In Brief: Nation & World: 11-28-16

Trump assails recount push, claims millions voted illegally

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump claimed without evidence Sunday that “millions” voted illegally in the national election, scoffing at Hillary Clinton’s nearly 2 million edge in the popular vote and returning to his campaign mantra of a rigged race even as he prepares to enter the White House in less than two months.

Trump and his lieutenants assailed an effort — now joined by Clinton — to recount votes in up to three battleground states, calling the push fraudulent, the work of “crybabies” and, in Trump’s estimation, “sad.”

The president-elect went on to cast a shadow over the legitimacy of an election that he actually won, tweeting that “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” He provided further contended that if the popular vote determined the presidency, “It would have been much easier for me to win” it because he would have altered his campaign to pile up overall vote totals, not Electoral College votes.

There’s been no indication of widespread vote manipulation, illegal voting or hacking that materially affected the outcome one way or the other. It’s that very lack of evidence that suggests Trump is likely to prevail in recounts.

As Trump worked to fill foreign policy and national security posts in his Cabinet, a top adviser expressed astonishment that 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney remained under consideration for secretary of state after his campaign-long questioning of Trump’s character, intellect and integrity.

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Trump aides say Cuban government will have to change

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Cuban government must move toward enacting greater freedoms for its people and giving Americans something in return if it wants to keep warmer U.S. relations initiated by President Barack Obama, top aides to President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday.

The comments by Trump advisers Kellyanne Conway and Reince Priebus followed the death of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Castro’s younger brother, 85-year-old Raul Castro, took control in 2006, and later negotiated with Obama to restore diplomatic relations.

Priebus, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, said Trump would “absolutely” reverse Obama’s opening to Cuba unless there is “some movement” from the Cuban government.

“Repression, open markets, freedom of religion, political prisoners — these things need to change in order to have open and free relationships, and that’s what President-elect Trump believes, and that’s where he’s going to head, ” Priebus told “Fox News Sunday.”

Conway made similar remarks and noted that any diplomatic deal will have to benefit American workers.

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Castro shunned statues, monuments but still became icon

There are no statues of Fidel Castro in Cuba. No school, street, government building or city bears his name. And while his likeness stares back from billboards and official portraits, it is absent from pesos and postage stamps.

As the island’s unchallenged leader for nearly a half-century before falling ill in 2006, Castro forbade monuments in his honor mere weeks after his rebels toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista on New Year’s Day 1959. He then spent decades railing against the idolatry encouraged by other communist leaders, such as Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin or North Korea’s Kim family.

“There is no cult of personality around any living revolutionary,” Castro said in 2003. “The leaders of this country are human beings, not gods.”

Yet despite his distaste for such honors, the bearded Marxist stood as a globally recognized symbol of resistance to Washington and free-market capitalism, a hero to left-wing Latin American allies whose movements he helped inspire and an evil genius to his foes in Miami.

He was the most dominant figure in Cuba, and Cuban state media amplified his every public act or utterance.

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Miami Cuban celebration turns to reflection on Castro death

MIAMI (AP) — Celebration turned to somber reflection and church services Sunday as Cuban-Americans in Miami largely stayed off the streets following a raucous daylong party in which thousands marked the death of Fidel Castro.

One Cuban exile car dealer, however, sought to turn the revolutionary socialist’s death into a quintessential capitalist deal by offering $15,000 discounts on some models.

And on the airwaves, top aides to President-elect Donald Trump promised a hard look at the recent thaw in U.S. relations with Cuba.

At St. Brendan Catholic Church in the Miami suburb of Westchester, a member of the chorus read a statement by Archbishop Thomas Wenski about Castro’s death before the service. There was no overt mention of Castro during the Sunday Mass. But during the reading of the Prayers of the Faithful, one of the two priests celebrating the Mass prayed for “an end to communism, especially in Cuba and Venezuela.”

“Lord, hear our prayers,” churchgoers responded.

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Imagining Cuba’s human rights situation after Fidel Castro

HAVANA (AP) — He overthrew a strongman, brought his country free health care and education, and enlisted Cubans in what he called fights for freedom from Central America to South Africa. Fidel Castro also maintained a steel grip at home, jailing dissidents and gays, controlling freedom of travel and expression and declaring virtually any activity outside his control to be illegitimate.

Since the revolutionary’s death Friday night, Cubans have defended Castro’s record while human rights groups said they hoped that his brother and successor, Raul Castro, would move faster toward allowing Cubans more freedom of speech, assembly and other basic rights.

“The question now is what human rights will look like in a future Cuba,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, the Americas director for Amnesty International, said Saturday. “The lives of many depend on it.”

Under Raul Castro, Cuba has moved away from jailing political prisoners for extended sentences, instead making thousands of short-term arrests each year that Cuban dissidents say are designed to harass them and disrupt any attempt at political organizations. Cubans today feel freer to criticize their government in public, but any attempt at protest or demonstration is swiftly quashed. Independent journalists operate inside the country but find it nearly impossible to distribute printed material and they report repeated harassment from authorities.

Berta Soler, head of the dissident group Ladies in White, said Sunday that she and her supporters decided to refrain from their traditional protest after Mass at a Havana church, out of respect for the feelings of Castro’s backers.

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Syrian army Aleppo advance displaces thousands

BEIRUT (AP) — Simultaneous advances by Syrian government and Kurdish-led forces into eastern Aleppo on Sunday set off a tide of displacement inside the divided city, with thousands of residents evacuating their premises, and threatened to cleave the opposition’s enclave.

Rebel defenses collapsed as government forces pushed into the city’s Sakhour neighborhood, coming within one kilometer (0.6 miles) of commanding a corridor in eastern Aleppo for the first time since rebels swept into the city in 2012, according to Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

Kurdish-led forces operating autonomously of the rebels and the government meanwhile seized the Bustan al-Basha neighborhood, allowing thousands of civilians to flee the decimated district to the predominantly Kurdish Sheikh Maqsoud, in the city’s north, according to Ahmad Hiso Araj, an official with the Syrian Democratic Forces.

The government’s push, backed by thousands of Shiite militia fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, and under the occasional cover of the Russian air force, has laid waste to Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods.

An estimated quarter-million people are trapped in wretched conditions in the city’s rebel-held eastern districts since the government sealed its siege of the enclave in late August. Food supplies are running perilously low, the U.N. warned Thursday, and a relentless air assault by government forces has damaged or destroyed every hospital in the area.

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Election throws US plans for Syrian refugees into question

RUTLAND, Vt. (AP) — Arabic language classes are drawing 25 to 30 people a week in preparation for the new arrivals in town. High school students are helping collect furniture and housewares for them, and employers have inquired about giving them jobs.

For the past several months, Rutland has been getting ready to receive 100 mostly Syrian refugees beginning early next year. But with Donald Trump taking office in late January, Rutland’s plans and those of other U.S. cities that have agreed to take in people fleeing the civil war have been thrown into question, given the incoming president’s hostility to Muslim immigrants.

“I am not even going to hazard a guess” about the fate of the program, said Mayor Christopher Louras, who invited the newcomers in the hope they can help revitalize this shrinking, post-industrial, heroin-plagued city of 15,800.

In the fiscal year that just ended, the Obama administration screened and admitted nearly 12,600 Syrian refugees, who were resettled in cities and towns across the U.S. Thousands more are scheduled to arrive in the coming year.

During the campaign, Trump proposed a ban on Muslims entering the country and called for a moratorium on accepting Syrian refugees for fear of terrorists slipping through. He also vowed “extreme vetting” of would-be immigrants from countries plagued by extremism.

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Fillon wins France’s conservative presidential primary

PARIS (AP) — Francois Fillon won France’s first-ever conservative presidential primary Sunday after promising drastic free-market reforms and a crackdown on immigration and Islamic extremism, beating a more moderate rival who had warned of encroaching populism.

“President! President!” chanted the former prime minister’s supporters as he declared victory over Alain Juppe in a nationwide runoff election.

Polls suggest the sober, authoritative Fillon, 62, would have a strong chance of winning the French presidency in the April-May election, amid widespread frustration with France’s current Socialist leadership.

Fillon, who was prime minister from 2007-2012 under ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, enjoyed a surprise surge in popularity in recent weeks. A rise in nationalist sentiment across Europe may have favored his strict conservative positions over Juppe’s more centrist stance.

France needs “a complete change of software,” Fillon said, promising in his victory speech to defend “French values.”

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Brown water, beaver battle among early signs of water woes

ATLANTA (AP) — Beaver dams have been demolished, burbling fountains silenced, and the drinking water in one southern town has taken on the light brownish color of sweet tea.

Though water shortages have yet to drastically change most people’s lifestyles, southerners are beginning to realize that they’ll need to save their drinking supplies with no end in sight to an eight-month drought.

Already, watering lawns and washing cars is restricted in some parts of the South, and more severe water limits loom if long-range forecasts of below-normal rain hold true through the rest of 2016.

The drought arrived without warning in Chris Benson’s bathroom last week in Griffin, Georgia.

“My son noticed it when he went to take his bath for the evening,” said Benson, 43. “The water was kind of a light brown color and after we ran it for a while, it actually looked like a light-colored tea. A little disturbing.”