#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30397886?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

Trump tweets while ignoring duties of his office

InternationalNov 13. 2020A television is seen through a window near the entrance to the West Wing of the White House on Tuesday night. President Trump’s sole public event this week was a wreath-laying at a Veterans Day ceremony. Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford 

By The Washington Post
David Nakamura

WASHINGTON – On Thursday, six American service members were killed in a helicopter crash during a peacekeeping mission in Egypt. Tropical Storm Eta made landfall in North Florida, contributing to severe flooding. The number of Americans infected with the novel coronavirus continued at a record-setting pace, sending the stock market tumbling.

At the White House, President Donald Trump spent the day as he has most others this week – sequestered from public view, tweeting grievances, falsehoods and misinformation about the election results and about Fox News’s coverage of him.

Neither he nor his aides briefed reporters on the news of the day or reacted to Democratic leaders who accused Republicans of imperiling the pandemic response by “refusing to accept reality” over the election results.

The contrast between the nation grappling with an ongoing global crisis and a president consumed with his own political problems highlighted a fundamental contradiction at the heart of Trump’s assault on the integrity of the U.S. election system: He is leveraging the power of his office in a long-shot bid to stay in the job while ignoring many of the public duties that come with it.

“It seems clear Trump has checked out,” said Norman Ornstein, a political scientist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who has criticized Trump. “It’s not like this guy has shown a great interest in governing for four years, so to expect he will now accelerate the pace is a little fanciful. It’s pretty clear he feels wounded. Under those circumstances, the idea he’s going to pay more attention to the details of governance is ridiculous.”

White House aides disputed the notion that Trump was reneging on his responsibilities as president, releasing a list of executive actions he has taken since the election. The list included an order Thursday banning U.S. investment in Chinese military companies, an emergency declaration for Florida over the storm damage and several presidential proclamations, including celebrating the 245th anniversary of the U.S. Marine Corps.

“Any suggestion that the President has given up on governing is false,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. “Just as he promised, President Trump is fighting hard for a free and fair election while at the same time carrying out all of his duties to put America First.”

Deere added that Trump is continuing to work on a “meaningful economic stimulus” to deal with the pandemic, but such legislation appears all but dead on Capitol Hill. The president met privately with Vice President Pence for lunch and with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in the afternoon, according to his public schedule.

At a news conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., accused Trump and his GOP allies of engaging “in an absurd circus right now” over the election results.

Republicans are “shamefully pretending” that Trump can overturn the outcome, “making it even harder to address the massive health and economic crisis that we’re facing,” Pelosi said.

Since the Nov. 3 election, Trump has addressed reporters twice – both times baselessly alleging widespread fraud in the ballot counting and promising to pursue legal challenges in swing states. His sole public event this week was to spend seven minutes at a wreath-laying event at a Veterans Day ceremony on Wednesday.

Over the weekend, he spent two days at his private golf club in Sterling, Va. But his public schedule has not included the daily presidential security briefing since early October, even as his administration has refused to launch the formal transition, depriving President-elect Joe Biden’s team of access to national security information.

National Security Council aides have grown agitated and uncertain about the stalled transfer of power, according to a former Trump administration official who remains in touch with colleagues. The staffers recognize that Biden will be the next president, but they are “not allowed to act like that will happen,” said the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his current job did not permit him to speak publicly.

Meantime, national security actions and requests for briefings from the president are drying up, the person said, and the team preparing updates for Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is “very frustrated.”

It was Biden who offered the first public condolences to the families of the service members who died in Egypt. “I join all Americans in honoring their sacrifice, as I keep their loved ones in my prayers,” he wrote on Twitter in the early afternoon Thursday.

By that time, Trump had issued nearly four dozen critical tweets and retweets about the election results and Fox News, including a baseless conspiracy theory from a far-right television network that alleged votes had been improperly tallied in Pennsylvania. He also found time to thank actor Scott Baio for posting a photo of a craft store’s candle display, which had been arranged to spell out, “Trump is still your president.”

“Thank you Scott, and stay tuned. You are terrific!” Trump wrote.

His tweets impugning Fox News drew sarcastic responses from Democrats.

“Thanks for working so hard for us!” Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., wrote. Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration, tweeted: “Sir, COVID19 cases in the US are exploding. Please refocus your attention. After January 20th, you will have all the time in the world to rant about Fox ratings.”

Trump associates have said privately that the president has no grand strategy to overturn his loss to Biden and that he has begun to talk about running again in 2024. His focus on his administration since Election Day has centered on ousting top aides at the Pentagon – including Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who was fired on Monday – and other agencies who were viewed as insufficiently loyal to the president.

On Thursday, the White House forced the removal of three high-ranking officials at the Department of Homeland Security.

Critics have speculated that Trump is laying the groundwork for major policy actions in his final days, such as bringing home more U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Others interpreted his housecleaning as an effort to install loyalists who could hamper a smooth transition for Biden, making it more difficult for him to govern.

Answers were not forthcoming from the White House, however. In an interview with the Trump-friendly “Fox & Friends” show, host Brian Kilmeade asked White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany whether Trump was receptive to granting Biden access to national security briefings.

“I haven’t spoken to the president about that. That would be a question more for the White House,” replied McEnany, who was appearing as a campaign surrogate, a role that has sparked criticism that she is violating Hatch Act regulations that bar federal officials from campaign activities.

By late afternoon, the White House announced that Trump had signed the executive order that banned U.S. investment in Chinese military companies that the administration has accused of perpetrating cyberespionage against American companies. But there was no public signing ceremony, and it was White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien, not Trump, who issued a statement on the order.

A former Obama administration official recalled that in 2016, after Trump’s election victory over Hillary Clinton, then-President Barack Obama traveled to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Peru, where he met with several foreign leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“It was all business. They talked about what they needed to manage for the remainder of his term,” said the former Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting. “At the end of it, Obama closed his notebook and said, basically, ‘I’m sure you are aware of the news of our election outcome. I hope you treat Trump fairly and continue to work with him to develop the relationship.’ “

On Thursday, Trump aides did not respond to a question about whether the president would participate in the virtual APEC summit next week.

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30397884?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

‘Catastrophic’ lack of hospital beds in upper Midwest as coronavirus cases surge

InternationalNov 13. 2020

By The Washington Post
Annie Gowen, Holly Bailey

Covid’s long, dark winter has already arrived in the upper Midwest, as cases and deaths surge, snatching lives, overwhelming hospitals, exhausting health-care providers and raising fears that the region’s medical system will be completely overwhelmed in the coming days.

As coronavirus cases grow exponentially across the United States – up 70% on average in the past two weeks, with an average of 130,000 cases per day nationally – the situation is particularly acute now in the upper Midwest and Plains states, with North and South Dakota leading the nation in new cases and deaths per capita over the past week, according to Washington Post data.

Experts say that cases are surging in the region as the weather has turned colder and more people are forced inside – into more poorly ventilated indoor spaces where transmission thrives – with the virus arriving even in remote areas in largely conservative states where Republican leaders have resisted mask mandates or business closures, asking their residents to rely instead on personal responsibility.

The region’s surge is a preview of what the rest of the United States can expect in the coming weeks as winter approaches, experts say.

The situation has become so acute that even some leaders who previously resisted restrictions have moved toward new strictures. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds in Iowa, long an opponent of closures and mask-wearing as “feel-good” options, this week moved to prohibit maskless indoor gatherings of 25 or more and require those attending larger outdoor events to wear a mask.

In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has warned of more “nightmare” numbers to come, even as the state has instituted new restrictions on bars, restaurants and social gatherings in an attempt to stop the spread. On Friday, Minnesota will begin limiting social gatherings to 10 people or less and tightening restrictions on larger social receptions as the country heads into a holiday season when doctors fear multigenerational family gatherings could become superspreader events.

In North Dakota, where cases have increased 60% in the past month, Republican Gov. Doug Burgum said this week that the state’s hospitals are at capacity and are so strained that the state will allow its doctors and nurses to continue working after they test positive for the coronavirus. His spokesman later qualified this is a potential short-term tool.

Even though he has continued to resist a statewide mask mandate, Burgum urged his fellow residents to take precautions as hospitals brimmed with patients.

“You don’t have to believe in covid, you don’t have to believe in a certain political party or not, you don’t have to believe whether masks work or not. You can just do it because you know that one thing is very real. And that’s that 100 percent of our capacity is now being used,” Burgum said.

Doctors and health-care providers across the upper Midwest grappling with rising caseloads and staff shortages continue to urge leaders in their states to do more to stem the tide of the virus, as many in these hardy, wind-swept states where independence is prized still refuse to wear masks.

“We had months to prepare for this, we saw it happen in other states that were hit earlier. Why weren’t we prepared for what was coming?” said Sarah Newton, chief medical officer of the hospital in tiny Linton, N.D., population 997.

She said she saw coronavirus cases begin surging in late September and October, and on some days ill patients filled the hospital, a low-slung brick critical-access facility with 14 beds.

“I felt so emotionally overwhelmed by what I was seeing. I felt like I was screaming into a void. I was drowning in my own hospital,” Newton said.

The disconnect with what was going on inside the hospital and her community was extreme, Newton said. She would go outside and see no one wearing a mask or social distancing, “having giant weddings and going about their lives.”

This week, the unthinkable happened. She called several hospitals in the region and was unable to find an intensive-care bed in a bigger hospital to transfer a rapidly declining coronavirus patient who needed more help than her small facility could provide.

“We have people we are not able to get to a higher level of care, and honestly, it’s a horrible feeling,” Newton said. “We have failed to do the things that prevented us from being here.”

Andrew Pavia, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Utah School of Medicine, said on a press call organized by the Infectious Diseases Society of America on Wednesday that the “enormous surge” in the upper Midwest and mountain states is concerning because health-care access in some rural areas is already limited and staff and facilities taxed.

“The situation really has to be described as dire,” Pavia said, saying that the “political climate” and “general distrust of the government” in these areas resulted in a reluctance of public officials to take more stringent measures to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19. Mass gatherings such as the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D., also contributed, Pavia said, as well as university students attending classes that were largely in person.

More than 330 coronavirus cases and one death were directly linked to the Sturgis bike rally as of mid-September, according to a Washington Post survey of health departments in 23 states.

“There’s an awful lot of preventable deaths happening right now,” Pavia said.

Doctors at one of the region’s largest health-care systems, Avera Health in Sioux Falls, S.D., with facilities in South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and North Dakota, said that its modeling showed the virus surge was only going to get worse in the coming weeks. Already, some of its facilities are nearing capacity and between 200 and 400 of its staffers are either out sick or in quarantine, officials said.

In Minnesota, state officials presented grim new infection numbers Thursday – with 7,228 people testing positive – and warned that the state is on pace to see at least 100,000 new cases by Thanksgiving.

The state reported 39 deaths Thursday. It set a record the day before, reporting that 59 people had died of covid.

In stressing the urgency of the situation, state health officials have pointed to a dramatic uptick in the positivity rate in diagnostic testing in recent weeks – rising from just 5% a month ago to 15% on Thursday.

Overall, nearly 202,000 people have tested positive in the state since the pandemic began and nearly 2,800 people have died.

“This is going to be a long dark winter,” Walz told reporters Tuesday. “[You] can’t wish it away, can’t hope it, can’t think it’s not real. This is killing large numbers of people.”

What has worried state officials is that there is no hotspot in Minnesota – the entire state is described as a “red zone.” All regions have seen a dramatic rise in cases and hospitalizations, including rural areas that had been largely spared by the disease until recent weeks.

In Itasca County, a rural area of 45,000 residents northwest of Duluth, county health officials said there were 200 coronavirus cases and 13 deaths through September. Numbers have skyrocketed in the past few weeks – averaging about 200 to 300 new cases a week – with a positivity rate so high that the beleaguered county health department announced it would no longer do contact tracing and focus its efforts on protecting “high-risk settings” including schools and long-term-care facilities.

An underlying concern for state officials is the pressure on Minnesota hospitals.

State health officials have warned of dire capacity levels statewide in terms of the number of available intensive-care beds, saying this week that they were at 90 to 95 percent capacity. In the Twin Cities, just 22 ICU beds were available – statistics that Walz described as “catastrophic.” Hospitals and the state are trading information hour by hour on capacity restraints and how to move patients. Officials are beginning to enlist retired health-care workers to help in what could be a nightmarish scenario in coming weeks.

Case counts are skyrocketing throughout the Midwest, with Illinois reporting 12,702 cases Thursday, a record, and Kansas reporting two record-high case counts this week.

“Now even in rural America people are thinking maybe I should pay attention to this,” said Liz Stedry, 44, a property manager and mother of a blended family of eight in Prairie Village, Kan., including 16-year-old twins with cystic fibrosis.

Stedry’s mother is a county commissioner in Jefferson County, Kan., which approved a mask ordinance Monday; the county commissioner pushed for one for weeks.

Stedry and her family have been in quarantine since Wednesday, after her husband and two of the children came down with mild cases of the coronavirus.

“The numbers are crazy scary. You want them to be kids but you worry about it. I’m actually happy it’s a forced quarantine,” she said. “Now the others have to be at home, too, until the time is up.”

Last week, South Dakota’s new daily reported cases rose by roughly 9%; the state also reported an 18.2% increase in daily deaths and a 26.5% uptick in hospitalizations, according to Washington Post data. The South Dakota Department of Health reported 2,020 new coronavirus infections Thursday, a record for positive results in a 24-hour period.

Despite this, its largest city, Sioux Falls, rejected a mask mandate Tuesday, and many in the state just don’t seem to think masks are necessary. Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, has taken a laissez-faire attitude toward the virus and has refused to issue a statewide mask mandate or other controls.

Masks are one of the most effective tools at fighting the coronavirus, public health officials say, and help protect the wearer and others.

Noem’s spokesman, Ian Fury, said that Noem had no intention of changing her approach, noting that although the hospitalization rate has increased, 34 percent of the state’s hospital and ICU beds remain open.

But doctors have countered that just because a bed is open doesn’t mean there will be enough staff. Monument Health, a hospital system in South Dakota, issued a statement this week that it is experiencing “stressed capacity” across the state.

“Our limiting factor isn’t beds, it’s staff,” said John Pierce, president of Rapid City Hospital, noting that the facility has a “record high” number of coronavirus patients and is having to shift non-coronavirus patients to other hospitals and hiring contract caregivers.

Chris Bjorkman, of De Smet, S.D., lost her husband, John, 66, a retired schools superintendent, after both were sickened by the coronavirus in September. Bjorkman had to be flown to a hospital in Marshall, Minn., when his condition worsened and there was no room for him in South Dakota, she said.

He eventually ended up back in a hospital and died Oct. 20. The last time she was able to speak to him, she said, he told her the hospital food was awful, so she had a meat-lovers pizza delivered to his room.

Bjorkman said that since her husband’s death she has been disheartened that so few of her neighbors have been wearing masks. Even the clerks in her local supermarket didn’t wear them until one of her family members called them out on it last week.

“People are not taking it serious,” she said. “Some just don’t care.”

– – –

The Washington Post’s Jacqueline Dupree and Emily Wax contributed to this report.

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30397881?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

Senior GOP lawmakers say Biden should get briefings

InternationalNov 13. 2020Joe Biden 

By The Washington Post
Seung Min Kim, Josh Dawsey, Matt Viser, Jon Swaine

WILMINGTON, Del. – President-elect Joe Biden began seeing more support, if indirectly, from Republicans on Thursday as senior GOP lawmakers called for him to receive classified briefings even as the Trump administration continued to bar a formal transition.

Trump officials prolonged that blockade even though in private top campaign aides were candidly telling President Donald Trump that his prospects of winning reelection were an uphill battle, according to sources close to the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations. His campaign, meantime, was scrambling to form a coherent legal strategy.

Taken together, those elements underscored a reality that Biden has accepted but one that Trump and key Republican officials haven’t: The current president is unlikely to overturn enough ballots in key states to undermine Biden’s presidential win.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican who won a tough reelection bid last week, said Biden needs to be briefed on classified intelligence – calling that process the “most important part of the transition” and one that can take place even as Trump contests the results in court.

“Like any apparent winner, he should have access to office space, federal employees, materials, supplies, whatever, but the standard assistance that the apparent winner receives,” Collins told reporters on Thursday. “That doesn’t in any way preclude President Trump from pursuing his legal remedies if he believes there are irregularities, but it should not delay the transition, because we want the president-elect – assuming he prevails – to be ready on day one.”

The acknowledgments came as Biden and his team continued to map out his transition, despite the lack of official certification from the General Services Administration that would unlock the resources and access to the federal government that Biden and his team will need to fully prepare for taking office on Jan. 20.

Biden also spoke with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., in their first substantive conversation since Biden was declared president-elect, with the trio stressing the need to have a coronavirus relief package signed into law by the end of the year.

The conversation effectively inserted Biden as a central figure in the talks, while Trump continued to stay out of sight and away from governing. The three Democrats coalesced behind a unified position, in particular advocating for state and local aid – a main sticking point between Democrats and Republicans.

Biden held another notable conversation on Thursday with Pope Francis, according to the transition team. Biden, who will become only the second Catholic to assume the U.S. presidency, expressed a desire to work together on issues including poverty, climate change and immigration.

The president-elect on Thursday also traveled to Rehoboth Beach, Del., where he has a vacation home and where he is expected to stay through part of the weekend. Biden, who on Wednesday named Washington veteran Ronald Klain as his incoming White House chief of staff, is not expected to formally announce other administration personnel this week.

But behind-the-scenes conversations between Capitol Hill and the transition team continued to occur, and Biden’s team has also tapped a coterie of senior House and Senate Democratic officials to serve as liaisons to Hill offices until Biden officially assumes the presidency, according to congressional aides.

An informal sketch of Biden’s orbit continued to take shape, with Steve Ricchetti, who served as chief of staff for Biden during his vice presidency, expected to assume a senior adviser role and Ted Kaufman, who temporarily succeeded Biden in the Senate when he was elevated to the vice presidency, becoming the head of a kitchen cabinet of sorts on which Biden will rely, according to a person familiar with the structure. Tom Donilon, another veteran Biden hand, is also expected to be a senior adviser to the president-elect.

One intriguing name being discussed privately is former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, according to the person familiar with the chatter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The thinking behind the move was that it would be a way for Biden to highlight the importance of that position in his administration and that placing her there would raise the prestige of the U.N. itself at a time when global cooperation, and the U.S. role on the world stage, has ebbed.

Another name emerging as a potential Cabinet pick is Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., the chairwoman of the House Democrats’ campaign arm who oversaw the party’s loss of House seats in the 2020 elections. She has signaled interest in leading the Agriculture Department. A spokeswoman for Bustos said, “With votes still being counted across America, Congresswoman Bustos remains focused on the task at hand and making sure front-line members in uncalled races have the support they need.”

Meanwhile, the outlook at the White House continued to remain tense.

Some aides were looking for jobs, and many were quarantining or even sickened by the fresh coronavirus outbreak within the White House. Few were continuing to fight for Trump’s reelection.

“A lot of people aren’t here,” one administration official in the West Wing said on Thursday. Trump remained sequestered Thursday, marking a week since he has spoken in public view.

At his campaign headquarters, many staffers were expected to be laid off in the coming days, two officials said, with some aides being notified on Thursday. Officials were also supposed to brief surrogates on legal strategy Thursday afternoon but postponed the call twice, a person familiar with the planning said.

Later, in a 12-minute call, campaign officials said they believed Trump could still win the race. Tim Murtaugh, the campaign spokesman, asked donors and surrogates “for patience” and said it would take some time.

“There is not going to be a silver bullet,” he said. Murtaugh spent much of his time criticizing the news media, according to an audio recording of the call.

“The campaign continues to firmly believe that this election is not over,” Murtaugh said.

Justin Clark, the deputy campaign manager overseeing the legal efforts, told listeners that “you’re going to see a lot of things happen,” without offering much in the way of specifics. Clark asked for people to send to the campaign for investigation things they see on Twitter or on other websites.

Privately, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, continued to tell allies that Trump is “realistic” about his chances but wants to continue the fight, a person who has spoken to him said. Campaign manager Bill Stepien and other top campaign aides have also briefed Trump on his chances, casting them as uphill and telling Trump it is unlikely he will win.

But Trump does not want to pull out of the fight until the votes are certified in key states, which won’t be until late November or early December. His campaign filed five new lawsuits in Pennsylvania in an attempt to block 8,349 ballots in Philadelphia from being counted – complaints that centered on mail-in ballots that city officials decided to accept despite administrative errors made by voters.

Biden has been declared the winner of Pennsylvania by multiple media outlets, and he leads Trump in the state by more than 53,000 votes. Kevin Feeley, a spokesman for the Philadelphia city commissioners, said on Thursday that the disputed ballots had not yet been added to the public vote totals.

The Trump campaign ran into resistance elsewhere in the courts in Pennsylvania, as three former Republican members of Congress and several veterans of GOP administrations joined the opposition to an effort by Trump to use the federal courts to block certification of the state’s election results.

Trump alleged in a lawsuit that hundreds of thousands of votes in Democratic Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are invalid because his campaign was not able to watch them being counted, which election officials deny.

A group including former congressmen Charlie Dent and Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., and former congresswoman Connie Morella, R-Md., along with former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman and former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer, filed a brief on Thursday asking Judge Matthew Brann to leave the dispute to the Pennsylvania state courts, which are considering a lawsuit from Trump on the same issue.

Another onetime Republican leader, former senator Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., whose state has also become a battleground over ballots that Republicans have contested, told The Washington Post in an interview that “there was no wholesale fraudulent scheme.”

Of Georgia, where Biden leads by roughly 14,000 votes and where a hand recount is underway, Chambliss, who retired at the end of 2014, said: “I am on the ground and I heard nothing about any kind of harvesting of ballots or fraudulent transactions. Sure, there are going to be isolated situations but not on a wholesale basis.”

Chambliss stopped short of saying Trump should concede or allow the transition process and security briefings for Biden to begin. He said he supported Trump’s right to pursue all legal options to contest the election. But he emphasized that the process must play out in court, and only if new evidence surfaces.

Other GOP figures went further in actively identifying Biden as the rightful winner. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, whose state Trump won by eight points, said on CNN on Thursday that he sees Biden as the president-elect even as Trump has “every right” to legally contest the results.

“Our courts are the best place, frankly, to adjudicate facts,” DeWine said.

But because of Trump and his team’s public defiance, many elected Republican officials have declined to even call Biden the president-elect. Even some GOP lawmakers who said Biden should be briefed were careful to distinguish between the type of intelligence Biden received as the Democratic nominee and the full-blown presidential daily briefing, which Biden would usually have access to as the president-elect.

“We should be in the same posture that we ran throughout the whole campaign, both of them receiving briefings, as they’re both trying to be able to prepare and then allow the process to be able to go through right now,” said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., a member of the Intelligence Committee.

Still, the consensus among Senate Republicans on Thursday was that Biden should be privy to the nation’s classified secrets.

“I see no problem” with Biden getting briefings, said Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the most senior Republican in the Senate.

“I think so, yes,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an ardent Trump ally, responded when asked whether Biden should be receiving classified briefings.

“Whether he actually gets the product itself, I think the information needs to be communicated in some way,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, another member of the Intelligence Committee. “If in fact he does win in the end, I think they need to be able to hit the ground running.”

– – –

The Washington Post’s Amy Gardner, John Wagner, Mike DeBonis and Felicia Sonmez contributed to this report.

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30397879?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

Jerry Rawlings, coup leader who ruled Ghana for 20 years, dies at 73

InternationalNov 13. 2020Jerry Rawlings 

By The Washington Post
Matt Schudel

Jerry Rawlings, who as a young military officer orchestrated two coups to seize control of the government in Ghana, then led the African country for 20 years, guiding it through a period of relative stability with an idiosyncratic blend of autocratic rule and democratic reform, died Nov. 12 at a hospital in the capital city of Accra. He was 73.

The death was announced in a statement by the country’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, citing an undisclosed illness.

Rawlings was a 32-year-old Ghanaian air force officer when he first attempted to overthrow what he considered a corrupt national government in May 1979. He was jailed but soon became a hero to the country’s poor people and military.

With the help of disaffected soldiers and non-commissioned officers, he escaped from jail on June 4, 1979, then proceeded to a radio station to urge his followers to seize power. By the end of the day, the country’s military leader, Frederick Akuffo, had been toppled.

Rawlings, who was often known as “Flight Lt. Rawlings” for his military rank, charged Akuffo’s regime with corruption and profiteering.

“The rich became richer, including the high military officers, and most of us were starving,” he said at the time. “I’ve always wanted to do something to correct injustice.”

A presidential election was already scheduled, and Rawlings vowed to step aside in favor of the new democratically elected leader. But during his 112 days in power, he oversaw the hasty creation of military tribunals that put Akuffo and two other former heads of state on trial. They were executed, along with numerous high-ranking officials.

True to his word, Rawlings and other coup leaders returned to their military positions when Ghana’s new president, Hilla Limann, was sworn into office. In a speech before the country’s parliament, Rawlings looked directly at Limann and issued an unmistakable warning.

“If people in power use their offices to pursue self-interest, they will be resisted and unseated,” he said, before ominously adding, “We have every confidence that we shall never regret our decision to go back to the barracks.”

In 1957, Ghana became Africa’s first sub-Saharan country to declare independence from a colonial power, in its case Great Britain. After Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, was overthrown in a military coup in 1966, the country faced increasing poverty and unrest under a series of military and civilian leaders.

That trend continued during Limann’s first two years in office, as Rawlings traveled throughout the country, giving speeches to large crowds and denouncing what he called the “rottenness” of a system that “would permit those same corrupt forces to retain their hold on Ghanaian life.”

Limann maligned Rawlings as “that boy,” and some of his associates mocked his mixed-race ancestry, calling him “half African.”

On Dec. 31, 1981, Rawlings led a second coup, calling Limann and his supporters “a pack of criminals who bled Ghana to the bone.”

This time, Rawlings had no intention of relinquishing authority. He dissolved the country’s parliament, abolished the constitution and banned all political parties except his own. He aimed to establish a socialist state in Ghana, espousing admiration for Libya and its dictator, Moammar Gaddafi.

“I am prepared at this moment to face a firing squad if what I try to do for the second time in my life does not meet the approval of Ghanaians,” Rawlings announced at the time.

He was, without question, an authoritarian ruler who fired judges and shut down opposition newspapers. His regime drove out many of the country’s business elite, particularly those of Lebanese descent, and publicly flogged people accused of charging too much money for commercial goods. Rawlings withstood several attempted coups, with political dissenters arrested and, in some cases, sentenced to death.

Yet, by the standards of other dictators, Rawlings demonstrated a certain measure of enlightenment and restraint. Instead of imposing Soviet-style economic programs, he took the advice of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and launched free-market reforms that led to a decade of growth.

He resisted the establishment of a cult of personality around himself and seldom used the title “president.” No pictures of him were allowed in public places, and he was never implicated in scandals involving financial corruption or personal behavior.

He also pledged to restore democratic elections to Ghana and to allow opposition political parties, provided that they not have names that had been used before. In 1992, after more than 10 years of one-man rule, Rawlings ran for election and won the presidency with 58 percent of the vote.

Despite economic setbacks over the next few years, he was reelected in 1996 in an election that local and international observers agreed was free and fair. Under Ghana’s new constitution, which he helped produce, Rawlings could not seek a third term as president.

When the candidate from his party lost the presidential election in 2000, the peaceful transfer of power was considered a rarity in African politics.

Rawlings was born Jerry Rawlings John on June 22, 1947, in Accra. His father was a Scottish businessman, and his mother was from Ghana’s Ewe ethnic group. His parents were not married, and Rawlings was raised by his mother.

When he entered Ghana’s training academy for air cadets, his last name, John, was omitted from his official form, and he became known as Jerry Rawlings, or sometimes Jerry John Rawlings. (Ghanaians often called him “J.J.,” which some critics said stood for “Junior Jesus.”)

Rawlings excelled as a pilot and, after his first coup in 1979, reportedly celebrated by going for a joyride in a jet fighter, flying low over Accra and the countryside.

Survivors include his wife of 43 years, Nana Konadu Agyeman, who ran unsuccessfully for Ghana’s presidency in 2016; and four children.

In later years, Rawlings remained a powerful voice in Ghana’s public life. Despite his rise to power on the strength of a military coup, he came to be seen as a pan-African statesman and as a primary architect of his country’s emerging social and political stability. He lectured around the world and participated in peacekeeping and diplomatic efforts for the United Nations and African Union.

In a 1979 interview with The Washington Post, Rawlings cited the influence of Frantz Fanon, a Black psychiatrist and writer from Martinique whose books delineated the dehumanizing effect of colonialism and economic inequality.

“Well, that is what we are all about,” Rawlings said. “It’s not a Black-White thing here but the rich suppressing the poor, exploiting us, oppressing us.”

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30397875?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

Far-right protesters, counterdemonstrators plan to gather Saturday in D.C. amid pro-Trump rallies

InternationalNov 13. 2020President Trump 

By The Washington Post · Marissa J. Lang, Peter Hermann · NATIONAL, POLITICS 
WASHINGTON – Demonstrations in support of President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the presidential election will descend on downtown Washington this weekend. 

The events have been promoted by far-right media personalities, white nationalists and conspiracists – several of whom announced plans to attend. Counterdemonstrations organized by anti-fascist and anti-racism groups are being planned nearby.

The rallies, which include a Women for Trump event, a “Million MAGA March” and a “Stop the Steal” demonstration – which falsely asserts that voter fraud cost Trump the election – will begin Saturday morning in and around Freedom Plaza.

The pro-Trump rallies have garnered support from Fox News host Sean Hannity as well as more fringe figures, including Enrique Tarrio, chairman of the Proud Boys; self-described “American Nationalist” and social media agitator Nicholas Fuentes; conservative provocateur Jack Posobiec, who promoted the “Pizzagate” conspiracy tied to the 2016 shooting at a District of Columbia pizzeria Comet Ping Pong; Scott Presler, a pro-Trump activist who works with anti-Muslim group ACT For America; and Infowars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. 

Jones has said he is leading a “Stop the Steal” caravan from Texas that is expected to arrive Friday night in the nation’s capital.

Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller responded to a tweet Thursday in support of the rally, saying, “Love the outpouring of support for @realDonaldTrump!”

A handful of anti-Trump rallies have also been announced, including one near Union Station organized by local activists and a protest involving Refuse Fascism D.C., which has said it intends to stand against “the Trump regime’s attempts to steal the election.”

Neither District police nor the National Park Service have issued permits for the demonstrations, although the Park Service is processing a permit application from Women for America First, a pro-Trump group that has advertised “Stop the Steal” rallies on its social media pages. It estimated in a permit application that about 50 people would attend its event.

The Park Service regularly works with groups that do not obtain permits before an event to register for one on-site and, if necessary, to move to a safer location. It was not clear whether the Park Police or Park Service had plans to approach demonstrators Saturday. 

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said city officials have been monitoring social media chatter around the planned events.

“We continue to follow those activities and be prepared,” Bowser said at a news conference this week. “Our police chief will have a similar posture this weekend as he did last week. We will be there to support peaceful First Amendment demonstrations.”

Bowser warned out-of-town visitors against bringing firearms to the city, noting the District has more strict firearm laws than other parts of the country. Gun owners are allowed to carry a concealed weapon with the proper license but carrying a gun openly is prohibited. It is also illegal to possess a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

District police announced road closures and parking restrictions throughout downtown.

District police were put on high alert last week with fears of unrest and violent protests that many cities expected could follow Election Day. Although those fears didn’t materialize, many downtown District businesses remained boarded up through the weekend – and the raucous celebrations that followed Biden’s victory. 

The mayor said she is still urging businesses to remove the boards, even with the Saturday rallies in mind.

Local activists are taking precautions as they prepare for Saturday, including efforts to safeguard the living monument at Black Lives Matter Plaza that has grown on and around the tall chain-link fence encircling Lafayette Square.

Last month, a group of Trump supporters in the District for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings tore down a number of the signs. Activists rebuilt the memorial the next day, and several have been standing guard since.

Past protests in Washington that have featured white nationalists and other far-right provocateurs have been dwarfed by counterdemonstrators.

A year after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., turned deadly when a car plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters, a small handful of white supremacists came to the District for the “Unite the Right 2” rally. Organizers had hoped hundreds would join them, but about three dozen attended. They were drowned out by crowds of counterprotesters, who chanted and danced in the street.

Last year, hundreds of District police officers kept far-right agitators, including members of the Proud Boys, and left-wing anti-fascist protesters clad in black from clashing during dueling rallies at Freedom Plaza and nearby Pershing Park. Though the groups interacted at times during the July 2019 demonstration, the protests did not turn violent. The crowd of counterprotesters far outnumbered the right-wing demonstrators.

Christopher Rodriguez, the District’s director of homeland security and emergency management, said in a news conference Thursday that officials are expecting a relatively small turnout at Saturday’s rally spread out among about a dozen groups.

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30397871?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

Senate readies vote on Judy Shelton, granting Trump another opportunity to shape Federal Reserve

InternationalNov 13. 2020Federal Reserve nominee Judy Shelton 

By The Washington Post · Rachel Siegel · BUSINESS, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS 
WASHINGTON – The Senate as soon as next week could vote to confirm President Donald Trump’s controversial Federal Reserve nominee Judy Shelton to a seat on the central bank’s board of governors, giving the president another chance to shape the long-term direction of one of the government’s most powerful entities.

Senate Republicans signaled on Thursday that they planned to vote on her long-pending nomination during the lame-duck session of Congress next week.

On Thursday, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said a vote “could be as early as next week” and that Shelton’s confirmation had been discussed among the party’s leadership. Also on Thursday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she would support Shelton’s nomination, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., invoked “cloture,” a procedure that is necessary before the full Senate can hold a vote on Shelton’s nomination. 

Just a few months ago, it was unclear whether Shelton had enough support among the party’s senators to be confirmed. 

Shelton’s confirmation could mark Trump’s final imprint on the Fed board before the Biden administration is inaugurated in January. Trump’s previous picks to fill the Fed’s two current vacancies have been faced with criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike, and getting his final nominees confirmed would be a victory before his administration leaves office. Some of Shelton’s critics had previously questioned whether Trump, if reelected, would try to elevate Shelton to Fed Chair. Yet those prospects have all but evaporated with an incoming Biden administration. 

“Judy Shelton, President Trump’s exceptionally qualified nominee to the Federal Reserve, has the full backing of the White House and we expect she will be confirmed,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement on Thursday.

In September, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., suggested Shelton did not have the votes to be confirmed. At the time, Thune said conversations around Shelton’s nomination “kind of got eclipsed by the coronavirus discussion” and related stimulus negotiations.

“We’re still working it,” Thune said at the time. “She’s a priority for the White House. It’s the Federal Reserve. It’s important, so obviously we want to get it done. But we’re not going to bring it up until we have the votes to confirm her.”

Shelton’s confirmation also appeared in jeopardy earlier in the summer when Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said they would vote against her nomination. In July, Shelton’s nomination narrowly made it through the Senate Banking Committee, which voted 13-12 along party lines to move her through. Some on the panel had previously expressed concerns that Shelton’s views on the Fed’s independence and monetary policy made her too much of an outlier.

Shelton advised Trump’s 2016 presidential bid and has been criticized for her views on the long-abandoned gold standard. Shelton had also called for closer ties between the White House and the Fed despite a long precedent for the central bank’s independence.

Shelton’s nomination was put up alongside that of Christopher Waller, a St. Louis Fed economist. Waller’s confirmation has been far less controversial. If both Shelton and Waller are confirmed, all of the board’s current vacancies will be filled. 

“It means Republicans are taking it very seriously and Trump wants to get it done,” said Stephen Moore, an outside economic adviser to the White House who abandoned his own bid to fill one of the Fed’s vacancies amid scrutiny of his past remarks. “People said, well, she’s not in the mainstream with all the other Fed economists. Well, that’s what we like about her…There’s this sense that everyone has to drink the same Kool-Aid at the Fed.”

Still, the makeup of the Fed board of governors could change further once the Biden administration is inaugurated. Lael Brainard, currently the board’s lone Democrat, is also a top contender for Biden’s Treasury Secretary or, some suggest, a successor to Powell if he is not reappointed when his term ends in 2022.

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30397869?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

Iraqis who helped U.S. fear reprisals

InternationalNov 13. 2020Pictured in January 2020, members of the Hashd al-Shaabi militias watch as photos featuring Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis are unveiled in the Karrada vicinity of Baghdad. MUST CREDIT: Photo by Emilienne Malfatto for The Washington Post 

By The Washington Post · Louisa Loveluck, Missy Ryan, Mustafa Salim · NATIONAL, WORLD, POLITICS, MIDDLE-EAST 

BAGHDAD – Iraqis who have worked closely with the U.S. military in their country have grown increasingly alarmed that they could be targeted for attack, fearing their personal identifying information has been obtained by Iran-backed militias. 

At a time when militia attacks on supply convoys for the U.S.-led coalition and against other U.S. interests have been on the rise, the sharing of this information – including names, addresses and license plate numbers – could present a heightened threat to hundreds of Iraqis who have long worked with American forces, in particular as translators. 

The U.S. military provides this personal information to the Iraqi security forces, as required by Iraqi authorities, to secure permission for the translators to move around Iraq, according to documents and Iraqi military officials. But Iran-backed militias have so permeated parts of Iraq’s security apparatus that the information has, in some cases, become accessible to groups that have taken up arms against the Americans and their local support staff, Iraqi officials say.

“It’s not a surprise that militias have these documents,” said an official in Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s office. He added, “They believe it’s going to be a long battle, so they will gather as much leverage over U.S. interests as possible.”

In June, a list purporting to contain personal information about Iraqis admitted to the Union III military base in Baghdad, the main headquarters of the U.S.-led military coalition, was published by the Sabreen news agency, which is affiliated with Iran-backed militias. The list included the names, addresses and identification numbers of Iraqi drivers and the make, model, year and license plate numbers of their cars, among other specifics, and the document bore logos of the U.S.-led military coalition and the U.S. Defense Department. The Washington Post could not independently verify the authenticity of the list.

Separately, two Iraqi translators saidthey witnessed militiamen who were stationed near an Iraqi military checkpoint check a list containing personal information that had been acquired from a military coordination center run by the Iraqi security forces. 

“When we realized where the information had come from, we were shocked. The list contains everything. Phone numbers, ID numbers, even our real names,” said one translator from Baghdad. The Post reviewed a copy of the list and confirmed this description.

“It’d be an easy mission to hunt us down,” the translator said. “They have all the information now. What if this list now goes online?” This man, like seven other translators interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

In response to a request for comment, a U.S. military spokesman said the U.S.-led coalition does not share personally identifiable information about the translators with the Iraqi military or government.

But three documents obtained by The Post show that such information provided by the U.S.-led coalition has been circulated by various elements of the Iraqi security forces over the past year. The documents, all issued by the national operations center under Iraq’s prime minister, say the information was obtained from the U.S.-led coalition and then shared with Iraqi security forces, including at three military camps in Baghdad; the special division for the Green Zone in central Baghdad; and the military intelligence directorate. In one case, the document includes personal information for 143 of the employees.

A senior Iraqi military officer said the U.S. military shared the information so the translators could travel outside military bases.

When the U.S. military spokesman was asked about the documents showing that the U.S.-provided information had been given to various Iraqi security forces, he had no additional comment.

The translators, who have been employed by Valiant Integrated Services, a Virginia-based contractor, represent one of the largest groups of Iraqis who have worked closely with the U.S.-led coalition. Many have served on front lines with U.S. and other coalition troops, sleeping in the same foxholes and camping out in abandoned buildings as fighting raged around them. 

The threat facing the translators has grown more intense in recent months. Many have been laid off as the United States prepares to withdraw its forces from the country, leaving the former contract workers unemployed and potentially unprotected.

The translator from Baghdad, now out of work, has been renting temporary accommodations with two former colleagues to hide out. But money is running out. “We are literally eating our savings buying food here,” he said. “We’ll be empty-handed by the end of the year.”

Under its contract with the U.S. military, Valiant hires translators, formally known as linguists, for work in Iraq, Syria and other places. The company has shared little information publicly about its work and employees, citing contract restrictions. 

Militia access to the personal information of Valiant’s employees could exacerbate a threat long felt by Iraqi support staff, who in some cases already fear they have been identified by militiamen monitoring checkpoints and military bases.

“We have interpreters right now who call me to say they have been threatened when they visit the bazaar or even just when they leave their homes,” said an Iraqi translator who coordinates a network of former support staff. “Some people have been told: ‘We can’t touch U.S. citizens here, but we can touch you.’ ” 

This translator, who lives in the northern city of Kirkuk, recalled a recent evening when he was leaving a busy cafe. A man he didn’t recognize approached from behind and tapped his shoulder firmly. “I turned around and he looked at me directly. He told me I had to leave this city,” recounted the translator.

In response to a request for comment, the U.S. military declined to say whether it had taken any steps to protect the personal information of Iraqi translators and address the threats they now face as a result of this information being accessible to Iran-backed groups.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition said he had contacted Valiant and that the company had responded that “it does not share information that puts the safety for their warfighters or teammates in jeopardy.” The spokesman, Col. Wayne Marotto, said Valiant should be contacted for any further information.

When contacted, Valiant did not provide further formal comment. But a person familiar with the issue said Valiant’s policy is to notify the appropriate military unit if a current or former employee reports a threat, which the person said has occurred “a few times a year.” The person added: “This is a priority. The military takes it from there.”

When the U.S. military was contacted again and asked how it handles these threats once it has been notified, the spokesman provided no further comment.

Although Iran-backed militias participated in the U.S.-supported campaign to oust the Islamic State’s caliphate, these armed groups have recently been escalating their attacks on American interests in Iraq, especially after the U.S. killing of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad in January. 

Militias in Iraq have described the translators as traitors. Iraqis driving equipment and logistics convoys on behalf of the U.S.-led coalition have been targeted. There have been at least 30 rocket or improvised explosive attacks on the convoys since the summer, according to a figures compiled by Joel Wing, an Iraq expert and author of the Musings on Iraq blog, which chronicles security and political developments. At least two people have been killed and another eight have been wounded. 

Marotto, the coalition spokesman, referred questions about attacks on convoy drivers to the Iraqi military, because the drivers are employed by companies contracted by Iraq’s security forces.

The Trump administration’s plans to draw down most of the remaining U.S. troops in Iraq has come amid escalating militia assaults against the convoys and other U.S. interests, including repeated rocket attacks on bases hosting American forces.

Between March and August, hundreds of Iraqi personnel working in support of the U.S. mission received emails saying their contracts had ended due to a loss of funding, stoking fears that they would be even more vulnerable to revenge attacks once the Americans depart. 

Those who have been working remotely due to the coronavirus outbreak were told not to return to their bases. Those still working at military installations alongside U.S. soldiers said they were informed that their departure would be “coordinated” in short order. 

The U.S.-led coalition has been stationed in Iraq to fight the Islamic State since 2014. In September, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said that the troop reduction – from around 5,200 to 3,000 – reflects the administration’s confidence that Iraqi security forces can handle the remaining threat from Islamic State militants in the country. 

While employed, the translators could report threats they received, and for the most part, they say, their complaints were taken seriously by the U.S. military. Some men were offered a safe place to stay on a military base. Others said their superiors made it clear that they had their backs. 

“I knew the risks when I signed on, but I also knew that the United States had told us that no matter the threat, they would stand by us,” said another translator from Kirkuk. 

During four years of service, he said, he had worked with the U.S. Navy SEALs and the Montana Army National Guard and had most recently been helping train Iraqi forces at two centers in northern Iraq.

When he received his termination notice, he got goose bumps. “I knew then that it isn’t a matter of asking whether something will happen to us. It’s a matter of asking when,” he said. 

Another translator, who said he had worked with the Navy SEALs on the front lines against the Islamic State, said he had not believed a colleague who called to say their contracts had ended. “He told me to check my Gmail, so I did the thing where you drag the screen down to refresh. I really didn’t think anything would show up. When it did, we were all freaking out.”

In late October, a little-known militia named Ashab al-Kahf addressed the translators directly in a statement, suggesting that the group would be willing to “forgive” and even provide a salary to those who identified themselves as working on a U.S. military installation. “Today we think it is beautiful to offer forgiveness to those who have insulted themselves, their religion and their country, who have rendered services to the American, the English, and the rest of the enemies of Iraq,” the statement said. 

A former translator in Baghdad said he saw the offer as a “trap,” adding, “Just like I predicted, the worst is yet to come.” 

The mounting peril comes as the Trump administration has been making it more difficult for people who fear war or other dangers in their home countries to move to the United States. The White House announced in October that it would reduce the annual cap on refugee entries to a record low of 15,000. 

While that number allocates up to 4,000 spots for U.S.-affiliated Iraqis per year, Iraqi applicants have been processed slowly, partly because of heightened security vetting. According to the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), there is a backlog of over 100,000 Iraqi applicants. Last year, the U.S. government also set aside 4,000 spots for Iraqis but only 161 were resettled, IRAP said.

Meanwhile, the United States no longer allows Iraqis who worked with the U.S. government in Iraq to apply for a so-called Special Immigrant Visas program, which stopped accepting new applications in 2014. A parallel program for Iraqi and Afghan translators remains open, but it is capped at 50 people per year. 

“Pathways for humanitarian protection for refugees from Iraq have so narrowed that they are basically closed,” said Sunil Varghese, IRAP’s policy director.

One of the translators who had worked with the Navy SEALs said he had been “honored” to do so. “I’m so proud of all the days I’ve been working with the greatest forces in the world,” he said. “But the problem is that after they are gone, their government doesn’t care about us. We are literally left behind.”

In the northern city of Irbil, a group of translators submitted a letter late last month to the U.S. Consulate there that they said was on behalf of around 400 people who had been hired by Valiant. “We are sure that you are well aware of the situation and the difficulties we face every day. For that, we are asking you kindly to reactivate [the visa] program that used to be provided for Linguists such us just a few years ago,” the letter read. 

Hostile militias, it said, are “capable and willing” to hunt down translators who have supported the departing U.S. forces. “The situation for us is a matter of When rather than If.”

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30397857?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

Swedish central banker says economy is worse than official data show

InternationalNov 12. 2020Stefan Ingves, governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, reacts during a news conference in Stockholm, Sweden, on Dec. 19, 2019. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Mikael Sjoberg.

By Syndication Washington Post,  Bloomberg · Rafaela Lindeberg · BUSINESS, WORLD, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS 

Sweden’s economy has been harder hit by the Covid crisis than is reflected in the latest official forecasts, according to the governor of the Riksbank, Stefan Ingves.

“The recovery seems to be a little slower than we initially thought,” Ingves said in an interview in Stockholm on Wednesday. “It is extremely difficult to assess how long this will take.”

After a summer during which the pandemic seemed to be receding, infection rates have again started to spike as winter approaches and temperatures drop. In Sweden, the government is now resorting to tighter measures than were used in the spring, in an effort to fight back the virus.

Robert Bergqvist, chief economist at SEB, said he doesn’t see much evidence in the latest data that things are slowing down in Sweden. But “changed behaviors” are also making it harder to interpret the statistics that are available, he said.

“It sounds as if Ingves is preparing for more stimulus,” said Bergqvist, who once ran the economic analysis unit at the Riksbank. That’s likely to take the form of an expanded quantitative easing program by 20% to $70 billion (600 billion kronor), he said.

The Riksbank’s latest official forecast, from September, shows Sweden’s economy shrinking 3.6% this year. The estimate was an improvement on the bank’s previous prediction for a 4.5% contraction in 2020. The Riksbank also raised its guidance for 2021 slightly in September, to growth of 3.7% from 3.6% previously.

Inflation stagnated at 0.3% in October, well below the Riksbank’s 2% target, according to data published on Thursday by Statistics Sweden.

Ingves, like some of his peers, cautioned against reading too much into efforts to produce a vaccine.

Stock markets shot up on Monday after an analysis showed that a vaccine being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech prevented over 90% of Covid-19 infections. The news was received as a game changer for global efforts to fight the virus, which has already killed more than 1 million people.

There are “lively discussions” about vaccines, Ingves said. But “it will take some time before everyone is vaccinated, and before this goes away.”

The Riksbank’s benchmark interest rate has been zero since Ingves ended half a decade of negative rates last year. He’s since made clear the Riksbank will rely on bond purchases, not rates, to support the economy.

The Riksbank has tested the limits of its toolbox this year, adding corporate bonds to its quantitative easing program for the first time. But Ingves signaled he’d be unlikely to make policy adjustments in response to developments in stock markets.

“We are, of course, looking at the financial sector, the banking system at large,” he said. “The Riksbank’s main focus isn’t the stock market. The stock market is a risk market and that’s something you have to live with, if you choose to put your money there. Sometimes it goes up and sometimes down.”

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30397856?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

G-20 looks to deepen debt relief drive with China’s coordination

InternationalNov 12. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Alonso Soto, Eric Martin · BUSINESS, WORLD, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS 
Policy makers from the world’s largest economies are set to meet Friday to iron out the details of a plan for debt relief to the poorest countries battered by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 scheduled the extraordinary meeting to deepen their work from last month and try to finalize the plan ahead of a summit by their heads of government next week. Officials from host Saudi Arabia will chair the talks.

The next phase of a relief drive is largely aimed at winning buy-in from China, the world’s largest official creditor, which was owed almost 60% of the bilateral debt that the poorest nations were due to repay this year. Beijing and other G-20 members suspended debt payments from dozens of countries until at least the first half of 2021.

The effort aims to standardize the way official and commercial creditors rework sovereign debts, seeking similar rules for China and the Paris Club, a grouping of mostly western government creditors. Beijing has also clashed with private bondholders in recent restructurings.

“Attention has been on getting an agreement that China can get behind,” said Eric LeCompte, the executive director of Jubilee USA Network, a non-profit group that advocates for debt relief for smaller economies. “This has been a process to include China.”

The G-20 members agreed to the framework in principle on Oct. 14 pending domestic approval, leaving the details for Friday’s meeting. Some western governments, however, have been skeptical that China will fully adopt the formula out of fear it could lose its edge in renegotiations and be forced to reveal the full extent of its overseas lending, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.

World Bank President David Malpass has complained that neither China nor bondholders have provided enough debt relief.

China “supports all parties to take further common action,” the nation’s Foreign Ministry said on Oct. 30 in a response to questions over its commitment to a common strategy.

Beijing says that global multilateral banks and commercial creditors have failed to provide relief to the poor despite holding much of their debt. However, it’s unclear if private investors would be able to grant leniency due to their fiduciary duties to clients, given that the fine print in many debt agreements prohibits changes in the terms without the approval of the majority of bondholders.

“Anything that moves us in the direction of China accepting Paris-Club-style principles, I think that would be a good thing,” said Mark Sobel, a former U.S. Treasury official now at the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum. “I expect the common framework to be incremental and not revolutionary.”

The U.S. presidential transition also hangs over the meetings, with Donald Trump set to exit as Joe Biden takes over the White House in two months. While G-20 heads of government are scheduled to meet on Nov. 21-22 with Trump’s participation, both Sobel and LeCompte urged Biden to call for another summit once he becomes president to strengthen debt-relief measures and coordinate the global response to the virus.

The pandemic-induced shock has hit developing economies particularly hard. Commodity prices slumped and investors withdrew capital, raising fears of a debt crisis that could sink millions into poverty if nothing is done.

As of last year, almost half of all low-income countries have reached, or are near, debt distress, according to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Although the framework should help cut the debt load, lack of a real commitment by G-20 creditors will likely derail the initiative, said Daniel Munevar, a policy adviser with the European Network on Debt and Development.

“The predicted failure of the G-20 response will condemn a large number of developing countries to a lost decade,” Munevar said.

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30397854?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

Japan has worst day of covid cases yet amid fears of winter wave

InternationalNov 12. 2020A screen features Hokkaido Governor Naomichi Suzuki delivering a coronavirus public information message at a junction in Sapporo, Japan, on Nov. 5, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Kentaro Takahashi.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Lisa Du · WORLD, ASIA-PACIFIC 
Japan hit a new daily record of coronavirus infections Thursday as authorities began hinting they may take stronger measures to arrest the increase.

At least 1,634 cases were recorded nationwide, according to a tally by national broadcaster NHK, topping the previous high set during a surge in August. While numbers are low in absolute terms compared to many other countries, a spike in northern Japan is leading to concerns cases could spread as winter sets in.

Yasutoshi Nishimura, the minister overseeing the country’s coronavirus response, said more stringent steps would be needed if infections continued to rise. That’s the strongest warning yet from the national government in a country that has largely escaped the worst of the pandemic.

“If it continues like this, the medical system could become overstretched,” Nishimura said at a briefing in Tokyo. “It’s not at the point where we need to call for a state of emergency, but we need to have the strongest sense of caution.”

Nishimura said that in some regions, several criteria used to evaluate the situation — such as the pace of new infections and the proportion of cases with an unknown route of infection — had entered the second-most serious stage on the government’s monitoring scale.

The northern island of Hokkaido and Kanagawa, near Tokyo, were among regions that saw record numbers of new cases. The Hokkaido government has already asked bars and other establishments to close early in the regional capital’s nightlife district. Tokyo saw 393 infections, one of the heaviest days to date.

Shares of Japanese stay-at-home stocks rose in Tokyo Thursday, with videogame and e-commerce stocks gaining as investors began to fret over the increase.

“This could be the beginning of a sharp increase in infections,” said Norio Ohmagari, an infectious disease specialist advising Tokyo authorities, at a local government meeting. “We need to be on alert.”

Japan has drawn attention from other nations for its ability to control the spread of the virus without mass-testing or enforced lockdowns. Despite two previous flareups, deaths and serious cases remain low, and hospitals haven’t been pushed to capacity. Life had been returning to normal, with sporting matches resuming, workers returning to offices and a successful campaign encouraging domestic travel.

But in recent weeks, officials have expressed concern over the increasing variance of infection clusters, with cases rising in nursing homes, hospitals and schools. Experts have pointed to an increased spread among younger adults tired of social distancing, as well as within foreign communities, which may struggle due to language barriers and more limited access to health services.