KEY COVID NOS. WORLDWIDE

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

               World    4,50,982              /             48,48,527            /             7,774     /             1,80,61,985        /             622

1             USA        96,000   /             7,30,139              /             1,642     /             98,16,920            /             2,190

2             UK          40,701   /             1,37,417              /             122        /             13,48,290            /             2,011

3             Russia    27,550   /             2,13,549              /             924        /             6,77,331              /             1,463

4             Turkey   30,019   /             65,590   /             217        /             4,76,426              /             767

5             Iran        11,625   /             1,22,012              /             233        /             3,82,072              /             1,430

6             Brazil     15,044   /             5,99,865              /             451        /             3,77,757              /             2,797

7             Mexico  7,697     /             2,80,607              /             713        /             3,61,304              /             2,148

8             Honduras             376        /             9,949     /             36           /             2,47,151              /             985

9             India      21,463   /             4,50,160              /             277        /             2,46,668              /             322

10           Poland   2,007     /             75,803   /             29           /             1,75,337              /             2,006

11           Ukraine 15,125   /             57,840   /             314        /             1,62,041              /             1,333

12           Germany              22,403   /             94,910   /             411        /             1,47,247              /             1,128

13           Malaysia              9,890     /             27,113   /             132        /             1,29,049              /             824

14           Serbia    6,978     /             8,582     /             51           /             1,27,825              /             987

15           Romania              14,467   /             38,542   /             263        /             1,21,372              /             2,021

16           Philippines           10,019   /             38,937   /             109        /             1,15,328              /             349

17           Thailand               11,200   /             17,418   /             113        /             1,09,022              /             249

18           Norway 508        /             871        /                            /             1,02,764              /             159

19           France   4,615     /             1,16,991              /             34           /             1,01,177              /             1,787

20           Finland  689        /             1,062     /                            /             98,292   /             191

35           Pakistan               1,453     /             28,032   /             46           /             44,395   /             124

90           Bangladesh         663        /             27,647   /             12           /             11,394   /             166

AUS PM SLAMS SOCIAL MEDIA GIANTS AND ANONYMOUS TROLLS

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has slammed social media giants for providing a “coward’s palace” for anonymous trolls to abuse people online, as he foreshadowed a further crackdown on the tech industry.

Mr Morrison took aim at the “lack of accountability” by the tech giants in enabling hate speech, saying the government would be “leaning further into this issue”.

“Social media has become a coward’s palace, where people can just go on there, not say who they are, destroy people’s lives and say the most foul and offensive things to people, and do so with impunity. Now that’s not a free country where that happens,” Mr Morrison said on Thursday.

“They should have to identify who they are. And, you know, the companies if they’re not going to say who they are, well they’re not a platform anymore, they’re a publisher. They’re a publisher, and you know what the implications of that means in terms of those issues.

“People should be responsible for what they say in a country that believes in free speech. That issue is, and the technology that enables it, and the lack of accountability that sits around it, is just not on. You can expect us to be leaning even further into this.”

“We intend to set the pace. We value our free society. And in a free society, you can’t be a coward and attack people and expect not to be held accountable for it,” he said.

NOBEL LITERATURE PRIZE: TANZANIAN-BORN NOVELIST ABDULRAZAK GURNAH WINS AWARD

Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday for works that explore the legacies of imperialism on uprooted individuals.

The Swedish Academy said the award was in recognition of his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”

Born in Zanzibar in 1948 and based in England, Gurnah is a professor at the University of Kent. He is the author of 10 novels, including “Paradise,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994.

Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for literature, called him “one of the world’s most prominent post-colonial writers.”

The prestigious award comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1.14 million). The prize money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

MOSCOW INVITES TALIBAN TO AFGHANISTAN TALKS ON OCT. 20

Russia will invite representatives of the Taliban to international talks on Afghanistan that it plans to host in Moscow on October 20, President Vladimir Putin’s special representative on Afghanistan said on Thursday.

Zamir Kabulov, the representative, did not provide further details on the planned talks in comments carried by Russian news agencies.

Russia is worried about the potential for fallout in the wider region and the possibility of Islamist militants infiltrating the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, which Moscow views as its southern defensive buffer. In the wake of the Taliban takeover, Moscow has held military exercises in Tajikistan and bolstered its hardware at its military base there.

Mr. Putin on Thursday also held a phone call with Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon in which the two leaders discussed the security situation surrounding the latest developments in Afghanistan, the Tajik presidency said in a statement.

CIA ZEROES IN ON BEIJING WITH CHINA-FOCUSED UNIT

After more than two decades of single-minded focus on terrorism, the CIA, spying arm of the US, is pivoting to what has emerged as a larger geo-political threat to American primacy: China.

The world’s most storied spy agency on Thursday announced that it is establishing a China Mission Centre to focus on a country that US analysts believe will be an even bigger challenge than the former Soviet Union, given its massive population and economic clout. The new centre “will further strengthen our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century, an increasingly adversarial Chinese government,” CIA director William Burns said in a statement accompanying background briefings by unnamed officials in which they outlined an agency-wide effort to ramp up personnel and resources for the new mission centre, including China-specific analysts, linguists, technologists, and other specialists.

Although the CIA subsequently kept extensive tabs on USSR legatee Russia, Iran, North Korea among others nations, the broader issue of terrorism emerged as its major focus.

They maintained that the CIA would continue its counterterrorism mission, but China, will become a singular priority, meriting a mission centre that will draw expertise from across the board and around the world.

SOUTH CHINA SEA: US SUBMARINE COLLIDES WITH 'UNKNOWN OBJECT'

More than a dozen US sailors have been injured after a nuclear submarine hit an "unknown object" while submerged in waters around the South China Sea.

Fifteen sailors had minor injuries when the USS Connecticut collided with the object on Saturday, US officials said.

They added that it was unclear what had caused the collision.

The incident comes as tensions mount in the highly-disputed region over a recent uptick of Chinese incursions into Taiwan's air defence zone.

A US Navy spokesperson said the submarine is now headed towards the US territory of Guam.

NATO CHIEF HITS OUT AT RUSSIA'S 'MALIGN ACTIVITIES'

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that the organisation withdrew the accreditation of eight Russian officials to the military alliance in response to a rise in “malign activities” by Moscow.

The eight officials are to be deprived of access to NATO's Brussels headquarters from the end of the month because it believes they have been secretly working as intelligence officers. NATO also reduced the number of positions that Russia can accredit people for from 20 down to 10.

“This decision is not linked to any particular event, but we have seen over some time now an increase in Russian malign activity, and therefore we need to be vigilant,” Mr. Stoltenberg told reporters.

PAID MILLIONS TO HIDE TRILLIONS: PANDORA PAPERS EXPOSE FINANCIAL CRIME ENABLERS, TOO

The Pandora Papers investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a non-profit newsroom and network of journalists based in Washington, D.C., has revealed there are still some go-to havens for those looking to hide illicit wealth.

The people who don’t get mentioned as much in the media coverage of the Pandora Papers, however, are the enablers devoted to helping the richest people in the world get richer and to pass on their wealth while avoiding or evading taxes. These enablers help criminals and kleptocrats launder their ill-gotten gains.

They may not be as wealthy as their clients, but they are paid millions to hide trillions.

Some elites pay respected professionals and businesses to open political doors, to lobby against sanctions, to fight legal battles and to launder money and reputations. In doing so, these institutions and individuals push the boundaries of the law and degrade the principles of our democracy.

According to the Deloitte Anti-Money Laundering Preparedness Survey Report 2020, the amount of money laundered in one year is estimated to be between two per cent and five per cent of global GDP, or from US$800 billion to US$2 trillion annually.

The ICIJ’s FinCEN Files offer unprecedented insights into a secret world of international banking, anonymous clients and, in many cases, financial crime.