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US election: Trump struggles on path to 270

Without Florida, Trump is projected to have less than a 1 in 100 chance of winning the White House. If he can hold on to Penn State, he stays in the game….reports Asian Lite News

  • Washington, Aug. 21, 2020 (Xinhua) — U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in Washington D.C., the United States, on Feb. 28, 2020. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua/IANS)

With less than a fortnight left, leading pollsters are pinning US President Donald Trump’s path to a second term on carrying two battleground states: Florida and Pennsylvania.

Without Florida, Trump is projected to have less than a 1 in 100 chance of winning the White House. If he can hold on to Penn State, he stays in the game.

Florida, with 29 electoral votes, is famous for its razor thin margins and has gone to the winner of nearly every presidential race in the US. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush scraped past Al Gore by 537 votes after a recount in Florida.

Reuters/Ipsos, CNN/SSRS and Civiqs/Daily Kos released Florida surveys that give Biden either a 4 or 5 point lead among likely voters.

At least one of the three rustbelt states he won in 2016 is a must-win again: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan.

Pennsylvania, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, has the highest chance of deciding the election.

There, Biden leads by 5 points in a Fox News poll, 6 points in a Suffolk University poll, 8 points in a Quinnipiac University poll and by 10 points among likely voters in a CNN/SSRS poll.

Trafalgar Group, which correctly predicted the 2016 election, also puts Trump ahead in Pennsylvania.

Ten polls released since October 10 all show Biden ahead in Pennsylvania, although they vary on the size of lead.

  • Trump, Biden trade early jabs in first presidential debate.



Across the entirety of six battlegrounds that could tip a closely fought election, Biden continues to maintain a steady 4 point average lead against Trump. In all these three states, Hillary Clinton led in the polls in the final weeks of 2016 and went on to lose the electoral college to Trump.

Fox News polls released on Wednesday show Biden with a clear advantage in Michigan and a slight one in Wisconsin.

There’s still time for another “October surprise” — the first was Trump’s Covid diagnosis on October 2, but one thing that’s different this time is the record number of votes already cast. Nationally, 46 million Americans voters have already voted and that number represents 33.6 per cent of the total votes counted in the 2016 general election. Of those 46 million early votes, more than 32 million are mail-in votes.

Six battlegrounds — Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona account for 101 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. These aren’t all the battlegrounds but their competitive edge, taken together, usually tip US elections.

Also read:Trump knocks Fauci, calls him ‘disaster’

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-Top News India News USA

Climate change: Trump puts blame on India, China, Russia

“Look at India, it’s filthy, it’s air is filthy,” Donald Trump said during the debate. That was the only mention of India during a debate that mostly stayed clear of foreign policy and strategic interests…reports Arul Louis

US President Donald Trump has described India and its air as “filthy” during the last presidential debate with his Democratic challenger Joe Biden while discussing the environment and the Paris climate change agreeement.

“Look at India, it’s filthy, it’s air is filthy,” Trump said on Thursday night in Nashville, Tennessee, while comparing it to China and Russia to what he said was the condition of the US environment.

“We have the best carbon emission numbers that we’ve had in 35 years under this administration, we are working so well with industry,” he said before lunging at India and the other two countries.

That was the only mention of India during a debate that mostly stayed clear of foreign policy and strategic interests.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programme came up with Trump pointing out that it had not conducted any nuclear tests during his time in office, unlike when Biden was the Vice President.

He said that he had prevented a war with Pyongyang that former President Barack Obama had expected.

Trump asserted that he will make China pay for spreading the Covid-19 pandemic and that he was already making it pay for the trade problems and sending $20 billion to US farmers, which Biden disputed.

Biden would not commit himself to taking punitive action against China for the pandemic, saying instead he would act according to international norms and make sure it would, too.

China and Russia also cropped in the context of money allegedly received by Biden’s son Hunter from sources there as well as in Ukraine.

Biden denied that his family had received any money from those sources, although some of it has been documented.

Trump asserted that he took the US out of the Paris agreement because it was unfair to the US and it would have been required to spend trillions of dollars to meet its undertakings in the pact.

“China doesn’t kick in until 2030, Russia goes back to a low standard, and we kicked into it right away.

“They were going to take away our businesses, I will not sacrifice tens of millions of jobs, thousands and thousands of companies, because of the Paris accord.

“We have done an incredible job, environmentally… The cleanest air the cleanest water, and the best carbon emission standards that we’ve seen in many many years,” the President added.

Trump has been criticised for lowering various environmental standards by, for example, cutting auto exhaust emission standards and opening up federal lands for oil and gas drilling.

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-Top News USA

Biden warns of ‘dark winter’ if Trump stays in power

Biden tore into Trump with the country’s virus caseload. Coronavirus has killed more than 222,000 Americans and sickened more than 8 million….Nikhila Natarajan reports

Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden, currently leading in national and battleground polls, waded into a final, high stakes presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee, slamming US President Donald Trump as a man unfit to remain in the White House, holding him responsible for America’s catastrophic coronavirus death toll and warning Americans of a “dark winter” ahead if Trump remains in office.

Biden tore into Trump with the country’s virus caseload. Coronavirus has killed more than 222,000 Americans and sickened more than 8 million.

“Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America. We’re in a situation where there are 1000 deaths a day. And there are over 70,000, new cases per day,” Biden said.

Biden landed plenty of punches into the first 15 minutes. “It’s his ineptitude that cost us lives. He should not have been in his sand trap in the golf course.”

Trump wants to be done with Covid-19 but Covid-19 isn’t done with America. That conversation has never gone well for Trump and that’s precisely where the final debate kicked off.

Trump, a recovered Covid patient, claimed the world’s leaders have been congratulating him for what he’s done with the virus response. True to form, Trump offered no specifics. He continued to say that schools must reopen, the economy must reopen and that Biden will simply hole up in his basement.

Trump is expected to attack Biden with dubious claims about Biden’s son Hunter’s alleged corruption and links to Ukraine. Biden aides have been pushing the former vice president to invoke the ‘American Family’ and ask Trump how that is going rather than take Trump’s bait.

Biden has a lot to go on offence about, if he wants to. Biden comes into the final televised debate in a strong position, ahead of Trump in battleground polls, awash in cash and a contrast to Trump in personal safety measures.

Biden has already made his case to America, Trump is looking for a late surge like the one which helped him win in 2016, and more than 46 million Americans have already voted. The stakes are high, the cracks are not as wide as they were at this point in the game in 2016.

Biden leads Trump in national polls by 9.9 points, according to FiveThirtyEight poll average and 7.9 points in the RealClearPolitics poll average.

  • Joe Biden.

Trump and Biden had their microphones cut off while the other delivered opening two-minute long remarks on the first debate topic. This will apply to all six segments. The mute button won’t feature in the open discussion portion of the debate. Each segment is 15 minutes long.

Trump is looking to reset the race, Biden is looking to ensure that there are no major gaffes. Incumbents have a pretty consistent history of doing badly in the first debate and coming back strong, but then again those were incumbents who listened to their aides. Trump has mostly been preparing by tweeting at the TV.

Next up, in 15 minute segments, the two will be facing off on the tanking economy, racial inequality, climate change, national security and leadership.

This second and final debate is being moderated by NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker. Welker is the first Black woman to moderate a presidential debate since Carole Simpson in 1992.

Also read:Biden slams Trump’s lies about Covid 19

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Politics USA

US election: Texas early voter turnout surpasses 2016 figure

As of Monday, nearly 720,000 voters in Harris County had cast their ballot in person or by mail…reports Asian Lite News

Voter turnout in Harris County, Texas, after seven days of early voting for the November 3 presidential election has surpassed the figure recorded during the 2016 polls.

As of Monday, nearly 720,000 voters in Harris County had cast their ballot in person or by mail, the Houston-based KHOU TV station said in a news report on Tuesday evening.

This figure represented 52 per cent of the total voter turnout in 2016 and 73 per cent of the early voter turnout that year.

Voters in the County broke another record during the first four days of the early voting, casting more than 100,000 ballots each day, with an average about 10,000 votes per hour.

“This turnout is not an accident,” the KHOU TV station quoted Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo as saying on Tuesday.

The county nearly tripled the number of early voting sites to a record 122. Ten of those are new drive-thru voting sites.

A spokesman for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office reported on Tuesday that more than 4.6 million of the state’s residents have cast their ballots during the first week of early voting.

In the 2016 election, Texas, a major battleground state, swung in President Donald Trump’s favour.

He won 52.23 per cent of the votes, while his then Democratic rival Hillary Clinton garnered 52.23 per cent of the ballots.

Also read:Trump to remove Sudan from terror list

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-Top News Politics USA

Obama calls on youth to create a ‘new normal’

“one of the most inspiring things about this year has been to see so many young Americans fired up, organizing, marching and fighting for change.” said Obama…reports Asian Lite News

As he readies to hit the campaign trail for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, former US President Barack Obama urged the country’s youth to vote in the November 3 election, as their “generation can be the one that creates a new normal in America”.

In a video posted on his Twitter account on Tuesday, Obama said: “one of the most inspiring things about this year has been to see so many young Americans fired up, organizing, marching and fighting for change.

“Your generation can be the one that creates a new normal in America. One that’s fairer, where the system treats everybody equally and gives everybody opportunity.

“We can come out of this moment stronger than before.”

The video came a day before Obama’s appearance at a Philadelphia event as part of the campaign trail for Biden, who was his Vice President from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017.

In Tuesday’s vide, Obama said about Biden that he him “better than almost anybody”, CNN reported.

“I trust him to be a great President. He’s different. He’s on the right side of the issues
.
“He’ll get the job done. And Joe and Kamala will want you to keep pushing them to get the job done,” the former leader added.

According to Democratic Party sources, the former President is also expected to travel to other key battleground states ahead of the November 3 election.

  • Joe Biden.

During the Democratic National Convention in August, Obama spoke live from the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia in support of his former Vice President.

Meanwhile, latest polls have revealed that Biden had a comfortable lead against President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state.

A Monmouth University poll out earlier this month showed that 54 per cent of registered voters preferred Biden over 42 per cent who backed Trump.

The state had swung in Trump’s favour in the 2016 presidential election, giving him 48.18 per cent of the votes against his then Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s 47.46 per cent.

Also read:Biden slams Trump’s lies about Covid 19

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-Top News Asia News USA

Armenian, Azerbaijani FMs meet Pompeo in Washington

The Foreign Ministers of the warring countries of Armenia and Azerbaijan will separately meet US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday…reports Asian Lite News

Amid the ongoing military conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, the Foreign Ministers of the warring countries of Armenia and Azerbaijan will separately meet US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday, according to media reports.

In a statement to The Hill news website on Tuesday, Elin Suleymanov, the Azerbaijani Ambassador to the US, said that Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov will meet Pompeo on Friday, adding that the invitation came from the State Department.

Suleymanov told The Hill that the meeting with Pompeo is expected to “address the stalled political negotiations over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh”.

“The issue is not the ceasefire, the issue is the resumption of substantive talks based on international law,” he added.

Meanwhile, Grigor Hovhannissian, Armenia’s Ambassador to the US also told The Hill that preparations were underway for Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan’s visit to Washington.

The envoy added that Yerevan was pushing the US to halt military assistance to Azerbaijan and sanction Turkey for its support of Baku.

According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, the meeting will also include representatives from France and Russia.

According to US government documents as seen by Politico news, Bayramov will first meet Pompeo on Friday morning, while Mnatsakanyan meeting will take place shortly after.

On Sunday, Azerbaijan and Armenia traded accusations of violating the second ceasefire which came into force, just hours earlier in the day, aimed at halting the fighting in the disputed region.

The accusations came despite the two warring countries welcoming the truce.

Following trilateral negotiations between Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia that lasted for over two hours in Moscow, the first ceasefire was enforced in the region on October 11.

Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, with intense battles raging in Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but mostly governed by the Republic of Artsakh, a de facto independent state with an Armenian ethnic majority.

The area experienced flare-ups of violence in the summer of 2014, April 2016 and in July tjis year.

Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war over the region in 1988-94, eventually declaring a ceasefire.

However, a settlement was never reached.

Also read:‘Deeply concerned’ over Turkish gas exploration: Pompeo

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-Top News USA

Trump knocks Fauci, calls him ‘disaster’

Trump’s rant came a day after Fauci said during a CBS News interview on Sunday that he was not surprised when Trump had tested positive for Covid-19 after “super spreader” cermony…reports Asian Lite News

During a call with his re-election campaign staff, US President Donald Trump slammed Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, and called the latter “a disaster”.

According to the audio of Monday’s call obtained by The Hill news website, the President even accused Fauci of providing inconsistent advice about the coronavirus pandemic and claimed that if he had followed all of the top scientist’s advice, the US would have “700,000 to 800,000 deaths right now”.

“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots, these people, these people that have gotten it wrong. Fauci is a nice guy, he’s been here for 500 years, he called every one of them wrong,” he told his staffers during the call.

“He’s like this wonderful guy, a wonderful sage telling us how he said, do not wear facemasks — that’s a number of months ago. He said, do not close it up to China. I have a list of 15 things.

“And yet we keep him. Every time he goes on television there’s always a bomb. But there is a bigger bomb if you fire him. But Fauci is a disaster… If we listened to him, we’d have 700,000 to 800,000 deaths right now,” the President added.

  • Washington, July. 21 (Xinhua) — Donald Trump takes the stage on the last day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, the United States, July 21, 2016. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu/IANS)


Trump’s rant came a day after Fauci said during a CBS News interview on Sunday that he was not surprised when Trump had tested positive for Covid-19 after the September 27 White House “super spreader” cermony for Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Following the event, the others who were infected besides the President included First Lady Melania Trump; youngest son Barron Trump; senior aides Hope Hicks and Stephen Miller; White House Press Secretary Kayley McEnany; RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel; Republican Senators Mike Lee and Thom Tilis; former adviser Kellyanne Conway; and Trump campaign director Bill Stepien.

During Monday’s call, the President also claimed the people are tired of the pandemic, adding “just leave us alone”, The Hill news website reported.

“With or without vaccines, people are tired of Covid-19.”

The President continued his tirade against Fauci even on Twitter, saying on Monday night that he should “make better decisions”, while also mocked him for throwing “perhaps the worst first pitch in the history of Baseball”.

Also read:Fauci asks Trump campaign to take down ad featuring him

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-Top News USA

Mics to be muted in final presidential debate

Trump, Biden trade early jabs in first presidential debate.

The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) said the decision was taken on after it met on Monday to discuss changes to the format of the debate…reports Asian Lite News

  • Trump, Biden trade early jabs in first presidential debate.

The microphones of US President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden will be muted during segments of Thursday’s presidential debate, the last direct face-off before the November 3 election, it was announced.

The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) said the decision was taken on after it met on Monday to discuss changes to the format of the debate which will take place at the Curb Event Centre, Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, CNN reported.

“We realize, after discussions with both campaigns, that neither campaign may be totally satisfied with the measures announced today.

“One may think they go too far, and one may think they do not go far enough. We are comfortable that these actions strike the right balance and that they are in the interest of the American people, for whom these debates are held,” it said in a statement.

Following the first presidential debate on September 29 which took a chaotic turn, insults such as “clown”, “liar”, “just shush for a minute” and “keep yapping” took centre-stage as the two rivals tore into each other, the CPD had announced that it was mulling changes to the format.

  • US President Donald Trump formallt accepts Republican nomination.



According to the CPD’s statement, at the start of each of the six segments of the debate, each candidate will be given two minutes to answer an initial question.

During that portion, the opposing candidate’s microphone will be muted.

An informed source told CNN on Monday that the decision on muting the microphones was unanimous by the CPD members.

“This is not a change to rules but rather a move to promote adherence to rules that have been agreed to by both campaigns.
“
A change to the rules would have required protracted and ultimately, in our view, unworkable negotiations between the two campaigns,” the source told CNN.

Reacting to the decision, Trump told reporters: “I’ll participate. I just think it’s very unfair.”

Confirming the President’s participation, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh termed the CPD’s decision an “attempt to provide advantage to their favoured candidate”.

The second presidential debate which was scheduled to take place on October 15 was cancelled after the CPD had suggested holding it in a virtual format following Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis.

But the President rejected the idea and declared that he wouldn’t participate, leading to its scrapping.

Also read:Biden slams Trump’s lies about Covid 19

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-Top News COVID-19 USA

NY Foundation’s Grant to Boost Testing in India

These grants are part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s ongoing Covid-19 response strategy, a global $100 million commitment to improve public health and expand equitable access to testing and contract tracing…reports Asian Lite News

New York-based Rockefeller Foundation on Monday announced two new grants totalling $5.5 million (approximately Rs 40.3 crore) to support the expansion of Covid-19 testing and contact tracing across India.

The grants, awarded to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms and PATH, will support domestic manufacturing of critical testing materials and the deployment of scalable testing programmes, essential to mitigating the virus’ spread.

Additionally, the grants will advance the efforts to leverage data and technology to strengthen pandemic surveillance and response.

“Scaling up Covid-19 testing provides crucial data insights that can help inform India’s response and direct targeted interventions to those most in need,” Naveen Rao, Senior Vice President (Health), Rockefeller Foundation, said in a statement.

“These grants reflect our commitment to supporting India’s equitable recovery from Covid-19, and we look forward to working alongside the government of India to advance this urgent goal,” Rao added.

India has recorded significant rise in Covid-19 cases over the past few months, placing it on track to surpass the US as the country with the highest number of infections.

These grants are part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s ongoing Covid-19 response strategy, a global $100 million commitment to improve public health and expand equitable access to testing and contract tracing.

As part of the newly announced grants, the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP) — an initiative of the Indian government’s Department of Biotechnology (DBT) — is receiving funding to scale up local manufacturing of reagents and testing solutions in India, providing the country with the elements needed to domestically produce reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing kits.

C-CAMP will leverage public-private partnerships to develop a roadmap for the production of RT-PCR testing kits and provide data-driven projections, informing a national plan for the production of at least 10 million testing kits per month.

“RT-PCR tests remain the gold standard for confirming active Covid-19 infections. By helping scale up domestic test production, this grant will strengthen India’s diagnostic capacities and improve its ability to mitigate the virus,” said Taslimarif Saiyed, C-CAMP CEO and Director.

PATH, a leading global public health organisation, has received a grant to expand Covid-19 testing capacity in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Punjab, The Rockefeller Foundation said.

With this funding, PATH will support state governments to develop and deploy optimised testing strategies that can be replicated and scaled up rapidly, seek to make Covid-19 screening and diagnostic tools available at an affordable cost, create an ecosystem of faster diagnosis of Covid-19 in key geographies, and establish pandemic surveillance models.

These collaborations will not only help to solve a critical domestic challenge, provide for import substitution, but will also enable India to better contribute to the global Covid-19 response.

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Biden slams Trump’s lies about Covid 19

Joe Biden.

“Turn the corner? Things are getting worse. He continues to lie to us about the circumstances,” the former Vice President added…Reports Asian Lite News

  • Joe Biden.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has said that US President Donald Trump continues to “lie about the circumstances” of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country.

“The other night, Trump said in one of his rallies, ‘we’ve turned the corner’,” The Hill news website reported on Sunday citing Biden as saying at a rally in North Carolina.

“Turn the corner? Things are getting worse. He continues to lie to us about the circumstances,” the former Vice President added.

Biden’s statement came a day after the President at an event in Janesville, Wisconsin, said: “We are rounding the corner. The vaccines are unbelievable. Except for a little politics. We have unbelievable vaccines coming out real soon. And the therapeutics are unbelievable.”

  • Washington, Oct. 2, 2020 (Xinhua) — File photo taken on Sept. 3, 2020 shows U.S. President Donald Trump participating in a campaign rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, the United States. Trump said early Friday morning that he and his wife, Melania, have tested positive for COVID-19, after a close aide had contracted the virus. (Xinhua/Liu Jie/IANS)

Making a similar remark at a rally in Jacksonville, Florida, last month, Trump had said “we’re rounding the turn”, adding that”under my leadership, prosperity will surge”.

The US is currently the worst-hit country by the global health crisis, accounting for the highest number of cases and deaths.

As of Monday morning, the total number of cases in the country stood at 8,152,093 and the fatalities increased to 219,669, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

Also read:Biden campaign raises far more in September than Trump