A recent proliferation of craft gins and new distilleries has taken over South Africa’s bar scene. But this is not your average gin, distillers say: South African gin is infused with unique local flavors — like fynbos, rooibos, marula, sceletium and other distinctive South African botanicals — that they feel will take the world’s taste buds by storm. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Gin Town, AKA Johannesburg.
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Category Archives: News
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Ocean Shock: In Land of Sushi, Squid Moves Out of Reach
This is part of “Ocean Shock,” a Reuters series exploring climate change’s impact on sea creatures and the people who depend on them.
Takashi Odajima picked up a cracked and faded photograph and dusted it off with his sleeve. He smiled a little sadly at the image from long ago, back when he was a baby boy.
In the photo, he sits on his uncle’s lap as his family poses at a nearby dock, squid heaped in the background. In another, his uncle dries rows of squid, carefully folded like shirts over a clothesline on the roof of their house.
Odajima’s family has lived for generations in Hakodate, on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. It’s a city steeped in squid, a place where restaurants outside the local fish market advertise the start of the squid-fishing season with colorful banners.
When Odajima’s father returned home from World War II, he supported his family by driving a truck for a local seafood company. He was paid in salt, a valuable commodity at the time.
Using the salt, his family began making and selling shio-kara, a fermented squid dish that derives its name from its taste: “salty-spicy.” Because it keeps for days without refrigeration, it was an important source of protein for Japan’s starving population after the war.
Seven decades later, most Japanese bars still serve it as an appetizer, and small bottles are sold in supermarkets as a condiment to be eaten with rice.
“Someone once asked me what squid means to people in Hakodate, and I told him that it was our soul. I was half-joking at the time,” Odajima, 66, said. “But squid was always the main dish, long before we started eating rice.”
Out of more than a dozen types of squid eaten here, the Japanese flying squid, or Todarodes pacificus, is so central to the national cuisine, it’s sometimes referred to as maika, or the true squid.
But now, fluctuations in ocean temperatures and years of overfishing and lax regulatory oversight have drastically depleted populations of the translucent squid in waters around Japan. As recently as 2011, fishermen in Japan were hauling in more than 200,000 tons of flying squid a year. That number had fallen by three-quarters to 53,000 tons last year, the lowest harvest since Japan’s national fisheries cooperative started keeping records more than 30 years ago. Japanese researchers say they expect catches of flying squid to be even smaller this year.
That such a ubiquitous creature could disappear has shaken a country whose identity is intertwined with fish and fishing, a nation where sushi chefs are treated like rock stars and fishermen are the heroes of countless TV shows. The shortage of flying squid, an icon of the working and middle classes, has dealt a hard blow to the livelihoods of not only fishermen, but everyone from suppliers to traders at Tokyo’s famous fish market.
The fate of the flying squid is a microcosm of a global phenomenon that has seen marine life fleeing waters that have undergone the fastest warming on record. Reuters has spent more than a year scouring decades of maritime temperature readings, fishery records and other little-used data to create a portrait of the planet’s hidden climate change — in the rarely explored depths of the seas that cover more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface.
Fish have always followed changing conditions, sometimes with devastating effects for people, as the starvation in Norwegian fishing villages in past centuries when the herring failed to appear one season will attest. But what is happening today is different: The accelerating rise in sea temperatures, which scientists primarily attribute to the burning of fossil fuels, is causing a lasting shift in fisheries.
In Japan, average market prices of the once-humble squid have nearly doubled in the past two years, quickly putting the dish out of reach for many blue-collar and middle-class Japanese families that grew up eating it.
A Town’s Identity Threatened
Here in Hakodate, the squid shortage threatens the very culture and shared history of the town. One of the country’s first ports to open for trade with the outside world in the 19th century, it has the look of a Japanese San Francisco, with gingerbread Victorians and tram lines that slope down to the waterfront.
Odajima’s earliest memory is of his mother buying squid from a neighbor’s cart piled high with the morning’s catch. Now, fishermen barely have enough squid to sell to traders, much less to neighbors. A festival celebrating the start of the squid season in a nearby town has been canceled two years in a row.
Odajima still works in the family compound, a collection of deteriorating buildings near the Hakodate docks. Walking through a cluttered storage shed, he shows off the factory floor where he keeps his family treasure: dozens of 60-year-old barrels made of Japanese cedar. He’s one of the last local manufacturers still using wooden barrels to ferment and age his product.
Odajima also refuses to use cheaper imported squid, saying it would harm the brand’s locally sourced appeal.
But with costs skyrocketing, he isn’t sure about the future of his family business. His 30-year-old son quit his office job to help out after Odajima failed to find new workers. “I wanted to be able to hand it to him in better shape,” he said, “but now…”
One morning in June, Odajima joined a huddle of men at the docks for one of the first squid auctions for the season.
They looked over three neat piles of white Styrofoam boxes, comforting one another that it was still early in the squid season.
“Shit, they’re all tiny,” one buyer said. His friend walked away without waiting for the bidding to start.
At exactly 6.20 a.m., men in green jackets tipped their hats and began the auction. Once an event that used to attract dozens of buyers and take as long as an hour, this one took less than two minutes.
A gruff buyer supplying local restaurants that cater mostly to tourists strode to the front of the pack and bought all 11 boxes without looking. The rest of the group, including Odajima, hung back and shook their heads.
In the month of June, just 31 tons of fresh squid ended up at Hakodate’s main market, 70 percent less than the previous year. A typical squid caught in the Sea of Japan now weighs a third less than it did 10 years ago, according to surveys by Takafumi Shikata, a researcher at the Ishikawa Prefecture Fisheries Research Center.
An Early Warning on Squid
The squid shortage has become so dire, anxious bankers with outstanding loans to those in the industry have started showing up at the annual seminars held by Yasunori Sakurai, one of Japan’s foremost experts on cephalopods.
Sakurai, the chair of the Hakodate Cephalopod Research Center, began warning fishermen and other researchers about the effects of climate change on Japan’s squid population nearly two decades ago.
The flying squid gains its name from the way it can spread its mantle like a parachute to draw in and eject water, using propulsion to fly above the waves. The squid spend their short life — just over a year — migrating thousands of miles between the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean, mating, then returning to lay eggs in the same area where they were born.
Sakurai blames climate change for recent fluctuations in ocean temperatures — a cold snap in waters where the squid spawn and steadily warming waters in the Sea of Japan where they migrate. These changes mean that fewer eggs laid in the colder-than-average waters in the East China Sea survive, and those that do hatch are swimming northward to avoid unnaturally warm waters in the Sea of Japan.
The Sea of Japan has warmed 1.7 degrees Celsius (around 3 degrees Fahrenheit) in the past century, making it one of the fastest-warming areas in the seas surrounding the archipelago.
Based on predictions by Sakurai’s former students now at Japan’s Fisheries Research and Education Agency, surface temperatures in these waters may rise an additional 3.7 degrees Celsius over the next century.
These changes have taken a toll on squid.
“It’s something that’s always been eaten on the side, and now it’s just gone. Everyone is asking why,” Sakurai said.
Others, like retired regulator and researcher Masayuki Komatsu, argue that although Japanese officials and fishermen are loath to admit it, the country’s rampant overfishing and lax regulatory oversight are also to blame for the shortage.
“They all blame it on climate change, and that’s the end of the discussion for them,” said Komatsu, who served as a senior official in Japan’s fisheries agency until 2004.
Since Japan started setting catch limits for the flying squid 20 years ago, fishermen have never come close to hitting the limit of the quotas. This year, the fisheries agency said it will allow fishermen to catch 97,000 tons of squid, a third less than the government’s limit for last year, but nearly double what fishermen actually caught during the same period.
The ministry acknowledges that flying squid, particularly those born in winter months, are rapidly declining. But officials say the catch limits are appropriate given the scientific evidence available. They say it is especially hard to study the elusive creature, which travels long distances over a short lifespan and is more susceptible to environmental changes than many other marine species.
“It isn’t scientific to simply say that because squid isn’t being caught, we need to lower the catch limits, when we don’t have the scientific backing to justify that,” said Yujiro Akatsuka, assistant director of the agency’s resources management promotion office.
A Fishing Town on the Rocks
Ripped curtains and fraying bits of cardboard cover windows of the empty storefronts along the main shopping street in Sakata, a town on the northwestern coast of Japan that once thrived as a major trading hub for rice and later as a fishing port. Old signs for grocery stores, camera shops and beauty parlors are barely visible through a thicket of vines.
Wooden warehouses that once stored the region’s rice are one of the few reminders of the town’s prosperous past. They were turned into souvenir stores after the buildings were featured in a popular television drama series.
On an early summer day, the docks were deserted except for a group of young Indonesian men living in shared rooms next to the port. They’re Japan’s answer to an aging industry, part of an army of young foreign men brought into the country to take fishing jobs spurned by Japanese men.
Shigeru Saito was 15 when he boarded his first fishing boat.
By the time he was 27, he was at the helm of his own ship. He never questioned his path. Both his father and grandfather, born on a small island off Sakata’s coast, had been fishermen.
Now 60, Saito has steered dozens of ships all over Japan.
When Saito started fishing, Japan had a fleet of more than 400 ships harvesting squid. He now captains one of the 65 remaining ships specially kitted with powerful light bulbs that lure squid from dark waters.
Until recently, his crew could return to port in two weeks after the start of the squid-fishing season in early June with their ship’s hold full of flying squid. Now, it takes them almost 50 days to catch that much.
“We’re having to travel farther and farther north to chase squid, but there are limits,” he said, pausing his round of checks to sit in the captain’s room of his ship, the Hoseimaru No. 58, where he sleeps in a tiny cot under boxes of equipment.
As competition intensifies for an ever-dwindling catch, fishermen have begun blaming trawlers from China, South Korea and Taiwan for overfishing in nearby waters. In recent years, fishermen from North Korea have also joined the competition.
Japan says North Koreans are illegally poaching squid in the Yamato Shallows, a particularly abundant area in the Sea of Japan.
Saito’s fishing lines got tangled in a net set by a North Korean boat there last year. Cautious about any confrontation with North Koreans, he and other Japanese fishermen abandoned the area early in the squid season.
“We can’t fish in these conditions,” he said.
Young Japanese men like Saito’s son are reluctant to join the industry, with its long months away from home and physically grueling labor. His crew is already half Indonesian. Soon, he said, only the captain will need to be Japanese.
In the last decade, the number of fishermen in Japan has declined by more than a third to fewer than 160,000. Of those left, an average fisherman earns about $20,000, not even half of Japan’s national median income.
“My son is a salaryman in the city,” Saito said. “I couldn’t recommend this to him – how could I? We’re away a third of the year,” and, with North Korean poachers on the prowl, “the waters are more dangerous now.”
The next day, men set up folding chairs and tents on Sakata’s dock for a ceremony marking the start of the fishing season. Saito joined other captains in the front row, bowing his head with his baseball cap in his hands. Young Indonesian men fidgeted in the back of the crowd. Melodic chants of Buddhist monks filled the salty air.
“We know we are powerless before the might of nature,” one monk said as the captains fixed their eyes on the ground. “We cannot go against the power of the sea. But we pray for a bountiful harvest and safe passage over the seas.”
Anxiety in Tokyo
Several weeks had passed since Japan’s squid-fishing fleet left port. But in Tokyo, near the Tsukiji fish market, Atsushi Kobayashi was waiting anxiously. The specialist wholesaler still hadn’t received a single shipment of flying squid from northern Japan. His driver sat on the concrete curb next to Kobayashi’s truck smoking in the midday sun.
In the past, each week Kobayashi would unload three to four shipments of 1,200 squid, to be dispatched to high-end sushi restaurants around Tokyo.
“Last year, the fishing season ended in November because the squid disappeared” — two months earlier than usual. He unlocked his phone to message another customer that he had nothing to sell that day.
Elsewhere in Tsukiji, the largest wholesale seafood exchange in the world, hundreds of other family-run fish traders were also awaiting this season’s catch. But by the time cases of squid finally began to arrive later in the summer, many of the traders were preparing to close their stalls to abandon the 80-year-old market.
In October, hundreds of fishmongers moved to a gleaming new market on the waterfront that cost more than $5 billion. But others, their businesses already failing from a drop in consumer demand, higher operational costs and a lack of interest from the families’ younger generation, didn’t make the move.
Those who left felt a powerful sense of loss about a place that has been a colorful symbol of the country’s fishing industry.
Masako Arai was one of them. Her husband’s family started their wholesale fish trading business 95 years ago, first in Nihonbashi, where the previous market was destroyed in a massive earthquake and fire in 1923, and later in Tsukiji.
“Our families have lived here and protected this place for generations,” the 75-year-old grandmother said.
Near Arai’s store were empty spaces where families had tended shop for generations; more than a hundred businesses have closed in the past five years. Nearly a third of the remaining 500 fish traders at the market were losing money.
“It feels like we’re always on shifting sand, and we don’t know what the future holds,” Arai said.
Nor do the chefs who create Japan’s signature cuisine.
Kazuo Nagayama has visited Tsukiji most mornings for the past 50 years to buy fresh fish. Once back at his sushi bar in the Nihonbashi district, he changes into his white uniform to write out the day’s menu with an ink brush.
For the past few years, the 76-year-old chef has found it harder to list local fish he deems decent enough to serve to his customers. On this summer day, the first item on his handwritten menu was yellowfin tuna shipped from Boston.
“I’m worried that people won’t know what it’s like to taste truly delicious fish,” he said. “Fishermen feel they have no future, and fisherfolk are disappearing. Our culture surrounding fishing is disappearing, and our culinary culture is also fading.”
Nagayama doesn’t allow anyone else to handle fish behind the counter, where customers pay up to $300 each for the chef’s nightly omakase course. Although his tiny bar is usually fully booked, he doesn’t see a future for it — he has no children and no heir.
“We’ll have to close in the next four to five years,” he said. “I’ll be the last one here.”
‘Everyone’s Raising Prices’
At Nabaya, a dark bar across the street from his Tokyo office, Hiroshi Nonoyama sipped a beer after another long day at work.
“It’s all depressing news, not a great topic of conversation over drinks,” he said. Nonoyama manages a trade group overseeing 79 companies that manufacture everything from squid-flavored potato chips to squid jerky. They’ve been some of the hardest hit by the recent run of poor harvests, Nonoyama said.
“A lot of these guys are old school. They haven’t diversified beyond using flying squid, you see? And when that becomes too expensive? Boom!” he said, crashing his hand on the bar counter.
Already this year, two of his companies had gone out of business because of the rising cost of squid.
“I only heard about one of them because I got a call from the tax office about unpaid taxes,” he said, sighing. The owner, who had employed 70 workers for half a century, was now on the run from his creditors.
“Everyone’s raising prices, but how much are customers willing to pay?” Nonoyama asked.
It’s the same question that Odajima, the Hakodate squid merchant, asks himself every day. He has nearly doubled prices in the past two years to 700 yen per bottle.
“Buyers are telling me that if I raise prices again, they won’t be able to sell it as a side dish or condiment — consumers just won’t buy it,” he said.
His factory’s yearly output is almost half of what it was 10 years ago. Looking for ways to survive, Odajima is now courting boutique supermarkets and upscale restaurants.
Recently, Odajima flew to Tokyo to pitch his product. By the time he arrived at Ginza Six, a shimmering luxury mall in the city’s posh shopping district, he was already sweating in his oversized pinstripe suit. He adjusted his tie and patted down his freshly cut hair in front of Imadeya, a premium liquor store on the basement floor of the mall.
Two Chinese women sampled glasses of Japanese wine under a pair of Edison bulbs at the shop counter. Shohei Okawa, the store’s 36-year-old manager, waited patiently as Odajima pulled several jars of shio-kara out of a cooler he had carried on the plane from Hakodate. Folded copies of Tokyo’s subway map peeked out of his large duffel bag.
“As you know, prices are getting higher, particularly for squid,” he said, suddenly sounding formal and looking anxious.
“Which is part of the reason why we’d love to sell in a higher-end store like yours.”
“What other stores carry this in Tokyo?” Okawa asked. “And is this rare? Is it authentic?”
Odajima quickly added that his product was handmade with no artificial coloring.
Satisfied, Okawa said he would send in orders for a few cases.
Outside, leaning against the mall’s glass façade, Odajima was happy — for the moment, at least.
“I wonder what my father would think, selling it at a place like this,” he said. “It’s a little unbelievable. We had so much squid we didn’t know what to do with it. Now, it’s become a delicacy.”
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US Acting AG Will Consult With Ethics Officials on Possible Recusals
Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker will consult with ethics officials about any matters that could require him to recuse himself, the Justice Department said on Monday, after critics called on him to step aside from overseeing a Special Counsel probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“Acting AG Matt Whitaker is fully committed to following all appropriate processes and procedures at the Department of Justice, including consulting with senior ethics officials on his oversight responsibilities and matters that may warrant recusal,” spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement.
Whitaker became the acting attorney general last week after President Donald Trump ordered Jeff Sessions to resign following months of criticizing him for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, which Trump has repeatedly called a “witch hunt.”
Sessions’ recusal paved the way for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Special Counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017.
The investigation has already led to criminal charges against dozens of people, including Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
With Whitaker’s appointment, Rosenstein is no longer in charge of the Russia probe. Democrats in Congress have said they fear Whitaker could undermine or even fire Mueller after he expressed negative opinions about the probe before joining the Justice Department as Sessions’ chief of staff in October 2017.
On Sunday, top Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Senate sent a letter to the Justice Department’s chief ethics officer to ask whether Whitaker had received any guidance on possibly recusing himself from the Russia probe.
“Allowing a vocal opponent of the investigation to oversee it will severely undermine public confidence in the Justice Department’s work on this critically important matter,” the letter said.
Democrats have also raised questions about whether Whitaker’s appointment was legal under the Constitution because Trump ignored a statutory line of succession and deprived senators of their “advice and consent” role.
San Francisco’s city attorney said on Monday his office may take legal action if the Justice Department does not provide a legal justification for Whitaker’s appointment.
The city has four cases proceeding in court that name Sessions as a defendant, including one which led to an injunction blocking a Trump executive order over “sanctuary cities” that the administration claims are protecting illegal immigrants from deportation.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the Justice Department expects to publish a legal opinion supporting Whitaker’s appointment.
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Liz Cheney Poised for Ascent into Republican Leadership
Liz Cheney has had a quiet first term as congresswoman, but that’s about to change. She’s seeking a House Republican leadership post that’s key to her party’s strategy against next year’s Democratic majority.
If she succeeds, Cheney will be the only woman in House Republican leadership — and follow in the footsteps of her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who won the same post more than 30 years ago.
She is seeking the position of GOP conference chair, which would put her at the forefront of the House GOP’s communications strategy when Democrats take over the chamber in January. House Republicans are looking for a more forceful approach to communications.
“We’ve got to change the way that we operate and really in some ways be more aggressive, have more of a rapid response,” Cheney told The Associated Press in an interview.
The Republican leadership elections are set for Wednesday. The conference chair is the third-ranking position and comes with several duties, including organizing regular weekly meetings and developing the GOP’s message to voters.
Cheney is running unopposed after the current chair of the conference, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, declined to continue in the post.
Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, won the conference chair position more than 30 years ago after four terms as Wyoming’s congressman. By landing the position after just one term, Liz Cheney would leave little doubt that she’s a rising political star in her own right.
Back home in deep-red Wyoming, most quit questioning Cheney’s political chops a while ago.
She won re-election last week with 64 percent, beating a little-known Democrat. It was the widest margin in Wyoming’s congressional race since 2014, when Republican Rep. Cynthia Lummis beat a Democrat living in Arizona whose campaign consisted of YouTube puppet and stuffed animal shows.
“She’s just been gathering strength as she goes on,” said one of Cheney’s primary opponents this year, Rod Miller, a retired ranch manager from the southeast Wyoming high country.
Since winning office by a wide margin in 2016, Cheney has served on the Armed Services and Natural Resources Committees. More remarkably for a freshman member of Congress, she landed a seat on the Rules Committee, which sets the terms for floor debate on legislation.
“That kind of is an indication that she has a constituency within the Republican conference — that she would be considered knowledgeable on issues, someone who is going to help advance the party’s leadership agenda,” said University of Wyoming political science professor Jim King.
The Republican conference chairmanship will be especially important now that Republicans look to rebrand themselves after losing the House majority, or at least improve their messaging to voters.
Deregulation, such as rolling back parts of the Dodd-Frank banking reform law, and federal income tax cuts are important accomplishments that Republicans can sell to voters, Cheney said.
“I think now the American people will have a chance to compare what we accomplished and what the Democrats do now that they’re in the majority,” Cheney said.
Cheney would give a fresh face to the party in the No. 3 role. The top two jobs will likely by filled by Kevin McCarthy of California and Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who are already in leadership. Yet having the Cheney brand at the forefront of the GOP communications apparatus could set a mixed tone.
Cheney’s ascent will likely prove popular with GOP voters who recall fondly the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney years, especially those who favor a hawkish defense posture.
And as a woman in leadership, she’ll face questions about what Republicans acknowledge is a yawning gender gap as their side of the aisle is made up of mostly white men. After the midterm elections, the ranks of Republican women in the House declined.
Less certain is whether Cheney’s style will appeal to those voters in suburban districts, particularly women, who flipped Republican-held seats to Democrats this year. Republicans will need those voters if they hope to win back the House majority in 2020.
Cheney has seen little notoriety lately compared with five years ago, when she launched an ill-fated campaign to oust Wyoming’s popular Republican senior senator, Mike Enzi. Labeled a carpet-bagger for having moved to Wyoming from Virginia barely a year earlier, Cheney made things worse by publicly feuding with her openly gay sister about gay marriage.
She bowed out eight months before the primary but didn’t give up on politics. She continued touring Wyoming, forming — and in some cases mending — the relationships she needed to dominate a crowded U.S. House primary two years later.
Her past experience as a Fox News commentator and State Department employee now give her valuable media and policy experience for the conference chairman job, Cheney said.
“It’s an opportunity that’s going to be focused on what it takes to get the majority back,” she said.
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No ‘Blue Wave,’ But Democrats’ Midterm Success Sinking In
No, it wasn’t a blue wave. But a week after the voting, Democrats are riding higher than they thought on election night.
As vote counting presses on in several states, the Democrats have steadily chalked up victories across the country, firming up their grip on the U.S. House of Representatives and statehouses. The slow roll of wins has given the party plenty to celebrate.
President Donald Trump was quick to claim victory for his party on election night. But the Democrats, who hit political rock bottom just two years ago, have now picked up at least 32 seats in the House — and lead in four more — in addition to flipping 7 governorships and 8 state legislative chambers. They are on track to lose perhaps two seats in the Senate in a year both parties predicted more.
In fact, the overall results in the first nationwide election of the Trump presidency represent the Democratic Party’s best midterm performance since Watergate.
“Over the last week we’ve moved from relief at winning the House to rejoicing at a genuine wave of diverse, progressive and inspiring Democrats winning office,” said Ben Wikler, Washington director of the liberal group MoveOn.
The blue shift alters the trajectory of Trump’s next two years in the White House, breaking up the Republican monopoly in Washington. It also gives Democrats stronger footing in key states ahead of the next presidential race and in the redrawing of congressional districts — a complicated process that has been dominated by the GOP, which has drawn favorable boundaries for their candidates.
Trump and his allies discounted the Democratic victories on Monday, pointing to GOP successes in Republican-leaning states.
“Thanks to the grassroots support for (at)realDonaldTrump and our party’s ground game, we were able to (hash)DefyHistory and make gains in the Senate!” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel tweeted, citing Senate wins in Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee, among others.
Indeed, just once in the past three decades had a sitting president added Senate seats in his first midterm election. But lost in McDaniel’s assessment was the difficult 2018 Senate landscape for Democrats, who were defending 10 seats in states Trump carried just two years ago.
Says Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez: “I believe in facts. And the fact of the matter is, the Democratic Party had a historic night at the ballot box — and we are not resting,”
Perez said in an interview, “Our goal was to compete everywhere, to expand and re-shape the electorate everywhere — and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
Historic diversity
The Democrats found success by attracting support from women, minorities and college-educated voters. Overall, 50 percent of white college-educated voters and 56 percent of women backed Democrats nationwide, according to AP VoteCast, a wide-ranging survey of the electorate.
Democrats featured historic diversity on the ballot.
Their winning class includes Massachusetts’ first African-American female member of Congress, Ayanna Pressley, and Michigan’s Rashida Talib and Ilhan Omar, the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, along with Kansas’ Sharice Davids, the first lesbian Native American.
They also won by running candidates with military backgrounds who openly embraced gun ownership, such as Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb and Maine’s Jared Golden, who is poised to win his contest because of the state’s ranked-choice voting system.
The Democrats needed to gain 23 seats to seize the House majority. Once all the votes are counted, which could take weeks in some cases as absentees and provisional ballots are tallied, they could win close to 40.
Democrats have not lost a single House incumbent so far. Yet they defeated Republican targets such as Reps. Mike Coffman of Colorado, Barbara Comstock of Virginia, Carlos Curbelo of Florida and Dana Rohrabacher of California.
They could win as many as 19 House races in districts carried by Trump two years ago, according to House Democrats’ campaign arm.
Ten House races remained too close for the AP to call as of Monday evening.
Far more of the Senate landscape was decided early, although contests in Arizona, Florida and Mississippi remain outstanding.
Republican control
While there were notable statehouse Democratic losses in Iowa and Ohio, the party flipped governorships in seven states: Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Kansas, New Mexico and Maine.
Republicans now control 25 governorships nationwide compared to 23 for Democrats. High-profile contests in Florida and Georgia remain outstanding, although Republicans hold narrow leads in both states.
Overshadowed perhaps by the higher-profile statewide elections, Democratic gains in state legislatures could prove deeply consequential.
Overall, they flipped state legislative chambers in eight states this midterm season, including Washington state’s Senate in 2017. The others include the state Senates in Maine, Colorado, New York, New Hampshire and Connecticut in addition to the state Houses of Representatives in New Hampshire and Minnesota.
With hundreds of races still too close to call, Democrats have gained at least 370 state legislative seats nationwide, according to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. The pickups include surprises in West Virginia, where Democrats knocked off the GOP majority leader-designate in the House and the majority leader in the Senate.
“We have elected a new generation of inspiring leaders and we know that a new era of democratic dominance is on the horizon,” said the committee’s executive director Jessica Post.
Still, Republicans will control the majority of state legislative chambers, governorships, the U.S. Senate and the White House. And even before the new Democrats take office, attention has begun to shift toward 2020.
Many Democrats have yet to shake off the stinging losses of 2016. Publicly and privately, Democrats are lining up for the chance to take down Trump in two years.
“This is step one of a two-step process to right the ship,” Guy Cecil, chairman of the pro-Democrat super PAC Priorities USA, said of the midterms. “Democrats have every reason to be optimistic.”
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Media: German States Want Social Media Law Tightened
German states have drafted a list of demands aimed at tightening a law that requires social media companies like Facebook and Twitter to remove hate speech from their sites, the Handelblatt newspaper reported Monday.
Justice ministers from the states will submit their proposed revisions to the German law called NetzDG at a meeting with Justice Minister Katarina Barley on Thursday, the newspaper said, saying it had obtained a draft of the document.
The law, which came into full force on Jan. 1, is a highly ambitious effort to control what appears on social media and it has drawn a range of criticism.
While the German states are focused on concerns about how complaints are processed, other officials have called for changes following criticism that too much content was being blocked.
The states’ justice ministers are calling for changes that would make it easier for people who want to complain about banned content such as pro-Nazi ideology to find the required forms on social media platforms.
They also want to fine social media companies up to 500,000 euros ($560,950) for providing “meaningless replies” to queries from law enforcement authorities, the newspaper said.
Till Steffen, the top justice official in Hamburg and a member of the Greens party, told the newspaper that the law had in some cases proven to be “a paper tiger.”
“If we want to effectively limit hate and incitement on the internet, we have to give the law more bite and close the loopholes,” he told the paper. “For instance, it cannot be the case that some platforms hide their complaint forms so that no one can find them.”
Facebook in July said it had deleted hundreds of offensive posts since implementation of the law, which foresees fines of up to 50 million euros ($56.10 million) for failure to comply.
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Tech Giants Slide, Pulling US Stock Market Sharply Lower
A broad sell-off in technology companies pulled U.S. stocks sharply lower Monday, knocking more than 600 points off the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The wave of selling snared big names, including Apple, Amazon and Goldman Sachs. Banks, consumer-focused companies, and media and communications stocks all took heavy losses. Crude oil prices fell, erasing early gains and extending a losing streak to 11 days.
The tech stock tumble came followed an analyst report that suggested Apple significantly cut back orders from one of its suppliers. That, in turn, weighed on chipmakers.
“With the news out of the Apple supplier this morning, you have the market overall questioning the growth trajectory as we look out to 2019,” said Lindsey Bell, investment strategist at CFRA. “We continue to like tech going into next year, but we think it could be a little bit of a rocky period for the group as we continue through the last two months of the year.”
The market’s slide came after a two-week winning streak.
The S&P 500 index dropped 54.79 points, or 2 percent, to 2,726.22. The Dow fell 602.12 points, or 2.3 percent, to 25,387.18. It was down briefly by 648 points.
The Nasdaq composite slid 206.03 points, or 2.8 percent, to 7,200.87. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies gave up 30.70 points, or 2 percent, to 1,518.79.
Bond trading was closed for Veterans Day. Stocks in Europe also suffered losses.
Apple tumbled 5 percent to $194.17 after Wells Fargo analysts said the iPhone maker is the unnamed customer that optical communications company Lumentum Holdings said was significantly reducing orders. Shares in Lumentum plunged 33 percent to $37.50.
Several chipmakers also fell. Advanced Micro Devices gave up 9.5 percent to $19.03, while Nvidia lost 7.8 percent to $189.54. Micron Technology gave up 4.3 percent to $37.44.
Amazon slid 4.4 percent to $1,636.85.
Banks and other financial companies also took heavy losses Tuesday. Goldman Sachs slid 7.5 percent to $206.05.
“Expectations are really that the deregulation process that has benefited banks up to this point is going to be slowed down with the Democrats in charge,” Bell said.
Stocks appeared to have regained their footing after a skid in October snapped a six-month string of gains for the S&P 500. Stocks rallied last week after the U.S. midterm elections turned out largely as investors expected, with a divided Congress promising legislative gridlock in Washington the next couple of years.
While the market has typically thrived in periods of divided government, investors continue to grapple with uncertainty over the U.S.-China trade dispute and the potential impact of increased oversight of Corporate America by Democrats, who will be taking over leadership in the House of Representatives in January.
In addition, some companies have recently reported third-quarter earnings and outlooks that have stoked investors’ worries about the future growth of corporate profits.
While companies got a boost this year from the lower tax rates put in place by President Donald Trump and the GOP last December, several companies have recently warned about the impact of higher costs related to tariffs and rising interest rates.
“The bull market is not over, the economic expansion is not over, but things are starting to wind down,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading & derivatives at Charles Schwab. “We’re clearly getting into the late innings of the ball game.”
British American Tobacco, which makes Newport cigarettes, plunged 8.8 percent to $38.08 on reports that regulators were considering a ban on menthol cigarettes.
PG&E tumbled 17.4 percent to $32.98 after the electric utility told regulators that a high-voltage line experienced a problem near the origin of one of the major California wildfires before the blaze started.
Investors bid up shares in Athenahealth after the struggling medical billing software maker said it received a $5.7 billion cash buyout offer. The stock jumped 9.7 percent to $131.97.
About 90 percent of S&P 500 companies have reported third-quarter results so far, with some 51 percent of those posting earnings and revenue that topped Wall Street’s forecasts, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Several big retailers are due to deliver results this week, including Walmart, Home Depot, Williams-Sonoma, Nordstrom and J.C. Penney.
“That could actually probably boost the market,” Bell said.”Retailers are going to have a better third quarter than most people expect. A lot of them ordered goods ahead of the tariffs going into place, so they’re not going to have to pass on higher prices on to the consumer this holiday season.”
Benchmark U.S. crude gave up an early gain, sliding 0.4 percent to settle at $59.93 per barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, dipped 0.1 percent to close at $70.12 per barrel in London. Oil futures rose earlier on news that Saudi Arabia and other major producers planned to reduce output.
The dollar strengthened to 113.86 yen from 113.80 yen on Friday. The euro fell to $1.1240 from $1.1336. The British pound weakened to $1.2853 from $1.2975 amid concerns that Britain’s government is struggling to find unity on a Brexit deal.
Gold fell 0.4 percent to $1,203.50 an ounce. Silver lost 0.9 percent to $14.01 an ounce. Copper slid 0.3 percent to $2.68 a pound.
In other energy trading, heating oil fell 0.8 percent to $2.16 a gallon and wholesale gasoline gained 0.9 percent to $1.64 a gallon. Natural gas rose 1.9 percent to $3.79 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Major stock indexes in Europe also ended lower Monday. Germany’s DAX lost 1.8 percent and France’s CAC 40 fell 0.9 percent. Britain’s FTSE 100 shed 0.7 percent.
In Asia, markets finished mixed. Japan’s Nikkei 225 added 0.1 percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.1 percent. Australia’s S&P-ASX 200 gained 0.3 percent. The Kospi in South Korea dipped 0.3 percent.
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Bolsonaro: Brazil Pension Reform Legislation Unlikely in 2018
Brazil’s Congress is unlikely to pass pension reform legislation this year, far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said on Monday, a blow to investor hopes that caused the country’s currency to weaken in futures markets.
Investors snapped up Brazilian assets in the wake of Bolsonaro’s election victory last month, cheered by his party’s stronger-than-expected showing in congressional races, which raised hopes he could make quick advances on fiscal reforms.
Many economists say cuts to Brazil’s social security system are essential to controlling a huge federal deficit and regaining Brazil’s investment-grade rating.
Last week, Bolsonaro said he would like to see some form of pension reform passed this year to make it easier to deal with the deficit after he takes office on Jan. 1.
On Monday, however, he told reporters in Rio de Janeiro that after speaking with his chief economic advisor Paulo Guedes, passing a 2018 pension reform bill looked increasingly unlikely.
He added that the reform would not just be based on crunching the numbers, but would also have to take into account the social impact of the overhaul.
Brazil’s currency, the real, weakened against the U.S. dollar in futures markets after his comments.
Bolsonaro also said that no decision had yet been taken on the next head of state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, with more names for the chief executive position set to come out on Tuesday.
Separately, Guedes said on Monday that World Bank chief financial officer and former Brazilian finance minister Joaquim Levy had accepted Bolsonaro’s offer to lead state development bank BNDES.
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Abu Dhabi Summit: Oil Production Cuts May Be Necessary
OPEC and allied oil-producing countries will likely need to cut crude supplies, perhaps by as much as 1 million barrels of oil a day, to rebalance the market after U.S. sanctions on Iran failed to cut Tehran’s output, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said Monday.
The comments from the minister, Khalid al-Falih, show the balancing act the U.S. allies face in dealing with President Donald Trump’s actions related to the oil industry.
Trump in recent weeks demanded the oil cartel increase production to drive down U.S. gasoline prices. “Hopefully, Saudi Arabia and OPEC will not be cutting oil production. Oil prices should be much lower based on supply!” he tweeted Monday.
The U.S. has meanwhile allowed some of its allies — Greece, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey — as well as rival China to continue to purchase Iranian oil despite reimposed sanctions, as long as they work to reduce their imports to zero.
Al-Falih, who on Sunday said the kingdom would cut production by over 500,000 barrels per day in December, said Monday that Saudi Arabia had been giving customers “100 percent of what they asked for.” That appeared to be a veiled reference to Trump.
Before the United States reimposed sanctions on Iran, “fear and anxiety gripped the market,” al-Falih said at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference. Now “we’re seeing the pendulum swing violently to the other side,” he added.
The energy minister of the United Arab Emirates, Suhail al-Mazrouei, currently the president of OPEC, said “changes” likely would be necessary as the oil cartel meets in December in Vienna. However, he added: “We need not to overreact when these things happen.”
Al-Falih said OPEC officials have seen analysis papers suggesting a production cut of upward of 1 million barrels of crude a day may be necessary to rebalance the market. However, he stressed that more study needed to be done.
“There are a lot of assumptions in their projections that may change,” al-Falih said. “We don’t want to throttle the global economy.”
A gallon of regular gasoline in the U.S. on average now sells for $2.69, down from $2.90 a month ago, according to AAA. Those lower prices likely quieted Trump, but production cuts could again boost prices at the pump.
Trump and volatility
Neither al-Falih nor al-Mazrouei directly criticized Trump, but Mohammed Hamad al-Rumhy, Oman’s oil and gas minister, blamed the U.S. president for some of the volatility striking the oil market. Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, maintains close diplomatic ties to Iran and often serves as an interlocutor between Western powers and Tehran.
“Supply and demand is perhaps the easy part because you can measure it,” al-Rumhy said. It’s “extremely difficult to quantify what is happening in [the] White House — almost impossible.”
Iran, which has tense relations with Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, did not have a high-level official at the summit.
Crude oil dropped to a low of $30 a barrel in January 2016. That forced OPEC to partner with non-OPEC countries, including Russia, to cut production to help prices rebound.
Benchmark Brent crude, which had been trading above $80 a barrel recently, now hovers just over $70 after the U.S. sanction waivers on Iran.
Fracking
Meanwhile, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, the head of the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., said the UAE planned to increase oil production to 4 million barrels a day by 2020 and 5 million barrels a day by 2030. The UAE now produces some 3 million barrels of oil a day.
Al-Jaber also said the UAE would begin fracking — injecting high-pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel and chemicals — to gain access to otherwise unreachable natural gas reserves.
“Make no mistake: Hydrocarbons will continue to play an absolutely essential part of a diversified energy mix,” al-Jaber said.
But the highs and lows of the market need to end for both oil consumers and producers to profit, said al-Rumhy, the Omani official.
“If it was my heart beat going that way, I think I would be in the hospital right now,” he said.
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France to ‘Embed’ Regulators at Facebook to Combat Hate Speech
Facebook will allow French regulators to “embed” inside the company to examine how it combats online hate speech, the first time the wary tech giant has opened its doors in such a way, President Emmanuel Macron said Monday.
From January, Macron’s administration will send a small team of senior civil servants to the company for six months to verify Facebook’s goodwill and determine whether its checks on racist, sexist or hate-fueled speech could be improved.
“It’s a first,” Macron told the annual Internet Governance Forum in Paris. “I’m delighted by this very innovative experimental approach,” he said. “It’s an experiment, but a very important first step in my view.”
The trial project is an example of what Macron has called “smart regulation,” something he wants to extend to other tech leaders such as Google, Apple and Amazon.
The move follows a meeting with Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg in May, when Macron invited the CEOs of some of the biggest tech firms to Paris, telling them they should work for the common good.
The officials may be seconded from the telecoms regulator and the interior and justice ministries, a government source said. Facebook said the selection was up to the French presidency.
It is unclear whether the group will have access to highly-sensitive material such as Facebook’s algorithms or codes to remove hate speech. It could travel to Facebook’s European headquarters in Dublin and global base in Menlo Park, California, if necessary, the company said.
“The best way to ensure that any regulation is smart and works for people is by governments, regulators and businesses working together to learn from each other and explore ideas,” Nick Clegg, the former British deputy prime minister who is now head of Facebook’s global affairs, said in a statement.
France’s approach to hate speech has contrasted sharply with Germany, Europe’s leading advocate of privacy.
Since January, Berlin has required sites to remove banned content within 24 hours or face fines of up to 50 million euros ($56 million). That has led to accusations of censorship.
France’s use of embedded regulators is modeled on what happens in its banking and nuclear industries.
“[Tech companies] now have the choice between something that is smart but intrusive and regulation that is wicked and plain stupid,” a French official said.
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US Vote Counting Continues in Close Races
U.S. election authorities counted and recounted vote totals in several too-close-to-call elections Monday, nearly a week after voting ended in national congressional contests.
Much of the attention centered on the southeastern state of Florida, where the outcome was in doubt in two races where Republicans hold narrow edges.
In a U.S. Senate election, Florida Governor Rick Scott is maintaining a 12,500-vote lead over the incumbent Democrat, Senator Bill Nelson, while in the governor’s race to succeed Scott, Congressman Ron DeSantis leads the Democrat, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, by nearly 34,000 votes.
Trump weighs in
U.S. President Donald Trump, who campaigned several times for Scott and DeSantis, contended on Twitter that the Florida recount of the two contests is fraudulent and ought to be called off, with the two Republicans declared the winners because they were ahead as the first results were announced last Tuesday.
“The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” Trump claimed. “An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”
Later, Trump blamed Monday’s 1-percentage point drop in stock market indexes on Democrats, saying, “The prospect of Presidential Harassment by the Dems is causing the Stock Market big headaches!”
As a result of the elections, starting in January, Democrats will retake control of the House of Representatives from Trump’s Republican colleagues and have vowed to launch investigations of Trump and his administration’s policies.
Gillum responds to Trump
Gillum, with his own tweet, rebuffed Trump about the Florida elections, telling the U.S. leader, “You sound nervous.”
Gillum, looking to become the state’s first African-American governor, had initially conceded the election to DeSantis, but over the weekend said, “I am replacing my earlier concession with an unapologetic and uncompromised call to count every vote.”
The contentious recount in both Florida races is statewide, but the Republican allegations of fraud center on two counties — Broward and Palm Beach — along the Atlantic Ocean shoreline. In both jurisdictions, Democratic voters are in the distinct majority. As absentee votes there have been counted in recent days, Scott and DeSantis election night leads have diminished.
Scott warns ‘liberals’
Scott told Fox News on Sunday, “No ragtag group of liberal activists or lawyers from [Washington] will be allowed to steal this election.” Scott has filed three lawsuits contesting various aspects of the recount of his contest against Nelson, but the Florida state agency that oversees elections and is controlled by Scott has said it has not found evidence of fraud.
Florida Democrats compared Scott to a strongman striking out at foes.
“Rick Scott is doing his best to impersonate Latin American dictators who have overthrown Democracies in Venezuela and Cuba,” the state party said in a statement. “The Governor is using his position to consolidate power by cutting at the very core of our Democracy.”
Arizona, Georgia
Election officials are also still counting votes in several other undecided contests elsewhere in the U.S., including several close elections for seats in the House of Representatives, as well for a Senate seat in the southwestern state of Arizona and the governorship of the southern state of Georgia.
In the Arizona race, Democratic Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema has pulled ahead of Republican Martha McSally, another congresswoman, by 32,000 votes with tens of thousands of mail ballots yet to count.
In Georgia, the Republican candidate, former secretary of state Brian Kemp, is holding a 58,000-vote edge over his Democratic challenger, Stacey Abrams, a state lawmaker who is trying to become Georgia’s first African-American governor. Abrams filed a federal lawsuit Sunday asking a judge to delay vote certifications in Georgia.
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Mishaps, Protests and Litigation Overshadow Florida Recount
Mishaps, protests and litigation are overshadowing the vote recount in Florida’s pivotal races for governor and Senate, reviving memories of the 2000 presidential fiasco in the premier political battleground state.
All 67 counties are facing a state-ordered deadline of Thursday to complete their recounts, and half had already begun. Many other counties were expected to begin the work Monday after a weekend of recount drama in Broward and Palm Beach counties, home to large concentrations of Democratic voters.
The developments make this a tumultuous political moment in Florida. This recount process is unprecedented even in a state notorious for settling elections by razor-thin margins. State officials said they weren’t aware of any other time a race for governor or U.S. Senate required a recount, let alone both in the same election.
In Broward County, the recount was delayed for hours Sunday because of a problem with one of the tabulation machines. That prompted the Republican Party to accuse Broward’s supervisor of elections, Brenda Snipes, of “incompetence and gross mismanagement.”
Broward officials faced further headaches after acknowledging the county mistakenly counted 22 absentee ballots that had been rejected. The problem seemed impossible to fix because dismissed ballots were mixed in with 205 legal ballots and Snipes said it would be unfair to throw out all the votes.
Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for Senate, filed suit against Snipes. He’s seeking a court order for law enforcement agents to impound all voting machines, tallying devices and ballots “when not in use until such time as any recounts.” The suit accused Snipes of repeatedly failing to account for the number of ballots left to be counted and failing to report results regularly as required by law.
The court didn’t immediately respond, though the outcry from Democrats was immediate.
Juan Penalosa, executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, accused Scott of “using his position to consolidate power by cutting at the very core of our democracy.”
Meanwhile, in Palm Beach County, the supervisor of elections said she didn’t think her department could meet Thursday’s deadline to complete that recount, throwing into question what would happen to votes there.
The recount in other major population centers, including Miami-Dade and Pinellas and Hillsborough counties in the Tampa Bay area, has been continuing without incident. Smaller counties were expected to begin reviews between Monday and Wednesday.
Unofficial results showed Republican former U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis ahead of Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by 0.41 percentage points in the governor’s contest. In the Senate race, Scott’s lead over Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson was 0.14 percentage points.
State law requires a machine recount in races where the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. Once completed, if the differences in any of the races are 0.25 percentage points or below, a hand recount will be ordered.
Republicans urged their Democratic opponents to give up and let the state to move on.
Gillum and Nelson insist that each vote should be counted and the process should take its course.
Scott said Sunday that Nelson wants fraudulent ballots and those cast by noncitizens to count, pointing to a Nelson lawyer’s objection of Palm Beach County’s rejection of one provisional ballot because it was cast by a noncitizen.
“He is trying to commit fraud to win this election,” Scott told Fox News. “Bill Nelson’s a sore loser. He’s been in politics way too long.”
Nelson’s campaign issued a statement later saying their lawyer wasn’t authorized to object to the ballot’s rejection, as “Non-citizens cannot vote in U.S. elections.”
Gillum appeared Sunday evening at a predominantly African-American church in Fort Lauderdale, declaring that voter disenfranchisement isn’t just about being blocked from the polling booth. He said it also includes absentee ballots not being counted and ballots with mismatched signatures that “a volunteer may have the option of … deciding that vote is null and void.”
Both the state elections division, which Scott runs, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have said they have found no evidence of voter fraud.
That didn’t stop protests outside Snipes’ office, where a mostly Republican crowd gathered, holding signs, listening to country music and occasionally chanting “lock her up,” referring to Snipes. A massive Trump 2020 flag flew over the parking lot and a Bikers For Trump group wore matching shirts. One protester wore a Hillary Clinton mask.
Registered independent Russell Liddick, a 38-year-old Pompano Beach retail worker, carried a sign reading, “I’m not here for Trump! I’m here for fair elections! Fire Snipes!” He said the office’s problems “don’t make me feel very much like my vote counted.”
Florida also is conducting a recount in a third statewide race. Democrat Nikki Fried had a 0.07 percentage point lead over Republican state Rep. Matt Caldwell for agriculture commissioner, one of Florida’s three Cabinet seats.
For some, the recounts bring back memories of the 2000 presidential recount, when it took more than five weeks for Florida to declare George W. Bush the victor over Vice President Al Gore by 537 votes, thus giving Bush the presidency.
Much has changed since then.
In 2000, each county had its own voting system. Many used punch cards – voters poked out chads, leaving tiny holes in their ballots representing their candidates. Some voters, however, didn’t fully punch out the presidential chad or gave it just a little push. Those hanging and dimpled chads had to be examined by the canvassing boards, a lengthy, tiresome and often subjective process that became fodder for late-night comedians.
Now the state requires all Florida counties to use ballots where voters use a pen to mark their candidate’s name, much like a student taking a multiple-choice test, and the process for recounts is clearly spelled out.
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Back from Paris, Trump Assails Europe on Defense, Trade
President Donald Trump, back in Washington Monday after commemorating the centenary of the end of World War I in Paris, immediately assailed Europe for its defense spending and trade surplus over the United States.
Trump, in a string of Twitter comments, said “much was accomplished” in his meetings with other world leaders. But he said it was “never easy bringing up the fact that the U.S. must be treated fairly, which it hasn’t, on both Military and Trade.”
The U.S. leader contended, “We pay for LARGE portions of other countries military protection, hundreds of billions of dollars, for the great privilege of losing hundreds of billions of dollars with these same countries on trade.”
Trump added, “I told them that this situation cannot continue – It is, and always has been, ridiculously unfair to the United States. Massive amounts of money spent on protecting other countries, and we get nothing but Trade Deficits and Losses. It is time that these very rich countries either pay the United States for its great military protection, or protect themselves… and Trade must be made FREE and FAIR!”
Trump has declared himself a “nationalist,” with an America First outlook on international relations. But in Paris on Sunday at the commemoration of the end of World War I, French President Emmanuel Macron, with Trump listening nearby, deplored rising nationalism throughout the world, declaring it a “betrayal of patriotism.”
Trump throughout his nearly two-year presidency has often complained that numerous European allies have yet to meet NATO’s 2024 goal of spending 2 percent of the size of their national economies on defense, chiefly funding for military weapons and armed forces.
Eight of the 29 members of the West’s main defense alliance, forged at the end of World War II, are expected to meet the target this year — the U.S., Britain, Greece, Estonia, Romania, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
China is the biggest individual national trading partner with the U.S., but U.S. trade is collectively larger with the 28-nation European Union.
Trump has expressed his ire that Europe has a trade surplus with the U.S. — $101 billion in 2017 — meaning that the EU ships more goods and services worth that much to the U.S. than it imports from America.
In recent months, Trump has imposed higher tariffs on European steel and aluminum imports, while the EU responded with higher levies on iconic U.S. exports, such as blue jeans, motorcycles, orange juice and bourbon.
Macron, Tech Giants Launch ‘Paris Call’ to Fix Internet Ills
France and U.S. technology giants including Microsoft on Monday urged world governments and companies to sign up to a new initiative to regulate the internet and fight threats such as cyberattacks, online censorship and hate speech.
With the launch of a declaration entitled the ‘Paris call for trust and security in cyberspace’, French President Emmanuel Macron is hoping to revive efforts to regulate cyberspace after the last round of United Nations negotiations failed in 2017.
In the document, which is supported by many European countries but, crucially, not China or Russia, the signatories urge governments to beef up protections against cyber meddling in elections and prevent the theft of trade secrets.
The Paris call was initially pushed for by tech companies but was redrafted by French officials to include work done by U.N. experts in recent years.
“The internet is a space currently managed by a technical community of private players. But it’s not governed. So now that half of humanity is online, we need to find new ways to organize the internet,” an official from Macron’s office said.
“Otherwise, the internet as we know it today – free, open and secure– will be damaged by the new threats.”
By launching the initiative a day after a weekend of commemorations marking the 100th anniversary of World War I, Macron hopes to promote his push for stronger global cooperation in the face of rising nationalism.
In another sign of the Trump administration’s reluctance to join international initiatives it sees as a bid to encroach on U.S. sovereignty, French officials said Washington might not become a signatory, though talks are continuing.
However, they said large U.S. tech companies including Facebook and Alphabet’s Google would sign up.
“The American ecosystem is very involved. It doesn’t mean that in the end the U.S. federal government won’t join us, talks are continuing, but the U.S. will be involved under other forms,” another French official said.
Japan’s Abe Calls for Public Works Spending to Help Economy
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called Monday for a new public works spending program to stimulate the economy amid growing concerns about global risks.
The spending, which is expected in the first half of next fiscal year starting in April, will focus on strengthening infrastructure to withstand earthquakes and frequent flooding, according to a presentation made at the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP).
Some of Japan’s top government advisers also called for stimulus to offset a decline in consumption expected after an increase in the nationwide sales tax in October next year.
The rush to approve public works spending and other measures to support consumption highlights growing concern among policymakers about the economy.
“The prime minister asked me to take firm measures to ensure that our economic recovery continues,” Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said at the end of the CEFP meeting. “He also said the public works spending program expected at the end of this year should be compiled with this point in mind.”
Japan’s economy is forecast to contract in July-September, and a recent slump in machinery orders suggests any rebound in the following quarters is likely to be weak if exports and business investment lose momentum.
Government ministers will compile a preliminary public works plan by the end of this month and then submit a final version of the plan by year’s end, according to documents used at the CEFP meeting.
Urgent matter
Members of the CEFP did not say how large the spending program should be or how the government should fund the package. At the meeting, Abe said compiling the package has become an urgent matter, according to a government official.
Japan’s government is considering a 10 trillion-yen ($87.77 billion) stimulus package to offset the impact of a sales tax hike next year, sources told Reuters last week, as concerns about consumer spending and the global economy grow.
Increasing spending on public works started to gain support after a strong earthquake in September caused a blackout in the northern island of Hokkaido and a series of typhoons damaged transport infrastructure in western Japan.
The advisers on the CEFP are academics and business leaders who are considered close to Abe, so their recommendations often influence policy decisions.
The CEFP met earlier Monday to debate consumer prices and fiscal policy, which is where the advisers made their recommendations.
The advisers did not lay out the specific steps the government should take to stimulate consumption, but government officials have previously said they are considering shopping vouchers for low-income earners and more spending on public works.
The nationwide sales tax is scheduled to rise to 10 percent in October 2019 from 8 percent currently. The government already plans to exempt food and some daily goods from the tax hike to soften the blow, but there is still a lot of concern that the tax hike will wreck consumer spending and sentiment. The economy was tipped into a recession the last time the tax was raised in 2014.
Advisers at the CEFP meeting also threw their support behind the government’s plan to encourage mobile phone carriers to lower smartphone fees, saying they hoped the move would increase households’ disposable incomes.
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Empowered, Emboldened House Democrats Chart Path Forward
Washington is adjusting to an impending power shift after Democrats won control of the U.S. House of Representatives in last week’s elections. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, Democrats are promising to hold President Donald Trump accountable and protect the Justice Department’s Russia probe, but also stressing the need to deliver tangible results that address the American people’s everyday concerns.
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Democrats Vow to Protect Mueller’s Russia Investigation
Key U.S. Democratic lawmakers vowed Sunday they would try to protect the investigation of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign’s links to Russia from interference by his new acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, who often attacked the probe before Trump named him to oversee it.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he would attempt to attach legislation to a must-pass government spending bill next month to keep the government from a partial shutdown to require that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation be permitted to be completed unimpeded.
“There’s no reason that legislation shouldn’t pass,” Schumer told news network CNN. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has opposed stand-alone legislation to protect Mueller, saying he has no reason to believe Trump will fire Mueller, even though the U.S. leader has often assailed the investigation as a “witch hunt,” a view echoed by Whitaker.
Schumer added, “I believe there are enough Republicans who will support us” in adding the Mueller protection measure to the budget legislation. Schumer said the Mueller legislation was needed because “there is every reason to believe there will be interference” by Whitaker, whom he called an “extreme partisan.”
Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler, set to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee when Democrats assume control of the House of Representatives in January, said the panel’s first mission then would be to call Whitaker to testify at a hearing, via a subpoena if necessary, about his “expressed hostility to the investigation.”
Nadler called Whitaker “a complete political lackey” and said Trump appointed a “totally unqualified hatchet man to destroy the investigation.”
But Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway dismissed concerns about Whitaker’s past comments about the Mueller probe, saying “there’s no evidence to me” that he “knows anything about the ongoing Mueller investigation.”
Her husband, lawyer George Conway, wrote in a newspaper column last week that Whitaker had been illegally named, claiming that Whitaker needed Senate confirmation as does the head of any Cabinet agency. But Kellyanne Conway brushed off her husband’s contention, saying that “spouses disagree everyday.” Trump accused George Conway of trying to get “publicity for himself.”
The latest Democratic concerns about protecting Mueller arose last week when Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, after criticizing him for more than a year for recusing himself from oversight of the Mueller probe. Trump then named Whitaker, Sessions’s chief of staff, to replace him, at least for the moment, as the country’s top law enforcement official.
Before joining the Justice Department last year, Whitaker said in commentary on CNN he could envision a scenario in which Trump might fire Sessions and replace him with a temporary attorney general, which is now what has happened. Whitaker, in the television remarks, suggested the replacement could then cut funding for Mueller’s investigation and his “investigation grinds almost to a halt.”
Whitaker suggested Mueller’s probe amounted to a “fishing expedition.”
But he has given no indication he plans to recuse himself from oversight of Mueller, saying he was “committed to leading a fair [Justice] Department with the highest ethical standards, that upholds the rule of law, and seeks justice for all Americans.” Sessions had handed Mueller oversight to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, recusing himself because of his support for Trump in the 2016 election and contacts he had with Russia’s then ambassador to Washington during the run-up to the voting two years ago.
Mueller has secured guilty pleas or convictions of several Trump campaign officials, but there is no deadline set for his conclusion of the investigation.
Oman Oil Minister: Majority of OPEC and its Allies Support Cut
A majority of OPEC and allied oil exporters support a cut in the global supply of crude, Oman Oil Minister Mohammed bin Hamad al-Rumhi said on Sunday.
“Many of us share this view,” the minister said when asked about the need for a cut. Asked if it could amount to 500,000 or one million barrels per day, he replied: “I think it is unfair for me to throw numbers now.”
He was speaking in Abu Dhabi where an oil market monitoring committee was held on Sunday, attended by top exporters Saudi Arabia and Russia.
“We need a consensus,” he said, indicating that non-OPEC Russia would need to approve any decision. Oman is also not a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Saudi Arabia is discussing a proposal to cut oil output by up to 1 million barrels per day by OPEC and its allies, two sources close to the discussions told Reuters on Sunday.
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Florida Declares Recount for Governor’s and US Senate Races
The Democratic candidate for governor in the state of Florida has rescinded the concession he made Tuesday night after the Florida secretary of state announced the governor’s race, as well as the race for a seat in the U.S. Senate, will be subject to a recount.
Andrew Gillum spoke to media Saturday shortly after the recount announcement. He said, “I am replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised and unapologetic call that we count every single vote. I say this recognizing that my fate may or may not change.”
Gillum said every Floridian who participated in the election deserves the comfort of knowing that every vote will be counted.
After Gillum’s concession speech on Tuesday, DeSantis has proceeded as if he is the victor, appointing a transition team in preparation for taking office in January.
The recount decision was announced earlier Saturday after unofficial tallies were submitted. Florida state law requires a statewide machine recount when the margin of victory is less than 0.5 percent, and a manual recount if the margin is less than 0.25 percent.
The governor’s race between Gillum, the Democratic mayor of Tallahassee, and Ron DeSantis, a Republican former congressman, showed DeSantis leading by 33,684 votes, or about 0.4 percent.
The contentious U.S. Senate race between Republican Governor Rick Scott and incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson had Scott ahead by just 15,562 votes, a lead of 0.15 percent.
Unofficial vote counts from county canvassing boards were submitted by a midday Saturday deadline, enabling the Florida secretary of state and the Division of Elections to determine that the returns met the legal thresholds requiring recounts.
The uncertainty over the outcome of the races has deepened divisions in a state that is likely to play a key role in the 2020 presidential election. The recounts will determine if Nelson returns to Capitol Hill or if Republicans increase their lead in the Senate.
The fight for Nelson’s seat has been particularly acrimonious, with both sides filing lawsuits. Scott, President Donald Trump and other Republicans have accused Nelson of trying to steal the election, while Nelson has alleged Scott is trying to stop officials from counting every ballot. Trump called the situation “a disgrace.”
Scott had asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the election departments in South Florida’s Democratic-leaning Broward and Palm Beach counties after his lead narrowed as ballots continued to be counted throughout the week. A state election spokeswoman said Friday, however, an investigation would not be launched because there was no evidence of fraud.
Judges ruled in favor of Scott late Friday, ordering election supervisors in the two counties to release information on the ballot-counting.
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Unofficial Florida Vote Tallies Submitted to State Election Officials
Florida election officials are expected to announce soon whether hotly-contested midterm election races for the U.S. Senate and governor will be subject to recounts after unofficial tallies were submitted Saturday.
The contentious U.S. Senate race between Republican Governor Rick Scott and incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson has Scott ahead by about 15,000 votes, a lead of less than 0.25 percent.
The governor’s race between Republican former congressman Ron DeSantis and Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum has DeSantis leading by almost 36,000 votes, or about 0.4 percent.
Florida law requires a statewide machine recount when the margin of victory is less than 0.5 percent and a manual recount if the margin is less than 0.25 percent.
Unofficial vote counts from county canvassing boards were due to be submitted by midday Saturday. The Florida Secretary of State and the Division of Elections will then determine if the returns meet the legal thresholds requiring recounts.
The possibility of recounts has deepened divisions among voters in a state that is likely to play a key role in the 2020 presidential election. Recounts would determine if Nelson returns to Capitol Hill or if Republicans increase their lead in the Senate.
The fight for Nelson’s seat has been particularly acrimonious, with both sides filing lawsuits. Scott, President Donald Trump and other Republicans have accused Nelson of trying to steal the election, while Nelson has alleged Scott is trying to stop officials from counting every ballot. Trump called the situation “a disgrace.”
Scott has asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the election departments in South Florida’s Democratic-leaning Broward and Palm Beach counties after his lead narrowed as ballots continued to be counted throughout the week. A state election spokeswoman said Friday, however, an investigation would not be launched because there was no evidence of fraud.
Judges ruled in favor of Scott late Friday, ordering election supervisors in the two counties to release information on the ballot-counting.
Gillum conceded defeat Tuesday night but later said every vote should count after the results began to narrow. DeSantis has proceeded as if he is the victor, appointing a transition team in preparation for taking office in January.
Study Links Social Media to Depression, Loneliness
University of Pennsylvania researchers say that for the first time they have linked social media use to increases in depression and loneliness.
The idea that social media is anything but social when it comes to mental health has been talked about for years, but not many studies have managed to actually link the two.
To do that, Penn researchers, led by psychologist Melissa Hunt, designed a study that focused on Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.
The results were published in the November issue of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.
How study worked
The study was conducted with 143 participants, who before they began, completed a mood survey and sent along photos of their battery screens, showing how often they were using their phones to access social media.
“We set out to do a much more comprehensive, rigorous study that was also more ecologically valid,” Hunt said. That term, ecologically valid, means that the research attempts to mimic real life.
The study divided the participants into two groups: The first group was allowed to maintain their normal social media habits. The other, the control group, was restricted to 10 minutes per day on each of the three platforms: Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.
The restrictions were put in place for three weeks and then the participants returned and were tested for outcomes such as fear of missing out (FOMO), anxiety, depression and loneliness.
Results of study
The results showed a very clear link between social media use and increased levels of depression and loneliness.
“Using less social media than you normally would leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness,” Hunt said. “These effects are particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed when they came into the study.”
She calls her findings the “grand irony” of social media.
What is it about social media that’s just so depressing?
Hunt says that it’s two major things. The first is that social media invites what Hunt calls “downward social comparison.” When you’re online, it can sometimes seem that “everyone else is cooler and having more fun and included in more things and you’re left out,” she said. And that’s just generally demoralizing.
The second factor is a bit more nuanced.
“Time is a zero-sum game,” Hunt told VOA. “Every minute you spend online is a minute you are not doing your work or not meeting a friend for dinner or having a deep conversation with your roommate.”
And these real life activities are the ones that can bolster self-esteem and self worth, Hunt said.
What to learn
So what’s the takeaway?
People are on their devices, and that’s not going to change, she said. But as in life, a bit of moderation goes a long way.
“In general, I would say, put your phone down and be with the people in your life,” she added.
Hunt pointed out a few caveats to the study. First, it was done exclusively with 18- to 22-year-olds, and it is unclear if the depressing effects of social media will cross generational lines to older or younger people, Hunt said. But she expects her results should generalize at least for people through the age of 30.
Hunt says she is now beginning a study to gauge the emotional impact of dating apps.
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For Autistic Kids, Robots Can Be Social, Learning Study Buddy
Robots have been put to work assembling cars in factories, answering questions at conventions and hotel lobbies, moving packages in warehouses, and more. Now, a team at the University of Southern California is studying how well robots work with autistic children, to offer personalized support and learning. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Midterms Races Still Undecided in Florida, Georgia and Arizona
While most of the votes have been counted from Tuesday’s U.S. congressional midterm elections, four major races remain undecided in key states. A recount may be in the offing in Florida for both the Senate and governor’s races where Republicans currently have narrow leads. And the governor’s race in Georgia and a Senate race in Arizona are also drawing scrutiny. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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After Scrutiny, Trump Seems to Back Away from Acting Attorney General
U.S. President Donald Trump sought to distance himself from the acting attorney general that he appointed earlier this week. VOA’s Bill Gallo reports the president’s shift comes after questions have been raised about the legality of the appointment.
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