LONDON (Bloomberg) - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has threatened to shut down a key pipeline carrying Russia gas to the European Union if Poland closes the border as thousands of migrants seek to cross into EU territory. “We’re heating Europe and they are threatening us that they will close the border,” Lukashenko said at the meeting with government on Thursday, citing the Yamal-Europe pipeline across Belarus, according to state-owned news agency Belta. “

***
PARIS (Reuters) - France is at the beginning of a fifth wave of the coronavirus epidemic, Health Minister Olivier Veran said. “Several neighboring countries are already in a fifth wave of the COVID epidemic, what we are experiencing in France clearly looks like the beginning of a fifth wave,” Veran said on TF1 television, adding the circulation of the virus was accelerating. The health ministry registered 11,883 new cases, the second day in a row with a new case tally over 10,000. New cases have seen double-digit percentage increases week-on-week since around mid-October.

***
NEW DELHI ( Reuters) - At least 14 people have died in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu during days of heavy rains, officials said Thursday. Several districts in the state are on high alert, bracing for more torrents as a depression over the southwest Bay of Bengal was set to cross northern Tamil Nadu on Thursday evening. The Indian Meteorological Department warned of intense rains in isolated places. The heavy rains first struck over the weekend, hitting the capital, Chennai. Photos and videos from the city showed residents wading through knee-deep waters and vehicles nearly submerged in the heavily flooded roads.

***
YANGON (Al-Jazeera) -A Myanmar military court has sentenced U.S. journalist Danny Fenster to 11 years in jail. Fenster was found guilty of breaching immigration law, unlawful association and encouraging dissent against the military. He was earlier this week slapped with two additional charges of sedition and terrorism, which carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. His trial on the new charges will begin on 16 November. Fenster, 37, who was the managing editor of online site Frontier Myanmar, was detained at Yangon international airport in May. He is one of dozens of local journalists that have been detained since a military coup in February.

***
MOSCOW (RT) - The Moon’s atmosphere doesn’t contain enough oxygen for human life, but under the planet’s rocky top layer, there’s enough of the gas to sustain eight billion human lives for 100,000 years, according to a prominent scientist. In a piece penned this week in The Conversation, John Grant, a lecturer in soil science at Australia’s Southern Cross University explained that the Moon was heavy in minerals that bind tightly with oxygen. Grant claims that, even if one ignores the oxygen tied up in deep, hard rock, the Moon’s regolith – the rocky top layer – which is easily accessible, could hold enough oxygen for eight billion people to live for 100,000 years.