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🌎  7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW

• Queen Elizabeth II funeral: Dozens of global leaders and hundreds of thousands of people are in London to attend Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral alongside the royal family in Westminster Abbey, following ten days of national mourning. She will then be laid to rest at St George’s Chapel in Windsor. Here’s a collection of 38 international magazine covers of the Queen over the years.

• Russian open to prisoners swap: Russia’s foreign ministry said on Monday that it is open to start talks on a prisoners swap with the U.S., which could lead to the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner and Marine veteran Paul Whelan. It also said that the American embassy in Moscow was not “fulfilling its official duties” to maintain dialogue.

• China angered by Biden’s statement on Taiwan: A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said that Joe Biden’s remarks in a CBS News interview that U.S. forces would defend Taiwan in case of Chinese invasion violated Washinton’s commitment not to support Taiwan’s independence, which Beijing warned could lead to war.

• Nearly 100 dead in Kyrgyz-Tajik border conflict: Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan authorities now report that nearly 100 people died in last week’s clashes that erupted over the longstanding border dispute. The two former Soviet states in Central Asia have extended their ceasefire to a second day, while Russian President Vladimir Putin calls for de-escalation.

• China’s COVID quarantine bus crash kills 27: A bus carrying 47 people to a remote quarantine center crashed in the early hours Sunday, killing 27. The news sparked outrage on Chinese social media, with many users condemning the country’s relentless zero-COVID policy.

• Taliban free American engineer: The Taliban have released U.S. engineer and navy veteran Mark Frerichs in exchange for Afghan tribal leader Bashir Noorzai, who had been held by American authorities since 2005 on drug charges. Frerichs was abducted by the Taliban in Feb. 2020.

• Activists launch Global Registry of Fossil Fuels: Climate campaigners have launched the world’s first public database on fossil fuel reserves, production and emissions. Developers hope that the Global Registry of Fossil Fuels, which covers 75% of global production, will help ONGs hold governments accountable.

🗞️  FRONT PAGE

In Taiwan, The Merit Times dedicates its front page to the 6.8 earthquake that shook the southeastern region of the island on Sunday, injuring 146 people and killing one. Hundreds of people are still stuck on mountains roads and many infrastructures were damaged, including railways.

#️⃣  BY THE NUMBERS

€7.5 billion

The EU Commission threatened to cut €7.5 billion funding, representing one-third of the cohesion funds until 2027, allocated to Hungary in a move to better protect the rule of law over worries of corruption in the country. The financial sanction will be implemented if the reform efforts remain insufficient by Nov. 19.

📰  STORY OF THE DAY

What's driving the new migrant exodus from Cuba

Since Cuba reopened its borders last December after COVID closures, the number of people leaving the island has gone up significantly. Migration has been a constant in Cuban life since the 1950s. But this article from Loraine Morales Pino in Cuba's independent news outlet El Toque shows just how important migration is to understand the ordeals of everyday life on the island.

🇨🇺🇺🇲 Some 157,339 Cubans crossed the border into the United States between Oct. 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022, according to the U.S. Border Patrol — a figure significantly higher than the one recorded during the 1980 Mariel exodus, when a record 125,000 Cubans arrived in the U.S. over a period of seven months. Migrating has once again become the only way out of the ordeal that life on the island represents. Cubans of all ages who make the journey set off towards a promise. They prefer the unknown to the grim certainty that the Cuban regime offers them.

💵 Studies on migration recognize there are many reasons behind this phenomenon. Even so, the analysis of migration out of Cuba has grouped around two schools of thought: the economic and the political reasons. When analyzing Cuban migration, ideological bias predominates. Researchers usually attribute the greatest weight in the migration decision to economic aspects, the search for an improvement in living conditions and family reunification.

⛔ Why do we need to focus more on analyzing the case of Cuba when it comes to migration studies? The contexts of Haiti, Central America and Venezuela are recognized as cases of true expulsions, in which people do not have the capacity or opportunity to build their lives with dignity and are exposed to risks that endanger their lives. But that debate has not yet reached Cuba. Not only is the total number of people who manage to leave the country relevant, but so is the migratory potential, understood as those people who cannot leave even though they want to.

📣 VERBATIM

The world’s on fire in a lot of different ways.

— In an interview with The Associated Press, former U.S. President Bill Clinton said that the world is on fire and urges “businesses, non-governmental groups and governments” to take action and work together to resolve problems at the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual gathering that was called off in 2016.