Six In The Morning Wednesday 30 September 2020

 

Presidential debate: How the world's media reacted

US voters have endured the first of three presidential debates between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

The event has also prompted a huge reaction from world audiences who tuned in for the chaotic event.

Newspapers and commentators around the world have criticised the tone and tactics of the debate.

As The Times in the UK wrote, "The clearest loser from the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was America."

Families plead for Hong Kong activists accused of trying to flee by speedboat

The ‘Hong Kong 12’ - arrested for allegedly trying to flee to Taiwan - have become the latest flashpoint for protesters

Helen Davidson

@heldavidson

Wed 30 Sep 2020 14.56 BST

The family of a Hong Kong activist detained in China after allegedly attempting to flee to Taiwan by speedboat say they have had no communication from him and are relying on a piece of paper from Chinese authorities as confirmation of his whereabouts.

Andy Li was among 12 people caught by Chinese coastguards on 23 August. He had been arrested earlier that month under Hong Kong’s newly introduced national security law, after which the authorities had confiscated his passport before releasing him on bail.

Andy’s younger sister, who did not want to publish her first name, told the Guardian they had no idea he had planned to leave Hong Kong – a venture reportedly months in the planning for at least some of the passengers – and only learned of his arrest from the media. They have been told little since.

Clean sweep: Russian woman beats pro-Putin boss in council election

Marina Udgodskaya has cleaned the local administration building for the last five years 

Daisy Lester

A woman who cleans a local government building in rural Russia has been voted into office after she only stood to get her boss re-elected.

Marina Udgodskaya won after taking 62 per cent of the vote, easily beating Nikolai Loktev, an ally and supporter of the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party.

She only stood for election because no one in the village of Povalikhino, Kostroma - some 525 kilometres east of Moscow - had challenged the former policeman.

Is Putin's war in Syria against America a miscalculation?

When Putin sent troops to Syria five years ago, he caught the US napping. But the Middle East is changing fast, and what looked like a success strategy may turn out to be a failure, writes Konstantin Eggert.

At the end of September 2015, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its allies, the Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, were on their last legs trying to prop up the Assad regime and its forces, which were fighting an increasingly losing battle against Islamists of all stripes, supported by various regional players — Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar — plus the formations of Syrian Kurds. The Kremlin gave Assad and the Iranians what they were sorely lacking — massive air cover. The Russian pilots were soon followed by marines, military advisers, and mercenaries from the so-called Wagner private military company.

French court approves transfer of Rwanda genocide suspect Félicien Kabuga to UN tribunal

France's top appeals court ruled Wednesday that alleged Rwandan genocide financier Félicien Kabuga should be transferred to a UN tribunal in Tanzania to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. 

Kabuga, arrested near Paris in May after 25 years on the run, has asked to face justice in France. But the Court of Cassation ruled there was no legal or medical obstacle to implementing an international warrant for Kabuga's transfer to the Arusha-based tribunal.

Kabuga, 87, is accused of bankrolling and importing huge numbers of machetes for ethnic Hutu militias who killed some hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda during a 100-day period in 1994.

There is no getting 'back to normal,' experts say. The sooner we accept that, the better

Analysis by Nick Paton Walsh, CNN

Updated 0919 GMT (1719 HKT) September 30, 2020

As 2020 slides into and probably infects 2021, try to take heart in one discomfiting fact: Things are most likely never going "back to normal."

It has become a well-worn phrase our politicians, officials, experts, even family, like to lean on — an ultimate, elusive prize.

Perhaps it's nostalgia for the world of January, a place where daily life more closely resembled our past decades. Perhaps it's a bid to show control, to revert to a time when change was not so universally imposed upon us.