News Headlines - 26 October 2020

▽Chilean Voters Approve Plan to Rewrite Constitution

Chileans voted Sunday on a proposal to replace the current constitution. Election officials reported that about 78 percent of voters supported creation of a new system of laws, while 22 percent were opposed... Under the proposal, a group of 155 Chileans would be chosen next year to write up the new constitution. The document would be offered to voters for approval in a special election in 2022.
Chile’s current constitution was approved during the rule of General Augusto Pinochet. It became the law of the land at a time when political parties were banned, and the government enforced heavy censorship. That constitution was approved by 66 percent of voters in 1980. But critics say many Chileans felt pressured at the time to accept it. The government was known to have arrested or killed suspected political opponents following the overthrow of the elected president, Salvador Allende.

▽Early voters want to change vote after Hunter Biden exposés

Google searches for “change my vote” have spiked over the last several days, and Americans interested in adjusting their ballot are also searching for more information on Hunter Biden, one week after the Post’s exposés.
More than 58.5 million have already cast their ballots, and searches for “change my vote” started trending over the last few days — linked to searches for “Hunter Biden,” according to Google Trends data.
The biggest interest has come from Arizona, Tennessee and Virginia, all states that — like most of the US — only give residents one shot at the polls.

▽NASA Finds Water and Ice on Moon in More Places Than Thought - The New York Times

In a paper published in Monday’s Nature Astronomy, a team of scientists used SOFIA, an infrared telescope mounted inside a 747 jumbo jet, to make observations that showed unambiguous evidence of water on parts of the moon where the sun shines... Although that water could be difficult to collect by astronauts, another group of researchers also reported on Monday that in addition to big, frigid, deep and potentially treacherous craters in the moon’s polar regions, smaller and shallower depressions in the same areas may also be cold enough to hold onto water ice for millions, if not billions, of years.

▽Japan will become carbon neutral by 2050, PM pledges | The Guardian

Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has said the country will become carbon neutral by 2050, heralding a bolder approach to tackling the climate emergency by the world’s third-biggest economy.
“Responding to climate change is no longer a constraint on economic growth,” Suga said on Monday in his first policy address to parliament since taking office.

▽Mitsubishi Chemical appoints first non-Japanese CEO | Financial Times

Mitsubishi Chemical has tapped a 56-year-old Belgian to head the group from next year in the first appointment of a foreign boss in Japan since the 2018 arrest and ousting of Carlos Ghosn.
Jean-Marc Gilson, who is currently the chief executive of Roquette, a French ingredients group, will be the first foreigner to run Japan’s largest chemical company which is part of the 150-year-old Mitsubishi group... But the record of foreign executives running Japanese companies has been mixed. Howard Stringer struggled to revive Sony in the 2000s while Michael Woodford’s brief spell at medical equipment maker Olympus ended after he exposed an accounting scandal in 2011.More recently, Mr Ghosn, the former chairman of Nissan, fled from Tokyo to Beirut in December after facing financial misconduct charges which he denies.