US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton have both performed predictably at their first presidential debate, an American political analyst and activist says. “Trump was Trump. Clinton was Clinton. He bragged. He lied. He bullied,” Myles Hoenig, a Green Party candidate for Congress, told Press TV on Tuesday.

The analyst said former secretary of state Clinton was prepared. “She evaded questions regarding the emails. She hid her own history as she claimed she cared for workers, families, others.” “In the end, she stole Green Party’s Jill Stein’s usual closing line, ‘…like your life depends on it, because it does,” he stated.

During the debate at Hofstra University in Hampstead, New York, Trump attacked Clinton over her use of a private email server as secretary of state and she criticized him for not releasing his tax history. “I’m not going to make any excuses, it was a mistake,” Clinton said referring to her use of private email.
She also said Trump is “trying to hide” his tax history, adding, “it must be something really important, even terrible.” Trump reacted by saying, “I will release my tax returns against my lawyer’s wishes when she releases her 33,000 emails that have been deleted.”

Green Party presidential nominee Stein and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson were not invited to participate in the debate by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The commission said the two candidates had failed to garner the 15 percent support in five polls required to qualify for the debate. But Stein rejected the standards set by the commission and staged her own live stream Q&A session on social media on Monday evening from outside the presidential debate venue in New York.

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Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has held some regional countries and world powers liable for the ongoing crisis in Syria, saying terrorism must be fought in practice and on the ground and not on paper. “The fight against terrorism will not be possible through statements and genuine measures must be carried out in practice,” Larijani said in a meeting with Syrian Parliament Speaker Hadiya Khalaf Abbas in Tehran on Monday. Pointing to Riyadh’s support for militants wreaking havoc in Syria, he added, “Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia has created many problems in the region and is not behaving correctly.”

He said the Islamic Republic has always contended that the crisis in Syria can be solved through political approaches and Syrian-Syrian negotiations. Larijani stressed the importance of reinforcing unity among Muslim nations to solve problems in the Muslim world and said, “Only major and colonial powers benefit from the existing divisions among Muslim states to serve their own interests.”
The top Iranian parliamentarian emphasized that Syria is on the frontline of the campaign against terrorism and Zionism and hailed the “very judicious” bids by the Syrian government and President Bashar al-Assad in particular in finding diplomatic solutions to the crisis in the country.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s policy is [based on] fighting terrorism and restoring security in the region,” Larijani pointed out. Pointing to “cordial and historical” relations between Tehran and Damascus, the Iranian parliament speaker said, “Iran and Syria, as two important and major countries in the region and the Muslim world which enjoy rich civilizations and history, have profound and strategic ties.”

The Syrian parliament speaker, for her part, said the Israeli regime is supporting the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham militant group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, in the southwestern city of Quneitra. She added that the US recent airstrikes against the Syrian army indicated Washington’s support for terrorism and said the United States is pursuing double-standard policies in Syria.

Khalaf Abbas praised Iran’s full support for her country and expressed hope the Syrian people would achieve a final victory over terrorists soon. The Syrian parliament speaker arrived in Tehran on Monday at the invitation of her Iranian counterpart, Ali Larijani, to hold talks with senior Iranian officials. Earlier in the day, she attended a joint press conference with Larijani and held talks with Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Back in 2014, the UN said it would no more update its death toll for Syria because it could not verify the figures that it received from various sources.

A week-long truce, brokered by Russia and the US, came to an end across Syria on September 19. Damascus refused to extend the deal after its military base was hit by US-led airstrikes near the eastern city of Dayr al-Zawr in violation of the agreement. In recent months, the Takfiri militants have suffered major setbacks as the Syrian army has managed to liberate several areas.

President Paul Biya has addressed the 71st General Assembly of the UN in New York. Cameroon state radio and television reported that his speech was based on the 17 point Sustainable Development Goals, (SDGs) which is currently guarding deliberation at the present session. The Cameroonian chief executive revealed that countries have not fully respected their engagements.

In a strongly worded message he stated that “now is not time for promises, the time to act is now” Biya specifically mentioned the 16th objective of the SDGs that deals with security and terrorism stating that in the past three years Cameroon has been fighting the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram.

He proposed the creation of an international institution to fight terrorism and insecurity especially in developing countries. He ended on a very positive note by indicating the SDGs is a universal dynamism to transform the world and if world leaders decide here and now to make available resources, the present world of turbulence shall be transformed to a world of peace.

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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said that US airstrikes on Syrian troops on Saturday were “intentional” and lasted for nearly one hour. In an interview with the Associated Press conducted Wednesday, Assad said the attack targeted a “huge” area constituting of many hills, “so it was definitely intentional, not unintentional as they claimed.”

The US Central Command has said it may have unintentionally struck the Syrian airbase in Dayr al-Zawr while carrying out a raid against Daesh and that the strikes were stopped in less than five minutes when Russia called the US to halt it.

Daesh militants briefly overran government positions in the area until they were beaten back. “How could they (Daesh) know that the Americans are going to attack that position in order to gather their militants to attack right away and to capture it one hour after the strike?” Assad asked.

“It wasn’t an accident by one airplane… It was four airplanes that kept attacking the position of the Syrian troops for nearly one hour, or a little bit more than one hour,” he said.  “You don’t commit a mistake for more than one hour,” Assad said in the interview.

US behind collapse of ceasefire 

Assad also blamed the US for the collapse of a ceasefire deal brokered with Russia. The strikes contributed to the collapse of the truce and cast serious doubt on chances for implementing an unprecedented US-Russian agreement to jointly target Daesh.

Assad said Washington “doesn’t have the will” to join the fight against Daesh, which the US, Turkey and their allies have cited as the reason for their military intervention in Syria.

Syrians who fled the country could return within a few months if the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar stopped backing militants, he added.

Assad said the war, now in its sixth year, is likely to “drag on” because of what he said was continued external support for Takfiri terrorists and numerous militant groups.

“When you talk about it as part of a global conflict and a regional conflict, when you have many external factors that you don’t control, it’s going to drag on.”

‘US lies’ about aid convoy attack

Assad also rejected accusations that Syrian or Russian planes struck an aid convoy in Aleppo and denied that his troops were preventing food from entering the militant-held part of the city.

“If there’s really a siege around the city of Aleppo, people would have been dead by now,” Assad said, asking how militants were able to smuggle in arms but apparently not food or medicine.

The attack on the aid convoy outside Aleppo took place Monday night, hitting a warehouse as aid workers unloaded cargo and triggering huge explosions.

US officials have oscillated between blaming the Syrian government and the Russian military for the attack. At one point, they have described a sustained barrage that included barrel bombs.

One Thursday, however, the AP quoted an unnamed “senior US administration official” who claimed a Russian-piloted aircraft carried out the strike. Assad dismissed the claims, saying whatever American officials say “has no credibility” and is “just lies.”

Russia has called for an independent investigation into the attack and has published a footage from a drone which apparently shows a militant vehicle towing a mortar alongside the aid convoy.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said an armed US drone was in the vicinity of the humanitarian aid convoy that was hit by the airstrike.

War ‘savage’

Assad also brushed aside what is often described as eyewitness accounts to accuse the Syrian army, while acknowledging the war had been “savage”.

“Those witnesses only appear when there’s an accusation against the Syrian army or the Russian (army), but when the terrorists commit a crime or massacre or anything, you don’t see any witnesses.”

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Police in the US state of California have released video footage of a deadly encounter between officers and a mentally ill African American man, who was killed after being shot 14 times. The violent confrontation happened on July 11, when two police officers fired 18 rounds at 50-year-old Joseph Mann, after he failed to heed to their warnings. Disturbing footage from three police dash cams and a nearby surveillance camera, released Tuesday, showed the officers slowly chasing Mann for a few minutes and asking him to drop his knife before gunning him down from about 15ft (6 meters) away.

Sacramento Police Chief Sam Somers confirmed the news on Tuesday, saying the footage were released after conversations with City Manager John Shirey and Mayor Kevin Johnson. According to the videos, Mann’s arms were raised and he did not seem to threaten the officers with any weapon when he was shot. He collapsed and could be heard shouting in pain as the cops opened fire.

Prior to the incident, police had received distress calls about a man dwelling Del Paso Heights while holding a knife and gun in his hands. The knife was later found at the scene but Mann’s alleged firearm was never recovered by police. According to the media, the 911 callers had clearly pointed to Mann’s mental illness but the dispatch had failed to inform the officers of the matter.

“There’s a man outside of my apartment with a gun and a knife,” a 911 caller said in the recording. “There’s children all around, and he’s mentally ill.” Mann’s family has filed a civil lawsuit against the police and the city, alleging that the officers should not have resorted to lethal force because he was experiencing a mental crisis. “Any reasonable police officer should have noticed that he was mentally impaired” John Burris the Mann family’s lawyer said.

Mann’s family members described him as a smart college graduate who succeeded in several careers before deteriorating into mental illness about five years ago. The case is expected to stir more controversy and anti-police sentiments in the US, amid a public outrage against law enforcement agencies due to their unjustified killings of unarmed African Americans over the past months.

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The Human Rights Watch (HRW) says two recent summits on the global refugee crisis held at the United Nations (UN) were dismal failures. “This week’s summits on the global refugee crisis failed to meet the challenge of this critical moment in history,” read a statement released by the rights group on Tuesday, referring to two high-level summits attended by world leaders and held at the UN headquarters in New York.

The first meeting, held on Monday, was hosted by the outgoing UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. During that summit, countries reconfirmed their commitment to receiving and assisting refugees. But the HRW said it was “filled with dismal speeches that veered from vapid platitudes disconnected from real world challenges to get-tough pronouncements about securing borders and stopping irregular migration.”

The second summit, which was held on Tuesday and hosted by the outgoing US President Barak Obama, called on the participating countries to accept higher refugee relocation quotas, and to donate more money for refugees.

The Tuesday summit was also viewed by the rights group as a disappointment since it was expected to hear speeches from “world leaders about how they would support the countries where most refugees live,” but almost no such speech was delivered.

According to the statement, the crisis has reached a “critical moment” since many countries, which host the huge majority of the world’s refugees, have clearly said that they have reached the limit of their capacity.

It added that some of those countries, which have generously hosted refugees for years — or even decades — are now pressuring asylum seekers to leave, have shut down their doors to new arrivals, or have announced that they would be doing so soon.

In the second summit, however, some more concrete goals were put on the table, including getting one million refugee children into school, granting work permissions to one million of their parents, and resettling a significant number of more refugees.

“As laudable as these goals are, however, they are not an end in themselves,” since they in fact “will help to keep front-line host countries from becoming destabilized,” the HRW said.

“That is the best strategy for ensuring that their doors can remain open so that people fleeing threats to their lives in the months and years to come will still have a place of refuge,” it added.

Europe has been facing an unprecedented influx of refugees, most of whom are fleeing conflict zones in North Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria. Last year alone, well over a million refugees made their way into the continent.

Many blame major European powers for the exodus of the refugees from their home countries as the conflicts and violence that force them out are usually a result of Western policies.

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A US black man that was fatally shot by police in Tulsa, Oklahoma last Friday was unarmed, police officials say. A video, taken from a police dashcam, was released on Monday which shows that 40-year-old Terence Crutcher had his hands up when he was tasered and then shot by police.

The incident began after an officer responded to a report of a stalled SUV in the middle of the road in Tulsa, where there was another police car stopped behind the disabled SUV. In the video, it can be seen that Crutcher walked away from the police cars and toward his own car with his hands over his head.

Then, one female officer followed him with her gun pointed at the victim’s back and then three other officers joined her, which obscured the camera’s view of the black man. He then collapsed with one officer saying on the police radio, “I think he may have just been Tasered” and then another one, saying, “shots fired.” He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

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Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton censures three terrorist attacks carried out in the US states of New Jersey, New York and Minnesota earlier. Responsibility for at least one of the recent attacks – the one in Minnesota—was claimed by the Daesh Takfiri terror group.

The former secretary of state took the chance on Sunday to highlight the US alleged war on ISIL. “ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack in Minnesota, and this should steel our resolve to protect our country and defeat ISIS and other terrorist groups. I have laid out a comprehensive plan to do that,” Clinton said. She further elaborated on her plan to stop the group from carrying out similar attacks on the US soil.

“This includes launching an intelligence surge to help identify and thwart attacks before they can be carried out, and to spot lone wolf attackers. We also need to work with Silicon Valley to counter propaganda and recruitment efforts online. Americans have faced threats before, and our resilience in the face of them only makes us stronger. I am confident we will once again choose resolve over fear.”

No injuries were reported after a pipe bomb went off in Seaside Park, New Jersey, late on Saturday. The explosion was followed by another one in New York City, leaving 29 people wounded. Nine people were also stabbed by a Daesh affiliate at a mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, Saturday night. Meanwhile, an investigation was launched by the FBI in order to assess whether the stabbing was a terror attack.

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US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has finally acknowledged that President Barack Obama was born in the United States, as he sought to end his longstanding attempt to discredit the nation’s first African-American president.

“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period,” Trump said on Friday at a campaign event in Washington, DC. Trump also falsely accused his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton of starting the so-called birther controversy in 2008. There is no evidence to link Clinton to the birthers. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. I finished it,” Trump said.

Trump did not apologize to Obama for his leading role in the birther movement and didn’t explain what caused him to change his view. The celebrity businessman has sought to improve his negative image among minority voters and moderate Republicans in recent months, many of whom see birtherism as racially motivated and an insult to Obama.

Analysts say that although the birther issue has not been a major one in this campaign, it continues to irritate black voters, who see it as an attempt to challenge the legitimacy of the country’s first African American president.

In a speech in Washington just ahead of Trump’s, Clinton said Trump had led the birther movement for five years and had founded his campaign on “this outrageous lie”. “There is no erasing it,” she said. “Imagine a person in the Oval Office who traffics in conspiracy theories – who distorts the truth to fit a very narrow view of the world,” she added.

Some reports suggest the birther issue was circulated in 2008 by loyal supporters of Clinton as it became clear that she was not going to win the Democratic nomination against Obama. However there is no evidence that Clinton or her then campaign was directly linked to it.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, Clinton held a 4-point lead over the New York businessman, 42 percent to 38 percent. However, one out of every five likely voters said they do not support Clinton or Trump for president, the poll found.

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US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has returned to the campaign trail as polls show she is locked in a tight contest against Republican rival Donald Trump. Clinton took the stage in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Thursday, four days after she almost fainted during a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. Clinton described her being off of the campaign fray as a moment that reminded her why she’s running for the White House.

“I certainly feel lucky — when I am under the weather, I can afford to take a few days off. Millions of Americans can’t. They either go to work sick or they lose a paycheck,” she said. Clinton said her break from the campaign trail helped her to ponder and “reconnect with what this whole campaign is about.”  “I have met so many people living on a razor’s edge, one illness away from losing their job, one paycheck away from losing their job,” she said.  “That goes against everything we stand for as Americans, because some things should not come down to luck.”

The 68-year-old former First Lady was forced to abruptly leave a 9/11 memorial in New York on Sunday due to a medical episode, stirring speculations about her well-being. The candidate’s physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, released a statement via the campaign and said she had pneumonia.

On Thursday, she acknowledged to the Greensboro, North Carolina, crowd that she was forced to stay at home following her pneumonia diagnosis. “As you may know, I recently had a cough that turned out to be pneumonia. I tried to power through it but even I had to admit that maybe a few days of rest would do me good,” she said.

Meanwhile, according to a new poll, Trump and Clinton are tied among likely voters in a four-way race for the White House. The CBS News/New York Times poll, released on Thursday, shows both Trump and Clinton have support of 42 percent. Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson has 8 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein has 4 percent.

Among registered voters in that scenario, Clinton has a 2 points lead over Trump, 41 to 39 percent, with Johnson earning 22 percent and Stein only 5 percent. In a two-way race, Clinton also leads Trump among likely voters by 2 points, 46 to 44 percent. She has a 5-point lead over Trump among registered voters, 46 to 41 percent. The poll was conducted from September 9 to 13 among a national sample of 1,433 registered voters. The margin of error is 3 percentage points.

Recent polls have shown that the race between Clinton and Trump is tightening at both the state and national levels before the November election. Clinton’s growing unpopularity follows renewed focus on her use of a private email server while she served as secretary of state, as well as alleged conflicts of interest over her connections to the Clinton Foundation fundraising. She is also facing criticism over the delayed release of her pneumonia diagnosis.

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