Six In The Morning Wednesday 14 October 2020

 

Chinese President Xi Jinping tells troops to focus on 'preparing for war'

By Ben Westcott, CNN

Updated 1353 GMT (2153 HKT) October 14, 2020

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called on troops to "put all (their) minds and energy on preparing for war" in a visit to a military base in the southern province of Guangdong on Tuesday, according to state news agency Xinhua.

During an inspection of the People's Liberation Army Marine Corps in Chaozhou City, Xinhua said Xi told the soldiers to "maintain a state of high alert" and called on them to be "absolutely loyal, absolutely pure, and absolutely reliable."

The main purpose of Xi's visit to Guangdong was to deliver a speech Wednesday commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, which was established in 1980 to attract foreign capital and played a vital role in helping China's economy become the second-largest in the world.

Neo-Nazi leaders of Greece's Golden Dawn sentenced to 13 years

Leaders of violent far-right group, including former MPs, shown no leniency by judges

Helena Smith

Wed 14 Oct 2020 13.47 BST

The neo-Nazi leaders of Golden Dawn have been sentenced to 13 years in prison by a court in Athens, at the end of a historic hearing likened to the Nuremberg trials after the second world war.

The violent Greek neo-fascist group was officially laid to rest as its disgraced former MPs were shown almost no remorse by a three-member panel of judges.

Presiding judge Maria Lepenioti read out the sentences less than a week after the court’s landmark ruling that Golden Dawn lawmakers had operated a criminal organisation under the guise of being a democratically elected party.

Indian jewelry brand removes ad on Hindu-Muslim unity after public backlash

Tanishq's advertisement film showed a Muslim family organizing a baby shower ceremony for their pregnant Hindu daughter-in-law. The brand was trolled and accused of promoting inter-faith marriages.

On Tuesday, Tanishq, one of India's top jewelry brands, removed a short advertisement film which was released as part of its "Ekatvam" (Oneness) campaign, after a public backlash.

The ad showed a Muslim family organizing a baby shower ceremony for their pregnant Hindu daughter-in-law.

IBK twice elected, now deposed

Mali: when is a coup not a coup?

Francophone West Africa has lurched between long-lasting authoritarian rulers and the coups that have overthrown them, the latest in Mali. With the military now in charge, what hope for true democracy when it has repeatedly proved fragile?

by Anne-Cécile Robert 

Mali’s press disagree on whether the events of 18 August 2020 were a coup, a stroke of genius or the last straw. But no one disputes that the president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK), and prime minister, Boubou Cissé, were deposed by a group of senior army officers. The rebels said in a statement that they had ‘accepted [their] responsibilities’ when faced with Mali’s ‘chaos, anarchy and insecurity’, the ‘fault of the men entrusted with its destiny’.

Israel approves first West Bank settler homes since Gulf deals

More than 2,000 Israeli settlement units have been approved for construction in occupied West Bank.

Israel has approved 2,166 new settler homes across the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, official figures sent to AFP news agency showed, ending an eight-month lull in settlement expansion.

The approvals came less than a month after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed agreements to normalise relations with Israel, which in return pledged to freeze its plans to annex swathes of the West Bank.

White House Embraces Declaration from Scientists that Relies on 'Herd Immunity'

Sheryl Gay Stolberg

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The New York Times•October 14, 2020

The White House has embraced a declaration by a group of scientists arguing that authorities should allow the coronavirus to spread among young healthy people while protecting the elderly and the vulnerable — an approach that would rely on arriving at “herd immunity” through infections rather than a vaccine.

Many experts say “herd immunity” — the point at which a disease stops spreading because nearly everyone in a population has contracted it — is still very far-off. Leading experts have concluded, using different scientific methods, that about 85% to 90% of the American population is still susceptible to the coronavirus.