US election: a roller-coaster count for both the Trump and Biden camps

Trump’s campaign has already unleashed a flurry of litigation: as soon as Michigan was called for Biden, they filed a lawsuit in an attempt to halt the count in the state until access was granted to Republican poll monitors. (AP)
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Updated 06 November 2020
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US election: a roller-coaster count for both the Trump and Biden camps

  • Democrats say robust legal team is ready to fight ‘nuisance’ lawsuits from Republicans

NEW YORK: The 2020 presidential election has been a roller-coaster ride for American voters, whichever side they are on.

The magic number of 270 Electoral College votes a candidate needs to win does not change, yet it has still seemed like a moving target as counts of the popular vote continue in key battleground states — two days after the polls closed.

The share of votes in the latest returns are so exceedingly close that, as of Thursday afternoon, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia remained uncalled — and the result of the election will be decided by some combination of them.

For those who are perplexed by the mathematical gymnastics involved in US elections, this nail-biter of a week should have made clear the reasoning behind the complex system: it was designed to ensure that voters in remote, rural counties, largely ignored or forgotten by politicians, have as much of a say in choosing their leader as those in huge, heavily populated states such as New York or California.

More than 140 million votes have been tallied and now the outcome will be determined by about 1 million votes that remain to be counted in Pennsylvania, 400,000 in Georgia, where the margin between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is razor-thin, and 400,000 in Arizona.

The eyes of Americans, and the entire world, are now on counties the names of which will fade back into oblivion for most people after the election is over: Maricopa country in Arizona, for example, or Fulton county in Georgia.

In those counties, the last word could go to minorities. Latinos originally from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, for example, who were unhappy about how Trump treated their homelands during Hurricane Maria and have come out in droves to vote against him. Or Cuban Americans who have rallied behind the president for his stance against the perceived threat of socialism, a specter that evokes a painful history for a community that reeled under a socialist regime for decades.

Meanwhile African Americans in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, chose Biden in preference to an incumbent president who, they believe, did not stand with them in their fight against racial injustice. On the other hand, Black males in Miami-Dade County in Florida voted for Trump in larger numbers than expected; the perception that Biden had taken their vote for granted did not resonate well with this young community.

Late on Thursday afternoon the White House called the “the lid,” the term used to announce there will be no more announcements that day. Trump shunned the cameras and remained huddled with advisers, gearing up for a possible legal battle to challenge the result should he lose the election. This is a candidate who suggested the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged.

Trump’s campaign has already unleashed a flurry of litigation: as soon as Michigan was called for Biden, they filed a lawsuit in an attempt to halt the count in the state until access was granted to Republican poll monitors. They filed a similar lawsuit in Pennsylvania, and threatened to take their battle all the way to the Supreme Court.

Trump is also seeking a recount in Wisconsin, where he lost by only half a percentage point. He is also challenging the handling of ballots in Georgia, where his campaign is suing election officials in Chatham county amid allegations that ballots that arrived after the voting deadline were being improperly counted.

This aggressive posture has been backed with appearances by and comments from a number of administration officials, during which they have attempted to discredit the election and call into question its integrity.

The president’s son Eric, for example, posted a message on Twitter on Wednesday declaring victory for his father in Pennsylvania, where more than a million votes remained to be counted. Twitter was quick to add a disclaimer to the tweet that read: “Official sources may not have called the race (in Pennsylvania) as this was tweeted.” As of Thursday evening, the result in the state remains too close to call.

Trump ally Rudy Giuliani bizarrely alleged, in front of television cameras, that mail-in ballots could be coming from Mars or that Joe Biden “could have voted 5,000 times for all I know.”

In stark contrast to Trump, Joe Biden has picked his words carefully as the count continues. Even as the election seemed to shift in his favor, he resisted the temptation to declare victory and instead expressed his trust in the electoral system.

While both candidates have the right to challenge very close results and call for recounts, the Biden camp views Trump’s lawsuits alleging electoral impropriety as a nuisance tactic more than anything else, as there appears to be little evidence to support the claims. They believe allegations of a lack of transparency in the counting process, for example, do not hold water when all tabulation centers are equipped with security cameras and the whole operation is being streamed live for the world to watch.

But while they hope any legal challenges will be dismissed long before they reach the Supreme Court, the Democrats have made it clear that they also have a robust legal team on hand. Fueled by fears about how the unpredictable Trump might react to defeat, they have created the largest election-protection program any campaign has ever developed — and made it clear they are prepared to use it.

“We’re winning the election, we’ve won the election, we’re going to defend that election,” said Bob Bauer, a leading attorney for the Biden campaign.

While many people are frustrated that the remaining vote counts are taking so long, Tom Wolf, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, made no apology for his state taking its time.

“This is a hiring process,” he said. “We need to make sure the voters are choosing the leaders and not the other way around.”

He described the Trump campaign’s lawsuits filed against the state as “(disgraceful) attempts to subvert the democratic process,” and vowed “to fight like hell (and) do everything in my power to make sure every vote is counted.”

In response to Trump’s attempt to halt the state’s count, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar was even more blunt: “We get to decide when the last vote is counted.”

She also evoked the long fight by American women to gain voting rights, which culminated 100 years ago in the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, and the Voting Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in elections.

“I take that every day with me as we fight for every vote in Pennsylvania,” she said.

Pollsters and pundits got many things wrong in so many ways about this election, but they are right about one thing: the story of this election is still far from over.
 

Al-Andalus revisited
Eight centuries of Muslim rule in Spain, during which Arab culture and science flourished, are echoed not only in the magnificent art and buildings of Al-Andalus, but also in the souls and the DNA of its descendants

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In their final meeting, Zelensky and Austin say military aid to Ukraine must continue under Trump

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In their final meeting, Zelensky and Austin say military aid to Ukraine must continue under Trump

  • Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin: US to send another $500 million in security assistance to Ukraine
  • The US has provided about $66 billion of the total aid to Kyiv since February 2022
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin used their final meeting Thursday to press the incoming Trump administration to not give up on Kyiv’s fight, warning that to cease military support now “will only invite more aggression, chaos and war.”
“We’ve come such a long way that it would honestly be crazy to drop the ball now and not keep building on the defense coalitions we’ve created,” Zelensky said. “No matter what’s going on in the world, everyone wants to feel sure that their country will not just be erased of the map.”
Austin also announced the US would send another $500 million in security assistance to Ukraine, including missiles for fighter jets, sustainment equipment for F-16s, armored bridging systems and small arms and ammunition.
The weapons are funded through presidential drawdown authority, meaning they can be pulled directly from US stockpiles, and the Pentagon is pushing to get them into Ukraine before the end of the month.
This latest package leaves about $3.85 billion in funding to provide future arms shipments to Ukraine; if the Biden administration makes no further announcements, that balance will be available to President-elect Donald Trump to send if he chooses.
“If Putin swallows Ukraine, his appetite will only grow,” Austin told the approximately 50 member nations who have been meeting over the last three years to coordinate weapons and military support for Ukraine. “If autocrats conclude that democracies will lose their nerve, surrender their interests, and forget their principles, we will only see more land grabs. If tyrants learn that aggression pays, we will only invite even more aggression, chaos, and war.”
Austin leaves a consortium that now has more than a half dozen independent coalitions of those countries who are focused on Ukraine’s longer-term security capabilities and who have committed to continuing to stand up those needs through 2027.
Globally, countries including the US have ramped up domestic weapons production as the Ukraine war exposed that all of those stockpiles were woefully unprepared for a major conventional land war.
The US has provided about $66 billion of the total aid since February 2022 and has been able to deliver most of that total — between 80 percent and 90 percent — already to Ukraine.
“Retreat will only provide incentives for more imperial aggression,” Austin told the group. “And if we flinch, you can count on Putin to push further and punch harder. Ukraine’s survival is on the line. But so is the security of Europe, the United States, and the world.”

Kremlin declines to accept responsibility for plane crash

Updated 39 min 34 sec ago
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Kremlin declines to accept responsibility for plane crash

  • Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said the Azerbaijani Airlines passenger jet was shot at ‘from the ground’ over the Russian city of Grozny where it had been due to land

MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Thursday declined to say Russian forces accidentally shot at an Azerbaijani plane which crashed last month, despite Baku repeatedly urging it to accept responsibility for the fatal disaster.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said the Azerbaijani Airlines passenger jet, which crashed in Kazakhstan on December 25, killing 38 people, was shot at “from the ground” over the Russian city of Grozny where it had been due to land.
Russia has said its air defenses were working at the time repelling Ukrainian drones but has stopped short of saying it shot at the plane.
Aliyev, a close ally of Moscow, this week repeated that “guilt” lay with Russia and accused it of “concealment” of the real causes.
“We are interested in an absolutely objective and impartial investigation in order to establish the causes of this catastrophe,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
“We are waiting for the results of the commission,” he added, saying Russian “specialists are giving their full cooperation.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin called Aliyev twice since the disaster.
The Kremlin said he had apologized for the fact the incident took place over Russian airspace but its account of the phone calls do not say Putin accepted responsibility.
Aliyev has expressed anger over Moscow’s handling of the crash.
He issued fierce criticism and demanded an apology earlier this week, calling on Moscow to punish those responsible for the “criminal” shooting of the plane.
Aliyev said air defense measures for Grozny – the capital of Russia’s Chechnya republic – were only announced after the plane had been “shot from the ground.”
Azerbaijan says the plane was riddled with holes and that preliminary results of its investigation show it was accidentally hit by a Russian air defense missile.


Pope Francis, ramping up criticism of Israel, calls situation in Gaza ‘shameful’

Updated 30 min 1 sec ago
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Pope Francis, ramping up criticism of Israel, calls situation in Gaza ‘shameful’

  • Pope Francis: ‘We cannot in any way accept the bombing of civilians’
  • ‘We cannot accept that children are freezing to death because hospitals have been destroyed or a country’s energy network has been hit’

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis on Thursday stepped up his recent criticism of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, calling the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave “very serious and shameful.”

In a yearly address to diplomats delivered on his behalf by an aide, Francis appeared to reference deaths caused by winter cold in Gaza, where there is almost no electricity.

“We cannot in any way accept the bombing of civilians,” the text said.

“We cannot accept that children are freezing to death because hospitals have been destroyed or a country’s energy network has been hit.”

The pope, 88, who was present for the address but asked an aide to read it as he is recovering from a cold, also condemned anti-Semitism; called for an end to the war in Ukraine and other conflicts around the world; and expressed concern over climate change.

The comments were part of an address to Vatican-accredited envoys from some 184 countries that is sometimes called the pope’s “state of the world” speech. The Israeli ambassador to the Holy See was among those present for the event.

Francis, leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts.

But he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian militant group Hamas, and has suggested the global community should study whether the offensive constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.

An Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff in December for that suggestion.

The pope’s text said he condemns anti-Semitism, and called the growth of anti-Semitic groups “a source of deep concern.”

Francis also called for an end to the war between Ukraine and Russia, which has killed tens of thousands.

“My wish for the year 2025 is that the entire international community will work above all to end the conflict that, for almost three years now, has caused so much bloodshed,” he said.

The pope also addressed conflicts in places including Sudan, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Nicaragua and reiterated his frequent calls for action to confront the impacts of global climate change, and the spread of misinformation on social media.


Russia battles Kyiv drone strike blaze for second day

Updated 09 January 2025
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Russia battles Kyiv drone strike blaze for second day

  • Kyiv hit the depot in the city of Engels, some 500 kilometers from the two countries’ border
  • Hours after the drone strike, Russia bombed the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia

MOSCOW: Russian firefighters on Thursday battled for a second day to put out a blaze caused by a Ukrainian drone strike on an oil depot.
Kyiv hit the depot in the city of Engels, some 500 kilometers from the two countries’ border, in Russia’s southern Saratov region on Wednesday.
Moscow has said that two fire firefighters died trying to extinguish the blaze.
Hours after the drone strike, Russia bombed the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 13 people and wounding more than 100.
“Emergency services are continuing to put out the consequences of the drone attack,” Saratov governor Roman Busargin said on Telegram.
“Specialists say that it will take some time to complete the burnout process,” he added.
Busargin said there was “no threat” to residential buildings.
Russia declared an emergency situation in Engels on Wednesday.
Images on social media showed a giant plume of smoke rising over the city, which has a population of around 220,000.
Ukraine has hit Russian infrastructure – sometimes deep behind the front lines – throughout Moscow’s offensive.
It has said that hitting the depot will cause “serious logistical problems” for Moscow’s air force.
Hours after the drone strike, Russia struck Zaporizhzhia, a southern Ukrainian city close to Moscow-occupied territory, killing 13 people.
Kyiv on Thursday said that 113 people were also wounded in the Zaporizhzhia strike, in an updated toll.
Russian attacks on the southern Kherson region killed two people on Thursday, Ukrainian officials said.
Prosecutors said the attacks killed a 54-year-old man in the village of Beryslav – on the Dnipro river that marks the front line – and a 60-year-old woman in Nezlamne, west of the city of Kherson.
The conflict in Ukraine – nearing its three-year mark – has escalated in recent months, with both sides seeking to gain an advantage ahead of Donald Trump returning to the US presidency.


Taiwan demonstrates sea defenses against potential Chinese attack as tensions rise with Beijing

Updated 09 January 2025
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Taiwan demonstrates sea defenses against potential Chinese attack as tensions rise with Beijing

  • Kuang Hua VI fast attack missile boats and Tuo Chiang-class corvettes showcased in waters near Taiwan’s largest port of Kaohsiung
  • Kaohsiung is a major hub for international trade considered key to resupplying Chinese forces should they establish a beachhead on the island
KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan: Taiwan on Thursday demonstrated its sea defenses against a potential Chinese attack as tensions rise with Beijing, part of a multitiered strategy to deter an invasion from the mainland.
The island’s navy highlighted its Kuang Hua VI fast attack missile boats and Tuo Chiang-class corvettes in waters near Taiwan’s largest port of Kaohsiung, a major hub for international trade considered key to resupplying Chinese forces should they establish a beachhead on the island.
The Kuang Hua VI boats, with a crew of 19, carry indigenously developed Hsiung Feng II anti-ship missiles and displayed their ability to take to the sea in an emergency to intercept enemy ships about to cross the 44-kilometer limit of Taiwan’s contiguous zone, within which governments are permitted to take defensive action.
China routinely sends ships and planes to challenge Taiwan’s willingness and ability to counter intruders, prompting Taiwan to scramble jets, activate missile systems and dispatch warships. Taiwan demanded on Wednesday that China end its ongoing military activity in nearby waters, which it said is undermining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and disrupting international shipping and trade.
Mountainous Taiwan’s strategy is to counter the much larger Chinese military with a relatively flexible defense that can prevent Chinese troops from crossing the strait. Landing sites are few on Taiwan’s west coast facing China, forcing Beijing to focus on the east coast.
Hsiao Shun-ming, captain of a Tuo Chiang-class corvette, said his ship’s relatively small size still allows it to “deliver a formidable competitive power” against larger Chinese ships. The Tuo Chiang has a catamaran design and boasts high speeds and considerable stealth ability.
Taiwan has in recent years reinvigorated its domestic defense industry, although it still relies heavily on US technology such as upgraded fighter jets, missiles, tanks and detection equipment. US law requires it to consider threats to the island as matters of “grave concern,” and American and allied forces are expected to be a major factor in any conflict.
Thursday’s exercise “demonstrates the effectiveness of asymmetric warfare, and Taiwan’s commitment to defense self-reliance,” said Chen Ming-feng, rear admiral and commander of the navy’s 192 Fleet specializing in mine detection. “We are always ready to respond quickly and can handle any kind of maritime situation.”
China’s authoritarian one-party Communist government has refused almost all communication with Taiwan’s pro-independence governments since 2016, and some in Washington and elsewhere say Beijing is growing closer to taking military action.
China considers Taiwan a part of its territory, to be brought under its control by force if necessary, while most Taiwanese favor their de facto independence and democratic status.