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  • Twitter says it will give @POTUS account to Biden on Inauguration Day

    Twitter says it will give @POTUS account to Biden on Inauguration Day

    Twitter said Friday it will hand control of the @POTUS account to the new Biden administration on Inauguration Day.

    The @POTUS account is the official account of the President of the United States and is separate from the @realDonaldTrump account that Trump uses to tweet.

    This will also apply to about a dozen White House accounts, including the @FLOTUS and @PressSec accounts, Nick Pacilio, a Twitter spokesperson told CNN Business.”Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021. As we did for the presidential transition in 2017, this process is being done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration,” Pacilio said in a statement.

  • Trump suffers double blow in bid to overturn US election results

    Trump suffers double blow in bid to overturn US election results

    US President Donald Trump’s desperate bid to overturn the November 3 election results was dealt a double blow on Friday after officials in the battleground state of Georgia certified Joe Biden’s win and top Republican legislators in Michigan said they had no information that would warrant reversing the outcome of the vote in that state.

    Biden, a Democrat, is preparing to take office on January 20, but Trump, a Republican, has refused to concede and his team is seeking to invalidate or reverse the results through lawsuits, recounts and undermining the certification of results in some states, claiming – without proof – widespread voter fraud.

    Trump’s critics have called the effort an unprecedented push by a sitting president to subvert the will of the voters.

    Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced on Friday that a manual recount and audit of all ballots cast in the southern state had determined that Biden was the winner.

    Biden is the first Democrat to carry Georgia since 1992.

    “The numbers reflect the verdict of the people, not a decision by the secretary of state’s office or courts, or of either campaign,” Raffensperger, a Republican and Trump supporter, told reporters. Official figures on the Secretary of State’s Office website showed Biden winning the state by 12,670 votes.

    Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, said he was required by law to formalise the certification of the results, “which paves the way for the Trump campaign to pursue other legal options in a separate recount if they choose”. But he also said the audit showed some errors in the original vote count.

    Trump had earlier expressed dismay, saying on Twitter that Georgia officials were refusing “to let us look at signatures which would expose hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots” and give him and his party “a BIG VICTORY”.

    The president provided no evidence to back up his claim.

    Michigan backs Biden win

    Trump, on Friday, also summoned a delegation of Republican legislators from Michigan, including the state’s Senate majority leader and House speaker, in an apparent extension of his efforts to persuade judges and election officials in the state to set aside Biden’s 154,000-vote margin of victory and declare him the winner.

    But in a statement issued after the meeting in the Oval Office, Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House of Representatives Speaker Lee Chatfield said they had faith in a review of Michigan’s elections process that is being conducted by state legislators.

    “We have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan and as legislative leaders, we will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding Michigan’s electors, just as we have said throughout this election,” their statement said.

    The White House had no immediate comment.

    Nationally, Biden won nearly six million more votes than Trump, a difference of 3.8 percentage points. But the outcome of the election is determined in the Electoral College, where each state’s electoral votes, based largely on population, are typically awarded to the winner of a state’s popular vote.

    Biden leads by 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 as states work to certify their results at least six days before the Electoral College convenes on December 14.

  • Twenty-three rockets hit Afghan capital Kabul, 8 civilians killed

    Twenty-three rockets hit Afghan capital Kabul, 8 civilians killed

    A rocket barrage slammed into the heavily fortified Green Zone where many embassies and international firms are based in the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing at least eight civilians and wounding dozens more on Saturday.

    Tariq Arian, spokesman for the interior ministry, said “terrorists” mounted the rockets on a small truck and set them off, adding an investigation was under way to find out how the vehicle came inside the city undetected.

    “Based on initial information eight people were martyred and 31 others were wounded,” Arian said, noting the final toll would change.

    Kabul police spokesman Ferdaws Faramarz confirmed the same tolls and details.

    Some residents filmed the projectiles being launched and posted them on social media. Several images circulating on Facebook showed damaged cars and a hole in the side of a building.

    Taliban fighters, battling against a foreign-backed Kabul administration, denied involvement in the attack saying they “do not blindly fire on public places”.

    “The rocket attack in Kabul city has nothing to do with the mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, using the insurgents’ name for Afghanistan.

    The barrage sent warning sirens blaring from embassy compounds and came two days before a major donor conference for Afghanistan in Geneva, Switzerland.

    The interior ministry also said two small “sticky bomb” explosions had been reported earlier Saturday, including one that hit a police car, killing one policeman and wounding three others.

    Since peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban stalled, attacks by it and other armed groups have been on the rise, especially in the capital that is home to more than five million Afghans.

    Officials told the AFP news agency on Friday a breakthrough in negotiations was expected to be announced in the coming days. The US State Department announced late on Friday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would meet negotiators from the Taliban and the Afghan government in Qatar on Saturday.

    US President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to end “forever wars” including in Afghanistan – the United States’s longest-ever conflict that began with an invasion to dislodge the Taliban following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

    Earlier this week, the Pentagon said it would soon pull some 2,000 troops out of Afghanistan, speeding up the timeline established in a February agreement between Washington and the Taliban that envisions a full US withdrawal in mid-2021.

    In the past six months, the Taliban carried out 53 suicide attacks and 1,250 bombings that killed 1,210 civilians and wounded 2,500 others, Arian said this week.

    Early this month, Kabul University’s campus and killed at least 35 people, mostly students, and wounded more than 50 others.

    The attack was claimed by ISIL (ISIS) but the Afghan government said the Taliban’s ultra-violent Haqqani network was responsible.

    US president-elect Joe Biden, in a rare point of agreement with Trump, also advocates winding down the Afghanistan war although analysts believe he will not be as wedded to a quick timetable.