Biden defeats Trump for White House, says ‘time to heal’

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From left, Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, Harris, President-elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden on stage together on Nov. 7, 2020, in Wilmington, Delaware. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool)
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Updated 08 November 2020
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Biden defeats Trump for White House, says ‘time to heal’

  • President-elect vows "to make America respected around the world again and to unite us here at home”
  • Kamala Harris makes history as the first Black woman to become vice president

WASHINGTON: Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States on Saturday, positioning himself to be a leader who “seeks not to divide, but to unify” a nation gripped by a historic pandemic and a confluence of economic and social turmoil.
“I sought this office to restore the soul of America,” said Biden in a prime-time victory speech not far from his Delaware home, “and to make America respected around the world again and to unite us here at home.”
His victory came after more than three days of uncertainty as election officials sorted through a surge of mail-in votes that delayed processing. Biden crossed the winning threshold of 270 Electoral College votes with a win in Pennsylvania.
Trump refused to concede, threatening further legal action on ballot counting.
Biden, 77, staked his candidacy less on any distinctive political ideology than on galvanizing a broad coalition of voters around the notion that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy. The strategy proved effective, resulting in pivotal victories in Michigan and Wisconsin as well as Pennsylvania, onetime Democratic bastions that had flipped to Trump in 2016.

Biden’s victory was a repudiation of Trump’s divisive leadership and the president-elect now inherits a deeply polarized nation grappling with foundational questions of racial justice and economic fairness while in the grips of a virus that has killed more than 236,000 Americans and reshaped the norms of everyday life.
Kamala Harris made history as the first Black woman to become vice president, an achievement that comes as the US faces a reckoning on racial justice. The California senator, who is also the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency, will become the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in government, four years after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.
Harris introduced Biden “as a president for all Americans” who would look to bridge a nation riven with partisanship and nodded to the historic nature of her ascension to the vice presidency.
“Dream with ambition, lead with conviction and see yourselves in a way that others may not simply because they’ve never seen it before,” Harris said. “You chose hope and unity, decency, science and, yes, truth ... you ushered in a new day for America.”
Biden was on track to win the national popular vote by more than 4 million, a margin that could grow as ballots continue to be counted.
Nonetheless, Trump was not giving up.
Departing from longstanding democratic tradition and signaling a potentially turbulent transfer of power, he issued a combative statement saying his campaign would take unspecified legal actions. And he followed up with a bombastic, all-caps tweet in which he falsely declared, “I WON THE ELECTION, GOT 71,000,000 LEGAL VOTES.” Twitter immediately flagged it as misleading.

Trump has pointed to delays in processing the vote in some states to allege with no evidence that there was fraud and to argue that his rival was trying to seize power — an extraordinary charge by a sitting president trying to sow doubt about a bedrock democratic process.
Trump is the first incumbent president to lose reelection since Republican George H.W. Bush in 1992.
He was golfing at his Virginia country club when he lost the race. He stayed out for hours, stopping to congratulate a bride as he left, and his motorcade returned to the White House to a cacophony of shouts, taunts and unfriendly hand gestures.
In Wilmington, Delaware, near the stage that, until Saturday night, had stood empty since it was erected to celebrate on Election Night, people cheered and pumped their fists as the news that the presidential race had been called for the state’s former senator arrived on their cellphones.
On the nearby water, two men in a kayak yelled to a couple paddling by in the opposite direction, “Joe won! They called it!” as people on the shore whooped and hollered. Harris, in workout gear, was shown on video speaking to Biden on the phone, exuberantly telling the president-elect “We did it!” Biden was expected to take the stage for a drive-in rally after dark.
Across the country, there were parties and prayer. In New York City, spontaneous block parties broke out. People ran out of their buildings, banging on pots. They danced and high-fived with strangers amid honking horns. Among the loudest cheers were those for passing US Postal Service trucks.

People streamed into Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House, near where Trump had ordered the clearing of protesters in June, waving signs and taking cellphone pictures. In Lansing, Michigan, Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter demonstrators filled the Capitol steps. The lyrics to “Amazing Grace” began to echo through the crowd, and Trump supporters laid their hands on a counter protester, and prayed.
Americans showed deep interest in the presidential race. A record 103 million voted early this year, opting to avoid waiting in long lines at polling locations during a pandemic. With counting continuing in some states, Biden had already received more than 74 million votes, more than any presidential candidate before him.
Trump’s refusal to concede has no legal implications. But it could add to the incoming administration’s challenge of bringing the country together after a bitter election.
Throughout the campaign, Trump repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, arguing without evidence that the election could be marred by fraud. The nation has a long history of presidential candidates peacefully accepting the outcome of elections, dating back to 1800, when John Adams conceded to his rival Thomas Jefferson.
It was Biden’s native Pennsylvania that put him over the top, the state he invoked throughout the campaign to connect with working class voters. He also won Nevada on Saturday pushing his total to 290 Electoral College votes.
Biden received congratulations from dozens of world leaders, and his former boss, President Barack Obama, saluted him in a statement, declaring the nation was “fortunate that Joe’s got what it takes to be President and already carries himself that way.”
Republicans on Capitol Hill were giving Trump and his campaign space to consider all their legal options. It was a precarious balance for Trump’s allies as they try to be supportive of the president — and avoid risking further fallout — but face the reality of the vote count.
On Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had not yet made any public statements — either congratulating Biden or joining Trump’s complaints. But retiring GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is close to McConnell, said, “After counting every valid vote and allowing courts to resolve disputes, it is important to respect and promptly accept the result.”
More than 236,000 Americans have died during the coronavirus pandemic, nearly 10 million have been infected and millions of jobs have been lost. The final days of the campaign played out against a surge in confirmed cases in nearly every state, including battlegrounds such as Wisconsin that swung to Biden.
The pandemic will soon be Biden’s to tame, and he campaigned pledging a big government response, akin to what Franklin D. Roosevelt oversaw with the New Deal during the Depression of the 1930s. But Senate Republicans fought back several Democratic challengers and looked to retain a fragile majority that could serve as a check on such Biden ambition.
The 2020 campaign was a referendum on Trump’s handling of the pandemic, which has shuttered schools across the nation, disrupted businesses and raised questions about the feasibility of family gatherings heading into the holidays.
The fast spread of the coronavirus transformed political rallies from standard campaign fare to gatherings that were potential public health emergencies. It also contributed to an unprecedented shift to voting early and by mail and prompted Biden to dramatically scale back his travel and events to comply with restrictions. The president defied calls for caution and ultimately contracted the disease himself.
Trump was saddled throughout the year by negative assessments from the public of his handling of the pandemic. There was another COVID-19 outbreak in the White House this week, which sickened his chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Biden also drew a sharp contrast to Trump through a summer of unrest over the police killings of Black Americans including Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and George Floyd in Minneapolis. Their deaths sparked the largest racial protest movement since the civil rights era. Biden responded by acknowledging the racism that pervades American life, while Trump emphasized his support of police and pivoted to a “law and order” message that resonated with his largely white base.

The third president to be impeached, though acquitted in the Senate, Trump will leave office having left an indelible imprint in a tenure defined by the shattering of White House norms and a day-to-day whirlwind of turnover, partisan divide and Twitter blasts.
Trump’s team has filed a smattering of lawsuits in battleground states, some of which were immediately rebuffed by judges. His personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was holding a news conference in Philadelphia threatening more legal action when the race was called.
Biden, born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and raised in Delaware, was one of the youngest candidates ever elected to the Senate. Before he took office, his wife and daughter were killed, and his two sons badly injured in a 1972 car crash.
Commuting every night on a train from Washington back to Wilmington, Biden fashioned an everyman political persona to go along with powerful Senate positions, including chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees. Some aspects of his record drew critical scrutiny from fellow Democrats, including his support for the 1994 crime bill, his vote for the 2003 Iraq War and his management of the Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court hearings.
Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign was done in by plagiarism allegations, and his next bid in 2008 ended quietly. But later that year, he was tapped to be Barack Obama’s running mate and he became an influential vice president, steering the administration’s outreach to both Capitol Hill and Iraq.
While his reputation was burnished by his time in office and his deep friendship with Obama, Biden stood aside for Clinton and opted not to run in 2016 after his adult son Beau died of brain cancer the year before.
Trump’s tenure pushed Biden to make one more run as he declared that “the very soul of the nation is at stake.”

 


Vatican chimney installed ahead of papal conclave

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Vatican chimney installed ahead of papal conclave

Held behind locked doors, the conclave will signal to the world the outcome by burning ballots in a special stove
Cardinals from around the world have been called back to Rome following the death on April 21 of Francis

VATICAN CITY: Firefighters installed the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel on Friday which will emit white smoke to signal the election of a new pope as preparations proceed just five days before cardinals gather for the conclave.
Some 133 Catholic cardinals will gather below Michelangelo’s famed frescoes in the 15th-century chapel, situated inside the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican, to elect a successor to Pope Francis.
Held behind locked doors, the conclave will signal to the world the outcome by burning ballots in a special stove, with the chimney emitting black smoke if no one has been elected, or white smoke if there is a new pope.
Cardinals from around the world have been called back to Rome following the death on April 21 of Francis, an energetic reformer from Argentina who led the Catholic Church for 12 years.
All but four of the cardinal electors — those aged under 80 — who can vote in the conclave are already in Rome, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said.
Ahead of the election, cardinals of all ages have been meeting daily at the Vatican to discuss the challenges facing the next head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
Friday’s meeting emphasized spreading the Catholic faith, the need for unity and the risk of “counter-witness” — problems such as sexual abuse and financial scandals — among other issues, Bruni told reporters.
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, Italy’s Pietro Parolin — who served as secretary of state under Francis — and Ghana’s Peter Turkson are among the favorites to be the next pope.
But there is an old Roman saying that he who enters the conclave a pope, leaves a cardinal — a warning that the favorite rarely emerges as the winner.
“I think the Church is in prayer mode, but it must also put itself in surprise mode,” Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez, 82, told reporters as he headed into Friday morning’s meeting.
“Remember what happened with Pope Francis — what a surprise!“
Among the crowds of tourists and pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square on Friday, the installation of the chimney on the Sistine Chapel — a thin metal tube with a capped top — went largely unnoticed.
But many were aware that history was in the making.
“It definitely is a historic moment and it definitely feels special to be in Rome,” said Glenn Atherton, a Briton visiting from London.
“It feels like a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” he told AFP.
There are 135 cardinals eligible to vote in the conclave, but two have withdrawn for health reasons.
These were Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, Archbishop emeritus of Valencia in Spain, and Cardinal John Njue, Archbishop emeritus of Nairobi in Kenya, the Vatican confirmed.
The conclave is due to begin at 4:30 p.m. (1430 GMT) on Wednesday, where the cardinals will take an oath to maintain the secrecy of the election, on pain of excommunication.
That first day they will hold one ballot, with the winner — technically any baptised male, but in reality always one of their own — needing a two-thirds majority, or 89 votes, to win.
During the following days they will hold two votes in the morning and two in the afternoon.
If a winner is elected, the ballots will be burned in the special stove with the addition of chemicals to emit a white smoke to alert the waiting world to the decision.
If no candidate has enough votes during the first morning vote, the cardinals will proceed to a second vote, and only after that point will the ballots be burned.
The afternoon session follows the same procedure — if a pope is elected, there will be white smoke, but if not, the cardinals will proceed to a second vote and only after that will the ballots be burned.
If no pope is elected, the smoke emitted by the chimney is black.
The ancient signalling system — which still remains the only way the public learns whether a pope has been elected — used to involve mixing wet straw with the ballots to produce white smoke, and tarry pitch to create black smoke.
But after several episodes in which greyish smoke caused confusion, the Vatican introduced a new system in 2005.
At the last conclave, in 2013, the Vatican said it used a mixture of potassium perchlorate, anthracene and sulfur to produce black smoke, and potassium chlorate, lactose and rosin for white.
Two stoves stand in a corner of the chapel, one for burning the ballots and the other for the chemicals, with the smoke from both stoves going up a common flue, it said then.
Details for the procedure of next week’s conclave have not yet been confirmed.

Understanding Nigeria’s new wave of militant attacks

Updated 6 min 39 sec ago
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Understanding Nigeria’s new wave of militant attacks

  • The Lake Chad basin serves as a crucial strategic corridor for militant groups, said Adamu
  • “Governance has been abandoned in so many of these places,” said Confidence McHarry, from consulting firm SBM Intelligence in Lagos

LAGOS: Nigeria’s northeast is facing a brutal resurgence of militant attacks, which have killed at least 100 people in April.
The state of Borno in particular, where the Boko Haram militant group emerged 16 years ago, remains the epicenter of a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 and displaced some two million people in Africa’s most populous country.
The Lake Chad basin serves as a crucial strategic corridor for militant groups, said Kabir Adamu, director of the Nigerian consulting firm Beacon Consulting, in terms of logistics, recruitment and cross-border attacks involving Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

Boko Haram, also known as Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS):
The movement was founded in 2002 in Maiduguri, Borno state, by radical preacher Mohammed Yusuf, who attributed Nigeria’s woes to the Western values left by former British colonial powers.
It launched an insurgency in 2009 and took control of significant areas in the northeast.
Through counteroffensives, the Nigerian army took back some of the lost territories but Boko Haram remains operational in some regions.
The Al-Qaeda-affiliated group relies heavily on fear-based tactics, targeting civilians, looting villages and conducting kidnappings.

The Daesh West Africa Province (Daesh-WAP):
This group emerged in 2016 from a split within Boko Haram, with Daesh-WAP opposing the killing of Muslims. It is proving to be more organized and more ideological, focusing its attacks on military targets and infrastructure.
Other groups are operating in the northwest of the country, near the border with Niger, such as Ansaru, a dissident movement linked to Al-Qaeda, or Lakurawa.
It is also worth noting the emergence of other groups, particularly in the northwest and central regions of the country, “which may not be strictly militant but utilize similar methods, blurring the lines between criminal and terrorist activities,” said Adamu.

The ongoing resurgence of attacks is linked to several factors, experts said.
“There were direct calls made by the Daesh between January and March 2025, urging its affiliates worldwide to intensify their operations,” Adamu said.
Idriss Mounir Lallali, director of the Algeria-based African Center for the Study and Research on Terrorism (ACSRT), has seen a “strategic recalibration” by Boko Haram and Daesh-WAP, as the two groups seem to have overcome a period of mutual conflicts.
The militants have adapted their combat tactics, through the use of drones, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), ambushes and coordinated raids, allowing them to intensify operations in rural and semi-urban areas.
Regional efforts in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel and west Africa are facing structural weaknesses.
“Governance has been abandoned in so many of these places,” said Confidence McHarry, from consulting firm SBM Intelligence in Lagos.
Niger in March withdrew from a task force it had created along with Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad to combat militants around Lake Chad, disrupting cross-border patrols and intelligence sharing.
Chad has also threatened to withdraw from the task force.
“Without a reinvigorated multinational approach, these gaps risk becoming safe havens for militant expansion,” Lallali said.
While Nigerian forces have achieved territorial gains and succeeded in neutralising key militant commanders, Daesh-WAP and Boko Haram have both demonstrated significant resilience.
Many of their fighters have retreated into ungoverned areas.
“Security forces, while concentrated in key garrisons, have left many border and rural areas exposed,” Lallali said.
Insurgents take advantage of these vulnerabilities to restore supply routes and rebuild their influence among local populations.
At the end of April, Nigeria appointed a new leader for anti- militant operations in the northeast, General Abdulsalam Abubakar.


South African mother found guilty of selling young daughter

Updated 29 min 5 sec ago
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South African mother found guilty of selling young daughter

  • The case drew national attention, including from Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie, who offered a one-million-rand ($54,000) reward for her safe return
  • The court heard that Smith, who has two other children, appeared unusually calm and unconcerned during the intense search for Joshlin

SALDANHA: A South African court found a woman guilty Friday of trafficking her six-year-old daughter who has been missing for more than a year, in a case that has outraged the nation.
The two-month trial heard statements from various witnesses that Racquel “Kelly” Smith had revealed to them that she had sold her daughter Joshlin in February 2024, including claims she was paid 20,000 rand ($1,085).
Judge Nathan Erasmus said the evidence of 35 state witnesses led him to find that Smith, 35, and her two co-accused — a boyfriend and a mutual friend — were guilty on the charges of human trafficking and kidnapping.
“I have already found that on the evidence before me, Joshlin was exchanged,” he said.
“The evidence is from all scores there were payments, or at least the promise of payments,” he said, accusing Smith of regarding her daughter, who was aged six when she disappeared, as a “commodity.”
The trial was held in a community hall in the small fishing town of Saldanha Bay, about 135 kilometers (80 miles) north of Cape Town, where the case sparked outrage.
Crowds had gathered outside the hearings, chanting: “We want Joshlin back” and Friday’s verdict was met with a burst of applause.
Many locals had joined the police in days of searches for the girl around their impoverished area.
“You are guilty of... trafficking in persons in relation to Joshlin Smith. On count two, you are also convicted of kidnapping,” Erasmus told the three accused, none of whom took the stand.
He adjourned the court for sentencing, which may run up to life sentences.
Smith initially drew sympathy after her daughter was reported missing. Photographs showing Joshlin’s striking green eyes, broad smile and brown pigtails flooded the media.
The case drew national attention, including from Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie, who offered a one-million-rand ($54,000) reward for her safe return.
But it took a turn when prosecutors alleged that Smith sold her daughter to a traditional healer, who was interested in her eyes and fair complexion.
The court heard that Smith, who has two other children, appeared unusually calm and unconcerned during the intense search for Joshlin.
Explosive details that played out in court included statements from the girl’s teacher and a pastor, who said the mother had told him of the planned sale of her child in 2023.


Palestinian girls arrive in UK for medical treatment

Updated 02 May 2025
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Palestinian girls arrive in UK for medical treatment

  • The pair, aged 5 and 12, have serious health issues that cannot be treated in Gaza
  • They are the first people from the enclave to be given temporary British visas since the start of the war

LONDON: Two young Palestinian girls have arrived in the UK for medical treatment of serious health conditions.

The girls, named by the BBC as Ghena, aged 5, and Rama, 12, are the first Gazans to be given temporary UK visas since Oct. 7, 2023.

They flew from Egypt, where they have been living with complex conditions after Gaza’s healthcare system collapsed during Israel’s invasion.

Rama, who has a serious bowel condition, previously lived in Khan Younis and told the BBC: “We were so scared. We were living in tents and shrapnel from airstrikes used to fall on us.

“Mum used to suffer so much going to hospitals while bombs were falling and would stand in long queues just to get me a strip of pills. Here I’ll get treatment and get better and be just like any other girl.”

Her mother told the BBC: “I’m very happy for Rama because she’ll get treatment here. As a mother, I felt so sorry in Gaza because I couldn’t do anything to help her. 

“To see your daughter dying in front of your eyes, day by day, watching her weaken and get sicker — it pained me.”

Ghena has fluid pressing against her optic nerve, which could cause blindness if left untreated.

Her mother Haneen told the BBC: “Before the war, Ghena was having medical treatment in Gaza, in a specialised hospital. She was getting tests done every six months there and treatment was available.”

Haneen said the hospital was destroyed in the first week of Israel’s invasion, leaving the family with little choice but to seek help elsewhere.

“She began complaining about the pain,” Haneen said. “She would wake up screaming in pain at night.”

Haneen added: “I hope she gets better here. In Gaza there are thousands of injured and sick children who need medical treatment. I hope they get a chance like Ghena.”

The girls were assisted by Project Pure Hope and the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, which worked with the World Health Organization to get them to the UK for treatment.

PCRF Chairwoman Vivian Khalaf told the BBC: “We came across these cases through an ongoing list that is getting longer and longer of children who need urgent medical treatment outside of Gaza.

“The current physicians and hospitals that continue to be operating to whatever extent have determined that the treatment isn’t available within Gaza.”

Khalaf said 200 children from Gaza have so far been taken abroad for medical treatment, including to the US, Jordan, Qatar and European countries.

The WHO has condemned the state of Gaza’s health system as “beyond description” after 18 months of conflict that has killed more than 50,980 Palestinians in the enclave, according to its Health Ministry.


Over 200 killed in at least 243 Myanmar military attacks since quake

Updated 02 May 2025
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Over 200 killed in at least 243 Myanmar military attacks since quake

  • Nearly 20 million people in the country already rely on humanitarian assistance, he said, stressing that people in Myanmar “need food, water and shelter”
  • A multi-sided conflict has engulfed Myanmar since 2021, when Min Aung Hlaing’s military wrested power from the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

GENEVA: The United Nations decried Friday continuing deadly attacks by Myanmar’s military despite a ceasefire declared following a devastating earthquake that killed nearly 3,800 people.
“The unremitting violence inflicted on civilians, despite a ceasefire nominally declared in the wake of the devastating earthquake on 28 March, underscores the need for the parties to commit to, and implement, a genuine and permanent nationwide halt to hostilities and return to civilian rule,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
A multi-sided conflict has engulfed Myanmar since 2021, when Min Aung Hlaing’s military wrested power from the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Following the 7.7 magnitude quake, the junta joined opponents in calling a temporary halt to hostilities on April 2 for relief to be delivered.
But Turk said that since the quake and up to April 29, “the military has reportedly launched at least 243 attacks, including 171 air strikes, with over 200 civilians reportedly killed.”
“The vast majority of attacks,” he added, had happened after the ceasefire took effect.
While the military renewed once its “largely unobserved ceasefire,” the truce had been allowed to expire on April 30, Turk said.
“It is imperative that the military immediately stop all attacks on civilians and civilian objects,” he insisted.
The UN rights chief decried how “the relentless attacks affect a population already heavily beleaguered and exhausted by years of conflict,” compounded by the impact of the quake.
Nearly 20 million people in the country already rely on humanitarian assistance, he said, stressing that people in Myanmar “need food, water and shelter.”
“They need, and must have, peace and protection,” he said.
“International law is clear that humanitarian aid must be able to reach those in need without impediment.”
Turk urged the military to “put people first, to prioritize their human rights and humanitarian needs and to achieve peaceful resolution to this crisis.”
“Instead of further futile investment in military force, the focus must be on the restoration of democracy and the rule of law in Myanmar.”