Twitter, Facebook close accounts linked to Spanish party

MADRID  — Twitter and Facebook say they have removed 365 fake accounts linked to Spain’s conservative Popular Party that were used to influence public opinion and spread spam.

Twitter said Friday it culled from the social network 265 accounts “operated by the party” that were “identified as falsely boosting public sentiment online in Spain.” The accounts were active before Spain’s April 29 general election.


Facebook says it removed 65 Facebook accounts and 35 Instagram accounts after it uncovered links to individuals associated with the Popular Party.

Facebook said the accounts had posts about politics, elections and criticism of the party’s opponents.


The Popular Party denies it ran the accounts.

The once-dominant party heavily lost the April election to Spain’s Socialists.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Microsoft offers software tools to secure elections

Microsoft has announced an ambitious effort to make voting secure, verifiable and subject to reliable audits by registering ballots in encrypted form so they can be accurately and independently tracked long after they are cast.

Two of the three top US elections vendors have expressed interest in potentially incorporating the open-source software into their voting systems.


The software is being developed with Galois, an Oregon-based company separately creating a secure voting system prototype under contract with the Pentagon’s advanced research agency, DARPA. Dubbed “ElectionGuard,” it will be available this summer, Microsoft says, with early prototypes ready to pilot for next year’s U.S. general elections.

CEO Satya Nadella announced the initiative Monday at a developer’s conference in Seattle, saying the software development kit would help “modernize all of the election infrastructure everywhere in the world.”

We are partnering with Microsoft to develop #ElectionGuard, a software development kit for secure, end-to-end verifiable elections. Overview by @n1nj4 here https://t.co/cfIlQIzERR @free_and_fair

— Galois (@galois) May 6, 2019

Three little-known U.S. companies control about 90 percent of the market for election equipment, but have long faced criticism for poor security, antiquated technology and insufficient transparency around their proprietary, black-box voting systems.

Open-source software is inherently more secure because the underlying code is easily scrutinized by outside experts but has been shunned by the dominant vendors whose customers — the nation’s 10,000 election jurisdictions — are mostly strapped for cash.

None offered bids when Travis County, Texas, home to Austin, sought to build a system with the “end-to-end” verification attributes that ElectionGuard promises to deliver.

Two of the leading vendors, Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Nebraska, and Hart InterCivic of Austin, Texas, both expressed interest in partnering with Microsoft for ElectionGuard. A spokeswoman for a third vendor, Dominion Voting Systems of Denver, said the company looks forward to “learning more” about the initiative.

Anyone with an existing voting system or developing a new one will be able to incorporate ElectionGuard — at the state or local level in the U.S. or national level for jurisdictions abroad.

“Once the barrier to entry is low enough, hopefully one of the vendors will go for it, and that will bring the rest of them in quickly enough,” said Dan Wallach, a Rice University computer scientist who assisted Travis County.

“It can be used with a ballot-marking device. It can be used with an optical scanner, on hand-marked paper ballots,” said Josh Benaloh, a senior cryptographer at Microsoft Research and key contributor to the ElectionGuard project.

Benaloh helped produce a National Academies of Science report last year that called for an urgent overhaul of the rickety U.S. election system, which Russian hackers infiltrated in 2016 in several states.

That report called for all U.S. elections to be held on human-readable paper ballots by 2020. It also advocated a specific form of routine postelection audits to ensure accurate vote counts — a requirement that “end-to-end’ voting verification satisfies.

Election integrity activist Susan Greenhalgh of the National Election Defense Coalition said she hoped it would encourage innovative thinking at the level elections are actually managed.

“We can’t have faith-based voting anymore,” she said. “This is a great step forward in verifying election results.”

ElectionGuard will let voters confirm that their votes are accurately recorded. Beyond that, the unique coded tracker it produces registers an encrypted version of the vote that keeps the ballot choice itself secret while ensuring votes are accurately counted.

That enables reliable postelection audits and recounts.

It also lets outsiders such as election watchdog groups, political parties, journalists — and voters themselves — verify online that votes are properly counted without being altered.

Microsoft executives say they also plan to build a prototype voting system for reference.

One election official who has been in informal conversations with the ElectionGuard project leaders is Dean Logan, who runs elections for Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, and is building an open-source voting system for it.

A spinoff of Galois called Free & Fair developed the sophisticated postelection audits , known as “risk-limiting,” for Colorado, which was the first U.S. state to require the audits recommended in the National Academies of Sciences report.

ElectionGuard is not designed to work with internet voting schemes — which experts consider too easily hackable — and does not currently work with vote-by-mail systems.

ES&S told The Associated Press via email that it was excited to partner with Microsoft and “still exploring the potentials” for incorporated the software kit its voting systems.

Hart InterCivic, the No. 3 vendor, said it planned a pilot project with Microsoft to “incorporate ElectionGuard functionality as an additional feature” layered over its core platform.

A spokeswoman for Dominion, the No. 2 vendor, said “We are very interested in learning more about the initiative and being able to review the various prototypes that are being planned, along with hearing more about other federally-supported efforts in the elections space.”

Edgardo Cortés, a former Virginia elections commissioner now with New York University’s Brennan Center, welcomed additional private sector support for election systems.


“I think it’ll take a while to catch on and see how beneficial (ElectionGuard) ends up being,” he said. “But I think it certainly does have a great deal of potential.”

Columbia University will be partnering with Microsoft to audit the pilots.


source: technology.inquirer.net

Trump economic agenda likely checked by Democratic election gains

WASHINGTON, United States – Against the backdrop of a strong economy, Republicans avoided blowout losses in the key US midterm vote but President Trump’s economic agenda will be sharply curtailed by Democratic gains.

With a divided Congress starting next year, and the 2020 race for the White House now underway, the polarization in Washington means major economic legislation is highly unlikely, analysts said following Tuesday’s nationwide elections.

However, Republicans almost certainly would have faced steeper losses if not for the low unemployment, rising wages and strong economic growth now prevailing, boosted by recent Republican-driven tax cuts as well as a bipartisan stimulus package in this year’s budget.

Despite the prospect of partisan deadlock in the new Congress, Wall Street rallied Wednesday as investors put the elections’ uncertainty behind them.

Analysts said the divided Congress meant there were few threats to profits from new legislation.

“I think the Democrats would certainly be a line of defense against any further tax cuts,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, senior economist at Oxford Economics.

“I think we may see gridlock on major things but some chance for agreement on a modest infrastructure package,” she told AFP.

Republican leaders had been bracing for a backlash against Trump, with the potential losses in the House of Representatives well beyond the 23 seats Democrats needed to seize control.

Some races were still too close to call early Wednesday but even with Democrats winning nearly 30 seats, the result clearly fell far short of Republicans’ worst fears of losing 40 or more.


Avoiding talk of the economy
The solid US economy likely stemmed the Republican losses.

“The economy is what’s keeping Republicans competitive despite Trump. It’s a very weird situation,” Gary Jacobson, emeritus professor of political science at the University of California San Diego, told AFP late Tuesday.


Republicans were caught in the crossfire between Trump’s unpopularity and the economy’s strength, he said.

“Normally a president with an economy like the one we have now would be 10, maybe even 20 points higher,” Jacobson said. “It’s clear that if the economy hadn’t been that good there would have been a real blow out.”

Republicans largely avoided campaigning on the 2017 tax cuts, which were passed without a single Democratic vote and which many voters saw as a giveaway to the wealthy and major corporations.

Even Trump focused on other issues, including stoking immigration fears to motivate his base in the campaign’s dying days.

“We can talk about the economy but the fact is we know how well we’re doing with the economy,” Trump said over the weekend at a Florida rally. “I want to solve problems.”

Midterm elections typically do not hinge on economic concerns and a CNN exit poll showed the economy ranked third among the most important issues for voters nationwide, behind health care and immigration but ahead of gun policy.

Democratic candidates highlighted on health care, seeking to capitalize on the many unpopular and unsuccessful Republican efforts to repeal the 2010 legislation providing access to affordable health care and protecting those with pre-existing medical conditions.

“The economy is too good to have to say anything about it in defense. That’s why it was health care, health care, health care,” John Aldrich, professor of political science at Duke University, told AFP.

But as the impact of last year’s tax cuts fade and Trump’s aggressive tariff policies bite harder, while the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates, the US economy is expected to slow next year.

And Trump — who said Democrats would “take a wrecking ball to our economy” — now has two ready-made scapegoats to blame for any slowdown: the Democratic-controlled House, and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who he has repeatedly attacked for raising rates.

Vanden Houten of Oxford Economics said she was not forecasting a recession by the time Trump faces reelection in 2020 but the odds were rising.

“The economy is definitely going to be more vulnerable about a year from now,” she said.

“I think by the time the presidential campaign is in full swing, it’s certainly going to be a fading expansion.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s newly renegotiated North American free trade deal — the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement — is likely to come up for a vote in 2019 but Democrats are unlikely to block it. /cbb

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

US voters head to the polls in a crucial midterm test for Trump

JEFFERSONVILLE, Indiana — Clara Swallows pulled herself out of bed. Her aching back made her want to stay put, but the 74-year-old in Indiana had somewhere she needed to be: the polls.

Seven hundred miles away in Florida, Stephanie Kent suspended repairs to her home — flooded during Hurricane Michael — and drove 20 miles out of the way to circumvent a still-closed bridge just to cast her ballot, too.

Like Swallows and Kent, more than 30 million Americans already have voted in a midterm election expected to draw unprecedented numbers by the time polls close Tuesday night. In casting their ballots for House and Senate races, voters will render a verdict on President Donald Trump’s tumultuous tenure, deciding whether his 2016 election was a one-off or if his divisive style of governing will define the future of American politics.

Swallows and Kent voted from opposite ends of the political schism. Swallows was determined to help put Democrats in office to curtail Trump’s agenda, while 54-year-old Kent committed to Republicans as a show of support for him. But both agreed this election was among the most important of their lifetimes.

“I woke up in pain, but I said I’m going to get out and do this,” said Swallows, a former Republican who has never before voted in a midterm. She cast her ballot for all Democrats, citing Trump’s stirring of racial and political tension. “I’m here to say that hatred is not going to win. We are not going to stand for it.”


Trump has sought to counter some of that rage toward his administration by stoking even more anger among his base.

In recent weeks, he’s put the spotlight on a caravan of Central American migrants fleeing poverty and violence that he calls “an invasion” of criminals and terrorists. He ran an advertisement about immigration so racially incendiary that all three major cable news networks, including Fox News, either refused to air it or eventually decided to stop showing it.

Among some Republican voters, that message resonated.


"This whole thing with this caravan is pretty scary,” said Jennifer Rager, 55, of Bozeman, Montana, who approves of Trump’s plans to crack down on immigration. She cast her ballot to keep Republicans in power so the president doesn’t become a lame duck. “It just feels like he’s really trying to do a good job of protecting our country, you know? I can’t wrap my head around why the other side is so unhappy and so terrified.”

In St. Louis, Susan Riebold, 53, posed for a photo with a cardboard cutout of Trump at a pre-Election Day rally for her Republican candidate for US Senate. She said she fully supports Trump’s decision to send military troops to the Mexican border to intercept the caravan — a move critics say is unnecessary and a political stunt, given the migrants are traveling mostly on foot and remain hundreds of miles away.

The country, she said, “is more strong, confident and unified than it’s ever been, and most of the confidence and people feeling unified and patriotic again has come right before Trump got in and since he’s been in.” And she dismissed any criticism of the president as fake news. “We hate the media,” she said, “because they’re the Democratic arm.”

Others expressed a heightened sense of unease and sadness about the state of America’s political climate. The election comes just days after a series of hate crimes and political attacks, including the arrest of a man who mailed pipe bombs to Trump critics whom the president often derides as “evil,” ”un-American,” and “the enemy.”

Many voters said they saw the election as an opportunity to reject that kind of bombast.

“We’ve forgotten our decency. We’ve forgotten the truth,” said Morris Lee Williams, 67, an Army veteran and member of Zion Travelers Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis. “We’re supposed to be a group of people, Americans, who are supposed to be that light in the world. Instead of a light, it’s turned into a nightmare.”

In suburban Chicago, Lea Grover agreed. “It seems to me a referendum on empathy, and whether or not we as a nation have any,” said the 34-year-old mother of three daughters.

Grover, a survivor of sexual assault who works for a nonprofit that helps other victims, was angered by the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He was accused by a high school classmate of sexually assaulting her decades ago. Republicans voted to confirm Kavanaugh, and Trump at one point mocked the accuser during a rally.

Voters on the other side were also galvanized by the Kavanaugh hearings — a “smear campaign,” in the opinion of Natalie Pig, a 31-year-old attorney in Missouri motivated to elect people to Congress sure to stand behind Trump.


Civil engineer Pritesh Mehta also cast his early vote for those who would support the president. Mehta, who lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, emigrated from India in 2000 and believes Trump is steering the country in the right direction, including with his immigration policies. Mehta came legally, he said, and he doesn’t see anything wrong with vetting others who want to live in the United States.

Uroosa Jawed is an immigrant, too. She relocated from Pakistan with her family when she was 5. Now 42 and a naturalized citizen living in Omaha, Nebraska, she has always considered herself an American. But over the last two years, as Trump has made sowing fear about immigrants the centerpiece of his presidency, she’s wondered whether her neighbors see her that way, too.

Jawed, who works for a nonprofit aimed at cultivating interfaith cooperation among Jewish, Muslim and Christian groups, said this election offers an opportunity to turn back that tide.

“I don’t feel despair,” she said. “I feel we’re on the precipice of change.” /ee

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Russians charged with meddling in 2016 presidential race

WASHINGTON — In an extraordinary indictment, the U.S. special counsel accused 13 Russians Friday of an elaborate plot to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, charging them with running a huge but hidden social media trolling campaign aimed in part at helping Republican Donald Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The federal indictment, brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, represents the most detailed allegations to date of illegal Russian meddling during the campaign that sent Trump to the White House. It also marks the first criminal charges against Russians believed to have secretly worked to influence the outcome.

The Russian organization was funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the indictment says. He is a wealthy St. Petersburg businessman with ties to the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin.

Trump quickly claimed vindication Friday, noting in a tweet that the alleged interference efforts began in 2014 — “long before I announced that I would run for President.”

“The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!” he tweeted.

But the indictment does not resolve the collusion question at the heart of the continuing Mueller probe, which before Friday had produced charges against four Trump associates. U.S. intelligence agencies have previously said the Russian government interfered to benefit Trump, including by orchestrating the hacking of Democratic emails, and Mueller has been assessing whether the campaign coordinated with the Kremlin.

The latest indictment does not focus on the hacking but instead centers on a social media propaganda effort that began in 2014 and continued past the election, with the goal of producing distrust in the American political process. Trump himself has been reluctant to acknowledge the interference and any role that it might have played in propelling him to the White House.

The indictment does not allege that any American knowingly participated in Russian meddling, or suggest that Trump campaign associates had more than “unwitting” contact with some of the defendants who posed as Americans during election season.

But it does lay out a vast and wide-ranging Russian effort to sway political opinion in the United States through a strategy that involved creating Internet postings in the names of Americans whose identities had been stolen; staging political rallies while posing as American political activists and paying people in the U.S. to promote or disparage candidates.

While foreign meddling in U.S. campaigns is not new, the indictment for an effort of this scope and digital sophistication is unprecedented.

“This indictment serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the internet,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Friday. “The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy. We must not allow them to succeed.”

The 13 Russians are not in custody and not likely to ever face trial. The Justice Department has for years supported indicting foreign defendants in absentia as a way of publicly shaming them and effectively barring them from foreign travel.

The surreptitious campaign was organized by the Internet Research Agency, a notorious Russian troll farm that the indictment says sought to conduct “information warfare against the United States of America.”

The company, among three Russian entities named in the indictment, had a multimillion-dollar budget and hundreds of workers divided by specialties and assigned to day and night shifts. According to prosecutors, the company was funded by companies controlled by Prigozhin, the wealthy Russian who has been dubbed “Putin’s chef” because his restaurants and catering businesses have hosted the Kremlin leader’s dinners with foreign dignitaries.

Prigozhin said Friday he was not upset by the indictment.

“Americans are very impressionable people,” he was quoted as saying by Russia’s state news agency. They “see what they want to see.”

Also Friday, Mueller announced a guilty plea from a California man who unwittingly sold bank accounts to Russians involved in the interference effort.

The election-meddling organization, looking to conceal its Russian roots, purchased space on computer servers within the U.S., used email accounts from U.S. internet service providers and created and controlled social media pages with huge numbers of followers on divisive issues such as immigration, religion and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Starting in April 2016, the indictment says, the Russian agency bought political ads on social media supporting Trump and opposing Clinton without reporting expenditures to the Federal Election Commission or registering as foreign agents. Among the ads: “JOIN our #HillaryClintonForPrison2016” and “Donald wants to defeat terrorism … Hillary wants to sponsor it.”

The indictment details contacts targeting three unnamed officials in the Trump campaign’s Florida operation. In each instance, the Russians used false U.S. personas to contact the officials. The indictment doesn’t say if any of them responded, and there’s no allegation that any of the campaign officials knew they were communicating with Russians.

Two of the defendants traveled to the U.S. in June 2014 to gather intelligence on social media sites and identify targets for their operations, the indictment alleges. Following the trip, the group collected further intelligence by contacting U.S. political and social media activists while posing as U.S. citizens. They were guided by one contact to target “purple states like Colorado, Virginia and Florida,” prosecutors say.

“They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump,” the indictment states.

Cruz and Rubio ran against Trump in the Republican primary; Sanders opposed Clinton in the Democratic primary.

According to one internal communication described by prosecutors, the specialists were instructed to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump_we support them).” And according to one internal review, a specialist was criticized for having a low number of posts criticizing Clinton. The person was told “it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton” in future posts.

The indictment also asserts that the posts encouraged minority groups not to vote or to vote for third parties and alleged Democratic voter fraud.

Ahead of a Florida rally, the Russians paid one person to build a cage on a flatbed truck and another to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform. But they also organized some rallies opposing Trump, including one in New York after the election called “Trump is NOT my president.”

The Russians destroyed evidence of their activities as Mueller’s investigation picked up, with one of those indicted sending an email in September 2017 to a family member that said the FBI had “busted” them so they were covering their tracks.

That person, Irina Viktorovna Kaverzina, wrote the family member, “I created all of these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Hillary Clinton declares ‘moment of reckoning’

PHILADELPHIA—Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, who sacrificed personal ambition for her husband’s political career and then rose to be a globally influential figure, became the first woman to accept a major party’s presidential nomination on Thursday night (Friday morning in Manila), a prize that generations of American women have dreamed about for one of their own.

Declaring that the nation was at “a moment of reckoning,” Mrs. Clinton, 68, urged voters to reject the divisive policy ideas and combative politics of the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump. She offered herself as a steady and patriotic American who would stand up for citizens of all races and creeds and unite the country to persevere against Islamic terrorists, economic troubles, and the chaos of gun violence.

“Powerful forces are threatening to pull us apart, bonds of trust and respect are fraying,” said Mrs. Clinton, who worked on the speech until the early hours of Thursday morning. “And just as with our founders there are no guarantees. It truly is up to us. We have to decide whether we all will work together so we all can rise together.”

Mrs. Clinton radiated confidence, from her pungent delivery and easy laugh to the unusually expressive ways she shifted her tone and delighted in her own best lines. She smoothly acknowledged her own limitations and trust issues as a public figure and forcefully challenged Mr. Trump over his claims that he alone could fix America’s problems.

And after 25 years in a sometimes brutal national spotlight, Mrs. Clinton tried to explain who she is and what drives her—from her Methodist faith to her passion for government policy that could mean all the difference for people.

Policy wonk

“I sweat the details of policy,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Because it’s not just a detail if it’s your kid—if it’s your family. It’s a big deal. And it should be a big deal to your president.”

It was one of several contrasts she drew with Mr. Trump, who has barely explained how he would carry out his policy goals. And she received help from several Republicans and military veterans who took the convention stage earlier in the evening to warn that Mr. Trump was not fit for the presidency and would take the United States to “a dark place of discord and fear,” as a retired general, John Allen, put it. Democrats in the convention hall broke out into a booming, lengthy chant of “USA, USA!”

But the most powerful guest speaker of the evening was Khizr Khan, a Muslim American whose son joined the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and was killed during service in Iraq. Mr. Khan, rebuking Mr. Trump for frequently demonizing Muslims as threats to the United States, pulled a copy of the Constitution out of his suit jacket.

“Mr. Trump, have you even read the Constitution?” he said. “You have sacrificed nothing.”

His words seemed to send a collective shiver through the convention hall, leaving some delegates in tears.

Night of history

Few recent political conventions have had a night gusting with so much history and high emotion. If elected, Mrs. Clinton would become the 45th president of the United States, as well as the first to be married to a former president, Bill Clinton, the nation’s 42nd.

She would be the latest in a long line of Yale graduates and accomplished lawyers to lead the country, but she would also be the first mother and grandmother to be commander in chief, decades after women became heads of state elsewhere.

Democrats roared with passion and pride as a beaming Mrs. Clinton took the stage after her daughter, Chelsea, introduced her as an American who was inspired by her own mother’s impoverished childhood and had faced personal and professional choices that defined generations of women. The two locked eyes and fell into a long embrace as Mrs. Clinton patted her back. A moment later, Mrs. Clinton waved at Mr. Clinton, and he blew her a kiss.

Have no fear

Then Mrs. Clinton, who has given only a few major political speeches in her life, delivered her biggest yet. She offered a positive portrait of America that felt like a different country than the nation in decline that Mr. Trump often describes and that many voters’ fear has come to pass after years of terrorism at home and abroad and the growing gap between rich and poor.

“He’s betting that the perils of today’s world will blind us to its unlimited promise,” Mrs. Clinton said. “He wants us to fear the future and fear each other. Well, a great Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came up with the perfect rebuke to Trump more than 80 years ago, during a much more perilous time:  ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’”

Mrs. Clinton, facing a three-month general election campaign against an unpredictable Mr. Trump, who has risen in the polls since his convention speech last week, hoped that her remarks here would not only energize her party, but also help her connect with undecided and independent voters who are skeptical of her candidacy.

Bernie’s cause

She nodded toward the political work she still had to do. Praising her rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, she told his mostly liberal supporters—some of whom booed or staged a “silent protest” in the hall, declining to applaud her speech—“I want you to know, I’ve heard you. Your cause is our cause.”

And she acknowledged that many voters still do not relate to her after her eight years as first lady, eight as a senator, and four as secretary of state.

“The truth is, through all these years of public service, the  ‘service’ part has always come easier to me than the ‘public’ part,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me,” she added before sharing memories of her humble roots and life lessons from church and her mother—particularly, “no one gets through life alone.”

Bashing Trump

Her strategy was to go hard at Mr. Trump, repeatedly drawing contrasts between her positions—which are in the mainstream of Democratic politics—and Mr. Trump’s unorthodox views for a Republican, such as placing tariffs on other nations’ goods and possibly withdrawing from treaties and trade deals.

Reciting a litany of unusual and unlikely ideas that Mr. Trump laid out at the Republican convention, Mrs. Clinton drew huge laugh when she said, “He spoke for 70-odd minutes—and I do mean odd.”

Mrs. Clinton, the rare first lady who, like her idol Eleanor Roosevelt, used the job to influence policy and who went on to be a powerful figure, began her own quest for the White House nearly a decade ago with her first run for the nomination against Barack Obama.

Back then she presented herself as a steely and even hawkish Democrat who held some views—opposing gay marriage, supporting free trade, and championing the rights of gun owners—that she has shifted since her defeat. This time around, she fashioned herself as “a progressive who likes to get things done”—the sort of line-straddling language that makes some liberals dubious of her values and some independents skeptical about her authenticity.

Wellesley speech

Her convention speech comes 47 years after the young Hillary Rodham wound up in Life magazine when she used her commencement address at Wellesley College to reckon with that era’s civic unrest and clashes between protesters and police officers.

Her message to the millions of people watching her speech on television on Thursday night was similar, as she implored Americans to look past fear and tumult and to choose harmony over hatred. But this time, Mrs. Clinton was to speak to an audience that is deeply distrustful of her. Some 67 percent of all voters and 74 percent of independents said they do not trust Mrs. Clinton, in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

About six weeks ago, Mrs. Clinton started sketching down rough notes about what she wanted to say on the eve she accepts her party’s nomination. A month ago, discussions with her top policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, and the speechwriters Dan Schwerin and Megan Rooney, began to shape the speech, with advice from a variety of friends and former speechwriters. Mrs. Clinton also sought advice from Mr. Obama’s much-admired former director of speechwriting Jon Favreau.

Falling barriers

The speech often electrified the assembled Democrats with its crowd-pleasing lines about Mr. Trump like, “Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis: A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” And the delegates reveled at the end as confetti rained down on Mrs. Clinton and she playfully swatted at the spill of balloons.

For her, though, the greatest exhilaration flowed from the sense that history had been made and that the lives of future generations would be changed forever.

“Standing here as my mother’s daughter, and my daughter’s mother, I’m so happy this day has come,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Happy for grandmothers and little girls and everyone in between. Happy for boys and men, too—because when any barrier falls in America, for anyone, it clears the way for everyone. When there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit.

“So let’s keep going,” she said, “until every one of the 161 million women and girls across America has the opportunity she deserves.” TVJ

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Republican candidates Bush and Trump clash over 9/11 remarks

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush transitioned from defense to offense on Sunday after criticism from rival Donald Trump that his brother, former President George W. Bush, carried some blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Trump, the flamboyant front-runner in the 15-candidate Republican field, once again provoked a tit-for-tat with Bush on Friday by saying his brother must share some of the blame for the attacks that occurred during his first year in office.

"Look, my brother responded to a crisis, and he did it as you would hope a president would do," Bush said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"The great majority of Americans believe that. And I don't know why he keeps bringing this up."

Bush said Trump's comments about the Sept. 11 attacks called his credibility into question. The former Florida governor attacked Trump's foreign policy credentials and compared his grip on international issues to a reality television show the billionaire businessman formerly hosted.

"Across the spectrum of foreign policy, Mr. Trump talks about things that -- as though he's still on 'The Apprentice,'" Bush said on CNN.

"Talking about Syria - saying ISIS should take out (Syrian President Bashar al-Assad), then Russia should take out ISIS, as though it was some kind of board game and not a serious approach," he said.

Trump doubled down on his comments during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," using a oft-repeated Jeb Bush phrase - that his brother "kept us safe" - against him.

"Jeb said 'we were safe with my brother. We were safe.' Well the World Trade Center just fell down," Trump said on Fox.

"I'm not blaming George Bush, but I don't want Jeb Bush to say 'my brother kept us safe,' because September 11th was one of the worst days in the history of this country."

Bush has defended his brother's actions after the Sept. 11 attacks, but his campaign has kept its distance from the unpopular president indelibly linked to the unpopular Iraq war.

He mocked Trump's comments and likened them to blaming President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the World War Two attack on Pearl Harbor.

"Next week, Mr. Trump is probably going to say that FDR was around when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor," he said. "It's what you do after that matters. And that's the sign of leadership." — Reuters

Bomb blasts kill five at Indian opposition rally

PATNA - A series of crude bombs killed five people and injured dozens in an eastern Indian city Sunday, shortly before opposition candidate Narendra Modi was due to hold a campaign rally.

Seven small bombs exploded near the venue in Patna where tens of thousands were gathering to hear Hindu hardliner Modi, a popular but divisive leader, launch the opposition's campaign in Bihar state for upcoming general elections.

The first explosion occurred in a public toilet at a railway station in Patna, before more bombs exploded near and just outside the Gandhi Maidan ground where the large rally was held, police said.

Five people were killed and 83 others injured, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar told a press conference in Patna.

"It seems that today's blasts were preplanned in Patna and I would like to assure everyone that no effort will be spared to solve the case," Kumar said.

"Making a guess on who did it would be premature at this stage. I rule out any political conspiracy," he said.

Police said two people have been arrested and several others detained for questioning, while the national government deployed anti-terrorism forces to Patna to investigate.

Television footage showed people running from several explosions at the venue, with smoke rising above them. Police helped carry the injured to hospitals, where mostly men with bloodied bandages were seen lying on beds and connected to intravenous drips.

"The condition of nearly half a dozen injured is critical," said an official from the Patna Medical College and Hospital, adding that some people were injured in stampedes after the blasts.

Modi, a polarizing figure particularly among religious minorities, later took to the stage and urged Hindus and Muslims to unite to overcome poverty in Bihar, a key battleground in the general election due next May.

"If we want to take Bihar forward we need to unite people of all religions, caste and creed together... We want to unite people, not divide them," he told cheering supporters in a speech that did not mention the blasts.

"Our opponents are fooling people. That's why I want to ask my poor Muslim and Hindu brothers, do you want to fight against each other or against poverty?"

Modi has been campaigning to topple the ruling Congress party since he was named last month as the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate for the national elections.

The chief minister of the economically successful western state of Gujarat, Modi is popular with the corporate world. Many hope he can revive Asia's third-largest economy if elected next year.

But he remains a divisive figure, tarred by religious riots in Gujarat in 2002. As many as 2,000 people were killed, mainly Muslims, according to rights groups.

Modi was chief minister at the time and denied any wrongdoing, but one of his former ministers was jailed last year for orchestrating some of the violence.

The rally in Patna was seen as key for Modi after the governing party in Bihar broke off a 17-year alliance with the BJP over choosing him as its candidate.

After the rally, Modi described the blasts as "deeply saddening and unfortunate". "Condolences with families of deceased & prayers with injured. I appeal for peace & calm," he tweeted.

Four more unexploded crude bombs were discovered at the railway station and the venue site after bomb disposal squads swept through, Bihar police chief Abhayanand, who uses one name, said.

In a statement, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the blasts, appealed for calm and "called for urgent steps to identify and take action against those responsible".

Junior home minister R.P.N. Singh said officers from the National Security Guard and National Investigation Agency have been deployed to Bihar.

Modi and his political rival Rahul Gandhi from the Congress party are holding a series of mass rallies across the country in a battle to win five key state elections later this year.

Those elections are seen as a crucial test of popularity, with both parties hoping to capitalize on any momentum from the results for next year's general election. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Google draws up PHL election doodle

Google Philippines on Monday drew up a doodle to mark the midterm elections where Filipinos are to elect 12 senators, party list groups, and local officials.

Visitors to Google's Philippine website (www.google.com.ph) were greeted with an animation of hands bearing ballots, eventually dropping them into the ballot box.

The letters in "Google" were drawn up in the company's standard colors, but could also symbolize the wide variety of political parties in the country.


Clicking on the doodle would take the user to a Google Search Results page for "Philippine Elections."

Google Philippines' Google+ page also advised users to get news and election-related information at www.google.com.ph/elections.

On Monday, Filipinos trooped to polling centers to cast their votes. The voting started at 7 a.m. and will end at 7 p.m. — LBG, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com