Americans split between Trump and Clinton: Poll
Gap between Trump and Clinton narrows to just 3 percentage points
AFP
WASHINGTON
Americans are almost equally split between real estate tycoon Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for November presidential elections as latest poll shows that the Democratic front-runner is just three percentage points ahead of the presumptive Republican nominee.
Americans are nearly split between their choice of Trump or Clinton; her margin over Trump narrows from five points last week to three points this week to 48 per cent to 45 per cent," NBC News/Survey Monkey said as it released its latest weekly online tracking poll.
Trump emerged as the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee after his massive victory in the Indiana primary elections early this month.
Clinton is yet to gain that status as she is facing a tough battle from Senator Bernie Sanders.
Given her advantage in the delegate count, she is expected to reach that stage soon, political analysts feel.
Releasing its weekly online tracking poll ahead of the primaries in Oregon and Kentucky, NBC News/Survey Monkey said Clinton has a massive 75 points lead over Trump when it comes to Black voters and 37 points lead among Hispanics.
On the other hand, Trump leads Clinton by 14 points among white voters.
However, Trump trails Clinton by 15 points among women voters, it said.
The Tracking Poll was conducted online from May 9 through May 15 among 14,100 adults, including 12,507 who say they are registered to vote.
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28% Americans likely to leave US if Trump becomes president: Survey
AFP
NEW YORK
Donald Trump's inflammatory presidential campaign and the prospect of the brash-talking tycoon actually becoming commander-in-chief has left progressive Americans obsessing about one thing: moving to Canada.
Stars from Cher to Lena Dunham have declared their intention to head north if the former reality star, famous for insulting Muslims and Mexicans, and under the microscope for alleged sexism, reaches top office.
According to one recent Morning Consult/Vox poll, 28 percent of Americans would "likely" consider moving to another country if Trump wins in November. Google said the search "how can I move to Canada?" surged 350 percent on March 1, when Trump won seven Republican state elections.
Money makers on both sides of the border have turned the hype into a savvy marketing tool. "Leaving the country if TRUMP is elected PRESIDENT? Give me a call and LET'S GET YOUR HOME SOLD!!" advertised one US realtor.
A millennial entrepreneur in Texas set up dating site Maple Match promising to help Americans "find the ideal Canadian partner to save them from the unfathomable horror of a Trump presidency."
The site is the brainchild of 25-year-old Joe Goldman, who always wanted to set up a dating site but used the Trump bandwagon to drive publicity.
While actual introductions and dates are a way off, Goldman says that more than 30,000 people hungry for love have already signed up.
"The Donald Trump campaign for president has provided us with an opportunity to make something positive," he told AFP. "But ultimately Maple Match itself is not political. It's about bringing Americans and Canadians together."
After Cape Breton Island, off the tip of Nova Scotia, offered a refuge to Trump-hating Americans earlier this year, visitors to its tourism site exploded from 65,000 last year to 600,000, says tourist chief Mary Tulle.
US academic Neda Maghbouleh moved to Toronto three years ago with her husband when they were offered attractive faculty jobs at a university.
Their daughter was born in Canada, the couple have acquired permanent residency and now they want to sponsor Maghbouleh's parents to join them.
"My urgency and fear was really stoked by this election. It was a feeling that we need to be very proactive about this," she said.
Businessman Nuri Katz, who helps people acquire second citizenship, says "tens" of clients have given Trump as a reason for wanting to relocate, but warns that there are huge obstacles to actually getting up and moving.
"All this anecdotal talk about moving to Canada, it's really tough," he told AFP during a business trip to New York. "It's not going to be a flood of people just driving into Canada and saying 'here we are'," he said.
Sortable, a web advertising company in Ontario, targeted US-based developers by cheekily offering "a safe place for smart, nice people" looking for an alternative to a Trump presidency earlier this year.
But while the ad generated a lot of interest, the company has yet to recruit any Americans although talks are ongoing, says digital marketing officer Brenden Sherratt.
Canada has tightened immigration procedures for many categories of people, although it has been liberal in accepting Syrian refugees. Americans opposed to Trump hardly meet the UN definition of a refugee, Katz warned.
"It is a tough argument to make that you are being politically persecuted in the US," said Katz, president at Apex Capital Partners Corp.
"Canada started accepting American political refugees? Boy, China would have a field day with that. Could you imagine?"
Katz says Dominica in the Caribbean is the cheapest place for Americans to buy second citizenship - yours for an investment of $100,000.
He has also signed up his first American client for Cyprus, where nationality can be acquired in three months for a one-off investment of 2.5 million euros ($2.8 million).
But Americans are a minority of those shopping for a second nationality and although a record number are renouncing citizenship, often for a combination of financial and political reasons, Katz says the industry is "tiny."
And even if Americans have itchy feet, their country remains a premier destination for foreigners, particularly Chinese.
An investor programme grants green cards to those who invest at least $500,000 and create 10 full time jobs. But it's so inundated that the wait time is eight years, Katz said.
As the daughter of Iranian immigrants, Maghbouleh grew up feeling lucky. "The US in so many ways is still the promised land for so many people," she admitted.
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AFP
EgyptAir flight: 'Smoke detected' inside cabin before crash
CAIRO
An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo with 66 passengers and crew on board crashed in the Mediterranean Sea off the Greek island of Crete early Thursday morning, Egyptian and Greek officials said.
Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said it was too early to say whether a technical problem or a terror attack caused the plane to crash. "We cannot rule anything out," he told reporters at Cairo airport.
EgyptAir Flight 804 was lost from radar at around 2.45 am local time when it was flying at 37,000 feet, according to the airline. It said the Airbus A320 vanished 10 miles (16 kilometers) after it entered Egyptian airspace, around 280 kilometers (175 miles) off Egypt's coastline north of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria. Egyptian aviation officials said the plane crashed and that a search for debris was now underway.
The "possibility that the plane crashed has been confirmed," as the plane hasn't landed in any of the nearby airports, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Konstantinos Lintzerakos, director of Greece Civil Aviation Authority, gave a roughly similar account to that given by EgyptAir. In comments to the private Antenna television, he said Greek air traffic controllers were in contact with the pilot who reported no problems as the aircraft cruised at 37,000 feet, traveling at 519 mph (830 kilometers per hour).
The controllers tried to make contact with the pilot 10 miles (16 kilometers) before the plane exited the Greek Flight Information Region, or FIR. The pilot did not respond, he said, and they continued to try to speak to him until 3.29 am local time (2.29 am Egyptian time) when the plane disappeared from the radar inside Egypt's FIR, 11 kilometers (7 miles) southeast of the island of Crete.
Egypt's state-run newspaper Al-Ahram quoted an airport official as saying the pilot did not send a distress call, and that last contact with the plane was made 10 minutes before it disappeared from radar. It did not identify the official.
Egyptian military aircraft and navy ships were taking part in a search operation off Egypt's Mediterranean coast to locate the debris of the plane, which was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two babies, and 10 crew members. The pilot had more than 6,000 flight hours.
Greece also joined the search and rescue operation, officials at the Hellenic National Defense General Staff said.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault offered to send military planes and boats to join the Egyptian search for wreckage.
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BLOCKING FINANCIAL PIPELINES
To step up intelligence-sharing, freeze assets and tighten rules on international fund transfers
To trace prepaid but anonymous phone cards, movements of cash and anonymous access to finances
Push for targeted financial sanctions to hinder terrorist support networks
To reduce threshold for declaring cross-border cash transactions
To adapt existing measures to combat changing threats
G7 pledges to clamp down on terrorist financing
AFP
Sendai
The G7 on Saturday pledged to clamp down on financial support for terrorist networks, with a plan to step up intelligence-sharing, freeze assets and tighten reporting rules on international transfers.
The club of wealthy nations has been cooperating to block the financial pipelines that allow terrorists to travel, plan and carry out attacks, but said that more must be done.
"Countering violent extremism and bringing perpetrators to justice remain top priorities for the whole international community," they said after two days of talks in northern Japan.
"The G7 commits to working together to strengthen the global fight against terrorist financing," said an action plan to be adopted by the group's leaders who meet in Japan next week.
French Finance Minister Michel Sapin, whose country suffered devastating attacks in January and November of 2015, said the Group of Seven was now in the "operational phase" of its efforts.
"We will introduce effective tools at our disposal in the war against terrorism financing," he told AFP. "It is absolutely essential."
Sapin said that good exchanges between intelligence agencies were vital, "especially to fight against large movements of money by, for example, the Islamic State in Syria or Iraq."
Another key tool is to counter the cover provided by "prepaid but anonymous phone cards, movements of cash that allow anonymous access to finances," he said.
"We must trace these."
The G7 action plan identified "targeted financial sanctions" as critical to hindering terrorist support networks.
It also emphasised the need to freeze terrorist assets, including those of individual militants.
Among specific measures, the bloc committed to reducing the threshold for declaring cross-border cash transactions from USD 15,000, 15,000 euros and two million yen to USD 10,000, 10,000 euros and one million yen.
It also said it would provide "continued strong leadership" to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which sets international standards to combat money laundering and terrorism finance.
While lauding FATF for establishing standards, it said that "the evolving nature of current terrorist financing threats requires us to adapt our existing measures to combat those threats."
The pledge comes after Group of 20 finance ministers said in February that more work was needed to combat "loopholes and deficiencies" in the global financial system as part of the fight against terror.
The G7 consists of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. All are also members of the broader G20, which takes China, India and emerging economies such as Turkey.
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Al-Qaeda country head killed
PTI
ISLAMABAD
The country head of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, Tayyab Nawaz alias Hafiz Abdul Mateen, was killed during an armed offensive by police in the country`s east Multan city.
Al-Qaeda commander was gunned down with his seven other accomplices on Thursday night when police raided a hideout of suspected militants at the river bank of Multan, a main district in the country`s east Punjab province, Xinhua quoted Dawn News as saying.
Police said that the militants were holding a meeting to carry out an attack at a prominent university in the city, when the cops conducted the raid by acting on an intelligence tip-off.
The bodies of the killed militants were shifted to Nishtar Hospital of Multan for investigations and autopsy where Mateen was identified.
The resident of northwest Dera Ismail Khan area, the commander was wanted in pertaining to murder of a senior army officer and attack on Parade Lane bombing in the country`s east Punjab province on December 4, 2009 in which 36 people were killed.
Police in Multan region issued a threat, following the killing of the militants, saying that the Al-Qaeda could target educational institutes in Punjab where security needed to be beefed up.
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ISIS claims responsibility for Bangladesh doctor killing
PTI
DHAKA:
The US-based SITE Intelligence Group in its report said that the Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the killing of a homeopath doctor in Bangladesh`s Kushtia district.
"Amaq News Agency of the Islamic State (IS) reported that IS fighters in Bangladesh killed a doctor who "called to Christianity" in the western district of Kushtia," the Daily Star quoted SITE Intel Group`s tweet as saying.
Sanaur Rahman, 60, a homeopath doctor in Kushtia, was hacked to death yesterday.
A teacher of Islamic University was injured in an attack.The attackers rode a motorcycle, which they used to block the motorcycle ridden by the victims in western district of Kushtia, 245 km from Dhaka.
Rahman was killed on the spot and his companion identified as Saifuzzaman, 45, suffered serious wounds.
The deceased along with Saifuzzaman was going to his native village at Shishirmath to give free treatment to locals.
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FLOOD TERROR
Flooding claims 71 lives, number of missing - 127
Landslides have buried victims in up to 15 metres of mud
3 lakh people staying in about 500 state-run relief centres
22 of Sri Lanka's 25 districts are affected
International aid rushed to flood affected island
Foreign aid reaches flooded Sri Lankan capital, 71 dead
AFP
COLOMBO
Foreign aid began arriving in Sri Lanka on Saturday, bringing help to half a million people who have been driven from their homes by heavy rains and landslides that have killed at least 71.
The heaviest rains in a quarter of a century have pounded Sri Lanka since last weekend, triggering huge landslides that have buried some victims in up to 50 feet (15 metres) of mud.
The number of people missing now stands at 127.
Residents clung to ropes as they battled to cross torrents of water pulsing through the streets of the flooded capital Colombo, with some forced to take shelter in rickshaws.
India has sent a military plane carrying emergency supplies to Colombo while Japan has also rushed in aid on a commercial flight, the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry said.
The Indian government has provided inflatable boats, outboard motors, diving equipment, medical supplies, electricity generators and sleeping bags, officials said.
Two Indian naval ships were also expected shortly at the port in the capital while Australia and the United States have made cash donations to help the victims.
Floodwater levels in parts of the capital subsided slightly overnight, officials said, but heavy downpours on Saturday prevented many from moving back to their homes on the banks of the Kelani river.
"Colombo did not receive any significant rain last night and the water levels of the Kelani went down slightly," Disaster Management Centre spokesman Pradeep Kodippili told AFP.
"But there were showers upstream and we are worried that the water levels could rise again in a day."
Nearly 300,000 people were staying in about 500 state-run relief centres on Saturday, which also marks Vesak, a Buddhist holiday.
The country`s influential Buddhist clergy urged the faithful to divert at least half of the money spent on holiday celebrations to help flood victims.
"There are lots of people who have lost their homes, some have only the clothes they are wearing," top Buddhist monk Warakagoda Sri Gnanarathana said.
"Consider this your meritorious deed to celebrate Vesak."
Vesak celebrations were muted Saturday in Colombo and elsewhere compared to previous years when the entire city was decorated with lanterns and coloured lights.
Sri Lanka`s Navy and the Air Force operated boats in some of the worst-hit areas, ferrying people to shelters and taking food to those stranded, officials said.
President Maithripala Sirisena urged Sri Lankans to provide shelter and donate cash or food to flood victims as offers of assistance came in from overseas.
Officials said there had been a huge outpouring of sympathy for victims with donations of food, clothing and dry rations.
The DMC said 22 of Sri Lanka`s 25 districts had been affected. Around 300,000 people have been moved to shelters while a further 200,000 were staying with friends or family.
The meteorological department says the rains were caused by a depression in the Bay of Bengal, ahead of the arrival of the southwest monsoon.
Almost a third of people had been moved from the low-lying capital, which has a population of about 650,000.
The district of Kegalle, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) northeast of Colombo, has been the worst hit, with the toll from two separate landslides rising to 39.
