World News

>Bolivia’s leftist President Evo Morales gave a press conference early Wednesday morning in which he warned that a right-wing coup attempt is being carried out so as to stop the full counting of votes, and annul the result of Sunday's elections if it gives Morales a first-round victory.

>“A coup is underway, carried out by the right-wing with foreign support...what are the methods of this coup attempt? They’re not recognizing or waiting for election results, they’re burning down electoral courts, they want to proclaim the second-place candidate as the winner”, Morales told journalists assembled.

>Morales pointed to the fact he is in the first place and reiterated his victory. However, he also stated that “we are just waiting for the electoral court to report the results, I'm nearly certain that with the vote of the rural areas that we will win in the first round, even though the preliminary results show that we’ve won, but we are respectful and will wait for the official results from the electoral court. I say to the international press, our triumphs have always been with the rural vote.”

>Morales also thanked the Bolivian people for giving his ‘Movement Towards Socialism’ party majority in the legislature, though pointing out that his party has so far fallen short of a two-thirds supermajority.

>Anti-government right-wing protests turned violent Monday with numerous violent attacks took place across the country as preliminary results indicated that leftist President Evo Morales is on course for a first-round victory. Attacks included the burning down of vote counting centers and assaulting Indigenous supporters of Morales.

>NEW ORLEANS – At 2:04 p.m. on Oct. 15, a guard at the Richwood Correctional Center noticed an odd smell coming from one of the isolation cells. He opened the door, stepped inside and found the lifeless body of Roylan Hernandez-Diaz hanging from a bedsheet.

>The USA TODAY Network uncovered the Richwood episode during an investigation of the rapidly growing network of detention centers used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The investigation revealed more than 400 allegations of sexual assault or abuse, inadequate medical care, regular hunger strikes, frequent use of solitary confinement, more than 800 instances of physical force against detainees, nearly 20,000 grievances filed by detainees and at least 29 fatalities, including seven suicides, since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017 and launched an overhaul of U.S. immigration policies.

>Combined with an analysis by a government watchdog, the USA TODAY Network analyzed inspection reports since 2015 and identified 15,821 violations of detention standards. Yet more than 90% of those facilities received passing grades by government inspectors. Network reporters interviewed 35 former and current detainees, some conducted using video chats from inside an ICE detention center. They reviewed hundreds of documents from lawsuits, financial records and government contracts, and toured seven ICE facilities from Colorado to Texas to Florida. Such tours are extremely rare.

>At least two detention centers passed inspections despite using a chemical restraint – Freeze +P – that is forbidden for use under ICE rules because it contains tear gas that produces “severe pain,” according to its manufacturer. Other centers received passing marks even after inspectors chronicled widespread use of physical force or solitary confinement. Richwood was one of the centers that passed inspections.

>For the past year, much of the nation’s attention on immigration issues has focused on how the Trump administration polices the southern border and how Border Patrol agents treat migrants arriving there. But away from that spotlight there is a separate detention system overseen by ICE that has continued to grow with far less scrutiny. It is now a $3 billion network of 221 facilities, the largest of which are operated by private companies under government contract. Combined, those facilities detain more than 50,000 women, men and children who wait months or years for immigration court proceedings.

>Two-thirds of detainees have no criminal records, ICE records show. About 26% are detained solely because they are requesting asylum in the U.S. That is why ICE policy mandates that immigration detention be civil in nature - an administrative hold on detainees as they await deportation or their next hearing - as opposed to a punitive, corrective prison system. But the USA TODAY Network review found that the ICE system operates in many ways like a prison system; detainees wear red and orange jumpsuits that sometimes read “inmate” on the back.

>ICE owns and operates five detention centers in four states: Florida, Arizona, New York and Texas. Private companies operate at least 60 facilities where 75% of all ICE detainees are held. Others are detained in city and county jails, where they await civil proceedings alongside convicted criminals and those awaiting criminal trials.

>Every detainee interviewed by the USA TODAY Network alleged mistreatment by guards.

>Florence Widdicombe, six, opened her box of £1.50 kitten-themed cards to find an alarming message that begged her to notify human rights organisations.
>“We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qinqpu prison China. Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organization.”
>The message also urged the finder to contact Peter Humphrey, a journalist who spent two years in jail in China at the same Qingpu prison while working as a corporate fraud investigator in Shanghai
>The girl's father contacted Humphrey on linkdin, who brought the story to the Sunday Times
>Tesco: "We have a comprehensive auditing system in place and this supplier was independently audited as recently as last month and no evidence was found to suggest they had broken our rule banning the use of prison labour."

>The United States recorded 60 new measles cases last week, taking confirmed cases for the year to 940, the worst outbreak since 1994 and since measles was declared eliminated in 2000, federal health officials said on Monday.

>Public health officials have blamed the measles resurgence on the spread of misinformation about vaccines, as a vocal fringe of parents oppose vaccines, believing, contrary to scientific studies, that ingredients in them can cause enthusiasm.

>As measles cases in the USA continue to rise from their highest level in a quarter-century, health officials pondered a drastic step – forbidding those believed to be infected from flying.

>U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday unveiled over 450 pages of leaked documents that he said expose British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's effort to open up the National Health Service to corporate exploitation in trade negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump.

>During a press conference, Corbyn said the Trump administration's negotiators are "demanding" that the NHS be put "on the table" in talks over a possible post-Brexit trade pact between the U.S. and U.K.

>"That could lead to runaway privatization of our health service," said Corbyn. "Mega-corporations see Johnson's alliance with Trump as a chance to make billions from the illness and sickness of people in this country. And if the Conservatives have their way and this deal goes forward, the changes I've revealed will be almost irreversible."

>More than 180 House Democrats joined a nearly united Republican caucus Wednesday night to pass a sweeping $738 billion military spending bill that gives President Donald Trump his long-sought "Space Force," free rein to wage endless wars, and a green light to continue fueling the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen.

>"This NDAA is atrocious, and it's very depressing that only 48 members of congress voted against it," tweeted anti-war group CodePink.

>In a floor speech ahead of Wednesday's vote, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), the most vocal opponent of the NDAA in the House, said "there are many things you can call the bill, but it's Orwellian to call it progressive." Khanna was standing across the aisle from Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who hailed the measure as "the most progressive defense bill we have passed in decades."

>According to the New York Times, Smith—chairman of the House Armed Services Committee—negotiated several provisions of the NDAA directly with Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser.

>Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) foreign policy adviser Matt Duss expressed outrage that Democrats allowed Kushner—who has close ties to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—to kill an amendment that would have helped end U.S. complicity in the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

>Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who voted against the NDAA, noted in a statement that the final version also stripped out her House-passed amendment that would have repealed the 2002 Iraq Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).

>The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has just updated its policy on firearms, moving from a recommendation that lethal weapons, including guns, were considered “inappropriate” on church property to an outright prohibition of them.

>This marks the latest in a series of small steps the church has taken away from the Republican Party, either by tweaking its own policies or by simply upholding its usual position to the right of center, while members of the GOP swing ever further to the right.

>Merely by doubling down on the church’s prior stance on weapons in church, changing the one word “inappropriate” to “prohibited,” LDS leaders are signaling that they’re not blindly following the direction that many in the GOP are embracing, despite the fact that a majority of U.S. Mormons identify with the Republican Party.

>Gun violence is not the only issue; Mormons are also charting their own path on immigration. The GOP in general has followed Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. Studies by the Pew Research Center show that Republicans are statistically much more likely than Democrats to believe that immigration is a major problem facing the country and that a border wall will be an effective way to solve the problem — both key elements of President Trump’s platform. Mormons, however, are noticeably more pro-immigrant than other Republicans.

>According to research from the 2016 Next Mormons Survey, a majority of U.S. Mormons feel that immigrants “strengthen our country because of their hard work and talents,” while Pew finds that a majority of Republicans believe that immigrants “are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing, and health care.”

>This is evident not just in the beliefs of the rank-and-file but in recent statements of the church, such as one decrying then-candidate Trump’s proposed “Muslim ban” in favor of religious freedom for all people (December 2015). Other statements have been pressing for compassionate solutions for refugees (January 2017), recommending that the federal government allow young DACA immigrants to remain in the country (January 2018) and urging that immigrant families be allowed to stay together rather than separating parents from children at the border (June 2018, and reiterated by church President Russell Nelson in April 2019).

>Abortion is a third issue where Mormons’ views are diverging from the GOP’s.

>Two Chinese state media outlets called for netizens to “renovate” the White House, in response to the United States passing a law supportive of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement—only to mistake the U.S. Capitol for the White House.
>On Dec. 4, the country’s state broadcaster CCTV and Party mouthpiece People’s Daily Overseas both posted on Facebook an image with the following words: “The United States passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. You’re welcome to come ‘renovate’ the White House.”