Nation & World Watch
vHarrisburg, Pa.: Recount bid going to federal court
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is taking her bid for a statewide recount of Pennsylvania’s Nov. 8 presidential election to federal court.
After announcing that Stein and recount supporters were dropping their case in state court, lawyer Jonathan Abady said they will seek an emergency federal court order Monday. He said barriers to a recount in Pennsylvania are pervasive, and the state court system is ill-equipped to address the problem.
Stein has spearheaded recount efforts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. She has framed the campaign as an effort to explore whether voting machines and systems had been hacked and the election result manipulated.
vMiami: Gitmo prisoner released to Cape Verde
A prisoner from Yemen at the Guantanamo Bay detention center has been released and sent to the West African nation of Cape Verde for resettlement.
The Pentagon says the release announced Sunday of Shawqi Awad Balzuhair reduces the number of prisoners held at the U.S. base in Cuba to 59. Twenty of those are approved for release.
Balzuhair has been held at Guantanamo without charge since 2002 following his capture in Karachi, Pakistan. A U.S. government review board determined he was a “low-level militant.” The U.S. does not return prisoners to Yemen because of civil war.
vAustria: Left-leaning candidate wins presidency
Left-leaning Alexander Van der Bellen and his message of moderation and tolerance prevailed in Austria’s presidential election, with preliminary results showing him with an unbeatable margin over right-wing rival Norbert Hofer.
Austria’s president has mostly symbolic duties. But after Donald Trump’s win in the U.S. and the Brexit vote in Britain, the vote was being watched as an indication of how well right-wing euroskeptic figures would do next year in elections in other EU nations.
vCuba: Fidel Castro laid to rest in private ceremony
A wooden box containing Fidel Castro’s ashes was placed by his brother and successor Sunday into the side of a granite boulder that has become Cuba’s only official monument to the charismatic, bearded rebel who seized control of a U.S.-allied Caribbean island and transformed it into a western outpost of Soviet-style communism that he ruled with absolute power for nearly half a century.
The private, early-morning ceremony was attended by members of Fidel Castro’s family, the ruling Politburo of the single-party system he founded, and Latin American leaders.
vIraq: Chaos erupts as government aid delivered
Chaos erupted in eastern Mosul on Sunday when hundreds of civilians overwhelmed aid trucks distributing food and water.
The Iraqi government has called on Mosul’s residents to stay in their homes during the operation to retake the city from the Islamic State group, hoping to avoid large-scale displacement, but as progress on the ground slows, hundreds of thousands are now stuck with dwindling food and water supplies.
The Iraqi government sent truckloads of food, heating oil and drinking water to residents in areas retaken from IS on Sunday, but few of the trucks could make it to civilians trapped near front-line fighting.
While the trucks bore banners identifying them as distributing aid on behalf of the local government, there were no government or security officials present. Men, women and children fought over bags of flour and baskets of apples.