Obama : Trump vote remarks ‘dangerous’

President Barack Obama has said Republican Donald Trump’s insistence that he might not accept the election result is “dangerous”.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Miami for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the president said Mr Trump’s comments undermined American democracy.

Mr Trump refused in a televised debate to say he would accept the outcome of the election on 8 November.

He later said he would accept a “clear” result but left a challenge open.

Speaking in Ohio on Thursday, Mr Trump said, with a grin: “I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States, that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election – if I win.”

In the same speech, he said he would accept a clear election result but reserved the right to file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable one.

Hours later, the president said that sowing the seeds of doubt in people’s minds about the legitimacy of US elections provided a boost to the country’s enemies.

“You’re doing the work of our adversaries for them, because our democracy depends on people knowing that their vote matters,” said Mr Obama.

Mr Trump has been heavily criticised by many in his own party by suggesting he might not accept the election result.

For days, he has claimed the election is rigged against him, due to media bias and voter fraud.

During Wednesday night’s debate with Mrs Clinton, when moderator Chris Wallace asked Mr Trump if he would accept losing to her, the Republican nominee said he would “keep you in suspense”.

Mr Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, later insisted that the candidate had meant he would not concede until the “results are actually known”.

Republican Senator John McCain, who lost to Mr Obama eight years ago, said: “A concession isn’t just an exercise in graciousness. It is an act of respect for the will of the American people, a respect that is every American leader’s first responsibility.”

First Lady Michelle Obama also joined the attack on Thursday, saying “you do not keep American democracy in suspense”.

With the Clinton camp – Kim Ghattas, BBC News

Hillary Clinton walked on to her campaign plane to the cheering and clapping of her aides.  

        

She told reporters she was relieved and grateful and joked there would be “no more naps”- a reference to Trump’s repeated description of her prep days off the campaign trail as naps.

Mrs Clinton’s stand-in for Mr Trump during the mock debates was one of her close aides, Philippe Reines, who took the role so seriously that he wore Trump cufflinks, shoe lifts and the same red tie as Mr Trump. After the debate, Mrs Clinton and Mr Reines embraced and he called her a “badass hombre”.

Clinton aides said she would continue to highlight Mr Trump’s refusal to pledge he would accept the results of the election. But would it be a real crisis on election day? Not if the result was a decisive win, they seemed to quietly indicate.

If Mrs Clinton and her team felt that she had closed the deal on stage, they kept their confidence in check. But the mood on the plane was certainly relaxed.

At the Ohio rally, Mr Trump also reiterated a claim he made during the debate, that Mrs Clinton and President Obama were responsible for inciting violence at a Chicago rally earlier this year.

The crowd erupted into cheers of: “Lock her up!”

During the debate, he called Mrs Clinton a “nasty woman”.

Mr Trump has trailed Mrs Clinton in the polls after facing damaging fallout over a video that emerged of him making obscene remarks about groping women.

When asked to address the allegations made against him by several women in the wake of the video, Mr Trump said the claims had been “largely debunked”.

Mr Trump’s comments come after a 10th woman came forward to accuse him of sexual assault on Thursday at a news conference.

Karena Virginia said Mr Trump allegedly touched her breast at the US Open in 1998 and made offensive comments about her to a group of men.

The two candidates are scheduled to appear at a charity dinner on Thursday night in New York.

Polls suggest Mrs Clinton is ahead nationally and in key battleground states.

Source: BBC

There’s no media conspiracy against Trump

Source: Robert J. Samuelson | The Washington Post

Date: 19-10-2016 Time: 11:10:05:pm

Regardless of who wins the election, the press — or, at any rate, what used to be called the “mainstream” media — may be the big loser. Donald Trump is making a case that he’s the victim of an orchestrated media campaign to defeat him, and although the charge is not true, it may stick among his devoted followers.

We live in an era of fragmented news sources. People can pick not only what’s interesting and agreeable but also what confirms their opinions, convictions, and biases. There are more choices than ever. A new Pew survey finds that adults “often” get their news from the following sources: TV, including cable (57 percent); online, including social media and smartphones (38 percent); radio (25 percent); and print newspapers (20 percent).

News has become akin to religion; it’s accepted or rejected as a matter of faith, depending on the source. Consider another recent Pew poll. Respondents were asked whether on major issues Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters agree on basic facts, even if they disagree on solutions. The finding: 81 percent said they disagree even on basic facts.

Trump is now ratcheting up this process to a new level of mistrust. The essence of his charge is that most mainstream media reporters and editors (the type of people who work at CNN, The Washington Post and the New York Times) don’t like him, don’t agree with him, or both, and have skewed their coverage to engineer his defeat. There is cooperation, implicit or explicit, with the Clinton campaign.

Trump is right in one sense: Much of the press dislikes him.

Take me as an example. I’m a slightly right-of-center columnist at The Post. I am no great fan of Clinton, but I believe that President Trump would be a disaster. He doesn’t know anything about governing, is proud of his ignorance, stirs hatred of his critics and would throw his opponent (Clinton) in jail. This last threat is one we associate with dictatorships, not American democracy.

I suspect that most Post reporters and editors feel this way, though I have no hard evidence. (For what it’s worth, the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity has disclosed that 480 “journalists” have made nearly $400,000 in campaign contributions, more than 96 percent of which went to Clinton. Many news organizations, including The Post and the New York Times, bar contributions and involvement in partisan politics.)

But this doesn’t mean the press has hatched a conscious campaign to defeat Trump. The counterweight to personal preference is a professional ethos that emphasizes evenhandedness — at least among mainstream media organizations. Note also that editorial pages are run separately from the news pages.

Let’s put this in context. All through the primaries, Trump skillfully played the media to get free airtime. He also used the media as a whipping boy, part of the dreaded “elite” that is allegedly ruining America. For these months, the media was Trump’s unwitting ally.

Now, the landscape has changed. Trump is the subject of blanket coverage, much of it unfavorable. He apparently didn’t pay federal income taxes for many years; he not only has made lewd comments about women but (as my colleague Eugene Robinson suggests) he also appears to be a sexual predator; he says nice things about Vladimir Putin and ignores his secret national-security briefings.

These stories are anti-Trump, but they’re not unfair. They address a central issue in any presidential election: personal character. If Trump dislikes the results, he has mostly himself to blame, because he has been mainly responsible for projecting and defining himself. If a free press is not supposed to explore questions of character and political philosophy, what is it supposed to do?

True, if the exploration were one-sided, the media would be playing favorites. But the press has also focused on Clinton’s embarrassments. Her use of a private email server has generated hundreds of stories; so have potential conflicts of interest involving the Clinton Foundation, as have her lucrative speaking gigs. But Clinton’s sins — secretiveness, arrogance, greed — seem less offensive than Trump’s, which include lying, bigotry and alleged sexual misconduct.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump believes there's a global conspiracy to stop him from becoming president – but it's not the first time he's pushed unfounded theories. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Should Trump win, he will likely use his new powers to attack the media he dislikes. If he loses, the media — or, at any rate, much of it — will be cast as a villain. Defeat will justify more false claims that he has been the victim of a “rigged” election. There was a time when the mass media was a unifying force in national life. That time has long passed.

This stylish 86-year-old grandma just got married and outshined us all

At 86 years young, grandma Millie Taylor-Morrison made one radiant bride.

A photo of Nana Millie, decked out in a purple wedding gown that she designed herself, began circulating on Facebook on Sunday, with many complimenting her timeless beauty and impeccable sense of style.

On Oct.16, she married Harold Morrison, 85, at Zion Hill Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey in front of 200 friends and family.

Her granddaughter Khadija Elkharbibi told The Huffington Post that all of the guests ― and especially the groom ― were blown away by her big day look.

“The look on everyone’s face when they saw her, but especially the look on Mr. Harold’s face when he saw her walking down the aisle ― it was the absolute sweetest thing you could ever see!” she said.

“He teared up. It was beautiful! My Nana just beamed with happiness, it was truly a sight to see.”

The groom started tearing up when he saw his stunning bride coming down the aisle

Nana Millie was married to Khadija’s grandpa for 41 years before he died in 1992. She knew Harold since the 1950s ― he was even a guest at her first wedding.

Over the years they lost touch and later reconnected at New Beginning Faith Fellowship Ministries in Orange, New Jersey. When Harold got sick, Millie picked him up and took him to church every Sunday.

“He got really sick again a year or two ago to the point where he couldn’t live alone and he moved in with her,” Khadija told HuffPost. “After a year of him getting better, they wanted to be married.

As a Christian woman, she felt strongly about not having a man in the house without being married and she wanted to be a role model for her granddaughters.”

The bride and groom sharing a dance at the reception

“Our family couldn’t be happier for her,” Khadija wrote on the Facebook page Love What Matters. “This is a true testament that age is just a number and everyone can find love again.”

The couple has known each other since the 1950s

After the ceremony, guests headed to Richfield Regency in Verona, New Jersey for the reception. The room was decorated beautifully and lit with purple lights that complemented Nana Millie’s gown.

The bride and her beautiful granddaughters

           

A view of the gown from the front and back.

Source: Huffington Post

I went to Nigeria to meet the man who scammed me

An internet romance scam took an unexpected turn, writes Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani.

When Maria Grette first discovered that the 58-year-old Danish man with whom she had fallen in love was actually a 24-year-old Nigerian 419 internet scammer, the 62-year-old Swede was distraught. But, soon, her feelings changed.

"The most terrible thing was not that he had cheated me, but that he had lost his innocence," she said.

She became consumed with what she describes as "a profound need to make a difference to the people of Nigeria".

Ms Grette's relationship with Johnny (not his real name) began after an evening of fun and games with her girlfriends, during which they playfully created a profile for her on an online dating website. A few years before, she had gone through a traumatic divorce, and her friends teased her about finally starting a new relationship.

But when the fun of creating her profile was over, Ms Grette, who works as an arts teacher, painter and arts therapist, didn't give much further thought to the website.

"I received messages telling me that people had contacted me, but I never looked at them," she said.

Then, one day, she did.

"I still don't know why," she said. "It was like a sudden impulse happening before I could stop it."

That particular message was from a man who described himself as a Dane raised in South Carolina, USA; a civil engineer working on a contract in England; a widower with a son in a Manchester university.

"I was caught up by the atmosphere and by something in his words," she said.

***************************************************************************

The pre-amble

Johnny: "I wish I could see through your eyes and see what you like to see"

Maria: "I like to see the truth, and often the truth is more beautiful and greater than people dare to realize"

Johnny: "You talk in parable´s. I can´t wait to see you"

Maria: "I can't understand how you can think so dedicated of me, when you have never met me. That scares me."

*****************************************************************************

"We spent some time writing, then he called from a UK number."

Ms Grette, who had lived in different countries across Europe, was surprised that she could not place the man's accent. She mentioned this to him but didn't give it too much thought.

He told her that he was planning for his retirement; had Sweden in mind for a place to settle; owned a house in Denmark inherited from his parents; wanted to leave that to his son, Nick, who was very attached to it, while he looked for a new home for himself in Sweden.

"I wanted to meet him because I liked him," she said. "He had a way and a sweetness I had never known in a man before. And he was innocent in a way that puzzled me."

Ms Grette put all these qualities down to "an old fashioned upbringing and an isolated life - living in hotels and spending his free time on golf courses owing to much travelling".

After three months of communicating, the man agreed to come over and visit her in Sweden. But before that, he and his son needed to make a quick trip to Nigeria for a job interview, he said.

Johnny called to let her know that he was at Heathrow Airport. And to say that he had landed in Nigeria. He also got her to speak with Nick. The next phone call was to tell her that he was in a Lagos hospital.

They had been mugged, his son shot in the head, and they were without money and papers.

Unfortunately, his bank did not have a branch in Africa, he added, so it would take time to transfer money from his UK account. Meanwhile, the hospital management was requesting €1000 to proceed with treatment.

The request

"Honey, I am in the hospital right now using the doctor´s laptop to send you this message so you can know my situation. Honey, if Nick dies I will also die with him, I have been crying, I wish I could call you, I wish I never came here, I will never forgive myself for bringing Nick along with me. I will call you with the doctor´s phone and send you an email later if I have the chanse.

"Honey, I am happy to hear from you and I am still at the hospital. The doctor said we where lucky we where not kidnapped. The bank does not have a location in Africa, so it will take time to get money and the management are requesting 1000 euros to proceed with treatment. Nick is all I have got and I will not forgive myself if anything happens to him. I am confused, and I do not know where to turn at the moment......"

"I will never forget how I rushed to the Western Union office, trembling while I did the transfer," Ms Grette said.

"All I could think of was to get the two persons in Nigeria out of danger."

The plot developed after that initial transfer. Medical complications called for more money. The doctors demanded more advance fees.

Several thousands of euro later, in what she describes as "coming to her senses", Maria realised that something was amiss.

She stopped responding to his messages.

Three weeks after her silence, he called her and confessed. He told her that he was not who she thought he was.

"I said I already knew that. I asked him to tell me his true identity and he did."

He was a 24-year-old Nigerian 419 scammer. He had finished university two years earlier but had no job.

He further described himself as a "devil" who had wronged "a lovely woman".

"He said he had never met anyone like me before, that he had been fighting his feelings for me for a long time. He said his scamming mates had warned him about falling in love with a 'client', that he had ignored them because he trusted me and did not want to lose contact with me."

The reveal

From this point on, their communication took a new turn. There were no further requests for cash.

"The attraction I started feeling was to the person who was revealing himself to me... It was still him, but with a new name and different age and circumstances," she said.

Johnny sent her a photograph of himself, but Maria was not satisfied with that.

"I wanted to meet him," she said. "I could not live with this relationship unless it was adjusted to reality in all senses."

Unable to get him a visa to travel to Sweden, she made up her mind to go to Nigeria.

In October 2009, Ms Grette travelled to Africa for the first time in her life.

"When I saw him at the airport in Abuja, tears fell over his face, and I knew I had known him all my life."

Ms Grette described her two weeks in Nigeria as blissful, a period during which she and Johnny succeeded in transforming their romantic feelings for each other into a good friendship.

She met his friends, many of whom were also scammers. It was while enjoying their company one night in a local bar that she began to wonder how she could make a difference.

"I asked myself what I could do to prevent a situation where healthy, good young men fall into this trap," she said.

An idea came to her two years later, in 2011, after she saw an article on a Nigerian news website about an arts exhibition.

Over the past six years, Ms Grette has arranged for a number of African artists to visit Europe for arts exhibitions, workshops, conferences and competitions.

She has assisted them to source international grants and other funding to advance their work.

She has also visited Uganda to give talks on art, and is looking forward to another visit to Nigeria scheduled for later this year. 

Ms Grette, now 69 and living in Norway, is elated at the opportunity to improve the lives of these young artists.

"Johnny has given me more than he took," she said, "Without him, I would not have met Africa."

When she'd visited him in Abuja, Johnny promised Ms Grette that he would give up scamming.

With her assistance, he left Nigeria shortly afterwards, to study in America.

Although they have not met each other again since, she continued to provide him with financial assistance until he completed his degree a few years ago and got a job in the American oil sector.

They still communicate frequently, updating themselves on each other's lives; and last year, he bought one of her paintings which she shipped over to him in America.

"He is very dear to me," she said.

"He has asked me so many times to forgive him and I told him that the most important thing is to forgive himself."

Source: BBC

Thai woman forced to kneel before late king's portrait for allegedly insulting him.

A Thai woman accused of insulting the country’s late king has been forced to kneel before his portrait outside a police station on the island of Koh Samui as hundreds of people demanded an apology.

The woman’s arrest and public shaming on Sunday was the latest of several such incidents since King Bhumibol Adulyadej died last week after a 70-year reign,plunging Thailand into intense mourning.

Two police officers led 43-year-old Umaporn Sarasat to a picture of Bhumibol in front of Bophut police station on the tourist island, where she knelt and prayed, both on the way into the station and the way out.

The crowd, some of whom held aloft portraits of the revered monarch, jeered when she first appeared. A line of police officers linked arms to keep them from surging forward.

It is likely that Sarasat, a small business owner, who is alleged to have posted disrespectful comments online, will face charges of insulting the monarchy.

“We are going to proceed with the case as best we can,” the district police chief, Thewes Pleumsud, told the crowd. “I understand your feelings. You came here out of loyalty to His Majesty. Don’t worry, I give you my word.”

Authorities were urging calm after people posted comments on social media about those not wearing black and white clothing to mourn the revered monarch, with some arch-royalists reprimanding people in public. A government spokesman said some Thais could not afford mourning clothes and urged tolerance.

There have been reports of profiteering as demand for mourning clothes has soared since Bhumibol’s death on Thursday.

Tens of thousands of Thais have descended on the Grand Palace in Bangkok where Bhumibol’s body is being kept, and the government has declared a year of mourning.

Several foreign governments have warned citizens travelling in Thailand to avoid behaviour that could be interpreted as festive, disrespectful or disorderly. On Friday, police and soldiers on the Thai resort island of Phuket dispersed a mob seekingto confront a man they believed had insulted the king.

Video footage showed the crowd blocking the road outside a soy milk shop and waving placards with slogans such as “buffalo”, a slang word for stupidity.

Thailand has draconian lèse-majesté laws that impose stiff prison sentences for actions or writings regarded as derogatory toward the monarch or his family.

The operator of Thailand’s main cable TV network has blocked foreign news broadcasts deemed insensitive to the monarchy since Bhumibol’s death.

Source: TheGuardian

Why Putin Fears A Clinton Presidency.

Source: CNN

Though Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin seem to agree on a number of issues, there is one they apparently don't see eye to eye on. While Trump argues that Hillary Clinton is too weak to be president of the United States, the Russian President appears to be genuinely afraid of Clinton.

Evidence is growing that Russia is actively working to undermine Clinton's presidential prospects. When hackers released the emails of the Democratic National Committee just hours before the Democratic National Convention, internet security specialists found the fingerprints of Russian agencies. Then came the latest hacks of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The US government has now formally accused Russia of interfering in the US elections, and every instance of interference so far is clearly aimed at harming the Democratic candidate.

It's easy to see why Putin fears Clinton. While the Trump campaign is trying to get voters to focus on Clinton stumbling and coughing, Putin sees her as a real threat to his objectives.

For Putin, stopping Clinton is not only an important strategic goal. It is also personal.

Back in 2011, Putin faced the biggest protests the country had seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He had served two terms as president, the maximum allowed, and in 2008 had become prime minister, in a maneuver that allowed him to effectively hold power while his ally, Dmitry Medvedev, was president. Then he announced -- to much anger, but little surprise -- that he would seek a third term as president. Three months later, the opposition erupted in fury when his party won a landslide victory in legislative elections amid allegations of fraud.

Despite the frigid Moscow temperatures, thousands massed in the streets calling for fair elections and for an end to Putin's seemingly endless rule. Signs and chants declared, "Putin is a thief!" Putin's hold on power faced a genuine threat. Then-Secretary of State Clinton openly sided with the protesters. "The Russian people, like people everywhere," she said, "...deserve free, fair, transparent elections."

Putin was fuming. He blamed the protests on Clinton, accusing her of sending "a signal" to the opposition.

Putin's personal animosity toward Clinton coincides with his larger strategic goals. In recent years, he has launched an increasingly muscular foreign (and domestic) policy. He is challenging the US, NATO and the European Union at every turn. Despite a shrinking economy -- not much bigger than Mexico's -- Russia has used its military power to make it a major player on the global stage.

How Russian hackers could influence the election 02:30.

Russia, according to Western analysts, has mounted a campaign to "discredit the West's liberal democratic model, and undermine trans-Atlantic ties," manipulating Eastern European countries and "supporting the far right" against the EU. That "Kremlin Playbook" includes tampering with elections in Europe and the US.

Clinton stands in direct defiance to Putin's vision, already partly in place, of a Russia with a sphere of influence that includes the former Soviet territory and, more loosely, Eastern Europe, alongside a weakened Europe, US and NATO.

In contrast to Trump, she has made countless comments over the years to suggest she would present a much tougher opponent to Putin's ambitions than Barack Obama has been, saying she thinks the United States must find ways to "confine, contain, [and] deter Russian aggression in Europe and beyond."

While Clinton looks poised to toughen America's stance, Trump's foreign policy coincides with Russia's. He has suggested he might recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea, which Putin captured by force from Ukraine; he might suspend economic sanctions against Russia; and would align his policies in Syria with Putin and Assad.

During the Republican primaries, Clinton came under fire for leading the Obama administration's failed diplomatic "reset" with Russia. But the former US ambassador to Moscow, Mike McFaul, said she was deeply skeptical that the plan would bear fruit.

Once out of office, her criticism of Russia became cutting.

When Putin justified Russia's 2014 takeover of Crimea as an effort to protect Russian minorities there, Clinton said it was reminiscent of Hitler's justification for taking over parts of Eastern Europe. Putin later commented that Clinton has "never been too graceful in her statements."

Clinton was implicitly critical of Obama's restrained response, saying, "I am in the category of people who wanted us to do more in response to the annexation of Crimea and the continuing destabilization of Ukraine."

And just as Putin targeted her by name, she, too, has gone after him personally. In a speech last year, she said, "I remain convinced that we need a concerted effort to really up the costs on Russia and in particular on Putin."

The most urgent item on the foreign policy agenda for both the United States and Russia is the civil war in Syria. There, the Trump campaign has offered conflicting ideas, but in the most recent debate Trump seemed to stand with Putin.

While Obama has maintained an extremely restrained approach to the crisis, sending Secretary of State John Kerry to multiple, so far useless, diplomatic marathons with his Russian counterpart even as Russia continues bombing civilians in support of Assad, Clinton sounds determined to impose a no-fly zone, which would defy not only Syria's army but also Russia.

She says she would keep the Russians informed, so no clashes occur, adding "I want them at the table," but it is a sharp departure from the current policy, and one that must sound deeply disturbing to Putin.

A few years ago, Putin mused, speaking about Clinton, that "It's better not to argue with women." It's clear now why he's going to great lengths to avoid having to argue with a President Hillary Clinton.

Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for the The Miami Herald and World Politics Review, and a former CNN producer and correspondent. The views expressed in this commentary are her own.