Six In The Morning Saturday 24 October 2020

 

Boris Johnson used to be the Teflon man of British politics, brushing off scandals, gaffes and mistakes. Not any more

Analysis by Luke McGee, CNN

Updated 1459 GMT (2259 HKT) October 24, 2020

Boris Johnson had big plans for 2020. With the Brexit question that had torn the nation apart for nearly four years finally settled, the Prime Minister was ready to spend some of the political capital he'd earned with his landslide election victory to bring the nation together. Then Covid-19 happened.

Now Johnson's plans appear ruined. He'd wanted to use his personal enthusiasm for Brexit to instil a fresh sense of optimism that the UK's future was brighter outside the European Union. Free from the Brussels bureaucracy, Johnson's government vowed to address the UK's socio-economic imbalance that in some sense led to Brexit, by "leveling up" deprived areas. He would also seek to strengthen the bond between the four nations of the UK, which had been stretched to near-breaking point amid the bitterness following the 2016 referendum. In short, the man who led the campaign that caused so much division was on a charm offensive to heal the country.

Thousands join Poland protests against strict abortion laws

Protests follow ruling that law allowing abortion of malformed foetuses is incompatible with constitution

Agence France-Presse in Warsaw

Sat 24 Oct 2020 15.31 BST

Thousands of people marched in cities across Poland on Saturday in the third straight day of protests against a near-total ban on abortion, with some promising further action in the coming days.

The protesters were reacting to Thursday’s ruling by Poland’s highest court that an existing law allowing the abortion of malformed foetuses was incompatible with the constitution.

The ruling has provoked an outcry from rights groups in and outside the deeply Catholic country of 38 million people. Some protesters chanted: “Freedom, equality, women’s rights.”

As France mourns slain teacher Samuel Paty, some question secular values

A week after the murder of history teacher Samuel Paty, many in France have been championing the country's fierce secular values. But some say the long-held belief is fueling divisions — and extremism.

In January 2015, millions of people flooded the streets of Paris and other French cities to denounce the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks. An angry nation brandished brightly colored pencils and banners, defending free expression and France's staunchly secular ideology.

Five years later, and after another Islamist terrorist attack there's a sense of deja vu. Today's protests are smaller. But the horror is the same, following the brutal decapitation of Samuel Paty, a middle school history teacher, after he displayed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on free speech.

Residents of Wisconsin town near Kenosha in uproar over teacher's racism lesson

Tyler Kingkade

Sat, October 24, 2020, 1:30 AM PDT

In late August, during the second week of school in Burlington, Wisconsin, Melissa Statz heard children in her fourth grade class talking about Kenosha.

A couple of students had seen burned and boarded-up buildings in the nearby city, but they didn’t know the details of the protests that filled the streets after a police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back on Aug. 23. One student asked Statz, 30, if she knew what was going on in Kenosha, which is a half-hour drive from Burlington, a town of 11,000 that is 89 percent white.

Tokyo Olympic swimming venue opens; now comes the hard part: COVID-19

By STEPHEN WADE

Tokyo opened its new Olympic swimming venue on Saturday, although Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike pointed out that it was finished eight months ago, just weeks before the Tokyo Olympics were postponed until next year by the coronavirus.

“We have now completed all the new venues,” Koike said.

Now comes the hard part for Tokyo Olympic organizers: figuring out how to run the Olympics, nine months from now, in the middle of a pandemic. The Games are set to open on July 23, 2021.

George Floyd death: A city pledged to abolish its police. Then what?

By Barbara Plett Usher
BBC News, Minneapolis

At the end of January Ade Alabi made a big investment. He bought a four-storey building with two ballrooms, three restaurants, a night club and a radio station, just down the road from Minneapolis's Third Precinct police headquarters.

By the end of May it was gone, a heap of rubble and ashes, consumed by the inferno that destroyed the police station and many of the businesses around it.

The image of the burning precinct, abandoned by police in the face of angry and violent protesters, signalled for him that something different was happening in Minneapolis.