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Doctors know that viruses can affect pregnant women and their developing fetuses. They are scrambling now to understand the effects of COVID-19 on pregnancies. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.Producer: Bronwyn Benito  
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Authorities in Nigeria are investigating reports that soldiers opened fire on demonstrators protesting against police brutality Tuesday night. The incident took place at Lekki Toll Plaza, an upscale district in Lagos, the country’s largest city and financial hub. One eyewitness, Akinbosola Ogunsanya, told news outlets that soldiers pulled into the plaza and after the lights were turned off at the plaza began shooting.   Ogunsanya and other eyewitnesses say there were multiple casualties at the scene.  Reports of the shooting came on the first night of a 24-hour curfew imposed by Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, which prohibits all but essential workers and first responders from the streets after 4 p.m. local time.  A spokesman for the governor, Gboyega Akosile, said on Twitter that the Lagos state government has ordered an investigation into the incident.The State Government has ordered an investigation into the incident.Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has advised the security agents not to arrest anyone on account of the curfew, which he urges residents to observe for the peaceful atmosphere we all cherish. #LASG#ForAGreaterLagos— The Lagos State Govt (@followlasg) October 20, 2020The international human rights group Amnesty International issued a statement saying there was “credible but disturbing evidence” of fatalities from the shooting at Lekki Toll Plaza.   “While we continue to investigate the killings, Amnesty International wishes to remind the authorities that under international law, security forces may only resort to the use of lethal force when strictly unavoidable to protect against imminent threat of death or serious injury,” the human rights watchdog tweeted.   The West African nation has been engulfed by two weeks of massive protests against the government’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad, commonly known as SARS, which were sparked by video allegedly depicting a man being beaten by SARS officers. The unit has long been accused of carrying out harassment, kidnappings, extortion, torture and murder. The demonstrations, conducted under the banner #EndSARS, led the Nigerian government to disband the controversial police unit.  But the demonstrations have persisted and turned violent as protesters demand broader changes to policing and an end to corruption.Video taken by a stringer for VOA’s Hausa service in the city of Jos Tuesday showed angry demonstrators hurling rocks and setting fires in the middle of one street, sidewalks covered with glass from shattered windows, burned out vehicles, and uniformed and plainclothes police patrolling the streets. “We need a new Nigeria. That is why we’re here,” protester David Danladi told VOA Hausa. “We need everything about the police to be changed.”   “We need someone that is going to address, that is going to tell us, ‘Look, we have heard your cry. We have heard your demands,’” Danladi said. “That is the change that we want.” At least 10 people have died since protests began earlier this month. Protesters and rights groups including Amnesty International have accused Nigerian police of using excessive force during demonstrations.  
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The White House and the Democratic-majority U.S. House of Representatives “are serious about finding a compromise” on a second massive round of coronavirus aid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday. Pelosi said she and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke by telephone Tuesday afternoon, and that she hoped they could continue talks Wednesday after he returns from an overseas trip. “Our conversation provided more clarity and common ground as we move closer to an agreement. Today’s deadline enabled us to see that decisions could be reached and language could be exchanged,” Pelosi said in a letter to her Democratic colleagues. The two sides called on the heads of congressional committees “to resolve differences about funding levels and language,” Pelosi said. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell committed Tuesday to bring any Trump-approved legislation that results from such a deal to the Senate floor for a vote.  “If such a deal were to clear the House, obviously, with the presidential signature or promise, we would put it on the floor of the Senate,” McConnell told reporters.     If negotiations between the White House and the Democratic-majority House of Representatives fail, the next opportunity for negotiations on aid will come during a lame-duck session of Congress in November and December.  “Nancy Pelosi isn’t serious,” McConnell said Tuesday on the timing of negotiations. “That’s because she doesn’t want anything to pass, she and [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer have made a calculated decision. It’s a political decision that nothing is going to pass until after Election Day because they believe that they have better chances of success on Election Day.”Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaks to reporters after casting his vote in the 2020 general election at the Kentucky Exhibition Center in Louisville, Ky., Oct. 15, 2020.The president also raised the timing of the deal in relation to the election during a campaign stop in Arizona Monday, saying Pelosi “at this moment, does not want to do anything that’s going to affect the election.”  U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly failed to reach an agreement on a second round of economic aid to millions of Americans impacted by the pandemic. In September, Senate Republicans failed to pass a slimmed-down $500 billion aid proposal. The House passed the $2.2 trillion Heroes Act in June and has so far rebuffed the administration’s offer of $1.8 trillion for a new round of aid.     The Senate voted Tuesday on another $500 billion proposal. That bill would provide funding for a new round of unemployment benefits and the popular Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).     McConnell said Senate Republicans did not feel there was a need for a second round of the $1,200 stimulus payments many Americans received as part of the CARES Act earlier this year.     “We thought about $500 billion was appropriate at this juncture,” he told reporters. “No one would argue the economy’s in good shape but it’s noteworthy that [un]employment is at about 8.4% which is what it was in several years during the Obama first term.”   He said the Republican proposal did provide funding for enhanced unemployment benefits.     Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the Senate votes this week a stunt.  “Democrats want to get a big bold bill that will meet the American people’s needs as soon as we can,” he said. “Nancy Pelosi is fighting to get one now. And as you know we’ve been met just with intransigence by the Republican Senate. We will try to get one in the lame duck and we will try to get one should we win the presidency and win the senate after that, the sooner the better,” Schumer told reporters Tuesday.     President Donald Trump announced an end to negotiations on a new round of aid earlier this month before reversing course and tweeting, “Go big or go home!” His expression of support for a larger topline number closer to House Democrats’ asks for close to $2 trillion and has caused discomfort among many Senate Republicans.  The $2 trillion CARES Act, passed by bipartisan agreement in March, was one of the largest aid packages in U.S. history, providing $600 in weekly enhanced unemployment benefits for millions of out of work Americans. The weekly benefits expired on July 31.     The U.S. economy is showing some signs of recovery from the lockdowns instituted earlier this year to contain the spread of the virus. More than 11.4 million jobs have been recovered, and there are signs of increased hiring in hard-hit industries such as tourism.     New unemployment claims jumped last week to more than 890,000, the highest level since mid-August, although continuing unemployment claims dropped to 10 million.  The U.S. leads the world with just over 220,000 COVID-19 deaths, as well as infections, with more than 8 million cases total, according to Johns Hopkins University. 
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Should Americans trust polling data showing Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden leading President Donald Trump ahead of the November 3 election? VOA’s Elizabeth Lee takes a look.
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Hispanics, Blacks and Asian Americans in the U.S. have been dying at disproportionately higher rates from the coronavirus compared to white Americans, government health experts reported Tuesday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new report that from late January — when the pandemic first hit U.S. shores from China and Europe — through early October, deaths of white people were about 12% higher than in the same months of the four previous years. But the CDC said deaths of Hispanics in that 2020 timeframe were 53.6% higher than in recent years, with deaths of Blacks up 32.9% and Asian Americans by 36.6%. “These disproportionate increases among certain racial and ethnic groups are consistent with noted disparities in COVID-19 mortality,” the CDC said. The federal health agency said the largest percentage increase in deaths was seen among individuals ages 25 to 44. In absolute numbers, people under age 25 fared best with 841 excess deaths. The total number of excess deaths compared to recent years ranged from 841 fatalities in people younger than 25 to 94,646 among those ages 75 to 84. The U.S. has now recorded more than 220,000 coronavirus deaths and 8.2 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins University. Both figures are the highest of any country across the globe. 
 
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​.Daily DebunkClaim: “No one under 20 has died of COVID-19, and ‘it has not actually been determined yet’ that anyone under 20 can spread it to an older person.” — Wisconsin senatorVerdict: Mostly falseRead the full story at: PolitifactSocial Media DisinfoCirculating on social media: “A widely shared image claims to show CNN anchor Don Lemon denouncing Nigeria’s controversial Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and Covid-19 as “two deadly viruses” killing people in the West African nation. AFP Fact Check found that the picture was digitally manipulated to change the news banner.” — AFP Fact CheckVerdict: FalseRead the full story at: AFP Fact Check Factual Reads on CoronavirusHow to void coronavirus while voting
Epidemiologists offer tips for U.S. voters and poll workers to limit their chances of getting infected. — Scientific American, October 14
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From making sure voters are eligible to cast a ballot, to tracking and reporting results, local election officers are key players in the U.S. presidential election. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports on what they’re doing to make the voting fair and safe.Camera and Produced by: Veronica Balderas Iglesias  
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The judge was incredulous as a federal prosecutor pushed to keep a 25-year-old man behind bars until his trial on a charge of having a Molotov cocktail at a protest in May.
The judge couldn’t understand how the government was arguing that the man — who had never previously been in trouble with the law, wasn’t a member of violent groups and lived with his parents in a suburb outside Austin, Texas — was too dangerous to be released.
The prosecutor pressed his case anyway, defending the government’s effort to keep the man locked up even as prisons across the U.S. were releasing high-risk inmates because of COVID-19 and prosecutors had been told to consider the risks of incarceration during a pandemic when seeking detention.
The case highlights the no-holds-barred approach the U.S. Department of Justice has taken against protesters involved in civil unrest, determined to focus on federal action and a reluctance to release.
It also underscores how the people being brought up on federal charges rarely fit President Donald Trump’s portrayal of them as members of left-wing radical groups.
An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of court documents from the more than 300 federal arrests nationwide shows that many look like people caught up in the moment. Very few of those charged appear to be affiliated with highly organized extremist groups, and many are young suburban adults who are from the very neighborhoods Trump is vowing to protect amid an election year effort to scare white voters from the suburbs into reelecting him.
Not to say there hasn’t been violence. Police cars have been set on fire. Officers have been injured and blinded. Windows have been smashed, stores looted, businesses destroyed.
Some of those facing charges undoubtedly share far-left and anti-government views. Far-right protesters also have been arrested and charged. Some defendants have driven to protests from out of state. Some have criminal records and were illegally carrying weapons. Others are accused of using the protests as an opportunity to steal or create havoc.
But many have had no previous run-ins with the law and no apparent ties to antifa, the umbrella term for leftist militant groups that Trump has said he wants to declare a terrorist organization.
Attorney General William Barr has urged his prosecutors to aggressively go after protesters who cause violence and has suggested that rarely used sedition charges could apply. But defense attorneys question why the Department of Justice has taken on some cases they say belong in state court, where defendants typically get much lighter sentences.
“It is highly unusual, and without precedent in recent American history,” said Ron Kuby, a longtime attorney who isn’t involved the cases but has represented scores of clients over the years in protest-related incidents. “Almost all of the conduct that’s being charged is conduct that, when it occurs, is prosecuted at the state and local level.”
In one case in Utah, where a police car was burned, federal prosecutors had to defend why they were bringing arson charges in federal court. They said it was appropriate because the patrol car was used in interstate commerce.
Even though most of the demonstrations have been peaceful, Trump has made “law and order” a major part of his reelection campaign, casting the protests as lawless and violent in mostly Democratic cities he says have done nothing to stymie the mayhem. If the cities refuse to properly clamp down, he says, the federal government has to step in.
“I know about antifa, and I know about the radical left, and I know how violent they are and how vicious they are, and I know how they are burning down cities run by Democrats,” Trump said at an NBC town hall.
In dozens of cases, the government has pushed to keep the protesters behind bars while they await their trials amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 220,000 people across the U.S. There have been more than 16,000 positive cases in the federal prison system, according to a tracker compiled by the AP and The Marshall Project.
In some cases, prosecutors have gone so far as appealing judge’s orders to release defendants. Pre-trial detention generally is reserved only for people who are clearly dangers to the community or a risk of fleeing.
In the Texas case, Magistrate Judge Andrew Austin repeatedly challenged the prosecutor to explain why Cyril Lartigue, who authorities say was caught on camera making a Molotov cocktail, should be behind bars while he awaits his trial. Lartigue, of Cedar Park, described his actions that night as a “flash of stupidity,” prosecutors said.
The judge said there are lot of people “who do something stupid that’s dangerous that we don’t even consider detaining.”
“I’m frustrated because I don’t think this is a hard case,” the judge said. “I have defendants in here with significant criminal histories that the government agrees to release.”
“We have no evidence of him — at least that’s been given to me — being a radical or a member of a group that advocates violence toward the police or others. We’ve got no criminal history. … What evidence is there that he’s a danger to society?” the judge asked.
The judge allowed Lartigue to stay out of jail.
While some of the defendants clearly hold radical or anti-government beliefs, prosecutors have provided little evidence of any affiliations they have with organized extremist groups.
In one arrest in Erie, Pennsylvania, community members raised more than $2,500 to help with bail for a 29-year-old Black man who was arrested after they said white people had come and spray painted a parking lot.
In thousands of pages of court documents, the only apparent mention of antifa is in a Boston case in which authorities said a FBI Gang Task Force member was investigating “suspected ANTIFA activity associated with the protests” when a man fired at him and other officers. Authorities have not claimed that the man accused of firing the shots is a member of antifa.
Others have social media leftist ties; a Seattle man who expressed anarchist beliefs on social media is accused of sending a message through a Portland citizen communication portal threatening to blow up a police precinct.
Several of the defendants are not from the Democratic-led cities that Trump has likened to “war zones” but from the suburbs the president has claimed to have “saved.” Of the 93 people arrested on federal criminal charges in Portland, 18 defendants are from out of state, the Justice Department said.
This has contributed to a blame game that has been a subplot throughout the protests. Leaders in Minneapolis and Detroit have decried people from out of state and suburbanites for coming into their cities and causing havoc. Trump in turn has blamed the cities for not doing their part.
“Don’t come down to Detroit and tear the city up and then go back home. That’s putting another knee on the neck of Black folk because we got to live here,” the Rev. Wendell Anthony of the NAACP said in May.
More than 40% of those facing federal charges are white. More than two-thirds are under the age of 30, and most are men. More than a quarter have been charged with arson. More than a dozen are accused of civil disorder, and others are charged with burglary and failing to comply with a federal order. They were arrested in cities across the U.S., from Portland, Oregon, to Minneapolis, Boston and New York.
Attorneys for those facing federal charges either declined to comment or didn’t respond to messages from the AP.
Brian Bartels, a 20-year-old suburban Pittsburgh man who is described by prosecutors as a “self-identified left-wing anarchist,” was flanked by his parents when he turned himself in to authorities. Bartels, who lives at his parents’ house, spray painted an “A” on a police cruiser before jumping on top of it and smashing its windshield during a protest in the city, prosecutors said. He pleaded guilty in September.
One defendant who was arrested during a protest in the central Massachusetts city of Worcester told authorities he was “with the anarchist group.” Vincent Eovacious, 18, who is accused of possessing several Molotov cocktails, told authorities that he had been “waiting for an opportunity,” according to court documents.
But tucked into the protest-related cases are accusations of far-right extremism and racism as well.
John Malcolm Bareswill, angry that a local Black church held a prayer vigil for George Floyd, called the church and threatened to burn it to the ground, using racial slurs in a phone call overheard by children, prosecutors said. Bareswill, 63, of Virginia Beach, faces 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to making a telephonic threat.
Two Missouri militia members who authorities say traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to see Trump’s visit in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake were arrested at a hotel in September with a cache of guns, according to court documents. An attorney for one of the men, Michael Karmo, said he is “charged criminally for conduct that many Americans would consider patriotic,” as authorities have alleged his motive was to assist overwhelmed law enforcement.
Three of the men arrested are far-right extremists, members of the “Boogaloo” movement plotting to overthrow the government and had been stockpiling military-grade weapons and hunting around for the right public event to unleash violence for weeks before Floyd’s death, according to court documents.
After aborting a mission related to reopening businesses in Nevada as the coronavirus pandemic raged, they settled on a Floyd-related protest led by Black Lives Matter. Angry it had not turned violent, they brought carloads of explosives, military-grade weapons, to a meet-up about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the protest site and pumped gasoline into tanks. FBI agents arrested them before they could act, according to a criminal complaint.
FBI Director Christopher Wray recently told a congressional panel  that extremists driven by white supremacist or anti-government ideologies have been responsible for most deadly attacks in the U.S. over the past few years. He said that antifa is more of an ideology or a movement than an organization, though the FBI has terrorism investigations of “violent anarchist extremists, any number of whom self identify with the antifa movement.”
But the handling of the federal protest cases is vastly different from other recent times of unrest.
“Look at Travyon (Martin) verdicts, Eric Garner verdicts,” Kuby said, talking about high-profile cases in which Black people were killed but no charges were filed.
“There was a tremendous amount of anger and unrest and activity that was objectively unlawful,” he said. “There were objections about law enforcement being militarized, but you didn’t see following the quelling of those demonstrations any significant federal law enforcement involvement.”
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Thousands of aboriginal Australians are expected to join a class action lawsuit that has been filed against the West Australian government for compensation for years of unpaid work. Historians have said that at the time the authorities knew the practice was a form of slavery.      In the 19th and 20th centuries, indigenous children as young as four were forcibly taken from their families to work in mines, on farms and as domestic servants in Australia.  Many received little or no wages, and some were paid only with bread and beef.   Lawyers have said conditions were “akin to slavery.” Until the 1970s, wages earned by indigenous workers in Western Australia were paid to the state government, but rarely was the money passed on. 
 
Lawyers have said as many as 10,000 workers and their descendants would be eligible to join the stolen wages class action lawsuit, which has been filed in Australia’s Federal Court. 
 
Jan Saddler is the head of class actions at Shine Lawyers, a legal firm that is leading the court case.     
 
“We have been talking to indigenous Western Australians who are well into their 70s and 80s.  Those people have effectively been waiting all their lives to be properly compensated.  They are actually waiting to receive their wages from the 1940s and the 1950s and they still have not been paid, and this is what that claim is all about,” she said.
 
Up until the late 1970s, Australia’s laws controlled every aspect of indigenous peoples’ lives — from buying clothes to whether they could marry.  They also allowed wages to be withheld.   
 
The Western Australian state government, which is being sued for compensation, has said it hopes a mediated settlement can be reached. 
 
Multi-million-dollar reparation schemes have compensated indigenous workers in the states of Queensland and New South Wales.  A previous restitution program in Western Australia limited claimants to payments of $1,400 and came with strict conditions.  Campaigners said it was too restricted and did not go far enough to address the injustices of the past.  
 
A federal parliamentary inquiry in 2006 tried to determine how much money may have been stolen from aboriginal Australians over the decades, but lawmakers found that wage theft was so widespread the amount was almost impossible to calculate.    
 
 
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Bolivian presidential candidate Carlos Mesa of the Citizen Community party has conceded defeat to rival Luis Arce Catacora, candidate of the Movement Towards Socialism party, citing exit polls showing Arce with an insurmountable lead. Speaking Monday, Mesa said he recognizes that there has been a winner in the election and that it is appropriate in a democracy to recognize the victory. Mesa’s concession comes a day after the election, with the official count by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal expected in the next few days.  Exit polls revealed Arce obtained at least a 20-percentage point lead over Mesa, with third placed candidate Luis Fernando Camacho of the Creemos coalition garnering just over 14 percent of the votes. Meantime, the French News Agency reports exiled former president Evo Morales is suggesting he will return to Bolivia after the election victory by Arce, a former member of Morales’ cabinet.
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Thousands of indigenous peoples in Colombia are planning to join a national strike this week after staging a mass protest Monday in Bogota, insisting the government change its economic and social policies. Protesters are also demanding an end to violence against social leaders and mass killings.  Indigenous leaders refused to meet with a delegation sent by President Ivan Duque, saying they wanted to meet directly with the Colombian leader. President Duque said nothing justifies placing our health and life at risk at the moment. He said if we have discussions, let’s have them within the framework of democracy, without issuing a summons or ultimatums, or invoking judgments that have no basis in reality. He added the dialogue should be sectorial and timely with regard to the issues of the regions, as we have already had.  Indigenous groups are expected to join Wednesday’s planned national strike set up by unions other groups. 
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President Donald Trump heaped criticism Monday against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the press and the polls that show him trailing Democrat Joe Biden in key battleground states two weeks before Election Day. On the third day of a Western campaign swing, Trump is hoping for the type of last-minute surge that gave him a come-from-behind victory four years ago.  His aggressive travel comes as Trump plays defense in states he won four years ago, though the president insisted he was confident as he executed a packed schedule despite the pandemic. “We’re going to win,” he told campaign staff on a morning conference call from Las Vegas. He went on to acknowledge: “I wouldn’t have told you that maybe two or three weeks ago,” referring to the days when he was hospitalized with COVID-19.  Seeking to shore up the morale of his staff, Trump blasted his government’s own scientific experts as too negative, even as his handling of the pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 Americans remains a central issue to voters. “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots,” Trump said of the government’s top infectious disease expert. “Every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb. But there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him. But Fauci’s a disaster.” At a rally in Prescott, Arizona, Trump assailed Biden for pledging to heed the advice of scientific experts, saying dismissively that his rival “wants to listen to Dr. Fauci.” The doctor is both respected and popular, and Trump’s rejection of scientific advice on the pandemic has drawn bipartisan condemnation. At his rally, Trump also ramped up his attacks on the news media, singling out NBC’s Kristen Welker, the moderator of the next presidential debate, as well as CNN for aggressively covering a pandemic that is now infecting tens of thousands of Americans every day.  Fauci, in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that aired Sunday, said he was not surprised that Trump contracted the virus after he held a series of large events with few face coverings. Fauci also objected to the president’s campaign using his words in a campaign ad. “I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask,” Fauci said of the president. Trump’s comments drew a defense of Fauci from Tennessee GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander, who praised the doctor as one of the nation’s “most distinguished public servants.”  As Trump turned his flouting of scientific advice into a campaign applause line, Alexander added that if more Americans had heeded Fauci’s advice, “we’d have fewer cases of COVID-19, and it would be safer to go back to school and back to work and out to eat.” Biden was off the campaign trail Monday, preparing for Thursday’s second and final debate. His campaign praised Fauci while saying that “Trump’s reckless and negligent leadership threatens to put more lives at risk.” “Trump’s closing message in the final days of the 2020 race is to publicly mock Joe Biden for trusting science and to call Dr. Fauci, the leading public health official on COVID-19, a ‘disaster’ and other public health officials ‘idiots,'” the campaign said. “Trump is mocking Biden for listening to science. Science.” 
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The United States has rejected the expiration of an international arms embargo on Iran, saying it will use its domestic laws to punish any weapons supplier dealing with the Islamic Republic.   “No nation that desires a peaceful Middle East should contemplate arms sales with Iran,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday on Twitter. “We are prepared to use domestic authorities to sanction individuals or entities contributing to these arms sales.”  Another statement issued Saturday by Pompeo gave a different interpretation of the arms embargoes, saying that “virtually all U.N. sanctions on Iran returned” on Sept. 19 after Washington triggered the “snapback” provision of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal.   FILE – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks to reporters following a meeting with members of the U.N. Security Council, at the United Nations, Aug. 20, 2020. (AP)Other world powers, including America’s European allies, disagree with the U.S. interpretation, saying that by withdrawing from the JCPOA in 2018, Washington forfeited its right to use the snapback provision of the deal.   Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the lifting of the arms embargo was a success for his country’s diplomacy.  “A momentous day for the international community, which — in defiance of malign U.S. efforts — has protected UNSC Res. 2231 and JCPOA,” Zarif tweeted Sunday.   FILE – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaks at the Raisina Dialogue 2020 in New Delhi, India, Jan. 15, 2020. (AP)”Today’s normalization of Iran’s defense cooperation with the world is a win for the cause of multilateralism and peace and security in our region,” he added.  No shopping spree  Despite the expiration of the decade-long embargo, some experts doubt that Iran will go on a weapons shopping spree as its economy struggles under crippling U.S. sanctions.  “Iran’s difficult economic situation remains the greatest obstacle to its procurement of large-scale, costly weapons,” Nicole Grajewski, a fellow with the Belfer Center’s International Security Program, wrote in an article published on the center’s Russia Matters website.    “It is simply unfeasible for a country facing a crippling economic downturn to afford expensive weapons such as the S-400 or a squadron of fighter jets,” she added.   Iran’s imported weapon systems largely date back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which resulted in the ouster of the country’s pro-Western King Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Those weapons, experts say, need upgrading now.  FILE – In this photo released by the official website of the Iranian Defense Ministry Aug. 13, 2018, Defense Minister Gen. Amir Hatami walks past a missile display at an undisclosed location in Iran.Iran Defense Minister Amir Hatami on Sunday, however, boasted about his country’s homemade weapons.  “The ground for selling and buying weapons is prepared for the Islamic Republic of Iran, but of course the sales will be more,” Iranian state-owned Tehran Times quoted Hatami as saying.   U.S. sanctions  Since its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Washington has increasingly imposed sanctions on those trading with Iran. Currently, nearly all key sectors of Iran’s oil-based economy are under U.S. sanctions.  The most recent round of sanctions, introduced earlier this month, targeted 18 “major” Iran-based banks. That followed last month’s sweeping executive order from President Donald Trump to “restrict Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile and conventional weapons pursuits.”  Russia and China are viewed as the most likely arms suppliers to Iran as both countries have publicly stated their willingness to sell weapons to Tehran.   But experts are split on whether U.S. sanctions have the power to deter Moscow and Beijing from signing defense contracts with Iran.”If anything, the Trump administration’s opposition to arms sales to Iran could incentivize the Russians and Chinese to announce new transfers, which would probably take some time to implement,” Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told VOA.  On the other hand, Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), says the threat of sanctions by the Trump administration along with previous authorities “constitute robust non-kinetic tools to deter and/or punish sales or transfers of weapons.”  Even though the most recent designations include a “military-affiliated bank,” some experts suggest their impact on the ground would be symbolic.    “Iranian officials have already admitted that their interaction with the global system has been blocked for months,” Alex Vatanka, an Iran analyst at the Middle East Institute in Washington, told VOA. “So more sanctions would not necessarily worsen their situation as the governor of central bank of Iran, [Abdolnaser] Hemmati, has made it clear that almost all companies and countries are staying away from dealing with Iran.”   Humanitarian exemptions  Washington says its sanctions include exemptions that would permit sending humanitarian assistance to the Iranian people as they are battling the coronavirus pandemic.   “Our sanctions programs will continue until Iran stops its support of terrorist activities and ends its nuclear programs,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Oct. 8 when introducing the latest round of sanctions. “Today’s actions will continue to allow for humanitarian transactions to support the Iranian people.”  Iranian officials claim that the U.S. designation of Iranian banks is aimed at “starving” the Iranian people.    “Amid COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. regime wants to blow up our remaining channels to pay for food and medicine,” Zarif said in response to the recent U.S. designations.   Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran, a U.S.-based advocacy group, said the U.S. sanctions would rather help expose Iranian policies that prioritize military adventurism over the well-being of its people.   “Just a few weeks ago,” he said, “Iran’s health minister complained that only a small portion of promised funds from the National Development Fund (NDF), which is controlled by Iran’s supreme leader, had been received for combating the coronavirus.”  “The NDF has been used in the past to fund Iran’s malign activity throughout the region,” Brodsky said.  
 
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The World Health Organization says 184 countries have now joined the COVID-19 global vaccine alliance, known as COVAX, designed to speed development and ensure distribution of viable vaccines and treatments for the ailment caused by the coronavirus.At the organization’s Monday briefing at its headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Ecuador and Uruguay are the most recent nations to join the cooperative program.The WHO chief said that with more than 100 COVID-19 vaccine candidates under development, COVAX represents “the largest portfolio of potential COVID-19 vaccines and the most effective way to share safe and effective vaccines equitably across the world.”Tedros maintains that the “equitably sharing of vaccines is the fastest way to safeguard high-risk communities, stabilize health systems and drive a truly global economic recovery.”The United States is not part of the COVAX program, calling it too constraining. Earlier this year, the Trump administration said it was withdrawing support for WHO, saying they were too heavily influenced by China, which last month announced it would be part of the COVAX program. Trump has blamed China for the global spread of the disease.In his recorded remarks from Beijing to last month’s U.N. General Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping said any attempt to politicize the pandemic should be rejected. He said the WHO should be given a leading role in the international response to the coronavirus.  Tedros said that as the virus spreads in Europe and other parts of the world, “sharing lifesaving health supplies globally, including personal protective equipment, supplies of oxygen, dexamethasone and vaccines when they’re proven to be safe and effective, we can save lives and get through this pandemic.”
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With 15 days remaining before the U.S. presidential election, Democratic challenger Joe Biden continues to lead in national polling against Republican President Donald Trump and millions of Americans are casting early ballots.Poll aggregators show Biden, the former vice president and a fixture on the U.S. political scene for nearly a half century, with a 9- or 10-percentage point lead nationally and perhaps half that lead in key battleground states that will determine the outcome.President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally, Oct. 19, 2020, in Prescott, Ariz.Trump is still confident he will be reelected.Already, there has been unprecedented early voting in the U.S., with nearly 28 million people having cast ballots, either in person or by mail. The figure equals about 20% of the total vote count when Trump edged Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and another 30% could vote by the official Election Day.Some of the voters have told interviewers they voted early to avoid coming face-to-face with other people at polling stations on Nov. 3 amid the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S.Meanwhile, some Democrats have said their early voting motivation was to be among the first to vote to oust Trump, while pollsters say a majority of Republicans have declared their intention to vote in person on Election Day, as is traditional in the U.S.Based on the polling, some news organizations are already predicting that Biden will become the country’s 46th president on the Jan. 20 inauguration day and its oldest at 78. An election loss would make Trump, a real estate entrepreneur and reality show host turned politician, the third incumbent U.S. president in the last four decades to lose his reelection contest for a second four-year term.Trump also trailed in the polls heading into the last election, but then scored an upset following intense campaigning in key battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.The polling website FiveThirtyEight.com says its 40,000 computerized simulations of the election show Biden winning 88 times in 100 possible scenarios considering prospective voter turnout, historical trends and recent election performance in the country’s 50 states.Other news sites are already suggesting that Biden is ahead in enough key battleground states to amass more than the majority 270 of the 538 electoral votes needed to win the presidency in the Electoral College, the U.S. system of indirect democracy.The U.S. national popular vote does not determine the winner, but rather the outcome in each of the states, where the vote winner in all but two of the least populous states amasses all its electoral votes.Trump and Biden have campaigned extensively in battleground states in recent days ahead of Thursday’s second and last debate between the two in Nashville, Tennessee. Trump headed Monday to two campaign stops in the southwestern state of Arizona, which he won in 2016 but now narrowly trails Biden in polling there.Biden took time off from the campaign trail Monday to prepare for the debate.FILE – Vice President Mike Pence speaks at a campaign rally held at the Reading Regional Airport, in Reading, Pa., Oct. 17, 2020. (AP)Trump’s running mate, Vice President Mike Pence, campaigned in the northeastern states of Maine and Pennsylvania. Biden’s vice-presidential running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, campaigned in another key battleground, the vote-heavy southeastern state of Florida, Trump’s adopted home state.Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks to supporters at a campaign event in Orlando, Fla., Oct. 19, 2020. (AP)Four years ago, Trump lost the national popular vote to Clinton by about 2%, nearly 3 million votes, while winning the election because he narrowly won the vote in three northern states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — that traditionally had been carried by Democrats. In the Electoral College, Trump collected all the electoral votes in those three states — and the presidency.Current state-by-state polling is not predicting any Trump wins in states carried by Clinton in 2016, while Biden has small polling advantages in several states Trump won, including the three that carried him to the White House, along with others where the outcome is in doubt.Trump, 74, continues to predict himself as the winner. But last week, at a campaign stop in the southern state of Georgia, he pondered the possibility of losing to Biden.“Could you imagine if I lose?” he said. “I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.” In other states, he has told voters he won’t return to see them again if they don’t carry the vote for him.On Sunday night in Nevada, Trump contended that his large rallies of thousands of supporters in contested states will carry him to victory, in contrast to the modest turnouts at Biden events, where social distancing by mask-wearing supporters is practiced.Before leaving for Arizona on Monday, Trump, who recently spent four days hospitalized after contracting the coronavirus, assailed government health experts, including the country’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, for their role in handling the pandemic and their urging for Americans to wear face masks and socially distance themselves from others.”People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots,” Trump declared in a call with campaign staff.Biden has often attacked Trump’s handling of the virus, observing at a Sunday rally in North Carolina that Trump had said that the U.S. had turned the corner on the pandemic.”As my grandfather would say, this guy’s gone around the bend if he thinks we’ve turned the corner. Turning the corner? Things are getting worse,” Biden said.In recent days, the U.S. is recording more than 50,000 new infections daily. In all, according to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. has recorded world-leading totals of more than 219,000 deaths and 8.1 million infections. 
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Vote counting is underway in Guinea to determine who will be the west African nation’s new president.   Sunday’s election, which pitted incumbent President Alpha Conde against opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo, was the culmination of months of political unrest over a controversial new constitution that allowed Conde to bypass the two-term limit for the president’s post.  Conde became Guinea’s first democratically elected president in 2010 after decades as an opposition activist. The new constitution prompted mass protests and harsh criticism by right groups about democracy backsliding in the country.  At least 50 people have been killed in the past year during mass protests of the new constitution.     On the eve of the elections, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres issued a statement calling on “all national stakeholders to ensure that the polls are conducted in an inclusive and peaceful manner.”    Guterres urged all political leaders and their supporters to refrain from “acts of incitement, inflammatory language, ethnic profiling and violence” and also “to resolve any disputes that may arise through legal means.”    Conde faces 10 other contenders besides Diallo, a former prime minister who finished second to Conde in 2010 and 2015 elections.     Diallo, a former prime minister who finished second to Conde in 2010 and 2015 elections, has warned about voter fraud and has said he will challenge any irregularities.  The final results are not expected for several days. 
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The world has now surpassed 40 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections. According to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, 40,050,902 people have been infected with the disease as of early Monday morning, and more than 1.1 million have died.  The most recent cases include Saeb Erekat, the veteran Palestinian negotiator and secretary-general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, who was rushed to a Jerusalem hospital Sunday, where he has been placed on a ventilator.FILE – Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat meets with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi (not pictured) in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 6, 2020. The 65-year-old Erekat, who was diagnosed with COVID-19 earlier this month, underwent a lung transplant in the United States in 2017, which compromised his immune system and  made him especially vulnerable to the virus.   A spokesperson at Hadassah Medical Center said Monday that Erekat “had a quiet night” but his condition eventually deteriorated and is “now defined as critical.” Another prominent person infected with COVID-19 IS South African health minister Zweli Mkhize.  Mkhize issued a statement Sunday that he and his wife tested positive for the virus the day before after experiencing mild symptoms.  Mkhize’s news comes days after South Africa officially surpassed 700,000 infections.   According to the Associated Press, Iran has confirmed 337 new coronavirus deaths, breaking the country’s single-day death toll record of 279, set just on Sunday. As scientists around the world race to develop therapies and an eventual vaccine against the novel coronavirus, U.S.-based biotechnology firm Vaxart, one of the many companies working on the vaccine, is under federal investigation for allegedly exaggerating its involvement in the Trump administration’s multi-billion vaccine development program.   The company claimed in a press release in June that its experimental oral vaccine had been selected by Operation Warp Speed, which sent its shares skyrocketing from $3 to $17 a share.  A hedge fund that partly controlled the company sold all of its shares in Vaxart, reaping $200 million profit. But the government later revealed that Vaxart had not received any funding from Operation Warp Speed, and that its vaccine was only involved in preliminary studies on animals.  The company is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Justice Department, and is also facing numerous lawsuits from shareholders.   The U.S. continues to lead the world in COVID cases, with 8.1 million infections, and nearly 220,000 deaths. FILE – Medical staffers take swabs as they test for COVID-19 at a drive-through, in Rome, Oct. 13, 2020.While cities in Italy, France and Britain are imposing new restrictions to blunt a second wave of COVID-19, the southern Australian city of Melbourne is slowly coming out of three months of strict lockdown orders.   As of midnight Sunday local time, the city’s 5 million residents will be able to spend as much time away from home as they wish for exercising or school, and the distance they can travel away from home has been increased from five to 25 kilometers.  Outdoor gatherings have an increased limit from five people to 10 from two households, while facilities such as skate parks, golf courses and tennis courts will reopen. The relaxed rules come as the capital city of Victoria state reported just two new coronavirus cases on Sunday and no deaths.  Authorities had reported more than 700 new daily infections at the peak of the resurgence in July.     
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