Tag: InternationalNews

{Recount requested by Green Party candidate Stein in state where Trump beat Clinton by less than one percentage point.}

The first candidate-driven statewide recount of a presidential election in 16 years began in Wisconsin, a state that Donald Trump won by less than a percentage point over Hillary Clinton after polls long predicted a Clinton victory.

The recount, requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, carries none of the drama of the Florida presidential recount of 2000, when the outcome of the election between Al Gore and George W Bush hung in the balance.

Stein, who made a $3.5m payment in recount costs this week, won about one percent of the vote in Wisconsin. He claims voting machines used in some parts of Wisconsin and other states are vulnerable to hacking and could have been manipulated.

“Verifying the vote through this recount is the only way to confirm that every vote has been counted securely and accurately and is not compromised by machine or human error, or by tampering or hacking,” Stein said in a statement Thursday.

“The recount does not benefit one candidate over another. It benefits all voters across the political spectrum. This is an essential first step to restore confidence in our elections and trust in our democracy.”

Almost no one expects Stein’s push for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to result in a Clinton victory over Trump.

“This is certainly not Bush v Gore,” said Wisconsin’s chief elections administrator Mike Haas.

Even so, the campaigns for Trump, Clinton and Stein all had observers spread throughout the state to watch the recount.

Clinton’s decision to join an effort to force recounts of votes from the November 8 election in up to three crucial states has been labelled “sad” by Trump, who added, “nothing will change”.

In a Twitter post last week, Trump said Clinton, his Democrat rival, had already “conceded the election when she called” him prior to his victory speech in the early morning of November 9.

“So much time and money will be spent – same result! Sad,” Trump tweeted, posting part of Clinton’s speech telling her supporters to accept that “Donald Trump is going to be our president”.

County election officials hired temporary workers, expanded hours and dusted off recount manuals to prepare for the work of re-tabulating nearly three million ballots.

Most counties will manually recount the ballots, although Stein lost a court challenge this week to force hand recounts everywhere.

The state’s largest county, Milwaukee, was planning to recount the ballots by feeding them through the same machines that counted them on election night.

In Dane County, where Clinton won 71 percent of the vote, the ballots will be counted by hand.

Wisconsin election officials have less than two weeks to complete the recount.

December 13 is the federal deadline to certify the vote to avoid having the fate of Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes decided by Congress.

Even if that were to happen, the votes would almost certainly go to Trump, since Republicans control both chambers of Congress.

{UN envoy urges access to residents of eastern Aleppo as at least 26 more killed while fleeing the fighting.}

Residents of Syria’s Aleppo are at risk of extermination and the clock is ticking on the besieged city as winter sets in, a top UN envoy told the Security Council.

Stephen O’Brien, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, made the comments on Wednesday as at least 26 more civilians, including seven children, were killed while trying to flee the government ground offensive in rebel-held east Aleppo.

“Today there was another massacre, I witnessed it,” said Aref al-Aref, a nurse and photographer in the city’s east. “The displaced people were coming at 6:30am. There was artillery shelling while they were walking in the streets. Really it was so, so horrible.”

More than 20,000 people have fled from there over the past 72 hours as Syrian forces continued to advance in the rebel-held part of the city, according to the Red Cross.

Terrified civilians have evacuated empty-handed into remaining rebel-held territory, or crossed into government-controlled western Aleppo or Kurdish-held districts.

“For the sake of humanity we call on – we plead – with the parties and those with influence to do everything in their power to protect civilians and enable access to the besieged part of eastern Aleppo before it becomes one giant graveyard,” said O’Brien.

He said aid convoys were ready to roll in from Turkey and western Aleppo, but they needed an end to the siege and protection for civilians.

The eastern part of Aleppo – which was home to 250,000 people – has been a key rebel stronghold since 2012.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have carried out the four-month siege to retake control of the city, enjoying military and diplomatic backing from Russia.

Government officials say they want to “liberate” the area, calling the opposition fighters “terrorists”, and accusing them of holding civilians there hostage.

The Syrian Civil Defence, a volunteer rescue group also known as the White Helmets, said at least 45 people, mostly women and children, were killed and more than 50 wounded in Jibb al-Qubba on Wednesday by the regime’s artillery shelling on those fleeing the conflict.

Footage sent by the Civil Defence rescue operation, purportedly of the aftermath, showed people lying in the street in pools of blood, including a woman dressed in black who had been carrying a large backpack. It was not possible to independently verify the date or location of the video.

Civilians in rebel-held eastern Aleppo expressed desperation for their survival as fighting carves deeper into their half of the city.

“We are so afraid. The army is about five to six kilometres away from us,” Marwa Taleb, resident of the al-Kallasseh neighbourhood in eastern Aleppo, told Al Jazeera.

“The exodus is extreme in every meaning of the word. Many from Hanano and Sakhour, where the army has advanced, are coming into our neighbourhoods. There is so much anxiety and fear.”

Britain’s ambassador, Matthew Rycroft, accused Russia, which in October vetoed a resolution to stop the bombing in Aleppo, of supporting “a deliberate act of starvation and a deliberate withholding of medical care”.

“The Syrian regime and Russia have been executing a plan that has now laid one million people under siege – and executing is an all-too appropriate word,” he said.

Russia’s envoy, Vitaly Churkin, brushed off criticism and said Syria was seeking to eliminate armed groups such as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

“We vehemently condemn any attempts to protect terrorists including any political action on a humanitarian pretext which, sadly alas, UN humanitarian works have been dragged into,” Churkin said.

Russian soldiers helped distribute food aid to displaced people who had fled eastern Aleppo to government areas, handing out packages stamped with the Russian flag and the slogan “Russia is with you” in Arabic.

Rebel shelling of government-held districts in western Aleppo killed eight people, including two children, and wounded seven, the official SANA news agency reported, citing a police official.

For months civilians have faced severe shortages of basic supplies, including food, water and fuel in addition to constant bombardment.

Ibrahim al-Hajj, head of media for the White Helmets’ Aleppo branch, told Al Jazeera there was no respite from the constant shelling in eastern Aleppo.

“There are people under the rubble. The situation is catastrophic,” he said. “Please help us. We want anyone to intervene and stop this.”

According to the UN about 400,000 Syrians have been killed in the conflict that dates back to a 2011 popular uprising against Assad’s regime.

Close to five million have fled into neighbouring countries over the years, while six million remain internally displaced. The UN has described the situation as the “biggest refugee and displacement crisis of our time”.

{Electrical failure and lack of fuel resulted in plane crash, according to recording of pilot’s final communication.}

The pilot of the plane that crashed in Colombia had radioed he was running out of fuel and in an emergency, according to a recording of his final communications.

Monday night’s disaster killed 71 people, including most of Brazil’s Chapecoencse football team en route to a cup final in Colombia, and sent shock waves round the global football world.

Only six on board the LAMIA Bolivia charter flight survived, including three of the Chapecoense squad en route to the biggest game in their history: the Copa Sudamericana final.

“Miss, LAMIA 933 is in total failure, total electrical failure, without fuel,” the Bolivian pilot Miguel Quiroga is heard telling a control tower operator at Medellin airport on the crackly audio played by Colombian media.

“Fuel emergency, Miss,” he added, requesting urgent permission to land.

Investigators from Brazil flew in to join Colombian counterparts checking two black boxes and cockpit voice recordings from the crash site on a muddy hillside in wooded highlands near La Union town.

Bolivia, where the charter company LAMIA was based, and the United Kingdom also sent in experts to help the investigation.

The Chapocoense football team – and an accompanying entourage of staff – were among 77 passengers and crew onboard the aircraft. A large number of journalists were also on the plane.

All six survivors were being treated at local hospitals. Of the players who survived, goalkeeper Jackson Follmann was recovering from the amputation of his right leg, doctors said.

Defender Helio Neto remained in intensive care with severe trauma to his skull, thorax and lungs.

And fellow defender Alan Ruschelhad had surgery for spinal injuries.

Another survivor, Bolivian flight technician Erwin Tumiri, said he only saved himself by strict adherence to security procedure, while others panicked.

“Many passengers got up from their seats and started yelling,” he told Colombia’s Radio Caracol. “I put the bag between my legs and went into the fetal position as recommended.”

By nightfall on Tuesday, rescuers had recovered most of the bodies of the dead, which were to be repatriated to Brazil and to Bolivia, where all the plane’s nine-person crew were from.

Locals are accustomed to planes flying overhead at all hours, but many were disturbed by the massive crash noise that interrupted their sleep and evening television.

“It came over my house, but there was no noise, the engine must have gone,” said Nancy Munoz, 35, a resident of the area.

“I thought it was a bomb, because the FARC rebels used to attack military infrastructure here. Then we heard the rescuers arriving,” said her husband Fabian.

Meanwhile, Brazil declared three days of mourning.

Chapecoense’s opponents, Atletico Nacional of Medellin, asked for the tournament to be awarded to the Brazilians in honour of the dead.

Fellow top division Brazilian sides also showed solidarity, offering loan players to Chapecoense, and urging the national federation to give it a three-year stay against relegation while the club got back on its feet.

Global soccer greats from Lionel Messi to Pele sent condolences.

It was an appalling twist to a fairy-tale story for Chapecoense, which rose since 2009 from Brazil’s fourth to top division and was about to play the biggest match in its history in the first leg of the regional cup final.

Distraught fans gathered around the team’s Conda stadium in Chapeco, a city of about 200,000 people in southern Brazil.

{Syrian army says Israeli jets fired two missiles at an area west of the capital, causing no casualties.}

Israeli jets fired two missiles from Lebanese airspace toward the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus early on Wednesday, the official Syrian news agency said, in a strike on an unknown target that caused loud explosions.

State news agency SANA said the missiles struck the Al-Sabboura area, west of Damascus, and did not cause any casualties.

Citing an unnamed military source, SANA did not specify what the missiles struck, but Damascus residents reported on social media hearing loud blasts around 2am.

“In a move aimed at diverting the attention on the victories of the Syrian army and to raise the morale of the terrorist gangs, Israeli warplanes fired two rockets from the Lebanese aerial space into the Sabboura area,” SANA said, quoting a military source.

The Israeli military declined to comment, but Tel Aviv is widely believed to have carried out a number of air strikes in Syria in the past few years that have targeted advanced weapons systems, including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles.

The arms are believed to have been destined for the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah group, a close ally of the Syrian government and a fierce enemy of Israel.

While the target of Wednesday’s air strikes is not yet known, the government-held town of Sabboura is close to the Damascus-Beirut highway and is often used by Hezbollah.

The strikes came days after Israeli aircraft hit a machinegun-mounted vehicle inside Syria, killing four fighters of the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, a group associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) after they opened fire on a military patrol on the Israeli-controlled side of the Golan Heights.

Israel has largely remained unaffected by the Syrian civil war raging next door, suffering only sporadic incidents of spillover fire that have generally been dismissed as tactical errors by forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad.

{France calls for emergency UN Security Council session as battles rage for control of Syria’s second city.}

Up to 20,000 people have fled eastern Aleppo over the past 72 hours as Syrian government forces continued to advance in the rebel-held part of the city, according to the Red Cross.

Terrified civilians have fled empty-handed into remaining rebel-held territory, or crossed into government-controlled western Aleppo or Kurdish-held districts.

The 20,000 figure is an estimate and could increase as “people are fleeing in different directions”, International Committee of the Red Cross spokesperson Krista Armstrong told the AFP news agency.

United Nations humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien had earlier put the number of displaced people from eastern Aleppo at 16,000.

The city, which was Syria’s biggest before the start of a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, has been divided between the government-held west and rebel-held east, where UN officials say at least 250,000 people remain under siege.

The Syrian government offensive to recapture the rebel-held parts of Aleppo has sparked international alarm as it intensified this week.

A voluntary rescue group known as the White Helmets reported at least 51 civilians killed in east Aleppo and more than 150 injured during the government assault.

Syrian government forces dropped “more than 150 air strikes from war planes and helicopters and [fired] more than 1,200 artillery shells”, the group wrote on its Facebook page.

The attacks hit the neighbourhoods of Bab al-Nairab, al-Mayser and al-Salheen, among others.

SANA, the official Syrian state media arm, reported that Syrian government forces and allies on Monday took control of several areas in the city’s northeast, including al-Haidariya, al-Sakhour, al-Inzarat, al-Sheikh Khedr, Jabal Badro, and al-Halk.

{{‘Cannot remain silent’}}

France called for an immediate UN Security Council session on the fighting, which has seen the army capture a third of opposition-controlled east Aleppo in recent days.

The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday on the dire humanitarian crisis unfolding in Aleppo, diplomats said.

The 15 ambassadors of the UN Security Council will get a video-conference briefing on the situation in Aleppo by a UN official in charge of humanitarian operation and the UN mediator in Syria, Staffan de Mistura.

“France and its partners cannot remain silent in the face of what could be one of the biggest massacres of civilian population since World War II,” said France’s UN ambassador Francois Delattre on Tuesday.

He and his British counterpart Matthew Rycroft earlier in the day pushed for the emergency council meeting on providing humanitarian relief to the besieged Syrian city.

Eastern Aleppo has been under government siege for more than four months, with international aid stocks exhausted and food supplies running low.

Rycroft said the council would discuss plans for the UN to deliver much-needed food and medicine into Aleppo and evacuate the sick and wounded.

“Russia complained that the opposition had not agreed to this plan. Now they have, so I call on Russia to make sure the Syrian regime agrees,” Rycroft said.

“The future of Aleppo is in the hands of the regime and Russia, and we urge the regime and Russia to stop the bombing and let the aid go through.”

The Syrian conflict started as a largely unarmed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule in March 2011. It has since morphed into a full-on civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands.

The UN refugee agency has registered more than 4.8 million Syrian refugees who have fled the fighting, while another 6.1 million people are internally displaced within the country’s borders.

{Almost 650,000 people in Mosul left without water after pipeline was hit during fighting between Iraqi forces and ISIL.}

Fighting between Iraqi forces and ISIL fighters has cut water supplies across a large part of Mosul, affecting 40 percent of residents in the city where poorer families are already struggling to feed themselves.

Water was cut to 650,000 people when a pipeline was hit during fighting between ISIL and the Iraqi government forces trying to crush them in their northern Iraq stronghold.

“We are facing a humanitarian catastrophe,” said Hussam al-Abar, member of Mosul’s Nineveh provincial council, adding that 1.5 million people were still inside Mosul.

“Basic services such as water, electricity, health, food are non-existent.”

Barely more than a third of the 200,000 displaced that the UN had expected in the first few weeks of the Mosul offensive have fled their homes so far.

The lack of clean drinking water could now make it difficult for residents to remain, however.

“There is no water, we drink water from the well. It’s very salty and we have to boil it before we drink it,” Umm Ahraf, a 45-year-old woman, told AFP news agency in the Khadraa neighbourhood on Tuesday.

The battle for Mosul has already raged for six weeks. Iraqi commanders said around 40 percent of the eastern half of Mosul has been retaken from ISIL since the huge offensive began on October 17.

The forces have told civilians to stay at home in order to avoid massive displacement from the city, which was believed to have a population of a million-plus before the operation started.

Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel Hamid, reporting from eastern Mosul, said the city was “becoming one big urban battlefield”.

“The large presence of civilians is slowing the military operations down,” she said. “But among those who managed to get out of the city, there is a feeling that this offensive should have started much earlier.”

Aid workers say a full siege is developing and fear that the longer the conflict drags on, the more civilians will suffer.

“Key informants are telling us that poor families are struggling to put sufficient food on their tables,” UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, Lise Grande, told Reuters news agency.

“This is very worrying. In a worst case, we envision that families who are already in trouble in Mosul will find themselves in even more acute need. The longer it takes to liberate Mosul, the harder conditions become for families.”

The capture of Mosul, ISIL’s last major urban stronghold in Iraq, is seen as crucial towards dismantling the caliphate which the group declared in Iraq and Syria.

A spokesman of the coalition, US Airforce Col John Dorrian, said there was “a sense of urgency” to capture the city, without giving a target time frame.

A fleeing seven-year-old child was among dozens more civilians allegedly executed by ISIL in Mosul in recent weeks, the UN said on Tuesday.

Since the battle to retake Mosul began, the UN rights office has reported hundreds of alleged execution-style killings by ISIL.

The most recent allegations include a November 22 killing of “a seven-year-old child who was running towards the Iraqi Security Forces in Adan neighbourhood in eastern Mosul”.

In a November 25 incident, 27 civilians were reportedly shot dead in Mosul’s northern Muhandiseen Park, possibly for “leaking information” to the Iraqi Security Forces, the UN added.

On Tuesday, Iraqi forces assaulted villages far south of Mosul in the Nineveh province, attempting to clear rural areas of ISIL fighters who stayed behind to hinder their advance.

Some 74,000 civilians have fled Mosul so far, and the UN is preparing for a worst-case scenario which foresees more than a million people made homeless as winter descends and food shortages set in.

{Most of the deaths were caused by a locked fire door and could have been prevented, according to the local mayor.}

At least 12 people, almost all of them schoolchildren, have been killed after a fire broke out in a girls’ dormitory in Turkey’s southern province of Adana, according to the local governor.

The fire, which officials said was likely caused by an electrical fault, spread rapidly through the building’s wooden interior late on Tuesday, as panicked victims tried to jump from windows to safety.

Officials expressed concern that many of the dead were killed after they were unable to open a closed fire door to escape the top floors of the building.

Images showed scenes of devastation, as emergency services arrived to tackle the fire at the dormitory building, parts of which were turned into a blazing wreck as the roof collapsed.

“We lost 12 of our citizens in the fire. Eleven of them were schoolchildren and one was a tutor. 22 citizens are injured,” Adana region governor Mahmut Demirtas told Turkish NTV television.

“We have reached all people inside. According to initial reports, we guess that the fire broke out due to the electrical contact,” he said.

He also said some of the injured students were affected by smoke and others were wounded while trying to escape the burning building.

Turkey’s private Dogan News Agency said that all 11 of the schoolchildren killed were girls. Their identities have yet to be disclosed but they were said to be 14-years-old or under.

The disaster took place in the town of Aladag, north of Adana city, one of the biggest urban centres in the south of Turkey.

Television footage showed the three-storey building in flames, with fire engine teams trying to put out the blaze.

The governor said the fire at the private schoolchildren dorm broke out at around 7:25pm local time (16:25 GMT) and it was brought under control some three hours later.

{{Locked fire door}}

Demirtas declined to comment on claims that fire escape stairs were locked and students were unable to use them.

But Adana city mayor, Huseyin Sozlu said: “It appears that the fire escape stairs door was locked. Children could not open it. Bodies were found there.”

He told NTV “of course children would have survived”, if they had been able to flee down the fire escape stairs.

“From tomorrow, the governor’s office will start an investigation.”

Students trapped on the second and third storeys of the building who could not get outside, were killed in the fire, the Dogan News Agency said.

The fire spread quickly because of the building’s wooden interior and carpeted floor, officials said.

Aladag district’s mayor Mustafa Alpgedik, quoted by the Dogan News Agency, said the fire erupted on the ground floor and then the flames spread because the third floor was wooden.

With the burning of the wooden floor, the roof then entirely collapsed, he said.

In an agonising wait, families who could not see their children stood outside in tears, he added.

The dorm had a capacity for 54 students and was open to both secondary and high school students. Demirtas said it was a private dormitory with 34 students in residence.

The governor previously announced 28 students were staying at the secondary school dormitory when the fire erupted.

Fires are frequent in Turkey due to antiquated and often wooden buildings and faulty electrics. But a disaster of this magnitude is highly unusual.

Underlining the seriousness of the incident, several ministers were heading to the region, including interior minister, Suleyman Soylu and education minister, Ismet Yilmaz.

Demirtas informed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who expressed his sadness over the catastrophe, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim was also briefed by Demirtas and ministers.

{Six survivors taken to hospital after crash of airplane carrying players from Brazil’s Chapecoense and journalists.}

A plane carrying players from a Brazilian football team headed to Colombia for a regional tournament final, has crashed on its way to Medellin’s airport, killing at least 71 people.

Police officials said that seven passengers had initially survived but one later died in hospital.

The entire Chapocoense football team – and an accompanying entourage of staff – were among 77 passengers and crew onboard the aircraft. Local reports said a large number of journalists were also on the plane.

Al Jazeera’s Alessandro Rampietti, reporting from Bogota, said the flight crashed in a mountainous region.

“There have been heavy rains day in and day out in the last week or so,” he said. “That could have played a big role in the crash, but that is still unconfirmed.”

Medellin’s Mayor Federico Gutierrez said that he was on his way to the region where the chartered aircraft was believed to have crashed shortly before midnight local time.

“It’s a tragedy of huge proportions,” he told Blu Radio.

It was not clear what caused the British Aerospace 146 short-haul plane to crash, but, as reported by Rampietti, Colombia had been hit by heavy rains and thunderstorms in recent hours.

It was originally reported that 81 people were on the flight, but four of the passangers never boarded because of visa issuea.

Data from the FlightRadar24.com website showed that the plane circling before eventually disappearing south of Rio Negro. Medellin’s airport confirmed that the aircraft, which made a stop in Bolivia, was transporting the first division Chapecoense team from southern Brazil.

The team was scheduled to play on Wednesday in the first of a two-game Copa Sudamericana final against Atletico Nacional of Medellin.

‘Completely devastated’

Al Jazeera’s Monica Villamizar, reporting from Brazil’s Sau Paolo, said the country was “completely devastated”.

“This team in particular had been a miracle team,” she said. “The mood has changed from total celebration – to the fact that the team was in the finals – to total sadness here hearing the news of the crash.”

A video published on the team’s Facebook page showed players, filled with enthusiasm, preparing for the flight earlier on Monday in Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos international airport.

READ MORE: Who are Brazil’s Chapecoense football club?

The sister of defender Alan Ruschel, who local media reported was the first survivor taken to hospital, tweeted her relief.

“I love you BRO. You’re a warrior!” she said.

Ruschel had earlier posted images of his journey to Colombia on his Instagram account , including a photograph of he and his teammates onboard the plane.

Local reports said that goalkeeper Marcos Danilo Padilha was another of the survivors, along with an unnamed air stewardess and a journalist.

After the incident, the team published an update on Facebook in which it said players, staff, journalists and guests were among those travelling with the club on the plane.

The team, from the small city of Chapeco, joined Brazil’s first division in 2014 for the first time since the 1970s and made it to the Copa Sudamericana finals last week by defeating Argentina’s legendary San Lorenzo squad.

Al Jazeera Andy Richardson described the team as “a rare model of organisational success” that was “lauded as an example of how to run a club”.

“They were seen as a real success story of the last three or four years in Brazilian football,” he said.

In a statement released on Tuesday, CONMEBOL, the South American Football Federation, announced that it had suspended all activities until further notice.

After news of the disaster broke, tributes poured in from the football community with teams and players from across the world offering condolences and tributes.

“Sad news to wake up to today,” Manchester United and England captain Wayne Rooney tweeted.