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British Airways announced Monday it will only allow travelers who test negative for the coronavirus to fly to New York City. The move was in response to calls from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio to ban air travel from Britain over a new coronavirus strain.Cuomo made the announcement and called for Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic Airways to “voluntarily agree” to do the same.”If they do not agree voluntarily, then New York State will pursue other options,” Cuomo said.The calls to limit travel from Britain come after researchers said they discovered a mutation of the virus that is more contagious. This led British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to issue strict lockdowns.Canada, India, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland are among countries that have taken measures to limit or ban travel to and from Britain. 
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A Russian agent involved in the cleanup of the near-fatal nerve-agent poisoning of Alexei Navalny in August has revealed in an inadvertent confession how the Russian activist’s underpants were smeared with the toxin Novichok by an intelligence unit from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
 
His disclosure was made in a remarkable and lengthy phone conversation with Navalny himself, who posed as a high-ranking Russian official wanting to know why the assassination bid failed. Investigative news outlet Bellingcat collaborated with Navalny and listened in on the conversation.
 
Konstantin Kudryavtsev, a member of a suspected FSB intelligence squad, revealed in the 49-minute conversation how the assassination plan was organized and overseen. He disclosed details of the subsequent cleanup operation to erase any evidence of the murder attempt, which took place on August 20 in Siberia’s Tomsk.  
 
Navalny almost died from the poisoning and was transferred to a German hospital after an international outcry. Tests in Berlin indicated the presence of the nerve agent Novichok in his body.
 
Last week, Bellingcat, along with a handful of media partners, unmasked the members of the unit behind the assassination operation. They mined open-source data and obtained cellphone logs on the black market for their expose.  
 
On Friday, Russian leader Vladimir Putin neither confirmed nor denied FSB involvement in the assassination attempt but joked that if they had wanted him dead, “they would’ve probably finished it.”
 First contact
 
The phone call involving the Russian agent took place on December 14, several hours before Bellingcat and its partners published their initial finding into Navalny’s poisoning. They reported that an elite Russian intelligence chemical weapons unit trailed Navalny for the past three years, right up until his near-fatal poisoning in August.
 
According to Bellingcat, the FSB squad started shadowing the Russian activist, who has long been a thorn in the side of the Kremlin, in 2017, shortly after he announced he would run against Putin in the presidential elections.  
 
Six to 10 agents of the unit specializing in toxins and nerve agents followed Navalny on more than 30 trips, according to phone records, flight manifests and other documents unearthed by Bellingcat in a joint investigation with CNN, Russia’s The Insider news site and Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine.  
 
In his conversations with Navalny, Kudryavtsev added significant new details to the operation, explaining how he was sent to clean up things. Navalny, who is recuperating at a secret location in Germany, posed as an important aide to a senior official on Russia’s National Security Council, saying he was tasked with carrying out an analysis of the poisoning and to identify what went wrong.
 
The phone number he used was disguised as coming from FSB headquarters, according to Bellingcat, which helped arrange the masking of the real number from Kudryavtsev. A Bellingcat researcher sat in on the call and recorded it.
 
At first, Kudryavtsev appeared reluctant to discuss the details over the phone. But Navalny, using the typical brusque manner of Russian officials, told him it was urgent and that he had to complete a report to be “discussed at the Security Council on the highest level.”
 
“What item of clothing was the emphasis on?” Navalny asked.  
 
“Underpants,” Kudryavtsev replied.
 
Navalny then asked exactly where the Novichok was applied.  
 
“The insides, the crotch,” Kudryavtsev responded.  
 
Novichok can be absorbed through the skin.  
 
Navalny fell ill on a flight home from Tomsk to Moscow. The pilot diverted the plane to Omsk so Navalny could receive lifesaving treatment from medics. Kudryavtsev noted in the call that if the flight had not been diverted, “the result would’ve been different.“So, I think the plane played the decisive part.”  
 
He added, “[We] didn’t expect all this would happen. I’m sure that everything went wrong.”   
 
Kudryavtsev was also asked what dosage was used and whether a sufficient quantity had been administered. Kudryavtsev said that had not been the problem.
 
“As I understand it, we added [a] bit extra,” he said.
 
Kudryavtsev is a specialist in chemical and biological weapons, having graduated from the Russian Academy of Chemical Defense. Bellingcat has established that he later worked at the 42nd center of the Ministry of Defense — a biological security research center.
 
Western governments say Navalny was poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, the same substance British officials identified as used in an attack in Britain in 2018 in a bid to kill former Russian spy Sergei Skripal. The European Union has sanctioned FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov and senior Kremlin officials over the Navalny assassination bid.  
 
Subsequent tests by French and Swedish laboratories of Navalny’s fluids confirmed the German result. In an interview with a German magazine in October, Navalny accused the Kremlin of being behind his poisoning.  
 
“I don’t have any other versions of how the crime was committed,” he said.FILE – Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, not seen in photo, is transferred on a stretcher into an ambulance before being driven to an airport for a medical evacuation to Germany, at the Omsk Hospital, in Omsk, Russia, Aug. 22, 2020.The plot
 
In its initial expose, Bellingcat said the FSB unit shadowing Navalny was comprised of six to 10 agents, including medical doctors and toxicologists in their late 30s and 40s. The operation was commanded by military scientist Col. Stanislav Makshakov, who communicated with senior figures at the FSB before and after Navalny’s trips, cellphone logs suggest. Makshakov, deputy director of the FSB’s Criminalistics Institute, is thought to have previously worked at a chemicals institute in the closed town of Shikhany-1. 
Kudryavtsev traveled to Omsk twice in the aftermath of the poisoning — on August 25 and October 2, according to flight data. Phone logs bought by Bellingcat showed that before and during the suspected time frame of the poisoning, he was in regular contact with Makshakov. 
In his call with Navalny, Kudryavtsev indicated that Makshakov was the squad’s commander, and that FSB operatives Alexey Alexandrov and Ivan Osipov, both medical doctors, were the key men applying the poison in Tomsk. Initially during the phone interview, Kudryavtsev told Navalny that questions about the operation would be best directed to Makshakov.
 Bellingcat
 
Russian officials have accused Bellingcat of being an arm of Western intelligence services. But Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins dismissed the claim in an interview with VOA, saying the Kremlin should come up with evidence.
 
“They are just trying to excuse their own incompetence,” he said.
 
Higgins said the Kremlin tries to suggest it “has an amazing intelligence service, but (the) story just proves the case it hasn’t.”  
 
Bellingcat first grabbed international attention in 2018 with its unmasking of the Russian intelligence operatives behind the assassination attempt on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Britain. The men identified by Bellingcat were subsequently named by the British government.
 
 Higgins said after the investigation into the Skripal poisoning, Bellingcat noticed that Russian intelligence services tried to tighten up their operations to protect the identities of operatives. It also tried to lay traps for Bellingcat.  
 
“They did make some attempts to make it more difficult for us to do what we do. The problem is, the entire system is completely rotten to the core,” Higgins told VOA.
 
“Because of corruption, you have a lot of databases that are usually only accessible to insurance companies, government departments and the like. So, stuff that’s fairly innocuous like property records, car registrations and flight records, and stuff like that, is out there,” he said.
 
Higgins said it is also not difficult to find people willing to sell data like phone records.  
 
“So, by using all this different information from different sources, you can combine it to reconstruct what’s happening,” he explained.
 
“You can use phone records, which include the position of mobile phones, to figure out where people are and when they are making calls and to whom,” he said.  
 
Higgins added that while Bellingcat does not have the details of the actual conversations between identified FSB operatives and officials alleged to be involved in the poisoning of Navalny, it stretches the imagination that their presence near him — and their trailing of him — is not connected to the plot.
 
He said buying phone logs from black marketeers, and Navalny’s call “under the guise of a fictitious, high-ranking aide,” does “raise ethical questions about this method of obtaining data. However, following an internal debate, we concluded that this action clearly falls within the realm of the overriding public interest, in light of the extraordinary circumstances around the Skripal and Navalny poisonings.”
 
Higgins acknowledged that the simple ruse of persuading an FSB operative to talk about the operation has added details he and his team could not secure via their database wizardry.
 
In the case of Navalny, Higgins said “no one else is investigating. The Germans have said they could only investigate it if Navalny had died. And the only possible way, really, to find out what happened is by taking these steps, even though they are extreme.” 
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The remaining signatories of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal Monday expressed “their readiness to positively address” the potential return of the United States to the agreement.
 
President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018, arguing it unfairly favored Iran.   
 
But President-elect Joe Biden, who was part of the U.S. administration that signed the deal, has said he would seek to rejoin it if Iran returns to compliance with its commitments.
 
Ministers from Britain, China, France, Germany, Iran and the European Union said in their statement after a virtual meeting that they deeply regret the U.S. withdrawal and stressed that in their view the agreement “remains fully in force.”
 
Iran has breached several of its promises since the U.S. withdrawal and reimposition of sanctions, saying it was not getting the economic relief it was due in exchange for limiting its nuclear activity. Iran has said the moves, including enriching uranium to higher levels and holding larger stockpiles, are reversible.
 
The ministerial statement Monday said the parties discussed the need to address challenges to implementation of the agreement, “including on nuclear non-proliferation and sanctions lifting commitments.” 
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A German court has handed a life sentence to a convicted right-wing extremist for an attack on a synagogue last year in the city of Halle.
 
On October 9, 2019, Stephan Balliet, 28, killed two people after he failed to enter the synagogue where worshippers were celebrating Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day.
 
A five-judge panel at Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony Anhalt state, found Balliet “seriously culpable,” for the crime, which means he will not be eligible for early release after 15 years, which is considered for those in Germany serving life sentences.
 
Prosecutor Kai Lohse told the court that “the attack on the synagogue in Halle was one of the most repulsive anti-Semitic acts since World War II,” while the presiding Judge Ursula Mertens, who read the verdict, described Balliet’s act as a “cowardly attack.”  
 
During the trial that began in July, Balliet repeatedly said, “Attacking the synagogue was not a mistake; they are my enemies,” and that he wanted to kill all the 51 people inside but was unable to open the building’s heavy doors.
 
Balliet shot and killed a 40-year-old woman on the street and apologized to the court, saying he did not want “to kill whites.” He also killed a 20-year-old man at a nearby kebab shop and wounded several others.
 
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A German court is to hand down its verdict Monday on a deadly far-right attack in Halle last year that nearly became the country’s worst anti-Semitic atrocity since World War II.A bolted door at the eastern city’s synagogue with 52 worshippers inside marking Yad Vashem, the holiest day of the Jewish year, was the only thing that prevented a heavily armed assailant from carrying out a planned bloodbath, prosecutors say.After failing to storm the temple on October 9, 2019, the attacker shot dead a female passer-by and a man at a kebab shop instead.During his five-month trial, far-right defendant Stephan Balliet, 28, has denied the Holocaust in open court — a crime in Germany — and expressed no remorse to those targeted, many of whom are co-plaintiffs in the case.”The attack on the synagogue in Halle was one of the most repulsive anti-Semitic acts since World War II,” prosecutor Kai Lohse told the court in the nearby eastern city of Magdeburg as the trial wrapped up.The prosecution has demanded life in prison for Balliet. His defense team has asked presiding judge Ursula Mertens only for a “fair sentence.”Lohse said Balliet had acted on the basis of a “racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic ideology” to carry out an attack against not only those he killed but “Jewish life in Germany as a whole.”The events that unfolded were like a “nightmare,” he added.”At the end of this nightmare, the perpetrator murdered two people and injured and traumatized numerous others.”During the trial, Balliet insisted that “attacking the synagogue was not a mistake, they are my enemies.”Dressed in military garb, he filmed the attack and broadcast it on the internet, prefacing it with a manifesto espousing his misogynist, neo-fascist ideology.The attack bore some of the hallmarks of two carried out and similarly live-streamed some months earlier in Christchurch, New Zealand, by Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people. Balliet cited Tarrant as an inspiration.He has been charged with two counts of murder and multiple counts of attempted murder in a case that has deeply rattled the country and fueled fears about rising right-wing extremism and anti-Jewish violence, 75 years after the end of the Nazi era.Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff, called the attack “a very, very alarming moment in German history.””If that guy would have been able to get into a synagogue… it would have had a tremendous impact on German identity after the war and the fight against anti-Semitism,” he told AFP in an interview. “I hope and trust that the German court will do the right thing and make the right decision. Anti-Semitism is indeed a phenomenon that attacks the very democratic essence of Germany and I think that is the thing that is so important to protect.”The government’s point man against anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, called the trial “a good opportunity to bring about debate in society about anti-Semitism.”Crimes targeting Jews and their belief have risen steadily in Germany in recent years, with 2,032 offenses recorded in 2019, up 13% on the previous year.Meanwhile a string of far-right terrorist attacks have shocked Germany, including the assassination of pro-refugee politician Walter Luebcke at his home in June 2019 and the murder in the western city of Hanau of nine people of migrant origin in February.Baillet “described the fatal shots fired at his two victims in Halle without emotion” and appeared disappointed that he had failed in his attempt to enter the synagogue, psychiatrist Norbert Leygraf said of the defendant in an evaluation.He said Balliet suffered from symptoms of schizophrenia, paranoia and autism preventing him from having “empathy with others” while feeling “superior to others.” 
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A free trade agreement reached this month would help Vietnam revamp its massive manufacturing sector after the coronavirus pandemic and solidify the global outreach of its deal partner, the United Kingdom, after its looming departure from the European Union, experts believe.The two countries finished negotiations December 11 on a two-way free trade deal that would eliminate nearly all customs duties.The agreement, which still requires formal signatures to take effect, would keep Vietnam on track to sign multiple free trade deals around the world, to help domestic manufacturers avoid import tariffs, analysts say. Vietnam could ultimately save $151 million in tariffs on goods shipped to the U.K., the British Embassy in Hanoi forecasts.Vietnam joined the 11-nation Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership two years ago. And as part of a Southeast Asian negotiating bloc last month, it entered the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership deal, which has China as the heavyweight. Vietnam and the European Union also finalized a free trade pact earlier this year.“They’re totally embracing globalization and free trade,” said Jack Nguyen, a partner at the business advisory firm Mazars in Ho Chi Minh City.“They want to get more high-end, high-tech investments into Vietnam. They want to get their products out to the market. They want to attract manufacturers to set up in Vietnam to export to other countries. So any agreement that will lower tariffs, lower trade barriers, they’ll want to sign,” Nguyen said.Vietnam-U.K. trade tripled from 2010 to 2019, when it reached about $7.6 billion.Tariff savings would help to ease the Southeast Asian country out of a slump in global demand that is hobbling manufactured exports. Vietnam reports relatively few cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, but anti-pandemic shutdowns in much of the West have curtailed orders for classic made-in-Vietnam exports, such as garments, shoes, electronics and automotive gear.About half of all businesses in Vietnam have downsized because of COVID-19, according to a survey by the Private Economic Development Research Board, as cited by domestic news website VnExpress International in September. Manufacturing accounts for about a quarter of the country’s GDP.Both free trade agreement signatories are “keen to close this deal as soon as possible” to boost post-COVID-19 economic recoveries, Vu Minh Khuong, an associate professor at National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, wrote in an online publication recently.Vietnam will get more access to the U.K.’s “distinctive strengths” of R&D and management consulting services, Vu wrote in a November commentary for the East Asia Forum.But the two countries lack a trade relationship that’s wide enough to lift Vietnam out of the post-pandemic slump next year, said Ralf Matthaes, founder of the Infocus Mekong Research consultancy in Ho Chi Minh City.“The U.K. and Vietnam do not have strong ties,” Matthaes said. Zooming in on Vietnam’s exports, he said, “How many people are buying new mobile phones right now or new TVs? It’s very limited.”The free trade deal, considered easy to complete because it borrows from contents of the Vietnam-EU pact, comes just as the U.K. expects to finish its Brexit implementation period next week.Tariff savings to the United Kingdom would come to just $36 million, less than Vietnam’s gains, the British Embassy predicts. But the agreement shows that the U.K. government can form its own trade relations after leaving the European Union following the Brexit referendum that British voters approved in 2016.“It’s the U.K. scrambling to stay in place, is the phrase I use,” said Frederick Burke, Ho Chi Minh City-based partner with the law firm Baker McKenzie.“For the U.K., if they can get enough of these trade agreements, they can almost keep up with when they were part of the EU, but it won’t have the same advantages, because it’s just a bilateral trade agreement, it’s not a full EU trade agreement,” Burke said. 
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MOSTAR, BOSNIA — Preliminary results from the first local election in 12 years in the Bosnian town of Mostar on Sunday showed most votes going to the Croat and Bosniak parties whose rivalry had left the ethnically divided town without a city council.
 
The coalition of multiethnic moderate parties BH Bloc won enough votes to act as a kingmaker in the future 35-member city council, according to unofficial preliminary results from the parties and election authorities.
 
It is not clear if the two main parties will form a coalition again or enter coalitions with other smaller parties.
 
“I expect the city to start functioning because so far nothing has been functioning,” Hedija Hadzic, a woman in her 50s, told Reuters TV. “At least we’ll get the city council.”
 
The southern town, renowned for its Ottoman-era Old Bridge, is the most multiethnic town in Bosnia, but the Croat and Bosniak communities have been largely separated by the Neretva river since the end of the country’s civil war in the mid-1990s.
 
Fifty-five percent of about 100,000 registered voters had cast their ballots by 1800 GMT, when polling stations closed, election authorities said. Most followed social distancing measures against the coronavirus pandemic, they added.
 
Observers said the election proceeded without any major incidents and irregularities.
 
Mostar has not held an election since 2008 because the Croat and Bosniak nationalist HDZ and SDA parties were unable to agree on electoral rules.
 
The dispute was settled thanks to a 2019 court ruling won by Irma Baralija, a philosophy teacher who filed a suit against Bosnia at the European human rights court for failing to hold elections in Mostar.
 
The voters chose 35 city councilors from six ethnically based electoral units and a central city zone.
 
The election commission presented results only for the central zone, but the trend is unlikely to change as results come in from other electoral units.
 
HDZ and SDA have held a firm grip over Mostar for more than a decade, each governing its own part of the town and its separate utilities, postal companies, universities and hospitals.
 
“The most important is that election took place and finally introduced Mostar into a democratic world,” Faruk Kajtaz, a journalist and analyst from Mostar told N1 television. 
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The German government has brought home three women and 12 children from refugee camps that hold families of Islamic State (IS) fighters in northeastern Syria.Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a press release Sunday that he was “relieved” that the German nationals were repatriated in an operation carried out Saturday in cooperation with Finland.“The repatriation was based on humanitarian grounds and involved (amongst others) orphans and sick children – cases in which a repatriation was deemed particularly necessary and urgent,” Maas said.“Shortly before Christmas, this is good news and an encouraging sign that we will be able to make repatriations happen in other cases, too,” he added.Maas did not identify the women, but prosecutors said one of them was arrested upon arrival at the airport in Frankfurt.German news media reported that all three women face terror charges for their connection with IS.Contacted by VOA, a Kurdish official confirmed the repatriation of the women and children but declined to give further details.Local media outlets in northeast Syria reported that a German delegation over the weekend met with officials from the local administration to discuss among other things the situation of German nationals held in Kurdish-run refugee camps in the region.About 70 adult Germans and 150 children of German parents remain in the custody of Kurdish forces in Syria, according to the German newspaper Bild.The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) says it currently holds about 70,000 people, mostly families of IS fighters or sympathizers of the terror group, in several detention camps. Most of them were captured following the 2019 U.S.-led campaign that destroyed IS’s so-called caliphate in Syria.In addition to women and children, the SDF also has more than 10,000 IS fighters in their custody, including about 2,000 foreign nationals.SDF officials have called on countries to take back their detained citizens, cautioning that they do not have enough resources to keep IS prisoners and their families indefinitely, especially during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.Several Western countries such as the United States, France, Germany, Britain and Finland have repatriated some of their citizens.
 
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A Belarusian human rights group says security forces have detained dozens of people during protests calling on strongman Alexander Lukashenko to step down. 
 
The Vyasna rights group said on December 20 that at least 42 people had been detained in the capital, Minsk, and the cities of Barysau, Homel, Hrodna, and Salihorsk. 
 
Marches and rallies were reported in several districts of Minsk, accordng to RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, with many carrying the opposition’s red-and-white flag or banners. 
 
Smaller protests were also held in other towns and cities across Belarus. Belarus has been roiled by nearly daily protests since early August when Lukashenko was declared victor of a presidential election that opposition leaders said was flawed. FILE – Law enforcement officers detain two men as opposition supporters rally to protest against police violence and the Belarus presidential election results in Minsk, Nov. 29, 2020.Police have violently cracked down on the postelection protests, with more than 27,000 detentions, according to the United Nations. There have also been credible reports of torture and ill-treatment, and several people have died. Many of Belarus’s opposition leaders have been arrested or forced to leave the country, while Lukashenko, who has ruled the country with an iron fist for almost three decades, has refused to negotiate with the opposition. 
 
The United States, the European Union, and several other countries have refused to acknowledge Lukashenko as the winner of the vote, and imposed sanctions on Lukashenko and his allies, citing election rigging and the police crackdown. 
 
Crowd numbers at protests in Minsk and elsewhere have dropped amid fatigue, repression, and the cold weather. Protests organizers have also switched tactics, calling for smaller gatherings to evade arrest and stretch the riot police. 
 
Small marches and rallies were also reported on December 19 in Minsk and elsewhere, including the western city of Hrodna.  
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Deep into a crucial weekend of negotiations, a breakthrough on fishing rights remained elusive for the European Union and Britain, leaving both without a trade agreement that would dull the edge of a chaotic, costly economic break on New Year’s Day. With hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake throughout the economy, the tiny sector of fisheries continued to drive a wedge between the 27-nation bloc and the U.K., highlighting the animosity that drove them to a Brexit divorce over the past four years. Britain left the bloc in January but a 11-month economic transition period ends on Dec. 31. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office said Sunday that the EU is “continuing to make demands that are incompatible with our independence. We cannot accept a deal that doesn’t leave us in control of our own laws or waters.”The almost mythical sense of Britain’s rights to rule its waves was an essential part of what drove Brexiteers to victory in the 2016 referendum. Johnson is seeking to make sure that as much as possible of the shared British waters are now returned to U.K. vessels only. The EU has always maintained that those waters have been shared for decades, if not centuries, and insists if too many fishing rights are taken away, it will punish Britain by imposing hefty import fees to the mainland market, which is essential to the U.K. seafood industry. The stalemate has left the overall talks inconclusive with businesses on both sides clamoring for a deal that would save tens of billions in costs. Johnson, though, could not be budged. “We need to get any deal right and based on terms which respect what the British people voted for,” his office said. The EU parliament needs to approve any deal before the end of the year and had set a Sunday night deadline so it could have a cursory vetting of the deal and approve it before New Year’s Day. Negotiators, however, seemed little impressed by yet another deadline when so many had already been missed during the four-year departure process. One official from an EU coastal nation said the EU was refusing to yield more than a quarter of the fishing quotas the bloc stands to lose now that Britain is regaining full control of its waters due to Brexit. Britain is also steadfast that a 3-year transition period would be long enough for EU fishermen to adapt to the new rules, while the EU wants at least six years. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were still ongoing.A failure to reach a post-Brexit deal would lead to more chaos on Britain’s borders with the EU at the start of 2021, when new tariffs would add to other impediments to trade enacted by both sides. The talks have bogged down on two main issues over the past days — the EU’s access to U.K. fishing waters and assurances of fair competition between businesses. A trade deal would ensure there are no tariffs and quotas on trade in goods between the two sides, but there would still be technical costs, partly associated with customs checks and non-tariff barriers on services. While both sides would suffer economically from a failure to secure a trade deal, most economists think the British economy would take a greater hit, at least in the near-term, as it is relatively more reliant on trade with the EU than vice versa. 
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Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Sunday there are 76.3 million global COVID-19 cases.The U.S. continues to lead the world in case numbers at 17.6 million, followed by India with 10 million and Brazil with 7.2 million.U.S. lawmakers are expected to vote Sunday on a nearly $1 trillion COVID-19 economic relief package. The package includes, among other things, $300 supplemental unemployment benefits and $600 direct stimulus payments to many Americans.“We can’t continue with Christmas as planned,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Saturday as he announced new restrictions for London and southern England, where a mutant strain of the coronavirus is spreading and where there is now a virtual lockdown, with people urged to stay home.All nonessential stores in the region are set to close, and people should not enter or leave the British capital or large parts of southeastern England.South Korea recorded 1,097 new infections Sunday, the fifth consecutive day it recorded more than 1,000 new cases.A South Korean Justice Ministry official said an outbreak at a prison in Seoul has infected 184 prisoners and one worker.Starting Monday, the Australian states of Victoria and Queensland are banning people arriving from Sydney, where a 70-person coronavirus cluster has emerged in its northern beach suburbs which have now been placed under a strict lockdown until Christmas Eve.Thailand said Sunday it will test more than 10,000 people in the southwestern province of Samu Sakhon after a daily surge of more than 500.
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Like other French ski resorts, the Alpine town of Chatel has been forced to close its lifts over the Christmas period as part of tougher government curbs to contain the coronavirus.But just 5 km (3 miles) away, holidaymakers are schussing down the same slopes on the other side of the border in Switzerland, where less strict restrictions mean it’s business as usual in the Dents du Midi ski region.Chatel mayor Nicolas Rubin was so annoyed by the sharp divergence in the handling of the coronavirus pandemic that he hung Swiss flags from the town hall windows for a week in protest.”Of course we are worried, because beyond the closing of the ski resort the morale and the mental health of people is starting to be affected,” he said. Jean-Francois Vuarand, Chatel’s tourism chief, said the year-end holidays normally generated a fifth of winter season turnover.”The problem is… it is difficult to make customers understand that at the border, in these two nearby areas, there are two different rules for the same activity,” he said.For Quentin Decoursier, owner of restaurant Le Comptoir on the French side, the discrepancy is manifestly unfair.”What is going to happen is that a lot of French people will go there (across the border) and we don’t understand because we have as much right as they have to be open,” he said.While the two countries have similar COVID infection and fatality rates, Swiss authorities have let individual cantons decide whether lifts can operate safely, though Dents du Midi tourism director Sebastien Epiney said his community was also living on the edge.”We are putting in place all our assets to offer a safe product to our customers, but the sword of Damocles is over our heads,” he said.Yoan Perroud, shrugged of the risk of skiing, saying outdoor activity was not as risky as the restaurants and bars that support them.”For me the problem is not the ski slopes, it’s what is next to them,” he said from Les Crosets, a resort on the Swiss side. 
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British and EU negotiators have dug in their heels and each is demanding more concessions from the other as post-Brexit trade talks dragged on into Sunday, deadlocked on fishing rights.Sources from each side said that unless the other backed down on access to U.K. waters, Britain would leave the single market at midnight December 31 without a deal on cross-channel commerce.”We’re continuing to try every possible path to an agreement, but without a substantial shift from the [European] Commission we will be leaving on WTO terms on 31 December,” a British government source said.But an EU diplomat told Agence France-Presse that Brussels had made Britain its last offer on fishing and it was down now to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to decide whether he wanted a deal.”If Britain doesn’t accept the latest EU offer, it will be a ‘no deal’ over fish,” he warned. A European official said: “It’s very blocked.”The tough talk came as both sides engaged in intense negotiations to secure a pact before the end of the month. No deal would risk chaos at EU and U.K. borders, where a pre-deadline rush has caused long lines of lorries.Observers, however, noted that the fishing issue was about finding middle ground between offer and counteroffer in an economically small sector, while the much bigger other main issue, on guaranteeing fair trade competition rules, was closer to settlement.”It’s all down to numbers now,” the European diplomat said.British chief negotiator David Frost arrives at the U.K. delegation office for Brexit talks in Brussels, Dec. 19, 2020. EU fishing rights in British waters were proving to be a hurdle to securing a post-Brexit trade deal.The EU’s lead negotiator, Michel Barnier, has proposed that EU fishermen give up nearly a quarter of the value of the fish they currently catch in U.K. waters. Britain is understood to be holding out for getting back much more than half.The U.K. has suggested this compromise last for three years before it is renegotiated, whereas Europe is holding out for double that.Fishermen ‘sold down the river’EU fishermen fear losing any access to the rich U.K. fishing waters will threaten their livelihoods.”We are in the throes of being sold down the river,” the European Fisheries Alliance said in a statement, urging Barnier to stick to protecting them. “The shape of a deal as currently stands would give a huge blow to the European seafood sector, which is made up of more than 18,000 fishermen and 3,500 vessels with an annual turnover of 20.7 billion euros.”Time is very short to reach an accord. The European Parliament has highlighted a deadline of midnight (2300 GMT) on Sunday to receive a deal for review if its members are to ratify it before the end of the year.Their U.K. parliamentary counterparts are in recess but can be recalled within 48 hours to do likewise.But EU capitals are not binding themselves to the European Parliament’s deadline.France’s European affairs minister, Clement Beaune, said talks would not be called to a halt if they dragged out past Sunday night.’Concerns’ Britain not readyThe urgency of reaching a deal is seen in long lines of trucks at the freight rail link through the Channel tunnel as British companies frantically stockpile.A group of U.K. MPs warned Saturday that Britain had not installed the complex IT systems and port infrastructure needed to ensure trade with the EU runs smoothly.Some disruption is inevitable, deal or no deal, with British and European firms needing to fill out import-export, health and tax forms to send and receive goods to each other.A deal would avoid tariffs but there would still be traffic snarls as checks on truck loads and drivers’ papers are carried out.
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