MicroWave

After a month of updating Floridians on hurricanes, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is now focusing his official office on fighting an abortion rights amendment, holding a campaign-like rally at state expense two weeks before the election.

DeSantis’ event Monday, which was capped with a prayer from the archbishop of Miami and the lieutenant governor asking people to not vote like atheists, came after the Department of Health’s top lawyer resigned over a letter he said the governor’s office forced him to send to television stations in an effort to stop a pro-Amendment 4 ad.

Documents obtained by Ottawa Citizen show officials were concerned about negative media in case of Kristen Adams

Canada’s military decided not to apologize to an employee after she was sexually assaulted while working with Nato allies, over fears that any apology would be reported by an Ottawa newspaper.

For years, the country’s armed forces has publicly acknowledged a culture that bred abuse and assault, and a longstanding failure to root it out. The crisis, which prompted a shake-up at the most senior ranks, has eroded public trust in the institution and weakened morale within the military’s ranks.

Kristen Adams, who was working at a canteen for troops in Latvia, was sexually assaulted by a Nato soldier on 3 December 2022. After filing a formal complaint about the assault, she was warned by the army’s morale and welfare services that she should have better understood the risks of the job.

Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman and longtime opponent of abortion rights, on Monday condemned Republican-imposed bans on the procedure and urged conservatives to support Kamala Harris for US president.

Cheney was speaking at the first of three joint events with the vice-president in the suburbs of three swing states aimed at prising moderate Republican voters away from party nominee Donald Trump. She has become the Democrat’s most prominent conservative surrogate and is rumoured to be in contention for a seat in a potential Harris cabinet.

At the first event in Malvern, a Philadelphia suburb, against a blue backdrop that said “a new way forward” and red one that said “country over party”, Cheney suggested that Republican-led states have overreached in restricting abortion since the supreme court’s 2022 Dobbs decision ended it as a constitutional right.

European Union candidate Serbia will continue to refuse to impose sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine despite Western pressure, Serbia’s leader said after his telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday.

Populist Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Instagram that he believes the call, what he said was his first in more than two years with the Russian president, will help “further development of relations and trust between Russia and Serbia.”

“We talked as people who have known each other for a long time, as friends, and the ten-minute conversation was marked by a personal note, and we also talked about those who are weak (pro-Western) leaders,” Vucic said.

Vucic quoted Putin as saying “what is good for Serbia is also good for Russia, what is good for the Serbs is also good for the Russians.”

Schools in Mexico have six months to implement a government-sponsored ban on junk food or face heavy fines, officials said Monday, as authorities confront what they call the worst childhood obesity problem in the world.

The rules, published on Sept. 30, target products that have become staples for two or three generations of Mexican school kids: sugary fruit drinks, chips, artificial pork rinds and soy-encased, salty peanuts with chili.

School administrators who violate the order will face fines equivalent to between $545 and $5,450, which could double for a second offense. That could amount to nearly a year’s wages for some.

A Chinese mercenary has shared details about North Korean soldiers allegedly killed shortly after they joined Russia's war effort in Ukraine.

The information was shared on X (formerly Twitter) by the account @whyyoutouzhele on Sunday, in a conversation between a gun-for-hire fighting alongside Russian forces, who goes by the handle "Dian Yuzhang," and a mercenary who has returned to China and goes by the name Li Dafu.

These claims emerged just days after South Korea's National Intelligence Service confirmed that North Korean troops had been training in Russia before being sent to bolster Russia's diminished forces and help contain Ukraine's counteroffensive in Russia's Kursk region.

Trump sported neither gloves not a hair net as he worked at a branch of the fast food chain in Pennsylvania

...

Earlier this year, this location didn't meet the compliance requirements of the Bucks County Health Department. A health inspection in March at the Feasterville-Trevose location resulted in four violations, including citing employees not having their "hands clean & properly washed."

"Food employees are not washing their hands as required before putting on gloves, after handling soiled tableware, after handling raw meat, before handling clean tableware, equipment, utensils. CFSM must review hand washing requirements with staff. Observed employees handling raw beef with gloves and then switching gloves without hand washing step in-between," the health inspector wrote.

The report also noted a lack of hairnets: "Food workers are not wearing hair restraints as required, which includes management that assists in packaging and preparing food. Employees shall wear hair restraints such as hats, hair coverings or nets, that are effectively designed and worn to keep their hair from contacting exposed food; clean equipment, utensils and linens; and unwrapped single-service and single-use articles."

Global heating particularly increasing risk of death from smoke inhalation in Australia, South America, Europe and parts of Asia

Global heating is causing more of the planet to be burned from wildfires and probably killing an extra 12,000 people a year from breathing in smoke, according to new research.

Global heating was particularly increasing the risk of death from wildfire smoke in Australia, South America, Europe and the boreal forests of Asia, one modelling study found.

A separate study said between 2003 and 2019 global heating had increased the area of the planet being burned almost 16% but other human actions, such as clearing forests and savannahs for roads or agriculture, had lowered the total burned area by 19%.

Both studies, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, teased apart the effect that adding greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere was having on wildfires, compared to other human actions such as land clearing.

Former President Barack Obama deconstructed some of Donald Trump’s playbook attacks while campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris in Nevada on Saturday.

Speaking at a rally in Las Vegas, Obama accused the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), of leaning on scaremongering about immigration as an answer to any issue.

“If you challenge them, they’ll fall back on one answer. It does not matter what it is — housing, health care, education, paying for the bills — one answer: blame the immigrants,” he said.

“He wants you to believe that if you elect him, he will just round up whoever he wants and ship them out and all your problems will be solved,” he added.

He acknowledged that there’s a “real issue” at the border and elements of the system are “broken,” but criticized Trump’s approach.

“When I hear Donald Trump talk ... he’s very quick to say to Kamala, ‘Well, you were vice president for four years,’” he added. “Dude, you were president for four years!”

Infant deaths have increased in the United States since the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe vs. Wade and allowed states to make abortion illegal, researchers reported Monday.

The change became detectable three months after the June 2022 ruling with an elevated rate of infant mortality involving babies born with serious congenital anomalies, the researchers found.

By the end of 2023, there were six months when the death rate for infants with severe anatomical problems was significantly higher than in the years leading up to the high court's decision. The researchers also identified three months when the nation's overall infant mortality rate had increased.

However, neither of those rates fell below their historical range in the year and a half after the ruling in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

The findings, reported Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, were seen as a clear sign that the Dobbs decision has prevented some women from terminating pregnancies that otherwise would have ended in abortion.

U.S. and Canadian warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, almost a week after China held massive war games around Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory.

The destroyer USS Higgins and the Canadian frigate HMCS Vancouver made a "routine" transit of the Taiwan Strait meant to uphold the principle of freedom of navigation for all countries, read a statement Monday by the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet.

The U.S. Navy, occasionally joined by ships from allied countries, regularly transits the sensitive waterway separating China from Taiwan. Germany sent two warships through the Taiwan Strait last month as it seeks to increase its defense engagement in the Asia-Pacific region.

Donald Trump's repeated gaffes, non sequiturs and unusual behavior have opened the door to questions from opponents about the 78-year-old Republican presidential nominee's mental and physical fitness.

From bopping to the beat of his music playlist for nearly 40 minutes at a recent swing state town hall to his pro-Vladimir Putin blaming of Ukraine for Russia's invasion, to criticizing former President Abraham Lincoln for not "settling" the Civil War, to riffing on locker room gossip about a pro golfer's anatomy, Trump is providing plenty of fodder for rivals who've declared him "unhinged" and worse.

As Republicans did to 81-year-old President Joe Biden earlier this year, Democrats including horror novelist Stephen King and former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are seizing every opportunity to bash Trump − and it's a target-rich environment.