FRANCE CHURCH ATTACK: 3 DEAD, COUNTRY ON HIGH ALERT

A young Tunisian man armed with a knife and carrying a copy of the Quran

attacked worshippers in a French church and killed three Thursday, prompting

the government to raise its security alert to the maximum level hours before

a nationwide coronavirus lockdown.

The attack in Mediterranean city of Nice was the third in less than two

months that French authorities have attributed to Muslim extremists,

including the beheading of a teacher who had shown caricatures of the

Prophet Muhammad in class after the images were re-published by a satirical

newspaper targeted in a 2015 attack.

Thursday's attacker was seriously wounded by police and hospitalised in

life-threatening condition after the killings at the Notre Dame Basilica.

President Emmanuel Macron said he would immediately increase the number of

soldiers deployed to protect schools and religious sites from around 3,000

to 7,000.

In Tunisia, the anti-terrorism prosecutor's office said an investigation was

being opened on the "suspected commission of a terrorist crime by a Tunisian

. outside national borders,," the official TAP news agency quoted the

prosecutor's office as saying.

The three were killed "only because they were in the church at that moment,"

Prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard told reporters. He said investigators are

looking for potential complicity in the "complex" probe.

The French consulate in the Saudi city of Jiddah was also targeted Thursday,

a man claiming allegiance to an anti-immigrant group was shot and killed by

police in the southern French city of Avignon, and scattered confrontations

were reported elsewhere, but it is unclear whether they were linked to the

attack in Nice.

It was the third attack since Charlie Hebdo republished the caricatures in

September as the trial opened for the 2015 attacks at the paper's offices

and a kosher supermarket.

"With the attack against Samual Paty, it was freedom of speech that was

targeted," Prime Minister Jean Castex told lawmakers Thursday, referring to

the teacher who was beheaded after showing his class caricatures of the

prophet during a civics lesson. "With this attack in Nice, it is freedom of

religion."

Macron left for Nice almost immediately and, standing before the basilica,

said, "Very clearly, it is France which is under attack." He added that all

of France offered its support to Catholics "so that their religion can be

exercised freely in our country. So that every religion can be practiced. "

In Avignon on Thursday morning, a man with a firearm was shot and killed by

police after he refused to drop his weapon and a warning shot failed to stop

him, a police official said. And a Saudi state-run news agency said a man

stabbed a guard at the French consulate in Jiddah, wounding the guard before

he was arrested.

While many groups and nations have been angered or frustrated by France's

position on the cartoons, several issued their condolences Thursday, as did

France's traditional allies.

The French Council of the Muslim Faith called on French Muslims to refrain

from festivities marking the birth of Muhammad "as a sign of mourning and in

solidarity with the families of victims and the Catholics of France."

So far, according to French officials, only EU countries and Canada had

supported Macron, even as Turkey and Pakistan led the attack against Macron.

Diplomats point out that even the US, the UK or Australia have not spoken

out in Macron's support so far. In this context, Paris saw New Delhi's

support as "very meaningful."

CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY'S KEY CONCLAVE APPROVES XI'S VISION 2035

China's ruling Communist Party on Thursday concluded its key annual conclave

during which it approved the 14th Five-Year Plan and Vision 2035, a

long-term development plan which observers say hints at the continuation of

President Xi Jinping in power for the next 15 years.

The four-day plenary session of the Communist Party of China (CPC) heard and

discussed a work report delivered by Xi on behalf of the Politburo of the

CPC Central Committee, an official communique said on Thursday.

The session also adopted the CPC proposals for the formulation of the 14th

Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and

the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035.

While the 14th Five-Year plan envisages massive overhaul of the country's

domestic market to boost consumption in order to reduce China's reliance on

shrinking exports markets, the Vision 2035 visualises a long-term plan,

reflecting the vision of President Xi.

The Vision 2035 plan prompted speculation that Xi intends to essentially be

"president-for-life".

The aim of Vision 2035, says Benjamin Hillman, a professor at the Australian

National University, is to "set goalposts for China's progress towards

achieving high-income status (being a fully developed nation) by 2049".

Yet the "very idea of a 2035 manifesto has also prompted speculation that Xi

intends to lead China through this period, becoming, essentially,

president-for-life", he told the BBC.

UK'S LABOUR PARTY SUSPENDS FORMER LEADER JEREMY CORBYN IN ANTISEMITISM ROW

The UK's Opposition Labour Party on Thursday suspended former leader Jeremy

Corbyn from its ranks after a report by the country's human rights watchdog

held the party "responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and

discrimination" during his time in charge.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which had launched an

investigation into antisemitism within the party following a string of

complaints, found that Labour had broken the law in its failure to handle

antisemitism, or anti-Jewish, complaints and there were "serious failings"

by its leadership at the time.

However, in his reaction to the report, Corbyn said the number of complaints

made during his tenure were "dramatically overstated".

"One antisemite is one too many, but the scale of the problem was also

dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and

outside the party, as well as by much of the media. That combination hurt

Jewish people and must never be repeated," said Corbyn, in reference to the

report.

A Labour Party spokesperson issued a statement soon after to announce that

Corbyn had been suspended from the party.

CHINA SETTING UP WORLD'S HIGHEST-ALTITUDE DATA CENTRE IN TIBET

China is building the world's highest-altitude cloud computing data centre

in Tibet that will meet the data storage needs of the country and South

Asian nations like Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, official media reported

On Thursday.

The data centre is situated in a high-tech zone of the Tibetan regional

capital city of Lhasa and located at an altitude of around 3,656 metres,

making it the highest-altitude data centre in the world, state-run Xinhua

news agency reported.

With a total planned investment of 11.8 billion yuan (over USD 1.80

billion), the project will provide services in areas such as video

rendering, autonomous driving, distance-learning data backup, among others,

according to its Lhasa-based operator, the Ningsuan Technology Group.

It is expected to provide those services to major Chinese provinces and

cities, as well as Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and part of Southeast Asia,

said the company.

The first phase of the project is expected to be put into operation in 2021,

said the report.

After the completion of phase one, the data centre will have 10,000 machine

cabinets and an annual revenue of 1.5 billion yuan (about USD 223.5

million), meeting the data storage needs of key clients in the country and

in South Asia.

Wang Jun, Ningsuan's vice president and chief marketing officer, said as

Lhasa pushes forward with the construction of a regional bureau for stepping

up international communications services, Tibet will become a big-data

industrial base.

US ALLOWS JERUSALEM-BORN CITIZENS TO PUT ISRAEL ON PASSPORTS

The United States will allow Americans born in disputed Jerusalem to list

Israel as their place of birth on passports and other documents, according

to a new policy announced Thursday.

The move came a day after the United States amended science accords signed

with Israel to apply to institutions in the occupied West Bank. The changes,

enacted days before the US election, appeared to be aimed at shoring up the

support of evangelical Christians and other Israel backers.

President Donald Trump's administration broke with decades of US policy by

recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital in 2017 and later moving the

embassy there from Tel Aviv, where most other countries maintain their

missions.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war along with the

West Bank, territories the Palestinians seek as part of their future state.

Israel considers the entire city its ``unified, eternal'' capital while the

Palestinians want their own capital in east Jerusalem.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that the new passport

policy was in keeping with the decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's

capital. Jerusalem-born Americans will be able to specify either ``Israel''

or "Jerusalem" as their place of birth on passports and official documents.

Those who do not specify their place of birth will be listed as having been

born in Jerusalem.

Trump has taken a series of unprecedented steps to support Israel and

isolate the Palestinians. He released a plan to resolve the Middle East

conflict in January that overwhelmingly favors Israel and was immediately

rejected by the Palestinians.

RECORD-BREAKING EARLY VOTING IN US ELECTION TOPS 80 MILLION

More than 80 million Americans have cast ballots in the US presidential

election, according to a tally on Thursday from the US Elections Project at

the University of Florida, setting the stage for the highest participation

rate in over a century.

The record-breaking pace, more than 58% of total 2016 turnout, reflects

intense interest in the vote, in which incumbent Donald Trump, a Republican,

is up against Democratic nominee Joe Biden, a former vice president.

Huge numbers of people have voted by mail or at early in-person polling

sites amid concerns the coronavirus could spread at busy Election Day voting

places.

Trump trails Biden in national opinion polls as most voters say they

disapprove of the Trump administration's handling of Covid-19, which has

killed more than 227,000 people in the United States, with case numbers once

again breaking daily records as Election Day nears on Tuesday.

Democrats hold a significant advantage in early voting due to their embrace

of mail balloting, which Republicans have historically cast in large numbers

but have shunned amid repeated and unfounded attacks by Trump, who says the

system is prone to widespread fraud.

Experts have predicted turnout will easily surpass the 138 million who voted

in the 2016 presidential election that Trump won. Only 47 million votes came

before Election Day in 2016.

In 20 states that report party registration data, 18.2 million registered

Democrats have already voted, compared with 11.5 million Republicans and 8.8

million with no party affiliation. The data does not show for whom the votes

were cast.