How bad could it get? America’s ugly election

Inner

Mongolia

kept their children

at home in protest against a

government effort to extend

the use of Mandarin in schools.

Some parents fear the new

policy will diminish young

people’s knowledge of the

Mongol language. 

Australia said one of its citi-

zens, a prominent journalist

working for 

Chinese state

television

, had been detained

by the Chinese authorities. No

details of any charges against

the woman, Cheng Lei, have

been released.

Venezuela’s

dictator, Nicolás

Maduro, pardoned 110 oppo-

nents who had been charged

with crimes by his regime.

They include associates of Juan

Guaidó, the president of the

National Assembly, who is

recognised as Venezuela’s

interim president by more

than 50 countries. Most oppo-

sition leaders intend to boycott

the legislative election due in

December.

Protesters in Montreal pulled

down a statue of John Macdon-

ald, 

Canada’s

first prime min-

ister. They accuse him of per-

petrating “genocide” by

founding the residential-

schools system, where tens of

thousands of indigenous

children were forcibly en-

rolled. Many were abused. 

The German government said

that 

Alexei Navalny

, a promi-

nent Russian opposition leader

taken ill on a plane in Siberia

and evacuated to Berlin, had

been poisoned by a form of

Novichok, a nerve agent used

in Britain in 2018 in an assassi-

nation attempt on another

enemy of Vladimir Putin. The

confirmation increases the

likelihood of more sanctions

on Russia. Mr Navalny remains

in a medically induced coma.

France

released details of a

€100bn ($119bn) stimulus

package, aimed at countering

the recession brought on by

covid-19, and also reintroduced

the concept of a national

economic plan.

Mustapha Adib, 

Lebanon’s

ambassador to Germany, was

selected as the country’s next

prime minister. This came a

day before a visit by Emmanuel

Macron, the president of

France, who pushed Lebanese

officials to tackle corruption

and implement political re-

form. Lebanon was already

mired in a financial crisis

when its capital, Beirut, suf-

fered billions of dollars in

damage from an explosion four

weeks ago.

A delegation of American and

Israeli officials took the first

official flight from