Trump officially secures title of U.S. President-elect amid protest, turmoil

Trump officially secures title of U.S. President-elect amid protest, turmoil

2016-12-20 16:11:31.0

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 : (Xinhua) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Monday officially won the Electoral College vote, securing his future four-year presidency amid protest and turmoil fuelled by U.S. intelligence agencies' consensus about Russia's alleged election meddling.

"The official votes cast by the Electoral College exceeded the 270 required to secure the presidency by a very large margin," Trump said in a statement released Monday evening.

"With this historic step we can look forward to the bright future ahead," Trump said, promising to work hard to unite the country and to "be the President of all Americans."

A total of 538 electors, chosen by their state political parties, convened on Monday in Washington D.C. and 50 statehouses across the country to cast two votes - one for the president and one for the vice president.

Before Monday's electoral vote, which has long been regarded as little more than a formality, many Republican electors have been urged to defect from Trump amid continuous protests over Trump's election victory.

Major U.S. intelligence leaders have expressed support for an assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that Russia intervened in the 2016 U.S. presidential election partly to help Trump win the White House.

The hope of the so-called "Hamilton Electors" was to dump Trump by having at least 37 Republican electors vote against the will of their states so as to deprive Trump of the 270 electoral vote majority.

However, in the end all but two Republican electors stayed loyal to the party's candidate, keeping Trump well above the 270 electoral vote threshold.

Both the two Republican "faithless electors" are from Texas. One voted for Ohio Governor John Kasich and the other for former Texas congressman Ron Paul. In comparison, on the Democratic side, there were at least eight "defectors" emerging from the Electoral College in five states, though three of them were later replaced by state election officials under their state law.

In Minnesota, Hawaii and Colorado, each state had an elector voting for Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton's strongest rival during the Democratic primaries.

In Washington State, three Democratic electors voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is actually an African-American Republican, while one voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, a Native American environmental activist opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

David Bright, a Maine Democratic elector, announced early on Monday that he would vote for Sanders instead of Clinton so as to help the embattled Democratic Party woo back young voters.

"Hillary Clinton will not become President, and there is nothing I can do about that. Knowing this, I was left to find a positive statement I could make with my vote," said Bright on Facebook. However, he finally recast his vote for Clinton after being deemed improper.

Most U.S. states have laws compelling electors to follow their state's popular vote result. However, there is no federal or Constitutional directive for that. Local media said only nine U.S. electors in the past 100 years broke from their states' Election Day results.

The number of electors each state has is equal to its number of representatives and senators in Congress - 538 in total, with those extra three electors coming from Washington, District of Columbia. Among them are state party leaders, elected officials or just individuals with a personal connection to a presidential candidate.The Congress, where Republicans hold a majority, is set to certify the vote on Jan. 6. RSS

Police: Truck attack that killed 12 in Berlin 'intentional'

Police: Truck attack that killed 12 in Berlin 'intentional'

2016-12-20 16:11:00.0

BERLIN, Dec. 20 :  (AP) Police said Tuesday that the driver who rammed a truck into a crowded Christmas market in the heart of the German capital, killing at least 12 people and injuring nearly 50, did so intentionally and that they are investigating a suspected "terror attack."

The truck struck the popular Christmas market outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church late Monday as tourists and locals were enjoying a traditional pre-Christmas evening out near Berlin's Zoo station.

"Our investigators are working on the assumption that the truck was intentionally driven into the crowd at the Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz," Berlin police said on Twitter.

"All police measures concerning the suspected terror attack at Breitscheidplatz are being taken with great speed and the necessary care," they said.Hours earlier Germany's top security official had refrained from pointing to an intentional act, but said evidence pointed in that direction, while the White House condemned "what appears to have been a terrorist attack."

The crash came less than a month after the U.S. State Department called for caution in markets and other public places across Europe, saying extremist groups including Islamic State and al-Qaida were focusing "on the upcoming holiday season and associated events."

The Islamic State group and al-Qaida have both called on followers to use trucks in particular to attack crowds. On July 14, a truck plowed into Bastille Day revelers in the southern French city of Nice, killing 86 people. Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack, which was carried out by a Tunisian living in France.

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After the Berlin attack, dozens of ambulances lined the streets waiting to evacuate people, and heavily armed police patrolled. Authorities on Twitter urged people to stay away from the area, saying they need to keep the streets clear for rescue vehicles. Among the dead was a passenger in the truck, who succumbed as paramedics treated him, Berlin police spokesman Winfried Wenzel said. Police said later that the man was a Polish national, but didn't give further details of who he was or what happened to him.

A suspect believed to be the driver was picked up about 2 kilometers (1½ miles) away, near the Victory Column monument. He was being interrogated, Wenzel said. The truck was registered in Poland, and police said it was believed to be stolen from a building site there. They didn't give a specific location.

The Polish owner of the truck said he feared the vehicle, driven by his cousin, may have been hijacked. Ariel Zurawski said he last spoke with the driver around noon, and the driver told him he was in Berlin and scheduled to unload Tuesday morning. "They must have done something to my driver," he told TVN24.

Federal prosecutors, who handle terrorism cases, took over the investigation, according to German Justice Minister Heiko Maas. In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said the United States was in contact with German officials and ready to help in the investigation and response.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump blamed Islamist terrorists, though it was unclear what that assessment was based on. He said Islamic extremists must be "eradicated from the face of the earth" and pledged to carry out that mission with all "freedom-loving partners."

But German officials said shortly after the attack that it was too early to call the crash intentional.

"I don't want to use the word 'attack' yet at the moment, although a lot speaks for it," Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told ARD television. "There is a psychological effect in the whole country of the choice of words here, and we want to be very, very cautious and operate close to the actual investigation results, not with speculation."

Germany has not experienced any mass-casualty attacks by Islamic extremists, but has been increasingly wary since two attacks by asylum-seekers in the summer that were claimed by the Islamic State group. Five people were wounded in an ax rampage on a train near Wuerzburg and 15 in a bombing outside a bar in Ansbach, both in the southern state of Bavaria. Both attackers were killed.

Those attacks, and two others unrelated to Islamic extremism in the same weeklong period, helped stoke tensions in Germany over the arrival last year of 890,000 migrants.