 October 28, 2020 |
Your Wednesday Evening Briefing |
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Good evening. Here’s the latest. |
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1. Stocks fell in Europe and the U.S. as investors fret over the impact of the coronavirus pandemic’s new wave. |
Oil prices dropped more than 5 percent, and shares of energy producers fared poorly. Even Big Tech suffered: Apple and Microsoft dropped more than 4 percent, and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, slid more than 5 percent. |
With the U.S. hitting a record of more than 500,000 new coronavirus cases over the past week, Covid-19 hospital admissions have climbed an estimated 46 percent from a month ago, and many hospitals are reeling. In El Paso, above, Covid-19 hospitalizations have more than tripled over the past three weeks. |
Germany is closing restaurants, bars, gyms and other businesses, and France is going into a second national lockdown starting on Friday — all with an eye to keeping schools open. |
“The virus is circulating at a speed that not even the most pessimistic forecasts had anticipated,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said. |
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2. Drive-through polling places. Zoom rallies. The coronavirus has upended the 2020 election season at nearly every turn. |
The collision of the election and the pandemic has thrown campaigns and early voting efforts into a last-minute frenzy. Above, a voter in San Francisco. |
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Joe Biden is maintaining a measured campaign pace that, in victory, would underscore his appeal as a safe and steady alternative to President Trump, but that, in loss, would very likely inspire overwhelming second-guessing. |
In other news bearing on the election: |
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Worried about Election Day? Here’s our Anxious Person’s Guide to the 2020 Election. |
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4. “It’s coming fast, it’s coming strong.” |
That was Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans, warning of the approach of Hurricane Zeta at Category 2 strength Zeta is expected to bring heavy rains and damaging winds to a state that has already been clobbered four times this hurricane season. |
The storm is expected to move across the Southeastern and Eastern U.S. on Thursday, dumping up to six inches of rain in some locations. |
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5. Philadelphia is under curfew after two nights of protests over a police killing of a Black man, Walter Wallace Jr. Above, an arrest Tuesday night. |
Mr. Wallace, a 27-year-old with a history of mental health problems, was killed on Monday, after the police responded to a call about a man with a knife. In an encounter captured on video, Mr. Wallace is seen walking into the street as two white police officers, backing away, aim their guns at him. Someone yells, “Drop the knife.” |
Mr. Wallace appears to continue to approach. The officers fire multiple rounds. |
His neighborhood, Port Richmond, has exploded in rage. Dozens of people have been arrested, protesters have looted stores, a police car was burned and 30 officers have been hurt. |
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6. Big Tech was back in the hot seat. |
Chief executives from Google, Facebook and Twitter appeared before a Senate hearing on a law that protects internet companies from liability for much of what their users post, and on how they moderate content. |
Democrats focused on misinformation and extremism. They also accused Republicans of holding the hearing to benefit President Trump. |
Republicans accused the executives of selective censorship, questioning Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, above, on how the company handled specific tweets. “Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear?” Senator Ted Cruz said. |
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6. Tens of thousands of people took to Poland’s streets for a nationwide strike to protest a court decision banning nearly all abortions. |
Now in their sixth day, the protests drew thousands of women, joined by numerous men, who abandoned their offices in dozens of cities, including Warsaw, above. |
The ruling, made by a top court last week, stopped pregnancy terminations for fetal abnormalities, virtually the only type of abortion currently performed in the country. The protests have turned into a broader expression of anger at a right-wing government that opponents accuse of hijacking the judiciary and chipping away at the rights of women and minorities. |
The leader of the ruling party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, accused demonstrators of seeking the destruction of the nation and appealed to supporters to “defend churches.” |
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7. A radical proposal to combat climate change is gaining traction: artificially cooling the planet to buy humanity more time to cut greenhouse gas emissions. |
The idea, called solar climate intervention or solar geoengineering, is to inject particles into the atmosphere to reflect more of the sun’s energy back into space, the way ash clouds spewed by volcanic eruptions do. |
“I liken geoengineering to chemotherapy for the planet: If all else is failing, you try it,” said the author of a book on the approach. |
Several universities received grants to study how it might be done, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is researching. In Australia, the government is funding research for a parallel idea to try to save the Great Barrier Reef: making clouds more reflective by spraying saltwater into the air. |
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