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France to allow limited reopening of border, but it may take days to clear out thousands of trucks stranded in U.K. amid coronavirus mutation fears (nationthailand.com)

France to allow limited reopening of border, but it may take days to clear out thousands of trucks stranded in U.K. amid coronavirus mutation fears

InternationalDec 23. 2020

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson scrambled to get a ban lifted on freight traveling from Britain to France on Dec. 22. (Reuters)

By The Washington Post · William Booth, Rick Noack, Quentin Ariès

LONDON – France agreed Tuesday to reopen its borders to travelers from Britain and get trade flowing again, but it may take days to clear out the thousands of cargo trucks snarled while a travel ban was in place, prompted by fears of a fast-spreading coronavirus mutation in England.

More than 50 countries have enacted restrictions on arrivals from Britain, disrupting passenger air service between the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. But France’s ban was particularly disruptive, halting transit along one of the most crucial trade routes in Europe.

The French government on Tuesday announced a reopening, starting on Wednesday, for E.U. citizens and residents if they provide a negative coronavirus test from the previous 72 hours. Truck drivers of all nationalities will be permitted entry, as long as they, too, can provide evidence of a test if asked.

After France and Britain haggled into the night over what sort of test would be acceptable, the two sides agreed to allow lateral flow tests, which provide results in about 30 minutes, along with the longer turnaround PCR tests.

British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said stranded truck drivers would start getting coronavirus tests on Wednesday, Reuters reported, so they could start to cross over to France.

“We’ll be making sure that tomorrow we’re out there, providing tests,” Shapps said, according to Reuters. “This will take two or three days for things to be cleared.”

The leader of Kent County Council in southeast England told the BBC on Tuesday that 3,000 trucks were waiting to cross the English Channel. On Monday, British government officials claimed there were only 170.

Drivers honked their horns in frustration, as some prepared to sleep for a third night in their cabs.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised his country that a newly sovereign, free-trading, swashbuckling “Global Britain” will soar after Brexit, coming in less than 9 days.

But with no free trade deal signed between Britain and the European Union, and the gateway to continental Europe blocked this week, Britons found themselves more isolated than ever.

Added to the sense of loneliness, after saying that it would be “inhumane” to cancel Christmas gatherings of friends and family, Johnson felt compelled to do just that on Sunday, based on advice from his public health advisers, who see cases of the coronavirus soaring here.

More than 18 million Britons are now in “Tier 4” lockdown, with all nonessential shops, pubs, restaurants, gyms, hair salons, theaters and toy stores closed.

Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious-disease official, told the BBC on Tuesday he thought a total U.S. ban on arrivals from Britain “might be a bit of an overreaction.”

The European Commission on Tuesday sought to promote a more coordinated approach after different levels of restrictions were announced haphazardly over the previous days.

It urged all 27 member states to end bans on flights and trains from Britain and to reopen freight routes. “All nonessential travel to and from the UK should be discouraged,” the E.U.’s executive arm said, but “flight and train bans should be discontinued given the need to ensure essential travel and avoid supply chain disruptions,” including the delivery of coronavirus vaccines.

Despite the commission’s recommendation, several countries continued to head into the opposite direction on Tuesday. Hungary banned passenger planes from the U.K. until early February, while Germany and Ireland extended their entry restrictions.

The Netherlands announced that its ban on travelers from Britain and South Africa would be replaced by a requirement to show evidence of a recent negative PCR test. The Dutch government also urged passengers to quarantine for 10 days after arrival.

The tussle over travel and trade came as scientists in Britain and around the world scrambled to assess the impact of the new mutation of coronavirus, first spotted in England.

Sharon Peacock, the director of the U.K. consortium tracking mutations of the virus, said Tuesday, “we have no evidence that the vaccine is in any way compromised by this new variant.”

Judith Breuer, professor of virology at University College London, said the observed rise in the prevalance of the variant strongly suggests the new mutation is driving increased transmission.

Breuer said that in coming weeks, researchers will be able to see if the greater spread of the variant leads to more serious illness, an observation that might be captured by a spike in hospitalization and death. So far, she said, there has been no evidence to show the mutation is more deadly.

The developer of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine said Tuesday that his company’s inoculation is likely to be effective against the new variant identified in Britain, but that a new version of his vaccine could be developed within six weeks if necessary.

From a technical perspective, tweaking the vaccine would simply be a matter of replacing one mutation with another while the “messenger” molecule remained the same.

Whether regulators would be willing to quickly approve a slightly modified version of the vaccine that has been cleared for distribution in the United States, Britain and European Union is another story, BioNTech chief executive Ugur Sahin told reporters at a news conference.

“The likelihood that our vaccine will work is relatively high,” Sahin said, noting that 99 percent of proteins found in the new mutation are the same as in other strains.

The French travel restrictions imposed Sunday night, with an initial 48-hour timeframe, did not ban freight coming into Britain, but flows in that direction were nevertheless hampered, as few companies appeared willing to risk sending their drivers over only to get stuck in the U.K. for Christmas.

Even after France agreed to reopen its borders, it remained to be seen whether the new testing requirements would deter truckers carrying goods destined for British shores.

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Isolated Britain seeks to reopen trade routes after days of chaos (nationthailand.com)

Isolated Britain seeks to reopen trade routes after days of chaos

InternationalDec 23. 2020Trucks parked near the Port of Dover in Dover, England, on Dec. 22, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Luke MacGregor 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Alex Morales, Kitty Donaldson, Lizzy Burden

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government is trying desperately to reopen trade routes to France after a day of cross-Channel political bartering failed to end the chaos at the U.K.’s busiest port.

France shut down freight traffic from Dover in southeast England at midnight on Sunday because of fear over a faster-spreading mutant strain of covid-19 that forced the U.K. government to impose a strict lockdown on London and surrounding areas. Spain and Portugal, meanwhile, are among more than 40 countries restricting flights and effectively isolating the U.K.

Johnson said on Monday he’d spoken with French President Emmanuel Macron and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps also held talks with his counterpart, but an agreement expected “within hours” didn’t materialize. At least 1,500 trucks bound for the continent are stuck.

“We’re considering everything,” Home Secretary Priti Patel said on Sky News on Tuesday. “We speak to our colleagues constantly in France on a range of issues. We’re working to get a resolution.”

The standoff comes as Brexit talks with the European Union intensify over fish, a politically sensitive issue over which France is playing hardball. The EU rejected the U.K.’s latest concessions on quotas, two officials said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the pressure is mounting to end the turmoil at the border turmoil that is threatening Christmas food supplies during the busy festive period.

Officials are at odds over the type of test to use, two people familiar with the talks said. The French side is pushing for hauliers to take PCR tests, which give a result in between 24 and 48 hours, while the U.K. prefers lateral tests that are less accurate but take only about 15 minutes -and would ease the long line a lot faster Richard Ballantyne, who heads the British Ports Association, is hopeful there could be an exemption for freight drivers that would be combined with testing for covid-19 at the border.

The search for a solution to keep goods flowing in and out of Britain comes after another taxing weekend for the U.K. at the end of a tumultuous year. A spike in coronavirus infections forced Johnson to backtrack on allowing people to spend the festive period together, while talks with the EU on a post-Brexit trade deal entered a critical phase.

The trade upheaval just 10 days before Britain’s post-Brexit transition period is due to end gave the country a foretaste of what could ensue. Without an accord, the U.K. will default to trading with the EU on World Trade Organization terms, with the imposition of costly tariffs and quotas, and the threat of more tailbacks at ports as haulers cope with new bureaucracy.

The economy is already buckling again, with London, the most critical dynamo for growth, in lockdown. Bloomberg Economics revised its outlook on Monday to predict another recession at the start of 2021. The pound plunged against the dollar, marking its worst day since the coronavirus hit markets in March.

Outside Dover, trucks lined up on the M20 highway as an emergency plan was triggered with drivers unable to board ferries. The Department for Transport also prepared to open Manston airport in Kent, which is being overhauled to accommodate as many as 4,000 vehicles as part of Britain’s planning for a no-deal outcome from the EU trade talks.

Johnson sought to downplay the crisis, stressing the closure only applies to “a very small percentage” of food entering the U.K. “The vast majority of food, medicines and other supplies are coming and going as normal,” he said. “The government has been preparing for a long time for exactly this kind of event.”

The U.K. this month became the first Western country to authorize a coronavirus vaccine. Johnson’s spokesman, Jamie Davies, told reporters that the program would be unaffected because the nation already has the majority of this year’s supply from Pfizer Inc.

Shapps earlier said the border snarl only affects about 20% of incoming trade, and that haulers are accustomed to disruption across the Dover-Calais strait because of the weather and strikes.

Nevertheless, the latest challenge is exposing Britain’s trade vulnerabilities just as a 4 1/2-year odyssey to leave the EU moves from political rhetoric to economic reality. Container ports and ferry terminals were already congested because of stockpiling ahead of the Dec. 31 deadline marking a final break from the European single market.

Business groups facing catastrophic losses urged the government to act soon, with the 18,000-member Logistics UK calling for rapid coronavirus testing of truckers departing the country as the quickest way of protecting supply chains. Meanwhile, there were long queues at some supermarkets in London, with fresh produce fast disappearing from shelves.

French Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari said European nations are working on “a solid health protocol” to be implemented “in the coming hours.”

But a meeting of the EU’s crisis response experts in Brussels on Monday ended without a decision on how to proceed, according to an EU official, who spoke on condition of an anonymity. Some members of the group called for an urgent discussion at political level to resolve the issue.

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Here’s the best and worst of 2020 politics (nationthailand.com)

Here’s the best and worst of 2020 politics

InternationalDec 23. 2020Tabe Mase gives President-elect Joe Biden his first dose of the coronavirus vaccine on Monday, Dec. 21, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jonathan Newton 

By The Washington Post · David Weigel

Outside Georgia – and apparently the Oval Office – the political year is over. Here are the highlights.

– – –

Campaign of the Year: Joe Biden for president

No way around it. If you were reading The Washington Post one year ago, you knew about Joe Biden’s weakness in New Hampshire and Iowa, the worries Democrats had about nominating an “old White guy,” and the grass-roots organizers who’d lapped the former vice president on the ground. In mid-February, Biden was in the weakest position of any perceived front-runner since Howard Dean; by mid-March, he was about to wrap up the nomination faster than any Democrat since John Kerry.

But Kerry lost the presidency and Biden won it, in part by mastering what failed candidates had never figured out. He was fast to respond to a charge of impropriety, which faded quickly as an issue, unlike the attacks on Kerry’s service in Vietnam. He invited allies of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to help shape the party’s platform, which kept the left inside the Democratic tent with only minimal risk. He had one consistent message, and his convention had a single goal, which it achieved: make voters comfortable about Biden becoming president and handling everything from civil unrest to mass vaccination. Biden benefited from Democratic unity, and the intensity with which his base focused on defeating President Donald Trump. But other candidates have had that, and lost – and never took the risk of pausing in-person campaigning for months while their opponent continued it.

– – –

Campaign of the Year (nonpresidential): Mike Garcia for Congress

First-time candidate Mike Garcia started his campaign last year as a long-shot challenger to Rep. Katie Hill, D-Calif. When she resigned under pressure from a sex scandal, Garcia still had to beat the district’s former Republican congressman, win the first special election of the pandemic era and hold the district as Biden carried it in November. He pulled it off – the last part of it by just a few hundred votes.

Runner-up: Susan Collins for Senate

Unlike Garcia, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, entered her toughest race with universal name recognition, and with most voters having supported her in the past. But Collins had a target on her back since her 2018 vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, she faced an opponent with bottomless resources and the blessing of national Democrats, and she trailed in every poll.

– – –

State Party of the Year: The Democratic Party of Wisconsin

First there was the primary, bundled with a state Supreme Court race that Ben Wikler’s Democrats could not afford to lose. Then came the campaign, with Democrats simultaneously battling in court to expand voters’ options and run an absentee chase program big enough to endure pandemic conditions. The Democratic National Convention was downgraded from a Milwaukee-based coronation to a virtual telethon, and a police shooting in Kenosha, followed by street protests, became a pivotal moment in the campaign, with Republicans seeing a way to win back suburban voters. But Wisconsin Democrats held on to enough voters to win, protected one of the last House Democrats whose district was carried by Trump, then survived a wave of lawsuits designed to overturn the election – by a single vote, thanks to winning that court race.

Runner-up: The Florida GOP

The math looked bad for Republicans this summer, with the president losing steam with older White voters. Chairman Joe Gruters forged ahead, building on the party’s Latino turnout efforts, reinforcing its grass-roots canvassing operation and focusing on turning out hundreds of thousands of voters who liked the president but had skipped the last election. It worked brilliantly, with the party gaining ground at every level, even in the sorts of places that trended hard toward Democrats in other states.

– – –

Pollster of the Year: Ann Selzer

Who doesn’t love a comeback story? Selzer’s year began with a debacle, when a blunder on one call sheet led to the cancellation of her final poll before the Iowa caucuses. It ended not just with a triumph but with a repeat of one of her greatest triumphs – a pre-election poll that showed Trump and the rest of the Republican ticket rebounding in Iowa. Selzer’s final 2016 poll captured the trend that swung the election in the Midwest, and her final 2020 poll portrayed what even Republicans doubted – after flirting with Democrats all year, rural White voters without college degrees were sticking with Trump. That kept Iowa red, and it made the Midwest much closer than many other pollsters expected. Again.

Runner-up: SurveyUSA

“America’s neighborhood pollster” takes an approach usually frowned upon, relying on automated callers rather than humans to conduct interviews. This year, amid speculation that many Trump voters did not want to admit who they supported, this worked out well: SurveyUSA was one of the few pollsters to show Biden with a margin-of-error lead in Georgia, and revealed that the president’s push for Minnesota was being stymied. In a bad year for the industry, that stood out as perceptive.

– – –

Ad of the Year (30 Seconds): “Defend”

The later, celebrity-voiced ads got more attention and had snappier production values. But Biden’s most distinctive and effective ad had almost no production at all, cutting together snippets of the section of his Democratic National Convention speech dealing with the coronavirus. There was no musical soundtrack, which helped the ad stand out, and the focus on Biden’s words helped counteract a problem: voters who thought he was too old and doddering to be president.

Runner-up: “Latinos por Trump”

A theme song so catchy it rewires your brain, clips of the president awkwardly dancing, and visions of the “good life” if the president gets a second term. The Trump campaign so frequently resorted to negativity that it sometimes drowned out its intended pre-pandemic message: Aren’t things basically great?

– – –

Ad of the Year (Short Film): ‘Ed Markey, The Green New Dealmaker’

The left had a strong year in primaries, ousting three incumbent House Democrats and replacing them with grass-roots activists, but its biggest coup was helping the 74-year-old Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts fend off Democratic Rep. Joe Kennedy. With this online spot, Markey pitched himself as a master legislator who could literally save life on Earth, and got into Kennedy’s head with one line: “It’s time to ask what your country can do for you.”

Runner-up: ‘Texas Reloaded: Greatest Joint Campaign Ad in History’

Is it cheating when the title of an ad informs you that it’s going to be the best? Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, who gained unexpected celebrity after a “Saturday Night Live” joke about his war injury, leaned hard into his image for what became the first in a series of ads portraying Republicans as members of an elite strike force. Most of them won, and the ads captured the ethos of post-Trump GOP politics: Look cool, talk confident and own the libs.

– – –

Worst Ad of the Year: ‘Break In’

After the election, Democratic leaders and liberal pundits blamed some of their down-ballot disappointments on “Defund the police,” a slogan coined by Black Lives Matter activists and immediately weaponized by Republicans. Yet the initial Republican advertising on the slogan was so ham-handed that it fell flat; in Pennsylvania, it was in rotation with an ad blaming Biden for high incarceration rates, clashing directly with its message. The Trump campaign’s cartoonish view of the suburbs, and Biden, was costly, even if similar messaging worked against less well-defined opponents.

Runner-up (tie): ‘Bounty’

The Lincoln Project, a coalition of Republicans who devoted themselves to defeating Trump, made some of the year’s buzziest ads, born to be viral. They were also frequently ineffective. This ad dramatizes a story that Trump critics could not believe was not bigger news: Russia paying bounties to Taliban fighters who killed Americans. The combination of its heavy-handed presentation and its focus on an issue that was not connecting with voters exemplified a mistake that Biden, mostly, did not make: chasing the worst story of the day about Trump instead of making a pitch for himself.

‘Sex Changes for Kids’

The conservative American Principles Project had a theory: Democrats had given conservatives a potent culture-war issue by embracing transgender rights. Claiming that its ads had moved votes in Kentucky’s 2019 race for governor (which Republicans narrowly lost), it re-upped spots about the threat of “boys” playing “girls’ sports,” and used a Biden answer on trans acceptance to claim, incorrectly, that he’d fund “sex changes for kids.” In every swing state where the ads ran, Trump lost.

– – –

Book of the Year: Rick Perlstein, ‘Reaganland’

Since 2001, when he told the story of Barry Goldwater’s failed revolution in “Before the Storm,” Perlstein has emerged from the archives every few years with a monolith-size history of American conservatism. His timing has never been better. “Reaganland” covers the months from Jimmy Carter’s election to Ronald Reagan’s first victory, explaining the collapse of liberalism along the way. A consistent theme is how the political analysts of the day were too slow to understand what was changing, then too hasty to explain why or write it off. When Perlstein writes about conservatives stopping legislation to end the electoral college, or Democrats panicking and endorsing an anti-tax measure because it has surged in the polls, you can see one version of the future as well as the past.

Runner-up: Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire, ‘Left Out’

How can a study of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom help you understand American politics in 2020? Because the American left took inspiration from the U.K. left, viewing Jeremy Corbyn’s takeover of Labour as what could have happened had Sanders won the Democratic nomination in 2016 – promoting a real working-class agenda and bringing disaffected voters back to the polls. Pogrund and Maguire start with Labour’s unexpectedly strong 2017 election performance and end with its 2019 landslide defeat.

– – –

Podcast of the Year: ‘QAnon Anonymous’

More than any modern election, this one took place in two realities: the one we live in, and the one drawn up by conspiracy theorists. Understanding the motivations and arcana of this alternate reality was essential to understanding what was happening, and sometimes what was motivating the president. This podcast, hosted by three investigative reporters who often cannot believe what they’re hearing, was incredibly informative and frequently hilarious.

Runner-up: ‘Bad Faith’

Briahna Joy Gray was the host of Sanders’s campaign podcast. Virgil Texas was (and still is) the elections expert on the left-wing show “Chapo Trap House.” When Sanders’s primary campaign was over, they teamed up for a panel show that tackled news, policy, and political strategy from a perspective that rarely is reflected in big media, with top-tier guests (Noam Chomksy, Michael Moore, Ice Cube). If infighting on the right was a major story of the Trump years, the battle inside the left is going to be a defining one in the Biden years, and “Bad Faith” is right in the middle of it.

– – –

Movie of the Year: ‘Feels Good Man’

The story of Matt Furie, a low-key cartoonist whose frog creation Pepe was appropriated by white supremacists, is also an alternate history of the past five years. The Trump era is willed into existence by “meme magic.” The rise of the alt-right is halted by a copyright lawsuit. Matt Braynard, whose Voter Integrity Fund is trying to compile enough fraud allegations to overturn the election, shows up as a meme guru who thinks Furie should be grateful that his character was adopted by the MAGA movement. Everything makes more sense when viewed through the eyes of a guy who wanted no part of this.

Runner-up: ‘Boys State’

The immersive journey inside the storied good-government program for high schoolers focuses on the conservative-leaning version that is run in Texas. Take away billions of dollars in campaign spending – and actual, lived experience – and you start to ask how many of our political problems are inherent, not forced upon us. One scene got richer after the election: The teen boys talk themselves out of passing silly resolutions during a meeting in the same room that Texas’s electors for Trump would occupy when they voted to deny the election results in swing states.

– – –

Twitter Account of the Year: @PopulismUpdates

It’s anonymous, and a lot of its coverage focuses on news outside the United States, but no account is better at capturing the degree to which voters are throwing off the old political order. In an interview, the account’s owner suggested that “parties and figures that employ creativity will be the most successful,” especially the ones who tap into “insurgent networks who simply know how to pose a more persuasive or exciting or motivating vision of the future than others.” That was a very useful lens through which to view our election.

Runner-up: @MattGertz

The Media Matters researcher was essential reading during the entire Trump era, for one reason: He watched the same conservative media as the president, and could trace nearly everything Trump talked about to a segment that put him on to it. As we march toward the first-ever case of an incumbent president demanding a congressional challenge to his defeat in the electoral college, all of it is foretold in Gertz’s tweets.

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U.S. consumer confidence unexpectedly drops to 4-month low (nationthailand.com)

U.S. consumer confidence unexpectedly drops to 4-month low

InternationalDec 23. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Julia Fanzeres

U.S. consumer confidence unexpectedly fell in December to a four-month low amid surging covid-19 cases that are spurring more states to tighten restrictions on businesses and travel.

The Conference Board index decreased to 88.6 from a downwardly revised 92.9 reading in November, according to a report from the group Tuesday. That was below all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists that had called for 97. The gauge of expectations rose while a measure of sentiment about current conditions fell.

The unexpectedly downbeat reading amid record virus cases and deaths comes just as the potential for new vaccines drew greater focus, and may prove to be short-lived as federal-aid plans include individual stimulus payments that are imminent. Confidence is well below pre-pandemic levels despite making some gains in recent months. The cutoff date for the preliminary results was Dec. 14.

“Consumers’ assessment of current conditions deteriorated sharply in December, as the resurgence of covid-19 remains a drag on confidence,” Lynn Franco, senior director of economic indicators at the Conference Board, said in the statement.

The reading contrasts with another key measure of the country’s outlook. The University of Michigan’s gauge of U.S. consumer sentiment unexpectedly increased in early December to the second-highest level since March. However, the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index has fallen for four straight weeks after rebounding since May.

The share of survey respondents who said they expected their incomes to increase edged up to 16.8 from 16, the board said.

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U.S. existing-home sales decline for 1st time in 6 months (nationthailand.com)

U.S. existing-home sales decline for 1st time in 6 months

InternationalDec 23. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Olivia Rockeman

Sales of previously owned U.S. homes fell in November for the first time in six months, suggesting that surging prices and a record-low supply are constraining red-hot demand.

Contract closings decreased 2.5% from the prior month’s almost 15-year high to an annualized 6.69 million rate, according to National Association of Realtors data released Tuesday. That was up 25.8% from a year earlier and compared with economists’ forecasts for 6.7 million.

The median selling price jumped 14.6% from a year earlier on an unadjusted basis to $310,800, the fourth straight month of double-digit increases.

The decline signals that strong demand is running up against constraints, with few available properties and weaker affordability likely keeping some buyers out of the market. Still, home sales remain brisk, well above pre-pandemic levels and near the highest since 2005, with demand skewed toward more-expensive houses.

The new fiscal stimulus package, approved by Congress on Monday, could prop up household incomes and keep the purchasing spree going into the first quarter of next year.

“Housing affordability, which had greatly benefited from falling mortgage rates, are now being challenged due to record-high home prices,” Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, said in a statement. “That could place strain on some potential consumers, particularly first-time buyers.”

Several data points illustrated how historically tight the market is.

Available inventory declined 22% from a year earlier to 1.28 million units, the lowest in data back to 1982, the NAR said. Properties remained on the market for 21 days in November, unchanged from the prior month and matching a record low. It would take 2.3 months to sell all the homes on the market at the current pace, the lowest on record.

The NAR’s report showed purchases of existing homes fell in three of four regions; they were unchanged in the West.

Existing-home sales account for about 90% of U.S. housing and are calculated when a contract closes. A separate report last week showed strength in new home construction, which increased to a nine-month high.