In Brief: Nation & World: 12-13-16
Trump’s criticism of Russia hacking claim could haunt him
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump held firm Monday to his skepticism of the huge intelligence apparatus he’s about to inherit, doubting anew the CIA conclusion that Russia tried to hack its way into tipping the U.S. election his way.
Trump emphasized that he does not accept the conclusion that the Kremlin tried to disrupt the election in his favor, an idea he dismissed as “ridiculous” over the weekend. He also demanded to know why the subject hadn’t been raised before Election Day — which it was, repeatedly.
The focus of reporting by leading news organizations, the issue has been in the headlines since at least June — after hackers broke into computers at the Democratic National Committee, after WikiLeaks began publishing Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman’s hacked emails in October and after the Obama administration publicly blamed Russia’s government, also in October.
“Unless you catch ‘hackers’ in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking,” Trump tweeted Monday. “Why wasn’t this brought up before election?”
Trump himself had raised questions during a presidential debate in September about whose hackers were responsible, after Clinton blamed Russia. “She keeps saying ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’ and maybe it was. It could be Russia, but it could be China, could also be lots of other people,” Trump said then. “It could be someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”
———
Trump targets F-35, but aircraft means jobs in 45 states
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is vowing to corral the “out of control” cost of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. But congressional Republicans and Democrats, aware of the tens of thousands of jobs the aircraft generates in 45 states, will be wary of any plans by Trump to cut the program.
A Monday morning tweet from Trump targeting the F-35 doesn’t explain exactly how he’ll save billions of dollars in military purchases while also honoring a campaign vow to rebuild the armed forces. Once Trump is in office, he can propose deep cuts to the F-35 or even elect to cancel the program altogether. But Congress, not the president, controls the government’s purse strings and makes the final decisions about the budget.
Built by defense giant Lockheed Martin, the nearly $400 billion price tag for the F-35 makes the program the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons acquisition ever. Despite the huge cost, the program has strong bipartisan support in Congress, where lawmakers view the aircraft as essential to national security.
After Trump’s tweet, Lockheed Martin’s shares tumbled, wiping out nearly $4 billion of the company’s market value. The F-35 program made up 20 percent of Lockheed’s total 2015 revenue of $46.1 billion. U.S. government orders made up 78 percent of its revenue last year.
“Whoever has this airplane will have the most advanced air force in the world. That’s why we’re building the F35. That’s why it’s important to not only the U.S., our partners and our partners like the Israeli Air force to have this airplane,” said Jeff Babione, general manager of the F-35 program, at a base in Israel.
———
Syria rebels retreat in Aleppo in ‘terrifying’ collapse
BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian rebels retreated from former strongholds in eastern Aleppo in a “terrifying” collapse Monday, holding onto a small sliver of territory packed with fighters and thousands of civilians as government troops pressed on with their rapid advance.
The Syrian military said it had gained control of 99 percent of the former opposition enclave in eastern Aleppo, signaling an impending end to the rebels’ four-year hold over parts of the city as the final hours of battle played out.
“The situation is very, very critical,” said Ibrahim al-Haj of the Syrian Civil Defense, volunteer first responders who operate in rebel-held areas. He said he was seeking shelter for himself and his family, fearing clashes or capture by the government.
Retaking Aleppo, which has been divided between rebel- and government-controlled zones since 2012, would be President Bashar Assad’s biggest victory yet in the country’s civil war. But it does not end the conflict: Significant parts of Syria are still outside government control and huge swaths of the country are a devastated waste-land. More than a quarter of a million people have been killed.
On Sunday, the Islamic State group re-occupied the ancient town of Palmyra, taking advantage of the Syrian army and its Russian backers’ preoccupation with the fighting in Aleppo. On Monday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS fighters were on the verge of imposing a siege on a nearby army base known as T4.
———
Pro-Kurd party members arrested in wake of Istanbul bombings
ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkish authorities arrested more than 200 people Monday following suicide bombings near an Istanbul stadium that killed 44 people. The arrests primarily targeted members of a Kurdish political party that already was a focus of a broader government crackdown.
Saturday’s attack, which a radical Kurdish group claimed as an act of revenge for state violence against the ethnic minority in the southeast, was the deadliest to hit Istanbul this year.
Authorities blamed the carnage on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. A shadowy offshoot of the movement, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the state, claimed responsibility for the attack on a website that is blocked in Turkey.
“This is definitely a repercussion of the current crackdown on the Kurdish people,” said Cenk Sidar, president of Sidar Global Advisors, a risk advisory group in Washington. “It seems likely (PKK) will go ahead with these high-casualty, low-cost attacks for them, and it is a very dangerous trend in the country.”
Turkey, a NATO member and a partner in the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State group, faces a myriad of internal and external security threats.
———
Recount efforts end: Trump wins in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania
Presidential election recount efforts came to an end Monday in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, with both states certifying Republican Donald Trump as the winner in contests that helped put him over the top in the Electoral College stakes.
Trump’s victory in Wisconsin was reaffirmed following a statewide vote recount that showed him defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton by nearly 23,000 votes. Meanwhile, a federal judge issued a stinging rejection of a Green Party-backed request to recount paper ballots in Pennsylvania’s presidential election and scan some counties’ election systems for signs of hacking.
Green Party candidate Jill Stein successfully requested and paid for the Wisconsin recount while her attempts for similar statewide recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan were blocked by the courts.
Stein got only about 1 percent of the vote in each of the three states that Trump narrowly won over Clinton. Stein argued, without evidence, that voting machines in all three states were susceptible to hacking. All three states were crucial to Trump’s victory, having last voted for a Republican for president in the 1980s.
The numbers barely budged in Wisconsin after nearly 3 million votes were recounted. Trump, a billionaire New York real estate mogul, picked up 131 votes and still won by 22,748 votes. The final results changed just 0.06 percent.
———
Suspect in Egypt chapel bombing had 2014 run-in with police
CAIRO (AP) — The young man suspected of blowing himself up inside a Cairo chapel during Sunday Mass, killing at least 25 people, had been arrested and beaten by police two years ago after allegedly taking part in an Islamist demonstration, his lawyer said Monday.
If independently confirmed, Mahmoud Shafiq Mohammed Mustafa would be the latest Egyptian to be radicalized after being subjected to police abuse, a practice that was common for decades and has become rampant after a crackdown on dissent following the military’s 2013 ouster of an Islamist president.
Speaking after a state funeral for the victims, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said the suspect detonated a belt of explosives inside a chapel adjacent to St. Mark’s Cathedral, seat of Egypt’s ancient Coptic Orthodox Church. The over 100-year-old chapel was packed with worshippers.
The dead included more than 20 women and children. Forty-nine others were injured, according to the latest figures from the Health Ministry.
Mahmoud Hassan, one of Musafa’s lawyers, said his client, who was 16 at the time of his arrest, was tortured until he confessed to the possession of weapons and explosions. He also faced charges of membership in an “illegal organization,” Egyptian parlance for the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group of which former President Mohammed Morsi was a senior official.
———
Trump ups US ante on Taiwan, but China has leverage too
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump sounds ready to use U.S. policy toward Taiwan as a bargaining chip to extract concessions from China, but both of the world powers could play at that game.
China’s rising economic and military clout means its communist leadership has leverage over Washington too. Beijing could erect more obstacles for U.S. companies working in China. It could ramp up tensions in the seas of East Asia. And if differences spike over Taiwan, the Trump administration could face tough choices on whether to send U.S. forces to defend the island that China regards as part of its territory.
There’s been a delicate diplomatic balance since 1979 when the U.S. shifted formal recognition to China from Taiwan. Under the so-called “one China” policy, Washington acknowledges China’s claim to Taiwan but retains close informal ties and supplies the self-governing island with weapons. Trump said Sunday that he didn’t feel “bound by a one-China policy,” drawing Chinese condemnation.
“This was the agreement that underpinned the normalization of U.S.-China relations. If you throw that out the window then China may very well see this as opening up every other issue,” said Michael Fuchs, a former U.S. senior diplomat on East Asia.
———
Antonio Guterres sworn as UN secretary-general
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres was sworn in Monday as secretary-general of the United Nations, becoming the ninth U.N. chief in the body’s 71-year history.
The former U.N. refugee chief was elected to the top job by acclamation in the General Assembly in October. He takes over from Ban Ki-moon on Jan. 1.
Guterres, 67, performed well in answering questions before assembly members and his executive experience as prime minister and as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in 2005-2015 propelled him to first place among 13 candidates vying for the job in informal polls in the Security Council. After the sixth poll, the council nominated him by acclamation and his name was sent to the assembly for final approval.
After being sworn in by General Assembly President Peter Thomson, Guterres addressed the 193 member nations, saying the U.N. must work to simplify, decentralize and make more flexible its sprawling bureaucracy.
“It benefits no one if it takes nine months to deploy a staff member to the field,” he said. “The United Nations needs to be nimble, efficient and effective. It must focus more on delivery and less on process, more on people and less on bureaucracy.”
———
‘La La Land’ waltzes off with most Golden Globe nominations
The Golden Globes nominations had their usual quirks. “Deadpool,” really? But the nominees did little to disrupt the dominant trends of this year’s award season: that “La La Land” and “Moonlight” have separated themselves from a pack of richly diverse contenders.
“La La Land,” Damien Chazelle’s infectious Los Angeles musical, sang and danced its way to a leading seven Golden Globes nominations, including best picture musical or comedy, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced Monday in Los Angeles . Barry Jenkins’ lyrical three-part coming-of-age tale “Moonlight” trailed closely with six nods, including best drama.
Those two films have taken just about everyone top honor so far in Hollywood’s awards season, with Kenneth Lonergan’s tender, grief-filled New England drama “Manchester by the Sea” — which scored five nominations Monday, including best drama and best actor for Casey Affleck — consistently in the running, too.
But “La La Land,” with its show-stopping musical numbers and love affair with old Hollywood musicals, remains widely seen as the Academy Awards favorite. After setting records in its limited release over the weekend and winning a leading eight Critics’ Choice Awards on Sunday , it may be just beginning to flex its musical muscle.
“What a way to start a Monday,” said “La La Land” star Emma Stone.
