Australia's COVID-19 hotspot to partially lift lockdown restrictions

Australia's state of Victoria, the epicentre of the country's coronavirus outbreak, will see some of its months-long restrictions eased as of Monday but retailers and restaurants must wait longer, the state's premier said on Sunday. After more than 100 days in a strict lockdown, the five million people living in Melbourne, Victoria's capital, will be able to spend as much time outdoors as they wish, but must stay within a 25-kilometre (15-mile) radius from their homes, Premier Daniel Andrews said. Public gatherings will remain tightly limited, and retailers and restaurants must operate only on take-away or delivery orders, with the state government eyeing their reopening by Nov. 1, Andrews said.

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Senate Republicans push narrow stimulus bills as Pelosi and Mnuchin resume talks.

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Biden email episode illustrates risk to Trump from Giuliani

A New York tabloid’s puzzling account about how it acquired emails purportedly from Joe Biden’s son has raised some red flags. One of the biggest involves the source of the emails: Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani has traveled abroad looking for dirt on the Bidens, developing relationships with shadowy figures, including a Ukrainian lawmaker who U.S. officials have described as a Russian agent and part of a broader Russian effort to denigrate the Democratic presidential nominee.

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Poultry firm denies any link to US Senator of same name who mocked Kamala Harris

Perdue Chicken assures angry customers it has no links to Georgia politician

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CIA, other spy agencies gathered intel on Rudy Giuliani's dealings with alleged Russian agents

The U.S. wasn't spying on Giuliani, but on people with whom he talked, including Andrii Derkach, identified by the Treasury Department as a Russian agent.

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Migrant evacuation flights resume from Libya, U.N. agency says

United Nations evacuation flights for migrants stuck in Libya have resumed after being suspended because of the global pandemic, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday. More than 150 people from Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan, including 15 children under 18 years old, flew to Niger later on Thursday where they are now in quarantine, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

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French police arrest 9 people after 18-year-old decapitates teacher in terror attack

Nine people have been arrested after a teacher in France was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen in what Emmanuel Macron called a "blatant Islamist terrorist attack". Samuel Paty, a married father, had shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in class on freedom of expression. The killer, who was shot dead by police on Friday in broad daylight, was identified as an 18 year-old Chechen Russian born in Moscow. A national tribute to Mr Paty is being planned. Parents of pupils laid flowers at the school gate. Some said their children were distraught.

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Turkey reportedly test-fires S-400 air defense system

NATO member Turkey has tested its Russian-made S-400 air defense system, Turkish media reported, raising the specter of a new standoff with the United States.

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Parents of Student Arrested After Teacher Beheaded for Showing Anti-Muslim Cartoon

Anti-terrorism prosecutors in France have detained nine people, including a minor, after a geography teacher was decapitated in broad daylight in front of multiple witnesses on a street in northern Paris on Friday afternoon, according to Paris police.The attack outside a school in the Parisian suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine occurred after the teacher showed caricatures of the prophet Muhammad published in the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo to his students, a police spokesperson told NBC. The teacher, identified as Samuel Paty, 47, told Muslim students they could leave the classroom ahead of the lesson on freedom of expression and blasphemy, according to the school district. However, several furious parents reportedly demanded Paty’s resignation after the lesson.Citing a police source, Agence France-Presse reported that the attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” or “God is Great” after the decapitation. The attacker, said to be an 18-year-old Chechen who was born in Moscow, was then fatally shot by police in the suburb of Eragy Sur Oise after threatening officers with his knife. A handgun was found near his body, police said.He was reportedly wearing a vest that could have contained explosives, which led police to send in the bomb squad. No information has been released whether the vest was lethal. Extremists have been indoctrinated to believe that suicide bombings and killings of “infidels” will grant them 72 virgins in paradise for their sacrifice. Those arrested included the attacker’s family members and parents of one of the victim’s Muslim students. The police spokesperson said the suspect had claimed responsibility for the attack and posted a photo of the headless victim on Twitter that was later removed.Terror Investigation Launched After Knife Attack at Charlie Hebdo’s Old Offices Injures TwoThe Friday attack is one of several terrorism-related tragedies to hit the French capital over the years. Last month, two people were injured in a knife attack close to the former offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, where Islamist militants killed 12 people in 2015 in revenge for a controversial cartoon of the prophet Muhammad. Officials said the September attack was an act of Islamist terrorism carried out amid a criminal trial for the 2015 attackers.Paty had reportedly been threatened after showing students the very cartoons that Charlie Hebdo was targeted for publishing. The Guardian reported that, after the lesson, the father of a 13-year-old girl who didn’t leave the classroom posted a YouTube video claiming Paty had shown a “photo of a naked man” and said it was the Muslim prophet. The father called the teacher a thug.As the situation intensified, the school convened a meeting with Paty, a head teacher and an education department official.After the killing, Charlie Hebdo tweeted, “Intolerance just reached a new threshold and seems to stop at nothing to impose terror in our country.”“Tonight, it was the Republic that was attacked with the despicable assassination of one of its servants, a teacher,” Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said Friday. “I think tonight of him, of his family. Our unity and steadfastness are the only answers to the monstrosity of Islamist terrorism.”The Washington Post reported the country’s anti-terror prosecutor immediately opened an investigation into the “murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise” and “criminal terrorist association.”French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday evening went to the crime scene after an emergency meeting with Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin. Darmanin set up a crisis center to deal with the grisly attack. Macron called the beheading “an Islamist terrorist attack” at the scene. “One of our fellow citizens was assassinated today because he was teaching, he was teaching pupils about freedom of expression.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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US woman faces first federal execution since 1953

Lisa Montgomery is due to become the first woman to face federal execution in the US in 67 years.

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‘I don’t owe Russia money,’ Trump says, while refusing to detail any foreign debts

President Trump declined to release definitive information on his financial situation when asked at Thursday's town hall in Miami about leaked tax returns that appear to show he owes hundreds of millions of dollars.

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Fact check: Biden voted to tax Social Security, wants to reform retirement benefits

As a senator, Joe Biden voted to tax Social Security benefits. As a presidential hopeful, he does not propose taxing property or retirement accounts.

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Flush With Cash, Biden Eclipses Trump in War for the Airwaves

By BY NICK CORASANITI, WEIYI CAI AND DENISE LU from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3dBBhNN

Hunter Biden: FBI probing alleged emails for links to foreign intelligence operation, report says

Expert warns emails should be treated as ‘Trump campaign product’

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During Iowa Senate debate, Ernst has difficulty answering a question about soybean prices

During the Iowa Senate debate with Democratic candidate Theresa Greenfield on Thursday, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst has trouble answering a question posed to her about soybean prices.

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Goodbye civil rights: Amy Coney Barrett's America is a terrifying place

With her confirmation all but inevitable, how bad will Barrett be? It’s hard to say for sure – but it doesn’t look good Amy Coney Barrett’s America is a terrifying placeSo that’s that then. The confirmation hearings are over and it is almost inevitable that Amy Coney Barrett will be confirmed as a supreme court justice before the November election. Barrett will shift the supreme court from a 5-4 conservative majority to a 6-3 super-majority, a move that could fundamentally reshape America. Goodbye civil rights, hello Gilead.You’ve got to hand it to the Republicans really; they get things done. They don’t care about being called hypocrites. They don’t care about ignoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish that she not be replaced until after the election. They don’t care about common decency. They don’t care about democracy. They just care about power – and they will do whatever it takes to get it.So just how bad will Barrett be? Could her confirmation mean the end of Roe v Wade and the federal right to an abortion in America? Is marriage equality in danger? Is it possible she could criminalize birth control? Is America on its way to becoming a Divine Republic? Are we going to look at The Handmaid’s Tale and realize it was a documentary?It’s hard to say for sure. Barrett said little of substance during the hearings, repeating over and over again that she would follow the law not her personal convictions. Which, it’s worth reiterating, are religious and regressive. People of Praise, the Christian community where Barrett previously served as a “handmaid” (the not-at-all creepy term they used for female leaders), for example, is anti-abortion and expels members for gay sex.“Leave Barrett’s religion out of it!”, many on the right have said. I would be very happy to if it were clear that Barrett would leave religion out of her work. But it’s hard to feel confident that is the case. Barrett has, after all, worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), America’s largest anti-LGBTQ legal organization. She taught a class at five different sessions of the ADF’s legal fellowship program, which is designed to train Christian lawyers “to foster legal systems that fully protect our God-given rights”. Barrett repeated that she doesn’t “have an agenda” throughout the hearings – but the ADF very clearly does. As the Christian Science Monitor recently noted: “If Judge Barrett is confirmed, it would represent a culmination of decades long efforts by the conservative Christian legal movement to move from the periphery of the legal world into the mainstream.”The few things Barrett did say during the hearings also don’t bode well. She admitted, for example, that she doesn’t view Roe as a “super-precedent”: cases that are so well-settled that no one would seriously push for their overruling. This, coupled with her judicial record, which shows a commitment to reducing abortion access, means Roe could be in real trouble.Barrett’s comments – or, rather, lack thereof – on same-sex marriage and birth control were also telling. Barrett refused to give an opinion on how Obergefell v Hodges, the 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, or Griswold v Connecticut, a case regarding birth control, were decided. That’s particularly concerning as Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, recently gratuitously attacked Obergefell as having “ruinous consequences for religious liberty”.“This goose is cooked,” Cory Booker said as the Barrett hearings wound up. It certainly is – but there’s still hope that our civil rights aren’t completely done for. It’s possible Biden wins by a landslide and the Democrats get control of the House and Senate. This would give them the ability to expand the supreme court. The question is, will they actually do this? In a town hall event on Thursday, Biden said he’ll let us all know sometime before election day. In the meantime, maybe it’s worth researching how to immigrate to Canada. Thousands of Uighur children being left without parentsGovernment documents indicate that in 2018 more than 9,500 mostly Uighur children were classified as having at least one parent in prison, detention, or a re-education centre. China’s persecution of the Uighurs is a crime against humanity; the world needs to be paying it far more attention than it is. As well as detaining Uighurs there are reports that women are being sterilized. Government data shows that in two Uighur regions, the birth rate fell by more than 60% from 2015 to 2018. Nationwide over the same period, births only fell by 4.2%. How the Women’s KKK courted members through empowerment feminismDo read this fascinating history of the Women’s KKK, an affiliated but separate Klan organisation for white Protestant women. Its racist and individualistic brand of ‘feminism’ feels particularly relevant this week in light of the Barrett hearings. Nasa made a space toilet for womenUp until now space toilets were tricky for women because they weren’t configured for what Nasa politely calls “dual ops”. I won’t get into the murky details – but there’s all the information you could possibly want on extraterrestrial excretions in this Atlantic article. Princeton to pay nearly $1m to female professors in back wagesThis follows a multi-year investigation into gender pay disparities at the university. Mexico identifies two women who may have had non-consensual surgeryRemember the allegations that detained women at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement centre in Georgia were being operated on without their consent? Mexico has been investigating and has identified two of its nationals who received surgery they didn’t authorize. The week in Brazilian buttriarchyChico Rodrigues, a Brazilian senator, has been caught with a wad of banknotes in his buttocks. Police found the concealed bundle during a raid that was part of an operation against the suspected misappropriation of public funds for fighting Covid-19. It is a find, many have suggested, that will be remembered “in the anals of history”.

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‘Transition’ to Kamala? Not on Our Watch

The Democrats’ case for the election of Joe Biden is that he will keep the crazies in his party in check. The Democrats’ case for the election of Kamala Harris is that she will not.Joe Biden is 77 years old. If, as seems possible, the Biden-Harris ticket wins in November, National Review will be more vital than it has ever been in holding back the advance of progressivism and protecting the American system of government. This is why we’re counting on your support.Biden has been careful to describe himself as a “transition candidate.” Transitioning to what, exactly? Well, to Kamala Harris, that’s to what. Which means transitioning to the abolition of the Senate filibuster, to the destruction of the Supreme Court, to the elimination of private health insurance, to a ban on fracking, to the confiscation of the most commonly owned firearms in America, to the federal pre-clearance of all abortion law, to the seizing of patents, to the Green New Deal, and, if Harris is to be the transitionee, to an unpleasant, smirking, dismissive would-be authoritarian who has openly laughed at the idea that presidents are constrained by the United States Constitution.The play here is a fairly obvious one. Harris failed badly in her run for president, despite her main opponents’ being Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and the unknown mayor of South Bend, Ind. At the time she dropped out of the Democratic primary, she was in fifth place even in her home state of California. Speaking to the New York Times about the collapse, a senior member of Harris’s team complained that she had “never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly.” Yet despite all of this, Harris has been elevated to a position from which there is a reasonable chance that she will become president. Speaking in September, Harris previewed what she called the “Harris administration, together with Joe Biden.” It does not take a genius to work out what she meant.National Review has long recognized who Kamala Harris is. We were clear about her when she was being ludicrously described as a “moderate.” We were clear about her when she was laundering gang-rape allegations against Justice Kavanaugh, and again this week, when she ineptly smeared Judge Amy Coney Barrett. We have been clear about her intolerance toward religious liberty, her desire to rule as a monarch, and her invention of ahistorical lies. And, while many around us have lost their minds, we have been clear in reminding the world that the existence of real flaws on the right does not cancel out the threat that Harris poses.That threat is real. Kamala Harris represents an unreconstructed progressivism of precisely the sort this magazine was founded to oppose and will continue to oppose with all of our energy. National Review contains a wide variety of opinions on a wide variety of topics. It is no small feat to be so deeply wrong on so many fundamental questions that you alarm all of us in equal measure, but Harris has managed it. With your help, we will continue to make our case in favor of this beautiful American experiment and against those who would destroy it.

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Trump tweets fake news story from satirical conservative website

President Trump on Friday tweeted a fake news story published by the Babylon Bee, a satirical website for Christian conservatives, mocking Twitter for blocking users from sharing an unconfirmed report about Joe Biden's son.

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Major Democratic group pulls out of Colorado Senate race

A major Democratic group on Friday pulled its last remaining ads from Colorado's closely watched U.S. Senate race, a sign that the party thinks its nominee has the crucial race in the bag. Senate Majority PAC said it will cancel $1.2 million in television ads and spend the money elsewhere as Democrats press a newly expanded Senate map, which Republicans on the run in GOP strongholds such as Alaska and South Carolina. Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, 68, is challenging Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, 46, in Colorado, a state that has trended sharply to the left since President Donald Trump's 2016 election.

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Conservative argues the attacks on Hunter Biden are crossing the line

"There is something very creepy about publishing the personal e-mails of a public-figure-once-removed like Hunter"

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Missile strikes on Azerbaijan cities after separatist capital shelled

A missile strike levelled several homes in Azerbaijan's second city of Ganja on Saturday, with one resident telling AFP he saw seven victims pulled out of the rubble.

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Analysis: Arrest of ex-army chief puts Mexican president's plans under siege

The spectacular fall from grace of Mexico's previous armed forces supremo has raised awkward questions about the president's reliance on the military to fight drug gangs and manage an increasing portfolio of vital civilian infrastructure. Thursday's arrest of former Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos in the United States at the Los Angeles airport on drug trafficking charges sent shockwaves through the political establishment and embarrassed a once highly trusted institution. It threatens to sour government relations with the military, which since President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador assumed power in December 2018 has been tasked not just with reducing violence, but also managing ports and even building an airport.

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Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

President Trump begins second rally of the night, this time in Janesville, Wisconsin

10/17/20 4:58 PM