Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis on Monday called Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn unfit to be prime minister for failing to remove anti-Semitism from his party.
Why it matters: Such interventions from religious leaders are unusual, according to Reuters. Mirvis's opinion article in The Times of London came just weeks before the Dec. 12 general elections.
Top Chinese leaders, including Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, "have been managing their response" to the violent protests in Hong Kong from a villa in Shenzhen instead of using the formal bureaucratic system that's been in place for two decades, Reuters scoops.
Why it matters: Under normal circumstances, Beijing and Hong Kong communicate through the Liaison Office, "housed in a Hong Kong skyscraper stacked with surveillance cameras, ringed by steel barricades," Reuters writes. This change shows the central government isn't happy with how the Liaison Office has been handling the protests.
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.
