Month: November 2020

Boris Johnson has warned that England will face another national lockdown unless MPs unite and vote in favour of the government’s new coronavirus restrictions, which might place 99 per cent of the country under the toughest Tier 2 or 3 curbs from Wednesday. writes the Daily Telegraph.

Facing a brewing revolt from backbenchers over the three-tier COVID-19 alert level system that comes under a House of Commons vote on Tuesday, in a letter published on Sunday evening, Johnson directly appealed to the rebels in the COVID Recovery Group (CRG). He said that there was “every reason” to hope and believe “the worst is nearly behind us, so now more than ever is the time to demonstrate unity and resolve.”

Amid continued allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election put forward by Donald Trump and his legal team, the FBI has reportedly requested files from an independent probe into evidence of people voting in “multiple states”.

The conservative legal nonprofit Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, in conjunction with an “election integrity” project run by Matt Braynard, a former data analyst on Trump’s 2016 campaign, have been gathering evidence of alleged voter fraud by the Democratic Party.

An upcoming round of indirect negotiations between Lebanon and Israel on the demarcation of Lebanese southern maritime border with the occupying regime has been postponed, officials on both sides say. 

“We were officially informed of the postponing of the indirect round of negotiations,” a Lebanese military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity told AFP on Monday.

Iran’s Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi says the country’s security forces have found a lot of new leads on the recent assassination of senior Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Fakhrizadeh, the head of the Iranian Defense Ministry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, was targeted in a multi-pronged terrorist attack by a number of assailants in Absard city of Tehran Province’s Damavand County on Friday.

Iranian government officials and military commanders have hinted that the Israeli regime could have been behind the terror attack, vowing harsh revenge against all the criminals involved.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that Israel was behind the assassination, citing three US officials.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Europe must stand up for its values in its dealings with China, but given the country’s sheer population and economic importance, there will always be a trade-off between the EU’s values and its interests, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

Merkel was speaking at an online conference of legislators from across the continent, in which several had demanded that she push for a tougher line on human rights violations in the country.

“We must define our own European interests, and this also includes common ground (with China) on foreign policy, on economic policy and digital policy and many more,” she said.

The pope customarily places a wreath of flowers at the base of a 12-metre column bearing a statue of the Madonna and blesses from a distance another wreath already placed around the statue’s arm by firefighters using a ladder.

The Vatican said Francis would skip the ceremony, which popes have been carrying out on the feast of the Immaculate Conception since 1953, “in order to avoid any risk of contagion caused by gatherings of people”.

Thousands of people usually line the streets near the area to see the pope and pray with him.

Brent crude for January delivery, a contract that expires on Monday, dropped 69 cents, or 1.4%, to $47.49 a barrel by 1220 GMT. The more actively traded February Brent contract was down 65 cents at $47.60.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude for January fell 53 cents, or 1.2%, to $45.00 a barrel.

“Last week’s optimism is taking a hit this morning and longs are edging towards the exit ahead of the OPEC+ talks,” said oil broker PVM’s Tamas Varga, after OPEC+ failed to agree on policy in informal talks ahead of Monday and Tuesday’s formal meetings.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Maguito Vilela was elected mayor of the Brazilian city of Goiânia on Sunday, but he has yet to find out. That’s because he has spent much of the last month in an induced coma, breathing via a ventilator because of a severe COVID-19 infection.

His case is a vivid example of the reach of the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil, which has the world’s worst COVID-19 death toll outside the United States. More than 6.3 million people have been infected and nearly 173,000 have died from the virus, according to Health Ministry data.