Monday, November 1 top stories

It is Monday, November 1. Hope your Halloween weekend went well. Here are today’s top stories.

President Joe Biden gave a speech at an international climate conference called COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland. COP26 is short for the "26th Conference of the Parties,” which are countries that are a part of U.N. and Paris agreements on curbing emissions in a bid to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. President Biden apologized for previous president Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement.

Biden said he hopes Congress will pass a bill that includes $555 billion to address climate change. But the bill has serious obstacles because there are divisions within the Democratic party and solid opposition from the Republican party. Biden said in the speech that if we don’t seize the moment, then none of us can escape the worst that is yet to come.

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres said we have to stop “treating nature like a toilet” and that “we are digging our own graves.” Guterres admitted that there are a lot of people who are confused on exactly what is the target for climate change, so he would establish a “Group of Experts” to propose clear standards and goals.

Over 100 world leaders are at the conference, but the Chinese and Russian presidents declined to attend.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced on Sunday that she tested positive for Covid-19. She is fully vaccinated and has mild symptoms. Psaki said several people in her family became infected with Covid-19 earlier last week and that made her decide to pull out of going with President Biden on his European trip. She said she tested negative later in the week and then tested positive on Sunday. Psaki said she hasn’t had close contact with the president since Wednesday. She said she would return to work only after quarantining for 10 days after a negative test.

Southwest Airlines said they are investigating one of their pilots for saying the phrase, “Let’s go, Brandon” after landing a plane. The phrase is said to be the equivalent of saying, “F*** Joe Biden.”

NPR explained that the phrase first came about last month at a NASCAR race when a reporter was interviewing a race car driver Brandon Brown after he won the race. The audience was heard on television chanting both “F*** Joe Biden” and “Let’s go, Brandon!” The reporter said, “You can hear the crowd saying, “Let’s go, Brandon.” Many suspected that the reporter was covering up the profane chants.

Since then some in Republican circles have used the “Let’s go, Brandon” phrase as a way of covertly cussing out the 46th president. U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan, a Republican from South Carolina, posted on Facebook a photo of himself using a facemask with the phrase.

So, you can understand why Southwest Airlines would want to investigate. Southwest said to NPR that they do not condone its employees sharing personal political opinions while working.

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Tomorrow — Tuesday, November 2nd — is an off-year election day. Here are some of the most important contests to look out for.

Virginia has a hot race for the governor’s office between Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who is a former governor, and Republican Glenn Youngkin. FiveThirtyEight said both candidates are tied in polling averages.

New Jersey also has a gubernatorial race between incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and his Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli. Murphy is ahead in polling.

There will be special elections for two House of Representatives seats in Ohio and for one seat in Florida.

Several large cities have mayoral races — Boston, Seattle, Cleveland, Atlanta, Buffalo and Minneapolis.

I’ll provide a recap tomorrow of the results.

Actor Alec Baldwin and his wife Hilaria stopped by the side of a road in Vermont on Saturday to answer questions to reporters who were following them about the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the film set of “Rust.” Alec said he couldn’t answer questions due to the active investigation, but said Halyna was her friend and that the shooting was a “horrible event.” Alec said he supports any movement to stop using authentic guns on filming sets. Alec said he doubts that the production for “Rust” would start again.

In Tokyo, Japan on Sunday, a man dressed as the Joker character went on a stabbing rampage on a train, threw acid on people, and started a fire. 17 people were injured. News videos show panicked people running and climbing out of train cars. The knifeman was seen sitting casually in a train smoking a cigarette. News reports said the man, when he was arrested, told police that he looked up to the Joker character and wanted to kill people so he could be sentenced to death. Because it was on Halloween, some people thought the attack was a joke before they realized it was real.

That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/alec-baldwin-ski-town-speaks-out-rust-movie-set-shooting

https://nypost.com/2021/10/31/deranged-man-stabs-10-people-aboard-tokyo-commuter-train/

https://www.axios.com/biden-cop26-speech-glasgow-climate-change-a3906434-a023-493c-929d-5509d4debfd7.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jen-psaki-covid-19-diagnosis-white-house-press-secretary/

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/cop26-climate-summit/story

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/01/1051074812/lets-go-brandon-southwest-pilot

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/30/1050782613/why-the-lets-go-brandon-chant-turned-meme-can-be-heard-on-the-floor-of-congress

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-2021-elections/

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