“Police in Vienna are investigating whether a 21-year-old man who tried to run over pedestrians with his car on Thursday morning had a terrorist motive,” The Local reports.

“Good things come to those who wait, and the saying may ring true for the next Nobel Literature laureate as the prize will be announced on October 13th, a little later than usual,” The Local reports.

I’d like Alan Hollinghurst to be the recipient.

“Hungry Venezuelans stop a livestock truck and steal crates of chickens after country’s food shortage spirals out of control,” Rory Tingle of Daily Mail reports.

Today is the last day of the year 5776 according to the Hebrew calendar. At sunset, the new year begins.

“Theresa May has confirmed she will trigger article 50 before the end of March 2017, setting in motion the two-year process of leaving the European Union,” Jessica Elgot of the Guardian reports.

“Just five minutes alone with an attractive female raise the levels of cortisol, the body’s stress hormone, according to a study from the University of Valencia,” Jeffrey Darko of the Ghana Star reports.

“Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s effort to boost his leverage in a divided European Union suffered a setback as too few voters turned out to make the result of a referendum on refugee policy binding,” Zoltan Simon of Bloomberg reports. “The share of valid votes was 39.7 percent, with 98.2 percent support for Orbán’s preferred ‘no’ vote, according to data from the election authority after 94.8 percent of the votes were counted.”

The Human Rights Council strongly deplores acts of violence and discrimination committed against individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“The second batch of Sweden’s new currency is going into circulation today as part of a huge project designed to replace hundreds of millions of banknotes and coins across the country,” The Local reports.

“Don’t trust the heart, it wants your blood.”

Image: The Washington Post’s “2016 Election Fact Checker”.

“The ‘Hungarian Prime Minister wants to position himself as a counterpoint to Ms Merkel—and perhaps even a future replacement for European Council president Donald Tusk’, Hungarian analysts told Financial Times in a report published on Thursday,” Hungary Today writes.

Now we see the rise of authoritarian loonies in every corner.

As you might have noticed, my website hasn’t updated properly. This has been an error caused by a minor mistake on my part when writing the manifest for the web application. It was a trailing slash too many. The mistake is now corrected. If you want my website to load properly, simply empty your cache memory once and it should be fine.

“Apple’s market value is more than $600 billion, below its 2015 highs but more than twice its level of 2011 and holding above Google parent Alphabet as the world’s most valuable corporation,” Rob Lever of AFP reports.

“Northern Ireland could veto its exit from the European Union, a lawyer for anti-Brexit campaigners from the region has told the high court in Belfast,” Henry McDonald and Patrick Wintour of the Guardian report. “A senior barrister argued that Brexit could not be imposed on Northern Ireland and that the Good Friday agreement, ratified by a referendum in 1998, meant the province had some control over such constitutional changes.”

So, Diane James resigns after two weeks. This far-right party had one goal, and that it has accomplished. The racism and the Europhobia has now become mainstream politics in Britain, so UKIP has nothing more to offer unless it goes for all-in fascism. I predict a party breakup before Britain leaves the EU.

“A new magazine issued by the Islamic State advises lone jihadists to get over any squeamishness about using knives and embrace sharp objects as ‘widely available’ weapons of jihad in nighttime stabbing campaigns,” Bridget Johnson of PJ Media reports.

“Like some GCSE performance art piece, May will then take to the stage this afternoon and say that the Tories are the new centrist party,” Ian Dunt of Politics writes. “In actual fact they have drifted further to the authoritarian nativist right than at any point since Thatcher and arguably before then.”

“The figure, more than two times the size of the global economy, comes from the [International Monetary] fund’s latest Fiscal Monitor and is, officials claim, the most accurate measure of the world’s debt burden ever calculated,” Claire Jones of the Financial Times writes.

“Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians.”

“Frauke Petry has come under fire for predicting a sort of clash of civilisations and comparing Germany’s multicultural society to a ‘compost heap’,” The Local reports.

But there’s still hope as several polls now show that Petry’s party is losing the support of voters.

“What is the world coming to, when you can’t trust a whore named Snake?”

Kyle Smith shows you how to do it.

“The British pound suffered a sudden fall of more than 6 per cent against the US dollar early on Friday before recovering most of its losses, amid mounting concerns over the UK’s exit from the EU,” Peter Wells, Jennifer Hughes, Katie Martin, and Robin Wigglesworth of the Financial Times report.

Jonathan Freedland writes in the Guardian:

This week the government signalled to foreign-born doctors and students that they are no longer wanted here, as well as warning diverse, global companies they will be named and shamed for the crime of drawing on a wide, international pool of talent. On Friday the London School of Economics claimed the government had told its non-British experts on Europe that their wisdom was not wanted. The Foreign Office rejected that claim. But a desire to purge ourselves of foreigners does seem to be turning into a fever: hot, irrational and ugly.

And all this while telling EU residents who have made their homes in Britain that they are to be “one of our main cards” in future negotiations with the EU—as if, should Britain not get what it wants, it might actually deport up to 3 million people who came here legally and in good faith. It’s one thing to listen respectfully to those millions of leave voters who want a say over how future migration works. It is quite another to demonise, and terrify, those who are already here.

“The leader of Sweden’s centre-right Moderate Party has shut the door on cooperating with the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, describing them as “racist”, following a week of scandals within the populist party,” The Local reports.

I’m watching the second presidential debate and realise that I’m seeing two candidates representing two distinctly different dimensions.

“Britain is seeking to shift the frontline of immigration controls to Ireland’s ports and airports to avoid having to introduce a ‘hard border’ between north and south after the UK leaves the European Union,” Henry McDonald the Guardian reports.

“I do not see the Brexit result in isolation,” Nigel Farage writes in the Telegraph. “Instead, I believe we are witnessing a popular uprising against failed politics on a global scale.”

I hate Farage’s closed-borders, xenophobic nationalism, but he’s right about this. Political parties that are not racist and nationalistic must learn to be more populist and address the issues of ordinary people with little or no interest in the facts and complexity that normally occupy serious politicians.

“Hungary’s largest daily newspaper, Nepszabadsag, unexpectedly halted its print and online editions on Saturday,” Eszter Zalan of EU Observer reports. “Its owner, Mediaworks, cited economic losses as reason for the move, but journalists, civil rights groups and opposition parties suspect interference by prime minister Viktor Orban’s government, whose Fidesz party had been the target of Nepszabadsag investigations.”

“Swedish soldiers in Timbuktu were caught up in a suicide attack late last night,” The Local reports.

“No Swedish soldiers were injured in the incident,” the Armed Forces say in a statement.

“Mr Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901,” Ben Sisario, Alexandra Alter, and Sewell Chan of the New York Times report. “In choosing a popular musician for the literary world’s highest honor, the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, dramatically redefined the boundaries of literature, setting off a debate about whether song lyrics have the same artistic value as poetry or novels.”

“The French finance minister, Michel Sapin, has said that US banks have told him they will move some activities out of Britain to other European countries in the wake of the referendum decision to leave the EU,” AFP and the Guardian report. “Sapin said that until now US banks had adopted a wait-and-see approach towards their British investments.”

I’ve never cared much for Bob Dylan. I hate his voice and it prevented me from really listening to his lyrics. But now, when the Swedish Academy has awarded him the Nobel prize in Literature, I took the time to read his words as poems. I found this song, “Dignity”, to be among his best.

Fat man lookin’ in a blade of steel
Thin man lookin’ at his last meal
Hollow man lookin’ in a cotton field
For dignity

Wise man lookin’ in a blade of grass
Young man lookin’ in the shadows that pass
Poor man lookin’ through painted glass
For dignity

Somebody got murdered on New Year’s Eve
Somebody said dignity was the first to leave.

The brother of the now deceased Syrian man arrested this week on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack was not radicalised until he made it to Germany, The Local reports.

“BBC presenters have apologised after the broadcaster’s breakfast programme showed footage of a gorilla instead of Scotland’s first minister,” the Guardian reports.

Image: Photo taken by Kabir Bakie at the Cincinnati Zoo in July 2005 (Wikimedia Commons).

“People often avoid making decisions out of fear of making a mistake. Actually, the failure to make decisions is one of life’s biggest mistakes.”

שבת שלום

“A former contestant on the Apprentice, Summer Zervos, on Friday accused Donald Trump of groping or aggressively kissing her on two separate occasions in 2007, when she met the businessman in private for what she thought were going to be discussions about job opportunities,” Molly Redden of the Guardian reports.

No one could be less surprised than I am.

Trump’s paranoid Twitter diatribe:

Donald J. Trump: This election is being rigged by the media pushing false and unsubstantiated charges, and outright lies, in order to elect Crooked Hillary! (2016-10-15 04:45)

Donald J. Trump: Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted and should be in jail. Instead she is running for president in what looks like a rigged election. (2016-10-15 05:23)

“Nicola Sturgeon has insisted that a hard Brexit would amount to the UK government breaking the promises it made during the Scottish referendum, and that such a departure from the EU would lead to another poll on independence,” Daniel Boffey of the Guardian reports.

Social Democrats	25,9%
Communist Party	8,2%
Green Party	4,7%
Moderate Party	25,0%
Centre Party	8,3%
Liberal Party	5,4%
Christian Democrats	2,8%
Sweden Democrats	16,8%
Others	3,0%

Source: Svenska Dagbladet

The Nobel prize in Literature was awarded Bob Dylan, a singing poet of an earlier generation. If I were to pick two singer-songwriters of my generation, it’d be Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys. Not convinced? Well, read their collective lyrics on the duo’s website.

“Police have been deluged with emergency calls as a result of the clown menace currently sweeping the nation,” The Local reports.

“Boris Johnson has said Britain’s continued membership of the EU would be a ‘boon for the world and for Europe’ in an unpublished newspaper column in which he wrestles with his decision to back or oppose Brexit,” Jessica Elgot of the Guardian reports.

Source: Eurostat (2016).

Polls	Clinton	Trump
Rasmussen	41%	43%
ABC News & Washington Post	47%	43%
NBC News & Wall Street Journal	48%	37%
UPI & CVoter	50%	45%
Fox News	45%	38%
Insights West	42%	37%
Politico & Morning Consult	46%	41%
Ipsos & Reuters	44%	37%

Source: New York Times

Trump tweets:

Donald J. Trump: Election is being rigged by the media, in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign, by putting stories that never happened into news! (2016-10-16 05:31)

And—surprise, surprise—he’s got no humour:

Donald J. Trump: Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me.Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election! (2016-10-16 04:14)

“Sweden could be set for its coldest winter in years with snow aplenty and temperatures low, according to a new long-term forecast from the Danish Meteorology Institute,” The Local reports.

Global warming, where are you?

“Calls for regulating emojis and stickers in chatting apps have been made by a newspaper affiliated with Beijing's Communist rulers,” Neil Connor of the Telegraph reports.

“The third and final presidential debate, in Las Vegas today, will be uncivil at best, a mud-fight at worst,” The Economist writes. “In the buildup, Donald Trump has said that Hillary Clinton should take a drug test before taking the stage.”

Former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, does not want to see Britain’s future decided behind closed doors by a “Pythonesque department of exit”, staffed by several people of low intelligence, Paul Dallison of Politico reports.

Julian Assange tweets:

WikiLeaks: There is no US election. There is power consolidation. Rigged primary, rigged media and rigged ‘pied piper’ candidate drive consolidation. (2016-10-20 19:47)

It makes sense that Julian Assange would favour a man with Trump’s view on women.

“A recent study by the LGBT Foundation found that drug use among LGB people is seven times higher than the general population, binge drinking is twice as common among gay and bisexual men, and substance dependency is significantly higher,” Owen Jones of the Guardian writes.

“Although I spent hours each day, alone and silent, attached to a laptop, it felt as if I were in a constant cacophonous crowd of words and images, sounds and ideas, emotions and tirades—a wind tunnel of deafening, deadening noise,” Andrew Sullivan writes in New York Magazine.

I spent the past weekend in Stockholm’s Old Town. I took this photograph last night when I walked from a restaurant to my hotel.

James Ball of BuzzFeed writes:

A few days after Assange arrived with me and a few others at Ellingham Hall, an older man, introduced to us as “Adam”, turned up. Assange had invited independent freelance journalists from around the world to the country house to see cables relating to their country—usually no more than a few thousand at a time.

“Adam” was different: He immediately asked for everything relating to Russia, eastern Europe, and Israel—and got it, more than 100,000 documents in all. A few stray comments of his about “Jews” prompted a few concerns on my part, dismissed quickly by another WikiLeaker—“don’t be silly… He’s Jewish himself, isn’t he?”

A short while later, I learned “Adam”’s real identity, or at least the name he most often uses: He was Israel Shamir, a known pro-Kremlin and anti-Semitic writer. He had been photographed leaving the internal ministry of Belarus, and a free speech charity was concerned this meant the country’s dictator had access to the cables and their information on opposition groups in the country.

Assange showed no concern at these allegations, dismissing and ignoring them until the media required a response. Assange simply denied Shamir had ever had access to any documents.

“Spain entered a crucial week Monday as acting conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy prepared to re-take power, ending ten rollercoaster months without government marked by hope and disillusion,” The Local reports.

“The singer Pete Burns, who founded pop group Dead Or Alive, has died of a cardiac arrest aged 57,” Hannah Ellis-Petersen of the Guardian reports.

“The Russian Embassy in London tweeted a picture of a giant Russian bear posing over the top of a concentration camp full of piggy banks, adorned with a Pride flag, stars, and a Eurozone sign,” Nick Duffy of Pink News reports.

Russian Embassy UK: If Russia is in decline, why worry? Maybe, real worry is West’s decline and that we manage things better? (2016-10-22 20:58)

The Putin regime wants us to think that Russia is doing great. Well, the World Bank’s GDP statistics tell a different story.

Intolerance is not only bad ethics, it’s bad economics, too.

“We want to trade with Canada, but we would rather not abolish tariffs,” says a Belgian farmer opposing CETA, quoted by The Economist.

And the anti-globalisation activists say they oppose egoism!

Bad news! The European Commission has decided that EU countries including Sweden should be granted permission to extend temporary border controls by a period of a further three months, The Local reports.

“The head of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) has branded Angela Merkel Europe’s most dangerous politician and says her migrant policy has paved the way for a possible civil war,” The Local reports.

“As part of the trade-off, Belgium will ask the European Court of Justice to clarify the proposed investment court system, which was one of the most controversial elements of the trade deal,” Aleksandra Eriksson of EU Observer reports.

“Donald Trump’s greatest fear is probably public humiliation—and there’s a decent chance he’s headed for a historic one,” Natalie Jackson and Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post report.

“The agreement between EU ambassadors will have to be endorsed by ministers in December and then by the European Parliament as part of work to end roaming costs in June 2017,” Eric Maurice of the EU Observer reports.

It’s Friday now, but there’s a cheerful “Thursday” video from the Pet Shop Boys. It’s now from the duo’s latest album, but it’s been stuck in my head for a few days now. In part because I like the rapper Example.

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CBS New York reports about the city’s new dining trend. People use marijuana and extracts the potent THC before infusing it into the oil that they then cooks with. Cannabis is used in all of the menu items, right down to the alcohol being served. Another example of the odd things people do to get high.

Newt Gingrich: “Donald Trump is the grizzly bear in The Revenant. If you get his attention, he’s going to walk over, bite your face off, sit on you for a while, and then wander off and go to sleep.”

Quote from the New York Times: “Everything worth doing takes time. You have to write a hundred bad songs before you write one good one. And you have to sacrifice a lot of things that you might not be prepared for. Like it or not, you are in this alone and have to follow your own star.”

It’s an historic event, and The Local follows the Pope’s visit to Malmö and Lund. I don’t care much for the Pope, but I’d love a ride in the Popemobile.