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Hillar.y Clinton calls Republican nominee’s unprecedented refusal ‘horrifying’ in debate that saw heated clashes on abortion, immigration and gun rights Paul Lewis, Ben Jacobs and Sabrina Siddiqui in Las Vegas Thursday 20 October 2016 14.06 BST https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/19/donald-trump-presidential-debate-election-result

2008 nominee says it is ‘impossible to offer even conditional support’ Sabrina Siddiqui and Ben Jacobs in St Louis and Edward Helmore in New York Sunday 9 October 2016 11.15 BST https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/08/john-mccain-donald-trump-sex-boast-tape

One device explodes as bomb squad attempts to disarm it close to Elizabeth station in New Jersey Martin Farrer and agencies Monday 19 September 2016 08.40 BST A police robot handles the unexploded pressure cooker bomb in West 27th Street in New York. Photograph: Lucien Harriot/Getty Images https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/19/new-york-bombing-both-devices-used-pressure-cooker-and-phone-reports

Anti-mafia chief says organised crime gangs were notorious for infiltrating construction contracts after 1980 quake Josephine McKenna in Rome Sunday 28 August 2016 12.08 BST Last modified on Sunday 28 August 2016 17.33 BST https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/28/italy-earthquake-mafia-construction-contracts

Members heckle Ukip leader as he says UK referendum result shows European Union is in denial about its failure Haroon Siddique Tuesday 28 June 2016 12.14 BST https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/28/meps-boo-nigel-farage-insults-in-european-parliament

What convinced Leicester to appoint Claudio Ranieri? Why are injured players pitchside at training on exercise bikes? And what have been the keys to a remarkable Premier League success? Stuart James reveals how the Foxes have stunned the world Tuesday 3 May 2016 13.38 BST In July last year Claudio Ranieri was enjoying a break in Italy when he received a phone call from Steve Kutner, his agent, that would end up changing the face of English football in a way no one could have imagined. Kutner had been attempting to convince Jon Rudkin, Leicester City’s director of football, that Ranieri was worth considering as the Premier League club’s new manager and finally there was news of a breakthrough. Ranieri was out of work at the time but keen to return to management, in particular in England, where he had fond memories from his time in charge of Chelsea and still owned a property in London going back to those days at Stamford Bridge more than a decade earlier. Several Championship clubs had been sounded out without success when Nigel Pearson’s sacking at Leicester presented Kutner and Ranieri with a window of opportunity. Kutner sensed that Leicester were sceptical about Ranieri, yet he refused to be discouraged. He submitted Ranieri’s CV, listing the distinguished clubs the 64-year-old had managed, together with his record – a Copa del Rey and Super Cup winner with Valencia, Coppa Italia winner at Fiorentina, plus second-place finishes in the Premier League, Ligue 1 and twice in Serie A – and kept chipping away. “I just wanted to get Claudio in front of them, because I was sure that they would be impressed,” Kutner says. Leicester eventually came round to the idea of an interview. Ranieri jumped on a plane to London and together with Kutner met up with Rudkin, Susan Whelan, the chief executive officer, Andrew Neville, the football operations director, and Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, the vice-chairman. Ranieri was Ranieri: charming, extremely passionate and knowledgable. There was a feeling that he clicked with Srivaddhanaprabha, who knows his football inside out – Francesco Totti and Gabriel Batistuta were brought up in conversation as Ranieri ran through some of the strikers he has worked with – and the Italian’s enthusiasm for management impressed other board members. Confirmation the talks had gone well arrived a few days later, when Ranieri and Kutner were invited back for further discussions, this time with Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, Aiyawatt’s father and Leicester’s owner, also in attendance. The more time the Leicester board spent with Ranieri, the more they came to realise that his appointment made sense. That is not to say that anyone involved in making that decision thought for one moment that Ranieri would be walking around the King Power Stadium pitch following the final home match of the season with a Premier League winners’ medal draped around his neck. It is a story that is as beautiful as it is absurd. Leicester, after all, were 5,000-1 rank outsiders and when it emerged that Ranieri decided to decorate his office at the King Power Stadium at the start of the season with an individual photograph of every other Premier League manager (he wanted to make them feel welcome after a match), it was tempting to wonder how long it would be before someone else was occupying his chair and asking for those black and white images to be packed away into a box never to be seen again. Ranieri’s appointment was viewed in that light and there is no point in pretending otherwise. On the afternoon the Italian was unveiled at the King Power Stadium – seven days after Gary Lineker had echoed the thoughts of many with a tweet that read: ‘Claudio Ranieri? Really?’ – Whelan and Rudkin sat alongside the new Leicester manager in what felt like a show of support as much as anything. It was a measure of the mood at the time that Whelan asked the supporters to trust the board’s judgement when it came to their decision to sack Pearson and replace him with Ranieri. Nine months later, and on the eve of claiming the Premier League title, some wonderful footage emerged of Ranieri in the stand at the King Power Stadium watching clips of Leicester supporters from across the city, starting with Vicky on a fruit and veg stall in the market and including a railway employee speaking on behalf of “virtually everyone at the station”, expressing their heartfelt gratitude for everything he has done for their football club. “God” and “Legend” were among the words used to describe Ranieri and, in the context of what has unfolded during this incredible season, who are we to argue? Leicester’s success under Ranieri will go down as one of the greatest achievements in sport, never mind the insular world of English football, and as the mind wanders forward to Saturday evening’s home game against Everton and the moment when Wes Morgan steps forward to pick up that 25kg Premier League trophy, the obvious question to ask is how on earth have they done it? The truth is that even those on the inside at Leicester shake their heads in disbelief, half-expecting to rub their eyes one morning and realise it was all a dream. Nobody at Leicester would dare to claim that they saw this coming, yet that is not to say that they struggle to come up with reasons why everything has spectacularly fallen into place, chief among them being the exhilarating mix of team spirit and talent within a group of players who possess a rare commodity in a game awash with money: hunger. An obvious place for the fairytale to start is at the end of last season, before Ranieri took over and when Pearson and his players pulled off the “great escape”, winning seven of their last nine matches to haul themselves off the bottom of the table and up to 14th place. Described as a “miracle” by Ranieri on the day he was presented to the media, that turnaround hinted at the potential (comfortable mid-table) in a team that Pearson had strengthened by the time he was sacked on 30 June. Robert Huth’s loan deal from Stoke City had been turned into a permanent move, and Christian Fuchs and Shinji Okazaki had joined from Schalke and Mainz respectively. Steve Walsh, the club’s joint assistant manager and head of recruitment, was busy chasing another target that was far from straightforward but would turn into one of the best Premier League signings of the summer. N’Golo Kanté was the player’s name, and Ranieri – as he would later admit – did not know much about him. Ranieri was far from alone in that respect – plenty of other Premier League managers have since questioned how he slipped under their radar – but Walsh and his recruitment team had done their homework. David Mills, Leicester’s senior scouting coordinator, had been to see Kanté play for Caen, and clips and statistics were put together to highlight the midfielder’s talent. Ranieri, however, still needed convincing about the player’s physique. A few months down the line, on the back of some superb performances from the Frenchman, Ranieri recalled how Walsh would constantly badger him during pre-season, saying: “Kanté, Kanté, Kanté!” In the end Ranieri was won over, Leicester handed over £5.6m and the rest is history. High quality on the pitch and low maintenance off it, Kanté drives a Mini and lives a simple life that involves tackling and smiling; occasionally both at the same time. He has been a revelation and everybody at Leicester loves him. In Walsh, Ranieri saw a friendly face when he arrived in Austria. The two worked together at Stamford Bridge, where Walsh was a scout for 16 years, and Ranieri knew how highly the former school teacher, who has been a central pillar of Leicester’s success with his remarkable track record of uncovering rough diamonds, was regarded by Rudkin and the club’s owners. Ranieri, crucially, was happy to work with the club’s existing staff, including Craig Shakespeare, who also holds the title of assistant manager and has a close rapport with the players; he is out on the training field with them every day. Rather than seeking to make sweeping changes, which may have affected his chances of getting the job in the first place, Ranieri chose to complement what was in place by bringing in three staff of his own. Paolo Benetti, who has worked with Ranieri since 2007, was named as the club’s third assistant manager and is seen as someone for the manager to bounce ideas off. Andrea Azzalin was appointed first-team science and conditioning coach, working under Matt Reeves, Leicester’s head of fitness and conditioning. A goalkeeping coach was also brought in but quickly departed. Mike Stowell, the first-team coach, fulfils that role and is well respected. Anyone who coaches Kasper Schmeichel with his father Peter watching – the former Manchester United goalkeeper often drops in at the training ground – needs to have a bit about them. In some respects Leicester’s success under Pearson was a hindrance as well as a help to Ranieri initially. The team had momentum from the previous campaign, and the feeling among the players was that there was little need for anything to be altered. Pearson was an extremely popular manager inside the dressing room and whatever the rights and wrongs of the club’s decision to dismiss him, many of the Leicester players felt a sense of loyalty to him and liked his methods, including the fact that he gave them a voice and, in the case of the more senior members of the squad, courted their opinion. In that sense Ranieri came to realise he would not be able to impose his way at Leicester and get everyone to blindly follow. It was a case of old habits die hard, especially when they delivered results. Players saw the five-a-sides on a Friday as a staple diet of their week and were not afraid to express their thoughts on the type of sessions being put on and how long they lasted. There was, in short, a resistance to change and, to an extent, Ranieri learned to go with the flow. Tactically, however, Ranieri quickly made his mark. During pre-season he decided that playing with a three-man central defence – a system that worked extremely well for Pearson and the players at the end of last term – should be scrapped. Although it felt like a big call at the time, Ranieri got it spot on and the same has also been true with his team selection and substitutions – all of which flies in the face of the popular characterisation of him as a man who was forever saying twist instead of stick at Chelsea. Early on Ranieri took a shine to Danny Drinkwater, who was unable to get into Leicester’s team at the end of last season but finishes this one hoping to go to Euro 2016 with England, and he has had no qualms about overlooking Gokhan Inler, the Switzerland captain who was signed as a replacement for Esteban Cambiasso. Inler, a player Ranieri was keen to sign and rated highly, was not even on the bench against Swansea last Sunday, when the manager dropped Marc Albrighton and was rewarded with an impressive performance from Jeffrey Schlupp. The feeling that Ranieri can do no wrong was confirmed when Albrighton came off the bench and scored Leicester’s fourth. The “Tinkerman” has become the “Thinkerman” at Leicester, yet one thing that will never change with Ranieri is that warm, infectious personality. He has brought humour and light to Leicester, privately as well as publicly, occasionally mixing up his words with comical consequences and, in true Ranieri fashion, laughing at himself in the process. Self-deprecation comes easily to Ranieri, who called himself “a bell” on Friday before realising amid the laughter that he was straying close to inadvertently insulting himself. That comment was made after another rendition of “dilly-ding dilly-dong” – the wake-up call for those not paying attention on the training pitch or in meetings – and a catchphrase that Ranieri’s staff and players have a permanent reminder of at home. At the end of one of the meetings at the training ground just before the visit to Liverpool on Boxing Day, Ranieri handed out a neatly boxed brass bell, engraved with his name, to everybody in the room. The only thing missing was a Father Christmas outfit. Ranieri, however, is no fool. By that stage Leicester were enjoying the view from the top of the table and the manager was keeping a lid on expectations with his expert handling of the media. Press conferences started with a handshake for everybody in the room, invariably finished with laughter and in between there was constant talk of hitting 40 points. He even referenced the US president at one stage when asked about the title. “I’d like to say: ‘Yes we can!’ But I am not Obama,” Ranieri said, smiling. Behind the scenes ambition was growing. In a colourful and eclectic dressing room where Jamie Vardy’s voice sets the volume and Huth’s dry sense of humour provides the comedy value, the team spirit and determination, as well as the individual talent, was shining through and, in many people’s eyes, inspiring Ranieri every bit as much as his players. He needed to look no further than the dejection among his players after the 1-1 draw with Manchester United in November to see the hunger and belief burning within. Vardy’s opening goal in that fixture saw him make history as the first player to score in 11 successive Premier League matches and, for all the talk about the camaraderie within the squad, it is impossible to overlook the significant individual contribution made by the England striker, who has scored 22 goals and set up another six, and two of his team-mates, Kanté and Riyad Mahrez, all of whom were named on the PFA player of the year shortlist. Mahrez arrived in 2014 from Le Havre for €450,000 and it seems laughable now that not so long ago Marseille’s chairman ridiculed the possibility of signing the 25-year-old. Walsh, on another one of his many scouting missions, had gone to watch Ryan Mendes, who is now at Nottingham Forest, but ended up being taken in by a slender winger with dexterous footwork. That night Mahrez produced the same trick that led to Leicester’s third goal against Stoke City a few months ago and left Philipp Wollscheid looking like a man who knew that he had been nutmegged but could not work out how. Mahrez has been unplayable at times this season and if ever there was a performance that clinched the votes for the PFA player of the year award, it was during February’s 3-1 victory at Manchester City. It was Mahrez at his best, when it mattered most, and provided a seminal moment in Leicester’s season; the players and staff sensed for the first time that something truly special was happening. Watching that game everything seemed a little surreal as Leicester, four days after beating Liverpool 2-0, took City apart at the Etihad. It was hard to suppress a smile when a message was sent out via Leicester’s official Twitter account with 20 minutes to go that read: “So if you’re just joining us... #lcfc are leading 3-0 and Robert Huth is on a hat-trick.” Yet it was the response to a setback eight days later, on Valentine’s Day, that provided the greatest indication of what Leicester were capable of achieving this season. After playing against Arsenal with 10 men for more than half an hour, following Danny Simpson’s red card, Leicester conceded in the 95th minute and lost 2-1. It was the cruellest of defeats, their lead at the top was cut to two points and everyone, inside and outside the club, wondered how the players would respond to not just losing but the gut-wrenching manner of that defeat. Ranieri, in what turned out to be a superb piece of management, took advantage of their early elimination from the FA Cup and gave the players a week off training to escape and forget about football. When they returned to the pitch the answer to whether being losing against Arsenal would break their resolve was emphatic. Leicester won six and drew one out of the next seven matches to take 19 points out of 21. Arsenal, for the record, collected nine. By now Leicester’s team had a familiar look. Schmeichel in goal; Simpson, Morgan, Huth and Fuchs at the back; Mahrez, Drinkwater, Kanté and Albrighton in midfield; and Okazaki playing just behind Vardy up front. Two compact banks of four, across defence and midfield, leaving opponents little room to play through them, and a deep-lying forward who never stops running operating behind a predator with the lightning pace to finish off their devastating counterattacks. Seven of that XI have started at least 33 of 36 league games this season. Of the other four players, Okazaki has made the fewest starts with 27. Settled and consistent, the team is also vastly experienced. Schmeichel and the back four in front of him, together with Okazaki and Vardy, are aged 29 and over. They are men – not boys – and it has shown in their mental strength during the run-in. Good fortune has played a part in their injury record and made it easy for Ranieri to pick the same team, yet pinning everything on luck overlooks the expertise and technology within the medical and sports science departments at Leicester, where Dave Rennie, the head physio, and Reeves leave no stone unturned. Advertisement The club has invested in a Cryo Chamber unit, where players are exposed to temperatures of -135 degrees to aid their recovery. They use other technology that is more commonplace at the highest level, such as the Catapult GPS system and Polar Team2 heart-rate monitors, regularly issue electronic questionnaires to gauge everything from energy levels to sleep patterns but, perhaps most importantly of all, strive to create an environment where everybody talks to each other. In the end it is about a meeting of minds. Ranieri wants players training and the medical staff need to minimise the risk of injury, so sometimes it is a case of searching for that middle ground, even if that means sticking an exercise bike on the side of the pitch during a tactical session and getting a player to pedal away while the manager makes his point. That is what happened at Leicester’s training ground a few weeks ago and meant that the player in question knew his role come matchday and never aggravated his injury in the leadup. Everyone was happy. It is not rocket science and, as we know from watching Leicester this season, nor does it need to be. In a game that is often overcomplicated and increasingly obsessed with statistics, the percentages show that Ranieri’s team are in the bottom three for possession and that only West Bromwich Albion have a lower pass completion rate, yet the only table that matters – in the absence of one that quantifies teamwork – shows Leicester City with an unassailable lead at the top of the Premier League. We should all enjoy that sight. Claudio Ranieri and his assistant Steve Walsh watch pre-season training. Walsh badgered him to sign N’Golo Kanté, saying ‘Kanté, Kanté, Kanté!’, and the move proved inspired. Photograph: Plumb Images/Getty Images Danny Drinkwater, here celebrating with Leonardo Ulloa, right, after the striker’s last-minute equaliser against West Ham, was made a mainstay of the team to terrific effect. He was unable to get into the side at the end of last season. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/the Guardian More pics and chart in link http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/may/03/leicester-city-title-inside-story-premier-league-champions-claudio-ranieri

Heated discussion gets personal as the pair question each other’s judgment amid attempts to draw contrasts over gun control, banking, minimum wage and Israel Ed Pilkington and Lauren Gambino in New York Friday 15 April 2016 07.20 BST The bitter struggle between Hillar-y Clinton and Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination erupted into fractious and at times personal attacks on Thursday night as the simmering animosities between the two candidates burst onto a Brooklyn stage. In the ninth and possibly last televised debate between the former secretary of state and US senator from Vermont, the candidates hurled themselves at each other in barely restrained terms. From the first minute of the two-hour event to its final moment, they questioned each other’s judgment, susceptibility to lobbyists and grasp of political reality in by far the most heated discussion of the campaign to date. From Wall Street to the minimum wage, gun control and mass incarceration, Israel and climate change, the rivals battled to set themselves apart in the hope of pulling ahead in the race. With the stakes so high – just five days before the critical ballot in New York state that carries a bonanza of 291 delegates out of the 2,383 needed to win – the rhetoric also reached a new intensity. “It is a little frustrating,” Clinton said scathingly towards the end of the CNN/New York 1 debate, “if Senator Sanders doesn’t agree with something you are saying then you are part of the establishment.” “Oh my goodness, they must have been really crushed by this,” Sanders said to Clinton earlier on, referring to her claims that she was tough on the big banks. “And was that before or after you received huge sums of money by giving speaking engagements?” he went on, in a tone that went beyond sarcasm into the fringes of disdain. The debate was feisty from the off. Sanders walked back from previous comments that he thought his competitor was unqualified for the White House. Answering a question on whether Clinton had the experience and intelligence to be president, he said: “Of course she does.” But hardly pausing for breath, he clarified: “I do question her judgment. I question a judgment which voted for the war in Iraq – the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country.” Clinton, clearly determined not to be outgunned by her opponent, lashed back by referring to the recent interview Sanders gave to the New York Daily News in which he appeared to struggle over the fine detail of his plan to break up the big banks. “When asked, he could not explain how that would be done and when asked about a number of foreign policy issues, he could not answer about Afghanistan, about Israel, about counterterrorism … I think you need to have the judgment on day one to be both president and commander-in-chief.” The sour note in the debate was a product perhaps of the make-or-break stage that the Democratic presidential campaign has reached. Clinton has a strong lead of more than 200 delegates and is 2.4 million votes ahead in the popular vote, but has failed to shrug off the attack of the self-described socialist senator from Vermont. For her, New York is an opportunity to break his grip on the contest. Latest opinion surveys suggest that Clinton is extending her lead in New York with an NBC 4 New York/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll putting her 17 percentage points ahead, on 57% to Sanders’ 40%. But Sanders shows no signs of going away quietly. He came into the debate with wind in his sails, following an epic rally in Washington Square park in Manhattan on Wednesday night, attended by 27,000. He has also won eight of the nine most recent primaries and caucuses, largely in western states, and is proving to be a much more dogged and durable threat to Clinton than she and her advisers ever expected. Banks provide a familiar battleground The slugfest opened on familiar territory: Wall Street and what to do to break up the big banks. Clinton said that she would appoint regulators tough enough to ensure that the post-2008 financial crash legislation, Dodd-Frank, was fully implemented. For Sanders that was not enough. He wanted the banks that were “too big to fail” to be broken up immediately, and he also renewed his attack on Clinton’s money-making speeches to Goldman Sachs. The former secretary of state in turn swung that back against Sanders by accusing him of failing to release his tax returns. She elicited from him the first big announcement of the night – that he would release his family’s 2014 US tax returns on Friday, and ones for earlier years when his wife Jane had got round to producing them. Sanders and Clinton then clashed fiercely over guns. “I have spent more time than I care to remember being with people who have lost their loved ones,” Clinton said as she continued to hammer Sanders on a record she thinks is vulnerable. Mothers of victims of gun violence and police shootings have appeared with Clinton at campaign events around the country. Clinton noted that he voted five times against the Brady Bill, which introduced background checks on gun purchases in the 1990s, and for a bill that still effectively shields gun manufacturers from legal liability. Sanders argued that he was the candidate best suited to address the issue because he comes from a state without control yet supports strengthening certain laws. The increasingly glaring gulf in the style and form of their politics that has developed as the campaign has unfolded was expressed more sharply than ever before. Sanders talked as though he were infuriated by Clinton’s cautious practicality and her lack of soaring ambition, saying with regard to her plan to combat climate change: “Incrementalism and those little steps are not enough.” Clinton, by contrast, was dismissive of her rival’s sweeping promises but lack, in her portrayal, of policy content. “Describing the problem is a lot easier than trying to solve it,” she said at one point. That comment was made with regard to the Middle East and the violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Both candidates gave their fulsome support for Israel and its right to exist, but in tune with the rest of the debate they differed starkly on their overall perspective on the conflict. Clinton emphasised the pressures put on Israel by Hamas: “I don’t know how you run a country when you are under constant threat, terrorist attack, rockets coming at you.” Sanders, taking the opposite position, highlighted the plight of the Palestinians and what he called the disproportionate response by Israel to rocket attacks. In one of his most searing attacks of the night, Sanders accused his rival of using racist language when she was first lady in the 1990s. Last week, former president Bill Clinton issued an apology after he drowned out Black Lives Matter protesters at a rally in Philadelphia to defend his wife, who said in 1996 “the kinds of kids that are called super-predators”. Asked by New York 1’s Errol Louis why Sanders demanded the former president apologize for defending Clinton’s use of “super-predator”, he said: “It was a racist word and everybody knew it was a racist word.” The debate was held in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where ships were once built from the civil war through to the end of the second world war. The site is just a stone’s throw across the East River from the subject of many of the most volatile arguments on Thursday night – Wall Street and its looming skyscrapers. Both candidates tried to make much of their connection to the local area. Sanders emphasised that he had been born in Brooklyn – he went to school less than seven miles away from the Navy Yard. Clinton though leaned on her connection to New York state with more determination, repeating in her opening and closing statements that she was honoured to have served the state for two terms as US senator and that she intended to take “New York values” to the White House. Clinton also made a sharp intervention about women’s rights. Near the end of the debate, she pointed out that over the course of nine Democratic debates, not one moderator had asked about women’s reproductive rights. “We’ve had eight debates before, this is our ninth,” Clinton said. “We’ve not had one question about a woman’s right to make their own decisions about reproductive health. Not one question. And in the meantime we have states governors doing everything they can to restrict women’s rights. We have a presidential candidate by the name of Donald Trump saying that women should be punished and we have never asked about this.” But that was virtually the only mention of Trump and the Republicans in a long, hard debate. For this moment, at least, the energies of the two Democratic candidates are focused entirely on themselves. Almost immediately afterwards, Sanders was whisked away to the airport for a trip to Rome, Italy and a conference at the Vatican where he will make a speech on the “idolatry of money”, a central theme of his presidential campaign and a moral teaching of the Pope Francis. Clinton moved on to join supporters at a watch party in Brooklyn. In the post-debate spin room, Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager, said he believed the senator had his strongest night yet on foreign policy and thought the debate could mark a turning point for him here in New York. “The race has been moving in our direction and I think it’s going to move further in that way,” Weaver said. Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, said Sanders was noticeably more aggressive during the debate but remained the same on substance. “We don’t see anything that he did that will change the dynamics of the race,” Palmieri said. She added: “We feel good about New York. We think she will win New York but it’s a competitive primary.” ‘Describing the problem is a lot easier than trying to solve it,’ Clinton said at one point about Sanders’ sweeping promises. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/15/democratic-debate-brooklyn-Hillarious-clinton-bernie-sanders

The Republican frontrunner was left scrambling during a CNN town hall when confronted with a 2002 interview in which he supported the Iraq invasion Sabrina Siddiqui in Columbia, South Carolina, and Ben Jacobs in Charleston Friday 19 February 2016 06.36 GMT Donald Trump, who has made his opposition to the Iraq invasion one of the bedrocks of his campaign, was left scrambling during a CNN town hall when confronted with a newly uncovered interview in which he supported the conflict. The interview, reported by BuzzFeed, was from 2002 when Trump sat down with radio shock jock Howard Stern and was asked directly whether he advocated invading Saddam Hussein’s country. Trump replied: “Yeah I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.” Asked by CNN moderator Anderson Cooper about the statement, the Republican frontrunner simply responded: “I could have said that.” Trump then insisted that his past support for the war did not matter because “by the time the war started I was against it”. His comments came during the second of a two-part town hall in Columbia featuring the remaining candidates in the Republican field. Ohio governor John Kasich and former Florida governor Jeb Bush preceded Trump in Thursday night’s instalment, whereas Ben Carson and senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz participated the prior evening. Trump stumbled when asked if he thought George W Bush had deliberately lied about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. Both a voter and Cooper repeatedly asked him if he stood by his comments in the last Republican presidential debate when he insisted that was the case. “They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none,” Trump said in the debate, held in Charleston on Saturday. During Thursday’s town hall, just five days later, he backtracked, saying: “There are a lot of people that think that. Bottom line is there were no weapons of mass destruction.” Pressed further, Trump said of George W Bush, “I don’t know what he did.” Trump added that he would have to “look at some documents”. The forum took place as another news cycle was dominated by Trump, who earlier in the day drew a rebuke from Pope Francis, who was returning from a trip to Mexico, over the candidate’s stance on immigration. When asked about the Republican frontrunner, the pontiff objected to some of Trump’s controversial statements about immigrants. “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” the Pope said, while adding he did not wish to wade into the US presidential election. Trump reacted sharply to the reports at first, saying it was “disgraceful” for a religious leader to question an individual’s faith and suggested the Pope had been misled by the Mexican government during his trip. Addressing the drama in the town hall that same evening, Trump softened his tone toward the pope. “I have a lot of respect for the pope. I think he was very much misinterpreted … and given false information,” he said. “I think he said something much softer than was originally reported by the media.” Trump went on to praise the pope as having “a lot of energy” and being effective in his role, adding that he agreed with many of the pontiff’s positions. Before Trump took the stage, two of his rivals in the Republican race who are struggling to gain traction in South Carolina sought to persuade the undecided into their fold two days ahead of the state’s primary. John Kasich and Jeb Bush both revealed their personal side and grasp of policy in a format that played to their strengths. While Kasich and Bush have grown more confident in recent debates, they have often struggled to stand out on a crowded stage and looked uncomfortable in increasingly testy exchanges. Thursday’s town hall offered a stark contrast, as the two governors breezed through questions ranging from the healthcare law to US foreign policy against the Islamic State. There were also more humanizing moments, such as when Kasich recounted the tragedy of losing his parents in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. The Ohio governor became emotional, saying his mother and father had been at Burger King because they were offered a second cup of coffee for free. “That’s the way the mailman and Mrs Kasich lived,” he said of his parents, adding that their death sent him “into a black hole with just a little pin prick of light”. “You don’t have to agree with me or like it or whatever, but it’s really where I found the Lord,” he added. “I have found that even though the pain still comes, there’s where I have to go.” Kasich has largely glossed over the South Carolina primary, choosing instead to focus on states where he would have more widespread appeal. He is nonetheless hoping that primary voters, even if in the south, might give him another look after he secured a surprise second-place finish in New Hampshire last week. Bush, who like Kasich is seeking to emerge as the establishment favorite, also opened up about his personal life in poignant terms. The son and brother of former US presidents lavished praise on his father, George HW Bush, calling him “the greatest man alive”. “I realized pretty quickly in my life if I could be half the man my dad was that that would be a pretty good goal,” Bush said. The former Florida governor has faced a series of challenges in gaining the traction he needs to remain competitive, and this week called upon his brother George W Bush for an assist on the campaign trail. The elder Bush brother remains a popular figure in South Carolina, despite having been considered a liability when Jeb Bush first launched his campaign. “It’s a blast being with George, because I love him dearly,” Jeb Bush said. Other Republican candidates spent the evening at an event held by Conservative Review, an online right wing publication, in Greenville. Ben Carson and Ted Cruz, appearing along with prominent conservative figures like Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin, emphasized their hard-right bona fides. Cruz spent much of his speech warning of the peril that the country faced in the aftermath of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. “Our very Bill of Rights hangs in balance, one justice away from a five justice radical left wing majority the likes of which our county has never seen,” said the senator from Texas. Cruz warned of the consequences not just of electing a Democrat, whom he claimed “every one of their nominees is consistent left-wing knee jerk vote” but of other Republicans as well. “We bat less than .500,” Cruz said, arguing that Republican presidents nominated “many of the worst judicial activists”. Carson, who is lagging in the polls, hit his normal talking points berating “secular progressives” and political correctness while opining “in the future, he who controls space will control the earth”. Marco Rubio was scheduled to attend but canceled because of scheduling issues, his campaign said. Rubio’s absence sparked criticism from Cruz, with whom he is locked in a bitter feud. A spokesman for Cruz charged that Rubio was too afraid to appear at the gathering, issuing a statement declaring that Rubio “is not a conservative”. Rubio instead appeared in an interview with Fox News alongside South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, whose endorsement he earned on Thursday. Earlier in the day, Rubio’s campaign accused Cruz staffers of resorting to dishonest tactics to impugn Rubio – such as photoshopping a picture of the senator shaking hands with Barack Obama to draw a link between their records. Alex Conant, a spokesman for Rubio, said it was “ridiculous” to go after the senator over his absence, much less to infer that he was not a true conservative. The attack, Conant said, was “just the latest example of Ted Cruz’s willingness to do or say anything in this campaign”. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/19/donald-trump-confronted-with-past-support-for-iraq-war

Their rhetoric may have different targets but both brought anti-establishment principles to New Hampshire – and it all points to a shifting political landscape including a win for maverick Texas senator Ted Cruz in Iowa and previous disappointment for Clinton – now point to political insurgencies that may drag on for months, with potentially profound consequences for the direction of national politics and for whoever eventually wins. For though they come from diametrically opposing ends of the political spectrum, Sanders and Trump share more in common than just a distinctively New York approach to pronouncing the word huge. From their very different perspectives, both, for example, rail against the system of campaign finance that has come to dominate US elections but is now being questioned by many. On one side of the fence, the property billionaire claims to have seen how easy it is to buy political influence and is choosing to renounce his old ways by paying for this campaign himself. On higher moral ground, Sanders is beating Clinton’s rich backers by raising $20m a month from a record number of small contributors giving him an average of just $27 each. “We have sent a message that will echo from Wall Street to Washington, from Maine to California, and that is that the government of our great country belongs to all of the people and not just a handful of wealthy campaign contributors, and their Super Pacs,” Sanders told ecstatic supporters at a victory party paid for without any need for such unlimited political action committees. “Tonight, we served notice to the political and economic establishment of this country that the American people will not continue to accept a corrupt campaign finance system that is undermining American democracy,” he added. Shortly after Clinton rang Sanders to concede defeat in a campaign that has been dominated by claims of her links to Wall Street and her receipt of lucrative speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, Sanders’ supporters started singing “We don’t need no Super Pac” to the tune of the Talking Heads song Burning Down the House. Given what a challenge his new way of politics poses to a system that even Barack Obama relied heavily upon, the original lyric may have been just as apt. As stock markets around the world once again continued their recent rout, here too were a pair of politicians declaring very different wars on the world’s economic status quo: both promising to end 70 years of American-led free trade policy and – with varying conviction at least – both arguing the US should provide universal healthcare. Instead of parroting the standard boasts of American exceptionalism, both claim the United States is losing the key battles of the 21st century: Sanders pointing to soaring income inequality as a sign that the American dream is dead; Trump – his mantra “Make America Great Again” on every baseball cap – arguing the country is losing wars against Islamic extremism and Chinese mercantilism that Obama has been too weak to fight. “We are going to start winning again,” he told his victory party. “We don’t win on trade. We don’t win with the military. We need to win with Isis.” The parallels between the two men on policy matters are extremely limited, of course, and even highlighting their shared anti-establishment approach will fill both sets of supporters with horror, but there are stylistic similarities that are hard for outsiders to ignore. Much as Trump accuses “scum” in the media of misrepresenting him and being overly politically correct when reporting on his seemingly ever-more offensive insults, Sanders slams the “corporately owned press” for failing to take his ideas for social reform seriously enough. “The people of New Hampshire have sent a profound message to the political establishment, to the economic establishment, and by the way, to the media establishment,” he told supporters on Tuesday night, who turned to shake their fists and stomp their feet at journalists – much as they do at Trump rallies. Supporters of both candidates are presented with a variety of villains to choose from when cheering their man as the rallies turn into pantomime. Trump focuses on racial and religious minorities as scapegoats for his vision of what is wrong with America. Mexican immigrants are dismissed as rapists and drug dealers, to be deported in their millions and kept from returning by a wall on the border that their government will be forced to pay for; Trump crowds yell “Mexico!” on cue as he asks them who shall pay for the wall. Muslims across the world are all deemed such a potential terrorist threat that they should also be kept from entering the US. Sanders hits Clinton where it hurtsThe Sanders world view could not be more different, seeking rapprochement with the Muslim world and demanding sweeping immigration reform, but he has his own, more powerful bogeymen – largely, wealthy companies that are blamed for exploiting the middle class. “Walmart!” shout his supporters, in an echo of the Trump gatherings, as the supermarket giant is paraded as a regular target. Bernie, as he is universally known by supporters, argues that its low wages and high profits represent a colossal subsidy from taxpayers because many of its workers are so poor they need help from government welfare programmes. Goldman Sachs is similarly held up as an exemplar of Wall Street greed and an investment banking business model that he claims is based on little more than fleecing customers. Yet it is perhaps no coincidence that the two companies Sanders most frequently chooses to exemplify the “rigged economy” both have strong ties to the Clinton family. The former first lady was a board director of Wal-mart Stores Inc for six years when she lived in its home state of Arkansas while her husband, Bill, was governor. And quite apart from the now infamous $600,000 Clinton took in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs after leaving the State Department, her daughter, Chelsea, is also married to a former employee of the bank. Campaign volunteers who canvassed for Sanders in past few days in New Hampshire say it was these alleged ties to Wall Street and Clinton’s use of big money campaign contributions that came up most among voters. Given this, it was perhaps no surprise that among the first promises made by Clinton during her speech to disappointed supporters on Tuesday night were to take new steps toward reforming Wall Street and campaign finance. The scale of the defeat on Tuesday nevertheless points to strategic challenges for Clinton that could hurt her in other states – particularly the “Super Tuesday” states voting on 1 March that once looked much more hospitable territory. According to exit polling in New Hampshire, the only demographics Clinton won here were those aged over 65 and those earning more than $200,000 a year – a reversal of her comeback against Obama in 2008 when she won the state with the help of blue-collar workers. It is waning support from younger voters and women that may also prompt a rethink of Clinton’s strategy ahead of the key battle for the Nevada caucuses next week. Sanders campaign adviser Tad Devine told the Guardian he is now hopeful of tempting Latino-dominated service sector unions in the state to part company with labor leadership in Washington and fight Clinton hard. Though the secretary had until recently looked stronger in polling for the next few states, particularly among African Americans voters in the south, Sanders flew straight to New York on Wednesday to seek the endorsement of key community leader and media host the Rev Al Sharpton, and will spend heavily on television advertising from Wednesday onwards. Republican field remains fragmentedThe path out of New Hampshire for Republicans is also more complicated than it was before the resounding Trump victory, but not without hope either. In stark contrast to Sanders, Trump did not win anything close to an overall majority among Republican voters due to the highly fragmented field and failure of any mainstream candidates to break free from the chasing pack. Whereas Florida senator Marco Rubio had looked best place to reel in Trump and Cruz after Iowa, it was Ohio governor John Kasich and, to a lesser extent, Jeb Bush who emerged stronger after New Hampshire. At some point many pundits still expect more moderate candidates will catch both Trump and Sanders. Clinton could yet blow her opponent out of the water quickly if she holds Nevada and takes South Carolina with a decisive win among minorities. March will probably be a decisive month, starting with the Super Tuesday test across 13 states. Among Republicans, governors Kasich and Bush are currently slugging it out in a war of words to see which can be persuaded to stand aside gracefully and let the other take on the mantle of Trump-slayer. But the reasons why voters turned out in droves to vote for Trump and Sanders in New Hampshire on Tuesday are not unique to this quirky little state, despite its outsize role in the primary process. Even if they eventually fall by the wayside, their threat to the establishment status quo in America may yet also tempt independent challengers such as former New York mayor and businessman Michael Bloomberg. And with plenty of money of their own and a new sense of momentum, it is now hard to see either Trump or Sanders stepping down easily as insurgent champions of this very frustrated new breed of voters anytime soon. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/10/donald-trump-bernie-sanders-new-hampshire-primary-anti-establishment-outsider-campaigns

The Seinfeld co-creator took his impression of the socialist presidential candidate to a new level with a spoof episode of ‘Bern your Enthusiasm’ on SNL Paul Owen in North Hampton, New Hampshire Sunday 7 February 2016 06.05 GMT Larry David took his celebrated impression of Bernie Sanders to a new level on Saturday with a spoof episode of “Bern your Enthusiasm” on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. Sanders, the socialist Democratic presidential candidate, turned up in person on the show, sending himself up during a sketch seemingly based on Titanic to announce characteristically: “I am so sick of the 1% getting this preferential treatment!” Sanders then lightly mocked his own often-repeated insistence that he is a “democratic” socialist and his pronunciation – which he shares with fellow New Yorker Donald Trump – of huge as “yuge”. And he later took one of his host’s catchphrases out for a spin, judging his campaigning for Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary to be going “pretty … pretty … pretty good”. Sanders strayed into one area he has been somewhat less comfortable exploring – the place of his Jewish identity in American society – when he recalled that his family’s name had once been “Sandersowsky, but we’re going to change it when we get to America so it doesn’t sound so Jewish”. “Yeah, that’ll trick ’em,” said David sardonically. And in the “Bern your Enthusiasm” segment – which revolved around Sanders’s loss to Hillarious Clinton by 0.2 percentage points in Iowa, revealed here to have been the result of his offending a mere five voters – it was notable that many of the voters he offended were black, probably a reference to Sanders’s difficulties winning support from African Americans. But this was more a love-in than a roast, with the affectionate dig from Ben Stiller as male model Derek Zoolander being much more typical: “He’s a champion of the 99% – the 99% off at JC Penney.” David’s impersonation of Sanders was hailed as the role he was born to play when the Seinfeld co-creator first essayed it following the Vermont senator’s arrival on the presidential scene last year. Both born in Brooklyn in the 1940s, both Jewish, both with a shock of balding white hair, the two men look fairly alike and their staccato, pugnacious vocal styles are almost indistinguishable, as David proved in that first SNL sketch: “Ehh … Not a fan of the banks. They trample on the middle-class, they control Washington, and why do they chain all their pens to the desks? Who’s trying to steal a pen from a bank? Makes no sense!” The leftwing firebrand has hardly run from the comparison. Indeed in a November Democratic debate, Sanders seemed almost to be channeling the Curb your Enthusiasm star; asked at one point what he missed the most that technology had made obsolete, he said: “I miss the fact that when I’m in a car or at home, there are not all kinds of buzzes and noises going off making me a nervous wreck. I miss peace and quiet … ” The Sanders campaign has grown to love David’s depiction and shifted his weekend schedule to make sure he could be in New York on Saturday to appear on the live NBC show, after it finished changing his Twitter picture to one of David. At Bernie rallies, warm-up speakers have imitated David imitating Sanders, to the enjoyment of his supporters. Sanders himself told a laughing crowd in October: “If you’re good, maybe I’ll imitate Larry David imitating me.” And when asked in February by Anderson Cooper if he could do an impression of David, Sanders said: “Anderson, I’m gonna – I know you’ve been in journalism a long time ... I am Larry David.” His voice rising with enjoyment, he roared: “And you didn’t get it!” 3 vids in link http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/07/bernie-sanders-on-snl-larry-david-saturday-night-live

Exclusive: UN secretary general adds voice to the Guardian’s drive to end the practice ahead of launch of Nigeria media campaign Maggie O'Kane Saturday 6 February 2016 09.28 GMT The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has called on men worldwide to join the fight to end female genital mutilation. Speaking to the Guardian, which has been running a campaign against the practice for almost two years, he said: “Now is the time for men all over the world to take up the fight to end FGM with real dedication.” Ban has taken a deep personal interest in FGM, speaking on the subject across Africa, where it is still widely practiced despite bans in Nigeria and the Gambia last year, as it is in some migrant communities in Europe. “As secretary general of the UN, ending violence against women and girls has been one of my top priorities and I will add my voice and my strength to your very noble campaign,” Ban said. “The Guardian’s prestigious name can make a difference – it is well known and well respected. For me, this is the way journalism can make a difference. Whatever the UN can do to help the campaign, we will spare no efforts.” Pope Francis and the US president, Barack Obama, have recently called for an end to the practice. In a statement to mark International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM on Saturday, Ban gave a stark warning that more action was needed. “If current trends continue, more girls will be cut every year by 2030 than today, owing to high fertility rates and youthful populations found in most communities where FGM is prevalent,” he said. “Never before has it been more urgent or more possible to end the practice of FGM, preventing immeasurable human suffering and boosting the power of women and girls to have a positive impact.” Yahya Jammeh, the president of the Gambia, where more than 70% of girls are cut, took the controversial step of banning FGM in the country in November. Nigeria brought in a ban in May 2015. More girls are mutilated in Nigeria, which has a population of 178 million, than any other country in the world. Although primarily concentrated in 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East, FGM is a global problem. In Britain, an estimated 137,000 women and girls have undergone FGM or are at risk from it. The practice, which was first recorded in the tombs of the pharaoh princesses, can cause infection, problems in childbirth and even death. On a visit to Ethiopia in August, Obama spoke out against the practice. “There’s no excuse for sexual assault or domestic violence, there’s no reason that young girls should suffer genital mutilation, there’s no place in a civilised society for the early or forced marriage of children. These traditions may go back centuries; they have no place in the 21st century,” he said. Similarly, Pope Francis voiced his support to end FGM on a trip to Africa in November. “Loyalties to tribes are sometimes stronger than political ties in Africa, leading to violences like FGM,” he said. Ban spoke to the Guardian days before women and girls are due to march in protest at the closure of the only clinic in London treating under-18s at St George’s hospital. Commenting on the Guardian’s drive to end FGM, which launches a media campaign in Nigeria next week, Ban said: “The media is a connector between [the] UN and the public. I am ready to continue working with international media and the Guardian to break the silence. “I raise my voice and call on others to join me in empowering communities, which themselves are eager for change. We can end FGM within a generation, bringing us closer to a world where the human rights of every woman, child and adolescent are fully respected, their health is protected and they can contribute more to our common future.” The Guardian’s Nigeria media campaign will launch in Abuja on Tuesday alongside the country’s first national conference on FGM. It will work with more than 100 media activists across the country using local media, social media, town criers and TV to spread the news of the 2015 FGM ban. Nigeria is the fifth country that the Guardian Global Media campaign will be working in; the others include the US, the UK, Kenya and the Gambia. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/06/ban-ki-moon-end-female-genital-mutilation-fgm-guardian-campaign

The Republican frontrunner will instead host an event in Iowa to raise money for veterans after Fox News released a press release he viewed as derogatory Ben Jacobs in Marshalltown, Iowa and Sabrina Siddiqui in Fairfield, Iowa Wednesday 27 January 2016 00.54 GMT Donald Trump made clear in a press conference in Marshalltown, Iowa, that he would not participate in a Fox News debate after the network sent out a press release that he viewed as derogatory. His campaign released a statement saying he will not be participating in the debate and will instead host an event in Iowa to raise money for “the Veterans and Wounded Warriors, who have been treated so horribly by our all talk, no action politicians”. “Like running for office as an extremely successful person, this takes guts and it is the kind mentality [sic] our country needs in order to Make America Great Again,” the statement continued. Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told the Guardian matter-of-factly: “He’s not participating in the Fox News debate.” Lewandowski said that this didn’t mean Trump was avoiding press scrutiny. “Look, he’s the clear frontrunner, he’s been in six debates already, answered more questions from the media than any other candidate on the stage combined.” The Fox News press release that irked Trump and led to his withdrawal read: “We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president – a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.” Trump derided it as “a wise guy press release . . . done by some PR person along with Roger Ailes”. He said that after seeing the release, “I said ‘bye bye’ to the debate”. “They can’t toy with me like they toy with everybody else,” Trump said of the news channel, long considered a kingmaker in GOP politics. Trump had long been cagey about participating in Thursday’s debate because of adversarial questioning from anchor Megyn Kelly in the first debate. Her questioning led Trump to say that he thought “there was blood coming out of her wherever”, a comment widely believed to refer to menstruation. In his press conference on Tuesday, Trump merely called Kelly a lightweight. Earlier in the day, prior to the Fox News press release, Trump asked his followers on Twitter if he should participate in the debate. With Trump’s absence from the main debate stage, only seven Republican candidates will be present on Thursday night. Ted Cruz will take Trump’s place at the center of the stage and he will be joined by Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Rand Paul. The press conference didn’t just focus on the debate. Trump defended himself from attacks from social conservatives on his record on abortion. He insisted: “I’m pro life.” However, when asked by the Guardian if he considered Plan B to be abortion, a stance held by many social conservatives including Ted Cruz, Trump said: “I will give you an answer to that sometime in the future.” In response to Trump’s decision not to participate in the debate, Cruz challenged his rival to a one-on-one “mano a mano” debate in the next week before the Iowa caucuses. While Cruz had previously been close to Trump, he had contempt in his voice as he issued his challenge during an interview with talk radio host Mark Levin. Cruz said that Trump’s feud with Kelly was a sign of weakness: “If he thinks Megyn Kelly is so scary, what exactly would he do with Vladimir Putin? I promise you Putin is a lot more scary than Megyn Kelly.” The senator from Texas added that Trump needed to “explain how he is prepared to be commander in chief if he is terrified of a television host” and made clear that if Trump joined Cruz in a one-on-one debate, he could even “name his own moderator”. Moments later, Cruz took the stage at a town hall-style event in Fairfield, where he immediately tore into Trump’s reluctance to participate in the debate. After breaking the news of his primary competitor’s debate announcement to the roughly 150 Iowans gathered, Cruz joked that Trump was “a fragile soul [whose] hair might stand” if faced with tough questions. The senator also wielded his jab that Trump was “apparently really, really scared of Megyn Kelly” before imploring the real estate mogul to “at least respect the great men and women of Iowa” by showing up. “If someone did that – didn’t show up at the interview – you know what you’d say? You’re fired!” Cruz exclaimed. The crowd, which applauded him throughout his riff, roared in agreement. Trump’s campaign did not immediately reply to a request from the Guardian for comment on Cruz’s challenge. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/26/donald-trump-boycott-fox-news-republican-debate

Record on gun control, especially ‘Charleston loophole’, hurts Sanders Contest of pragmatism v idealism sees Clinton put on defensive What we learned from the fourth Democratic primary debate Dan Roberts and Ed Pilkington in Charleston Monday 18 January 2016 07.55 GMT Growing tensions over the future of the Democratic party erupted at its fourth presidential debate on Sunday, as Hillar-y Clinton and Bernie Sanders clashed over whether Barack Obama should be succeeded with pragmatism or idealism. After a series of relatively cautious warm-up debates dominated by the former secretary of state, the candidates sparred over radical policy issues much closer to the agenda of Sanders supporters, leaving Clinton on the defensive over healthcare and Wall Street. “Even when the Democrats were in charge of Congress we could not get the votes to do that,” warned Clinton, after Sanders upstaged his rival shortly before the debate, by releasing detailed proposals of a plan to get employers to pay for Medicare for all Americans. A notably more aggressive Sanders accused her talking “nonsense” by claiming his plans would roll back the health insurance reforms of Obama. “We are not going to tear up the Affordable Care Act – I helped write it – but we are going to move on top of that to a Medicare-for-all system,” said the Vermont senator. “Tell me why we are spending almost three times more than the British, who guarantee healthcare to all of their people, 50% more than the French, more than the Canadians,” he added. Estimates by Sanders’ experts claimed that getting rid of private insurance would more than compensate for higher taxes. Sanders also went on the offensive over Wall Street reform, coming close to accusing Clinton of being “corrupted” by $600,000 in annual speaking fees he said she received from Goldman Sachs. “I don’t take money from big banks, I don’t get personal speaking fees from Goldman Sachs,” said Sanders, to boos from the audience. He was supported in his attack on Clinton’s ties to Wall Street by an otherwise subdued Martin O’Malley, who interrupted her claim to be the candidate that the bankers fear most with “oh come on” and “that’s not true”. The one policy area where Clinton pitched herself as the radical alternative – and where Sanders was on the defensive – was gun reform. The issue was especially charged given that the debate was held just a block away from the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church, where nine Bible students were gunned down last June. Clinton sought to push home her recent attacks on the Vermont senator, accusing him of voting with the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby on numerous occasions. She pointedly raised the so-called “Charleston loophole” – which allowed the Emanuel AME shooter to buy a gun when his federal background check was not completed in three days – which Sanders voted for in 1993. (Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, signed it into law, though she did not mention that). For a candidate whose insurgency-style campaign has benefitted from pushing to the left of his rivals, Sanders found himself uncharacteristically accused of conservatism on guns. He tried to hit back by accusing Clinton of being “disingenuous”. “I have a D-minus record from the NRA,” he said. On Saturday night, just 24 hours before the debate, Sanders backed out of his resistance to legislation currently before Congress that would end immunity for firearms manufacturers from lawsuits from victims of gun violence. On stage, he tried to defend his 2005 vote in favor of such immunity by saying it was made out of concern for “small mom-and-pop gunshops”. Clinton’s position of defending Obama’s record on healthcare and Wall Street reform was also reversed on foreign policy, where the former secretary of state struck a slightly more hawkish tone over how to tackle the Islamic State. Sanders was left defending the president’s more cautious approach. Bill Clinton was also brought into the debate, courtesy the NBC News moderators. First they asked Hillar-y Clinton whether Bill would be leant upon for advice on “kitchen table economics”, were she to win the presidency. “It will start at the kitchen table, and we’ll see where it goes from there,” she replied. She added that she would ask for his “ideas and advice” on economic policy, and use the former president as an “emissary” to travel the country looking for best practice to draw upon. Then Bill Clinton was invoked again, this time in a question to Sanders in which his previous criticism of the former president’s sexual indiscretions was raised. In an echo of the way in which Republican presidential candidates have turned their ire on debate moderators for puerile questions, Sanders lashed out at Lester Holt and Andrea Mitchell of NBC News. He said: “That question annoys me. I cannot walk down the street without being told how much I have to attack Secretary Clinton. I’ve avoided that, trying to run an issue-oriented campaign.” But he did say of the former president: “Yes, his behavior was deplorable.” Despite such diversions, the overall tenor of the debate was dominated by discussions of Sanders’ policy proposals – a development that may worry Clinton advisers already made nervous by his momentum in recent polling, just two weeks before voters go to the polls in Iowa. In the spin room after the debate, senior Clinton aides tested out their new attack line on Sanders – that he is making up policy “on the fly”. The phrase was used with reporters by her campaign chairman, John Podesta, and echoed by the Clinton’s director of communications, Jennifer Palmieri. “The more scrutiny Sanders gets, people see flaws are exposed. Details matter: you can’t make it up as you go along,” Palmieri said. Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver rejected the idea that the surprise release of the senator’s healthcare was an example of “policy on the fly”. “He said he was going to release his plan for healthcare-for-all before the Iowa caucus. We’re having a big debate here tonight, it was a six-page release, plenty of time for experts on the Clinton campaign to handle it.” http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/17/democratic-debate-clinton-sanders-guns-health-wall-street

Hostility between Trump and Cruz on citizenship and conservatism dominated televised debate among many skirmishes on the NSA, Islamic State and more Lucia Graves: the night somebody found out how to beat Donald Trump Ed Pilkington and Ben Jacobs in North Charleston, South Carolina Friday 15 January 2016 06.07 GMT The race for the Republican presidential nomination erupted into open conflict between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz on Thursday night, with the party’s two frontrunners launching blistering attacks over their values and eligibility for the nation’s highest office. With just 18 days to go before the starting gun of the 2016 presidential election is fired at the Iowa caucuses, tensions that have been simmering beneath the surface exploded into plain sight. And the rhetoric got hotter as candidates vied with one another to sound toughest on guns, fear of Muslims, immigration and American foreign policy. Liberal “New York values” were deplored by Cruz, while Florida senator Marco Rubio vowed to start sending more terrorist suspects to Guantánamo Bay. However, a debate which lasted more than two and a half hours was dominated by Trump, the billionaire real-estate tycoon, and Cruz, the senator for Texas. After tiptoeing around each other for months as they compete for the ultra-conservative vote, they finally let their mutual disdain emerge at the sixth Republican debate in South Carolina. As Trump and Cruz went after each other with new abandon, the North Charleston debate had the effect of appearing to further tighten the Republican contest. At the start of the debate, the number on stage had already been whittled down to seven – the fewest yet following the relegation for lackluster poll ratings of Rand Paul, the libertarian senator for Kentucky, and former technology executive Carly Fiorina. By the end of the debate, the pool of serious contenders appeared to have been reduced to just four – the battling frontrunners Trump and Cruz, Rubio and Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey. The remaining three – former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Ohio governor John Kasich and the once ascendant former neurosurgeon Ben Carson, spent much of the debate looking on from the sidelines. The unofficial truce between Trump and Cruz, who are running essentially neck-and-neck in Iowa according to the latest local polls, was torn apart by the billowing spat over whether or not Cruz is a “natural-born citizen” and thus eligible to run for the presidency. Trump has been baiting Cruz in recent days, suggesting that doubts about the senator’s eligibility because he was born in Canada to an American mother and Cuban father could present the Democrats with a legal and electoral gift. Under the television lights at the North Charleston Coliseum, where Trump yet again took pride of place in center stage and Cruz stood right beside him in recognition of his second-place ranking, the senator accused the billionaire of peddling “extreme” “birther issues” that only four months ago Trump himself had dismissed as immaterial. “Since September the constitution hasn’t changed, but the poll numbers have, and I recognize that Donald is dismayed that his poll numbers are falling in Iowa,” Cruz said. Cruz went on that under the most extreme birther theories, which suggest both parents of a president have to be born in America, “interestingly enough Donald J Trump would be disqualified because Donald’s mother was born in Scotland”. “But I was born here. Big difference,” Trump shot back. Asked why he had raised the citizenship issue at this point in the race, Trump replied: “Because now [Cruz] is doing a little better. I didn’t care before, he never had a chance. Now he has a 4-5% chance.” Later in the debate, Trump and Cruz went at each other’s jugulars a second time – on this occasion over Cruz’s recent jibe that Trump subscribed to “New York values”. “I think most people know what New York values are … Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan,” Cruz said. Trump, looking theatrically irate, hit back with a long diatribe about how New York City had responded to the 9/11 attacks. “The people of New York fought and fought and fought. We saw more death, even the smell of death, it was with us for months. Everyone in the world watched and everyone in the world loved New York. I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.” The unrestrained fighting between the two frontrunners sucked much of the oxygen out of the debate, causing frustration among the others. At one point, Rubio blurted out: “I hate to interrupt this episode of Court TV.” Rick Tyler, Cruz’s national spokesman shied away from describing Cruz as attacking Trump. Instead, he thought the campaign had entered the contrast stage. “They presented different points of view on different issues,” he said of the spat between the candidates. “That’s a contrast, I don’t consider those attacks, if there’s a difference on policy we’ll point out difference on policy. When we get attacked on silly things like birther conspiracies, we’ll respond.” The clash at the top of the Republican pile was echoed in harsh exchanges between two more contenders who are struggling with one another – Rubio and Christie. The Florida senator and New Jersey governor are banking on a strong finish in New Hampshire, which Christie has made a focus of his campaign, in the hope of being crowned the “anyone-but-Trump” alternative to the tycoon. Rubio turned on Christie, attacking him for what he characterized as a liberal record in New Jersey. “I like Chris Christie,” said Rubio, “but we can’t afford to have a president of the United States that supports gun control.” The Florida senator then went on to attack Christie for donating to Planned Parenthood and for supporting the supreme court nomination of liberal judge Sonia Sotomayor. Christie insisted that “someone has been whispering in ol’ Marco’s ear” to encourage him to make such untrue negative talks. “I didn’t support Sonia Sotomayor. I never wrote a check to Planned Parenthood.” Both of Christie’s statements are untrue. Christie said in 2009 of Sotomayor, “I am confident that she is qualified for the position of Associate Justice of the US supreme court.” Christie also said in 1994, “I support Planned Parenthood privately with my personal contribution” and said gun control was the issue that “energized him” to enter politics. The New Jersey governor, though, went on to mourn the fact that Rubio attacked him. “Two years ago, he called me the conservative reformer that New Jersey needed,” said Christie “I’ve never changed my tune. Marco Rubio is a good guy and a smart guy.” The rising temperature of the nomination race as Iowa fast approaches prompted a tone of debate that was sharper, more shrill than in the previous five televised engagements. In particular, the candidates tried to outdo each other in attacking Obama and the Democratic frontrunner Hillarious Clinton in ever more lurid terms. Christie took the prize, calling Obama a “petulant child” and vowing that the Republicans would “kick your rear end out of the White House from this fall”. Rubio also took a notably more aggressive posture than he had in previous debates – dropping a more cerebral approach for caustic comments on Obama, Clinton and in regard to national security. He vowed if he were elected president to wage war against “radical jihadist terrorists”, saying “if we capture any of them alive they are getting a one-way ticket to Guantánamo”. Yet again, Bush tried to take a shot at Trump after the frontrunner defended his call for an temporary ban on all Muslims entering the US. Bush argued that “this policy is a policy that makes it impossible” to fight Isis and noted “the Kurds are our strongest allies, they are Muslims”. In the former Florida governor’s view, Trump’s “rash statements” sent “signals of weakness” to the rest of the world. Kasich sounded a more conciliatory tone on the issue of police shootings. The governor of a state that saw Black Lives Matter protests in the aftermath of the shooting death of Tamir Rice, said “protest is fine but violence is wrong” and insisted “the country needs to be healed”. A further brutal exchange broke out late into the debate between Cruz and Rubio, whose similarities – both sons of Cuban fathers, both senators – cannot disguise their mutual hostility. Rubio hit Cruz on surveillance and his support of the USA Freedom Act by alleging the Texas senator acted in concert with Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders and libertarian Republican Rand Paul on the floor of the Senate. In contrast, Rubio maintained his national security bona fides insisting: “Edward Snowden is a traitor and if I am president and we get our hands on him, he is standing trial for treason.” South Carolina congressman Trey Gowdy, a prominent Rubio supporter, thought the attack on Cruz was fair game for the Florida senator. “I think contrast is good if it’s done in context and it’s fair,” said Gowdy. “If you present yourself as being pure without any deviations, it is fair to have episodes of, shall we say non-compliance, pointed out to people” in what was a barely disguised slam at Cruz. Carson, briefly a frontrunner, seemed flummoxed throughout the debate, and was a non-factor. The retired neurosurgeon’s campaign has been beset by high staff turnover and accusations of financial irregularities. Much of the money the campaign has raised has gone to direct mail vendors. After the debate, when asked by the Guardian if his campaign was a direct mail scam, Carson said: “Not that I know of.” In the undercard debate earlier on Thursday evening, Fiorina, former senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania, and the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee also targeted their fire primarily on Clinton. In one of the more memorable lines from the hour-long discussion, Fiorina said: “Unlike another woman in this race, I actually love spending time with my husband.” Paul had decided to boycott the early debate in protest at being ejected from the main primetime event. But he was represented in that main debate, after all, when a group of hecklers briefly interrupted proceedings with shouts of: “We want Rand! We want Rand!” At the end of the debate, Clinton made clear her view of the event in a tweet: “2 1/2 hours of this? Imagine 4 years.” http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/15/republican-debate-donald-trump-ted-cruz-muslim-gun-new-york-values

German chancellor’s party to discuss range of measures at policy meeting as far-right Pegida movement gathers for rally in city Jamie Grierson in London and Kate Connolly in Cologne Saturday 9 January 2016 12.06 GMT Angela Merkel has said she will back tougher laws on deporting immigrants as far-right protesters marched in Cologne following a string of sex attacks allegedly committed by asylum seekers. German federal police have confirmed that at least 32 people are suspected of playing a role in the violence on New Year’s Eve, 22 of whom are in the process of seeking asylum. Of the 32 suspects, nine were Algerian, eight Moroccan, five Iranian, and four Syrian. Three German citizens, an Iraqi, a Serb and a US citizen were also identified. Gangs of men described by some of the alleged victims as being of North African or Arab descent are reported to have robbed, threatened or sexually assaulted 121 women as revellers partied near the city’s Gothic cathedral. Germany’s far-right Pegida movement, one of the groups that say the assaults are proof that Merkel’s liberal migrant policy is failing, held a rally in Cologne on Saturday. Around 1,700 supporters of Pegida and the local far-right group Pro NRW arrived in the city’s main square at 1pm (midday GMT). Waving German flags and signs reading “Rapefugees not welcome”, “Germany survived war, plague and cholera, but Merkel?”, they shouted “Merkel out”. About 1,300 anti-Pegida protesters held a counter-rally, chanting “Nazis out”. Leaders of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) held a policy meeting in the south-western city of Mainz on Saturday to consider tougher penalties for attacks against police and emergency responders, and the withdrawal of refugee or asylum-seeker status from anyone sentenced to a non-parole prison term. Under current laws, asylum seekers are only forcibly sent back if they have been sentenced to jail terms of at least three years, and if their lives are not at risk in their countries of origin. The DPA news agency reported that leaders of CDU agreed on a proposal to exclude foreigners who had been convicted of crimes from being granted asylum. They also reportedly agreed to support powers that would strengthen the ability of police to check identity papers. Merkel said the proposal, which will be discussed with her coalition partners and would need parliamentary approval, would help Germany deport “serial offenders” convicted of lesser crimes. “This is in the interests of the citizens of Germany, but also in the interests of the great majority of the refugees who are here,” Merkel told party members in Mainz, according to the Associated Press. “If people act outside the law … naturally there must be consequences,” she said. “Serial offenders who consistently, for example, return to theft or time and again insult women must count on the force of the law.” She has, however, resisted domestic pressure to introduce a formal cap on migrant numbers, repeating her “We can do this” mantra. Cologne’s police chief, Wolfgang Albers, who had been heavily criticism for his handling of the violence and police communications afterwards, was dismissed on Friday. The city’s mayor, Henriette Reker, suggested on Friday that police had held back information from her, and said in a statement that her trust in the Cologne police leadership was “significantly shaken”. A leaked police report, obtained by the German newspaper Bild, said women were forced to “run a gauntlet … beyond description” to reach or leave the station. Cologne police said on Friday that they had arrested two males aged 16 and 23 with “North African roots” on suspicion of involvement in the assaults. The federal police documented 76 criminal acts, most them involving some form of theft, and seven linked to sexual assault. The German interior ministry spokesman Tobias Plate did not say if any of the suspects had been charged. “The investigations are ongoing,” he said. Amateur videos from the night show groups of young men jumping around chaotically, shooting fireworks into the crowd and pushing bystanders. A full police report on the evening is due in the coming days. The CDU has called for tougher penalties against offending asylum seekers in response. A draft paper seen by Reuters before the party leadership’s meeting in Mainz said migrants who have been sentenced to prison or probation should be ineligible for asylum. “Why should German taxpayers pay to imprison foreign criminals?” said the vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, who leads the Social Democrats (SPD), Merkel’s coalition partner. The CDU paper calls for lower barriers to the deportation of criminal asylum seekers, increased video surveillance and the creation of a new criminal offence of physical assault. The incidents in and around the square in front of Cologne’s main train station have led to accusations of a police and media cover-up to avoid anti-foreigner sentiment following Merkel’s open-door policy towards refugees and migrants. About 1.1 million refugees and migrants arrived in Germany last year, far more than in any other European country, most of them fleeing war or deprivation in the Middle East. Evidence has emerged that similar attacks had taken place in seven other German cities. After Cologne, Hamburg appears to have been the worst affected. Of 167 complaints of attacks made to police - around two-thirds of them being described as sexual assault, including two cases of rape – 100 relate to Cologne and 53 to Hamburg. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/09/cologne-attacks-merkel-mulls-faster-deportation-for-migrant-criminals Cologne police chief fired as witness says NYE violence was coordinated http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/08/cologne-violence-suspects-include-asylum-seekers

Petition calling for US presidential candidate to be denied entry to UK on grounds of hate speech racks up nearly 225,000 signatures in 24 hours. Damien Gayle , Libby Brooks and Patrick Wintour Wednesday 9 December 2015 22.02 GMT The government has signalled it will not refuse the US presidential candidate Donald Trump entry to Britain following his controversial comments about Muslims, despite a petition calling for a ban gathering more than 325,000 signatures in just over 24 hours. At the height of its popularity on Wednesday afternoon, the petition, which calls for Trump to be stopped from entering Britain on the grounds of hate speech, was racking up more than 30,000 signatures an hour, according to parliament’s petitions website. Parliament considers all petitions that receive more than 100,000 signatures for a debate. The petition to ban Trump, which became open for signatures at 4.39pm Tuesday, had been signed by 325,090 people by 10pm on Wednesday. It says: “The signatories believe Donald J Trump should be banned from UK entry. The UK has banned entry to many individuals for hate speech. The same principles should apply to everyone who wishes to enter the UK. “If the United Kingdom is to continue applying the ‘unacceptable behaviour’ criteria to those who wish to enter its borders, it must be fairly applied to the rich as well as poor, and the weak as well as powerful.” The petition comes after Trump was widely criticised for saying on Monday that Muslims should be banned from entering the US. He said in a speech following a mass shooting committed by a Muslim couple in San Bernardino, California, last weekend: “We need a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States while we figure out what the hell is going on. We are out of control.” On Tuesday, there was widespread condemnation of Trump’s comments, including from fellow Republican presidential contenders. And later comments from the presidential hopeful in a radio interview that there were districts of London and Paris so “radicalised” that they were off limits to police led to further angry rebuttals from UK politicians and the police. The London Metropolitan police said Trump “could not be more wrong”, while the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: “London has a proud history of tolerance and diversity and to suggest there are areas where police officers cannot go because of radicalisation is simply ridiculous.” The UK chancellor, George Osborne, said on Wednesday it was best to combat Donald Trump through robust democratic debate and not to try to ban him from the UK on the grounds that his remarks incited racial hatred. Speaking at prime minister’s questions, Osborne said Trump’s views “flew in the face of the founding principles of the American founding fathers”, adding that those principles had been an inspiration all round the world. He continued: “The best way to defeat nonsense like this is to engage in robust and democratic debate, and to make it clear his views are not welcome.” Osborne’s aides said the previous occasions when foreigners had been banned from the UK reflected moments when individuals had been repeatedly convicted of race hate crimes, and this did not apply to Trump. A Downing Street spokesman said there were no known plans for Trump to visit the UK, so suggestions of a ban from Britain were hypothetical. He added the remarks should be seen in the context of an internal Republican election campaign. Jon Trickett, the shadow communities secretary, praised Osborne’s remarks as clear and straightforward. He said it was “entirely inappropriate to suggest every follower of one of the world’s great religions has to be suspected of terrorism”. He added it was “wrong, divisive, dangerous and may speed up the radicalisation of individuals”. Although he said it was interesting that 100,000 people had called for a ban, Trickett said he preferred staging a debate, rather than imposing travel bans. The home secretary can decide to exclude a person from the UK if it is believed that an “individual’s presence in the UK would not be conducive to the public good”, according to government guidance. In effect, that usually means people seen to be preaching hate or inciting extremism. However, individuals can also be blocked on the grounds of their criminal records. People previously banned from Britain include Mike Tyson, over his rape conviction, Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, the controversial French comedian accused of antisemitism, and Stephen Donald Black, founder of the white-supremacist website Stormfront. The Home Office said it did not comment in individual cases. Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon has moved to sever all Scottish government business links with Donald Trump. The first minister withdrew Trump’s membership of the GlobalScot business network, run by Scottish Enterprise, with immediate effect. A Scottish government spokesperson said: “Mr Trump’s recent remarks have shown that he is no longer fit to be a business ambassador for Scotland and the first minister has decided his membership of the respected GlobalScot business network should be withdrawn with immediate effect.” Sturgeon described Trump’s comments as “obnoxious and offensive”, and “rightly … condemned by people across the political spectrum”. Trump was invited to join the GlobalScot network, which describes itself as a “diverse network of business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives with a connection to Scotland”, in 2006. Meanwhile, more than 10,000 people have so far signed a petition calling for Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University (RGU) to revoke the honorary degree awarded to Trump in 2010 in recognition of his “business acumen and entrepreneurial vision”. The decision was controversial at the time, with a former RGU principal handing back his own honorary doctorate in protest. A RGU spokeswoman said the current principal, Ferdinand von Prondzynski, was “considering the position”, adding: “Professor von Prondzynski is totally committed to equality of opportunity and to respect for different cultures, values which are an important part of RGU’s ethos.” http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/09/petition-calling-for-donald-trump-to-be-banned-from-uk-signed-by-85000

Suspects attempted to destroy ‘digital fingerprints’ but Tashfeen Malik allegedly made pledge of allegiance to Isis in a Facebook post on day of the attack Rory Carroll in San Bernardino and Joanna Walters in New York Saturday 5 December 2015 14.34 GMT The San Bernardino shooting that killed 14 people is being investigated an act of terrorism, the FBI has confirmed, as it emerged that the couple who carried out the attack appear to have had links to Islamic State. “As of today, based on the information and the facts that we know … we are now investigating these horrific acts as an act of terrorism,” FBI assistant director David Bowdich told a press conference. The move comes after reports that the woman who helped slaughter 14 people in a gun massacre in California pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (Isis). Tashfeen Malik, 27, swore allegiance to the terror group in a Facebook post on Wednesday, the same day she and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, committed the rampage, US officials said on Friday, according to numerous media reports. A Facebook executive said Malik’s online post was made as the attacks began, the Associated Press reported. Law enforcement officials said it could be a “game changer” in the investigation. It is likely to shift political debate over the massacre – the worst mass shooting in the US in three years – from gun control to terrorism, immigration and radical Islam. Speaking later in Washington DC, FBI director James Comey said the investigation had been taken on by his agency amid indications of radicalisation by the killers, and because they had been potentially inspired by foreign terrorist organisations. However, he said there was “no indication that the killers are part of an organised larger group or form part of a cell. There is no indication that they are part of a network”. It has since emerged that Islamic State acknowledged the attacks in a regular radio broadcast, saying they had been carried out by “followers” of the group. “Two followers of Islamic State attacked several days ago a centre in San Bernadino in California, opening fire inside the centre, leading to the deaths of 14 people and wounding more than 20 others” the group’s daily broadcast al-Bayan said, giving information already widely reported. The statement stopped short of a full claim of responsibility. The assistant FBI director said that several pieces of evidence “essentially pushed us off the cliff to say we are now investigating this as an act of terrorism”. Bowdich confirmed that the two attackers had attempted to destroy their “digital fingerprints” and that two cellphones had been found, crushed, in a bin near the scene of the shooting. He confirmed that evidence was being retrieved from the phones, however, adding there has been “some telephonic connections between at least one of these individuals and other subjects of our investigation”. Bowdich said he knew of contacts made within the US, not overseas, but that the bureau was working with foreign partners to clarify that. He also confirmed that he was aware of the Facebook post that had been cited in earlier reports. He said there were no other suspects under arrest, adding that an “acquaintance” who bought two guns on behalf of Farook was so far not under arrest. He said he did not know whether Malik radicalised her husband. “Being a husband myself we’re all influenced to some extent, but I don’t know the answer.” The assistant director also expressed concern that the suspects were not on law enforcement radar before the attack. “Of course I’m concerned. We didn’t know. There’s nothing that we’ve seen yet that would’ve triggered us to know.” But he added: “Is it possible there may be future arrests? We don’t know. Are there others and are they based in the US, are they outside the US – we don’t know the answer.” Malik, who was Pakistani, and Farook, 28, an Illinois-born US citizen and the son of Pakistani immigrants, died in a shootout with police hours after killing 14 people and wounding 21 in the Inland Regional Center social services agency in San Bernardino, about 60 miles (100km) east of Los Angeles. Most of the victims were Farook’s colleagues. Citing law enforcement officials and government sources, Reuters, the Associated Press, CNN and the New York Times reported that Malik pledged allegiance to the Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on Facebook. CNN’s sources said she made the posts while the attack was happening. Other accounts said she used an alias and deleted the messages before the attack. The officials said investigators were still looking into additional motives, including possible workplace tensions over religion. Farook, described by relatives and colleagues as a quiet, reserved and devout Muslim, was a county environmental health inspector. He had been attending a day-long training session, with a holiday-themed luncheon, before leaving mid-morning and returning with Malik. Both wore masks and combat-style black clothing and wielded assault rifles, according to witnesses. One of the dead was Nicholas Thalasinos, a Jewish colleague with outspoken views, and blog postings, about Islam and jihadis. He reportedly had a heated argument with Farook about two weeks before the massacre. There are unconfirmed reports that Farook may have been involved in another argument shortly before leaving the gathering. The couple appeared to have prepared for a dramatic, bloody confrontation: they stockpiled pipe bombs and thousands of rounds of ammunition at home and several days before the attack deleted their electronic information, according to the officials who briefed the media. Several days earlier they also rented a black SUV, used in their dramatic final gun battle with police. Before heading to the Inland Regional Center they left their six-month-old daughter with Farook’s mother, saying they had a medical appointment. ‘I think he married a terrorist’ Malik’s alleged oath to Isis intensified scrutiny on her role and background. She was born in Pakistan and travelled on a Pakistani passport, and recently lived in Saudi Arabia. She apparently met Farook online – he posted profiles on Muslim dating websites – and met in person when he travelled to Saudi Arabia last year. They came to the US together in July 2014, Bowdich told a news conference. Malik traveled with K-1 visa, which lets people enter the US to marry an American citizen. Christian Nwadike, who worked with Farook for five years, told CBS that his co-worker had been different since he returned from Saudi Arabia. “I think he married a terrorist,” Nwadike said. Syed Nisar Hussain Shah, one of Malik’s professors in the pharmacy department at Bahauddin Zakariya University, said she was a diligent student and one of the small minority of women who wore a veil. “She remained always in a veil and she was not mixing with other students. She was shy,” he said. During her studies she lived with other students in the women’s hostel at the university. After completing her five-year course in 2012 she moved to Saudi Arabia to be with her parents, Dr Shah said. Comey said hundreds of officers were working on the case around the world and a large volume of electronic data was being exploited even though the killers had tried to conceal their movements. Without going into detail, he said there were elements of the evidence that “did not make sense” to investigators. The alleged Isis connection will tilt political debate over the massacre from gun control to immigration, radical Islam and national security, potentially boosting Donald Trump, Ben Carson and other Republican presidential contenders who have focused on those issues. Obama said the attack may have been motivated by a mix of reasons, including extremist ideology. Publicly, the FBI continued to reserve judgment. “We don’t know the motive,” Bowdich said on Thursday. “We cannot rule anything out at this point. We don’t know if this was the intended target or there was something that triggered him to do this immediately.” On Friday, David Chelsey, a lawyer for Farook and Malik’s family, said many details “do not add up”. “There are a lot of disconnects and there are a lot of unknowns and there are a lot of things that quite frankly don’t add up, or seem implausible,” he told CNN. Later at a news conference in Los Angeles, the lawyers played down any terrorist link and suggested loneliness and teasing at work may have contributed to the attack. “Someone made fun of his beard. He was a very isolated, introverted individual with really no friends that we could identify,” Chesley said. They said the alleged link to terrorism was tenuous. “All there is thus far is some nebulous thing that someone looked at something on Facebook,” said Chesley. Visiting a page did not signify endorsement, he added. The lawyers disputed the characterisation of Malik as a terrorist who radicalised her husband, saying she was a soft-spoken housewife who cared for the couple’s infant daughter. Farhan Khan, who is married to one of Farook’s sisters, told NBC News he had begun legal proceedings to adopt the couple’s daughter. He lashed out at his late brother-in-law. “You left your six-month-old daughter,” Khan said. “In this life some people cannot have kids. God gave you a gift of a daughter. And you left that kid behind … What did you achieve?” Candlelit vigils drew thousands of people, including Muslim, Christian and other faith leaders, across San Bernardino on Thursday night. On Friday, some streets that had been sealed off were reopened, restoring a semblance of normality to a city still coming to terms with its loss. The dead victims, five women and nine men, ranged in age from 26 to 60. They included a father of six, a coffee shop owner, a physical education teacher, a health inspector who followed his love to California, a mother who fled Iran to start a new life, and the cousin of a New York Giants player. The loss of life was the country’s worst since the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Thirteen of the dead worked for the county health department, said a spokeswoman, Felisa Cardona. “It’s an unspeakable tragedy of this magnitude. It’s just devastating to fellow employees and it’s devastating to the community.” After police vacated Malik and Farook’s home it briefly became a media circus when journalists entered and rifled through it, inspecting ID documents, baby books, a crib and other items before being ushered out by the landlord. He then boarded up the property. This undated combination of photos provided by the FBI, left, and the California Department of Motor Vehicles shows Tashfeen Malik, left, and Syed Farook. Photograph: AP http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/04/san-bernardino-shooting-tashfeen-malik-isis-connection

In an exclusive interview, the Republican critiques Obama’s Isis strategy and national security views of fellow presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump – and pushes back on the response to the Syrian refugee crisis Sabrina Siddiqui in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Sunday 22 November 2015 13.40 GMT Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio has vowed to use American forces to inflict “high-profile, humiliating defeats” on Islamic State jihadis, to show the world they are not invincible. In an interview with the Guardian while he campaigned across Iowa this weekend, the Florida senator detailed a strategy to fight Isis that left no options off the table – including US ground troops to support a coalition led by Sunni nations. In a wide-ranging examination of US foreign policy, he also: Dismissed Donald Trump’s controversial plan to broadly target mosques and create Muslim registries as “not a serious proposal”. Accused Republican rivals Ted Cruz and Rand Paul of taking steps that would weaken American defense and intelligence-gathering capabilities. Signalled that he would not be able to work with Russia as a partner in attempting to resolve the chaos in Syria. Rubio spoke during a swing through Iowa, one week after the terrorist attacks on Paris that killed 130 people and injured hundreds more. The aftermath of those attacks and the stated threat of similar violence in Brussels provided a greater sense of urgency to his pitch for a more hawkish foreign policy. Speaking with the Guardian, Rubio criticized Barack Obama for having only “components of a strategy” but no comprehensive plan to take on Isis. He nonetheless maintained that “the bulk of the ground work” would rest on the shoulders of Sunni Arabs in the region. “The only way to defeat Isis is for Sunni Arabs themselves to reject them ideologically and defeat them militarily,” Rubio said. “They must be defeated on the ground with a ground force that is made up primarily of Arab Sunni fighters from Iraq, from Syria, but also from Jordan, from Egypt, from the Emirates, from Saudi Arabia.” While the US would need to support that coalition with increased airstrikes and by embedding special operations forces on the ground, he said, Rubio would not specify the number of American ground troops that might be needed, nor would he place a limit on what that commitment might look like. “I believe it will require some level of special operators on the ground,” he said, “to subject Isis to high-profile, humiliating defeats, to sort of reverse this narrative that they’ve created that they are an invincible force.” Rubio said the size of such an American special operations force “would depend on our military tacticians to outline a strategy and tell us what the commitment would be. “Whatever it is, we’re going to do that. If you’re going to engage militarily, you have to ensure you have the resources to win, not simply to have a symbolic gesture. “So unlike this president, our troop strength in an effort like that will be determined by what’s necessary to achieve victory, not some artificial constraint or an artificial number that I make up in my own head.” Obama has rejected calls for major ground forces in Iraq and Syria, a position he maintained after the Paris attacks. “It is not just my view, but the view of my closest military and civilian advisers, that that would be a mistake,” the president told reporters at the G20 summit meeting in Turkey last week. Rubio has also joined calls for the imposition of a no-fly zone in Syria. Asked how this could avoid conflict with Russia, which is also carrying out airstrikes in the country, he said: “Russia says it’s there to fight against Isis. Our no-fly zone would not have Isis fighters in it.” He added: “The problem is, I don’t think Russia’s geopolitical interests overlap ours at this moment. Other than that they now have a motive for some revenge attacks against Isis [after the downing of a Metrojet airliner, an attack claimed by Isis], their goal in this region is to prop up [bashar al-Assad]. And as long as Assad is in power, there will be no solution to this problem.” At a campaign rally in West Des Moines on Saturday, Rubio laid into Obama publicly for what he said was a “feckless” approach to the turmoil in the Middle East. He also rebuked the president for “spending more time attacking Republicans than talking about how he would attack Isis”. Obama has, on a number of occasions over the last week, condemned Republican presidential candidates over their opposition to accepting more Syrian refugees after the tragedy in Paris. “He accused us of being xenophobes because we want to protect America,” Rubio told the crowd, who had braved the first snowstorm of the season in the midwest to see him speak. The senator told the Guardian there had been “a fundamental distortion” of what the refugee debate was about. “This is not about turning away Muslim refugees, this is not about turning away refugees,” he said. “It’s not that we don’t want to accept refugees, it’s not that we’re going to have a religious test. It’s that you may not be able to fully vet everyone and if you can’t vet someone, you can’t let them in.” Other Republican presidential contenders, such as Cruz and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, have pushed for allowing in only Christian refugees fleeing war-torn Syria. Cruz even attempted to pass legislation specifically barring Middle Eastern refugees from entering the US for a period of three years, while Kentucky senator Rand Paul pushed bills to ban the resettlement of refugees from 34 “high-risk” countries and strip refugees from those nations of access to social welfare assistance. Trump has gone a step further with a series of controversial statements in the last week. The real estate billionaire said his administration would close down some mosques and later backed the idea of creating a national registry for Muslims. Rubio pushed back on Trump’s suggestion, arguing it was “not a serious proposal”. “We have a registry of people that come into the country, so that’s not by religious affiliation, it’s a registry of people that are here on visas or people who have immigrated here,” Rubio said. Rubio reiterated his view that any facility where terrorism was inspired – be it a mosque, community center, or website – should be targeted. But he added that “the enormous majority of mosques in this country have nothing to do with radical Islam”. “We need to focus in on areas where people are being radicalized, but that doesn’t mean you go around saying you’re going to target specifically centers of worship.” Ever since Rubio declared his candidacy in April, foreign policy has been a cornerstone of his campaign. The senator routinely indicts the Obama administration’s handling of international affairs into his stump speech, criticisms which have only grown sharper in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. In addition to being a longtime critic of Obama’s policy toward Syria, Rubio ranks among the most vocal opponents of the nuclear deal in Iran and is a staunch defender of National Security Agency surveillance. The latter distinguishes Rubio from Cruz and Paul, the other first-term senators seeking the Republican nomination. Unlike Rubio, they have sided with civil liberties advocates and backed legislation reining in the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records. And while Cruz and Paul have escalated attacks on Rubio for co-authoring a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2013 they claim loosened security at the US border, Rubio has responded in kind by highlighting their votes on issues pertaining to defense. “They make that argument to distract from their own record on national security,” Rubio said in the interview. “Both Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have voted to weaken the Defense Department ... Ted Cruz recently joined with Rand Paul to weaken our intelligence programs.” Rubio’s willingness to throw punches at his opponents marks a shift from the early months of his campaign, when he repeatedly declined to respond to attacks from other Republicans. But with a crowded Republican field, the race remains wide open. As the Iowa caucuses approach, Rubio is seeking to build on momentum gained from strong debate performances. The inching of voter priorities towards national security could prove an asset. “The national security of our country is the most important issue that the federal government deals with,” he said, “and our next commander-in-chief has to be someone with a strong record on national security.” http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/22/marco-rubio-isis-strategy-us-troops-exclusive-interview

• Masked attacker posed for picture with students before killing spree • Assailant, who was shot dead by police, said to have far-right sympathies • Premier calls attack a ‘black day’ for country as two patients remain critical David Crouch in Gothenburg Thursday 22 October 2015 18.22 BST Sweden has reacted with shock and horror after a teacher and pupil were stabbed to death in a school with a high number of immigrants by a masked man who was reported to have far-right sympathies. The man, who posed with students before starting his killing spree, was shot dead by police. There were scenes of panic in Trollhättan, an industrial city near Gothenburg, on Thursday as parents and pupils crowded outside Kronan school in the aftermath of the killings among large numbers of police and ambulances. “It is a black day for Sweden,” said the prime minister, Stefan Löfven, before rushing to the city. King Carl Gustaf said Sweden was “in shock” following the attack and that the royal family received the news “with great dismay and sadness”. A teacher died at the scene, while an 11-year-old died later in hospital from stab wounds. Two more students were in a critical condition on Thursday night. Police said they had identified the attacker as a 21-year-old male but gave no further information. The killings took place in a school with a high proportion of immigrants, raising fears the killer’s motives may have been racist. The anti-racist organisation Expo, citing reliable sources, said it knew the identity of the attacker, who “during the past month showed clear sympathies with the extreme right and anti-immigration movements”. Daniel Poohl, from the organisation, said: “It is too early to say anything concrete about the killer’s motives, but perhaps he was a lone wolf with far-right sympathies. This is traumatic for Sweden, something we haven’t seen before.” Soon after the attacks, which happened at about 10am (0900 BST) on Thursday morning, a picture emerged of an ordinary school day that turned suddenly into a scene of terror. “When we first saw him we thought it was a joke. He had a mask and black clothes and a long sword. There were students who wanted to go with him and hold the sword,” a student at the school told Swedish broadcaster SVT. Mobile phone images of the suspect show a man in a helmet resembling that used by the Nazis, holding a sword and wearing what was described as a Star Wars mask. According to several witnesses, he allowed himself to be photographed with students, who took it to be a Halloween prank. Police said the man carried more than one weapon, including “at least one knife-like object”. “One of my classmates’ sisters called her to warn her there was a murderer at the school,” a pupil told TheLocal.se. “So we locked the door to the classroom, but our teacher was still outside in the corridor. We wanted to warn him, so a few of us went outside and then I saw the murderer, he was wearing a mask and had a sword. Our teacher got stabbed. The murderer started chasing me, I ran into another classroom. If I had not run, I would have been murdered.” In a week when Sweden has basked in international attention after Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said the US needed to move closer to Scandinavia, Swedes now fear that, on the contrary, the country is emulating the violence familiar to US schools. No one has died in school violence in the country since 1961, when one young person died and six were injured at a shooting at a school near Gothenburg. Police say they foiled a planned school shooting in Malmö in 2004, and threats of violence have occurred elsewhere. But the tragedy in Trollhättan has forced Swedes to ask if the traditional openness of their society may be putting pupils and teachers at risk. The school’s cafeteria and library were both open to the public. “Of course schools should be open to society, but not like this, not so anyone can walk in,” said Bo Johansson, head of the teachers’ union. “I am not sure we want a situation like in the US with detectors and security guards, but in workplaces, offices and apartments you have security – why should schools have a worse situation?” In June, the Swedish Schools Inspectorate fined the city council 600,000 kronor (£46,000....$70,819) for “substantial shortcomings in the areas of security and the study environment” at Kronan school. The inspectorate found a high turnover of staff, who lived in fear of some students and struggled to keep order. This week, the cross-party education group on Trollhattän city council visited the school to look at the security situation. After Thursday’s attack, councillor Peter Eriksson, of the opposition Conservatives, said the cafeteria should be closed to the public “because it creates a precarious situation for the students”. But other councillors defended the school, which was only six years old and had seen substantial investment. “This kind of thing could happen in any school,” said Sofia Andersson, for the ruling Social Democrats in the city. It is difficult to speak about security measures in a Swedish context because people want an open society, said Magnus Lindgren, of the Safer Sweden foundation. “In recent years cities that were already safe have become even more safe, but neighbourhoods that already had problems with crime have got worse – we can see a polarisation.” With more than 400 pupils, Kronan school is at the heart of Kronogården, a disadvantaged area where more than half the population was born abroad. Trollhättan has been named by researchers as the most highly segregated city in Sweden, with immigrants concentrated in Kronogården. The neighbourhood was among 38 named this month as Sweden’s most vulnerable in a report on “forgotten suburbs”. There has been a tense debate over immigration and asylum in Sweden, with the far-right seeking to exploit incidents of violence involving immigrants. In August, a refused asylum seeker stabbed two people to death in an Ikea store near Stockholm, causing a storm of outrage. There has been a spate of apparent arson attacks on refugee accommodation in the past week. Two hours before the attack in Trollhättan, officials announced Sweden was expecting to receive as many as 190,000 refugees this year – twice previous estimates. This picture, made available to AFP by a student, shows the masked man posing for a photo with pupils before the attack. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Onlookers stand outside a cordoned area after the attack. Photograph: Tt News Agency/Reuters http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/22/pupils-wounded-in-sword-attack-at-swedish-school

By Kristen Holloway and Brandon Rook Published: October 4, 2015, 6:30 am Updated: October 4, 2015, 11:13 pm WHITE PINE,TN. (WATE) — A shooting Sunday morning in White Pine left an 8-year-old girl dead and an 11-year-old boy arrested on first-degree murder charges. Jefferson County Sheriff G.W “Bud” McCoig said the boy shot the girl in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun, from inside his home along Robin Road. Sheriff McCoig said the gun belonged to the boy’s father. The boy’s name is not being released at this time. According to her mother, McKayla Dyer, 8, was found lying on the ground with a gunshot wound to her chest. She was taken to Morristown-Hamblen hospital, where she later died. “She was a precious little girl, she was a mommy’s girl, no matter how bad of a mood you were in she could always make you smile,” said McKayla Dyer’s mother, Latasha Dyer. Latasha Dyer said her daughter was outside playing when her next door neighbor, an 11-year-old boy, asked to see her puppy. She said her daughter told the boy “no” and shortly after the 11-year-old boy shot her. The shooting wasn’t the first time their family had problems with the boy, according to Latasha Dyer. “When we first moved to White Pine, the little boy was bullying McKayla,” Latasha Dyer said. “He was making fun of her, calling her names just being mean to her, I had to go the principal about him and he quit for a while and then all of a sudden yesterday he shot her.” WATE 6 On Your Side reached out to the boy’s family for comment, but received no answer. Latasha Dyer says she’s heartbroken and their entire family is devastated. “I want her back in my arms, this is not fair, hold and kiss you’re babies every night because you’re never promised the next day with them,” said Latasha Dyer. “I hope the little boy learned his lesson because he took my baby’s life and I can’t get her back.” Both children were White Pine Elementary students according to Sheriff McCoig. http://wate.com/2015/10/04/8-yr-old-girl-dies-in-white-pine-shooting-police-arrest-11-yr-old-suspect/

CNN moderators struggle to maintain order as candidates engage in a series of face-offs, with the former HP CEO and Marco Rubio winning over audience Rory Carroll and Tom McCarthy in Simi Valley, California Thursday 17 September 2015 06.44 BST The race for the Republican presidential nomination entered a new and more aggressive phase as multiple candidates assailed Donald Trump’s fitness to lead the United States in a raucous debate on Wednesday night. Rival candidates used the three-hour CNN debate to try to rein in the frontrunner and assert their own credentials for the White House, with the only female contender, Carly Fiorina, making a significant breakthrough. With 11 people on stage the second debate, hosted at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, ranged widely over immigration, abortion, jobs, national security, Iran, same-sex rights, marijuana and climate change, but was dominated by attacks on Trump, who counter-attacked with gusto. Afterwards all sides claimed victory, but there was widespread agreement that Fiorina, the former head of Hewlett-Packard, shone as an articulate, forceful outsider who hammered Trump as well as H-illary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner whose name came up 32 times. With the mood swinging from a rollicking family argument to uncomfortably personal confrontation to shared disdain for liberals, the debate showcased a race with an unusual number of candidates from unusually diverse backgrounds making creative plays for the Republican base. The face-offs were encouraged by CNN moderator Jake Tapper, who repeatedly asked candidates what they thought of negative things the others had earlier been quoted as saying about them. Fiorina dismissed Trump as an “entertainer”. Rand Paul, the libertarian Kentucky senator, called him “sophomoric”. Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor, said the billionaire turned politician was unqualified. “Mr Trump, we don’t need an apprentice in the White House. We have one now.” Trump characteristically gave as good as he got. “In Wisconsin you’re losing $2.2bn right now,” he told Walker. “I would do so much better than that.” He also lambasted Paul and Fiorina, saying the latter ruined Hewlett-Packard. Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, repeatedly tangled with the frontrunner, including a claim that he stopped Trump from trying to establish casinos in his state. Trump denied he had ever wanted a Florida casino. “I promise, if I wanted it, I would’ve gotten it,” he said, adding mockingly of Bush: “I like this. More energy tonight.” He has frequently described Bush as the “low-energy candidate”. It was one of many applause lines embraced by a crowd that noticeably warmed to others onstage as the night went on, especially Florida senator Marco Rubio and Fiorina. She drew strong applause for an impassioned attack on Planned Parenthood, the women’s healthcare provider, for what she said was profiteering on fetal tissue. Officials from the group had been videotaped discussing fees related to fetal tissue use in research. “This is about the character of our nation,” Fiorina said. She won equal applause when confronting Trump, who had been quoted as criticizing Fiorina’s face. He later said he had been criticizing her “persona”. “I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr Trump said,” Fiorina said. Trump made an attempt at chivalry. “I think she’s got a beautiful face, and I think she’s a beautiful woman,” he said. Fiorina betrayed no amusement at the remark. Later, as Trump and Fiorina argued over who had made more business missteps, Christie jumped in to object to the personal combat. “You’re both successful people – congratulations,” Christie said, but time would be better spent talking about the middle class. “Let’s start talking about those issues tonight, and stop this childish back-and-forth between the two of you.” The exchanges were characteristic of a night in which candidates who did not speak up often were consigned to 10 minutes or more of silence. Ben Carson, who has been competing almost neck and neck with Trump in some polls, spoke relatively little in the first half of the event. Later he spoke up to knock down an insinuation by Trump that there was a correlation between vaccination and autism cases. “He’s an OK doctor,” Carson joked. “But the fact of the matter is, we have extremely well documented evidence that there’s no autism associated with vaccinations.” With the sun setting over the rugged landscape, the candidates stood inside, some sweating under the TV lights, at glassy lecterns spanning an elevated stage erected in front of the airplane that served as Air Force One during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The crowd occasionally broke through with enthusiastic applause despite CNN’s request for no cheering between speakers. One perhaps unexpected recipient of applause was former president George W Bush, who was attacked by Trump as having performed poorly enough to have ushered in a Democratic president. “Your brother’s administration gave us Barack Obama,” Trump told his Bush. “The last three months were so bad, not even Abraham Lincoln could get elected.” The former Florida governor hit back. “There’s one thing I remember,” Bush said, to a crescendo of clapping. “He kept us safe. He sent a clear signal. He would keep us safe.” Spokespersons for the candidates proclaimed them victors in an adjacent media “spin room”. Bush “shut down” Trump for much of the debate, said Trent Wisecap, a Bush spinner. “It put him back on his heels.” Robert O’Brien, a spinner for Walker, put a positive interpretation on Walker being ignored for much of the debate. “Everyone else took a hit. Scott Walker did not take a hit. No one laid a glove on him.” He said the governor’s lack of a knockout blow did not matter. “I don’t think in early September a breakthrough moment is necessary.” Before the debate the race had tightened significantly, according to national polling. Trump’s double-digit lead ahead of the Republican field has disappeared in at least two recent polls. A CBS News/New York Times poll published Tuesday showed Trump ahead of Carson nationally by only four points, 27%-23%, while a Monmouth University poll late last month showed the two candidates tied in Iowa. In national polling averages, Trump still held a 12-point advantage, but he was losing ground to Carson, who has jumped from about six points on average up to 18 points in the last month. The debate was preceded by a warm-up event featuring four candidates trailing in the polls: former governor George Pataki, former senator Rick Santorum, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham. They clashed over immigration and birthright citizenship – the right of anyone born in the United Staes to become a citizen, something that has become a controversial issue in the Republican race. Graham invoked the former president pro tempore of the senate from his home state of South Carolina in support of his argument for changing the policy of granting citizenship at birth. “Strom Thurmond had four kids after 67 years old,” Graham said. “If you’re not willing to do that, we better come up with a new legal immigration system.” The first GOP debate, broadcast by Fox News, attracted 24 million viewers, a record for non-sports cable broadcasting. This one ended with a lightning round that featured Bush suggesting that Margaret Thatcher should be on the $10 bill. The next Republican debate is scheduled for 28 October in Boulder, Colorado. The Democrats are to hold a debate on 13 October in Las Vegas, Nevada. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/17/carly-fiorina-donald-trump-republican-debate-cnn-jeb-bush

PM says Hungary facing ‘a rebellion by illegal migrants’ as officers filmed throwing sandwiches towards desperate crowds at centre in Röszke Peter Walker and agencies Friday 11 September 2015 14.44 BST Hungarian police are investigating a video showing police in surgical masks throwing packs of sandwiches to refugees clamouring for food at a reception centre, as the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, claimed the country was facing “a rebellion by illegal migrants”. The footage, posted on the YouTube channel of the Austrian politician Alexander Spritzendorfer, and supposedly taken by his wife, Michaela Spritzendorfer-Ehrenhauser, is said to have been taken at a refugee camp in Röszke on Hungary’s border with Serbia, where tens of thousands of refugees have gathered. Hungarian police told Reuters that they had launched an emergency inquiry into the video. In Hungary, Orbán defended police in remarks to reporters, claiming refugees had rebelled against Hungarian authorities, seized railway stations and rejected registration in the past few days. “Considering that we are facing a rebellion by illegal migrants, police have done their job in a remarkable way, without using force,” he said, adding that from 15 September, when tough laws on immigration take effect, those who cross Hungary’s border illegally will be arrested. Zoltán Kovács, a spokesman for the Hungarian government, said the police in the footage were attempting to maintain order in trying circumstances. “I can see policemen who have been performing their duties for months, trying to take care of 23,000 migrants arriving continuously day by day, while there is no cooperation whatsoever on their part. I can see they are trying to maintain order among those who are unable to line up for food,” he said. Human Rights Watch said conditions were “abysmal” at the Röszke camp. “The detainees at Röszke are held in filthy, overcrowded conditions, hungry and lacking medical care,” said Peter Bouckaert, HRW Emergencies Director, citing video footage and interviews with people who had passed through the camp or were still there. Hungary was on Friday among four central European countries whose foreign ministers reiterated their opposition to an EU plan for national quotas in accepting refugees across the bloc. The Czech foreign minister, Lubomír Zaorálek, who hosted his counterparts from Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, told reporters: “We need to have control over how many we are capable of accepting.” The EU president, Donald Tusk, said he would call a summit of EU leaders if there was no agreement on the refugee dispersal. “The time has come to take decisions. From that meeting, we will need a concrete, positive sign of solidarity and unity,” he told reporters on a trip to Cyprus. There have been growing signs of Hungary’s inability to handle the arrival of more than 170,000 people this year, seeking sanctuary in Europe from war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. On Thursday alone, police recorded 3,601 refugees on the border, according to official data. On Friday the UN refugee agency said it was sending pre-fabricated housing units for 300 families to Hungary to help provide temporary overnight shelter for some of the arrivals. William Spindler, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the agency was “closely following” the way people were being treated in the country. He said: “Obviously we expect authorities to respect rights of refugees whether they are the police or army”. The UNHCR is also sending emergency supplies for 95,000 people to the region wider region, he added. At the same briefing, Spindler welcomed an offer by the US to take at least 10,000 Syrian refugees, while saying this remained insufficient: “Of course the United States could and should do much more, but it is a step in the right direction.” Spritzendorfer-Ehrenhauser said she took the detention centre video footage while delivering sanitary supplies to refugees with the Hungarian Red Cross. “It was about 8pm and they were giving dinner to people,” she said. There were maybe 100 people trying to catch these plastic bags with sausages ... They were not able to organise a camp and treat them like human beings.” While the UNHCR has praised the Hungarian police’s handling of the crisis, officers have complained of being forced to work long hours in impossible conditions. Vincent Cochetel, the commission’s regional refugee coordinator, said: “It is not easy at the border, it was tense at the railway station and there is no quick fix because people sometimes are angry, they are sometimes aggressive, sometimes for good reason, sometimes for bad reason.” Those stranded at the Hungarian border have waited days to be registered, while conditions at makeshift frontier camps are basic. Medical care for the crowds at Budapest’s railway stations has been provided entirely by volunteers. The bulk of those arriving in the country are seeking to travel westwards, mainly to Austria and on to Germany to claim asylum. Thousands of people are now walking to Vienna from Austria’s main border crossing point with Hungary after rail traffic was suspended due to overcrowding. Refugees walking to Vienna ( map in link) Austrian Federal Railways said it no longer had the capacity to deal with the thousands of people at the Nickelsdorf crossing wanting to board trains daily to the Austrian capital. The German defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, said 4,000 troops had been put on standby ahead of the expected arrivals. She said the would be able “to help out in emergency cases” and would exercise “maximum goodwill” toward the refugees. Also on Friday, another arm of the UN warned that many more people in Syria could seek to head to Europe if there is no end to the war there. Peter Salama, Univef’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said: “There could be millions and millions more refugees leaving Syria and ultimately to the European Union and beyond.” According to Macedonia’s state news agency, around 7,600 refugees, mainly Syrians, entered the country during 12 hours overnight into Friday, the highest number seen so far. “We have information from our Greek colleagues that more migrants are travelling towards the Macedonian border in buses,” Alexandra Krause of the UNHCR was quoted as saying, according to AFP. Most of the arrivals register with authorities before being taken by bus north to the Serbian border, and then on to Hungary. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/11/refugees-roszke-hungary-police-food-camp