Cincunri Sakia

Minggu, 15 Desember 2019

General election 2019: John McDonnell sorry for 'catastrophic' election result - BBC News

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have apologised over Labour's "catastrophic" defeat in Thursday's election, which saw them lose 59 seats.

Mr Corbyn said he was "sorry that we came up short", while Mr McDonnell told the BBC he "owns this disaster".

The leader and shadow chancellor said they would step down in the new year.

The race for their replacements has already begun, with Wigan MP Lisa Nandy saying for the first time she was "seriously thinking about" running.

Mr McDonnell said it would be up to Labour's National Executive Committee to decide the mechanics of the leadership election, but he expected it to take place in eight to 10 weeks' time.

Labour suffered its worst election result since 1935 on Thursday and saw its vote share fall by eight points.

The Conservatives won a Commons majority of 80 - the party's biggest election win for 30 years - sweeping aside Labour in its traditional heartlands.

Mr Corbyn apologised to Labour supporters in two articles in the Sunday papers, calling it a "body blow for everyone who so desperately needs real change in our country".

Writing an open letter in the Sunday Mirror, he said he took his "responsibility" for the result, but insisted he remained "proud" of the party's campaign.

He doubled down in the Observer, saying his own election campaign had successfully re-set the terms of debate and his manifesto would be seen as "historically important".

But Mr McDonnell has argued "it's on me" as he apologised for the performance, on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.

The shadow chancellor said he was sorry for "not being able to articulate" the party's campaign message ahead of the poll.

However, he also blamed the "media portrayal" of Mr Corbyn, saying "of course the system will throw the kitchen sink at you" if you challenge it.

Former Labour MP Caroline Flint - who lost her seat on Thursday - placed much of the blame at the leadership's door.

She also criticised the party's position on Brexit for leaving some voters behind, telling Sky's Sophy Ridge that "ardent Remainers", such as shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, "contributed to sacrificing" seats.

She accused Ms Thornberry of telling one her colleagues from a Brexit-backing area: "I'm glad my constituents aren't as stupid as yours."

Ms Thornberry has not yet responded to the comment.

Ms Flint added: "I don't believe anybody who have been the architects of our European policy in the last few years is credible to be leader. I don't think they can win back these seats."

Instead, she said Ms Nandy and shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey were "worth looking at".

Ms Nandy told the BBC's Andrew Marr she was considering a leadership bid after the "most shattering" defeat for Labour.

"In towns like mine, the earth was quaking as the entire Labour base crumble beneath our feet," she added.

Ms Nandy made a number of proposals - including moving the party's headquarters out of London - to help "rebuild that coalition" between "the Lewishams and the Leighs", and to regain a Labour Party that "speaks for both".

A number of other candidates are expected to join the race, including Salford and Eccles MP Ms Long-Bailey and Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips.

Ms Phillips wrote in the Observer an appeal to people to join Labour to change it, arguing too many working-class people do not believe the party is better than the Tories.

Asked about the contenders, Mr McDonnell said he would "prefer others" to Ms Phillips, naming Ms Long-Bailey, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner and shadow women's and equalities minister Dawn Butler as possibilities.

He said Ms Phillips was "really talented", but added: "I want someone who actually has been really solidly involved in the development of existing policy - that's why Becky and Angie and Dawn and others have been so good."

Mr McDonnell said it "should be a woman leader next" and was "most probably time for a non-metropolitan" leader, adding: "I think it is time for a non-London MP, we need a northern voice as much as possible."

Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon also backed Ms Long-Bailey and said he was considering running to be her deputy.

"Colleagues have approached me about that," he told Sky.

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2019-12-15 10:12:24Z
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Hong Kong mall protests flare with leader Lam in Beijing - Reuters

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Small groups of anti-government protesters gathered in shopping malls across Hong Kong on Sunday amid sporadic scuffles with riot police, with Chief Executive Carrie Lam away on a visit to Beijing.

In the peak shopping season ahead of Christmas, groups of masked protesters, clad in black, marched through malls chanting slogans including “Fight for freedom” and “Return justice to us”.

In the Telford Plaza mall in Kowloon Bay, skirmishes broke out with riot police, who used pepper spray on crowds and wrestled several people to the ground before taking them away.

In Shatin, police fired one tear gas canister outside the New Town Plaza mall, and took away several people, according to media reports, after some entrances and walkways were blocked, glass panels smashed, and graffiti sprayed.

The police said in a statement that some shops had been damaged and that a smoke bomb had been set off. Many shops closed early.

Hong Kong has been embroiled in its worst political crisis in decades since June with anti-government protests posing a populist challenge to China’s leader Xi Jinping, complicating ties between China and the United States at a time of heightened tensions including over trade.

Demonstrators have railed against what they see as Chinese meddling in freedoms promised to Hong Kong when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

They also say they are responding to excessive use of force by police. Last Sunday, a protest march drew around 800,000 people, according to organizers, suggesting the movement still has significant public support.

On Hong Kong island, several hundred people, many social workers, gathered peacefully to reiterate demands that include full democracy and an independent inquiry into allegations of police brutality. Some called for more strikes, while others sat at tables to write Christmas cards to those who have been jailed.

“One of our goals is defending social justice,” said Chan, a 20-year-old studying to become a social worker. “We have tried every measure to express our voices ... but the government still doesn’t listen. We haven’t put enough pressure.”

Separately, a pro-government rally drew over a thousand people nearby.

“We don’t support any violence in Hong Kong,” said Lee Man-kan, a 54-year-old solicitor.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam is in Beijing where she is due to meet Xi on Monday.

Slideshow (10 Images)

Some observers say the visit could yield fresh directives including a possible cabinet reshuffle of key local officials. Lam, however, seemed to play that down before she left, saying the first task was to curb violence and restore order.

The government is also planning more public dialogue through social media channels, as well as a second planned town hall session with top officials to try to bridge differences.

Despite the febrile public mood, China maintains it is committed to the “one country, two systems” formula granting Hong Kong autonomy and says it fully supports Lam.

Additional reporting by Twinnie Siu and Noah Sin; writing by James Pomfret; editing by Jason Neely

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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2019-12-15 10:18:00Z
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Scuffles break out in Glendale as Rep. Adam Schiff speaks at town hall - Los Angeles Times

At a town hall event on Saturday where an Armenian organization was thanking U.S. government officials for their support of resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide, scuffles broke out as Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a co-sponsor of a resolution on the issue, spoke in the auditorium at the Glendale Central Library.

As Schiff began speaking, a man and two women held up signs reading,"Don’t Impeach.” When they were asked to take down the signs, they refused.

Then, about a dozen people scattered throughout the auditorium began yelling, “Liar.”

When some in the audience asked them to refrain from yelling, scuffles broke out throughout the room, and the audience members who were yelling at Schiff removed their jackets, revealing shirts supporting President Trump.

After about 15 minutes, the scuffles settled down, and the event continued.

There were three Glendale police officers at the event who helped deal with the situation, according to the Police Department. No injuries were reported, police said.

The event was organized by the Armenian National Committee of America - Western Region to thank the U.S. House of Representatives for recently passing a resolution affirming its recognition of the Armenian genocide and celebrating the U.S. Senate’s unanimous recognition Thursday of the genocide.

Schiff said he appreciated the opportunity to take part in the event.

“I was grateful for the opportunity to share in the community’s celebration of the historic passage of the Armenian Genocide resolution in both the House and Senate, and thankful for the recognition of the efforts of so many people who made this day possible,” he said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, some came to the event with the intent to disrupt, but the Armenian community has had to overcome far greater challenges along the road to recognition than to be deterred by a few angry voices,” said Schiff, who as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has helped lead the Trump impeachment investigation.

In a statement, the Armenian committee said what made the act that much more “egregious” was that descendants of genocide survivors were in the room, many of them elderly, who had waited for the passage of such resolutions their entire lives and had attended the event to express their gratitude to all those who supported the cause for decades.

“While, as Americans, we value our right to freedom of speech, today’s actions by a select few were designed to disrupt an event that had no connection to recent political divisions and disrespected the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide,” the statement said.

“Though asked to leave, the disrupters instead remained and continued to behave in an appalling manner which lacked any semblance of human decency,” the statement added.

The committee said the issue transcends partisan politics in its appeal to properly honor and acknowledge the 1.5 million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians who were massacred from 1915-23 under the Ottoman Empire, now modern-day Turkey.

“Our democracy deserves better than the disgraceful behavior of those who tried to disrupt a non-partisan, non-political event meant to express unity and gratitude on a purely humanitarian issue, and we strongly condemn any attempt to hijack its message,” the committee said.

Roa and Kellam write for Times Community News.

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2019-12-15 07:03:00Z
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Sabtu, 14 Desember 2019

New Zealand Volcano Eruption Death Toll Rises To 15 - NPR

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Divers near White Island search for a body in the water on Saturday after the volcanic eruption earlier this week. New Zealand Police hide caption

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New Zealand Police

As New Zealand divers carry out a high-risk recovery operation to recover the body of a person killed in Monday's volcanic eruption on White Island, police have announced that the official death toll has risen to 15.

A team of nine police divers were searching contaminated waters for a body spotted in the water near the island. The water is contaminated because of the eruption and visibility is limited — between zero and 6.5 feet, according to a police statement.

"Divers have reported seeing a number of dead fish and eels washed ashore and floating in the water," Deputy Commissioner John Tims of New Zealand Police said. "Each time they surface, the divers are decontaminated using fresh water."

The divers are also operating under the threat of another eruption. GeoNet, which monitors volcanic activity in New Zealand, estimated on Saturday that there is a 35 to 50% chance of another eruption on the island in the next 24 hours. That's a decrease from Friday, when the experts estimated a 50 to 60% likelihood of an eruption in the next day.

Authorities were able to recover six bodies from the island on Friday, meaning that two people remain unaccounted for. The police said that even as divers continue to try to find human remains on Saturday, no land-based searches will be conducted on the island, also known by its Maori name, Whakaari.

Col. Rian McKinstry from the New Zealand Defence Force told Stuff that on Friday, the recovery team used hazmat suits with a special protective layer containing charcoal to filter out noxious gases. The team also used oxygen masks.

When the volcano on White Island erupted on Monday afternoon, 47 people – many of them tourists from around the world — were there exploring. Some of the survivors are suffering from major burns to their skin and lungs. Major questions persist about why so many people were freely wandering around in an area that was known to be an active volcano.

Police formally identified the first victim of the eruption on Saturday – Krystal Eve Browitt, a 21-year-old Australian citizen. The young woman had been on a cruise with her parents and sister, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Her mother had stayed behind on the cruise, and her other two family members are believed to be receiving treatment for their injuries in an Australian hospital.

Browitt's high school principal from Kolbe Catholic College says that she was a "much-loved member of the Kolbe community that her teachers describe as a beautiful soul," the Herald reported.

The fifteenth fatality from the eruption, which police confirmed Saturday, was a person who was being treated for injuries at a hospital in New Zealand.

New Zealand's Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has called for a minute of silence on Monday at exactly a week after the eruption started.

"Wherever you are in New Zealand, or around the world, this is a moment we can stand alongside those who have lost loved ones in this extraordinary tragedy," Ardern said in a statement. "Together we can express our sorrow for those who have died and been hurt, and our support for their grieving families and friends."

As NPR's Colin Dwyer reported, of the 47 people where were on the island at the time, 24 were from Australia and nine from the U.S. Others were from China, Malaysia, Germany, the U.K. and New Zealand.

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2019-12-14 18:25:00Z
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Trump administration inches closer to massive trade deal with China - Fox News

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2019-12-14 15:43:48Z
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What did the UK elections teach us about 2020? Trust the polls - CNN

Maybe you think Republican President Donald Trump has reason to smile after his friend, Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, won a big mandate.

Maybe you think the crushing defeat of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party shows the peril of the Democrats potentially nominating Bernie Sanders.

Those theories may prove to be true, but I think the clearest lesson is staring us right in the face: The polls are still pretty good as we head into the 2020 presidential election in the US.

Take a look at the average of polls for the four parties that have earned at least 10 seats each in the House of Commons (the UK Parliament's lower House). The average of the final UK polls had the Conservatives winning 43% of the vote, Labour 33%, the Liberal Democrats 12% and the Scottish Nationals 4%.

The actual result was Conservatives taking 43.6%, Labour 32.2%, the Liberal Democrats 11.6% and the Scottish Nationals 3.9%. In other words, each of these parties got within 1 point of its final polled vote share.

This remarkably accurate result was better than we'd expect based on history. The final 2019 polling average missed the margin between Conservative and Labour by about 1.9 points. Since the 1945 election (i.e. the prior 20 UK general elections), the average final poll had missed by 3.9 points.

Indeed, despite a lot of cries that the polls are broken, the UK elections taking place during the Trump administration show that isn't true. Beyond this year, the difference between the Conservatives and Labour margin in the final 2017 polling average and election result was 4 points. In other words, it's right in line with what we'd expect, given the historical polling accuracy rates.

The US's own polls have likewise been fairly accurate during the Trump era. The average House, Senate and governor's polls were about a point more accurate in 2018 than they had been in similar elections over the prior 20 years. The same was generally true for House special election polling in the 2017-2018 cycle and the three governor elections of 2019 (Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi).

Another key point is that just because one side outperformed in the polls in the last election doesn't mean the same party will outperform in the next one. I know some people were expecting (and a lot of Labourites were hoping) that because the polls underestimated Labour in 2017 they would do the same in 2019. It didn't happen. The Conservatives were actually slightly underestimated.

Again, we saw this same lesson play out in the US over the past few years. After the polling underestimated the Republicans almost across the board in 2016, there was less of a systematic error in 2018. The polls slightly underestimated the Democrats on average. Now, the polls weren't perfect in 2018 in the US, but they were better than average and correctly projected a strong Democratic year. Similarly, the polls, if anything, underestimated the Democrats in the gubernatorial elections of 2019 and special elections over the course of 2017 and 2018.

The direction of the polling errors is most often random. If something is methodologically amiss in surveys, good pollsters tend to figure out what's wrong before the next election.

None of this guarantees that the final polls will correctly gauge who is going to win or lose in 2020. There are still margins of error, so someone slightly ahead in the polls may end up losing. Likewise, someone slightly behind may end up winning.

But in an era with a lot of disinformation out there, the polls continue to do a very good job of separating the signal from the noise.

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2019-12-14 13:32:00Z
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General election 2019: Labour facing long haul, warns McDonnell - BBC News

Labour faces a "long haul" as it attempts to gain power following its fourth election defeat in a row, shadow chancellor John McDonnell has warned.

He rejected claims that leader Jeremy Corbyn had been responsible for the result, instead blaming "the overwhelming issue" of Brexit.

But some current and ex-MPs have said Mr Corbyn's unpopularity contributed to Labour losing dozens of seats.

Boris Johnson's Conservatives won on Thursday with a Commons majority of 80.

The outcome, far more positive for the Tories than most opinion polls had predicted, has prompted much soul-searching within Labour, which last won a general election under Tony Blair in 2005.

Mr Corbyn has announced he will stand down in the near future and Mr McDonnell, one of his closest allies, said he had been "the right leader" for the party.

But Labour's Helen Goodman, who lost her Redcar seat to the Conservatives on Thursday, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that "the biggest factor was obviously the unpopularity of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader".

And Dame Margaret Hodge, Labour MP for Barking, east London, said she felt "anger because this is an election we should have won".

She added that, under Mr Corbyn's leadership - during which Labour has faced criticism for its handling of anti-Semitism allegations among its membership - voters had come to see it "as a nasty party".

Meanwhile, Wes Streeting, Labour MP for Ilford North, said the party's "far-left" manifesto had alienated much of the electorate.

Mr McDonnell disagreed with personal criticism of his leader, saying: "The overwhelming issue was Brexit and the Labour Party was caught on the horns of a dilemma.

"We had a party which was largely supportive of Remain, but many of us represented Leave constituencies."

In the election, Labour's number of Commons seats fell to 203, its lowest since 1935.

Mr Corbyn, leader since 2015, ran for prime minister on a promise to hold a second referendum on Brexit, saying that during any campaign he would remain neutral - in contrast to Mr Johnson's promise to take the UK out of the EU by 31 January.

Mr McDonnell said: "If we went one way, to Leave, we would have alienated a lot of our Remain support. If we went for Remain, we'd alienate a lot of our Leave support.

"We tried to bring the country together. It failed. We have to accept that, take it on the chin. We have to own that and then move on."

Mr McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington in west London, said Labour now needed to have "a constructive debate" about its future, discussing "what went right and what went wrong" during the election campaign.

He argued that Mr Corbyn, who has received criticism from some Labour figures for not standing down immediately, was right to stay on "for a couple of months".

It was necessary because of the "expertise" required to deal with issues such as Brexit and the forthcoming Budget, he said.

Discussing Mr Johnson's government, Mr McDonnell said: "My fear is that we're in for a long haul now, possibly five years.

"The two issues that we face are still there - huge, grotesque levels of inequality and, the issue that never really emerged in the campaign, which was climate change, this existential threat that must be our priority.

"Brexit, well, we'll see what the government brings back in terms of its negotiations. The people have decided we need to implement that, but we've got to get the best deal to protect jobs and the economy."

He added: "My fear is five years of a fossil fuel-backed government under Boris Johnson means we'll miss this five-years opportunity of saving our planet."

At the 2017 general election, Mr Corbyn's first as Labour leader, the party won 40% of votes and gained 30 MPs, denying Theresa May's Conservatives a majority.

But on Thursday it received 32% of the vote and lost 59 seats, including several of its traditional strongholds in the north of England.

Mr Corbyn said that, during the election campaign, he had done "everything I could" and that he had "pride" in the party's manifesto.

The Labour leader's sons, Tommy, Seb and Benjamin, tweeted a tribute to their father, calling him an "honest, humble and good-natured" figure in the "poisonous world" of politics.

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2019-12-14 13:10:54Z
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