Two French citizens described to a court in Paris on Thursday how they used their bare hands to disarm and immobilise an Islamist gunman in an attack on a high-speed train in France in 2015. FRANCE 24's Alison Sargent tells us more.
The result of the six-day hand recount of the state’s 5 million ballots had been widely expected, despite baseless allegations from Trump and his allies that Georgia’s vote tallies were suspect because of widespread fraud.
Amid a series of losses in court, Trump’s re-election campaign has shifted to a new strategy that relies on persuading Republican state legislators in crucial states to ignore the election results and intervene on Trump’s behalf, according to three people familiar with the plan.
The campaign has filed multiple lawsuits to try to challenge the results in battleground states that Biden won, as election officials across the country have affirmed that there is no evidence of major irregularities. Judges in three states delivered new legal setbacks to the campaign on Thursday, rejecting claims of improper vote counting.
Biden, a Democrat, has captured 306 electoral votes to the Republican Trump’s 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the winner of the election, well above the 270 needed for victory.
site : https://hcde.instructure.com/courses/92094/pages/watch-online-mulan-free-full-hd-2020
Georgia’s audit, launched after unofficial results showed Biden leading Trump by about 14,000 votes cast, ended with Biden winning by 12,284, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. The state is expected to certify Biden’s victory on Friday.
Trump and his allies, including Georgia’s Republican U.S. senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who both face runoff elections in January, have accused fellow Republican Raffensperger without evidence of overseeing a flawed election, an allegation Raffensperger has angrily disputed.
In remarks on Thursday after a call with 10 state governors, Biden called Trump’s attempt to reverse the results “totally irresponsible.”
“It sends a horrible message about who we are as a country,” said the president-elect, although he expressed no concern that the gambit would succeed in preventing him from taking office on Jan. 20.
Biden on Trump: ‘I think [Americans are] witnessing incredible irresponsibility, incredibly damaging messages being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy functions … it is totally irresponsible … it sends a horrible message about who we are as a country’ pic.twitter.com/OaPc1QKnLV
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) November 19, 2020
While legal experts see Trump’s last-gasp effort as unlikely to succeed, they say the strategy represents an unprecedented assault on the country’s democratic institutions by a sitting president.
The Trump campaign has already asked a judge in Pennsylvania, where Biden won by 82,000 votes, to declare Trump the winner, allowing the Republican-controlled legislature to choose the state’s 20 Electoral College voters.
Several prominent law firms have pulled out of the campaign’s legal challenges, leaving Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to spearhead the efforts.
Giuliani alleges conspiracy
At a news conference on Thursday, Giuliani said he planned to file more lawsuits and that Democrats had engaged in a “national conspiracy” to manipulate vote totals, although he admitted he did not have any evidence.
Other members of the legal team floated a theory involving Venezuela and George Soros, a bogeyman of conservatives, although they said they would probably not pursue it in court.
Giuliani said accounts of suspicious activity would ultimately overturn the election, which Biden won nationwide by 5.9 million votes. Some of those accounts have already been thrown out of court.
“We cannot allow these crooks — because that’s what they are — to steal this election. They elected Donald Trump. They didn’t elect Joe Biden,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani’s agitated performance, featuring rivulets of hair dye running down his face, was widely mocked by Democrats. Others expressed alarm.
The counties were supposed to finish the hand count by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system, said Thursday evening that the audit was complete and the results would soon be posted on the secretary of state’s website.
site : https://hcde.instructure.com/courses/92094/pages/watch-unfortunate-stories-online-full-hd
Once the state certifies the election results, the losing campaign has two business days to request a recount if the margin remains within 0.5%. That recount would be done using scanners that read and tally the votes and would be paid for by the counties, Sterling said.
It was up to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to select the race to be audited, and he said the presidential race made the most sense because of its significance and the tight margin separating the candidates. Because of that small margin, Raffensperger said a full hand recount was necessary.
Votes that hadn’t previously been counted were found in several counties during the audit, which required recertification of the election results in those counties.
How one Atlanta suburb helped turn Georgia blue
01:12
Daily newsletter
Receive essential international news every morning
Subscribe
site : https://hcde.instructure.com/courses/92094/pages/123movies-watch-the-christmas-ride-online-full-hd
In Floyd County, more than 2,500 ballots were discovered during the audit that hadn’t previously been scanned, and the secretary of state’s office had called for the firing of the county’s chief elections clerk, Robert Brady. The county elections board on Thursday voted to issue a written reprimand to Brady and, because it was his second written reprimand within six months, to fire him in accordance with county policy, board member Melanie Conrad said in an email.
site : https://hcde.instructure.com/courses/92094/assignments/494499
Several other counties found memory cards with votes that hadn’t been uploaded and counted prior to the audit.
Going into the hand tally, Biden led Trump by a margin of about 14,000 votes. The previously uncounted ballots discovered during the hand count will reduce that margin to about 12,800, Sterling said.
The Associated Press has not declared a winner in Georgia, where Biden led Trump by about 0.3 percentage points. There is no mandatory recount law in Georgia, but state law provides that option to a trailing candidate if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. It is AP’s practice not to call a race that is — or is likely to become — subject to a recount.
site :
US President Donald Trump will take part Friday in an Asia-Pacific summit as he continues to reject his election loss, a day after President Xi Jinping used the forum to hail China’s growing economic clout.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) gathering, held online this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, brings together 21 Pacific Rim countries, accounting for about 60 percent of global GDP.
Beijing has become the main driving force behind the trade grouping after the United States began withdrawing from multilateral bodies during Trump’s presidency.
President Xi, boosted by the signing last week of the world’s biggest trade pact, gave a keynote address to the forum Thursday, hailing China as a pivot point for global commerce and vowing to keep its “super-sized” economy open.
site :
Washington broke with its usual practice and did not send a representative to deliver a public speech at the two days of meetings, but a senior US official confirmed Trump would take part in the official summit on Friday evening.
He will deliver a speech to fellow leaders but the event is mostly closed to the media, according to officials in host country Malaysia.
site :
It will be only the second time that Trump, who is fighting his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, has participated in APEC, the other occasion being in 2017.
site :
Oh Ei Sun, an analyst from the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, said Trump would be aiming to “present himself as ‘presidential’ on the global stage”.
“Trump would, of course, take this opportunity to present himself as a sitting president for domestic political advantage,” he told AFP.
The president would also “like to reiterate his administration’s hallmark emphasis on protectionism and in the process forestall China from claiming leadership in the global free trade agenda”, he added.
- Hard line on China -
site :
Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that the voting in the November 3 election and count were fraudulent.
His campaign has launched lawsuits challenging the vote, while his allies also sought to pressure local officials to hold off on certifying vote counts.
site :
Trump has taken a hard line on China during his tenure, hitting the world’s number-two economy with a barrage of tariffs and tech restrictions, and a Biden administration is expected to see a more nuanced extension of Washington’s current China policy.
This year’s APEC gatherings come a week after China and 14 other Asia-Pacific countries signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world’s biggest free-trade pact.
The deal, which excludes the US, is viewed as a major coup for China and further evidence that Beijing is setting the agenda for global commerce as Washington retreats.
APEC gatherings have in recent years been overshadowed by escalating trade tensions between the US and China, and leaders were unable to agree on a formal written declaration for the first at their most recent summit in 2018.
"Today we have decided to delay the date of Black Friday if this can help shopkeepers reopen before Dec. 1. This year the Black Friday will take place on Dec. 4," Amazon France Chief Executive Frederic Duval told TF1 television.
The finance ministry earlier on Thursday said supermarkets and online retailers in France were open to the idea of postponing "Black Friday" discount shopping sales at the end of November by a week.
Amazon, which has seen sales surge under lockdown, is now joining France's Carrefour, Europe's biggest retailer, and French retailer Leclerc in agreeing to the delay.
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called on supermarkets and online retailers on Wednesday to postpone Black Friday, which runs from Nov. 27 to Nov. 29, as shops selling non-essential goods would have to remain closed during lockdown.
Duval had said earlier this week that the end of November was a very important time for Christmas shopping and it would be perfect if stores selling non-essential items were allowed to reopen on Nov. 27.
https://muhzeinjr.medium.com/covid-19-french-mental-health-deteriorating-amid-lockdown-minister-says-c1a6cd8dc18c
https://unemm23nem.medium.com/rescuers-search-for-bodies-as-central-america-counts-cost-of-hurricane-iota-2576287f3b83
