UK
Too few companies disclose financial hit from climate change, regulator says

By Huw Jones REUTERS 

© Reuters/KACPER PEMPEL FILE PHOTO: Smoke and steam billows from Belchatow Power Station, Europe's largest coal-fired power plant operated by PGE Group, near Belchatow

LONDON (Reuters) - Too few companies specify their prospective financial hit from climate change under a voluntary global disclosure code that needs wider backing from asset managers and others to be fully effective, a global regulatory body said on Thursday.

Climate change can reduce the value of assets or subject companies to costs from flooding and other weather-related events, and a body dubbed the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) in 2017 published a voluntary set of disclosures to help inform investors.

The TCFD, set up by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) which coordinates financial rules for G20 countries, said more than 1,500 organisations worldwide had expressed support for TCFD-aligned disclosures to help cut carbon emissions, up 85% since last year's update.

But the level of disclosure remains inadequate, it said.

"Companies' disclosure of the potential financial impact of climate change on their businesses and strategies remains low," the TCFD said.

Just one in 15 companies reviewed disclosed information on the resilience of their strategy, far lower than other categories of disclosure such as governance and risk management, it added.

More backing was needed given the urgent demand for consistency and comparability in reporting, with support from asset managers and owners of assets likely to be insufficient to give investors the right information, it said.

The TCFD will seek better insight into reporting practices of asset managers and asset owners.

Ahead of the next round of global climate talks in Scotland next year, expectations are growing that the code will be made mandatory, as indicated by a Bank of England official this month.

The TCFD also published a consultation paper on making the code more forward-looking for banks, insurers and asset managers.

It singled out one potential yardstick known as implied temperature rise associated with investments or ITR. This is used by some firms already to estimate the global temperature rise associated with greenhouse gas emissions of a company, investment strategy or fund.

ITR could be useful in several ways but faces several significant challenges to calculating it more consistently, the TCFD said.

(Additional reporting by Simon Jessop; Editing by David Holmes)

Bełchatów Power Station - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bełchatów_Power_Station

The Bełchatów Power Station is the world's largest (nominal power of 5,102 MW ) lignite-fired power station, situated near Bełchatów in Łódź Voivodeship, Poland. It is the largest thermal power station in Europe, and fifth largest fossil-fuel power station in the world.

• Overview
• Carbon dioxide emissions
• See also
• External links

It produces 27–28 TWh of electricity per year, or 20% of the total power generation in Poland. The power station is owned and operated by PGE GiEK Oddział Elektrownia Bełchatów, a subsidiary of Polska Grupa

Polish president backtracks on abortion view amid protests

WARSAW, Poland — Poland's President Andrzej Duda said Thursday that women themselves should have the right to abortion in case of congenitally damaged fetuses, apparently breaking ranks with a conservative leadership that pushed a ban that has led to mass street protests.

© Provided by NBC News

“It cannot be that the law requires this kind of heroism from a woman,” Duda said in an interview with radio RMF FM.

© Jadwiga Figula Image: Women hold placards as they take part in a protest against the ruling by Poland's Constitutional Tribunal that imposes a near-total ban on abortion, in Gdansk (Jadwiga Figula / Reuters)

He spoke after seven straight days of huge protests across Poland following a constitutional court ruling declaring it unconstitutional to terminate a pregnancy due to fetal congenital defects. The ruling effectively bans almost all abortions in a country that already had one of Europe's most restrictive abortion laws.

That ruling has triggered huge nationwide protests, with young people heeding a call by women's rights activists to come to the streets to defend their freedoms.

Deep divisions that had been brewing for a long time in Poland are now erupting on the streets.

On Thursday night, men with a far-right group, All-Polish Youth, attacked women taking part in protests overnight in some cities, including Wroclaw, Poznan and Bialystok.

Their actions came after Poland's most powerful politician, ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, called for his supporters to turn out on the streets to defend churches after women disrupted Masses last Sunday and spray-painted churches.

© Jadwiga Figula Image: A woman takes part in a protest against the ruling by Poland's Constitutional Tribunal that imposes a near-total ban on abortion, in Gdansk (Jadwiga Figula / Reuters)

Many interpreted Kaczynski's call as permission for violence against the protesters.

Duda’s comments Thursday were in sharp contrast to his initial reaction last week, when he welcomed the ruling, and stressed his opposition to abortion even when a fetus is irreversibly damaged.

He also signaled a difference of opinion with Kaczynski on the issue of security, saying police should have the sole responsibility for protecting the streets.

Photos document U.S. eviction crisis as families struggle with pandemic

As hard-hit families struggle financially and rent moratoriums expire, John Moore of photo agency Getty Images spent more than a week with the Maricopa County Constables Office in Arizona photographing the eviction crisis many Americans are facing during the coronavirus pandemic.

© John Moore/Getty Images 

A woman is overcome with emotion after she was served a court eviction order for non-payment of rent on Sept. 30, 2020 in Phoenix. She and her daughter were forced to leave their apartment.

READ ON 

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/other/photos-document-u-s-eviction-crisis-as-families-struggle-with-pandemic/ar-BB1aveSO?ocid=msedgdhp

Tilting tanker off coast of Venezuela could spill 1.3 million barrels of oil into Atlantic

Devika Desai 

Fisherman in the Caribbean are calling for a state of emergency to be declared, after evidence emerged of an sinking oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, threatening to spill over 1.3 million barrels of oil into the ocean.

© Provided by National Post The Nabarima floating storage and offloading (FSO) facility, operated by the Petrosucre joint venture between Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela and Italy's Eni, is seen tilted in the Paria Gulf, between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, October 16, 2020.

The Nabarima, a Venezuelan tanker partly operated by Italian energy giant ENI, was first noticed to be tilting in July. By August, crews discovered that water was leaking into the ship, threatening to sink it.

She is in “very poor condition,” tweeted Eudis Girot, the head of the Unitary Federation of Petroleum Workers of Venezeula on Aug. 31, warning that the tanker held about nine feet of water in her lower decks. Photos with the post showed flooding in various sections of the interior of the vessel.

Last month Gary Aboud, who represents the fishing community in Trinidad, got close enough to the tanker to show the gravity of the risk to the entire Southern Caribbean. “What we found was frightening,” Aboud said in a video posted online on Sept. 7.

The tanker appeared to be tilting at an angle of 25 degrees, Aboud said in the video, while pointing at the ship just a few feet away from him. Currently the ship is held in place by anchor chains, although it isn’t clear how strong the chains are, and how long they will be able to control the tanker. The chains “aren’t enough,” Aboud said, adding that poor weather could cause the tanker to flip.

The situation could also be exacerbated by a particularly active 2020 tropical cyclone season, which has already seen 28 cyclones, 11 hurricanes and four “major” hurricanes.

In his video, Aboud criticized Trinidad and Tobago government officials for a lack of response to the situation, which has now been ongoing for three months. An oil spill of this magnitude could wreck the livelihoods of over 50,000 local fisherman who rely on the sea, cause long term ecological harm to the biodiversity in the nearby coral reef, and pose a broader regional risk, Forbes reported.

“This requires national emergency,” Aboud said. “(I’m) calling on the government of Trinidad and Tobago to wake up and do something.”

International maritime reports have also been calling for action since early September, the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian reported, and government officials have asked for verification from Venezuelan officials on the status of the tanker.

In early September, Trinidad and Tobago Energy Minister Franklin Khan noted that initial reports from Venezuelan authorities described the vessel to be in upright and stable condition.

“The Energy Ministry through the Venezuelan Embassy has offered any assistance, technical or logistical to the Government of Venezuela that it may require. Also, the Minister of Energy is in contact with his Venezuelan counterpart for further updates as they become available,” a spokesman for Khan stated.

According to Khan, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela have a bilateral agreement which includes an oil spill contingency plan, “in the event of a genuine risk exists or an active spill occurs.” “This is the agreement that will govern the action of the Government,” he said.

Should the spill occur, it will be the fourth major oil spill from Venezuela in the past three months.

In early September, fisherman and experts confirmed that oil was leaking into the sea near Falcón State, in north-east Venezuela, from a cracked underwater pipeline linked to attempts to restart fuel production at a refinery.

The month before, photos showed beaches and mangroves around Moroccoy National Park, on the west-central Venezuelan coast, slicked in oil. The images quickly gained traction online before local officials said a clean up effort was taking place. Research released two weeks later by Simón Bolívar University attributed the oil spill to the incompetence of state authorities working at the nearby El Palito refinery, located 66 kilometres south of the park.

Man arrested after showering commuters with money from 30th-floor window

Helen Davidson in Taipei 

Chinese police have arrested a man after he scattered a “heavenly rain of banknotes” on commuters from his apartment window while allegedly high on methamphetamine.

© Photograph: REX/Shutterstock The man was taken into custody in Chongqing and was receiving treatment, police said.

Police said the 29-year-old was “in a trance” after taking drugs at his home on the 30th floor of a building in Chongqing, in south-western China, when he began throwing cash out of the window to the streets below.

Local media reported the “heavenly rain of banknotes from the sky”, and a video of the 17 October incident has been viewed more than half a million times.

The footage shows traffic slowed to a crawl, or completely stopped in some sections, as dozens of people left their cars or walked onto the busy road to catch the banknotes.

Police were called and the man was taken into custody. The police said in a statement he had been detained for taking drugs and was under investigation and receiving treatment.

In 2017, also in Chongqing, a woman walked into traffic throwing bank notes behind her, prompting a police officer to pick them up as he followed her. Local media reported she told police she threw the 16,000 yuan (US$2,300) because she was in a bad mood.

Last year a man who threw 100,000 yuan into the air after having a bad day at work asked for people to return his money. Shishi city police in Fujian said the man’s actions caused a traffic jam and people fell over each other trying to grab the cash.

Hong Kong teen activist Tony Chung charged with secession

A teenage Hong Kong democracy activist was charged on Thursday with secession, the first public political figure to be prosecuted under a sweeping new national security law Beijing imposed on the city.

© ISAAC LAWRENCE Tony Chung, 19, is a former member of Student Localism, a small group that advocated Hong Kong's independence from China

Tony Chung, 19, appeared in court two days after he was arrested by plainclothes police in a Hong Kong coffee shop opposite the US consulate, charged with secession, money laundering and conspiring to publish seditious content.


He was remanded into custody until his next court hearing on 7 January and faces between 10 years to life in prison if convicted under the new law.

Chung is a former member of Student Localism, a small group that advocates Hong Kong's independence from China.

The group said it disbanded its Hong Kong network shortly before Beijing blanketed the city in its new security law in late June but kept its international chapters going.

The legislation -- a response to huge and often violent pro-democracy protests that swept the city last year -- outlawed a host of new crimes, including expressing certain political views such as advocating independence or greater autonomy for Hong Kong.

© ISAAC LAWRENCE Chung and three others were first arrested by a newly created national security police unit in July on suspicion of inciting secession via social media posts

Chung and three other members of Student Localism were first arrested by a newly created national security police unit in July on suspicion of inciting secession via social media posts.

On Thursday, Amnesty International said the charges showed authorities were wielding the law to criminalise peaceful political expression.

"The intensifying attack on human rights in Hong Kong has been ramped up another notch with this politically motivated arrest in which a peaceful student activist has been charged and detained solely because the authorities disagree with his views," said Joshua Rosenzweig, head of Amnesty's China team.

- Aiming for US consulate? -

Speculation has swirled that police moved on Chung because he was hoping to ask for asylum at the US consulate in Hong Kong.

A little-known group calling itself Friends of Hong Kong put out a statement shortly after Chung's arrest on Tuesday saying it had been trying to arrange for Chung to enter the US consulate that day and seek sanctuary.

AFP was not able to independently verify the group's claim and Chung has been unable to comment because he has remained in police custody since then.

His bail conditions from his first arrest prevented him from leaving Hong Kong.

Asylum claims to the US have to be made on arrival in the country or via a United Nations refugee referral programme.

With some very rare exceptions, consulates and embassies do not tend to grant asylum as doing so could spark a huge diplomatic tussle.

Local Hong Kong media this week reported that four people who may have been trying to help Chung entered the US consulate on Tuesday but were turned away.

The US consulate has declined to comment.

A small but growing number of Hong Kongers have fled the city since Beijing's crackdown on democracy protesters and recent asylum cases are known to have been successful in both Germany and Canada.

- New law -

China bypassed Hong Kong's legislature to impose the new security law, keeping its contents secret until it was introduced.

It targets a wide array of acts deemed as secession, subversion, terrorism and colluding with foreign forces.

Along with mass arrests and an anti-coronavirus ban on public gatherings it has largely succeeded in stamping out mass protests and dissent.

But the root causes of last year's huge rallies remain unaddressed and the city is still deeply polarised.

Critics say the law's broad wording has delivered a hammer blow to the semi-autonomous city's freedoms.

The legislation also ended the legal firewall between Hong Kong and the authoritarian mainland, empowering China's security agents to operate openly in the city for the first time.

Beijing has said it will have jurisdiction over the most serious national security offences.

Around two dozen people have been arrested under the new law, including newspaper tycoon Jimmy Lai, a staunch Beijing critic.

Only two have so far been charged -- Chung and a man who allegedly rode his motorbike into a group of police during a protest.

su-jta/rma

CANADA #BLM

Black amputees face challenges and increased costs for prostheses

Crystal Goomansingh 

© Getty Image/File Prosthetic limbs are most often made in a singular skin tone.

Overcoming a life-altering injury, an amputation or disfigurement is a challenge for anyone, but perhaps a little more so for people of colour.

Depression and fear overwhelmed John Sunday's younger brother Michael after his accident. The young Nigerian man was struggling not only with the trauma of losing several fingers but with his prosthesis -- it was white.

"His behaviour changed. This guy is not happy. God forbid he could have taken his life maybe so I had to do something fast and quick. So that's where my inspiration came from," said Sunday.

It took many attempts and countless hours but the trained artist managed to make a hand that looked like his brother's.

Read more: Saskatchewan teen amputee finds passion in music, constructs device to play guitar

Now, from his company Immortal Cosmetic Art in Nigeria, Sunday creates a variety of body parts and has clients in Italy, Germany, China and across Africa -- nearly all Black. He says his business is growing for two main reasons.

"I'm a Black man and I understand at least a little more of the Black skin tone, that's one. Secondly, it's closer [for clients] to have this access to my company," Sunday said from Uyo, Nigeria in an online video interview with Global News.

He says he sees the power of his craft -- especially helping Black individuals, as there are many options for white amputees.

Read more: Want to support Black people? Stop talking, start listening

Prosthetics are made by different companies all over the world.

Depending on the skin colour of the individual and what options the manufacturer offers, a custom paint job might be required or a specific shade of cloth for a sleeve might be needed to cover an attachment and that means a higher price tag.

In Ottawa, Annelise Petlock leads the advocacy program at War Amps and says more needs to be done to support amputees.

"You should be able to get a limb that matches your skin tone, that allows you to replicate some of the function that you've lost.

"I think you should be able to have something that maximizes the functionality, and right now, the way that the funding is across the country ... you don't. We're being restricted -- amputees are being restricted by the lack of funding," said Petlock.

Read more: Teen builds his own robotic prosthetic arm using Lego

In Canada provincial health-care coverage is not universal.

According to War Amps, Newfoundland and New Brunswick do not have any funding for artificial limbs unless the individual is on social assistance and the agency says the maximum provincial contribution is often not enough to cover the prosthesis.

In Quebec and Ontario provincial funding is available but the fee schedules are not regularly updated and so the 75 per cent coverage offered in Ontario may not even cover half the cost.

An artificial limb can cost tens of thousands of dollars depending on the individual's size and weight, and more than one might be needed over the years.

Read more: No solution yet for injured veterans forced to repeatedly prove amputated limbs are still missing

Petlock says many Canadian amputees end up resorting to fundraising.

As for Sunday, he says he feels a lot of joy from his work -- his clients hug him for a long time and appreciate how he is able to capture their colour.

While he still loves his other art forms, Sunday says this one is changing lives.

FBI warns ransomware assault threatens US healthcare system

BOSTON — Federal agencies warned that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts against the U.S. healthcare system designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care just as nationwide cases of COVID-19 are spiking

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

In a joint alert Wednesday, the FBI and two federal agencies warned that they had “credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers.” The alert said malicious groups are targeting the sector with attacks that produce “data theft and disruption of healthcare services."

The cyberattacks involve ransomware, which scrambles data into gibberish that can only be unlocked with software keys provided once targets pay up. Independent security experts say it has already hobbled at least five U.S. hospitals this week, and could potentially impact hundreds more.

The offensive by a Russian-speaking criminal gang coincides with the U.S. presidential election, although there is no immediate indication they were motivated by anything but profit. “We are experiencing the most significant cyber security threat we’ve ever seen in the United States,” Charles Carmakal, chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, said in a statement.

Alex Holden, CEO of Hold Security, which has been closely tracking the ransomware in question for more than a year, agreed that the unfolding offensive is unprecedented in magnitude for the U.S. given its timing in the heat of a contentions presidential election and the worst global pandemic in a century.

The federal alert was co-authored by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The cybercriminals launching the attacks use a strain of ransomware known as Ryuk, which is seeded through a network of zombie computers called Trickbot that Microsoft began trying to counter earlier in October. U.S. Cyber Command has also reportedly taken action against Trickbot. While Microsoft has had considerable success knocking its command-and-control servers offline through legal action, analysts say criminals have still been finding ways to spread Ryuk.

The U.S. has seen a plague of ransomware over the past 18 months or so, with major cities from Baltimore to Atlanta hit and local governments and schools hit especially hard.

In September, a ransomware attack hobbled all 250 U.S. facilities of the hospital chain Universal Health Services, forcing doctors and nurses to rely on paper and pencil for record-keeping and slowing lab work. Employees described chaotic conditions impeding patient care, including mounting emergency room waits and the failure of wireless vital-signs monitoring equipment.

Also in September, the first known fatality related to ransomware occurred in Duesseldorf, Germany, when an IT system failure forced a critically ill patient to be routed to a hospital in another city.

Holden said he alerted federal law enforcement Friday after monitoring infection attempts at a number of hospitals, some of which may have beaten back infections. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

He said the group was demanding ransoms well above $10 million per target and that criminals involved on the dark web were discussing plans to try to infect more than 400 hospitals, clinics and other medical facilities.

“One of the comments from the bad guys is that they are expecting to cause panic and, no, they are not hitting election systems,” Holden said. “They are hitting where it hurts even more and they know it.” U.S. officials have repeatedly expressed concern about major ransomware attacks affecting the presidential election, even if the criminals are motivated chiefly by profit.

Mandiant’s Carmakal identified the criminal gang as UNC1878, saying “it is deliberately targeting and disrupting U.S. hospitals, forcing them to divert patients to other healthcare providers” and producing prolonged delays in critical care.

He called the eastern European group “one of most brazen, heartless, and disruptive threat actors I’ve observed over my career.”

While no one has proven suspected ties between the Russian government and gangs that use the Trickbot platform, Holden said he has “no doubt that the Russian government is aware of this operation — of terrorism, really.” He said dozens of different criminal groups use Ryuk, paying its architects a cut.

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and former chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, said there are “certainly lot of connections between Russian cyber criminals and the state," with Kremlin-employed hackers sometimes moonlighting as cyber criminals.

Neither Holden nor Carmakal would identify the affected hospitals. Four healthcare institutions have been reported hit by ransomware so far this week, three belonging to the St. Lawrence County Health System in upstate New York and the Sky Lakes Medical Center in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

Sky Lakes acknowledged the ransomware attack in an online statement, saying it had no evidence that patient information was compromised. It said emergency and urgent care “remain available” The St. Lawrence system did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

Increasingly, ransomware criminals are stealing data from their targets before encrypting networks, using it for extortion. They often sow the malware weeks before activating it, waiting for moments when they believe they can extract the highest payments, said Brett Callow, an analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft.

A total of 59 U.S. healthcare providers/systems have been impacted by ransomware in 2020, disrupting patient care at up to 510 facilities, Callow said.

Carmakal said Mandiant had provided Microsoft on Wednesday with as much detail as it could about the thr eat so it could distribute details to its customers. A Microsoft spokesman had no immediate comment.

—-

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington, D.C., Lisa Baumann in Seattle and Deepti Hajela in New York City contributed to this report.

Frank Bajak, The Associated Press

Trump bet against science, and voters are casting judgment

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

The failed bet laid by President Donald Trump to ignore science and prioritize his political goals early in the pandemic, revealed Wednesday in fresh detail by new Jared Kushner tapes, is backfiring in devastating fashion at the critical moment of his reelection bid.

© Isaac Brekken/Getty Images

Dark warnings by scientists and new data showing a nationwide explosion in a virus Trump says is going away, crashing stock markets and real-time examples of the White House's delusions about its failed response are consuming the President as tens of millions of early voters cast judgment.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden, leading in the polls with five days of campaigning to go, is accusing the administration of surrendering to the virus and offering to shoulder the nation's grief in the grim months to come.

The extent to which the country's worsening trajectory has overtaken the final days of the campaign emphasizes how the election has become a personal referendum on Trump and how he mishandled the worst domestic crisis in decades.

The roots of his current difficulties were bedded down months ago.

"Trump's now back in charge. It's not the doctors," the first son-in-law and White House adviser, Kushner, said back in April in tapes of interviews with Bob Woodward, obtained by CNN.

To win next Tuesday, the President will have to convince sufficient Americans to build an Electoral College majority that his populist anti-Washington message, cultural themes, hardline "law and order" rhetoric and claimed expertise in rebuilding the ravaged economy are more important than his botched choices on a pandemic that is getting worse every day.

Stock slump is another blow to Trump

While the coronavirus tightened its grip, the President tried to change the subject, seizing on violence in Philadelphia after another police shooting to blame Democrats for looting.

But another huge slump on Wall Street showed how the election endgame narrative was slipping out of his control. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, one of the President's favorite metrics for his own performance, was off more than 900 points Wednesday.

Former top Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor outed himself as the author of a searing 2018 New York Times op-ed by "Anonymous" that castigated Trump's leadership.

And new polling showed few signs that the President is making the kind of late run that helped power his shock win over Hillary Clinton four years ago. A new CNN national survey had Biden leading by 12 points among likely voters. Even a win in the high single digits could assure Biden a comfortable margin in the Electoral College. Other swing state polls in Wisconsin and Michigan also had the Democrat ahead.

The President insisted he was doing "fantastically" in polls and was in better shape than four years ago. Trump appears, however, to face a complicated scenario on the electoral map that would require him to run the table on a string of Southern and Western battlegrounds before a final showdown with Biden in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

With more than 75 million votes already cast -- one-third of registered voters -- the chance for a late change to the race is limited, even as the President tried to shore up his far Western power base with rallies in Arizona, a state that could help Biden block his route to 270 electoral votes.

'Negotiated settlement'

The new recordings of Kushner's interviews with Woodward for his book "Rage" show in the most intimate detail yet how the President and close aides marginalized government scientists earlier this year in a bid to push economic openings at all cost to help his reelection effort.

In a conversation on April 18, the President's son-in-law told The Washington Post veteran that Trump was "getting the country back from the doctors" and referred to public health officials as if they were adversaries when he talked of a "negotiated settlement" with them.

Comprehensively misreading the situation, Kushner, who had no previous governing experience to match his elevated influence, also said the US was moving swiftly through the "panic phase" and "pain phase" and was at the "beginning of the comeback phase," while allowing there was a lot of pain to come for a while.

At the point of the recordings, more than 40,000 Americans had died from the virus. More than 227,000 have now perished, the death toll is rising and hospitals in many states risk becoming overwhelmed.

But Trump told his crowd in Bullhead, Arizona -- as usual packed together with little mask wearing -- that "people are getting better."

"We will vanquish the virus and emerge stronger than ever before. Our country will be stronger than ever before," he claimed.


Biden warns beating the virus is not just 'flipping a switch'

Unlike the President, who is in charge of stemming the latest spike in infections, Biden had a briefing from public health experts Wednesday. He emerged to tell Americans that mask wearing was patriotic, not political, but warned that if he is elected president he won't be able to end the pandemic by "flipping a switch." And he drew on his own experience of personal tragedies to console bereaved relatives of Covid-19 victims.

"I know all too well what it feels like to have your heart ripped out, losing a loved one too soon, to sit by their hospital bedside and feel like there's a black hole in the middle of your chest," Biden said.

Health experts inside and outside the government made clear that the state of the pandemic was closer to the status report laid out by Biden than the President's continuing false appraisals.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, "We are not in a good place," and predicted that even with a vaccine, it would be "easily" late 2021 or into the following year before Americans experience any degree of normalcy. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former head of the US Food and Drug Administration, said the US was on a trajectory to "look a lot like" Europe's current spike by early November.

Trump has been arguing with some justification in recent days that European countries lauded for doing a better job than he is in fighting the virus are now experiencing awful escalations in infections. France imposed a new lockdown starting on Thursday.

But those countries, by aggressively managing the virus, were able to give their populace some respite over the summer, saving thousands of lives. Trump's push for state openings unleashed a viral surge across the Sun Belt in the summer and the US never returned to the lower levels of infections experienced across the Atlantic.

Several Trump aides on Wednesday tried to defend Trump's handling of the virus but only served to expose his negligence. Campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley told CNN's "New Day" that "we are moving in the right direction" after a White House document boasted Trump had ended the pandemic. And Alyssa Farah, the White House communications director, conceded that the choice of words was poor but said the US is "rounding the corner."

White House attacks 'Anonymous'

The White House went on the offensive Wednesday after Taylor -- who had been chief of staff to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, revealed he had written the 2018 New York Times op-ed and a book critical of Trump. (He was Nielsen's deputy chief of staff when the op-ed was published.)

"Issuing my critiques without attribution forced the President to answer them directly on their merits or not at all, rather than creating distractions through petty insults and name-calling," Taylor, who is now a CNN contributor, wrote in a statement. "I wanted the attention to be on the arguments themselves."

In the op-ed, Taylor slammed Trump for "amorality," "reckless decisions" and "erratic behavior" -- and he sparked a White House hunt for his identity.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany released a statement blasting Taylor as a "low-level, disgruntled former staffer" and a "liar and a coward who chose anonymity over action and leaking over leading."

But in many ways, the President's decision to ignore the ramifications of sidelining scientists in favor of minimizing the pandemic and concentrating on his own electoral prospects validates Taylor's critique.

Biden draws contrast with Trump on coronavirus as pandemic worsens in campaign's final days

By Eric Bradner and Sarah Mucha, CNN
Udated 4:00 PM ET, Wed October 28, 2020

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden attends a virtual public health briefing at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del., Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020.


(CNN)Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden sought Wednesday to make the differences in how he and President Donald Trump have approached the coronavirus pandemic a part of his closing message, sitting for a briefing with health experts and addressing the crisis as Trump campaigned out West as if it was over.

Wednesday's event was the latest in Biden's series of demonstrations of how he would handle the pandemic -- which have become a regular feature of his campaign, underscoring his aides' belief that the virus' spread on Trump's watch is the dominant factor in the November 3 election.

"We discussed importance of wearing masks, protecting yourself, protecting your neighbor and to save around 100,000 lives in the months ahead," Biden said in a speech after the briefing. "This is not political. It's patriotic. Wearing a mask. Wear one, period."

Biden's approach demonstrates a fundamental difference between his campaign and Trump's in the closing days of the 2020 election: Trump is campaigning as if the pandemic is over, holding multiple rallies per day with thousands of maskless supporters. Biden is campaigning with an acknowledgment that it has upended American life and politics, minimizing his public events and -- when he does travel -- delivering made-for-TV speeches and holding "drive-in" outdoor rallies in which attendees stay near their cars, instead of the larger mega-rallies typical of a presidential campaign.

"We are turning the corner. We are rounding the curve, we will vanquish the virus," Trump said in Wisconsin on Tuesday, where coronavirus cases are surging.

The former vice president's closing message has been twofold: Trump is a poisonous presence in a political system Biden claims he can get to function again, which was the theme of a Tuesday speech Biden delivered in Georgia; and Trump has failed in responding to the pandemic, which his Wednesday briefing and speech were designed to highlight.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden attends a virtual public health briefing at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del., Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020.

Biden's public coronavirus briefings -- a regular feature of his campaign for months -- are carefully staged. On Wednesday, he sat alone at a table on a stage in Wilmington's Queen Theater in front of a massive screen as four public health experts, including former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, briefed him remotely.

The screen also displayed charts showing the seven-day rolling average of reported coronavirus cases and hospitalizations resulting from the virus.

"There's no doubt, we are in the midst of the third wave," Dr. David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner and the chair of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in a portion of the briefing reporters were allowed to watch. "I don't think anyone can tell you how high this is going to get."

"Almost the entire nation is worsening at this point," Kessler said.

Biden on Wednesday said the Trump administration has refused to recognize the reality of the pandemic, calling that failure "an insult to every single person suffering from Covid-19."
"Even if I win, it's going to take a lot of hard work to end this pandemic. I'm not running on the false promise of being to end this pandemic by flipping a switch," Biden said in a speech after his briefing. He added that he would start on day one "doing the right things. We'll let science drive our decisions." 

He also highlighted the contrast in optics between his campaign and Trump's, pointing out that many attendees at a Trump rally in Nebraska on Tuesday night were stranded in a cold parking lot afterward, calling it "an image that captures President Trump's whole approach to this crisis."