CLEVELAND: President Donald Trump cast doubt in advance on Tuesday’s election results, while Democratic challenger Joe Biden pushed ahead on offense on the final full day of campaigning ahead of an election conclusion that could have consequences for the US for years to come.
After the president threatened legal action on Sunday to stop vote counting in some crucial states such as Pennsylvania, his campaign released a statement on Monday accusing Democrats of trying to “subvert state deadlines for receiving and counting ballots.”
If Pennsylvania ballot counting takes several days, as is allowed, Trump charged on Monday that “cheating can happen like you have never seen. ”
Biden dipped into Ohio, a show of confidence in a state that Trump won by 8 percentage points four years ago. He focused on the central message of his campaign: that Trump cost lives by mismanaging America’s response to the worst pandemic in a century.
“Donald Trump is not strong, he’s weak,” Biden declared in Cleveland. “This is a president who not only doesn’t understand sacrifice, he doesn’t understand courage.”
On the eve of the election, the US is at a crossroads, gripped by a historic pandemic that is raging anew in nearly every corner of the country, and a reckoning over race. Both campaigns insist they have a pathway to victory, though Biden’s options for picking up the required 270 Electoral College votes are more plentiful. Trump is banking on a surge of enthusiasm from his most loyal supporters in addition to potential legal maneuvers.
Trump was spending the final day sprinting through five rallies, from North Carolina to Wisconsin. Beyond Ohio, Biden was devoting most of his time to Pennsylvania, where a win would leave Trump with an exceedingly narrow path.
Biden also announced plans to campaign in Scranton and Philadelphia on Tuesday as part of a get-out-the-vote effort. His running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, will visit Detroit, a heavily Black city in battleground Michigan, and both of their spouses will hit the road too. Trump, at least for now, was not scheduled to travel on Election Day.
More than 93 million votes have already been cast, through early voting or mail-in ballots, which could lead to delays in tabulation. Trump has spent months claiming without evidence that the votes would be ripe for fraud while refusing to guarantee that he would honor the election result.
Trump has used stark terms to threaten litigation to stop the tabulation of ballots arriving after Election Day — counting that is allowed with earlier postmarks in some states. As soon as polls close in battlegrounds, “We’re going in with our lawyers,” Trump said Sunday.
It was unclear precisely what he meant. There is already an appeal pending at the Supreme Court over the counting of absentee ballots in Pennsylvania that are received in the mail in the three days after the election.
The state’s top court ordered the extension, and the Supreme Court refused to block it, though conservative justices expressed interest in taking up the propriety of the three added days after the election. Those ballots are being kept separate in case the litigation goes forward. The issue could assume enormous importance if the late-arriving ballots could tip the outcome.
One of Biden’s top legal advisers Bob Bauer pushed back at Trump’s promise of mobilizing his lawyers after polls close to challenge certain ballots.
“It’s very telling that President Trump is focused not on his voters but on his lawyers, and his lawyers are not going to win the election for him,” Bauer said. “We are fully prepared for any legal hijinks of one kind or another. We’re not worried about it.”
And Harris, said that she believed Trump was simply blustering to “distract from the fact that he actually has no record to run on.” She said “he wants to scare people, he wants to distract people, confuse people.”
Under the shadow of possible legal battles, Pennsylvania loomed as the most important battleground.
For Biden, who was born there and lives in neighboring Delaware, Pennsylvania has long been a focus of his campaign, a bulwark to block Trump from securing the electoral votes needed for reelection. Both Biden and Harris and their spouses were crisscrossing the state Monday — hoping to deliver a knockout blow big enough to avert a legal challenge.
Trump once led comfortably in Ohio. But Biden announced Sunday during his national team’s daily call that he planned to return to the state at the urging of Sen. Sherrod Brown, who said he and other Ohio Democrats in Congress had encouraged it, suggesting a final, late visit could win.
That trip comes after Biden’s ticket has pushed into other formerly reliable Trump strongholds including Georgia, where the Democrats’ most popular surrogate, former President Barack Obama, was campaigning Monday.
“I didn’t originally plan to come to Georgia. I told Michelle, I’m sorry, Baby, I got to go to Georgia. This is a big deal,” said Obama, noting Democrats’ hopes that they could deliver a knockout blow to Trump in the former GOP stronghold. “Georgia could be the state, Georgia could be the place.”
But even as Biden enjoyed strong poll numbers, the move to expand the map revived anxiety among Democrats scarred by Trump’s 2016 upset over Hillary Clinton, whose forays into red states may have contributed to losing longtime party strongholds. Biden planned a Pittsburgh drive-in event with Lady Gaga on Monday night, reminiscent of Clinton’s rallying with Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi in Philadelphia on the eve of an election she was favored to win but didn’t.
Short on campaign cash, Trump has been unable to compete with Biden over the airwaves and has relied on rallies to fire up his base. Those events, arguably the most striking political force of the past five years, could draw to a close Monday with stops in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and two in Michigan. The last was set for Grand Rapids, the city where Trump held his finale four years ago.
Trump talks legal action, Biden on offense as campaign ends
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Trump talks legal action, Biden on offense as campaign ends
- Trump accuse Democrats of trying to 'subvert state deadlines for receiving and counting ballots'
- Trump spends final day sprinting through five rallies, from North Carolina to Wisconsin
More than 30 dead in Brazil bus and truck collision
- The exact death toll remains uncertain due to the condition of the bodies, which were burned beyond recognition
- Initially, firefighters reported the bus, carrying 45 passengers, had a tire blowout, causing driver to lose control
A packed bus collided with a truck and burst into flames early on Saturday in Brazil, killing more than 30 people, the fire department said.
After completing the removal of victims from a major highway near the town of Teofilo Otoni in Minas Gerais, the state’s fire department estimated the number of fatalities between 32 and 35, including at least one child.
The exact death toll remains uncertain due to the condition of the bodies, which were burned beyond recognition.
Confirmation will likely depend on forensic work by the Civil Police, the department said in a statement.
A forensic investigation will also be required to determine the accident’s cause, as differing accounts were gathered from witness testimonies, it added.
Initially, firefighters reported the bus, carrying 45 passengers, had a tire blowout, causing the driver to lose control before colliding with an oncoming truck on the BR-116 federal highway, a major route connecting Brazil’s densely populated southeast to the poorer northeast.
However, witnesses also reported that a granite block the truck was transporting came loose, fell on the road and caused the collision with the bus, said the fire department.
“Only the forensic investigation will confirm the true version,” it added.
The bus departed from Sao Paulo and was headed to the state of Bahia.
Firefighters said they rescued 13 passengers from the wrecked bus. Three occupants of a car that also collided and was trapped under the truck survived the accident.
Indian man denies hospital rape and murder of doctor
- The discovery of the doctor’s bloodied body at a government hospital in Kolkata on August 9 sparked nationwide anger
- The gruesome nature of the attack drew comparisons with the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a Delhi bus
KOLKATA: An Indian man on trial for raping and murdering a 31-year-old doctor has pleaded not guilty, his lawyer said Saturday, a crime that appalled the nation and triggered wide-scale protests.
The discovery of the doctor’s bloodied body at a government hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata on August 9 sparked nationwide anger at the chronic issue of violence against women.
Sanjoy Roy, 33, the lone accused in the case, pleaded not guilty before the judge in a closed court on Friday in Kolkata, his lawyer Sourav Bandyopadhyay told AFP.
“I am not guilty, your honor, I have been framed,” Roy told the court, Bandyopadhyay said, repeating his client’s words.
Roy, a civic volunteer in the hospital, was arrested the day after the murder and has been held in custody since.
He would potentially face the death penalty if convicted.
The court began hearings on November 11, listening to evidence from some 50 witnesses, but it was on Friday that Roy took the stand.
“Judge Anirban Das questioned him with more than 100 questions during the six-hour-long in camera deposition, that continued until late in the evening,” Bandyopadhyay said.
Roy had earlier proclaimed his innocence to the public while screaming from a prison van outside the court before a hearing in November.
Doctors in Kolkata went on strike for weeks in response to the brutal attack.
Tens of thousands of ordinary Indians joined in the protests, which focused anger on the lack of measures for female doctors to work without fear.
India’s Supreme Court has ordered a national task force to examine how to bolster security for health care workers, saying the brutality of the killing had “shocked the conscience of the nation.”
The gruesome nature of the attack drew comparisons with the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a Delhi bus, which also sparked weeks of nationwide protests.
The trial continues. The next hearing is set for January 2, 2025.
Russia’s UK embassy denounces G7 loans to Ukraine as ‘fraudulent scheme’
- Britain said in October it would lend Ukraine 2.26 billion pounds as part of a much larger loan from the Group of Seven nations backed by frozen Russian central bank assets
LONDON: The Russian embassy in London on Saturday described Britain’s planned transfer to Ukraine of more than 2 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) backed by frozen Russian assets as a “fraudulent scheme.”
Britain said in October it would lend Ukraine 2.26 billion pounds as part of a much larger loan from the Group of Seven nations backed by frozen Russian central bank assets to help buy weapons and rebuild damaged infrastructure.
The loans were agreed in July by leaders of the G7 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US — along with top officials from the European Union, where most of the Russian assets frozen as a result of the war are held.
“We are closely following UK authorities’ efforts aimed at implementing a fraudulent scheme of expropriating incomes from Russian state assets ‘frozen’ in the EU,” the Russian embassy in London said on social media.
British Defense Minister John Healey said the money would be solely for Ukraine’s military and could be used to help develop drones capable of traveling further than some long-range missiles.
The embassy added: “The elaborate legislative choreography fails to conceal the illegitimate nature of this arrangement.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry last week described the US transfer to Ukraine of its share of the G7’s $50 billion in loans as “simply robbery.”
Death toll in German Christmas market car-ramming rises to five, more than 200 injured
- Source: Saudi Arabia had warned German authorities about the attacker
- Germany’s domestic intelligence agency declined to comment on the ongoing investigation
MAGDEBURG, Germany: At least five people were killed in a car-ramming attack at a German Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg that also left more than 200 injured, officials said, and a Saudi man was arrested on suspicion of driving a car into the crowd.
The Friday evening attack on market visitors gathered to celebrate the pre-Christmas season comes amid a fierce debate over security and migration during an election campaign in Germany, where the far right is polling strongly.
“What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in the central city, part of the former East Germany, where he laid a white rose at a church in honor of the victims.
“We have now learnt that over 200 people have been injured,” he added. “Almost 40 are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”
German authorities are investigating a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who has lived in Germany for almost two decades in connection with the car-ramming. Police searched his home overnight.
The motive remained unclear and police have not yet named the suspect. He has been named in German media as Taleb A.
A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia had warned German authorities about the attacker after he posted extremist views on his personal X account that threatened peace and security.
Der Spiegel reported that the suspect had sympathized with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The magazine did not say where it got the information.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.
Germany’s FAZ newspaper said it interviewed the suspect in 2019, describing him as an anti-Islam activist.
“People like me, who have an Islamic background but are no longer believers, are met with neither understanding nor tolerance by Muslims here,” he was quoted as saying. “I am history’s most aggressive critic of Islam. If you don’t believe me, ask the Arabs.”
Andrea Reis, who had been at the market on Friday, returned on Saturday with her daughter Julia to lay a candle by the church overlooking the site. She said that had it not been for a matter of moments, they may have been in the car’s path.
“I said, ‘let’s go and get a sausage’, but my daughter said ‘no let’s keep walking around’. If we’d stayed where we were we’d have been in the car’s path,” she said.
Tears ran down her face as she described the scene. “Children screaming, crying for mama. You can’t forget that,” she said.
Scholz’s Social Democrats are trailing both the far-right AfD and the frontrunner conservative opposition in opinion polls ahead of snap elections set for Feb. 23.
The AfD, which enjoys particularly strong support in the former East, has led calls for a crackdown on migration to the country.
Its chancellor candidate Alice Weidel and co-leader Tino Chrupalla issued a statement on Saturday condemning the attack.
“The terrible attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg in the middle of the peaceful pre-Christmas period has shaken us,” they said.
A leading Social Democrat lawmaker in the Bundestag parliament warned against jumping to conclusions and said it appeared the attacker did not have an Islamist motive.
“Now we have to wait for the investigations. It seems that things are different here than was initially assumed,” Dirk Wiese told the Rheinische Post newspaper.
Eight convicted in France over murder of teacher who showed Prophet caricature
- Eight sentenced for roles in hate campaign against teacher
- Two associates of killer sentenced to 16 years for complicity, the father of pupil sentenced to 13 years for inciting hatred
PARIS: A French court sentenced eight people to prison terms ranging from one to 16 years for their roles in a hate campaign that culminated in the murder of a teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class, local media reported.
Days after Samuel Paty, 47, showed his pupils the caricatures in October 2020, an 18-year-old Chechen assailant stabbed and beheaded him outside his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, near Paris. The assailant was shot dead by police moments after.
Among those convicted on Friday was the father of a student whose false account of Paty’s use of the caricatures triggered a wave of social media posts targeting the middle-school teacher.
The court sentenced Brahim Chnina to 13 years in prison for criminal terrorist association, according to broadcaster Franceinfo. Chnina had published videos falsely accusing the teacher of disciplining his daughter for complaining about the class, naming Paty and identifying his school.
Abdelhakim Sefrioui, the founder of a hard-line Islamist organization, received a 15-year sentence. Both Sefrioui and Chnina were found guilty of inciting hatred against Paty.
Many Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet Muhammad to be blasphemous. Sefrioui’s lawyer said his client would appeal the decision, according to French media.
Two associates of Paty’s killer, Abdullakh Anzorov, were also convicted. Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov were sentenced to 16 years in prison for complicity in a terrorist killing. Both had denied wrongdoing, according to Franceinfo.
Last year, a court found Chnina’s daughter and five other adolescents guilty of participating in a premeditated conspiracy and helping prepare an ambush.
Chnina’s daughter, who was not in Paty’s class when the caricatures were shown, was convicted of making false accusations and slanderous comments.
French media reported that the 13-year-old made the allegations after her parents questioned why she had been suspended from school for two days.
