World roundup: October 28 2022

Stories from Qatar, Ukraine, Brazil, and elsewhere

INTERNATIONAL

In today’s global news:

• Worldometer is tracking COVID-19 cases and fatalities.

• The New York Times is tracking global vaccine distribution.

MIDDLE EAST

TURKEY

In what is probably best interpreted as his first stump speech ahead of Turkey’s 2023 general election, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised on Friday to introduce a slew of amendments to the Turkish constitution to codify the “rights” of the Turkish people, with an eye toward drafting an entirely new constitution down the road. I put rights in quotation marks there because some of the ones Erdoğan enumerated—like a “right” to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community—might not be entirely familiar to most readers. Erdoğan’s speech suggests that, having pretty much failed in all respects to revitalize the Turkish economy, he plans on leaning heavily into culture war issues (and probably actual war issues, at least with respect to the Kurds) to mobilize his right wing nationalist base.