"Most secure election" - West coast travel restrictions - Ethiopian conflict escalates

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released a joint statement with other election security experts Thursday refuting claims that hackers interfered with vote tallies. The statement, joined by the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, came hours after a report from Reuters that CISA Director Christopher Krebs believes the White House is planning to fire him.
...
In the joint statement, election security officials called the 2020 US presidential election "the most secure in American history," adding, "there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." The statement was released within hours of a tweet from US President Donald Trump that baselessly claimed ballot systems deleted votes cast for him.
...
Krebs' agency is a division of the US Department of Homeland Security and is in charge of securing the US election system, which is classed as critical infrastructure similar to the nation's power grid and financial system. Cybersecurity experts see false claims that aim to delegitimize elections as one of the biggest threats to election security this year.

“The pandemic has resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty,” Alito noted [during a Federalist Society speech]. While “I’m not disputing that broad wording may be appropriate in statutes designed to address a wide range of emergencies,” Alito said, “laws giving an official so much discretion can, of course, be abused. And whatever one may think about the COVID restrictions, we surely don’t want them to become a recurring feature after the pandemic has passed.”
...
In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the 1905 ruling that was widely cited as a justification for COVID-19 lockdowns, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to mandatory smallpox vaccination. But that situation was quite different from edicts ordering all “nonessential” businesses to close and commanding hundreds of millions of Americans to remain in their homes except for government-approved purposes.
...
The question confronting courts right now is when disease control measures exceed those bounds. “If you go to Nevada,” [Alito] said, “you can gamble, drink, and attend all sorts of shows. But here’s what you can’t do: If you want to worship and you’re the 51st person in line, sorry, you are out of luck. Houses of worship are limited to 50 attendees.”

Dominic Cummings served as campaign director of the “Vote Leave” campaign in 2016 and is credited with the memorable slogan “Take back control.” Later, the political strategist helped Johnson win the 2019 general election in a landslide, marching his boss to an 80-seat majority in Parliament under the banner “Get Brexit done.”
...
Cummings’s exit follows that of his fellow arch-Brexiteer, Lee Cain, a former tabloid journalist who became Johnson’s communications director and chief spin doctor. The departures mark a profound tilt in the axis of power among Johnson’s inner circle. Brussels diplomats were wondering aloud whether Johnson might soon erase his red lines to ink a post-Brexit free-trade deal with the European Union.
...
Cummings was at the center of another political storm this year, when he and his wife, both having tested positive for the coronavirus, fled their London home to travel 260 miles to a family farm. His apparent flouting of strict lockdown rules at the peak of the pandemic raised questions about fair play and cost Johnson public support.

Early on November 4, 2020, the Ethiopian government began military operations in Tigray, one of the country’s semi-autonomous regions, in what Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said was a response to an attack on a federal military base by the ruling party in the region, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The TPLF led the former coalition that ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades before Abiy took office in April 2018.
...
Following the alleged attack on the federal military base, phone and internet communications were swiftly cut in the region, and the federal government soon after announced a round of airstrikes in areas around the regional capital, Mekelle. By November 10, more than 14,000 Ethiopian refugees, half of whom were children, had crossed the border into Sudan – a number humanitarian agencies expect could swell in the coming days if the fighting continues.
...
Hundreds of people were also reportedly killed and injured on November 9 in an incident around Mai Kadra, in western Tigray where much of the fighting has occurred. Prior to the outbreak of fighting, reports highlighted that food and fuel were already in short supply, with over 600,000 people relying on food aid to survive.

The governors of California, Oregon and Washington issued a joint coronavirus travel advisory on Friday urging people arriving to their states to self-quarantine for 14 days and asking residents to avoid all non-essential out-of-state trips. Friday’s travel warning comes as families across the country modify their holiday plans and university students plan their return trips home amid a surge of Covid-19 cases in nearly every corner of the U.S.
...
The travel advisory is voluntary, according to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, which sent out a statement saying the best enforcement is “encouraging others to be respectable and be responsible by taking action. Asking people to do the right thing is the most powerful enforcement tool we have.”
...
[New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo] said he plans to send in more National Guard to help enforce the state’s travel advisory, adding that he spoke with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio about increasing the New York City Police Department’s presence as well.