“The Chinese military conducted two hypersonic weapons tests over the summer, raising US concerns that Beijing is gaining ground in the race to develop a new generation of arms,” the Financial Times reports.

“A Brazilian congressional panel is set to recommend mass homicide charges against President Jair Bolsonaro, asserting that he intentionally let the coronavirus rip through the country and kill hundreds of thousands in a failed bid to achieve herd immunity and revive Latin America’s largest economy,” the New York Times reports.

“The extraordinary accusations appear in a nearly 1,200-page report that effectively blames Mr. Bolsonaro’s policies for the deaths of more than 300,000 Brazilians, half of the nation’s coronavirus death toll, and urges the Brazilian authorities to imprison the president.”

“The Taliban have promised plots of land to relatives of suicide bombers who attacked U.S. and Afghan soldiers, in a provocative gesture that seems to run counter to their efforts to court international support,” the AP reports.

“The global upswing in trade is leaving the U.K. behind, an early sign of the challenge Brexit is presenting its economy,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Leaving the EU has put the U.K. outside the EU’s vast internal market of 445 million consumers and a customs territory that is bigger still, stretching from the Atlantic to Turkey. It is hobbling trade just as its economy needs all its engines firing to power out of its worst downturn in a century.”

A new Gallup poll finds that across 46 countries and territories, median approval of U.S. leadership stood at 49% under President Biden.

This rating is up from the 30% median approval at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency and matches the rating during former President Barack Obama’s first year in office in 2009.

“The Biden administration warned on Monday that digital currencies posed a threat to America’s sanctions program and said in a new report that the United States needed to modernize how sanctions were deployed so that they remained an effective national security tool,” the New York Times reports.

“China has denied reports that it tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile earlier this year, insisting instead that it was a routine spacecraft check,” the BBC reports.

“Hypersonic missiles are much faster and more agile than normal ones, meaning they are more difficult to intercept.”

Almost the entire Afghan population of 40 million people could fall below the poverty line in coming months, the Wall Street Journal reports.

New York Times: “It is true… that China is emerging as a far broader strategic adversary than the Soviet Union ever was — a technological threat, a military threat, an economic rival. And while President Biden insisted at the United Nations last month that ‘we are not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs,’ his repeated references this year to a generational struggle between ‘autocracy and democracy’ conjured for some the ideological edge of the 1950s and ’60s.”

“Yet the question of whether the United States is entering a new Cold War is about more than just finding the right metaphor for this odd turn in superpower politics. Governments that plunge into a Cold War mind-set can exaggerate every conflict, convinced that they are part of a larger struggle. They can miss opportunities for cooperation, as the United States and China did in battling Covid-19, and may yet on the climate.”

“And the issue of whether this is a Cold War, or something quite different, lurks just beneath the escalating tensions over economic strategy, technological competition and military maneuvers — undersea, in space and in cyberspace.”

“China’s economy grew 4.9% in the third quarter from a year earlier, slowing sharply from the previous quarter’s 7.9% growth rate, as power shortages and supply-chain problems added to the impact from Beijing’s efforts to rein in the real estate and technology sectors,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August that circled the globe before speeding towards its target, demonstrating an advanced space capability that caught US intelligence by surprise,” the Financial Times reports.

“The missile missed its target by about two dozen miles, according to three people briefed on the intelligence. But two said the test showed that China had made astounding progress on hypersonic weapons and was far more advanced than US officials realized.”

Said a fourth person: “We have no idea how they did this.”

“Russia claims one of its warships has chased away a U.S. Navy destroyer that, according to Moscow, attempted to enter Russian territorial waters during Russian-Chinese naval drills in the Sea of Japan,” Radio Free Europe reports.

A British lawmaker from the Conservative Party died after being stabbed multiple times in an attack, the BBC reports.

The Guardian has the latest.

“Satellite images have revealed China is upgrading and reinforcing its airbases closest to Taiwan along its southeastern coast, indicating Beijing may be stepping up its plans to take the island by force,” the South China Morning Post reports.

“The images… showed work on aircraft shelters and reinforced munitions storage started early last year and continued uninterrupted during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

“With the Afghan government and economy starved of cash, the Taliban are pressing their claim to the roughly $8 billion in Afghan foreign reserves that have been frozen by the U.S.,” Axios reports.

“Afghanistan is barreling into a humanitarian crisis, and donor countries and international institutions have cut off the aid that accounted for some 75% of the previous government’s budget.”

“The State Department plans to resume regular evacuation flights from Afghanistan before the end of the year to help U.S. citizens, residents and some visa applicants leave the country,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The small number of U.S. citizens and thousands of Afghans left behind after the chaotic evacuation effort in the final weeks of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan could be eligible for seats on the U.S.-sponsored flights.”