A World Anti-Doping Agency committee recommended a sweeping four-year international sports ban for Russia, which would impact its participation in next year's Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the New York Times reports.
The big picture: The ban stems from the discovery that multiple positive drug tests were deleted by Russian officials from a database during the agency's investigation into the massive doping scandal that broke in 2016.
LONDON — There aren’t many people who could have stood between Vladimir Putin and the Russian presidency two decades ago. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was one of them.
The big picture: Once Russia’s richest man, Khodorkovsky and a handful of other powerful oligarchs loomed large in the chaotic decade that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. His imprisonment in 2003 shocked the world, and it was the moment many gave up on the illusion of Putin as a Westward-looking modernizer.
A closely watched survey of private sector activity showed the bleakest outlook for U.K. businesses since July 2016 — which was right after the country voted to leave the European Union.
Why it matters: The Brexit back-and-forth has left businesses in a tailspin amid a softening global economy.
A Justice Department official outlined to CBS' "60 Minutes" Sunday why the department believes 12 Russian agents indicted during the Russia investigation hacked the Democratic Party's computers in 2016. And a cybersecurity expert and former FBI official warns there's a real threat that Russia could interfere in the 2020 election.
The U.K.'s Conservative Party announced in its election manifesto published Sunday that if it wins a majority on Dec. 12, its government will seek to pass Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit deal by Jan. 31 and negotiate a free trade agreement with the European Union before December 2020.
Why it matters: The manifesto rules out extending the Brexit transition period, during which the country will continue to follow EU rules as the two sides hammer out a permanent trade deal. EU politicians have expressed skepticism that a comprehensive free trade agreement could be negotiated in such a short time period, meaning that the U.K. could crash out of the bloc in 2020 without a deal.
Pope Francis traveled to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on Sunday to ask world powers to renounce their nuclear weapons, calling the possession and use of atomic bombs wasteful and “immoral," AP reports.
The big picture: Standing with survivors of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings, Francis also criticized countries for dismantling Cold War-era nuclear arms control agreements. His visit was the first day of his three-day Japanese campaign for a global ban on atomic weapons.
