Month: October 2019

President Donald Trump officially launched his reelection campaign Tuesday, and few things got the assembled crowd going like a modified slogan.

Speaking in Orlando, Fla., Trump issued a common refrain for his rallies and asked the audience of supporters which slogan it preferred: the classic “Make America Great Again” or the more recent “Keep America Great.”

When he announced the latter, the audience exploded in screams, prompting the president to cover his ears, before the arena burst into chants of “USA! USA! USA!”

“Wow, I’m sorry, MAGA country,” Trump said. “That wasn’t too close.”

Trump has tested out the new slogan in past appearances, and Keep America Great posters have already become a fixture at Trump rallies. But as the president officially announced the start of his reelection efforts, his comments offered a subtle nod that he was ready to move on from his old slogan.

“How do you give up the greatest theme of all time with a new theme?” Trump said. “If I lose, people are going to say what a mistake that was. But we’re not going to lose, so it’s not going to matter.”

Few things defined Trump’s meteoric rise in the lead-up to 2016 as his MAGA slogan and merchandise did. Make America Great Again hats have maintained a steady presence in the president’s public life, appearing in visits abroad and outings to disaster-stricken areas of the country.

Regardless of the rising popularity of a new theme, Trump returned to his classics at the end of the Orlando rally, bellowing to the crowd: “We will make America strong again, we will make America safe again, and we will make America great again,” before heading off the stage to the sound of the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

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According to the statement from the Investigative Committee, a soldier allegedly opened fire on colleagues at a military garrison near the city of Chita, killing two officers and six enlisted personnel. The suspect in the case, Private Ramil Shamsutdinov, a member of Unit 54160, has been detained, the Investigative Committee said.

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According to the Russian defense ministry, the shooting occurred at around 6:20 p.m. during a change in a guard shift. Eight servicemembers were killed and two additional military personnel were injured and taken to a hospital; their condition is not life-threatening, the ministry said.

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A commission of the Russian defense ministry, headed by Deputy Minister of Defense Colonel-General Andrei Kartapolov, flew to the scene of the incident, and an investigation is underway.

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The Investigative Committee said a criminal investigation had been opened in the case under Article 105 of the Criminal Code: the killing of two or more persons.

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A system of pervasive hazing was once common in the Russian and Soviet militaries, and bullied soldiers sometimes turned their weapons on colleagues. Such cases are relatively rare today.

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The election, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson has attempted to secure for nearly two months, was sealed after the Labour Party dropped its opposition and voted in support of the government’s bill.

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It will come as the country seeks a path out of its crippling impasse over Brexit, the issue certain to dominate the six-week campaign season.

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“There is only one way to restore the esteem in which our democracy is held and to recover the respect in which Parliament should be held by the people of this country,” Boris Johnson said in the House of Commons on Tuesday before a vote was approved at the fourth attempt.

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Jeremy Corbyn, who will contest his second poll at the helm of the opposition Labour Party, wrote on Twitter seconds after the vote was confirmed: “It’s time for real change.”

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MPs approved the bill that set the election date by 438 votes to 20, after a lengthy day of debate over the precise date of the poll and an ultimately futile attempt to reduce the minimum voting age from 18 to 16. After the measure is approved by the House of Lords in the next few days, Parliament will be dissolved next week.

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Johnson had pushed for an election rather than attempting to get his Brexit deal legislation through Parliament, where the government lacks a majority and has found itself constrained to the point of paralysis.

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The Prime Minister enjoys a healthy lead in opinion polls, but the move is still a risk for his Conservative Party — which lost a slim majority when former leader Theresa May took a similar gamble and called a vote in 2017.

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The decision is also likely to frustrate parts of the country’s weary electorate, who have already voted in three major polls since 2015 and now face the UK’s first December general election since 1923.

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But it provides opposition parties and voters a likely final chance to forge a path towards a second referendum on the issue of Brexit.

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Country readies for winter campaign

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Britain’s parties will now criss-cross the bitterly divided country in search for votes, amid an electoral landscape upended by the political earthquake of 2016’s Brexit referendum.

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Johnson, who finds himself at risk of becoming one of Britain’s shortest-serving prime ministers, will look to focus his campaign on the withdrawal agreement he secured with the EU but was unable to force through a fractured Parliament.

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But he risks being punished by pro-Brexit voters for his inability to take the UK out of the bloc by October 31 — a date he infamously said he’d rather be “dead in a ditch” than miss.

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And after lurching his party to the right on the issue of Europe through his expulsion of MPs who refused to support a no-deal split, his party could also lose support among moderates and anti-Brexit voters.

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The Labour Party is backing a second referendum after months of soul-searching on the Brexit issue, and will be hoping to make more progress under Jeremy Corbyn, a traditionally strong campaigner who has lost ground in opinion polls since Johnson became Prime Minister over the summer.

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Both parties’ plans could also be damaged by two groups with more hardline Brexit policies — Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, which advocates a no-deal split, and the resurgent Liberal Democrats, who want to cancel Brexit altogether.

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Johnson confirmed before tabling the bill that the new Parliament will sit for the first time before Christmas, giving it a few weeks to deal with the political fallout of the election before Britain’s new exit date of January 31.

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Olivette Otele will take up her new role as the University of Bristol’s first Professor of the History of Slavery on January 1, the institution said in a press release.

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Her first task will be a two-year research project on the university’s and the city of Bristol’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.

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Bristol’s wealth in the 17th century was largely built on the slave trade, with more than 2,000 slaving vessels setting out from the city’s port between 1698 and 1807, when Parliament abolished the slave trade, according to Bristol Museums.

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During that period, slave ships carried more than 500,000 people from Africa to the Americas.

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One slave trader, Edward Colston, transported about 80,000 men, women and children between 1672 and 1689 in his ships, according to the BBC.

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In Bristol, a street and several buildings are named after Colston. Last year, the city council’s plan to put a plaque on Colston’s statue explaining his links to the slave trade led to a row over its wording.

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Professor Otele, who was born in Cameroon, said in a statement that she wants to “bring together Bristolians from all communities, and scholars, artists and educators who are willing to contribute to a stronger and fairer society.”

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“I want students to see me as a facilitator of a dialogue that needs to take place and that is about the role of the University of Bristol in the transatlantic slave trade,” she said.

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“I want to produce a rigorous and an extensive piece of research that will be relevant to the University, to the city and that will be a landmark in the way Britain examines, acknowledges and teaches the history of enslavement.”

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Professor Judith Squires, the university’s Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, said: “As an institution founded in 1909, we are not a direct beneficiary of the slave trade, but we fully acknowledge that we financially benefited indirectly via philanthropic support from families who had made money from businesses involved in the transatlantic slave trade.

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“This new role provides us with a unique and important opportunity to interrogate our history, working with staff, students and local communities to explore the University’s historical links to slavery and to debate how we should best respond to our past in order to shape our future as an inclusive University community.”

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Earlier this year, another British institution, Cambridge University, launched an academic study into the ways in which it contributed to or benefited from the transatlantic slave trade.

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The UK was supposed to exit the bloc on Thursday, in a much-heralded Halloween deadline. But MPs, desperate to avoid a no-deal Brexit, forced Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ask Brussels for a third delay.

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The EU granted this three-month extension on Monday, meaning the UK will now stay part of the bloc, with all its advantages and obligations, until January 31 2020. Before that, there’s the small matter of the country’s general election on December 12.

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From the outside, nothing much has changed yet. From the inside, however, the UK has undergone a radical and at times ugly transformation. The June 2016 referendum has helped set off a chain of events that has impacted many aspects of life in the country.

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Brexit remains extremely divisive. Opinion polls show the country is split pretty much down the middle between those who want to leave the EU as soon as possible and those who are still hoping the country could somehow remain in the bloc.

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This debate hasn’t always been civilized. Politicians advocating for a softer version of Brexit have been called “saboteurs” by elements of the press, while the opposition has accused the government of staging a “coup.”

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Judges have been called “enemies of the people” for ruling against the government.

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Official statistics from the UK Home Office show that hate crime increased during and immediately after the referendum.

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The Home Office says that while the rise in hate crime has been down mainly to better reporting, there have been spikes following certain events, “such as the EU referendum and the terrorist attacks in 2017.”

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The crimes have ranged from verbal abuse to murder. Just before the referendum, the Labour MP and prominent Remain campaigner Jo Cox was killed by a man with extreme right wing views.

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Goodbye and good luck

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Immigration was the most important issue for voters ahead of the referendum, according to an Ipsos Mori poll.

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Under EU rules, citizens of any member state are allowed to work and live anywhere across the bloc without the need for a visa. Brexit was largely pitched to UK voters by its supporters as an opportunity to regain control over the country’s immigration policy.

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The hostile rhetoric, coupled with legal uncertainty since the vote, has made the UK a much less popular destination for people from elsewhere in the EU. Fewer Europeans are arriving in the country and many of those settled there are leaving.

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Jay Lindop, Director of the Centre for International Migration at the Office for National Statistics, said migration patterns have changed since the EU referendum vote.

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“EU net migration, while still adding to the population as a whole, has fallen to a level last seen in 2009,” Lindop said. “We are also now seeing more EU8 citizens — those from Central and Eastern European countries, for example Poland — leaving the UK than arriving,” she added.

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The decision to leave the EU has also had a profound effect on people’s wallets. The value of the British pound slumped significantly after the vote, because investors worried about its impact. That made imported goods and foreign holidays a lot more expensive for Brits.

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The weak pound has pushed inflation higher. When prices rise faster than wages, people get poorer.

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This trend has reversed even as the UK slid into the limbo of delays and uncertainty, but the pound’s value has remained volatile.

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And because the UK economy is fueled largely by consumer spending, a squeeze on consumers means a downturn for the wider economy.

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The UK went from being an economic frontrunner among the world’s biggest economies to one of the weakest ones.

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Deepening divisions

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When previous Prime Minister David Cameron called the referendum in 2016, he was fulfilling a promise he made ahead of the 2015 general election. His pledge to hold a vote on EU membership helped Cameron secure an outright majority for his second term after presiding over a coalition cabinet, with the Liberal Democrats, in his first term.

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Cameron’s Conservative Party had been split in its approach to the European Union for decades, and a key motivation for calling the vote was to reunite the party. Simply put, Cameron was hoping he’d win the referendum and put the issue to rest once and for all.

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That backfired spectacularly.

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Cameron, and his successor Theresa May, both lost their jobs to Brexit. The Conservative Party has become ever more split since the vote, with Brexiteers and Remainers pitted against each other.

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The parliamentary majority Cameron secured in 2015 has gone. May lost the outright majority in a 2017 snap election, which she called in hope of securing a bigger majority.

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That majority has plunged further under current PM Johnson, as more MPs resigned or were fired over their Brexit actions.

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In an attempt to break the UK’s political impasse, the country is now heading for its third general election in four years in December. As long as it’s clear, the result of that vote may finally clarify the future of Brexit. But one thing is certain: not everyone will be happy with it.

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British voters are heading to the polls for the fourth time in less than five years, after lawmakers backed Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s gamble to break the country’s crippling political deadlock and hold an election two weeks before Christmas.

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The country’s weary voters will be forced to endure an onslaught of photo calls, a daily slew of opinion polls and a fresh flood of campaign leaflets pouring through their letterboxes.

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But this year, the well-worn politician’s cliche is true: this vote really is unique.

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Britain hasn’t held an election in December since 1923. It hasn’t witnessed such paralysis in Westminster a generation. And while the prospect of trudging to a polling station on a chilly evening a fortnight before Christmas may fill some with dread, the vote will take the temperature of a nation whose position in the world is in flux, and whose future is far from certain.

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So, as we begin six weeks of heated winter campaigning, here’s a guide to everything you need to know.

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Why is an election happening now?

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The real question is why has it taken so long. Since former Prime Minister Theresa May’s disastrous gamble on a snap election in 2017 deprived her of a working majority in the House of Commons, Britain has been in a political standstill. That result prevented May from passing her Brexit deal three times and dealt Johnson a series of defeats over his own Brexit strategy.

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Thanks to a piece of relatively recent legislation, the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, the next election was not due to take place until 2022. But Johnson came to the same conclusion as May, that the only way out of the impasse was to hold an early vote in an attempt to seek a parliamentary majority to enact his Brexit plan.

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Opposition MPs finally backed his call on Tuesday, on the fourth time of asking, after Britain’s third Brexit extension gave the country time to sort out its future.

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How will it work?

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In the UK, voters don’t elect a prime minister directly. Instead, they elect a Member of Parliament (MP) to represent their local constituency. The leader of the party which wins a majority of the UK’s 650 constituencies automatically becomes Prime Minister.

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That means a party needs to win 326 seats to form a majority government. If no group meets that number, the party with the most seats can seek the support of smaller parties, either to join in an official coalition, as the Liberal Democrats did for the Conservatives between 2010 and 2015, or support them on a more informal basis, as the Democratic Unionist Party has done since 2017.

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Who’s going to win?

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Johnson clearly likes his chances enough to have called a vote. He’s enjoying a comfortable lead in the opinion polls of anything between 3 and 15 per cent, depending on which pollster you believe.

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But May was sitting even prettier when she called the 2017 vote, before a surprisingly strong performance from Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn upended the predictions and forced a close result. Corbyn is historically a good campaigner, and if the numbers are tight again, his party has the benefit of having more potential coalition partners than the Conservatives.

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And that wild disparity in the polls tells you something else — that the electorate is incredibly volatile at the moment. Pollsters agree that traditional party loyalties are fracturing, and that voters are defining themselves more along how they feel about Brexit. That makes the result very hard to predict — and could result in some unexpected local fluctuations.

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It’s a safe bet to say that the largest party will either be the Conservatives or Labour. No other party is in with a chance over overtaking them. But it’s entirely possible that neither will win an overall majority. The Liberal Democrats will hope to capitalize on the clarity of their anti-Brexit position and substantially increase their tally of 20 MPs. On the other end of the spectrum, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party hopes to take advantage of the Conservatives’ failure to take the UK out of the EU by October 31 and gain its first representation in Parliament.

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In Scotland, the Scottish National Party, which has 35 MPs, hopes to regain some of the seats it lost to a resurgent Conservative Party last time around. (The Conservatives’ popular leader in Scotland, Ruth Davidson, is standing down.

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Who can vote?

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British citizens over the age of 18, plus qualifying Irish and Commonwealth citizens living in the UK, are able to vote — as long as they’re registered before the deadline, which will come a few weeks before polling day.

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16- and 17-year-olds and EU nationals can’t take part, despite a last-minute push from some opposition parties to Tuesday to include them in the franchise for this election.

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You can check whether you’re eligible and register to vote here.

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What are the issues?

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Brexit has turned into a tussle for the soul of the country, so it’s no surprise to learn that it will take center stage throughout the campaign. The main parties all have drastically different proposals on the matter; the Conservatives will tout Boris Johnson’s deal with the EU and claim they can get Brexit “done,” while Labour will negotiate a softer Brexit before giving the public the final say in a second referendum.

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The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, want to scrap Brexit altogether, and the Brexit Party are pursuing a no-deal split.

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But close watchers of British politics will recall that the 2017 poll was supposed to be all about Brexit too — in reality, voters care about other issues as well.

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As per tradition, the Labour Party will likely make the revered National Health Service a central tenet of its campaign — and in particular the issue of whether a post-Brexit trade deal with the US will open up the health service to American commercialization.

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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has pushed the Labour Party further to the left, is also expected to unveil a dramatic swath of policy proposals; last time around, he touted the abolition of tuition fees, the nationalisation of Britain’s railways, water and energy companies, and an increased tax on Britain’s highest earners.

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The Conservatives, meanwhile, also look set to highlight a commitment to the health service, touting increased investment in hospitals. They are also likely to pitch themselves as the party of law and order as concern over crime on British streets rises. The economy, so closely tied to the country’s Brexit fate, will be debated at length too, while issues such as social care, migration and education always rank highly amongst the priorities of British voters.

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Will this vote break the Brexit deadlock?

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In Britain’s fractured political climate, little is certain.

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The rise of smaller parties means the possibility of a hung parliament is greater now than in previous decades. If the 2019 election goes the same way as those in 2010 and 2017, and fails to deliver a party with an overall majority, Brexit could go in a number of different directions.

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A hung parliament with a minority Conservative government would likely mean more of the same paralysis that has dogged British politics for the past year. Johnson would likely be forced to try again to get his Brexit deal through Parliament, with no guarantee of success.

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If Labour emerges as the largest party, that makes a second Brexit referendum more likely, given that’s also the ambition of the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party.

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And even if the Conservatives won a majority on the back of their promise to “get Brexit done,” the saga won’t be over. Johnson would be able to get his deal through Parliament by the next deadline — January 31 — but that’s only the start. Months of negotiations with the EU would follow about a future trading partnership, and the risk of a no-deal Brexit could return all over again if a trade deal isn’t concluded by the end of the Brexit transition period in 2020.

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So while this vote will likely set a new Brexit course for Britain, it would be naive to think the issue will be off the agenda by the new year. Sorry.

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Why is this all happening in December?

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British votes wanted nothing more for Christmas than to be forced to trudge through the winter gloom to church halls, community centers and elementary schools in order to mark an “X” on a piece of paper with a stubby pencil. (British elections are notoriously low-tech.)

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And lo, they got their wish!

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This will be the country’s first December election since 1923, but the urgency of the new January 31 Brexit deadline and the extent of the parliamentary deadlock has forced the poll.

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Still, a pre-Christmas vote will present a number of unique challenges. Sunset will come before 4 p.m. across Britain on polling day, and it’s almost certain to be cold, which could have an impact on turnout.

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Parties also face the challenge of getting voters excited about their agendas at a time when most people have their mind on other things, and when long nights threaten dampen Brits’ revolutionary fervor.

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Are people calling it ‘Brexmas’ yet?

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Regrettably, yes, it seems like this is becoming a thing.

The England striker put the Red Devils in front from the spot after Daniel James was felled by Marcos Alonso inside the Blues penalty area in the 26th minute.

Chelsea hauled themselves level through Michy Batshuayi after the Belgian held off four visiting defenders to drill into the bottom corner from 20 yards.

But Rashford’s stunning free-kick ended Chelsea’s seven-match winning streak as they failed to get a measure of revenge on United for their 4-0 defeat on the opening day of the season.

The teams have gone in opposite directions since then, with United struggling for form while Chelsea are fourth in the Premier League and joint top of their Champions League group.

The 16-year-old impressed in the previous round of the competition in their 2-0 win at MK Dons and he was denied a goal twice by the woodwork.

Jurgen Klopp looks likely to make changes all over the pitch against the Gunners and Elliott will feature at some point.

In May, Elliott became the Premier League’s youngest ever player when he entered the pitch for Fulham at Molineux, aged 16 years and 30 days old.

Since then he has joined Liverpool and the boyhood Reds fan revealed his hopes for progression at Anfield.

“I’ll work as hard as I possibly can for the club and I feel Anfield is the perfect place for me to develop and progress as a player,” he said.

Harvey Elliott – The stats so far

All you need to know about Liverpool's newest youth prospect

Age – 16

Current Club – Liverpool

Former Club(s) – Fulham

Youth Development – QPR, Fulham

Position – Winger

Nationality – English

Premier League appearances – 2

EFL Cup appearances – 2

Club career so far

Elliott became Fulham’s youngest ever player when he made his debut in an EFL Cup victory over Millwall last September. He was just 15 years and 174 days old.

Following the sacking of Claudio Ranieri, caretaker manager Scott Parker included him in three Premier League match day squads before handing him his record-breaking top flight debut against Wolves.

One week later he made a second substitute appearance against Newcastle at Craven Cottage.

In total, he has played 18 minutes of Premier League football in his career so far.

Showing masses of potential and drawing interest from Real Madrid, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain, he signed for Liverpool in July 2019.

The absence of a creative spark in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side clear for all to see with the Red Devils playing 13 matches this season in all competitions – but only scoring more than one goal in a single game on two occasions.

That came in the opening weekend of the season against Chelsea (4-0) and most recently in a 3-1 success at Norwich.

United icon Ryan Giggs, and current Wales manager, has been impressed with Solskjaer’s recruitment but says he needs the funds to bring in another ‘five or six players’ to enhance the squad – emphasising his former side’s lack of innovation as an issue.

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“We need to bring quality in,” Giggs told the United Stand. ”Ole has brought three in who are all doing well. His dealings have been very good so far.