• China exports grew at the fastest pace in 19 months in October, while imports also rose, official data showed on Saturday, as the world’s second largest economy continued to recover after being hit hard by the coronavirus crisis earlier this year.
  
• China’s exports have stayed largely resilient amid the Covid-19 global pandemic, as strong demand for medical supplies and reduced manufacturing capacity elsewhere worked in China’s favor.
  
• However, some analysts said exports could come under pressure in the coming months, as major European economies, including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, went back into lockdown as a second wave of coronavirus cases gathered strength.
  

(CNN)President-elect Joe Biden addressed a deeply divided nation Saturday night, turning to the challenges ahead by grounding his victory speech in the spirit of compromise, asking supporters of President Donald Trump to give him a chance, and calling on all Americans to turn the page from what he described as a "grim era of demonization."

Biden made that plea for unity and understanding in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware, at an extraordinary moment in American history when the current occupant of the White House showed no indication that he plans to concede to his rival and continued to push the fiction on Twitter that he had won the election, while making baseless accusations about how the election was stolen from him.

After jogging on stage wearing a mask, Biden repeated his promise that he would seek to unify rather than divide. He pledged to govern by the creed that he does not see blue states and red states, but only the United States.

When the campaign started nearly two years ago, it would have been extraordinary to think that Americans would show up to a victory rally wearing masks. The fact that they had to, and at a drive-in event outside in November, was a reminder of the moment of national extremis that Biden and Harris will inherit in January.


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Trump: "I've been talking about mail-in voting for a long time. It's really destroyed our system. It's a corrupt system and it makes people corrupt."

Mr Trump has posted more than 70 tweets casting doubt on mail-in voting, referencing voter fraud or "rigged" elections since April.
But there is no evidence the system is corrupt.

Electoral fraud is very rare in the United States - the rate is less than 0.0009%, according to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice. There's no evidence to suggest it's been a major issue at this election either.

The president himself has voted by post in the past. He lived outside the state he was registered in, Florida, and requested a postal vote.
This is known as an absentee ballot, which Mr Trump has said he is in favour of because he believes it has better safeguards.

But he has made a distinction with other forms of mail-in voting, such as when states automatically send out ballots to all registered voters.

Oregon and Utah have done so successfully in previous elections.


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KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 7 ― The National Patriots Association (Patriot) wants the government to explain its RM81 million allocation to the Special Affairs Department (Jasa) under the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia.

Patriot President Brig-Jen (Retired) Datuk Mohamed Arshad Raji also questioned the decision to bring back the controversial department that had been criticised for being a propaganda tool, saying there were other existing agencies that could disseminate information about government initiatives and programmes.

“What is so special about Jasa that other agencies of the ministry could not do? This is sheer duplication of tasks and wastage of funds. At a time when our country is so squeezed of funds, such wastage is irresponsible,” he said in a statement today.

He said Jasa had deviated from its original objectives over the years and had become a political propaganda machinery during Barisan Nasional’s rule to be used against its political rivals.


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Barring a twist inconceivable even by the standards of 2020, we will soon know the result of the US presidential election – and it will almost certainly be a cause for rejoicing. Donald Trump, the man who has haunted the world’s dreams and sparked a thousand nightmares, has all but lost. On 20 January 2021, he will probably leave the White House – or be removed if necessary. The Trump presidency, a shameful chapter in the history of the republic, will soon be over.

True, it is taking longer than we might have liked. There was to be no swift moment of euphoria and elation, an unambiguous landslide announced on election night with a drumroll and fireworks display. Instead, thanks to a pandemic that meant two in three Democrats voted by slower-to-count mail-in ballots, it’s set to be a win in increments, a verdict delivered in slow motion. Nor was there the hoped-for “blue wave” that might have carried the Democrats to a majority in the US Senate (though there is, just, a way that could yet happen). As a result, it will be hard for Joe Biden to do what so urgently needs to be done, whether that’s tackling the climate crisis, racial injustice, economic inequality, America’s parlous infrastructure or its dysfunctional and vulnerable electoral machinery. And it is glumly true that even if Trump is banished from the Oval Office, Trumpism will live on in the United States.

And yet none of that should obscure the main event that has taken place this week. It’s a form of progressive masochism to search for the defeat contained in a victory. Because a victory is what this will be.

Recall the shock and disgust that millions – perhaps billions – have felt these past four years, as Trump sank to ever lower depths. When he was ripping children from their parents and keeping them in cages; when he was blithely exchanging “love letters” with the murderous thug that rules the slave state of North Korea; when he was coercing Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, or else lose the funds it needed to defend itself against Vladimir Putin, the high crime for which he was impeached; when he was denying the reality of the coronavirus, insisting it would just melt away, thereby leaving more than 235,000 Americans to their fate and their deaths – when he was doing all that, what did his opponents long for? The wish, sometimes uttered to the heavens, was not complicated: they wanted Trump’s defeat and ejection from power. Few attached the rider that it would only count if the Democrats could also pick up a Senate seat in North Carolina.


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