Ripped from the Headlines: October 2020: This Week In Words: October 17–23, 2020

Reporting revealed that President Trump has a Chinese bank account that was not listed on any of his public financial statements. The account is held by Trump International Hotels Management, a company owned by the President, and it paid nearly $200,000 in taxes to the Chinese government from 2013–2015.

The huge August motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota turned out to be a massive so-called "superspreader" event, infecting thousands of people with Covid-19 who then returned home to dozens of states. In the weeks following the rally, in which people gathered in large groups, close together, with no masks, states in the region quickly led the nation in new infections.

Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker made a highly publicized deal in 2018 with the Chinese company Foxconn that was supposed to bring thousands of jobs to the state. But the jobs and the huge factory never came. Reports have surfaced of empty buildings and employees with nothing to do, even after the state and local governments spent $400 million to uphold their end of the deal.

Demonstrations in Lagos, Nigeria were met with violence as soldiers opened fire, killing at least a dozen civilians. The protests were against a police unit, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), that's been accused of serious abuses. The government has denied that the shootings took place, calling the reports "fake news." Morph comes from Greek, where morphi means "form" or "shape." As a term for computer-generated shape-shifting, morph was coined in the early 1990s.

In a new documentary, Pope Francis says that gay couples should be able to join in civil unions where they have the same legal protections and status as married couples. “They’re children of God and have a right to a family,” the pope said. “Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.” This is the first time a Pope has made such a clear declaration in favor of LGBTQ rights.

With two weeks to go before the election, former President Obama returned to the campaign trail. He gave a speech in Philadelphia in which he harshly criticized President Trump for his response to the pandemic and called not only for voters to choose Joe Biden but to elect a Democratic Senate that will help a President Biden govern effectively.

While plastics and other waste in landfills and the ocean have long been a visible form of pollution, tiny fibers and particles of plastic may be a much worse problem. Even washing clothes with plastic fibers like nylon, polyester, or spandex can cause these tiny pieces to enter wastewater and from there end up in rivers and oceans and then enter the food chain.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have been making progress on negotiating a bill that would provide financial relief to individuals and small businesses. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he wants to focus on confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court before the election, and that any debate or vote on economic relief would slow that down.

Sweden has banned Huawei and ZTE, both Chinese companies, from building 5G networks in the country, and any existing Chinese network equipment must also be removed. A Swedish government agency has said that China is a security threat, and that its ongoing cyber-spying efforts include theft of technology and data from companies and individuals.

The U.S. Justice Department is suing Google for anti-competitive behavior, specifically in how it makes its search engine the default in many platforms. Because Google shows up at the top of most browsers and mobile operating systems, it dominates the search space, and most of the top results from a search lead to sponsored content or keep the user within the Google ecosystem: all situations where the company profits.