2024
November
08
Friday

Monitor Daily Podcast

November 08, 2024
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Mark Sappenfield
Senior global correspondent

Donald Trump will significantly shape where the world goes from here. America’s influence is no longer what it once was, for better or worse, but the country remains the globe’s most influential force.

Between migration and war, the world faces its most urgent challenges since the Cold War. Today, a team led by the Monitor’s Ryan Lenora Brown looks at six families whose lives Mr. Trump could well change. Some are worried; some are optimistic. All hope for better. Together, they are a portrait of how the American presidency touches parents and children around the world.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Whitney Eulich
Yojani (left) and her son, Yorjan, seen here Nov. 6, 2024, have been sleeping in a tent in Mexico City for two months while awaiting an appointment with immigration officers.

The world always watches the American presidential election. But this year, the stakes feel much higher – especially for parents around the globe who wonder if Donald Trump will make their children’s lives better or worse.

Today’s news briefs

• Biden immigration plan: A federal judge strikes down a Biden administration policy that aimed to ease a path to citizenship for some unauthorized immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens.
• Foiled Trump assassination plot: The Justice Department unseals criminal charges in a thwarted Iranian plot to kill President-elect Donald Trump before this week’s presidential election. 
• Mozambique unrest: Thousands are protesting in Mozambique’s capital, and police are responding by firing tear gas and rubber bullets. The unrest was sparked by an October vote that will keep the ruling party in power amid allegations of rigging.
• Chinese plan for local economies: China has announced an $839 billion plan to help local governments refinance their mountains of debt in the latest push to rev up growth in the world’s second-largest economy.
• Israeli soccer fans attacked: Dutch authorities say young people on scooters attacked Israeli fans in hit-and-run assaults overnight after a soccer game in Amsterdam.

Read these news briefs.

Republican Donald Trump has twice defeated a seasoned female candidate for president of the United States. Women have ably led many other nations. Are American voters ready to send a woman to the Oval Office? 

Henrik Merker/Special to The Christian Science Monitor
Olivia Schneider uses her 1970s electric coffee grinder. The product has a cryptic model name typical of no-frills communist marketing: AKA electric MWM3.

The East-West identity divide did not fall with the Berlin Wall. Young east Germans today take a nostalgic pride in possessing Soviet-era items their parents and grandparents used.

California may be a reliably blue state, but it proved not to be monolithic this week. It gave Kamala Harris its full electoral count, but rolled back its support of progressive criminal justice candidates and policies.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a concession speech for the 2024 presidential election, Nov. 6, 2024, on the campus of Howard University in Washington.

Working-class voters abandoned Kamala Harris in droves. Democrats are fighting about what went wrong – and where to go from here.

Book review

Never underestimate the skill needed in saving a griffin, breaking a code, or searching for treasure. These books for young readers respect the smarts of their characters – and of the audience.


The Monitor's View

After 13 months of mass destruction, the war in Gaza has taken an unexpected turn for peace.

In a religious ruling, the most prominent Islamic scholar in the Palestinian enclave says Hamas failed to keep its fighters “away from the homes of defenceless [Palestinian] civilians” – or, in effect, it used innocent people as shields against Israeli attacks on Hamas positions purposely placed in or under civilian buildings.

“Human life is more precious to God than Mecca,” stated Professor Salman al-Dayah, a former dean of the faculty of sharia and law at the Hamas-affiliated Islamic University of Gaza, in a six-page document.

The BBC, which reported on the religious edict, notes that Dr. Dayah cites Islamic principles that require Hamas to avoid “actions that provoke an excessive and disproportionate response by an opponent.”

In the past, Dr. Dayah has been respected enough to mediate disputes between Islamist militant groups within Gaza. His edict, or fatwa, could now further undercut Hamas’ claim that much of its legitimacy rests on its obedience to Islam.

Since the group’s Oct. 7 attack last year on Israeli civilians, many in the Muslim world have debated how much Islamic law and international law regarding rules of war apply to the conflict in Gaza.

The Global Imams Council, for example, condemned the massacre of Israelis. The world’s largest and most moderate Muslim movement, Nahdlatul Ulama in Indonesia, urged “that religious inspiration – including the values of universal love and compassion, human fraternity, and justice – be brought to the forefront of public awareness at all times, to help resolve conflict.”

Dr. Dayah’s ruling echoes similar calls by Jewish scholars for the Israeli military to honor international and Jewish law by protecting Palestinian noncombatants in both Gaza and the West Bank.

The core of the differences between Israelis and Palestinians “is the ability and willingness to empathize with innocent victims on both sides,” wrote Singapore-based scholar James Dorsey after the Oct. 7 attack.

Such empathy is shared by the three Abrahamic faiths of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. The late chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks, wrote that all three faiths must contend with a dualism that claims there is not one reality but a grand conflict between two realities, good and evil. To end interfaith conflict, he said each faith must rely on its respective belief that every human being is created in the image of God.

“Can I see the image of God in one who is not in my image, whose color, culture, and creed are different from mine?” he asked in a 2015 speech. “That is the theological challenge, and it’s there in the Bible.”


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

As we accept God’s redeeming love, we find freedom from lingering effects of trauma and regret – and a way forward.


Viewfinder

Toby Melville/Reuters
Just ahead of the United Kingdom’s Nov. 11 Remembrance Day, people view “For Your Tomorrow,” an art installation of 1,475 silhouettes that represent those under British command who were killed in the 1944 D-Day landings during World War II. The memorial, seen here Nov. 7 at Stowe Gardens in Stowe, England, was created by community artist Dan Barton.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us this week. We have two additional stories to offer you before the weekend begins.

First, this week’s “Why We Wrote This” episode is an encore from last year that we found to be timely again. In it, author Alexandra Hudson talks about the importance of true civility and respect. Here’s an excerpt, featuring Ms. Hudson. Find the full show at CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis

We also look at what the financial markets are signaling about a Trump presidency.

Lastly, a reminder: We won’t publish on Monday, which is the Veterans Day federal holiday in the United States. You’ll see your next Daily on Tuesday, Nov. 12.

More issues

2024
November
08
Friday
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