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Aleksei Navalny, Charlie Hebdo, Macron in Lebanon: Your Wednesday Briefing
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Good morning.
We’re overlaying Emmanuel Macron’s go to to Lebanon, Charlie Hebdo’s republication of its Prophet Muhammad cartoons and Argentina’s push to return jaguars to the wild.
Aleksei Navalny: The Kremlin’s unspeakable nemesis
Throughout greater than 20 years in energy, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has never uttered the name of Aleksei Navalny, his highest-profile opponent, in public. (When he did so at a private event in 2013, after prodding from an American interlocutor, it became a national news story.)
Why? Intolerably for Mr. Putin’s circle, Mr. Navalny is “completely out of their control,” resulting in a quasi-mystical taboo around his name, one analyst said. Another source of the anger, he added, is that the security services have never been able to find any compromising material on him.
The Russian opposition leader is lying comatose in a German hospital after being poisoned — but he has still managed to needle Mr. Putin. His organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, released a video on Monday with footage of Mr. Navalny denouncing corrupt pro-Kremlin politicians in Siberia.
Russia’s outbreak: The variety of coronavirus instances in Russia handed a million on Tuesday, the federal government mentioned, making it fourth in the world for reported whole infections after the US, Brazil and India.
Listed here are the newest updates and maps of the pandemic.
In different coronavirus developments:
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Within the U.S., kids of coloration are contaminated and hospitalized at considerably larger charges than white kids.
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Dozens of scientists world wide have tried making experimental vaccines, with wildly various strategies, affiliations and claims. Every is motivated by the identical thought: Distinctive occasions name for distinctive measures.
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Hungary has opted to loosen up border restrictions imposed Tuesday to permit journey from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.
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After 1000’s of unmasked protesters turned out in Berlin over the weekend to rally in opposition to virus restrictions, the town now requires masks for demonstrations with greater than 100 members.
Charlie Hebdo republishes its Muhammad cartoons
The French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo has republished the cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad and Islam that prompted a deadly attack on the magazine in 2015, a move that will be seen by some as a defiant act of free speech and by others as reckless provocation. The cartoons were published online Tuesday and will appear in print today — just as the long-awaited trial begins of people accused of assisting in the attack, which left 12 people dead.
It’s change or sanctions, Macron tells politicians in Lebanon
In his second go to to Lebanon in lower than a month, President Emmanuel Macron of France met with representatives of the country’s political factions on Tuesday. He urged them to back an overhaul of government and measures to curb pervasive corruption, and he warned that they would otherwise be at risk of sanctions on their personal wealth.
The leaders have controlled the government through a sectarian power-sharing agreement during the three decades since Lebanon’s civil war, a long and brutal conflict in which most of them participated.
By dangling the threat of sanctions, Mr. Macron is hoping to secure a commitment to economic and political measures that underpinned discussions early this year with the International Monetary Fund about a bailout. Those talks stalled over several issues, including the government’s rejection of a forensic audit of the central bank.
Miners, loggers and farmers have turned huge elements of the Southern Cone of South America into grassland, driving jaguars to extinction in a number of of their former domains. Our reporter visited Iberá National Park in Argentina, where conservationists are working to bring back the top predators after more than seven decades of absence.
The five felines chosen for rewilding came from zoos and had troubled pasts. Getting them to mate and hunt takes teams of people working untold hours (from a distance). If all goes as planned, the jaguars will be fully released into the wild this year or early in 2021.
Russian interference: The Internet Research Agency, a Russian group that interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, is at it again, Facebook said on Tuesday. Turkey: The authorities announced the arrest of Mahmut Ozden, described as a top Islamic State figure in Turkey, and said they suspected the group was planning an attack in Istanbul.
Here’s what else is happening
Annie, we heard a lot about women, about suffrage. There was a lot of programming that hit that message. What do you think the aim of that was?
The phrase I was tracking went like, “I wish you could see what I see”: this empathetic president who is kind. This was a theme over and over. It was an acknowledgment that he needs to increase his support with suburban women. That’s the best path he has to re-election, and it was a clear acknowledgment that just the base is not going to be enough.
How was this convention aimed at the swing states that were fundamental to his 2016 win?
Jonathan: If you look at the polling, the president has been trailing Biden consistently, but the margins got worse over the summer, and there’s been some analysis about what happened. You can basically trace it back to June and July, when two things happened. He responded to the Black Lives Matter protest in a way that was incendiary and turned off a lot of voters, including center and center-right voters, and then the coronavirus flared back up and he wasn’t showing urgency in his response.
Those two issues have given Biden a larger lead that may be temporary, so I think the mission in this convention was looking to places like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and trying to get back some of those voters they lost.
Thanks for joining me. See you next time.
— Natasha
Thank you P.S.
To Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.
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