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7 THINGS TO KNOW NOW

• The Taliban ban foreign currency: The Taliban announced that anyone using foreign currency for domestic companies in Afghanistan would be prosecuted. It’s a move that risks further disrupting an economy on the brink of collapse following the abrupt withdrawal of international financial aid following the Taliban takeover.

• Ethiopia War Crimes Report: A joint investigation by UN and Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) blamed all parties for committing abuses and violating international human rights in Tigray. Extrajudicial killings, acts of torture, rapes, attacks on civilians and arrests on the basis of ethnicity have been documented. In the meantime, Ethiopia has ordered a emergency state as Tigray forces have captured several key cities in recent days and are now threatening the capital Addis Ababa.

• COVID update: As Russia has reported 1,178 deaths linked to COVID-19, its highest daily toll from the pandemic, the president Vladimir Poutine said regional authorities could extend a nationwide non-work period beyond November 7. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the army and police to airlift vaccines to all provinces of the country to avoid “dead ends” in vaccine distribution, which he blames local governments for. we Centers for Disaster Control and Prevention now recommends that all children aged 5 to 11 receive a low-dose COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech.

• American Republicans win Virginia: republican businessman Glenn Youngkin wins Virginia the governor’s race in a state that Democratic President Joe Biden won by 10 points in last year’s presidential election. This result, as well as the very close race in New Jersey, gives the Republican Party hope to regain control of Congress in the 2022 midterm elections.

• A delegation from the European Parliament visiting Taiwan: For the very first time, an official delegation from the European Parliament has arrived in Taiwan, as part of an effort to forge closer ties with the island despite warnings from China. Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory and has pledged to take it one day, by force if necessary, has no formal diplomatic relations with any European country except Vatican City.

• Missing Australian found alive after 18 days: Cleo Smith, four, who disappeared from her parents’ tent at a campsite in Western Australia on October 16, was found alive and well in a locked house. Authorities said a man was in custody.

• The car parked in the Italian street for 47 years becomes a tourist attraction: A car that has been parked on an Italian street for 47 years has become a local landmark, attracting tourists and visitors from all over the world. Angelo Fregolent, now 94, parked his 1962 Lancia Fulvia outside the newsstand he and his wife ran in Conegliano, northeastern Italy, in 1974.

🗞️ HOME PAGE

Brazilian daily Folha de São PauloThe magazine’s front page features a photo of President Jair Bolsonaro’s meeting with far-right leader Matteo Salvini during his two-day visit to northern and central Italy – a visit made more controversial as the Brazilian leader has chosen to skip the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.

# ️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS

As political leaders leave COP26 in Glasgow, it is now time for the United Nations conference. Finance companies, whose value is estimated 130 trillion dollars, are busy determining where the profit opportunities lie among emission reduction commitments and finding the innovations and infrastructure to fuel the transition to low-carbon energy alternatives.

STORY OF THE DAY

How high-end demand from Asia is fueling South American coffee exports

Amid post-pandemic trade distortions and changing consumption patterns, countries in Latin America looking to boost coffee exports should aim for a growing specialty market in prosperous Asian countries, writes Gwendolyn Ledger in the economic magazine American economy.

☕ Like many sectors of the economy, coffee production has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. But COVID-19 and a resulting change in habits, including working from home, have also boosted the consumption of hot and caffeinated drinks. Now, growers of a crop grown around the Tropic of Capricorn are striving to meet this global demand for around three billion cups of coffee per day. As Euromonitor marketing consultants observed in a recent study, coffee is an eminently social drink and global lockdowns have distorted social habits.

💸 All consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, including the beverage industry, could soon feel the effects of inflation. Labor shortages, bottlenecks, extreme weather events linked to climate change and other distortions rooted in the pandemic have pushed input prices significantly above those of 2019. But there are has hope for sellers – in the Asian market. Euromonitor estimates that aside from China and Japan, ASEAN states could add $ 168 million to retail coffee sales by 2025.

🇵🇪 Although not traditionally associated with Peru, coffee has become its third agricultural export, after blueberries and grapes. Mario Ocharan, export promotion manager at Promperú, Peru’s national brand agency, says parts of Peru have unique coffees that have won awards overseas. Ocharan attributes this success to conditions such as Peru’s different climates, but also to collaborative efforts to make production more competitive, “from the breeding of seeds to the use of blockchain, where something as traditional as coffee is digitized as much as possible thanks to these certified international sales. ” This helps Peruvian coffees to enter Asian markets.

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VERBATIM

We cannot die without telling people what the Belgian state has done to us.

– Monique Bintu Bingi and five other women file a complaint Belgian state for crimes against humanity for the colonial policy which deprived them of their mother. The Belgian government and the Catholic Church have apologized in recent years for the systematic kidnapping, segregation, deportation and forced adoption of thousands of Métis children under its colonial rule in the Belgian Congo. However, until now, little was known about his victims: many abductees have never seen their parents and have remained without administrative documents since their childhood. The survivors are demanding modest reparations of 50,000 euros.