Trump says no need for Republican unity

WASHINGTON (AFP) - 

There may be much Republican hand-wringing over Donald Trump's presumptive nomination to face the Democratic candidate for the White House, but the boastful billionaire says he doesn't care, and it doesn't matter.

A growing chorus of senior Republican leaders have joined the "anyone but Trump movement," including 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the last two Republican presidents, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush.

"Does it have to be unified?" Trump asked about the Republican Party.

"I'm very different than everybody else, perhaps, that's ever run for office. I actually don't think so," he told ABC's "This Week" in excerpts provided ahead of Sunday's broadcast.

"I think it would be better if it were unified, I think it would be -- there would be something good about it. But I don't think it actually has to be unified in the traditional sense."

A group of conservatives opposed to Trump's candidacy meanwhile announced it had launched a "formal effort" for an alternative candidate, though it stopped short of backing a contender from a third party.

"This is not just a fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party; it is a battle for the future of our country," Conservatives Against Trump said in a statement.

"This week, Conservatives Against Trump launched a formal effort to identify an acceptable alternative candidate to run for president against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton."

The race is still "wide open for a qualified conservative candidate," the group of activists said.

"We will not vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton; but we will vote."

Trump, however, said he expected even some Democratic voters to throw their support behind him to win the general election.

"I'm going to go out and I'm going to get millions of people from the Democrats," Trump said.

"I'm going to get Bernie (Sanders) people to vote, because they like me on trade," he added, referring to the Democratic candidate in an uphill fight against Hillary Clinton to clinch the party's nomination.

© 2016 AFP

Is Hillary a sure thing for the White House?

WASHINGTON (AFP) - 

In a US election that has ripped up, chewed through and spat out conventional wisdom, Hillary Clinton is still favorite to beat Donald Trump in November.

Few analysts or journalists predicted that Trump would last long in a tough Republican race, much less win it.

But here is why Clinton is still odds-on favorite to become the first female president, along with a few reasons why a dose of caution might be warranted.

- The numbers -

At the starting gate, a CNN/ORC poll has Clinton leading Trump 54-41. For months, head-to-head surveys have found a similar result.

That is a monumental lead in a country almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. But it is also borderline irrelevant.

The November 8 vote is six months away, light years in US electoral politics.

And US elections are won by carrying individual states, not the popular vote, as Al Gore found to his cost in 2000.

Still, the polls contain harbingers of doom for Trump, particularly in a sliver of data that politicos refer to as "unfavorables."

About 65 percent of voters have a negative impression of Trump, according to an average of polls by Real Clear Politics.

Given he has been in the public eye for years, he is widely known and minds could be difficult to shift.

Yet "The Donald" has shown he does not play by conventional election rules.

He has already branded his rival "Crooked Hillary" and is certain to stir up memories of Bill Clinton's marital infidelity.

Clinton who is herself seen negatively by 55 percent of voters -- a large number, but not quite as catastrophic as Trump's -- has the upper hand, but will have to find the right tone to parry attacks.

Trump's rivals learned the hard way that getting in the mud with him rarely pays off, but taking the high road might look detached or meek.

- The electorate -

The long trend of America becoming less white means Trump, with his pseudo-nativist message, is also waging a campaign against demographics.

In the 2012 election, 93 percent of African-Americans, 71 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of Asians voted for Barack Obama.

That was enough for the Democrat to win the election, even though he only got 39 percent of white voters, the biggest voting group.

Trump -- thanks to talk of building a border wall, Mexican "rapists" and deporting the country's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants -- is doing even worse among Hispanic voters than the last Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

His approval ratings among Hispanic voters currently stand at 12 percent.

That's bad news for Trump's chances in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico and maybe even Arizona. To add to Trump's misery, his standing among women voters is derisory.

Almost half of Republican women say they can't see themselves voting for him.

"Trump has alienated growing demographic groups such as Hispanics, and he is at toxic levels with women and young people," said Larry Sabato, who heads the University of Viarginia Center for Politics.

If he can't reach working and college educated women, then even blue collar states like Pennsylvania may remain out of reach.

Trump hopes to change the calculus by getting more white voters to turn out.

"He needs to excite the middle and working class white who doesn't usually vote," said Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Sabato was skeptical.

"There aren't millions of blue collar whites who don't usually vote Republican just waiting to show up for Trump. Where's the evidence for this breathtaking proposition?"

- The Map -

The most important number in US politics is 270, the number of electoral college votes -- out of a total of 538 -- needed to win the presidency.

Of the 51 state and regional contests, most are winner-take-all. But not all are equal.

California is worth 55 votes, while Vermont is worth three.

In 2008 and 2012, Obama broke 300.

The last Republican president George W. Bush squeaked by with 271 and 286.

Trump may target states in the Rust Belt and New England, and battlegrounds like Florida and Ohio, but he faces the prospect of having to flip several states to the Republican column just to be competitive.

- The campaigns -

The businessman will have to try to do all this without the unified support of the Republican party.

There have been mass refusals to back the controversial candidate.

Many donors and potential campaign staff promise to "sit this one out."

To give one example of the impact, "Hacking the Electorate" author Eitan Hersh said Trump will find it more difficult to get targeted messages to voters.

A key arrow in the quiver of modern US electoral campaigns is microtargeting -- cross-referencing voter rolls with records on everything from magazine subscriptions to eBay searches to build a profile of individual voters and deliver a specific message.

Trump has instead focused on macromessaging, by dominating the TV news which also gives him free advertising.

"Trump hasn't shown much of an appetite to engage in microtargeting. He also is not a team player," said Hersh.

"Part of the Democrats' advantage is that the state parties, interest groups, labor unions and candidates up and down the ballot see themselves as largely on the same team."

- The zeitgeist -

One area where Trump may have an advantage is capturing the spirit of the age.

Many Americans still feel the effects of the Great Recession.

Middle class incomes have been stagnant, while the rich have become significantly richer.

Democrats are not oblivious to that fact, indeed Bernie Sanders has built most of his campaign around addressing income inequality.

But Trump may better articulate the fear and anger of those who have faltered.

After years of modest growth, a mediocre jobs report in April was a reminder that another slowdown could come even before the impact of the last one is no longer felt.

That could easily eat into Obama's solid 51 percent approval rating, a metric that currently indicates the electorate is not desperate for a changing of the guard.

Along with the economy, polls show terrorism is a top concern for voters.

Here too, Trump's message of bombing the Islamic State group to oblivion is more easily digested than Clinton's more nuanced push for tackling radicalism through military, economic, diplomatic and cultural means.

Where rivals see him as naive, Trump's status as a political neophyte might serve him well.

It's harder for Clinton, a former first lady, US senator and secretary of state to argue that she will bring change to Washington.

But her wealth of experience might also mean she knows a bit more about winning elections.

by Andrew Beatty

© 2016 AFP

Security forces on alert ahead of tense Philippine elections

MANILA (AFP) - 

Tens of thousands of security forces fanned out across the Philippines Sunday on the eve of national polls, following a bitter and deadly election campaign plagued by rampant vote-buying and intimidation.

Elections are a traditionally volatile time in a nation infamous for lax gun laws and a violent political culture, and they have been inflamed again this year by allegations of massive corruption from the local village to presidential level.

"Vote-buying is everywhere," Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner Luie Guia told reporters.

"We are receiving reports that everything is being used to buy votes, not only money. It could be (plastic) basins, groceries."

Such small gifts are an effective, if illegal, way for politicians to win support in a nation where roughly one quarter of its 100 million people live below the poverty line.

To try to check vote buying, the election commission has banned mobile phones in polling places. This is so people cannot photograph their ballots to prove to vote-buyers that they cast their ballots for the right candidates.

At the national level, presidential and vice presidential rivals are also accusing each other of trying to rig the elections.

President Benigno Aquino, who is limited by the constitution to a single term of six years, has warned the favourite to succeed him, Rodrigo Duterte, is a dictator in the making and will bring terror to the nation.

Duterte, mayor of the southern city of Davao, has in turn accused Aquino's administration of planning "massive cheating" to ensure that his preferred successor, former interior secretary Mar Roxas, wins.

Followers of Duterte, who has admitted links to vigilante death squads in Davao that rights groups say have killed more than 1,000 people, have warned of a "revolution" if he loses.

Meanwhile, at least 15 people have died in election-related violence, according to national police statistics.

In the latest suspected case, a grenade blast killed a nine-year-old girl behind the house of a powerful political warlord in the strife-torn province of Maguindanao late on Saturday, said Chief Inspector Jonathan del Rosario.

The girl's death has not yet been included in the tally, although it likely will be, according to del Rosario, spokesman for a police election-monitoring taskforce in Manila.

"This looks like it is election-related but we have a process we have to follow," he told AFP.

Del Rosario said 90 percent of the nation's police force, or about 135,000 officers, were already on election-related duty and had been authorised to carry their assault rifles. He said they were guarding polling and canvassing places and manning road checkpoints.

© 2016 AFP

Greece has 'basically achieved' reform goals, says Juncker

Greece has "basically achieved" the objectives of the reforms required by its creditors and its eurozone partners will begin discussing possible debt relief for the country, according to European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker.

"We are now at the time of the first review of the programme (to aid Greece) and the objectives have been basically achieved," Juncker said in an interview to be published Sunday in the Funke Mediengruppe newspapers in Germany.

Greece's creditors carried out the review intended to evaluate progress on reforms by the Athens government as it hopes to unlock the next tranche of its 86-billion-euro ($95 billion) bailout agreed in July.

The Eurogroup, comprised of the 19 finance ministers of the euro area countries, is set to meet Monday in Brussels and take up this review of Greek reforms.

They will also "start the first discussions about how to make Greece's debt sustainable in the long term", Juncker told the German papers.

Approval of the reforms is needed before any consideration of Greek debt relief, but despite months of talks, Greece's reforms have yet to win the backing of all its creditors largely due to differences between the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, which has demanded more reforms.

Juncker's comments come as Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos Saturday called on his eurozone partners to back Greece's reform package of cuts worth 5.4 billion euros, and to put aside the creditors' call for 3.6 billion euros of additional measures.

"Any package in excess of 5.4 billion is bound to be seen by both Greek citiziens and economic agents, within and beyond Greece, as socially and economically counter-productive," he wrote in a letter to the Eurogroup.

Tsakalotos warned of the price of a "failed state" if the crucial talks on Monday run aground.

At the same time IMF chief Christine Lagarde also addressed the Eurogroup in a letter, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, urging the ministers to take up the question of debt relief.

Lagarde stressed the need to revise down the goal of Greece achieving a primary budget surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP in 2018, saying it was "counterproductive" to expect Athens to meet the target.

But the IMF also said there were "significant gaps" in Greece's reform offers.

Greece is under pressure as it faces a huge payment to the European Central Bank in July, with fears growing that Athens could default if the bailout funds do not come through.

(AFP)

Gunmen kill eight Egyptian police near Cairo

Gunmen shot dead eight plainclothed Egyptian policemen in the Helwan district south of Cairo, the interior ministry said Sunday.

The policemen were travelling in a minivan when the assailants in a pickup truck blocked their path and sprayed the vehicle with automatic rifle fire, the ministry said.

Jihadists, including Islamist State group militants, have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers in attacks, mostly in the Sinai Peninsula and also in and around Cairo.

Egyptian criminal gangs have also killed policemen in shoot outs, but the attack bore the hallmarks of jihadists who have waged an insurgency since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

The interior ministry said the dead included a lieutenant and seven lower ranking policemen who were patrolling the area just south of the capital when they were ambushed late at night.

Militants had struck before in Helwan, killing a policeman standing guard outside a museum in June 2015.

The jihadists, who are based in the sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, have repeatedly tried to make inroads in the capital, where police have had more success in quelling them than in Sinai.

They have claimed several attacks in Cairo, including an attempted assassination of the interior minister in late 2013 and the bombing of the Italian consulate in July 2015.

More recently militants have conducted hit and run attacks on policemen in Cairo and small scale bombings.

Retaliation

They often claim their attacks are in retaliation for a bloody police crackdown on Islamist supporters of Morsi, which has killed hundreds of protesters and imprisoned thousands.

They have also targeted foreigners.

In October, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for bombing a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers from a south Sinai resort, killing all 224 people on board.

The group said it smuggled explosives concealed in a soda can on to the plane in airport at Sharm El-Sheikh, a popular Red Sea resort in south Sinai.

That attack prompted Russia to suspend all flights to Egypt, and has lost the country hundreds of millions of dollars in tourism revenues.

The bombing came two months after they abducted a Croatian oil worker near Cairo and beheaded him.

Police later tracked down the top Islamic State group operative in Cairo, who was linked to the Croat's murder, and killed him in a shoot out.

But efforts to quell the insurgency in Sinai have floundered despite a massive army campaign.

In March, Islamic State gunmen killed 15 policemen in an attack on a checkpoint near the El-Arish, the provincial capital of North Sinai.

Since pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group, which controls parts of Syria and Iraq, in November 2014, the Sinai branch's attacks have grown more sophisticated.

The military says it has killed more than 1,000 militants, occasionally publishing pictures of their bodies.

The claims are difficult to verify, with reporters having little access to the north of the peninsula.

(AFP)

North Korea’s Kim says will not use nuclear arms unless threatened

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country will not use nuclear weapons unless its sovereignty is infringed by others with nuclear arms, and is willing to normalize ties with states that had been hostile towards it, state media said on Sunday.

Isolated North Korea has made similar statements in the past, although it has also frequently threatened to attack the United States and South Korea, and has defied United Nations resolutions in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Kim also set out a five-year plan to boost economic growth, emphasizing the need to improve North Korea’s electricity supply, the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.

The North “will faithfully fulfill its obligation for non-proliferation and strive for the global denuclearization,” Kim said in a report to a rare congress of the ruling Workers’ Party (WPK) that opened on Friday, the KCNA news agency reported.

The first congress in 36 years began amid anticipation by the South Korean government and experts that the young third-generation leader would use it to further consolidate power. Kim became leader in 2011 after his father’s sudden death.

On Sunday morning, foreign journalists were told to dress presentably and were brought to the People’s Palace of Culture, where dozens of black Mercedes-Benz E-class sedans, with the 727 number plates reserved for the highest government officials, were parked.

However, after a one-hour wait in a lobby outside large wooden doors with frosted glass, the journalists were taken back to their hotel without having met any officials.
While the North Korean capital has been tidied-up as part of a 70-day campaign of intensified labour ahead of the congress, the 128 members of the foreign media invited to Pyongyang to cover the event had yet to be granted access to the proceedings.

Short on details

Although Kim’s economic plan was short on details, Michael Madden, an expert on the North Korean leadership, said it was significant that Kim had set out an economic plan at all.

“In stark contrast to his father, he is publicly taking responsibility for the economy and development as the originator of the policy. His father never undertook that responsibility,” Madden said.

Late on Saturday, North Korean state TV showed video of Kim addressing the congress which, according to state media, includes 3,467 voting delegates.

“As a responsible nuclear weapons state, our Republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying on the second day of the meeting on Saturday.

“The WPK and the DPRK government will improve and normalize the relations with those countries which respect the sovereignty of the DPRK and are friendly towards it, though they had been hostile toward it in the past,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

DPRK is short for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Kim, 33, also called for improved ties with the rival South by erasing misunderstanding and mistrust, although he has made similar proposals in the past that led to talks by government officials that made little progress.

The two Koreas remain in a technical state of war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and relations have been at a low since the North’s January nuclear test, its fourth.

North Korea came under toughened new U.N. sanctions in March after its most recent nuclear test and the launch of a long-range rocket that put an object into space orbit in defiance of past Security Council resolutions.

Since then, it has continued to engage in nuclear and missile development activities and claimed that it had succeeded in miniaturizing a nuclear warhead and launching a submarine-based ballistic missile.

In March, Kim said the North would soon test a nuclear warhead, and South Korea has said Pyongyang may conduct its fifth nuclear test in conjunction with the party congress.

(REUTERS)

Nobel laureates call for easing of sanctions on North Korea

During a week-long trip, three renowned scientists have seen for themselves the impact of international sanctions on North Korea. They say the quality of medical care and academic research has been weakened. 

Nobel medicine prize winner Richard Roberts, Nobel economics prize winner Finn Kydland and Nobel chemistry prize winner Aaron Ciechanover have described how United Nations sanctions and a lack of internet access are hampering North Korean scientists.

Speaking to reporters following their visit to Pyongyang, the three laureates from Norway, Britain and Israel called for a rollback of many of the international restrictions that have been placed on the Communist state.

"You don't pressurize via making people sicker," said Ciechanover: "That's not the right way to go."

Roberts described how North Korean academic institutions suffered from a lack of modern scientific equipment. He said restrictions on internet use prevented most scientists from collaborating with colleagues in other countries, or accessing the latest scientific literature.

"So this embargo is really hurting the scientists in some major ways, and I think that's a great shame," Roberts added.

He said there was a strong desire for more international exchanges. During the trip, at least two North Korean students were invited to the West.

The Western scientists visited hospitals, universities and research institutes in Pyongyang and met with students and academics. They described clean and modern facilities - a stark contrast to other accounts, which describe the country as brutally impoverished.

The trip, which has been described as an exercise in "silent diplomacy," was planned more than two years ago with help from the International Peace Foundation (IPF). In turn the Vienna-based organization received an unsolicited email from the Korean National Peace Committee.

The visit coincided with the start of the congress of the ruling North Korean Workers' Party, the first in 36 years. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is expected to be bestowed with the country's top title during the conference.

The scientists insisted that they had no contact with the country's top leadership.

Earlier this year, the UN tightened sanctions on North Korea after Pyongyang carried out several ballistic missile launches and its fourth nuclear bomb test.

On Saturday, US observers said they believed Pyongyang was planning another nuclear test.