State of Emergency.
News Items by John Ellis.
1. Russian biologist Denis Rebrikov has started gene editing in eggs donated by women who can hear to learn how to allow some deaf couples to give birth to children without the genetic mutation that impairs hearing. The news, detailed in an e-mail he sent to Nature on 17 October, is the latest in a saga that kicked off in June, when Rebrikov told Nature of his controversial intention to create gene-edited babies resistant to HIV using the popular CRISPR tool.
2. China and the United States made “concrete progress” in many areas during their latest round of talks to resolve the trade war, but negotiations must be on an equal basis, Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He said earlier today. In his first public comments about the talks in Washington which ended on October 11, Liu said the two sides had built an important foundation for the signing of a “phased deal." The two sides have made "substantial progress in many fields, laying an important foundation for the signing of a phased agreement,” he said at a virtual reality conference in Nanchang, in eastern China’s Jiangxi province.
3. The People's Bank of China has "no timetable" for launching its planned digital currency, the bank's governor said Tuesday, in his first direct mention of the e-yuan project in a news conference. Speaking in advance of the 70th anniversary of modern China on Oct. 1, Yi Gang cited the need for studies, tests and evaluations before adopting the virtual currency, which he said would be aimed to partly replace cash. A team at the central bank had made "positive progress" in studying digital currencies since starting work in 2014, he added.
4. German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz on Friday redoubled his criticism of Facebook’s plans to launch its Libra cryptocurrency, and said creation of a new world currency should be prevented. Mr. Scholz, speaking with reporters at the IMF and World Bank fall meetings in Washington, cited growing concern about such “stablecoins” and the potential international risks they posed. The German official said he was “highly skeptical” about Facebook’s plans, adding, “We will carefully monitor the situation with all the means at our disposal. I am not in favor of the successful creation of such a world currency because that is the responsibility of democratic states.” The Group of Seven wealthy nations on Thursday released a new report, arguing that such digital currencies should not be allowed to launch until the profound international risks they pose are addressed.
5. Yanis Varoufakis: "....humanity would have suffered had Facebook been allowed to use Libra to privatize the international payments system. But the authorities that are now strangling Libra should look to the future and do with it something innovative, useful, and visionary: hand Libra, or its core concept, over to the International Monetary Fund so that it can be used to reduce global trade imbalances and rebalance financial flows. Indeed, a Libra-like cryptocurrency could help the IMF fulfill its original purpose."
6. Fidelity is ramping up its cryptocurrency custody business, hoping to profit from the scarcity of big, regulated institutions in the chaotic world of digital assets, according to Abigail Johnson, the investment group’s chief executive. The Boston-based financial group, which has $2.8 trillion of assets under management, announced the launch of Fidelity Digital Assets last autumn, promising “enterprise-quality custody and trade execution services” for hedge funds, family offices and financial advisers dabbling in cryptocurrencies. Fidelity started adding clients in the first quarter and is now engaged in a full rollout of its custody and trading services for digital assets — a boon to what is a fragmented and complicated industry, Ms Johnson told the FT in a rare interview.
7. Boris Johnson pleaded with Members of Parliament to back his Brexit agreement in a day of high tension in the House of Commons in London. The prime minister, who said the choice is his deal or no deal, must win the approval of lawmakers today or he will have to seek a further delay from the European Union. But he won’t push it to a vote if lawmakers back former Tory minister Oliver Letwin’s amendment, which would force Johnson to request an extension whatever the outcome of Saturday’s proceedings. Letwin and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond say the amendment would be an insurance against crashing out without an agreement on Oct. 31, but a government official said it would make Saturday’s vote meaningless. Guardian Live Blog is here. Bloomberg Updating Blog is here.
8. The Syrian "ceasefire" deal announced by Vice President Pence and Turkish President Erdogan on Thursday in Ankara was “a great day for civilization," according to President Trump, who praised Mr. Erdogan as “a hell of a leader." Here's a report on what is actually happening in Syria. Here's another. Here's another. Here's damning evidence of war crimes and other violations by Turkish forces and their allies.
9. Cities across Lebanon rang with antigovernment chants and smoldered with burning roadblocks as thousands of people around the country protested against their leaders on Friday, the second day in a row that frustrations over chronic corruption and dysfunction spilled into the streets. Protesters massed outside the government palace in downtown Beirut and marched on the presidential palace in Baabda, blocked the airport road and burned posters of politicians from Tripoli in the north to Tyre in the south — Christians, Muslims and religious minorities alike. In downtown Beirut, trucks loaded with huge speakers blasted upbeat patriotic songs and the national anthem. “Revolution! Revolution!” people chanted. “The people want the fall of the regime.”
10. Sixty-two people have died after an explosion at a mosque in eastern Afghanistan caused the roof to collapse on worshippers gathered for Friday prayers. The attack underscored the record numbers of civilians dying in the country’s 18-year war. Attahullah Khogyani, spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province, said the militant attack wounded 36 others. He said it was not immediately clear whether the mosque was attacked by a suicide bomber or it was some other type of bombing. “Both men and children are among those killed and wounded in the attack,” he said.
11. A state of emergency has been declared in Santiago, Chile after simmering protests against a rise in metro fares spilled out into widespread vandalism and violence fuelled by rising cost-of-living pressures. As ordained by Chile’s dictatorship-era constitution, the state of emergency will apply to Santiago and can last for 15 days. It grants the government additional powers to restrict citizens’ freedom of movement and their right to assembly. Ominously, soldiers will return to the streets for the first time since an earthquake devastated parts of the country in 2010.
12. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has insisted that his government was right to release one of the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, a day after his brief capture by the army sparked a wave of attacks by cartel gunmen who took soldiers hostage and paralyzed the northern city of Culiacán. “This decision was taken to protect citizens. You cannot fight fire with fire,” López Obrador said in his daily press conference on Friday morning. “We do not want deaths. We do not want war.” But the aborted arrest – and the chaos that it unleashed – prompted accusations that the government had simply folded in the face of cartel firepower, and cast further doubt on the president’s efforts to overhaul Mexico’s security strategy.
13. Catalonia suffered a fifth consecutive night of rioting yesterday after violence erupted in Barcelona following a peaceful demonstration attended by more than 500,000 people in protest at the heavy sentences handed down to Catalan politicians and activists. There were disturbances and police charges on Via Laietana near the headquarters of the Spanish national police during Friday afternoon but, no sooner had the demonstration begun to disperse at 6.30pm than rioting broke out around Plaça Urquinaona in the city center.
14. The far right is beginning to dominate the terrorism stage in the Western world. It was responsible for every single extremism-related killing in the United States in 2018—including six mass-casualty incidents. Last year was the most violent in terms of U.S. terrorism since 1982, according to START’s Global Terrorism Database. Right-wing assailants have also perpetrated high-level political assassinations in the United Kingdom and Germany. Anti-Semitism has been particularly prevalent; Germany, for example, suffered 1,800 acts of anti-Semitism last year, its highest since 2006. These networked adversaries, operating within a loose, leaderless ideological framework, are a different kind of terrorist. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s new Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence [PDF] highlights this, noting the proliferation of perpetrators writing manifestos rather than being motivated by radicalizers or taking orders from commanders.
15. For months, Boeing has said it had no idea that a new automated system in the 737 Max jet, which played a role in two fatal crashes, was unsafe. But on Friday, the company gave lawmakers a transcript revealing that a top pilot working on the plane had raised concerns about the system in messages to a colleague in 2016, more than two years before the Max was grounded because of the accidents, which left 346 people dead. In the messages, the pilot, Mark Forkner, who played a central role in the development of the plane, complained that the system, known as MCAS, was acting unpredictably in a flight simulator: “It’s running rampant.”
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