Connery Dies Aged 90 

Scottish movie legend Sean Connery, who shot to international stardom as the suave, sexy and sophisticated British agent James Bond and went on to grace the silver screen for four decades, has died aged 90. The BBC and Sky News reported his death on Saturday. “I was heartbroken to learn this morning of the passing of Sir Sean Connery. Our nation today mourns one of her best loved sons,” said Scottish First Minster Nicola Sturgeon. “Sean was a global legend but, first and foremost, he was a patriotic and proud Scot.” 
 
Connery was raised in near poverty in the slums of Edinburgh and worked as a coffin polisher, milkman and lifeguard before his bodybuilding hobby helped launch an acting career that made him one of the world’s biggest stars. 
 
Connery will be remembered first as British agent 007, the character created by novelist Ian Fleming and immortalized by Connery in films starting with “Dr. No” in 1962. 
 FILE – In this file photo taken on Oct. 22, 1982 British actor Sean Connery is seen during the making of the film “Never say, never again” in Nice.As Bond, his debonair manner and wry humor in foiling flamboyant villains and cavorting with beautiful women belied a darker, violent edge, and he crafted a depth of character that set the standard for those who followed him in the role. 
 
He would introduce himself in the movies with the signature line, “Bond – James Bond.” But Connery was unhappy being defined by the role and once said he “hated that damned James Bond.” Tall and handsome, with a throaty voice to match a sometimes crusty personality, Connery played a series of noteworthy roles besides Bond and won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a tough Chicago cop in “The Untouchables” (1987). 
 
He was 59 when People magazine declared him the “sexiest man alive” in 1989. 
 
Connery was an ardent supporter of Scotland’s independence and had the words “Scotland Forever” tattooed on his arm while serving in the Royal Navy.FILE – Sir Sean Connery, with wife Micheline (R), pose for photographers after he was formally knighted by the Britain’s Queen Elizabeth at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh July 5.When he was knighted at the age of 69 by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth in 2000 at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, he wore full Scottish dress including the green-and-black plaid kilt of his mother’s MacLeod clan. 
 Became fed up with ‘idiots’  
 
Some noteworthy non-Bond films included director Alfred Hitchcock’s “Marnie” (1964), “The Wind and the Lion” (1975) with Candice Bergen, director John Huston’s “The Man Who Would be King” (1975) with Michael Caine, director Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989) and the Cold War tale “The Hunt for Red October” (1990). 
 
Fans of alternative cinema will always remember him starring as the “Brutal Exterminator” Zed in John Boorman’s mind-bending fantasy epic “Zardoz” (1974), where a heavily mustachioed Connery spent much of the movie running around in a skimpy red loin-cloth, thigh-high leather boots and a pony tail. 
 
Connery retired from movies after disputes with the director of his final outing, the forgettable “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” in 2003. 
 
“I get fed up dealing with idiots,” he said. The Bond franchise was still going strong more than five decades after Connery started it. The lavishly produced movies, packed with high-tech gadgetry and spectacular effects, broke box office records and grossed hundreds of millions of dollars. 
 
After the smashing success of “Dr. No,” more Bond movies followed for Connery in quick succession: “From Russia with Love” (1963), “Goldfinger” (1964), “Thunderball” (1965) and “You Only Live Twice” (1967). 
 
Connery then grew concerned about being typecast and decided to break away. Australian actor George Lazenby succeeded him as Bond in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” in 1969. 
 
But without Connery it lacked what the public wanted and he was lured back in 1971 for “Diamonds Are Forever” with temptations that included a slice of the profits, which he said would go to a Scottish educational trust. He insisted it would be his last time as Bond. 
 
Twelve years later, at age 53, Connery was back as 007 in “Never Say Never Again” (1983), an independent production that enraged his old mentor, producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli. 
 Preferred beer to martinis  
 
In a 1983 interview, Connery summed up the ideal Bond film as having “marvelous locations, interesting ambiance, good stories, interesting characters — like a detective story with espionage and exotic settings and nice birds.” 
 
Connery was a very different type from Fleming’s Bond character with his impeccable social background, preferring beer to Bond’s vodka martini cocktails that were “shaken not stirred.” 
 
But Connery’s influence helped shape the character in the books as well as the films. He never attempted to disguise his Scottish accent, leading Fleming to give Bond Scottish heritage in the books that were released after Connery’s debut. 
 
Born Thomas Connery on Aug. 25, 1930, he was the elder of two sons of a long-distance truck driver and a mother who worked as a cleaner. He dropped out of school at age 13 and worked in a variety of menial jobs. At 16, two years after World War II ended, Connery was drafted into the Royal Navy, and served three years. 
 
“I grew up with no notion of a career, much less acting,” he once said. “I certainly never have plotted it out. It was all  happenstance, really.” 
 
Connery played small parts with theater repertory companies before graduating to films and television. It was his part in a 1959 Disney leprechaun movie, “Darby O’Gill and the Little People,” that helped land the role of Bond. Broccoli, a producer of the Bond films, asked his wife to watch Connery in the Disney movie while he was searching for the right leading actor. 
 
Dana Broccoli said her husband told her he was not sure Connery had sex appeal. 
 
“I saw that face and the way he moved and talked and I said: ‘Cubby, he’s fabulous!'” she said. “He was just perfect, he had star material right there.” 
 
Connery married actress Diane Cilento in 1962. Before divorcing 11 years later, they had a son, Jason, who became an actor. He married French artist Micheline Roquebrune, whom he met playing golf, in 1975.   

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Vietnam Gets Boost from Western Allies in its Defense against China 

Vietnam’s leadership this year of a Southeast Asian negotiating bloc has opened a door to bolster its defense against longtime rival China through stronger relations with the West, experts say.The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, a U.S.-led grouping that also includes Australia, India and Japan, invited Vietnam to join talks on COVID-19 and economic impacts in March, and its members have conferred with Vietnamese officials regularly since then.  U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo finished his five-nation Asia visit with a stop in Vietnam Friday.  He praised the host country’s “sovereignty” when he met Friday with Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh in Hanoi and said he looked forward to further improvement in relations.  FILE – A ship (top) of the Chinese Coast Guard is seen near a ship of the Vietnam Marine Guard in the South China Sea, about 210 km (130 miles) off shore of Vietnam, May 14, 2014The two sides periodically ram each other’s boats and try to keep each other away from undersea energy reserves — as China uses technological and military advantages to occupy tiny islets.    The two communist neighbors often make up after these incidents but never settle them. They had already sparred on and off for centuries over territory, culminating in a war in the 1970s.   Quad connections “will give Vietnam a solid regional ‘coalition’ to work on China with,” said Yun Sun, East Asia Program senior associate at the Stimson Center in Washington. “For a Vietnam that has been resisting China alone for centuries, to have those solid partners will improve Vietnam’s leverage and position,” she said.   The Quad was launched 13 years ago. It’s seen as a counterweight to Chinese expansion, from the Sino-Indian border to the South China Sea. New Zealand and South Korea joined Vietnam for Quad talks this year about COVID-19.   China will “think the worst” of Vietnam’s Quad role, Thayer said.     Vietnam has hardly forgotten ASEAN or forsaken China, though. As ASEAN readies for a leadership summit November 11-15, Vietnam has a chance to help the members clinch a free-trade agreement involving China. China is already an economic benefactor for much of Southeast Asia, and Vietnam counted China last year as its No. 2 trading partner, after the United States.   FILE – Container trucks are seen while waiting for cross the border at Huu Nghi border gate connecting with China, in Lang Son province, Vietnam, Feb. 20, 2020.A breakthrough this year in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership deal after nine years of discussion would make Vietnam “look good” by helping so many economies, said Rajiv Biswas, senior regional economist with IHS Markit, a London-based market analysis firm. The 15 would-be partnership countries make up almost 30% of the global gross domestic product.   “Because these things have been under conversation for quite a few years, if they can pull it off under their chairmanship then it looks good that they were the ones who were able to bring it over the line,” Biswas said.   

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Trump Travels Saturday to Pennsylvania; Biden to Michigan

With only three days of campaigning left before Election Day in the United States, both top candidates travel to battleground states Saturday, with Republican President Donald Trump focusing on Pennsylvania while Democratic candidate former Vice President Joe Biden plans events in Michigan.Biden will be campaigning alongside former President Barack Obama for the first time during the campaign. The two will travel to Flint and Detroit on Saturday, part of two days of campaigning to get out the vote in Michigan.In Detroit, they will be joined by singer Stevie Wonder, who will perform at a drive-in rally. Wonder has previously performed at several Democratic events, including for Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012 as well as for Hillary Clinton in 2016.Trump plans to hold four rallies in cities across Pennsylvania on Saturday. The president narrowly won the state in 2016 and is seeking to repeat his performance there. Polls currently show Biden with a slight advantage.Trump told reporters Friday that he is undecided about his election night plans after The New York Times reported he canceled plans to appear at an event at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.“We haven’t made a determination,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question about his whereabouts on election night. Trump said coronavirus restrictions imposed by the local government in Washington, including a ban on gatherings of more than 50 people, would be a factor in the decision.“You know, Washington, D.C., is shut down. The mayor has shut it down. So we have a hotel; I don’t know if it’s shut — if you’re allowed to use it or not, but I know the mayor has shut down Washington, D.C. And if that’s the case, we’ll probably stay here or pick another location,” Trump added.On Friday, Trump and Biden both campaigned in the Midwest with Trump traveling to Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, while Biden held events in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.Michigan has 16 electoral votes, Minnesota and Wisconsin have 10 each, and Iowa has six.Biden told supporters at a drive-in rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines Friday that the state hit a daily record number of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations this week and argued that Trump “has given up” on fighting the virus.Trump told supporters at an outdoor rally in Waterford Township, Michigan, that Biden has predicted a dark winter ahead because of the coronavirus pandemic.“Just what our country needs is a long dark winter and a leader who talks about it,” Trump said.The president said a safe vaccine would be delivered to Americans in a matter of weeks, adding that it will be free because “this wasn’t your fault. This wasn’t anyone’s fault. This was China’s fault.”National polls typically show Biden with a lead of 7 or 8 percentage points over Trump, although the margin is about half that in several key battleground states that are likely to determine the outcome in the Electoral College.According to an average of major polls compiled by the website Real Clear Politics, Biden and Trump are virtually tied in the battleground states of Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina, while the president trails the former vice president in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.Americans are voting early for Tuesday’s presidential election in unprecedented numbers, a product of strong feelings for or against the two main candidates and a desire to avoid large Election Day crowds at polling stations during the pandemic.More than 82 million people had already voted as of Friday, well above half of the overall 2016 vote count, which was 138.8 million.     

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At Least 27 Dead as Powerful Quake Hits Major Turkish City, Greek Islands

Rescue teams in Turkey working around the clock recovered another body Saturday from the rubble of a collapsed building in Bayrakli district in Izmir struck by a strong earthquake.The quake hit Turkey’s third-largest city and a nearby Greek island on Friday morning, killing at least 27 people and injuring more than 800.Haluk Ozener, director of the Istanbul-based Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, said that Izmir was the hardest-hit and most-damaged area.Izmir’s Governor Yavuz Selim Kosger said at least 70 people were rescued from the wreckage of four destroyed buildings and from more than 10 other collapsed structures.As the quake hit, residents were seen running into the streets in panic in Izmir, which has a population of 4 million.The European-Mediterranean Seismological Center said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 with an epicenter 13 kilometers north-northeast of Samos and 32 kilometers off the coast of Turkey.The U.S. Geological Survey put the magnitude at 7.0. It is common for preliminary magnitudes to differ in the early hours and days after a quake.The quake triggered a surge of water into Izmir’s Seferihisar district.On the nearby Greek island of Samos, a teenage boy and girl were found dead in an area where a wall had collapsed.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said all means necessary would be used to assist rescue efforts.Many of Izmir’s inhabitants, fearing for their safety, were spending the night outside, in parks and open land or in their cars. Soup kitchens have been set up to feed those in need.Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis offered his condolences to Erdogan. The quake comes amid high tensions between the neighbors over disputes over territorial waters, but Mitsotakis tweeted, “Whatever our differences, these are times when our people need to stand together.”Erdogan thanked Mitsotakis and offered assistance, “We are standing with Greece if there is anything we can do for them.”Turkey is no stranger to powerful earthquakes, developing a large pool of expertise in rescue operations.The provincial city of Izmit, close to Istanbul, was devastated by an earthquake in 1999, killing at least 17,000 people. Many of those killed died in collapsed buildings.Since the 1999 quake, stringent building regulations have been introduced, along with a program of strengthening old structures. 

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Thousands in Warsaw Join Biggest Protest so far Against Abortion Ruling

Tens of thousands of Poles joined a march Friday in Warsaw, the biggest in nine days of protests against a ruling by the country’s top court last week that amounted to a near-total ban on abortion in the predominantly Catholic nation.Defying strict rules that restrict gatherings to five people during the coronavirus pandemic, demonstrators walked through central Warsaw streets carrying black umbrellas, a symbol of abortion rights protests in Poland, and banners that read “I think, I feel, I decide” or “God is a woman.”Military police, some in riot gear, lined the streets as the demonstration began.Organizers and the city of Warsaw said some 100,000 people took part, one of the largest protest gatherings in years, following a Constitutional Court ruling on Oct. 22 outlawing abortions because of fetal defects. It ended the most common of the few legal grounds left for abortion in Poland and set the country further apart from Europe’s mainstream.Daily protests have taken place across the country in the past week and have turned into an outpouring of anger against five years of nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) rule and the Roman Catholic church, which is an ally of the government.Far-right groups which support the court ruling also turned out in small gatherings in Warsaw on Friday, and TV footage showed police clashing with them to keep one group away from the protesters.The leader of the abortion rights movement in Poland, Marta Lempart, told activists to report any attacks and to resist any threats of prosecution or fines for taking part. “We are doing nothing wrong by protesting and going out on the streets,” she told a news conference.After the ruling goes into effect, women will only be able to terminate a pregnancy legally in the case of rape, incest or a threat to their health.Dancing on tramsIn an effort to ease tensions, President Andrzej Duda proposed legislation on Friday reintroducing the possibility of terminating a pregnancy due to fetal abnormalities, although only limited to defects that are immediately life-threatening.Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki pledged lawmakers would proceed with the legislation quickly, but demonstrators were unimpressed.”This is an attempt to soften the situation for PiS, but no sane person should fall for it,” activist and leftist lawmaker Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus told Reuters.The government has accused demonstrators of risking the lives of the elderly by defying strict pandemic rules against large gatherings. Poland reported a daily record of more than 21,000 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday.Health Minister Adam Niedzielski drew comparisons between the Polish protest and the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality, saying demonstrations across the United States caused an “escalation” of the pandemic.Public health experts say there has yet to be conclusive evidence of large-scale spread from the U.S. events.Five women were charged with organizing an illegal protest which attracted 850 people in the town of Police on Thursday, officials said.The Roman Catholic Church has said that while it opposes abortion, it did not push the government or the court to increase restrictions.PiS, however, has sought to instill more traditional and Catholic values in public life, ending state funding for in vitro fertilization, introducing more patriotic themes into school curricula and funding church programs.It has also launched a crackdown on LGBT rights and a reform of the judiciary the European Union says subverts the rule law. PiS says it seeks to protect traditional Polish values against damaging western liberalism.Opinion polls have shown its support falling sharply in recent weeks.

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Halloween 2020: Some Fun with Death and Fear, Anyone?

The setting: a rolling patch of Pennsylvania farmland, about 15 miles from the little town where “Night of the Living Dead” was filmed. The moment: Halloween season 2020, a moonlit Friday night.She strides up to the hayride, then beckons you to the dimly lit tent behind her. Her eyes are hollow. “Blood” streaks her nurse’s uniform. Across her forehead is a deep, oozing wound.”This is the corona tent,” she says. “I’m Nurse Ratched. We’re gonna test you all for the corona.”This is Cheeseman Fright Farm, one of those stylish Halloween attractions that emerge from the shadows in the United States of America when the leaves start falling and the days grow shorter.On this night, it is the place to be: By 8:45 p.m., a line 400 strong — some wearing face masks, some not — waits, at $20 a pop, to be carted off into the darkness and have creatures in various states of decay leap out at them for the better part of an hour.Good fun? Other years, sure. But this year — this 2020 of pandemic and uncertainty and racial injustice and sometimes violent unrest and unthinkable political divisions?In a year when fear and death have commandeered front-row seats in American life and more than 225,000 are dead from COVID, what does it mean to encounter the holiday whose existence hinges on turning those things into entertainment? What happens when 2020 and Halloween collide? Can being scared — under certain, controlled conditions — still be fun?A jack-o’-lantern is part of a Halloween display in front of an Upper East Side home on Oct. 30, 2020, in New York City.There’s precedent. In 1931, when the Great Depression was at its height and American society seemed fragile, Universal Studios uncorked its first iconic horror films, delivering up Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster.In the 1950s, when American life felt finite, with nuclear menace from without and subversive threats from within, science fiction produced “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “The Thing From Another World.”But usually the fear Americans have chased is different than — though certainly related to — the fear in our lives.”We have to process all this unpleasant cultural stuff. But it’s easier to do when you’re not looking at it too directly,” says David J. Skal, who chronicles the American fascination with horror and is the author of “Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween. “I hope there is some kind of catharsis that comes out of Halloween this year.”The question is, with so many Americans affected by this year’s events, is that the kind of release people seek?”If you’ve been directly impacted by serious illness or loss, we’ve heard from people that this isn’t something that appeals to them this year,” says Matt Hayden, co-owner of Terror Town, an Old West-themed horror village in Williamsburg, Ohio.That’s not the majority. Hayden reports record attendance this year, people who want to swap that dull, pounding fear for something cinematic. “They can come to places like this,” he says, “and separate themselves from this year and what it’s been.”Even beyond COVID, there’s enough fear and death to go around. Among the year’s scares: What will happen on Election Day? What will happen to the republic AFTER Election Day?A skull and spiderwebs are part of a Halloween display in front of an Upper East Side home on Oct. 30, 2020, in New York City.Then there’s the racial reckoning fueled by centuries of fear and death visited unto Black people in America — and renewed by 2020’s convulsive events. As The Root wrote in October 2016, “Every day is Halloween for Black people.”The HBO show Lovecraft Country, which ended its first season this month, played on that notion with a blend of fantastical horror and the ugly real-life terror of racism in 1950s America. The show got, instinctually, what Americans are absorbing in 2020: What we’ve been trained by Hollywood and Halloween to see as frightening might pale when compared to what’s around daily life’s next corner.Are your finances uncertain? Unemployment might be your horror. Pre-existing health condition? As daunting as a murderer in a hockey mask. And if you are a young Black man who gets pulled over by police, the fear could be as dreadful as any seven-eyed monster with 3-inch teeth.Esther Jones, dean of the faculty at Clark University in Massachusetts, studies medical ethics, speculative fiction and African American literature. To her, 2020’s blurred lines are part of what’s making this Halloween unusual.”Halloween, for one night, you know it’s coming. You’re going to immerse yourself in this fear and this release. And the next day you’re back to normal,” Jones says. But 2020 “has turned over the rock. It’s removed the mask,” she says. “Everything that we thought was so strong and resilient and would not change is changing in front of our very eyes.”So right now, what do zombie mannequins in the supermarket foyer and hands clawing out from front-yard Halloween graves in the suburbs really give us?Perhaps the fear itself isn’t what provides the release. Maybe it’s that the fear, consumed in bite-sized doses, comes to a measurable end. And when it does conclude, no matter what the rest of the world is dishing out, turns out you’re still fine after all. You’ve made it. Or, at least, you can pretend you have.”The notion of survival — that we come out on the other side of this — has perhaps changed, but perhaps come out stronger,” Jones says. But “if there’s no end in sight for it, how do we exist with this threat?”Back in 1968, that original “Night of the Living Dead” ended with the hero — a Black man — surviving the flesh eaters only to be shot by a police posse. Then came “Dawn of the Dead” and “Day of the Dead.” Halloween will come and go, but those other horrors — they don’t end when the sun comes up the next morning. 

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Why a Big Boost in Litigation Is Possible After Tuesday’s Election

With Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election upon us, it is far from certain that either President Donald Trump or his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, will emerge as the clear winner on election night.While Biden is leading Trump by a cumulative average of 8 percentage points in national polling, the Democrat’s lead shrinks to just a few points in a number of battleground states crucial to determining the winner in America’s unique system of indirect presidential election.This has raised the odds that the election results could be delayed until all the ballots are officially tallied and certified. To be sure, a winner could well be declared if either Trump or Biden comes out on top with a large margin of votes.But if the results are too close to call in some states, the ballots there could be subject to a recount and potential legal challenges, a process that could take weeks, if not longer, to sort out.“There’s nothing magical about Election Day or election night in terms of the legal requirements of finding out who won,” said James Gardner, a law professor and election law expert at the University of Buffalo. “What you have to do is go through the complete electoral process and count all the votes. And (if) that takes a few days or more, then we just wait.”Tom Spencer, a veteran Republican election lawyer and vice president of the Lawyers Defense Fund, agrees that the impending electoral contest won’t be over until all the ballots are counted.“I think that experienced election lawyers know that results change predicated upon when the ballots come in,” said Spencer, who served as co-counsel for the George W. Bush presidential ticket during the 2000 vote recount in Florida.Hundreds of lawsuitsFor American voters, this has been a year of confusion as Republican and Democratic lawyers have filed hundreds of lawsuits over voting by mail and other rules during the pandemic, making this election cycle the most litigated in history.With the looming possibility that the presidential election outcome could be decided in the courts rather than at the ballot box, both the Trump and Biden campaigns have enlisted high-powered lawyers who have already begun running through various post-election scenarios.“We have been planning for any post-election litigation and recounts for well over a year and are extraordinarily well-positioned,” Justin Riemer, chief counsel for the Republican National Committee, said in a statement to VOA. “With the help of our national network of attorneys, the RNC has been beating the Democrats in court for the last several months and that will continue should they attempt to sue their way to victory in November.”A Biden campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. In an Oct. 9 tweet, Democratic lawyer Marc Elias wrote, “Republicans are spending $20 million to make voting more difficult in the middle of a pandemic that has cost over 200,000 lives.”If any of the election results for president, members of Congress or state offices are close, losing candidates have two “remedies” available to them, Gardner said.The first is a vote recount. Currently, 21 states allow for automatic recounts if the margin between the two opposing candidates is less than 1%, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In other states, a losing candidate can request a recount.A recount “simply repeats, with greater care, the counting of ballots that were in the initial pool of ballots,” Gardner said.If a recount does not change the results – they rarely do – the losing candidate can launch what is known as an election contest, essentially filing a legal challenge, Gardner said. This is the phase where the losing candidate can dispute the validity of ballots or practices used in counting the votes, triggering court battles that could take weeks and potentially end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.State and federal courts all the way up to the Supreme Court have been busy for months dealing with more than 300 cases stemming from the primary and general election campaign – many of them having to do with mail-in voting and changes in procedures at polling places in response to the coronavirus pandemic.This week, the Supreme Court allowed election officials in the battleground states of  Pennsylvania and North Carolina to accept mail-in ballots that arrive three to six days after the election, respectively, after refusing to affirm Wisconsin’s six-day ballot receipt extension.“You could very well have a situation like we had in 2000 with ballot examination and counting teams going through thousands of ballots with observers from both parties looking over their shoulders,” Gardner said.Late-arriving ballotsOne potential area of post-election dispute will likely involve mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a citizen advocacy organization.As of Friday, there were still many millions of outstanding mail-in ballots. That means ballots that arrive after Election Day may not count in some states.In Pennsylvania and Minnesota, two battleground states that accept mail-in ballots after Election Day, election officials will segregate late-arriving paper votes. How to dispose of those ballots could become the main issue in subsequent court cases. North Carolina, another key state, may do the same, Albert said.“I think there will be an attempt to segregate those ballots to possibly have them thrown out,” Albert said.Rejected mail-in ballotsRejected mail-in ballots could become another focus of any post-election litigation.During every U.S. presidential election, hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots are discarded by election officials for a variety of reasons, from arriving after the deadline to missing a proper signature on the outer envelope.But this year, because of the ramp-up in absentee voting, a lot more ballots face rejection, with minority and first-time voters disproportionately affected, according to experts. In North Carolina and Florida, respectively, more than 10,000 and 15,000 ballots face rejection.Although voters in 30 states including Florida are given an opportunity to “cure” or correct problems with their ballots, voters in 20 other states are not afforded that opportunity. That means election officials can toss ballots without informing voters about the defects.“I think there will be large disagreements and lots of wrangling over which of those ballots should count and which of the absentee voters should be able to correct any errors in their ballots,” Albert said.Ballot drop boxesBallots placed in drop boxes across the country are another category of voting facing potential litigation.While some states have long used free-standing boxes to collect ballots, this year 40 states will use them, according to the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.The expanded use of drop boxes has become a major flashpoint in the debate over voting access during the pandemic and a focus of litigation in at least three states: Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.While Democrats and voting rights advocates say drop boxes make it easier for voters to cast their ballots without exposing themselves to the virus, President Trump and Republicans have railed against them, describing them as a potential ballot security risks and trying to limit their number. In Texas, for example, Gov. Greg Abbott has limited the number of drop boxes to one per county.While election officials have sought to reassure voters regarding the security of drop boxes, Republicans continue to argue that they pose problems. In Texas, litigation continues over whether ballots dropped in a collection box were secure enough to be counted, Albert, of Common Cause, said.“I think there are going be arguments that drop boxes were not secure and therefore none of the ballots should count,” she said.   

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Walmart Returns Firearms, Ammunition to US Store Floors Ahead of Election

Walmart Inc said on Friday it had begun returning firearms and ammunitions to the floors of its U.S. stores a day after the world’s largest retailer said it had removed these products to protect customers and employees as tensions across the country rise.”After civil unrest earlier this week resulted in damage to several of our stores … we asked stores to move firearms and ammunition from the sales floor …. As the current incidents have remained geographically isolated, we have made the decision to begin returning these products to the sales floor today,” the company said.A Walmart spokesperson declined to comment on why the decision to place firearms and ammunition back on U.S. store floors was made days before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, with many worried that the result could be contested or spark violence.Gun control advocates criticized the move on social media, saying they were “disappointed” and “surprised” by the news and that it was a “huge mistake.”Retailers have been on edge after people earlier this year smashed windows, stole merchandise and, at times, set stores ablaze in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Portland and other U.S. cities. In another trend that has fed concern, gun sales in the United States this year have reached record highs, and more first-time buyers have purchased firearms in recent months.Shares of the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer, which sells firearms in approximately half of its more than 5,000 U.S. stores, were trading roughly flat after the bell.

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Sudan, US Sign Agreement Restoring Sudan’s Sovereign Immunity

Sudan and the United States signed an agreement to restore the African country’s sovereign immunity, the Sudanese Ministry of Justice said Friday.The ministry said in a statement the agreement would settle cases brought against Sudan in U.S. courts, including for the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, for which Sudan has agreed to pay $335 million to victims.The deal is part of a U.S. pledge to remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. The designation goes back to Sudan’s toppled Islamist ruler Omar al-Bashir, when Washington believed the country was supporting militant groups.President Donald Trump said this month that the United States would remove Sudan from the list as soon as Khartoum set aside the $335 million it has agreed to pay to American victims of militant attacks and their families.To avoid new lawsuits, Sudan needed its sovereign immunity restored, which it lost as a designated sponsor of terrorism.The designation makes it difficult for its transitional government to access urgently needed debt relief and foreign financing as it fights an economic crisis.Sudan has agreed, under U.S. pressure, to normalize ties with Israel, making Khartoum the third Arab government after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to establish relations with Israel in the last two months.

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Trump Suspends Duty-free Access for $817 Million in Thai Imports

Thailand’s duty-free privileges for some $817 million in exports to the United States will be revoked starting Dec. 30, U.S. President Donald Trump announced Friday, citing a lack of progress in opening the Thai market to U.S. pork products.The suspension of the Generalized System of Preferences access follows a suspension earlier this year on about $1.3 billion worth imports from Thailand, which once had such privileges for about $4.4 billion in exports to the United States.The U.S. Trade Representative’s office said the list of products includes auto parts, electrical products, dried produce, tools and aluminum kitchenware.Trump’s letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announcing the move, released by the White House, follows more than two years of negotiations with Thailand over issues ranging from access to Thailand’s markets for U.S. goods and inadequate labor rights in the country.”I have determined that Thailand has not assured the United States that Thailand will provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets,” Trump wrote to Pelosi.GSP is a 1970s-era program of U.S. trade preferences for developing economies aimed at improving workers’ rights and market access.USTR also announced that it had closed other GSP eligibility reviews with no loss of benefits for Georgia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan. It also said new GSP reviews were opened for Eritrea based on concerns about workers’ rights.

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Hundreds of Romanians Form Human Chain on Fifth Anniversary of Deadly Fire

On the steps of a Bucharest court on Friday, Adrian Albu pointed to his sister among the pictures of the 65 people who died in a nightclub fire five years ago, triggering mass protests across Romania at a culture of graft and lack of accountability.Hundreds of people wearing protective masks and standing 4 meters apart lit candles and formed a socially distanced human chain between the site of the former Colectiv club and the Bucharest Court of Appeals where the trial against those responsible is still taking place.”We should know who is guilty and people should know that the same thing can happen again at any moment and we are as unprepared now as we were then,” said Albu, 43, who survived the fire but lost both his sister and his cousin.The fire broke out when fireworks used during a concert by rock band Goodbye to Gravity ignited non-fireproofed insulation foam, triggering a stampede toward the single-door exit.Prosecutors have shown the club’s owners allowed it to fill beyond capacity and that Bucharest officials gave it an operating license while safety inspectors allowed it to run despite knowing it did not have a fire safety permit.A trial resulted in preliminary prison sentences last year, but the decision is on appeal.Badly burned patients were treated in improper conditions in Romanian hospitals, where many contracted infections that are still hampering their recovery.On Friday, centrist President Klaus Iohannis signed into law a bill that covers all future medical expenses of those injured at Colectiv. Albu said the legislation does not account for hundreds of non-Colectiv burn victims Romania records every year.Romania, which has one of the European Union’s least developed health care infrastructures, currently has one of the EU’s highest coronavirus death rates.”Change must start with us citizens,” said Marian Raduna, one of the human chain organizers. “We are the ones who tolerate corruption cases and incompetent authorities, and, sadly, we forget quickly.”

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Tanzania’s Populist Leader Declared Winner of Flawed Vote

Tanzania’s populist President John Magufuli has been declared the overwhelming winner of a second term amid allegations of widespread election fraud, while the ruling party won enough seats in parliament to change the constitution.The national electoral commission late Friday said Magufuli received 12.5 million votes, or 84%, while top opposition candidate Tundu Lissu received 1.9 million, or 13%. Turnout was roughly 50%, with 14.8 million people voting after 29 million registered.The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party won parliament seats in 253 of the 261 constituencies announced so far, achieving upsets in opposition strongholds by wide margins.Some in the ruling party had called for the presidency’s two-term limit to be extended if enough parliament seats could be secured.Lissu has rejected the vote while alleging “widespread irregularities” and called for peaceful demonstrations. The opposition asserts that thousands of observers were turned away from polling stations on Wednesday, and that at least a dozen people were killed on the eve of the vote in the semi-autonomous region of Zanzibar. Internet and text-messaging services slowed dramatically or disappeared.But electoral commission chair, Semistocles Kaijage, asserted in late Friday’s announcement that all the votes were legitimate.Large crowds of ruling party supporters who had gathered to watch the election results were celebrating in the streets. There was no immediate comment by the president.The two main opposition parties, Lissu’s CHADEMA and ACT Wazalendo, planned to hold a joint press conference on Saturday, a spokesman said.The United States has said that “irregularities and the overwhelming margins of victory raise serious doubts about the credibility of the results announced.”Few international election observers were present, unlike in past years.The vote “marked the most significant backsliding in Tanzania’s democratic credentials,” Tanzania Elections Watch, a group of regional experts, said in an assessment released Friday. It noted a heavy deployment of military and police whose conduct created a “climate of fear.””The electoral process, so far, falls way below the acceptable international standards” for holding free and fair elections, the group said.The opposition alleges widespread irregularities including double-voting and ballot box-seizing by security forces or other authorities.The East African nation is one of Africa’s most populous countries and fastest-growing economies. Magufuli has pointed to the country’s achievement of lower-middle-income status as one reason he deserves another term.But observers say Tanzania’s reputation for democratic ideals is crumbling, with Magufuli accused of severely stifling dissenting voices in his first five-year term. Opposition political gatherings were banned in 2016, the year after he took office. Media outlets have been targeted. Some candidates were arrested, blocked from campaigning or disqualified ahead of the vote.Concerns of post-election violence linger. The ACT Wazalendo presidential candidate in Zanzibar was arrested on Thursday for the second time this week before being released. Another ACT Wazalendo official there, Ismail Jussa, was badly beaten by soldiers and hospitalized, the party said.

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Kenyan Court Sentences Two to Prison for Westgate Mall Attack

A Kenyan court Friday sentenced two men to 33 and 18 years in prison for their roles in the 2013 Westgate Mall attack that killed 67 people in Nairobi.
Mohamed Ahmed Abdi and Hussein Hassan Mustafa are accused of assisting Al-Shabab extremists, who masterminded the four-day siege on the upscale mall in the Kenyan capital.
Chief Magistrate Francis Andayi sentenced the pair to 18 years for conspiracy and 18 years for supporting terrorists. Those sentences will be served concurrently.
Abdi was given an additional 15-year jail sentence for possession of materials promoting terrorism. The two men have spent seven years in jail, and Andayi said those years will be deducted from their sentences.
The whereabouts of a third defendant, Libyan Abdullah Omar, who was acquitted in the trial in early October, remains unknown after he was taken by gunmen.
All three defendants are ethnic Somalis, including two Kenyan citizens.
The mall attack came two years after Kenya took military action in Somalia to prevent kidnappings in Kenya, which were soaring at the time.
Kenyan authorities’ poor response to the siege brought the country’s preparedness under sharp scrutiny, even though four gunmen died during the attack and it has never been proven there were others who escaped.
A writer who was at a bank with her cousins when the attack began said the prison terms are not enough for victims.
“What sentencing would you give somebody who has planned such a thing? I can’t even fathom how you pay back that,” Loi Awat told Reuters. “What is justice for an atrocity?”

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Court Rejects Appeal Seeking Gun Ban Outside Michigan Polling Places

The Michigan appeals court on Thursday rejected an appeal from a Democratic state official who wants to ban the open carrying of guns outside polling places.The court, in a 3-0 order, declined to hear the case but noted that it’s already illegal to intimidate voters or aggressively wave a gun in public.”Anyone who intimidates a voter in Michigan by brandishing a firearm or, for that matter, by threatening with a knife, baseball bat, fist, or otherwise menacing behavior, is committing a felony under existing law,” the court said.The three-judge panel included Brock Swartzle, who is a candidate for the state Supreme Court.The order came two days after a judge said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had exceeded her authority in prohibiting the open carrying of guns within 100 feet of a polling place.Formal processCourt of Claims Judge Christopher Murray said the policy didn’t go through a formal rule-making process required under Michigan law.Benson, the state’s chief election officer, acted after federal authorities on October 8 said they broke up a scheme by anti-government paramilitary groups to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. But some county sheriffs said they wouldn’t enforce the order, and the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police also had panned it.FILE – In this June 4, 2019, file photo, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel listens to a question from reporters in Detroit.Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said she’ll now ask the Supreme Court to take the case. Her office pointed to a weekend poll by The Detroit News that found 73% supported a gun ban.Attorneys defending Benson said the secretary of state has discretion to set certain rules related to elections. They quoted voters as saying they would be discouraged from casting a ballot if they saw someone with a gun near a polling place. Some don’t trust the absentee ballot option.”While the presence of firearms might comfort some, that same presence instills discomfort and even fear in others,” Assistant Attorney General Ann Sherman said in a court filing.Steve Dulan, an attorney for the Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners, said the group’s members were upset with the “demonization” of gun owners through Benson’s order.

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Rapid COVID-19 Tests for Kenyan Truckers Revive African Economies

The International Organization for Migration is providing rapid COVID-19 tests to thousands of truck drivers across Kenya as part of an effort to reinvigorate regional economies in Eastern and Central Africa.Much of Africa’s multibillion-dollar cross-border trade has been halted because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Truck drivers identified as a high-risk group for spreading the virus have to be tested for coronavirus before they can deliver their goods.That has resulted in thousands of truckers being stuck at Kenya’s sprawling port in Mombasa, awaiting test results that could take up to two weeks. Trucks at the port carry cargo destined for Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Paul Dillon, a spokesman for the IOM, told VOA the drivers cannot leave the port until their COVID-19 tests come back negative.  He said that had created economic hardships for the drivers.“When you have drivers who are operating on very thin profit margins, who are driven by an imperative to deliver their product from Mombasa port to these far-flung countries — any moment, any time that is spent sitting at the border waiting for either test results to come back or for issues related to visas and other mobility issues that have been implemented at the border is money out of their pockets,” he said. Dillon said the turnaround time for COVID-19 test results administered by the IOM to truckers was between 24 and 36 hours.  He said IOM staff had tested more than 17,000 drivers since July and that that had made a huge difference.“The impact is quite astonishing.  Where once one had 90-kilometer traffic jams at a border, now there is a relatively freer flow of goods out of the port of Mombasa to countries in the region,” he said. Dillon said about 2 percent of all test cases were coming back positive. He said Kenya’s Ministry of Health assesses the seriousness of the cases and determines whether medical intervention is required or home quarantine measures are more appropriate.

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