KEY COVID NOS. WORLDWIDE

Pos   /   Country   /   New Daily cases   /   Total Deaths   /        Daily Deaths /           Active Cases   /           Deaths/1M Pop

               World    4,01,462              /             48,30,540            /             7,364     /             1,80,51,890               /             619.7

1             USA        89,836   /             7,24,670              /             1,753     /             97,88,557            /               2,173

2             UK          33,869   /             1,37,152              /             166        /             13,39,764            /               2,007

3             Russia    25,110   /             2,11,696              /             895        /             6,66,672              /               1,450

4             Turkey   29,802   /             65,137   /             228        /             4,80,075              /             762

5             Brazil     20,528   /             5,98,871              /             686        /             4,11,418              /               2,792

6             Iran        13,226   /             1,21,563              /             216        /             3,94,511              /               1,424

7             Mexico  2,282     /             2,79,104              /             303        /             3,61,002              /               2,136

8             India      19,380   /             4,49,568              /             285        /             2,52,762              /               322

9             Honduras             302        /             9,879     /             18           /             2,47,021              /               978

10           Poland   1,325     /             75,741   /             46           /             1,71,896              /               2,004

11           Germany              7,768     /             94,419   /             77           /             1,45,931              /               1,122

12           Ukraine 9,846     /             57,206   /             317        /             1,43,898              /               1,318

13           Malaysia              8,817     /             26,876   /             117        /             1,35,945              /               817

14           Serbia    7,190     /             8,481     /             51           /             1,28,014              /             976

15           Romania              15,037   /             37,929   /             252        /             1,11,917              /               1,988

16           Thailand               9,869     /             17,203   /             92           /             1,08,373              /               246

17           France   5,558     /             1,16,923              /             75           /             1,07,076              /               1,786

18           Philippines           9,055     /             38,828   /                            /             1,03,077              /               348

19           Norway 582        /             861        /                            /             1,01,786              /             157

20           Finland  583        /             1,062     /                            /             96,937   /             191

21           Italy       2,466     /             1,31,118              /             50           /             90,299   /               2,173

35           Pakistan               1,308     /             27,947   /             54           /             45,826   /             124

88           Bangladesh         694        /             27,614   /             23           /             11,542   /             166

TAIWAN ‘ON ALERT’ AFTER RECORD 56 CHINESE PLANES ENTER ADIZ

Taiwan said on it was “on alert” over China’s “over the top” military manoeuvres, after Beijing flew a record 56 fighter planes towards the self-governing island in a third day of sustained military intimidation.

The first sortie on Monday of 52 planes included 34 J-16 fighter jets and 12 H-6 bombers, among other aircraft, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence. Later, four more Chinese J-16s flew towards the southwestern part of Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, a buffer outside a country’s airspace.

The Taiwanese air force scrambled its fighter planes and monitored the movement of the Chinese warplanes on its air defence system, the ministry said.

Premier Su Tseng-chang said Taiwan needed to be on alert and that China’s actions risked regional peace and stability.

“Taiwan must be on alert. China is more and more over the top,” Su told reporters in Taipei. “The world has also seen China’s repeated violations of regional peace and pressure on Taiwan.”

Taiwan needs to “strengthen itself” and come together as one, he added.

“Only then will countries that want to annex Taiwan not dare to easily resort to force. Only when we help ourselves can others help us.”

Taiwan has reported 148 Chinese airforce planes entering the southern and southwestern part of its air defence zone since China celebrated its National Day on October 1.

On Monday, foreign minister Joseph Wu worried about the risk of conflict.

“We are very concerned that China is going to launch a war against Taiwan at some point, even though the threat may not be imminent at this point,” Wu said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corp broadcast on Monday.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has made modernising the armed forces a priority, enhancing its capacity for asymmetric warfare, which is designed to make any Chinese attack difficult and costly, for example with smart mines and portable missiles. She is also overseeing improvements to the island’s air force.

In an article for the US magazine Foreign Affairs released on Tuesday, Tsai said Taiwan falling to China would trigger “catastrophic” consequences for peace in Asia.

While Taiwan does not want military confrontation, “if its democracy and way of life are threatened, Taiwan will do whatever it takes to defend itself,” she wrote.

TRIO WIN NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS FOR CLIMATE DISCOVERIES

US-Japanese scientist Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann of Germany and Giorgio Parisi of Italy have won the Nobel Prize in physics for climate models and the understanding of physical systems.

The jury’s announcement came on Tuesday, a month before the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, where global warming will top the agenda.

Manabe, 90, and Hasselmann, 89, share one half of the 10-million-kronor ($1.1m) prize for their research on climate models, while Parisi, 73, won the other half for his work on the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems.

“Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann laid the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it,” the Nobel Committee for Physics said in a statement.

“Giorgio Parisi is rewarded for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered materials and random processes,” it added.

Manabe is affiliated with Princeton University in the US, while Hasselmann is a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg.

Parisi is a professor at Sapienza University of Rome.

Thors Hans Hansson, chair of the Nobel Committee, said “the discoveries being recognised this year demonstrate that our knowledge about the climate rests on a solid scientific foundation, based on a rigorous analysis of observations”.

TALIBAN UNLAWFULLY KILLED 13 ETHNIC HAZARAS: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Taliban forces unlawfully killed 13 ethnic Hazaras, most of them Afghan soldiers who had surrendered to the insurgents, a prominent rights group said Tuesday.

The killings took place in the village of Kahor in Daykundi province in central Afghanistan on August 30, according to an investigation by Amnesty International. Eleven of the victims were members of the Afghan national security forces and two were civilians, among them a 17-year-old girl.

The reported killings took place about two weeks after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in a blitz campaign, culminating in their takeover of Kabul. At the time, Taliban leaders sought to reassure Afghans that they had changed from their previous harsh rule of the country in the late 1990s.

The world has been watching whether the Taliban would live up to their initial promises of tolerance and inclusiveness toward women and ethnic minorities, among them the Shiite Hazaras. However, Taliban actions so far, such as renewed restrictions on women and the appointment of an all-male government, have been met with dismay by the international community.

Hazaras make up around 9% of Afghanistan’s 36 million people. They are often targeted because they are Shiite Muslims in a Sunni-majority country.

Amnesty's secretary general, Agnes Callamard, said that “these cold-blooded executions (of the Hazaras) are further proof that the Taliban are committing the same horrific abuses they were notorious for during their previous rule of Afghanistan."\

G20 MUST WORK OUT CONDITIONS FOR TALIBAN RECOGNITION: FRANCE

France’s President Emmanuel Macron said the G20 summit, scheduled to be held at the end of the month, must send a clear message to Afghanistan’s Taliban on the conditions for international recognition.

In an interview with France Inter radio station broadcast on Tuesday, Macron said those conditions must include equality for women, access for foreign humanitarian operations and non-cooperation with Islamist terror groups.

"I believe international recognition should have a price, and the dignity of Afghan women, equality between men and women, should be one of the points on which we must insist,” Macron said.

“You must absolutely give young girls in your country a future, and that is one of the things that we will look at before recognising you”. He said allowing all girls back to school was one of his concerns. Referring to the G20 summit due to take place in Rome later this month, Macron said: "We will talk about Afghanistan. We absolutely must, that's to say us, the Europeans, the Americans, China, Russia, the big powers of Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America all together, we must have a very clear message that we will set conditions for recognition of the Taliban.”

FACEBOOK HARMS CHILDREN AND WEAKENS DEMOCRACY: EX-EMPLOYEE

A former Facebook employee has told US lawmakers that the company's sites and apps "harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy".

Frances Haugen, a 37-year-old former product manager turned whistleblower, heavily criticised the company at a hearing on Capitol Hill.

Facebook has faced growing scrutiny and increasing calls for its regulation.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg hit back, saying recent coverage painted a "false picture" of the company.

In a letter to staff, he said many of the claims "don't make any sense", pointing to their efforts in fighting harmful content, establishing transparency and creating "an industry-leading research program to under these important issues".

"We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health," he said in the letter, made public on his Facebook page. "It's difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives."

Ms Haugen told CBS News on Sunday that she had shared a number of internal Facebook documents with the Wall Street Journal in recent weeks.

Using the documents, the WSJ reported that research carried out by Instagram showed the app could harm girls' mental health.

This was a theme Ms Haugen continued during her testimony on Tuesday. "The company's leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer, but won't make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people," she said.

She criticised Mark Zuckerberg for having wide-ranging control, saying that there is "no one currently holding Mark accountable but himself."

And she praised the massive outage of Facebook services on Monday, which affected users around the world.

"Yesterday we saw Facebook taken off the internet," she said. "I don't know why it went down, but I know that for more than five hours, Facebook wasn't used to deepen divides, destabilise democracies and make young girls and women feel bad about their bodies."

BIDEN DIALS JAPAN PM AMID CHINA CONCERNS

Japan's new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held his first talks as Japanese leader with US President Joe Biden and confirmed they would work to strengthen their alliance and cooperate in regional security in the face of growing challenges from China and North Korea.

Kishida told reporters that Biden, in a phone call, reassured him of the US commitment to defend the Japanese-controlled East China Sea island Senkaku, which China also claims and has escalated coast guard activity in the area. Biden provided “a strong statement about US commitment for the defense of Japan, including Senkaku,” Kishida said, adding the two leaders also reaffirmed they would tackle together the “challenges facing neighboring regions such as China and North Korea”.

ASTRAZENECA ASKS FDA TO AUTHORISE COVID ANTIBODY TREATMENT

AstraZeneca, the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker that developed one of the first COVID-19 vaccines, has asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorise the emergency use of an antibody treatment to prevent the disease.

The company said Tuesday that the treatment, known as AZD7442, would be the first long-acting antibody combination to receive an emergency use authorization for COVID-19 prevention. The treatment may help protect people whose immune systems don't respond adequately to vaccination, AstraZeneca said.

Late-stage human trials showed that AZD7442 reduced the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 by 77%. More than three-quarters of the participants had suppressed immune systems and other conditions that made them more susceptible to severe disease.

The drugs are laboratory-made versions of virus-blocking antibodies that help fight off infections. The treatments help the patient by supplying concentrated doses of one or two antibodies.

The main antibody treatment being used in the U.S. is Regeneron's dual-antibody cocktail. The FDA has also authorized the Regeneron product as protection for high-risk people against severe COVID-19.

3,30,000 KIDS VICTIMS OF CHURCH SEX ABUSE, SAYS FRENCH REPORT

An estimated 3,30,000 children were victims of sex abuse within France’s Catholic Church over the past 70 years, according to a report released Tuesday that represents the country’s first major accounting of the worldwide phenomenon.

The figure includes abuses committed by some 3,000 priests and other people involved in the church — wrongdoing that Catholic authorities covered up over decades in a “systemic manner”, according to the president of the commission that issued the report, Jean-Marc Sauve. The head of the French bishops’ conference asked for forgiveness from the victims, about 80% of whom were boys, according to the report. The bishops met on Tuesday to discuss next steps.

The independent commission urged the church to take strong action, denouncing “faults” and “silence”. It also called on the Catholic Church to help compensate the victims, notably in cases that are too old to prosecute via the courts.

“About 60% of men and women who were sexually abused encounter major problems in their life,” Sauve said. The 2,500-page document was issued as the Catholic Church in France.

Victims welcomed the report as long overdue. Francois Devaux, head of the victims’ group The Liberated Word, said it was “a turning point in our history”. The panel worked for 2 1/2 years, listening to victims and witnesses and studying church, court, police and news archives starting from the 1950s.

The report says an estimated 3,000 abusers — twothirds of them priests — worked in the church during the seven-decade period.