WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump pressured Georgia's top election official to "find" enough votes to overturn his defeat in the southern state, according to excerpts of a recording of the hour-long call released by the Washington Post on Sunday (Jan 3).
The call on Saturday was the latest move in Trump's two-month effort to claim that his loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden in the Nov 3 election was the result of widespread voter fraud, a claim that has been widely rejected by state and federal election officials as well as multiple courts.
Trump's call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, came as some of Trump's allies in the US Congress said they plan to object to the formal certification on Wednesday of Biden's victory.
The former vice president won by a margin of 306-232 in the state-by-state Electoral College, and by more than 7 million votes overall.
The Washington Post said that during the call Trump alternately flattered, begged and threatened Raffensperger with vague criminal consequences in an attempt to undo his loss.
Raffensperger and his office's general counsel rejected Trump's assertions throughout, and told the president that he was relying on debunked conspiracy theories spread on social media about what was a fair and accurate election, according to the audio excerpts and the newspaper's account.
"The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry," Trump said, according to one audio excerpt published online by the Post. "And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated."
"So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state," Trump said in the recording, insisting that there was "no way" he lost the state.
The White House declined to comment. Raffensperger's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Biden's transition office had no immediate comment.
The call came days before US Senator Ted Cruz is set to lead several of Trump's allies in Congress in a long-shot bid to disrupt the formal recognition of Biden's win.
Biden's narrow victory in Georgia was the first by a Democratic presidential candidate in a generation and has raised hopes among Democrats that they could win a pair of US Senate runoffs in the state on Tuesday, giving their party control of Congress.
Even if Trump had won Georgia's 16 Electoral College votes, he would still have lost the White House to Biden, who will be sworn into office on Jan 20.
Before the Washington Post published its report of the call, Trump said on Twitter on Sunday that he had spoken by phone with Raffensperger about voter fraud in Georgia.
"He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the 'ballots under table' scam, ballot destruction, out of state 'voters', dead voters, and more. He has no clue!" Trump tweeted.
Raffensperger responded on Twitter: "Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out."
News of Saturday's call drew immediate criticism from congressional Democrats including Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee.
"Trump's contempt for democracy is laid bare. Once again. On tape," Schiff wrote on Twitter. "Pressuring an election official to 'find' the votes so he can win is potentially criminal, And another flagrant abuse of power by a corrupt man who would be a despot, if we allowed him. We will not."
KUALA LUMPUR - Heavy rain continued to lash parts of Malaysia on Sunday (Jan 3), causing thousands to be evacuated in the southern state of Johor and some parts of the East Coast highway in Pahang to be temporarily shut to traffic.
Johor State health and environment committee chairman R. Vidyananthan said one death was recorded from the floods. He added that 56 temporary relief centres in affected districts, such as Johor Baru, Kota Tinggi, Kluang, Mersing, Pontian, Kulai and Batu Pahat, have been set up to provide shelter for flood victims.
As of noon on Sunday, a total of 6,248 flood victims from 1,628 families in seven Johor districts had been rescued and evacuated to safety.
State capital Johor Baru claimed the most victims, with over 2,400 people displaced, followed by Kluang with more than 1,800, Mr Vidyananthan said, according to The Star Online.
A bad weather warning was issued by the Malaysian Meteorological Department, predicting continuous rain in Segamat, Batu Pahat, Kluang, Mersing, Pontian, Kulai, Kota Tinggi and Johor Baru.
Johor’s rivers also swelled, with three river monitoring stations recording dangerous water levels, while six more recorded alert levels.
Meanwhile in eastern state Pahang, a total of 65 people from two districts have been evacuated to relief centres following floods caused by continuous heavy rain since Saturday.
Residents in state capital Kuantan waded in waist-deep waters to salvage their belongings and helped push stranded cars to safety.
Three rivers in the state - Sungai Lepar, Sungai Lipis and Sungai Lembing - had risen past their danger levels on Sunday.
A section of the East Coast Expressway (ECE), which connects Kuantan with capital city Kuala Lumpur, was temporarily closed to vehicles as floodwaters inundated the highway lanes.
State basic amenities, public delivery system and innovations committee chairman Norol Azali Sulaiman said that the section between Gambang and Sri Jaya was completely impassable to east and west-bound traffic.
“Water along the road shoulder has spilled onto the dual-carriageway,” he was quoted as saying by New Straits Times.
The east-bound lanes and the Kuala Lumpur-bound fast lane were later reopened to traffic after the floodwaters receded.
Kampung Galing resident Mohd Faiz Abdullah wading through 1m floodwaters to save his essential belongings. PHOTO: BERNAMA
The meteorological department has warned that the annual monsoon season, which usually lasts from November to March, is expected to bring more rainfall to the east coast states of Pahang, Terengganu and Kelantan.
It said west coast states on the peninsula as well as the east Malaysia states of Sabah and Sarawak are also expected to experience thunderstorms, heavy rain and strong winds in the evening and up to early in the night during the monsoon.
These may cause flash floods especially in low-lying areas, the department said.
WASHINGTON: US Senator Ted Cruz on Saturday (Jan 2) said he will spearhead a drive by nearly a dozen Republican senators to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s victory when Electoral College results are tallied in Congress on Jan 6 – a largely symbolic move that has virtually no chance of preventing Biden from taking office.
Cruz's effort is in defiance of Senate Republican leaders, who have argued that the Senate's role in certifying the election is largely ceremonial and had been looking to avoid an extended debate on the floor about the outcome.
In a statement, Cruz, the US senator from Texas, and the other 10 senators said they intend to vote to reject electors from states that have been at the centre of President Donald Trump’s unproven assertions of election fraud. They said Congress should immediately appoint a commission to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of election results in those states.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) attends a campaign event ahead of runoff races in Georgia for control of U.S. Senate, in Cumming, Georgia, U.S., January 2, 2021. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage
"Once completed, individual states would evaluate the commission's findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed," they said.
It was not immediately clear which states would be subject to the proposed audit, Cruz's office said.
Michael Gwin, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, dismissed the move as theatre that is not supported by any evidence.
"This stunt won’t change the fact that President-elect Biden will be sworn in on Jan 20, and these baseless claims have already been examined and dismissed by Trump’s own attorney general, dozens of courts, and election officials from both parties," he said.
The push for an audit is a political stunt that will not affect the outcome of the election, said Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Iowa.
Muller said that, while the 1887 law governing how lawmakers validate the election is murky, most scholars believe that Congress lacks the legal authority to require the audit. Even if lawmakers had that power, a majority of both chambers would need to support the audit, and there is virtually no chance of the proposal having that level of support, he said.
Biden beat Trump by a 306-232 margin in the Electoral College.
Under the Electoral College system, "electoral votes" are allotted to states and the District of Columbia based on their congressional representation.
Trump has been encouraging Republicans to prevent Biden from taking office, although there is no viable mechanism for them to do so.
Legal challenges by Trump and his allies in the courts to overturn the election results have met with resounding failure. On Friday, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit brought by Representative Louie Gohmert that sought to allow Vice President Mike Pence, who presides over the Congressional tally, to declare Trump the victor on Jan 6.
The effort by Cruz and other Republicans comes days after US Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri became the first sitting member of the Senate to announce he would challenge the election result. A number of Republicans in the US House of Representatives also plan on contesting the vote tally.
Cruz was joined in the statement by Senators Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, along with Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis, Tommy Tuberville, Bill Hagerty, and Roger Marshall, all of whom will be sworn in as senators on Sunday in the new Congress.
Several Republicans senators have said they do not support any effort to derail the certification of the Electoral College vote.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, acknowledged Biden’s victory on Dec 15 and has urged other Republicans to refrain from objecting on Jan 6.
Republican Senator Pat Toomey of swing state Pennsylvania criticised Cruz and others for undermining the will of voters to choose their leaders and said Trump's loss in his state is due to the decline in suburban support for the president and loss of support in most rural counties, not fraud.
"I intend to vigorously defend our form of government by opposing this effort to disenfranchise millions of voters in my state and others," he said.
In Cruz's statement, the senators said they did not necessarily expect their gambit to succeed.
"We are not naive. We fully expect most if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise," they said.
Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, said in a statement on Saturday that lawmakers have the right to raise their objections.
"The Vice President welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on Jan 6," Short said.
BANGKOK: A group of people were hard at work on the dusty roadside by a railway.
Wearing yellow aprons and black gloves, they swept dry leaves into piles and scooped up garbage with their hands. Their faces are wrinkled and beaded with sweat while their skin burned in the scorching sun. But they are happy to do it every week.
“The job is easy but you have to be clean and focused. You can’t just do it for fun,” said one of the cleaners, Chalee Maneeterm.
Like his colleagues, Chalee is a participant of the Hire Me project or "Jangwan Ka" in Thai, which seeks to provide jobs for people with no home or on the brink of becoming homeless.
The initiative was launched in July by the Mirror Foundation, a non-governmental organisation that has advocated social development in Thailand since 1991. So far, the project has attracted about 100 participants. Most of them are aged between 55 and 70 and do not have enough funds to start a new life on their own.
“I stay at a market. There’s a place for me to sleep there but it’s not really meant for that. I can use it, though, without causing trouble to anyone. Sometimes, people give me things,” Chalee said when interviewed by CNA.
An elderly woman picks up a piece of rubbish on the roadside in Bangkok. (Photo: Pichayada Promchertchoo)
Three years ago, an accident cost him the sight of his left eye and forced him to spend his savings on medical bills. Life has since become a struggle with jobs proving hard to find.
People think he is “incomplete”, he said, but things got even worse with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chalee has no permanent job and relies on charity to get buy. Each time he wants to have a shower, he has to find 10 baht (US$0.34) to use bathrooms or go to a temple that would allow him to use the facility for free.
“If I have a chance, I’d like to do something else to make myself better and not have to depend on others all the time,” he said.
Chalee is one of more than 2,700 people with no home in Thailand, according to a survey in January by the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security and related organisations.
Data showed 86 per cent of this vulnerable group were male and more than half lived alone. They are scattered across the country but concentrated in big cities such as Bangkok, Nakhon Ratchasima, Chiang Mai and Songkhla.
A group of cleaners fill a plastic bag with rubbish and dry leaves as part of the Hire Me project. (Photo: Pichayada Promchertchoo)
“The root cause of the problem is that these people have a home but they can’t live there for various reasons, for example, a financial problem with people in their house. They feel they can no longer stay there and choose to leave. But they don’t have any capital that’d allow them to, let’s say, rent a room or stay with friends for two months while looking for a job,” said Hire Me project manager Sittiphol Chuprajong.
“In most cases, homeless people have very little capital – limited education, hardly any savings and even their age; most of them are elderly,” he added. “It makes them unable to find jobs.”
As a result, thousands of people have ended up on the streets and public areas such as train stations, bus stops and parks.
“DON’T HAVE TO RUN TO BEG FOR FOOD ANYMORE”
Since July, the Hire Me project has provided a number of homeless people with cleaning jobs. Sittiphol and his team coordinate with the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration in sourcing public areas for them to clean at least once a week.
The venues range from pedestrian bridges to parks and pavements. Each session lasts three to four hours and the cleaners get paid 400 baht (US$13).
“Almost every single one of them are enthusiastic to work because they feel they get to do something with their life instead of having to beg all the time,” Sittiphol said.
A male cleaner sweeps dry leaves on the roadside in Bangkok. (Photo: Pichayada Promchertchoo)
For those who are serious about saving up, they can opt for working four times a week to earn more. One of them is Natcha Sangyot, who became homeless at the age of 54.
Like Chalee, the COVID-19 pandemic made it hard for her and her sister to find a job. With no money to rent a room, the pair had to stay around a bus stop in Bangkok and live on charity. They had to queue for hours in the sun every day to receive food donations. At night, they had to be careful about lurking dangers.
“We would sit at the bus stop the whole night and take turns sleeping,” Natcha said.
There were other homeless people there and they’d grope us. Some taxi drivers came to grab our hands. Sometimes when we were asleep, people would steal our belongings – shoes and bags. That’s how it was. So, we had to be careful.
The Hire Me project helps homeless and vulnerable people in Bangkok improve their life by providing them with jobs. (Photo: Pichayada Promchertchoo)
Natcha and her sister lived on the streets for weeks before someone introduced them to the Hire Me project. Then life began to change. With regular income, they have been able to save money, rent a room and stop taking turns to sleep at night.
“Life is much better now as we don’t have to stand in the sun or sit in the square all day,” Natcha said.
“I don’t have to run to beg for food anymore. We have some savings to pay for showers and to buy food without having to queue for hours with other people,” she added. “I’m proud.”
“THESE LITTLE THINGS WE TAKE FOR GRANTED”
Natcha has been paying rent herself for three months now. The joy of having financial independence makes her continue to work hard. But not everyone on the streets can achieve what she has done.
Through years of working with homeless people in Thailand, Sittiphol has discovered that a key challenge faced by this vulnerable group is a lack of stable jobs and access to basic facilities such as bathrooms, toilets and laundry areas, which affects their quality of life.
While the government provides shelters for homeless people, he said very few of them want that kind of support because it is not compatible with their lifestyle.
“Most residents of state shelters have mental health problems – about 80 per cent of them. This makes ordinary people like those with no home feel suffocated if they have to stay there, where they’ll be put together, sleep together and share the same space. They can’t handle it,” Sittiphol told CNA.
“Also, there is no freedom. They can’t really go anywhere and that doesn’t suit their lifestyle, which involves finding income,” he added.
According to Sittiphol, homeless people in Thailand have different needs and not all of them want to have a home. To help improve their life, social workers who run the Hire Me project chose to target unemployment among the homeless population. They believe a key factor that could help them transform and improve their quality of life is a job.
“They can buy new clothes and products to look after themselves such as soap and toothpaste. They can take care of themselves more often. Those who pay to use bathrooms can shower more,” Sittiphol said.
These little things we take for granted mean a lot to them. They want to be clean. They want to shower. And to be able to spend money without having to beg means much to them. It brings back their pride, as these people normally have to wait for charity.
“When they have income, they’ll also think ‘What should I do with the money?’. So this will lead to a certain decision that’s important to their life, for example, find a place to live that’s not on the streets or public places,” he added.
On the roadside, black garbage bags are filled with dry leaves and rubbish. Work has been finished and the cleaners were preparing to go home. Chalee may not have one to go back to just yet but he is working on it.
“I would like to have a gas stove and sell fried chicken with sticky rice in the morning,” he said.
“I may be disabled but I’m 100 per cent ready,” he added. “I can see the whole world, not just half of it.”
NEW DELHI: India on Saturday (Jan 2) staged nationwide drills to start one of the world's biggest coronavirus vaccination programmes as the drug regulator prepared to approve the first vaccine.
A government panel on Friday recommended emergency use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford University shot and the first injections could be given in the coming week after the Drugs Control Authority of India gives final approval.
India, which has the world's second-highest number of pandemic cases - more than 10.2 million - has set an ambitious target of inoculating 300 million of its 1.3 billion people by mid-2021.
Serum Institute of India, the world's biggest vaccine producer, has already stockpiled tens of millions of doses of AstraZeneca's Covishield ready for the campaign and 96,000 health workers have been trained for the inoculation drive.
The drills saw 25 health workers receive dummy vaccines at each of the centres to be used across the country in a test run ahead of the launch.
Health minister Harsh Vardhan said the exercise would help build expertise "so that the upcoming vaccination drive may proceed without any glitch". He has also called for a campaign to counter "misleading rumours" that may scare people off getting the vaccine.
While India is only second to the United States for the number of cases, its rate of infection has come down significantly from a mid-September peak of 90,000 plus cases daily and its fatality rate is lower than other badly affected countries.
Britain and Argentina this week authorised the AstraZeneca vaccine while the World Health Organization on Thursday granted emergency validation to the rival Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Covishield is expected to get more use in India as it can be stored and transported under normal refrigeration while the Pfizer shot needs ultra-low temperatures for storage.
BEIJING: Different efficacy results for a Chinese COVID-19 vaccine released separately in China and in United Arab Emirates are both real and valid, an executive at China National Biotec Group (CNBG) told state media.
China approved its first COVID-19 vaccine for general public use on Thursday (Dec 31), a shot developed by an affiliate to state-backed Sinopharm, after the developer said the vaccine showed 79.34 per cent efficacy based on an interim analysis of late-stage clinical trials.
That rate is lower than the 86 per cent rate for the same vaccine reported by the United Arab Emirates on Dec 9.
Countries have certain differences in their standards and procedures in diagnosing patients, and the final results of COVID-19 case identification were different, Yang Xiaoming, chairman at Sinopharm unit's CNBG, told Global Times, a tabloid published by the People's Daily, the official newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party.
"Therefore, there were differences between the comprehensive multi-country data we reviewed and the protection rate data previously evaluated by the UAE and Bahrain," Global Times quoted Yang as saying in a report published on Thursday.
"But these two results are both real and valid," Yang said, without offering further details for the data.
CNBG did not participate in the analysis or review of clinical trial data released by regulators in countries where its vaccine was being trialled, Yang said.
The vaccine, developed by CNBG's unit Beijing Biological Products Institute, along with another candidate from a Wuhan-based unit of CNBG, are being tested in Phase III clinical trials outside China.
Trials for CNBG's candidates have recruited over 60,000 participants aged between 18 and 60, Yang said.
