We've learned we don’t have automatic stabilizers, safety nets not as good as they should be: El-Erian

Mohamed A. El-Erian, Allianz Chief Economic Adviser joins the On the Move panel to discuss the recent GDP, the Fed decision and jobless claims.

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  • Indigenous groups demand meeting with Colombia's president

    Thousands of Indigenous protesters marched through Colombia’s capital city on Monday to demand a public meeting with President Ivan Duque and call for reforms they say are crucial for their survival. The Indigenous groups, most from the country's southwest, are complaining about mining concessions and growing violence that has accompanied setbacks in implementation of a 2016 peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebel group. The problems have led to a rise in conflicts involving guerrilla factions, the army, drug traffickers and illegal miners, all of whom have been accused of trampling on Indigenous rights.

  • 'She saved others in the pandemic': 91-year-old coronavirus survivor paints a watercolor a day

    Bonnie Bowen, 91, has painted a watercolor pieced daily since the pandemic began. She's shared her artwork on Facebook to thousands of followers.

  • Air travel pandemic milestone; 1 million passengers screened

    The number of passengers screened in a single day for flights in the U.S. topped one million for the first time since COVID-19 infections began to spike last March. The notable milestone, reached Sunday, signifies both the progress made since the darkest days of pandemic for the devastated U.S. airline industry, when fewer than 100,000 people were screened per day in April, and how far it still has to go. The million plus passengers screened Sunday compares with 2.6 million on the same day last year, or roughly 60% fewer, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

  • Georgia: two rightwing Republicans face Democrat in special election debate

    * GOP’s Kelly Loeffler and Doug Collins face Raphael Warnock * Virtual debate for Senate seat race with no primaryKelly Loeffler, the Republican US senator from Georgia who has embraced a follower of the toxic rightwing conspiracy theory QAnon in a desperate bid to hang on to her seat, will square off with her Trump-supporting rival and the leading Democratic candidate in their first debate on Monday.The virtual debate, staged through separate video links to ensure safety amid the pandemic, will be a chance for voters to get to grips with one of the most volatile and chaotic races in the nation. Some 20 candidates are standing in a race which, as a special election, had no primary.Loeffler, who was appointed to the seat in January following the resignation of Johnny Isakson, is having to fend off a fierce challenge from Doug Collins, an avidly Trump-supporting congressman. The pair have been scrambling over each other in a rapid dash to the right, trying to outdo the other in their radical conservative credentials.Last week Loeffler appeared at a press conference with Marjorie Taylor Greene, to accept the latter’s endorsement.Greene, who has no Democratic opponent in a staunchly conservative House district in north-west Georgia, has made racist statements and was an early adopter of QAnon, a virulent conspiracy theory which claims a cabal of Democrats and billionaires is running a paedophile and human trafficking ring and which the FBI has warned is a domestic terrorism threat.From 2017 Greene was an active proponent of QAnon, publicly praising its anonymous originator as a patriot who “very much loves his country” and is “on the same page as us”. More recently she claimed to have moved away from the movement, telling Fox News she was not a QAnon candidate.At last week’s event, Loeffler tried to bat away the controversy, telling reporters: “No one in Georgia cares about the QAnon business.”The Democratic candidate for the Senate seat, by contrast, has successfully united his party. Raphael Warnock is the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King preached for eight years.Recent polls put Warnock at around 31%, Loeffler at 23% and Collins at 22%. Under special election rules, the race will go into a January run-off between the top two should none of the candidates secure at least 50% of the vote.Most observers expect a head-to-head between Warnock and the winner of Loeffler and Collins’s bitter fight on the right.QAnon’s fantasies have caused considerable difficulties for Republicans in the 2020 election cycle. Last week Trump declined to denounce the conspiracy theory, praising it for being “strongly against paedophilia”.On Sunday, the chair of the Republican national committee, Ronna McDaniel, similarly sidestepped questions on QAnon during an appearance on ABC News. Asked if she would condemn it, she replied: “ I knew you were going to ask me that question. I knew it because it’s something the voters are not even thinking about. It’s a fringe group. It’s not part of our party.”The Loeffler battle is one of two US Senate races in Georgia that goes to the polls on 3 November. In the second contest, the incumbent Republican David Perdue is in an exceptionally tight fight against the Democrat Jon Ossoff.Perdue did himself no favors on Friday when he took the stage at a Trump rally in Macon and mangled Kamala Harris’s name. The widely criticized move sparked a flood of almost $2m into Ossoff’s already swollen campaign coffers.Perdue’s insulting jab also earned a riposte from Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband. He said: “Let me help what’s-his-face pronounce this: M-V-P. If he can’t remember her name, how about Madam Vice-President?”

  • US Supreme Court to hear key immigration cases after election

    The US Supreme Court agreed on Monday to take up two key cases related to President Donald Trump's immigration policies after the November election.

  • Tropical Storm Epsilon forms in Atlantic; expected to be at or near hurricane strength this week

    The storm is forecast to be at or near hurricane strength by early Thursday.

  • The week in polls: Trump erases Biden's bounce in Florida, Biden gains in Georgia

    In the Senate, a poll found Doug Jones may not be doomed after all. And another found Lindsey Graham's race may not be as tight as believed.

  • Melting snow reveals 800-year-old mummies in Antarctica

    An 800-year-old penguin mummy revealed after snow and ice in Antarctica melted. (Steven Emslie) Ornithologist Steven Emslie made an unexpected discovery when he stumbled across what appeared to be ancient and fresh remains of Adelie penguins at Cape Irizar, Ross Sea, Antarctica, during a research expedition in 2016. "In all the years I have been doing this research in Antarctica, I've never seen a site quite like this," Emslie said in a recent press release. He revealed his findings in a paper published late last month. At the time of discovery, Emslie, an ornithologist at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, was in Antarctica studying ancient penguin remains as part of a funded research project of the National Science Foundation. "I went to Cape Irizar after seeing a reference to old penguin guano that was found there," Emslie said in an email to AccuWeather. Cape Irizar, Ross Sea, Antarctica, Jan. 20, 2016. (Steven Emslie) "Since Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton had explored the area over a hundred years ago and hadn't written about any penguins at this particular site, I didn't expect to see much since they always wrote about penguins when they saw them," Emslie told The New York Times. When Emslie arrived at the site, he found white, splotchy guano stains across the surface of the ground and lots of loose chick bones, typically indicating recent use of the site. But that wasn't possible, Emslie said. Upon further investigation, Emslie also discovered complete chick carcasses with feathers falling apart from decay, as well as intact mummies. Emslie was stunned by the discovery. "I remember thinking, 'Wow, a penguin colony that even Shackleton didn't know about,'" he said to the Times. "This site must have been covered by snow and ice soon after the colony was last abandoned, preserving the surface remains for centuries until revealed again by recent snowmelt," Emslie explained to AccuWeather. Bones emerging from the snow on Cape Irizar. (Steven Emslie) "This site must have had its beach access opened and closed repeatedly by changing sea ice conditions over time, so that sometimes the coast was open for penguins to colonize this site, then abandoned when access ended and ice remained along the coast during the summer," Emslie said. "Changing conditions could mean less marine food that parents find to feed their chicks." And when the food supply is depleted, he added, "some die or starve." Carbon dating analysis showed the site was occupied at least three times in the past, beginning about 5,000 years ago. A warming period between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago allowed another occupation, and the last occupation began during the medieval warm period 1,200 years ago and ended at the start of the Little Ice Age 800 years ago. "That's when I think the site was covered by snow and preserved, with surface remains dating to that last occupation and looking fresh," Emslie added. An abandoned penguin colony on Cape Irazar. (Steven Emslie) Could the site see penguins return in the future? "Definitely they could return, and perhaps in the not-too-distant future as the current warming trend breaks up the sea ice along the coast earlier each summer. Eventually, it will be early enough to provide the open water beach access penguins need to recolonize this area," Emslie said. The Ross Sea has warmed by 1.5-2.0 degrees Celsius since the 1980s, according to the Geological Society of America. Emslie told Business Insider that he would like to return to the Cape Irizar area soon. "There are other caves emerging from under the melting snow nearby that are worth checking to see if they had penguins," he said. Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.

  • EU to link national COVID-19 tracing apps together

    The European Commission on Monday launched an EU-wide system devised to link national COVID-19 tracing apps together in its latest effort to slow down the coronavirus pandemic. Following testing in different EU countries earlier this autumn, the bloc's executive arm said the system got underway with three national apps — Germany’s Corona-Warn-App, Ireland’s COVID tracker, and Italy’s immuni — now linked through the so-called interoperability gateway. According to the European Commission, these three apps have been downloaded by around 30 million people, the equivalent of two-thirds of all tracing app downloads in the EU.

  • Rudy’s ‘Russian Agent’ Pal Booted from Facebook for U.S. Election Interference

    Facebook has suspended the account of Ukrainian politician—and alleged Russian agent—Andrii Derkach for election interference activity.The member of Ukraine’s parliament has been working with President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to gather allegations against former Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter.In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson told The Daily Beast: “We removed this account and this Page for violating our policy against the use of our platform by people engaged in election-focused influence operations.”Derkach was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in September for allegedly acting as an agent of Russian intelligence and being “directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election.”Rudy: Only ‘50/50’ Chance I Worked With a ‘Russian Spy’ to Dig Dirt on Bidens and UkraineThrough his “Nabu Leaks” website, Derkach began spreading leaked recordings of conversations between Vice President Biden and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko discussing a one billion dollar loan to Ukraine and the need to fire an allegedly corrupt former prosecutor. Derkach, along with a number of Republican politicians, have spread unsubstantiated allegations that Biden’s internationally backed pressure on Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general was part of a corruption scheme involving Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company where his son Hunter sat on the board.Giuliani has come under increasing scrutiny for his relationship with Derkach, as revelations swirl about the U.S. intelligence community’s concerns that Russian spies may have tried to use the former Mayor of New York as a conduit to launder disinformation from Moscow.Giuliani’s relationship with Derkach blossomed as he traveled around Ukraine in search of dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden’s son. Giuliani interviewed Derkach for a video series about his Hunter Biden conspiracy theories and recently told The Daily Beast “The chance that Derkach is a Russian spy is no better than 50/50.”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.

  • American Airlines to restart 737 MAX flights in December

    American Airlines says it plans to begin flying the Boeing 737 MAX again in December, assuming the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) allows the plan to resume service, the carrier confirmed on Monday.

  • Nokia to build moon's first 4G cell network for NASA program

    Nokia says it has been tapped by NASA to build the first cellular communications network on the moon. The Finnish telecommunications equipment maker said Monday its Nokia Bell Labs' division will build a 4G communications system to be deployed on a lunar lander to the Moon's surface in late 2022. NASA is awarding $370 million to 14 companies including to provide technology for the Artemis moon-landing program.

  • Death toll climbs as Nigeria protests spiral

    Crowds took to the streets again in Nigeria's largest cities on Monday as the death toll rose in snowballing protests sparked by police brutality.

  • Alibaba fintech arm gets nod for record IPO listing in Hong Kong

    The financial arm of Chinese e-commerce titan Alibaba received Monday a green light from Chinese regulators to list in Hong Kong, according to data published online, another step towards the biggest IPO in history.

  • Coronavirus live updates: Global COVID cases pass 40M; US nears 220K deaths; Fauci not surprised Trump was infected

    Nancy Pelosi says stimulus deal "depends on the administration." Anthony Fauci talks lockdown, vaccine on "60 Minutes." Latest COVID news.

  • ICYMI: A look back at Sunday's 60 Minutes

    This week on 60 Minutes: Alexey Navalny describes being poisoned; Dr. Anthony Fauci on his media restrictions, Trump contracting COVID, masks, voting and more; And the COVID flight from Hell.

  • Avoiding America's worst possible future

    Is the United States on the brink of authoritarianism? A shocking large number of commentators seem to think so. This would appear to suggest that we should take the threat very seriously indeed — except for one crucially important consideration: Those raising alarms can be found on both sides of the political spectrum, with each camp pointing to its ideological opposite as the source of the impending breakdown of democracy and advent of tyranny in America.That highlights another, deeper problem that threatens a very different, though no less catastrophic, outcome.The center-left has been making versions of the authoritarian argument from the very start of the Trump administration. In addition to the president's tendency to talk like a demagogic dictator at campaign rallies and on Twitter, his hesitancy to distance himself from right-wing hate groups, and his pursuit of xenophobic immigration policies, progressives highlight GOP efforts at voter suppression, the counter-majoritarianism of the Electoral College and Senate, and Trump's own refusal to say he'll step down from office if he loses his bid for re-election. All of it adds up to a narrative of incipient Republican Party dictatorship.The right, meanwhile, has its own story of creeping totalitarianism. Some conspiracy-minded conservatives have viewed liberals as would-be tyrants going all the way back to the New Deal, if not before. But such concerns surged into the mainstream with new fervor in the run-up to the 2016 election with the claim that Trump and his supporters were like courageous martyrs storming the cockpit of Flight 93 on September 11, willing to risk everything to avert the existential threat that a Hillary Clinton presidency posed to conservative priorities.More recently, journalist Rod Dreher has published a bestselling book warning conservative Christians about the looming threat of "soft totalitarianism," as progressives prepare to use combined state and cultural power to enforce conformity in the United States to a "woke" moral-spiritual outlook that's virulently hostile to anything resembling traditional Christianity.Those are the camps, each fearing and loathing the other, each seeing itself as freedom's sole savior and its opponents as freedom's mortal enemy. Obviously, both cannot be right, and in fact neither wholly is. But their civic significance lies not in the truth of the warnings each of them broadcasts about the other but in their shared conviction that those on the other side of our partisan divide pose a grave danger — so grave that permitting them to win political power may soon prove to be unacceptable and illegitimate.That sounds like competing defenses of one-party rule — and it would be that if we had any reason to believe either side would back down and allow its opponents to seize such dictatorial powers. Another scenario is far more likely: Each side's fear of the other's authoritarianism could push it to embrace outright political violence.I don't at all mean to suggest that I think a civil war is imminent or likely. It isn't. But when contemplating the tail risks associated with the American present, it's important to recognize that civil war is significantly more likely than the successful imposition of authoritarianism in any form. Exploring why that is and how to respond to it is among the most important tasks of the present moment, and two writers of the center-right are making crucial contributions to the task.In a pair of recent columns, The New York Times' Ross Douthat has done a highly effective job of explaining how both sides in our politics overstate the authoritarian character of the opposition. Against the left, Douthat argues that Trump has been far too lazy, ignorant, and incompetent to effectively institute anything remotely akin to dictatorial rule — and that progressives have countless paths of cultural and political resistance to any (ineptly) attempted seizure of such powers. Against the right, he argues … much the same thing about possibilities for resistance against the left. Addressing both, he suggests it would wise to stop indulging in the fantasy that each new election serves as an occasion to achieve a Final Victory that will at long last neutralize the opposition.With this final point, Douthat's analysis brushes up against, while never exploring, the greater danger that follows from the alarmist exaggerations of both camps — namely, that people on one or the other side could be provoked by fear of their ideological opposite to embrace outright political violence.In thinking through how to navigate these treacherous civic waters, our best guide so far is David French's Divided We Fall. Unlike Dreher and the authors of most of the center-left books on the dangers confronting American democracy, French is a (classical, or conservative) liberal who situates himself somewhat above the immediate political fray, placing concern for the enduring ideals and institutions of American democracy ahead of his own policy preferences and partisan commitments. This allows him to see the U.S. for what it is at the moment — namely, a country coming apart, spiraling toward ever deeper and potentially calamitous division.French examines the concrete ways in which the country could come undone, and he proposes solutions. I agree with him that our best shot at de-escalation — at accepting and learning to live with our vast differences — has to involve a greater willingness to embrace federalism. Though I also worry that this could produce a country waging a (cultural) civil war by other means. (We need to beware doing even more to foster division.)But this is a relatively small and potentially fruitful point of possible disagreement. French's book is important because he has his eyes fixed on the real or most fundamental problem confronting American democracy, and because he doesn't allow himself to get sucked into or distracted by the more superficial conflicts that feed into that problem and make it worse. His book deserves to be widely read and debated among those who would help America avoid the worst of its many possible futures.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com Will Kansas go blue? What happened to third party candidates? If Roe falls

  • New this week: The Boss, Billie Eilish, Borat & 'Bad Hair'

    — You have to admire the moxie of Netflix and director Ben Wheatley for taking on Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca,” which already has a masterpiece Alfred Hitchcock adaptation to its name. — Following his critically acclaimed turn as activist Abbie Hoffman in Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Sacha Baron Cohen is returning to the character he made his name with: Borat.

  • Jean-Claude Van Damme saves life of puppy in fake passport row

    Action movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme has come to the rescue of a three-month-old chihuahua, saving her from euthanasia on Monday after a legal tussle between Norway and Bulgaria.

  • Why full evidence of the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Whitmer may never be known

    Technology played a critical role in the planning and formulation of the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, police say.