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Amid Recount Effort, Donald Trump Eyes Foreign Policy, Defense Jobs

[email protected] (Agencies)
November 27, 2016

West Palm Beach, Nov 27: His inauguration less than eight weeks away, President-elect Donald Trump was confronted by new developments Saturday in recount efforts in three states pivotal to his Nov. 8 victory, even as he worked to fill foreign policy and national defense jobs in his incoming administration.

Donald

The New York billionaire, whose defeat of Democrat Hillary Clinton surprised even some loyalists, has scrambled to fill his Cabinet as the Jan. 20 inauguration approaches. Still, in many ways, he has barely scratched the surface of creating the massive team needed to run the government.

Experts say presidential transitions are periods of great vulnerability for the nation, and among the vacancies on the Trump team are leaders of the departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security.

Trump, who has virtually no experience in foreign affairs, offered a one-line tweet Saturday morning in reaction to the death of Cuban leader Fidel Castro - "Fidel Castro is dead!" - before issuing a more detailed statement.

"While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve," Trump said.

His transition team did not immediately respond to requests to clarify his Cuba policy, which was inconsistent during the campaign.

Also Saturday, Clinton's camp said it was supporting Green Party candidate Jill Stein's push to force recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania in Michigan. Trump narrowly carried those Democratic strongholds.

Clinton leads the national popular vote by close to 2 million votes, but Trump won 290 electoral votes to Clinton's 232, with Michigan still too close to call. It takes 270 to win the presidency.

Wisconsin officials are moving forward with the first presidential recount in state history following Stein's formal request. Stein, who drew 1 percent of the vote nationally, is raising millions of dollars to pay for the effort.

"Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves," Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias wrote Saturday in blog post. "But now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides."

Elias said Clinton would take the same approach in Pennsylvania and Michigan if Stein were to follow through with recount requests those states, even though that was highly unlikely to change the election outcome.

"Regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states, we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself," Elias wrote.

Trump was spending the Thanksgiving holiday weekend with family at his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago. On Friday, he named Fox News analyst Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland as deputy national security adviser and appointed campaign attorney Donald McGahn as White House counsel.

McFarland has worked for three presidents, although none since Ronald Reagan. Fox News said Saturday that her contract has been terminated in light of the appointment.

Trump planned to return to his New York home on Sunday ahead of a series of Monday meetings with prospective administration hires, including Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. He's seen as a possible Homeland Security pick. Clarke's vocal opposition to the "Black Lives Matter" movement has made him popular with many conservatives.

Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence also have Monday meetings scheduled with Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., former Security and Exchange Commission commissioner Paul Atkins, World Wide Technology chairman David Steward and General Growth Properties CEO Sandeep Mathrani.

Internal divisions over his choice for secretary of state have delayed that critical decision. The options include former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who lacks foreign policy experience, but was intensely loyal to Trump, and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who aggressively opposed Trump's candidacy but is largely regarded as more qualified. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker is also a possibility.

With the world's attention on Cuba on Saturday, Trump indicated his administration would do "all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty."

During the campaign, Trump initially suggested he supported President Barack Obama's moves to loosen the US trade embargo.

Trump reversed himself less than a month before the election, and said he would reverse Obama unless Cuba met demands including "religious and political freedom for the Cuban people and the freeing of political prisoners."

His Saturday statement offered no more clarity.

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Agencies
May 26,2020

Sheikhupura, May 26: Younus, the brother-in-law of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy by a Pakistani court, was killed in Sheikhupura city of Punjab province in Pakistan on Monday.

According to the FIR, Younus had gone to his farms on May 24 and did not return home at night. His body with throat slit was traced in the farm the following morning.

It is believed that, hailing from minority Christian community, Younus was killed in a rivalry.

This is not the first time that somebody associated with Asia Bibi has been murdered in cold blood.

In 2011, Salman Taseer, the influential governor of Punjab was assassinated after he made headlines by appealing for the pardon of Asia Bibi, who had been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Prophet Muhammad.

A month after Taseer was killed, Religious Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian who spoke out against the laws, was shot dead in Islamabad, underlining the threat faced by critics of the law.

Asia Bibi is now living in exile after the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted her based on insufficient evidence in October 2018.

Recounting the hellish conditions of eight years spent on death row on blasphemy charges but also the pain of exile, Asia Bibi recently broke her silence to give her first personal insight into an ordeal that caused international outrage.

French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet, who has co-written a book about her, was once based in the country where she led a support campaign for her."You already know my story through the media," she said in the book.

"But you are far from understanding my daily life in prison or my new life," she said. "I became a prisoner of fanaticism," she said. In prison, "tears were the only companions in the cell".

She described the horrendous conditions in squalid jails in Pakistan where she was kept chained and jeered at by other detainees.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws carry a potential death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. Critics say they have been used to persecute minority faiths and unfairly target minorities.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan defended the country's strict blasphemy laws during his election campaigns. The status quo is still in place.

No government in Pakistan was ready to make changed to the blasphemy law due to fears of a backlash.

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Agencies
April 14,2020

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has reprimanded the Imran Khan government for denying food aid to Hindus and Christians in Pakistan amid the coronavirus pandemic and warned that it will trigger an additional crisis due to religious discrimination.

The USCIRF is an independent federal government entity set up by the US Congress to monitor and report on religious freedom in the world.

Pakistan continues to be in the tier one of the USCIRF list of the countries whose record on religious freedom remains abysmal.

In a statement issue on Monday, the USCIRF said it was troubled by the reports of food aid being denied to Hindus and Christians in Pakistan amid pandemic.

Citing one of the examples of religious discrimination, the USCIRF said that in Karachi, the Saylani Welfare International Trust, a non-government organization set up to help the homeless and seasonal workers, has been refusing food aid to Hindus and Christians and providing it only Muslims.

Describing such actions "reprehensible", the USCIRF commissioner Anurima Bhargava said: "As COVID-19 continues to spread, vulnerable communities within Pakistan are fighting hunger and to keep their families safe and healthy. Food aid must not be denied because of one's faith."
One of the USCIRF commissioners, Johnnie Moore warned that if the Khan government continued with such policies, Pakistan would add an additional crisis.

"In a recent address by Prime Minister Khan to the international community, he highlighted that the challenge facing governments in the developing world is to save people from dying of hunger while also trying to halt the spread of COVID-19. This is a monumental task laying before many countries.

"Prime Minister Khan's government has the opportunity to lead the way but they must not leave religious minorities behind. Otherwise, they may add on top of it all one more crisis, created by religious discrimination and inter-communal strife."

The organization which makes foreign policy recommendations to the US President, the Secretary of State, and Congress, urged the Pakistani government to ensure that food aid from distributing organizations is shared equally with Hindus, Christians, and other religions minorities.

Last year, in its annual report, the USCIRF had noted that Hindus and Christians in Pakistan "face continued threats to their security and are subjected to various forms of harassment and social exclusion".

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Agencies
July 28,2020

Sydney, Jul 28: Nearly 3 billion koalas, kangaroos and other native Australian animals were killed or displaced by bushfires in 2019 and 2020, a study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Tuesday, triple the group's earlier estimates.

Some 143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds and 51 million frogs were impacted by the country's worst bushfires in decades, the WWF said.

When the fires were still blazing, the WWF estimated the number of affected animals at 1.25 billion. The fires destroyed more than 11 million hectares (37 million acres) across the Australian southeast, equal to about half the area of the United Kingdom.

"This ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history," said WWF-Australia Chief Executive Officer Dermot O'Gorman in a statement.

The project leader Lily Van Eeden, from the University of Sydney, said the research was the first continent-wide analysis of animals impacted by the bushfires, and "other nations can build upon this research to improve understanding of bushfire impacts everywhere".

The total number included animals which were displaced because of destroyed habitats and now faced lack of food and shelter or the prospect of moving to habitat that was already occupied.

The main reason for raising the number of animal casualties was that researchers had now assessed the total affected area, rather than focusing on the most affected states, they said.

After years of drought made the Australian bush unusually dry, the country battled one of its worst bushfire seasons ever from September 2019 to March 2020, resulting in 34 human deaths and nearly 3,000 homes lost.

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