A Turkish newspaper with close ties to the government is reporting what it says were the final words of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Khashoggi was murdered on Oct. 2, 2018, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He was killed by a Saudi hit squad, as his fiancée waited outside of the building. The Sabah newspaper reports that a recording of the incident was obtained by Turkey's intelligence agency, and Khashoggi is heard speaking with several of his killers.
Per the transcript, one of the members of the hit squad is heard telling Khashoggi that Interpol has ordered his arrest and he will be returned to Riyadh. Khashoggi responds that he knows this isn't true, and reminds the man that his fiancée is waiting for him. Khashoggi is also heard being pressured to send his son a message saying if he doesn't hear from him, not to worry, Sabah reports. "I will write nothing," Khashoggi responds.
One of the men is heard threatening Khashoggi, telling him if he doesn't willingly go to Saudi Arabia, "you know what will happen in the end." Khashoggi was then apparently drugged, Sabah reports, and before he lost consciousness, he said, "Don't cover my mouth. I have asthma, don't do it. You'll suffocate me."
Some of these details were included in a United Nations report released this June, which calls for an investigation into Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's possible role in Khashoggi's death; he has denied being involved. Saudi Arabia couldn't stick to one story about what happened to Khashoggi, and after putting forward several different scenarios, the kingdowm put the blame on a group of rogue officers. Catherine Garcia
United Airlines has announced plans to start offering COVID-19 tests to certain passengers, becoming the first U.S. airline to do so, CNN reports.
The airline on Thursday said that beginning on Oct. 15, passengers traveling from San Francisco International Airport to Hawaii will be able to take either a rapid COVID-19 test at the airport or a test that they can administer at home prior to the trip.
At the airport, United will offering Abbott's COVID-19 test that provides results in 15 minutes. For the mail-in test from Color, passengers will be able to return it through mail or a drop box and get the results back in between 24 and 48 hours. According to CBS News, the rapid testing at the airport "takes about 20 minutes from arrival to result and initially will cost $250," while the at-home testing "will be $80 plus shipping and go to a San Francisco lab for processing."
This program, United said, will help ensure that these passengers who test negative for COVID-19 will not be subject to Hawaii's 14-day quarantine requirements. As CNN notes, Hawaii says that those who "are tested no earlier than 72 hours before their flight arrives with an FDA-approved nucleic acid amplification test" can avoid the 14-day quarantine.
United Chief Customer Officer Toby Enqvist says the company will "look to quickly expand customer testing to other destinations and U.S. airports later this year." Brendan Morrow
President Trump will accept the results of the 2020 election, but only under select conditions.
In a press conference Wednesday, Trump raised concerns from both sides of the aisle as he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election this fall. Trump suggested, without evidence, that ballot fraud would lead him to lose the election, and that it would likely be decided in the Supreme Court.
So in a Thursday appearance on Brian Kilmeade's Fox News Radio, the host asked Trump if he would accept a Joe Biden victory if it came from the Supreme Court. "That I would agree with," Trump responded. "But I think we have a long way before we get there. These ballots are a horror show."
But it's not as if Trump has no influence on the court he's relying on to make a 2020 decision. The Supreme Court already has a conservative majority, with two of Trump's own nominees already on the bench. And after Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death last week, Trump ominously said Wednesday it was important to get a new nominee on the bench before Election Day. "I think this [the election] will end up in the Supreme Court, and I think it's very important that we have nine justices," Trump said, alleging Democrats are running a "scam" that will end up "before the United States Supreme Court." Kathryn Krawczyk
Helsinki Airport has started making use of dogs to detect COVID-19.
The airport in Finland is deploying trained sniffer dogs as part of a new trial after researchers said that in preliminary tests, dogs could "identify the virus with nearly 100 percent accuracy," including "days before before a patient developed symptoms," The Guardian reports. They can reportedly detect it in 10 seconds or less.
"It's very promising," University of Helsinki researcher Anna Hielm-Björkman, who is overseeing the trial, told The Guardian. "If it works, it could prove a good screening method in other places."
The trial reportedly involves having passengers use a wipe to dab their necks, which one of the dogs then sniffs, and if it detects the coronavirus, the passenger can then take a polymerase chain reaction test. Participation in the trial is voluntary, The New York Times reports.
Hielm-Bjorkman told the Times that it's not entirely clear what the dogs are actually detecting, explaining that "we know how dogs detect it — by smell — but we have no clue what they detect yet." But she added, "If we find this out, we can train thousands of dogs across the world." Airport Director Ulla Lettijeff in a statement said "we are pleased" with the start of the trial, adding, "This might be an additional step forward on the way to beating COVID-19." Brendan Morrow
The British government is on the verge of approving and funding the first clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines in which healthy volunteers are deliberately infected with live coronavirus, the Financial Times reports. Such "challenge trials" are not new — they have been conducted since the 1790s — but they are more dangerous than double-blind placebo studies and therefore more rare. Still, 2,000 people have signed up to participate in the proposed trials in east London, FT reports, and Britain could green-light the research as soon as next week.
The volunteer subjects will be young, healthy, and deemed at low risk of being harmed by exposure to the new coronavirus. They will first be given a dose of the experimental vaccine and then later get a "challenge" dose of the coronavirus, to see if the vaccine works, FT reports. Imperial College London will reportedly be the academic lead on the trials. It's not clear which vaccines will bet tested at the proposed new London quarantine facility, but AstraZeneca and Sanofi both told Reuters they are not involved. Peter Weber