Six In The Morning Saturday 17 October 2020

 

New Zealand election: Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party scores landslide win

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has won a landslide victory in the country's general election.

With most ballots tallied, Ms Ardern's centre-left Labour Party has won 49% of the vote and she is projected to win a rare outright parliamentary majority.

The opposition centre-right National Party, currently on 27%, has admitted defeat in Saturday's poll.

The vote was originally due to be in September, but was postponed by a month after a renewed Covid-19 outbreak.

Thousands of Thais defy crackdown on protests in Bangkok

Police use water cannons on demonstrators and close down city’s transport system

Reuters in Bangkok

Sat 17 Oct 2020 14.33 BST

Thousands of Thais have joined protests across Bangkok in defiance of a crackdown on three months of demonstrations aimed at the government and the monarchy.

Police used water cannons for the first time on Friday and closed much of the city’s transport system on Saturday to try to thwart protesters, but they gathered where they could.

Tang, 27, an office worker, said she joined thousands of demonstrators at the Lat Phrao station on Saturday after seeing the pictures of police firing water cannons at young protesters, including many schoolchildren.

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: Several dead in missile strikes on Azerbaijani cities

Azerbaijan says 12 civilians were killed by Armenian shelling in the second city of Ganja. The spike in violence between the two former Soviet republics over Nagorno-Karabakh could also lead to a humanitarian disaster.

An Armenian missile strike leveled several residential homes in Azerbaijan's second city of Ganja on Saturday, Azeri officials said, in the latest escalation in the conflict over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Prosecutor General's office said two shells hit apartment buildings, killing 12 civilians and wounding more than 40 others.

French prosecutor says school of murdered teacher received threats before attack

France's anti-terror prosecutor has confirmed that the suspect in Friday's gruesome beheading of a middle school teacher was a Chechen national and that the school had received threats prior to the attack.

French police were questioning nine people in custody on Saturday after a suspected Islamist sympathiser beheaded a school teacher in broad daylight on the street in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.

Police shot the attacker dead minutes after he murdered 47-year-old history teacher Samuel Paty in what President Emmanuel Macron described as an "Islamist terrorist attack".

Iran imposes new restrictions as COVID-19 deaths surpass 30,000

The Iranian authorities warn of falling adherence to health protocols as COVID-19 fatigue and economic worries set in.

By 

Maziar Motamedi

“The second time I was dealing with the virus, one night I was in so much pain that I said my prayers before going to sleep because I felt like I might not see another morning,” says Tehran resident Sadaf Samimi.

The 29-year-old journalist told Al Jazeera she first tested positive for COVID-19 in July at her workplace and has since been working from home.

But in early September, she got sick a second time with the coronavirus after she met two of her close friends, who had been isolating at home. One of her friends had shopped for groceries at a large market, where they might have contracted the virus.

The legal reckoning awaiting Donald Trump if he loses the election

By Kara Scannell and Erica Orden, CNN

Updated 1143 GMT (1943 HKT) October 17, 2020

If things don't go Donald Trump's way on Election Day, the President may face more serious matters than how to pack up the West Wing.

Without some of the protections afforded him by the presidency, Trump will become vulnerable to multiple investigations looking into possible fraud in his financial business dealings as a private citizen -- both as an individual and through his company. He faces defamation lawsuits sparked by his denials of accusations made by women who have alleged he assaulted them, including E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine columnist who has accused him of rape. And then there are claims he corrupted the presidency for his personal profits.