U.S. Election, Boris Johnson, Nagorno-Karabakh: Your Monday Briefing
News

U.S. Election, Boris Johnson, Nagorno-Karabakh: Your Monday Briefing

By Nancy Carrillo

(Would you like to receive this briefing by email? Here is the registration.)

Good Morning.

We report the latest from the US election, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s quarantine and a turning point in Nagorno-Karabakh.

More than a week after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the U.S. presidential election, Mr. Trump continues to block his successor’s transition, withholding intelligence information and critical access to the coronavirus task force and other elements of the huge government machinery that Mr. Bid. Biden will be overseeing soon.

A tweet from the president on Sunday morning appeared to acknowledge Mr Biden’s victory, but Mr Trump quickly went back on his testimony, claiming in a separate post that “WE WILL WIN!” He still claims, without evidence, that the election was rigged.

Biden looks ahead: With the presidential election essentially in retrospect, Mr Biden and his team have begun choreographing the political moves they could take in a government no longer under Mr Trump’s leadership.

A divided nation: Democrats and Republicans face perhaps the most electoral electoral landscape of a generation, and the traditional strongholds of both parties are increasingly besieged.

The President versus the Media: French President Emanuel Macron reiterated concerns similar to those raised by Mr Trump, accusing the English-language media of “legitimizing” violence and demonstrating a lack of common values.

A deal brokered by Russia ended weeks of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenians have to pack up their houses as they retreat, while the Azerbaijanis plan a joyful return to long-lost lands.

For the Armenians who have been forced to flee, the result is a tragedy. Many seemed determined to make relocating the area as difficult as possible, burning houses, destroying infrastructure and dismantling restaurants and gas stations. In Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, police officers in balaclavas arrested numerous demonstrators who accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of treason in acceding to the peace agreement.

For at least the next five years, nearly 2,000 Russian forces will patrol the border between Azerbaijani-Armenian-controlled regions to reinforce Russian influence in the formerly Soviet South Caucasus.

By the numbers: At least 2,317 Armenian soldiers have died in the conflict since September 27. Azerbaijan has not published a death toll.

Quote: “How can I burn this?” said Ashot Khanesyan, a 53-year-old Armenian, referring to the house he had built that was about to desert in the town of Kelbajar. He said his neighbors asked him to demolish the house, but “my conscience won’t let me.”

Seven months after battling a severe case of Covid-19, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Sunday that he would be quarantined after coming into contact with a lawmaker who was later found infected.

Mr. Johnson is otherwise conducting business as usual, officials said. “He will continue to work on Downing Street leading the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic,” his office said in a statement.

Experts say it’s too early to know how long immunity to the coronavirus will last, but reinfection with the virus is considered very rare for at least many months after the initial illness. Mr. Johnson’s office said in a statement that he was feeling fine and showing no symptoms.

Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

In other developments:

  • Mexico became the eleventh country to have exceeded a million total coronavirus cases.

  • Israel has pledged to buy enough Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine to vaccinate four million of its nine million citizens. The authorities in the impoverished Gaza Strip announced more than 400 new infections on Sunday, the highest one-day number since the beginning of the pandemic.

  • To survive the pandemic, London’s famous Savile Row tailors have made changes, including digital faucets, clothing lines and even a brigade of robots.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide in the recent elections in Myanmar and established another five years during which it will share power with the military that has ruled the country for nearly 50 years. Above, supporters celebrating in Yangon on November 9th.

She remains popular at home, but it’s hard to imagine another human rights hero whose global stature has declined just as quickly. Our reporter watched her move from iconic democracy to defender of a military accused of genocide.

Belarus: Despite months of mass protests, President Aleksandr Lukashenko was able to hold onto power through a combination of tough police tactics, hollow reform promises, and the insidious Homeland Security Agency, which uses its old Soviet name, the KGB

Free trade: China and 14 other nations, including Japan and New Zealand, have signed one of the world’s largest regional free trade agreements, involving 2.2 billion people.

John Paul II, Covered: The former Pope was canonized immediately after his death. But a tarnished legacy of dealing with the Church’s sexual abuse scandals has led critics to wonder if it was too quick.

Launch of Space X: A capsule rocket shot down from Florida that carried four astronauts – three from NASA and one from JAXA, the Japanese space agency – to the International Space Station. After a journey of 27.5 hours in orbit, the astronauts begin a six-month stay.

Snapshot: Above, people from the Tigray region of Ethiopia are waiting to register at a United Nations refugee center in Hamdayet, Sudan, on Saturday. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s two-year feud with the region’s rebellious ruling party has exploded into war that threatens to disrupt the entire Horn of Africa.

Lived life: Architect and interior designer David Easton, who created English-style palaces for an American aristocracy with helipads and formal English gardens, died last month at the age of 83.

Princess Diana: Since “The Crown” aired on Netflix in 2016, fans have been eagerly awaiting Princess Diana’s character. She arrived on the first episode of the series’ fourth season over the weekend.

What we read: This twitter thread. “Someone made a joke somewhere about turning the animated film ‘Ratatouille’ into a musical,” said Andrea Kannapell, the editor of Briefings, “and this gathers some of the amazing young talent who come up with songs.”

Do: Take a virtual tango lesson or visit Japan’s stores by phone. As the surge in travel increases, seasoned companies are adjusting to social distancing in new ways.

Get your week off to a good start. At home, you have ideas about what to read, cook, see, and do while being safe indoors.

Donald G. McNeil Jr., one of our science and health reporters, was at the forefront of the Times’s coverage of the coronavirus. He spoke to Times Insider about the prospect for a vaccine and the recent surge in cases in the US and Europe.

Pfizer’s announcement last week is very optimistic, suggesting the mRNA-based vaccine could be more than 90 percent effective. What should we do with it? Is It Too Early To Be Happy?

No, I would say a little joy is in order. The FDA has announced it will accept a vaccine that is only 50 percent effective, which is worse than a few years of flu shots, so everyone’s expectations have been lowered. That’s pretty great. Plus, we were pretty sure mRNA vaccines would be harmless. With this type of vaccine, you only inject a short portion of the virus’ genome, which is wrapped in a tiny ball of fat with a mild electrical charge. In contrast, some vaccines use a whole virus that is killed or weakened and is more likely to cause bad reactions.

Pfizer actually said its vaccine was at least 90 percent effective. We have to be careful: this was the press release rather than the actual data that scientists are trying to investigate. But I’ve read previous press releases from big pharma companies and compared them to the data published later, and they were honest.

How do you rate the effectiveness of locks?

We must stop thinking of bans as an end in themselves. A really tough lock – literally telling people to stay at home – stops the broadcast until you can launch real tools: quick, accurate testing, quick contact tracing, isolating infected people from their families, and so on.

That’s it for this briefing. I wish you a good start to the week.

– Natasha

Many thanks
To Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the break from the news. You can reach the team at [email protected].

PS
• We listen to “The Daily”. Our last episode is about President Trump’s refusal to allow the election.
• Here is our mini crossword puzzle and a clue: Capital of Vietnam (five letters). You can find all of our puzzles here.
• The word “hyperfuturist” – via a new music video by Lil Nas X – first appeared in The Times yesterday, according to the Twitter bot @NYT_first_said.
• Azam Ahmed, who became our office manager in Mexico City in 2015, won the Michael Kelly Award for reporting on the brutal cycles of violence in Latin America and the Caribbean “with a deeply felt humanity”.

Nancy Carrillo 5192 posts 0 comments
You might also like More from author

Comments are closed.