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Trump’s election assault bodes lingering damage (nationthailand.com)

Trump’s election assault bodes lingering damage

InternationalNov 25. 2020President Trump arrives to speak in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford 

By The Washington Post · Toluse Olorunnipa, Michelle Ye Hee Lee, Rosalind S. Helderman · NATIONAL, POLITICS, WHITEHOUSE

WASHINGTON – When President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20, he will face a fundamental challenge unlike any incoming president before him: Tens of millions of Americans who doubt his legitimacy and question the stability of the country’s democratic traditions – in part because of his predecessor’s unprecedented attempt to set both ablaze before leaving office.

For the past three weeks, as President Donald Trump has refused to concede the election, the federal government, the Trump campaign legal team and whole swaths of the Republican Party have worked in tandem to interfere with the peaceful transition of power.

By lodging baseless claims of voter fraud and embracing – or declining to reject – outlandish conspiracy theories about the electoral process, Trump and his allies have normalized the kind of post-election assault on institutions typically seen in less-developed democracies, according to historians, former administration officials, and lawmakers and diplomats from across the political spectrum.

Lingering damage to the U.S. electoral system could be among the most consequential legacies of the Trump presidency, said Michael Chertoff, a homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush

Trump’s effort to overturn the election results in the days after the race has so far proved unsuccessful, as Biden has moved ahead with hallmarks of a presidential transition such as building a Cabinet. But Chertoff and others said the harm inflicted on the democratic process since Nov. 3 should not be underestimated.

“We’ve now seen a blueprint, which has been road-tested in other parts of the world, being adopted by Donald Trump here in the U.S.,” he said, adding that Trump’s attempts have been ineffective in part because of their clumsiness. “But a more effective and a more skillful want-to-be autocrat could use the same playbook.”

Trump has continued to declare himself the winner of the election, even as several key swing states have moved forward with certifying Biden’s victory and the federal government has ascertained that a new administration is likely to take over in two months. Trump’s GOP allies, despite multiple losses in court, have continued to press their case with the public – making an ever-growing list of specious allegations about fraud involving mail-in ballots, voting machines, signature-matching, late-arriving votes, poll workers in heavily minority cities, foreign interference, dead people voting, unbalanced voter rolls, nonresident voters, Sharpie-stained ballots and the traditional tabulation process.

But as Trump has tried unsuccessfully to win over judges and state lawmakers, Biden’s lead has remained secure – and has grown nationally as more ballots have been processed. As of Tuesday, Biden’s popular vote total had surpassed 80 million, the largest in the country’s history.

Still, Trump’s repeated claims of election rigging have led many of the 74 million people who cast ballots for him to doubt the reliability of the voting process. Even as the transition proceeds – with the General Services Administration announcing late Monday that the administration could begin coordinating with Biden’s incoming team – Trump has continued his onslaught.

“What does GSA being allowed to preliminarily work with the Dems have to do with continuing to pursue our various cases on what will go down as the most corrupt election in American political history?” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “We are moving full speed ahead. Will never concede to fake ballots & ‘Dominion,’ ” the latter reference being about a company that supplies voting equipment.

The claims about vote-changing machines and fraudulent ballots have been repeatedly rejected by judges, local officials and even the president’s own administration. Last week, Trump fired a top Department of Homeland Security official who had vocally dismissed allegations of widespread fraud in the Nov. 3 election.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The lack of pushback from Republican lawmakers signaled a willingness by them to accept Trump’s post-election denial despite the danger it poses, said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University.

“This is the story of the Trump presidency,” he said. “The GOP not only stood behind the president, regardless of what he did, but even as he used his power to attack the basic element of the democratic process, very few took action.”

While a growing number of Republicans have publicly acknowledged Biden’s victory, more have remained silent or echoed Trump’s allegations of fraud. Some local Republicans have challenged the results of their own races as Trump has done, making post-election allegations about rigged voting a more mainstream proposition up and down the ballot.

Kimberly Klacik, a Republican who lost a Baltimore-area congressional race by 72% to 28%, claimed on social media that the result had been rigged.

“Luckily, we raised enough money to investigate,” she wrote earlier this month, in a tweet that referred to the president’s allegations of fraud.

Trump’s campaign has also been soliciting donations to continue the president’s quest to overturn his defeat.

“We cannot let the Democrats STEAL this Election from your all-time favorite President,” Trump said Tuesday in a fundraising pitch. “I’m calling on YOU to FIGHT BACK. We need to bolster our critical Election Defense Fund if we’re going to keep going. We can’t do this without you.”

Gene Rechtzigel, a Minnesota Republican who ran for the U.S. House, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State, the Minnesota State Canvassing Board and the Ramsey County Elections Office. He lost to Democrat Betty McCollum by more than 30 points – 133,086 votes – but claimed that the state should delay certification of the results because of allegations of election irregularities.

Other Republicans have taken up the Trump campaign’s push to delay the certification of vote totals in other states ahead of the electoral college’s formal vote electing Biden in mid-December.

Georgia lawyer Lin Wood, a Trump ally, is appealing a federal judge’s rejection of Wood’s attempt to block the certification of Biden’s victory in the state, according to a new filing Tuesday.

Wood had challenged the way Georgia election officials check signatures submitted with absentee ballots and raised questions about the rate of rejection of ballots on the basis of mismatched signatures.

U.S. District Court Steven Grimberg, a Trump appointee, on Friday denied Wood’s request for a temporary restraining order on Georgia’s certification of election results. Grimberg wrote that doing so “at literally the eleventh hour would breed confusion and potential disenfranchisement that, I find, has no basis in fact or in law.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, both Republicans, certified the state’s election results on Friday. The Trump campaign has said it will file a separate lawsuit challenging Biden’s win in Georgia, where a second recount is underway at the president’s request.

Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Michigan plan to hold hearings over the next week on the election – elevating fraud claims even as their states move forward to certify Biden’s victory. Trump’s campaign celebrated the events Tuesday, announcing that the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, will make a presentation Wednesday before Republicans in the Pennsylvania state Senate.

“It’s in everyone’s interest to have a full vetting of election irregularities and fraud,” Giuliani said in a statement. “And the only way to do this is with public hearings, complete with witnesses, videos, pictures and other evidence of illegalities from the November 3rd election.”

In a scathing ruling Saturday, a judge in Pennsylvania dismissed Giuliani’s allegations as meritless and blasted what he said was the Trump campaign’s attempt to disenfranchise millions of the state’s voters.

Trump has been undeterred by the cascade of court losses, and his allies have continued to make the case that the election was stolen from him. Unable to change the results with lawsuits or by persuading state lawmakers to overturn the will of voters, Trump has resorted to pressing the last avenues of protest that remain open to him. His advisers expect him to continue fighting reality as long as possible and do not expect him ever to formally concede to Biden or invite him to the White House in line with tradition stretching back decades.

Biden, who has said Trump’s denial of the election results is “embarrassing,” said Tuesday that he is willing to meet with the president.

“Of course I would, if he asked,” Biden told reporters.

That seems unlikely to happen soon, as Trump and much of his party remain focused on continuing the effort to cast doubt on the election results.

Recounts continued Tuesday in Wisconsin’s two most populous and Democratic-leaning counties, Dane and Milwaukee.

Under Wisconsin law, the Trump campaign had the right to request the recount – provided it agreed to foot the bill – given that Biden’s margin of victory was under 1%. But Biden leads Trump in the state by about 20,000 votes, a gap even many Republicans agree is extremely unlikely to be closed by a recount. In 2016, when Green Party candidate Jill Stein requested a more extensive statewide recount in Wisconsin, it resulted in Trump’s margin growing in the state by just 131 votes.

“Trump representatives saw the process four years ago. They saw how accurate it was – they complimented us on it. Given that, it was really irresponsible to ask for another recount,” said Scott McDonell, the clerk of Dane County, where 80 workers have been staffing the recount for hours each day. “It’s a public health threat.”

Wisconsin Attorney Geneneral Josh Kaul, a Democrat, noted that Trump observers have also slowed the process by objecting to large numbers of ballots. He noted that one Trump observer in Milwaukee objected because a poll worker was placing ballots in a pile – a normal part of the process. Another objected to all absentee ballots that had been folded, as was necessary for voters to place the ballot in an envelope and submit it by mail.

The campaign also formally objected to tens of thousands of ballots that were cast using rules the campaign argued were improper, though the same rules were in place statewide. The challenges were rejected by local officials, but the campaign could still try to sue over its objections and delay Wisconsin’s scheduled certification on Dec. 1.

“What seems to be happening is that representatives of the president are using the recount as a vehicle for challenging certain election practices,” Kaul said.

Kaul said he was confident the challenges would fail, but he said they were obscuring the fact that the voting actually ran very smoothly, with few lines even amid record turnout.

“The real untold story of this election is how efficiently the democratic process worked,” he said.

In the short term, Trump’s efforts could backfire in Georgia, where two runoff races for the Senate could be affected by the president’s continued claims that his loss resulted from fraud.

Georgia’s voting systems manager Gabriel Sterling said during a Monday news conference that he is concerned that “there are going to be some Republicans who don’t trust the outcomes of the system at all” and therefore don’t vote.

“Now, am I concerned that it’s going to end up suppressing the vote, to a degree? Absolutely,” he said. “Whether you’re on the left or the right, anytime you end up questioning the fundamental fairness without any real evidence of there being an issue, you’re undermining the confidence of your voters and everybody else.”

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Mysterious metal obelisk is found in a remote part of Utah (nationthailand.com)

Mysterious metal obelisk is found in a remote part of Utah

InternationalNov 25. 2020

By The Washington Post · Marisa Iati · NATIONAL

The monolith’s mysterious appearance amid the rocky desert sparked excitement among the hominids who circled it, intrigued and perplexed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/d312fa3d-2243-4ef9-a276-565413b8982c?ptvads=block&playthrough=false

But unlike the alien structure made famous by the epic film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the metal monolith discovered Wednesday by public safety workers in southeastern Utah is real. The workers were scouring the redrock region by helicopter for bighorn sheep when a crew member spotted the object, pilot Bret Hutchings told KSL-TV.

“He’s like: ‘There’s this thing! There’s this thing back there! We got to go look at it!'” Hutchings said.

Joking that they were intrepid explorers investigating an alien life form, the crew members determined that the monolith was 10 to 12 feet tall and planted firmly in the ground. It seemed to them like more of an artistic expression than part of a scientific experiment.

But mostly, it looked like something out of a science-fiction novel.

“We were kind of joking around that if one of us just suddenly disappears, I guess the rest of us make a run for it,” Hutchings told KSL, chuckling.

It was not clear who installed the monolith, which Hutchings designated the strangest discovery he’s made in years of flying over Utah desert. The Utah Department of Public Safety will not disclose its exact location, warning that people who try to visit it might end up stranded amid the rocky terrain.

Officials noted that installing unauthorized structures on federally managed public lands is illegal, “no matter what planet you’re from.” The Bureau of Land Management is determining whether to investigate further.

For now, the monolith is delighting science-fiction fans all over the Internet, who noted the uncanny resemblance to the mysterious structure in “2001” that came from aliens and sped up human evolution.

Some people also posited that the discovery of a monolith in the wilderness was a fitting end to the wild ride of the past year.

“2001: A Space Odyssey in #2020,” one Twitter user wrote. “What a long strange year it’s been.”

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Coronavirus vaccine will likely be required for international flights, Qantas CEO says (nationthailand.com)

Coronavirus vaccine will likely be required for international flights, Qantas CEO says

InternationalNov 25. 2020

By The Washington Post · Antonia Noori Farzan · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, FEATURES, TRANSPORTATION, TRAVEL

Australian air carrier Qantas anticipates asking all international travelers to prove they’ve been immunized against the coronavirus once a vaccine is widely available – a requirement that is likely to be adopted throughout the industry, CEO Alan Joyce said Monday.

“I think it will be a common theme, talking to my colleagues in other airlines across the world,” Joyce told Australia’s Nine News.

Travelers entering or leaving Australia could be required to show an electronic “vaccination passport” that shows which vaccine they received, Joyce said. He acknowledged that the government would probably need to provide input, though Australian officials have said that they are primarily focused on orchestrating the rollout of a vaccine once one is available, and have yet to decide if border restrictions will be changing. Australia requires two weeks of supervised quarantine for all new arrivals, except for New Zealanders who are exempt under the terms of the two countries’ “travel bubble.”

The International Air Transport Association has been working to build an app that can serve as a “digital passport” like the one that Joyce described, with the goal of making it safe for countries to reopen their borders so that travel can safely resume. On Monday, the organization announced that its app was in the final stage of development and a pilot program would begin later this year.

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Rich Americans increasingly are looking for second passports (nationthailand.com)

Rich Americans increasingly are looking for second passports

InternationalNov 25. 2020Billionaire Eric Schmidt, Alphabet’s former CEO, who reportedly applied to become a citizen of Cyprus, joins a growing club of individuals participating in government programs enabling foreigners to acquire passports. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Ben Stupples, Devon Pendleton · BUSINESS

Eric Schmidt acquired all the typical trappings of a mega-rich U.S. citizen: a superyacht, a Gulfstream jet, a Manhattan penthouse.

One of his newest assets is far less conventional: a second passport.

Alphabet Inc.’s former chief executive officer applied to become a citizen of Cyprus, according to an announcement last month in a Cypriot newspaper that was first reported by the website Recode. Schmidt, 65, joins a growing club of individuals participating in government programs enabling foreigners to acquire passports.

In previous years, U.S. citizens rarely sought to buy so-called golden passports. The business mainly thrived targeting people from countries with fewer travel freedoms than the U.S., like China, Nigeria or Pakistan.

But that’s changing. People close to the industry say they’ve been inundated with inquiries from citizens of the world’s richest country.

“We haven’t seen the likes of this before,” said Paddy Blewer, a London-based director at citizenship and residency-advisory firm Henley & Partners, referring to queries from U.S. individuals. “The dam actually burst — and we didn’t realize it — at the end of last year, and it’s just continued getting stronger.”

A spokeswoman for Cyprus’ government declined to comment. Representatives for Schmidt — who is worth $19 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The benefits of owning a second passport, which range from potentially lower taxes, to more investing freedoms and less hassle traveling, can be had for as little as $100,000. The so-called citizenship-by-investment programs historically haven’t been as popular with Americans since one of their main draws — the favorable tax regimes of adopted countries — has been of little benefit to citizens of the U.S., one of the few nations to tax its people regardless of where they live.

The current heightened interest among U.S. citizens predates the coronavirus pandemic, but the crisis has helped turbocharge demand as they plan for how to maintain some freedom of movement with lockdown measures increasing amid a swelling second wave of covid-19 cases.

“Americans are thinking: ‘I want to have that ability to move as quickly as possible and not be stuck,'” said Nestor Alfred, chief executive officer of St. Lucia’s citizenship-by-investment unit.

The U.S. elections have also stoked interest. While Joe Biden has rejected the wealth tax pushed by some of his Democratic primary rivals, his proposals could disrupt the ways that many Americans minimize — or altogether avoid — taxes on their investment gains. Some have also looked to get an additional passport due to fears of social unrest, according to citizenship advisory firm Apex Capital Partners, which said inquiries from clients — typically about five a year — have increased 650% since this month’s vote.

“We’re seeing this interest from Americans who are all saying the same things that Chinese, or Middle Eastern or Russian clients are saying,” Apex founder Nuri Katz said in an interview. “They’re saying, ‘We’re not leaving the U.S. right now, but we’re concerned and we want to have something else, just in case.'”

St. Kitts and Nevis was the first country to introduce a citizenship-by-investment program in the early 1980s, and more than half-a-dozen nations have since done the same. In many cases, they’ve proved lucrative. Malta raised almost $1 billion through June 2019 after launching its program last decade, while the Caribbean territory of Dominica has raised more than $350 million in the past five years.

The industry has generated plenty of consternation for effectively turning citizenship — usually obtained from birthplace or heritage — into something that can be purchased.

It has also attracted scandal. Fugitive Malaysian financier Jho Low was among 26 individuals to lose their Cyprus citizenship last year. The speaker of the Cypriot House of Parliament, Demetris Syllouris, resigned last month after offering to help a Chinese businessman with a criminal record get citizenship.

“European values are not for sale,” European Union Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders tweeted last month.

Following the scandal, Cyprus said it would end its current passport-for-investment program on Nov. 1. The European Union, meanwhile, issued legal ultimatums to Malta and Cyprus about their citizenship-by-investment programs, claiming they may have violated the E.U. law. Representatives for Malta’s government, which announced plans to revise its program before the EU’s action, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

It’s unclear whether interest among Americans in reducing exposure to their home country will endure when the pandemic and post-election uncertainty have abated.

After an election, “we always have an uptick in emotion,” said Sherwin Simmons, principal at tax advisory firm Asgard Worldwide, adding he’s recently fielded increased inquiries from wealthy clients about renouncing U.S. citizenship, a complex process that involves a steep exit tax.

He reminds clients that politicians “have talking points. Once they’re elected, let’s wait and see before we make an immediate or emotional reaction.”

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Airlines stir doubts among health experts with claims of safe flying (nationthailand.com)

Airlines stir doubts among health experts with claims of safe flying

InternationalNov 25. 2020Passengers wear protective masks on an American Airlines flight departing from Los Angeles International Airport on June 13, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Patrick T. Fallon 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Alan Levin · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, HEALTH, HEALTH-NEWS

Airlines have loudly insisted that it’s safe to fly during the coronavirus pandemic, and U.S. travel is surging before the Thanksgiving holiday despite a nationwide spike in virus cases.

Yet top U.S. infectious-disease experts say the findings underpinning the carriers’ safety claims aren’t that conclusive.

Concerned about the “misinterpretation” of their findings, researchers on a Defense Department study that has been widely cited by the industry added a cautionary revision. A senior expert in travel-health issues declined to participate in an airline trade group’s news conference, citing what he called their “bad math.”

“The airline industry got a little ahead of itself trying to say the risk is zero,” said David Freedman, a University of Alabama at Birmingham professor emeritus who balked at appearing with an International Air Transport Association event that cited his work.

U.S. airlines, hit with an unprecedented drop in demand since the virus began spreading widely in March, are enjoying their strongest week since then. Even as health officials warn against travel during the Thanksgiving holiday because of a surge in covid-19 cases, more than 4 million people traversed airports between Friday and Monday.

The risk of being infected with the novel coronavirus on planes, which have highly effective filters that remove virus from the air and where mask usage is required, is probably fairly low, scientists say.

But the research is far from clear and some recent cases have documented transmission on flights even when passengers wore masks and sat far apart, according to a review of recent cases and interviews with academics and disease specialists.

“I definitely can say it’s premature to say that air travel is very safe,” said Qingyan Chen, an engineering professor at Purdue University in Indiana who’s written extensively on disease transmission on planes.

Airline officials, responding to the historic drop in passengers, repeatedly have defended the protections against infection on flights.

“Flying is safe,” Nicholas Calio, president of Airlines for America, a trade group for large carriers, said at a Nov. 12 briefing. “I will state that categorically.”

A4A declined to add additional comments. It has highlighted the efforts to force passengers to wear masks and to remain apart during boarding and exiting, and to disinfect aircraft. Montreal-based IATA defended its use of Freedman’s data on confirmed in-flight transmissions, saying it never characterized the results as definitive.

A4A frequently has cited a study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which was funded by the trade group and other aviation industry sources, that concluded the risk of transmission on an airliner was “very low.” But authors cautioned that their projections depended on adherence to mask usage and they also urged airlines to improve ventilation while planes are parked at the gate.

Another study airlines point to was conducted by the Defense Department with the assistance of United Airlines Holdings Inc. and Boeing Co. It attempted to measure how aerosol virus particles were exhaled by a simulated masked passenger.

United said in promotional materials released Oct. 15 the study “determined the risk is almost nonexistent.”

However, after news coverage of the study, the authors added a revision, saying they were “concerned about the potential misinterpretation of the findings.” They also acknowledged they based their results on a person exhaling relatively few virus particles, an amount well below levels documented in some cases.

The airplane filters and mask usage “significantly reduces” exposure to infectious aerosols, they wrote. “However, the current established scientific understanding of SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics is not sufficient to calculate definitive SARS-CoV-2 transmission risk from these measurements of aerosol transport.”

United spokeswoman Leslie Scott responded in an email that “Throughout the pandemic, our top priority has been the health and safety of our customers and crew.”

“It’s why we supported military officials, medical experts and aviation engineers in their work demonstrating that aircraft cabins are among the safest of public indoor environments thanks to advanced air filtration systems, required mask-wearing and diligent cleaning protocols,” she added.

Overall, there are few confirmed reports of infections linked to flights. However, because of limited contact tracing in the U.S. and the difficulty of finding transmission cases, it’s hard to say for sure what that means, researchers said.

“I haven’t seen any studies come out and say it’s highly risky,” said Byron Jones, an engineering professor at Kansas State University who has studied airliner cabin-air safety. “But I haven’t seen the study that says it’s definitively safe either.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control summarizes the risks from air travel this way on its website: “Most viruses and other germs do not spread easily on flights because of how air circulates and is filtered on airplanes. However, keeping your distance is difficult on crowded flights, and sitting within six feet of others, sometimes for hours, may increase your risk of getting covid-19.”

While some studies have shown cases in which no one on a flight became infected despite the presence of contagious passengers, other data have documented in-flight transmissions.

Purdue’s Chen said he’s been following news reports in China of possible infection between passengers on a Nov. 9 Air China flight from Los Angeles to Tianjin.

Ten people who weren’t connected to one another and resided in different parts of the U.S. tested positive for the coronavirus after arrival. All the passengers had tested negative for the disease before the flight, suggesting at least some of the transmission occurred on the plane, he said.

Such incidents are confounding because they seem to contradict Chen’s own earlier research showing mask usage can dramatically lower risks of infection, he said.

“That’s why I’m having doubts about what’s going on in airplanes,” he said.

Government researchers in Ireland documented as many as 13 cases linked to a single flight last summer, according to a paper published in October. The infections in five of the cases were genetically linked, “strongly suggesting a single point source of infection,” the authors said.

The widebody jet was largely empty, people were spaced out on the plane and almost everyone whose activity could be documented said they wore masks. Nevertheless, the authors estimated that 10-18% of passengers became infected.

“It is interesting that four of the flight cases were not seated next to any other positive case, had no contact in the transit lounge, wore face masks in-flight and would not be deemed close contacts under current guidance from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control,” the authors said.

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IMF rejected new tool to loosen conditions for pandemic loans, sources say (nationthailand.com)

IMF rejected new tool to loosen conditions for pandemic loans, sources say

InternationalNov 25. 2020

IMF spokesman Gerry Rice

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Eric Martin · BUSINESS

The International Monetary Fund recently rejected a proposed new tool that would have offered countries pandemic loans with looser conditions than usual, choosing instead to work within the flexibility of existing programs, according to people familiar with the talks.

The discussion of the Pandemic Support Facility took place in the weeks leading up to the IMF’s annual meetings in mid-October as the Fund was preparing announcements of new initiatives, said the people, who asked not to be named because the talks were private.

The consensus among the IMF board, which represents the finance ministries of member nations, was that current tools can perform necessary lending, and that it shouldn’t create new ones without an obvious demand or need, the people said. Such a move would require the approval of board members representing 85% of the IMF’s voting power.

IMF spokesman Gerry Rice declined to comment directly on the proposal.

“We continue to apply flexibility available in existing IMF lending tools — as approved by our executive board — to support our member countries, calibrated to their pandemic-related needs,” he said in an emailed statement. “This has enabled the IMF to respond to this crisis as never before in our history and help our member countries on an unprecedented scale and at unprecedented speed.”

The IMF has made more than $100 billion in new financing available to 80-plus countries since the start of the pandemic — mostly with limited or no conditions — and in April doubled the annual access limit that countries have to emergency financing.

Creating the new tool was a further option prepared by staff in the Strategy, Policy and Review Department. They said that given the virus’s unprecedented impact, the fund could allow cash-strapped countries longer repayment periods and also let them make policy changes toward the end of the loan once the pandemic’s path is clearer, rather than immediately, the people said.

IMF loans are typically disbursed over a period of one to three years.

The IMF has generally been facing requests for help from two kinds of countries: One group was on sounder footing before the pandemic and is encountering a liquidity crisis as a result of the virus. Others face tougher solvency challenges from the virus but were seen as needing policy changes even before the pandemic.

So-called conditionality has made the IMF a lightning rod for criticism over the years. But the fund has traditionally operated on the idea that requiring countries to commit to fundamental reforms — such as narrowing budget deficits via spending reductions, controlling inflation and tackling corruption — is necessary for creating the self-sustaining growth that weans them off reliance on multilateral lenders like the IMF and World Bank.

The IMF also has considered another move that would effectively increase the capital available to countries without conditions: a new allocation of its reserves, known as special drawing rights. A proposal to issue $500 billion of the assets has been blocked by Donald Trump’s administration, which criticized the idea for failing to target poor countries, but it could gain new life under President-elect Joe Biden.

Some IMF board members who opposed the new pandemic facility didn’t want it to finance nations that need reforms to deal with underlying and preexisting weakness, the people said. Another concern was that lending to countries without conditions could result in failure to repay the fund and therefore put IMF resources at risk.

A similar mechanism was proposed in July by two former IMF officials: Adnan Mazarei, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, and Matthew Fisher.

Mazarei and Fisher argued that absent a new facility, the IMF might need to loosen the conditionality in some of its traditional lending tools. Should that happen, it would be difficult to restore the standards when the pandemic ends, they said.

“We proposed there be a sunset clause on this facility, that it only be used until the pandemic is over,” Mazarei said in an interview. “Then, you bring back the old workhorse facilities. If you loosen standards now on those facilities, you won’t be able to raise them back to where they were.”

France’s finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, also urged the consideration of the Pandemic Support Facility last month during the IMF’s annual meetings.

The IMF’s decision to forgo the new instrument follows its creation in April of the Short-term Liquidity Line, a tool to help countries ease moderate liquidity problems before they intensify. The fund predicted when launching the instrument that demand might be as much as $50 billion, but it’s had no takers so far.

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U.S. consumer confidence falls as virus surge damps expectations (nationthailand.com)

U.S. consumer confidence falls as virus surge damps expectations

InternationalNov 25. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jarrell Dillard · BUSINESS

U.S. consumer confidence fell in November to a three-month low as the coronavirus resurgence prompted a slide in Americans’ expectations for the economy and job market.

The Conference Board’s index decreased to 96.1 from an upwardly revised 101.4 reading in October, according to a report Tuesday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for the measure to slip to 98.

The gauge of expectations dropped 8.7 points, the most since July, to 89.5 this month, while a measure of sentiment about current conditions eased 0.3 point to 105.9.

The figures coincide with the start of the holiday-shopping season that will help shape estimates of consumer spending for the quarter. Less optimism, against a backdrop of surging infections that are sparking more government restrictions, suggests retail sales and hiring will slow.

The smallest shares of respondents since March said they expected better business conditions and more jobs in the next six months, the report showed.

“Heading into 2021, consumers do not foresee the economy, nor the labor market, gaining strength,” Lynn Franco, senior director of economic indicators at the Conference Board, said in a statement. “In addition, the resurgence of Covid-19 is further increasing uncertainty and exacerbating concerns about the outlook.”

At the same time, more consumers surveyed indicated they were likely to make big purchases in the months ahead. Greater shares in November said they plan to buy automobiles, homes or appliances. Buying plans for previously owned homes were the strongest since March 2019.

Also, the share of survey respondents who said they expected their incomes to increase crept up to 17.6%, the highest since March.

Consumers that said business conditions are currently favorable decreased to 17.6% from 18.6%. The percentage of consumers who said jobs are hard to come by was little changed.

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600 civilians were killed in massacre in Tigray, Ethiopia’s rights commission says (nationthailand.com)

600 civilians were killed in massacre in Tigray, Ethiopia’s rights commission says

InternationalNov 25. 2020

By The Washington Post · Lesley Wroughton · WORLD, AFRICA

Hundreds of people in a town in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region were stabbed, strangled and hacked to death in an apparent ethnically based attack that may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes, Ethiopia’s human rights watchdog said Tuesday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/7b48b5d1-26b4-422c-8fdf-1fb1dce5fcc7?ptvads=block&playthrough=false

The commission said at least 600 people were killed in the town of Mai Kadra in western Tigray on Nov. 9 when local youths known as Samri, aided by the then-local administration, went door to door killing those they identified as from the minority Amhara and Wolkait ethnic groups.

The killings took place throughout the night of Nov. 9 as security forces of the region’s ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, were retreating from the advance of federal government troops, the commission said.

The victims were beaten to death with sticks, stabbed with knives, machetes and hatchets, and strangled with ropes, according to the report. Many others were severely injured and property looted or destroyed, the commission said.

“The killings, bodily and mental injury, as well as the destruction that went on throughout the night . . . indicate the commission of grave human rights violations which may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes,” the commission said.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission’s findings could not be independently verified, but they echo similar accounts reported earlier by Amnesty International, which cited witness statements, photos and videos as evidence.

The commission’s findings, the result of a week-long investigation in the town, are the first evidence of possible war crimes being committed in Tigray, where government troops and TPLF forces have been fighting since Nov. 4 in a conflict many fear could destabilize the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in a statement called the commission’s findings “heart-wrenching” and urged the international community “to condemn these atrocious acts of crimes against humanity.”

There was no immediate response to the commission’s report from the TPLF. The regional government and refugees fleeing the fighting have accused government forces of targeting ethnic Tigrayans.

The commission warned that the death toll from the massacre could be much higher, as many people were still missing and bodies were hidden in fields outside the town.

Survivors told investigators that some residents in the town hid people in their homes, in churches and in farm fields as the Samri gangs raided the town.

“The unimaginably atrocious crime committed against civilians for no reason other than their ethnicity is heartbreaking,” the commission’s chief, Daniel Bekele, said in a statement, calling for the perpetrators of the attacks to be brought to justice.

Abiy, who comes from the Oromo, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, on Sunday issued a 72-hour ultimatum to Tigray’s leaders and combatants to surrender before government forces attack the capital Mekele, with a population of about half a million. The deadline is Wednesday.

The conflict erupted when Abiy sent troops to Tigray after the TPLF army and local militia attacked government military bases in the region and tried to steal artillery and other military equipment. The conflict spread across the border to Eritrea when Tigrayan forces fired several rockets at its capital and sent at least 40,000 refugees fleeing into Sudan.

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U.S. on sidelines as China, Russia use coronavirus vaccines to expand influence (nationthailand.com)

U.S. on sidelines as China, Russia use coronavirus vaccines to expand influence

InternationalNov 25. 2020

By The Washington Post · Loveday Morris, Emily Rauhala, Shibani Mahtani, Robyn Dixon · WORLD, HEALTH

BERLIN – In the new frontier of vaccine diplomacy, there are two paths: stockpile or share.

The first way is unfolding in the United States – with two promising coronavirus vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna on the cusp of approval – as the Trump administration focuses on domestic distribution from private labs.

The European Union and other wealthy democracies have bought up much of what’s left of the initial doses, but also will lend support to a World Health Organization-linked effort to eventually expand supplies to countries in need.

The other approach comes from China and Russia, which have rushed to share their own state-backed vaccines with nations scrambling for supply, positioning themselves to possibly expand their political and economic interests in the process.

The contrast goes well beyond the crisis of the pandemic, reflecting how the post-World War II world order is challenged by the rise of authoritarian powers and the retreat of the United States during the outgoing Trump administration.

“Global health and pharmaceutical interventions are getting sucked into balance-of-power politics,” said David Fidler, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “For the U.S. this creates geopolitical nightmares, because we are not in the game.”

The pandemic, he said, becomes a “force multiplier,” accelerating waning U.S. influence.

The ultimate outcome depends, of course, on how the vaccine race plays out.

On Monday, another group in the vaccine hunt, a collaboration between the University of Oxford and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, said its vaccine was up to 90% effective when subjects received a half-dose, followed by a full dose one month later.

Beijing and Moscow are marshaling the vast powers of their states to develop vaccines for domestic and international use, accompanied by grand claims of scientific and manufacturing prowess.

There are critical questions about safety and efficacy – or even how much each country can produce. But, for the moment, those questions are overshadowed in a seller’s market.

So far, the United States has essentially ceded the field. It has declined to join more than 170 other countries in Covax, the WHO-backed program to deliver billions of vaccine doses to less-developed nations, and has not outlined a plan for sharing doses with anyone else.

Kendall Hoyt, an assistant professor at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, predicted that President-elect Joe Biden would find some way to engage – either by joining multilateral efforts on vaccines, forging bilateral deals, or both.

“It’s the most powerful bargaining chip there is right now,” Hoyt said.

But China is signing agreements for early vaccine access in regions where it has historically battled the United States for influence. Western pharmaceutical companies say that just meeting their existing orders from Europe and elsewhere will be a huge logistical challenge.

A recent analysis from researchers at Duke University found that high- and middle-income countries have already purchased 3.8 billion doses of promising vaccines, with options for 5 billion more. The team predicted that billions of people in developing countries could be waiting until 2024.

The WHO-linked Covax effort is seen as an important backstop for poorer countries that would otherwise struggle to source vaccines. But efforts have been slow to get off the ground, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel warning at the virtual Group of 20 summit this past weekend that “the Chinese are knocking at the door” of developing nations.

“And [the Chinese] are saying that they have a vaccine they’ll make available to me now in the short term,” Fidler said. “Not later, when Covax might have something available.”

China has five vaccine candidates in the final stages of trials, which have taken place in regions of strategic importance to Beijing. Testing is underway in more than a dozen countries, including Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Brazil.

In the United Arab Emirates, where Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid is among those to receive a vaccine, China’s Sinopharm received emergency-use approval months ago.

Beijing has offered $1 billion in loans to countries that would otherwise struggle to pay to buy its vaccine, according to the Mexican Foreign Ministry.

But perhaps the biggest advantages for Beijing could be won in Southeast Asia, where China and the United States compete for strategic and cultural influence.

China has signed agreements with Malaysia and Indonesia for priority access to the Sinovac Biotech vaccine, moving in swiftly with trials earlier this year as cases mounted in the two nations and economies faltered.

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Wearing a mask stamped with the Indonesian flag, Ridwan Kamil, the governor of West Java, held his arm out for the cameras after receiving his coronavirus jab in September.

One of 1,620 volunteers to receive the Sinovac vaccine, he has raved about his experience. It’s seen as gesture of solidarity with China aimed at helping Indonesia get back on its feet as the country of 268 million people – now the worst-hit by the coronavirus in Southeast Asia – stares down a recession.

Indonesia’s food and drug agency said Thursday that Pfizer, AstraZeneca and the developers of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine have all reached out about the possibility of vaccine trials and partnerships with Indonesia’s pharmaceutical companies.

Sinovac, one of China’s coronavirus vaccine front-runners, published mixed findings from its two first clinical trials last week. The company reported that the vaccine generated lower levels of protective antibodies in the bloodstream compared with those arising in recovered coronavirus patients.

Beijing has said it won’t use the vaccine for diplomatic leverage. But in public remarks, Chinese officials have linked the vaccine to greater cooperation and outreach – echoing China’s foreign policy strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to build transport and commercial links across Asia and beyond.

As the Trump administration has stepped back from global health leadership, most notably by threatening to withdraw from the WHO, Beijing has pointedly stepped in.

Chinese President Xi Jinping in a video statement Saturday told the G-20 that China was “willing to strengthen cooperation” with other countries to accelerate vaccine development and distribution.

“We will fulfill our commitments, offer help and support to other developing countries, and work hard to make vaccines a public good that citizens of all countries can use and can afford,” he said.

There are questions about what depending on China for doses could mean for countries in Southeast Asia, particularly as they push back against Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea, for instance.

Sebastian Strangio, author of a recent book on Beijing’s relationship with Southeast Asia, said China’s vaccine strategy is part of a broader campaign to cast itself as a “helpful, understanding regional partner – and an inevitable one.”

Strangio predicted that Beijing’s use of leverage will generally be “subtle” rather than a straightforward quid pro quo, such as China’s request to the Malaysian government to release dozens of Chinese fishermen held for illegally entering Malaysia’s waters last month. The appeal came during the same meetings as negotiations on a vaccine. The men remain jailed, and a news portal, Malaysiakini, published letters from Malaysians about the case, including one saying Malaysia will not be “held to ransom” by the Chinese vaccine.

China is “going to be smart about it,” Strangio said. “It is going to be a lot of small concessions that add up over the long term.”

Russia’s vaccine diplomacy is part of a broader push by President Vladmir Putin to reassert the country as a global power. Even the name it chose for its first covid-19 vaccine – Sputnik V – evokes the 1950s Cold War space race.

Russian officials claim to have provisional orders from some 50 countries for 1.2 billion doses of Sputnik V in the next year and say they have negotiated deals with firms in South Korea, India, China, Kazakhstan and E.U.-member Hungary, led by nationalist President Viktor Orban.

Trials are underway or planned in India, the U.A.E., Brazil, Venezuela and longtime Russian ally Belarus.

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The rush to roll out the vaccine before Phase 3 trials has raised questions about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.

Sputnik V’s developers, the Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), say the vaccine is 92 percent effective. A second Russian vaccine has been registered and a third is in development.

Kirill Dmitriev, head of the RDIF, declined an interview request but has portrayed criticism of Sputnik V as a Western effort to undermine the project.

The Kremlin, too, is hailing Sputnik V in its diplomatic outreach. “Nowadays, the issue appears on the agenda of Putin’s discussions with all of his foreign colleagues,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a recent interview with journalists.

Russia has always tried to project soft power by emphasizing its technological achievements, said Grigory Golosov, political analyst at the European University at St. Petersburg. “This only adds one more topic to this more or less continuous flow of propaganda,” he said.

But the international push is also aimed at building support for the Russian vaccine at home, he added. An August poll in Russia by the Levada Center found that 54% of those surveyed would not take the vaccine even if it was free because of distrust and fear.

And then there is the question of capacity.

Speaking at an investment forum last month, Putin conceded that Russia faces problems in swiftly ramping up production because it lacks the equipment. Russia has been forced to slash its overly optimistic plans to make 30 million doses this year; it now estimates it will produce roughly 2 million.

“Russian vaccines exist. They work, and they are safe and efficient,” Putin said last Tuesday at a summit of BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. “The question is how to arrange the mass production.”

He told the G-20 virtual summit Saturday that vaccines must be made universally available to all countries, rich or poor, and said Russia was ready to distribute its vaccines to those who need them.

“Products for immunization need to be common public assets,” Putin told the summit. “Russia, of course, is ready to provide needy countries with vaccines developed by our scientists.”

The White House opted out of multilateral efforts, in part because of its ongoing feud with the WHO over the agency’s initial coronavirus response and Trump’s claims that the U.N. agency was “China-centric.”

Biden has pledged to rescind the WHO withdrawal letter but has not publicly committed to Covax or any other plan.

But the race has already started, and analysts say China and Russia are likely to take every advantage they can before a Biden administration gets into gear or private Western companies look to markets further afield.

“There’s a strategic game going on, but the U.S. is not playing,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.