A Donald Trump campaign staffer has apologized after the US Republican presidential nominee’s wife was accused of using remarks by First Lady Michelle Obama in a speech broadcast live to millions of people.

Melania Trump’s Monday address to the Republican National Convention contained similarities to a 2008 convention speech by US President Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle. In a written statement on Wednesday evening, Meredith McIver admitted she made a mistake by not checking Michelle Obama’s former speeches.

The statement said McIver offered to resign but the Republican presidential nominee had rejected the offer. McIver explained that she included the parts from Michelle Obama’s speech after listening to Melania read passages from the First Lady’s 2008 speech.

“Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama’s speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech,” she said.

“I did not check Mrs. Obama’s speeches. This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama. No harm was meant,” she stated.

Donald Trump did not accept McIver’s resignation, calling her error “an innocent mistake.” “She made a mistake … we all make mistakes,” Trump told ABC News. In tweets, Trump said he was proud of the fact that his wife’s address “got more attention than any in the history of politics.” Melania Trump had claimed she wrote her speech “with as little help as possible.”

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Christine Robichon, first ever female French ambassador to Cameroon has announced that her mission to Cameroon will come to a close in September 2016. She made the announcement at her residence in Yaoundé on the 14^th of July during the celebration of the French National Day.

Said Madam Christine Robichon, “This is the third time I am celebrating July 14 with you. This is also the last because my mission has eventually come to an end. This mission was exciting. I had the chance to rely on a great team, to be supported by the French community in Cameroon and its associations”.

She was appointed to Cameroon in 2016 and experienced a stay described by many political commentators as both calm and turbulent. Christine Robichon was booed during a public demo in Yaoundé against the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram.

Ambassador Robichon further stated that ” I arrived when the crisis in neighboring Central African Republic  and Boko Haram atrocities were along the Cameroon borders, when a false and negative campaign against France was developing in the country, I have had challenges. In the next two months, I will leave Cameroon with the satisfaction of a job well done, and I want to come back here as a traveler, friend, retired and free of any professional obligation.”

Chi Prudence Asong (Cameroon Concord News)

Michael Stephen Hoza, Ambassador of the United States of America to Cameroon tells Cameroon Tribune that the US is proud of the strong partnership it has with Cameroon. In this soul searching conversation, he also talks of areas of bilateral cooperation and preparations of US presidential election.

What are the key areas of current bilateral cooperation between Cameroon and the United States of America ?

Ambassador Stephen Hoza: The United States of America is proud of our strong partnership, particularly on the security front with Cameroon to defeat the violent extremism of Boko Haram, to provide peacekeepers to the United Nations and bring stability back to the suffering people of the Central African Republic and to defeat pirates in the Gulf of Guinea.

Our partnership extends into the health sector where we work closely with Cameroon’s health experts to fight infectious disease, to eradicate polio, to defeat HIV/AIDS, to build health sector capacity to prevent, detect and respond to virulent pandemics like Ebola or Avian Bird Flu, and to take on the scourge of malaria. We have sponsored people to people programs that have brought Fulbright scholars, International Visitors, and Young African Leaders to America, each of them representing a beautiful thread in the fabric of our bilateral relationship.

We have partnered with Cameroonians at all levels to sustain the engagement of Peace Corps Volunteers engaging their new families in a vibrant cultural exchange. We promote private sector investment in Cameroon, like Taylor Guitars and Crelicam, who bring world class technology, create jobs for Cameroonians, and responsibly harvest the riches of Cameroon’s wonderful forests. Crelicam supplies Cameroonian ebony to all of the finest guitar makers in the world, and Bob Taylor has partnered with the University of Yaounde and UCLA to begin a program that will plant more ebony than Crelicam cuts down!  That is American corporate social responsibility at its finest.

All eyes are now almost turned towards the various parties nomination conventions ahead of the November 8, 2016 presidential election in the United States of America. How is your general appraisal of the electoral process up to this moment?

Ambassador Stephen Hoza: This is an exciting time for Americans to exercise our voice through our vote.  When George Washington was elected as the first president in 1789, only 6 percent of the U.S. population could vote. In most of the original 13 states, only landowning men over the age of 21 had the right to vote.

Today, the U.S. Constitution guarantees that all U.S. citizens over the age of 18 can vote in federal, state and local elections. In November of this year, America will hold its 57th Presidential election.  Over 218 million American citizens, every man and woman aged 18 and up, will have the right to vote, and their vote will select the chief executive of our country-peacefully.  Winners will celebrate; losers will concede graciously and plan for the next election.

It is certain that after the presidential election, the US will have a new President to pilot the affairs of the country. How do you see the American position and rule in international affairs when the new leadership will be in power?

Ambassador Stephen Hoza: We can’t predict the results of the election or what the next President’s policies will be. However, we can say that the beauty of democratic systems are in their absolute commitment to respecting the will of the people in their choice of leaders, and the constitutional processes that ensure smooth transitions from one chief executive to the next.

On the day our new President is sworn in, this Embassy, the State Department, our military and our entire government will, as required by our constitution, immediately go to work on ensuring that his or her policies are faithfully executed in a manner consistent with our laws and regulations and that The Peoples’ business continues uninterrupted.

All federal employees pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States because it is that document that sets out our responsibilities to the office of the President and the people of the United States, and it is the values embodied by the constitution that carry over from one administration to the next, regardless of specific political programs and policies presidents are elected to enact.

And those values will continue to underpin our actions and activities now and in the future. As always, we are not focused on our position and power, but on our partnerships and their potential to promote stability and better lives for all.  We are focusing on what we’re doing right now, both in Cameroon, and around the world, and our commitment to engagement in so many regions is not going to stop.

Presumptive US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has chosen Indiana Governor Mike Pence to be his vice presidential running mate. “I am pleased to announce that I have chosen Governor Mike Pence as my Vice Presidential running mate,” Trump tweeted on Friday. Trump said he would make a formal announcement about his VP pick at a news conference on Saturday. Pence, 57, was elected as the governor of the state of Indiana in 2012. Before his current job, he spent 12 years in Washington in the US House of Representatives at the Congress. Pence’s popularity with many Republicans and religious conservatives makes him a target of Democratic opponents.

After the announcement, presumptive US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton issued a warning about Pence, saying he favors policies that hurt minorities and favor the wealthy and powerful — people like Trump. “By picking Mike Pence as his running mate, Donald Trump has doubled down on some of his most disturbing beliefs by choosing an incredibly divisive and unpopular running mate,” said John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman. Pence’s legislative experience in Congress as well as his position as governor of a Midwestern state could give Trump advantages in November’s presidential election.

The vast majority of Americans say they feel afraid if either Trump or Clinton is elected to the White House, a new poll shows. The Associated Press-GfK poll released Thursday found that 81 percent of US voters were worried by the idea of a Clinton or Trump presidency. On Wednesday, a poll by the Quinnipiac University showed that Trump has also overtaken Clinton in three swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania

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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says he will be remembered in history as a ruler who defended the territorial integrity of his country in the face of foreign-sponsored militancy. “I hope that history will see me as the man who protected his country, from the terrorism and from the intervention, and saved its sovereignty,” he told NBC News television network in an exclusive interview to be broadcast on Thursday. He added, “When you protect your country from the terrorists, and you kill terrorists, and you defeat terrorists, you’re not brutal. You are a patriot.”

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict. The UN has stopped its official casualty count in Syria, citing its inability to verify the figures it receives from various sources. While most European countries have been voicing opposition to the government of President Assad, some of them are gradually making a shift in their policies as they realize the importance of Damascus’ efforts in fighting terrorism.

No Putin proposition of transition 

In the interview, Assad also said Russian President Vladimir Putin has never talked to him about leaving power, despite pressure from Washington for the Syrian president to step down. “They never said a single word regarding this,” Assad said when asked whether Putin or Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had talked to him about a political transition in Syria.

Assad also said he is not concerned that Putin and US Secretary of State John Kerry, who travels to Moscow Thursday, will make a deal that would force him from power. “Because their politics, I mean, the Russian politics, is not based on making deals. It’s based on values,” Assad said. Kerry is heading on Thursday for his third visit to Moscow this year to resume Syria peace talks.

Despite appearing increasingly at odds over the way forward, Russia and the US are nominally co-chairs of international efforts to end the conflict in Syria. Foreign-backed militant groups abandoned the last UN-brokered talks in Geneva in April after declaring a new war against the Syrian government.

US foreign policy

The Syrian president further played down the lack of foreign policy experience of presumptive US Republican nominee Donald Trump, stating that neither the incumbent US President Barack Obama nor his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton had such a capability.

“Who had this experience before? Obama? Or George Bush? Or Clinton before? None of them had any experience,” he said. “This is the problem with the United States. You have to look for a statesman who has real experience in politics for years. Not because, to have position in Congress for few years, or minister of foreign affairs, for example, that doesn’t help you have the experience,” Assad pointed out.

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US President Obama has accepted the letter of accreditation from Ambassador Etoundi Essomba. The Minister Plenipotentiary officially took office on the 27^th of June 2016 as Cameroon ambassador to the USA after the traditional ceremony of presentation of credentials that held at the Oval Office of the White House.

Etoundi Essomba who served as Cameroon ambassador to Israel for two decades was appointed to US by a presidential decree on Monday, April 11, 2016.  The Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Republic of Cameroon to the United States of America with residence in Washington DC now has the onerous task of uniting the US Cameroonian Diaspora and defend the interest of Cameroon. He replaced his kinsman, Charles Foe Atangana.

Chi Prudence Asong (Cameroon Concord News Group)

Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson says Donald Trump is “clearly” a racist. Trump said in a CNN interview last week that US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the son of Mexican immigrants, was biased against him in lawsuits involving fraud allegations against Trump University, the billionaire’s real estate training school.

Trump claimed that the judge’s Mexican heritage had influenced his opinion because of the presumptive Republican nominee’s plan to build a wall on the US-Mexico border after winning the presidential elections. Speaking in an interview with The Hill newspaper on Monday, Johnson lashed out at Trump for making another controversial statement.

“The latest comments on the Hispanic judge — nothing short of racist,” said Johnson, who served two terms as governor of New Mexico. When asked if he believes Trump is racist, Johnson responded, “Clearly. Clearly. These are incendiary comments to me as a former governor of a state that’s one of the four majority-minority states in the country.” The Libertarian politician said he’s “absolutely” fearful over the idea of Trump winning the White House.

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US President Barack Obama is set to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for the 2016 election. Various US media outlets made the announcement Tuesday, citing American officials and other sources. White House officials were determining about when and how Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden should announce their formal endorsement.

The signal from the White House came on a day that Obama’s former secretary of state was close to securing enough delegates to become the presumptive Democratic nominee. “He has indicated he wants to spend a lot of time on the campaign trail, so when it’s time to do that, we’ll go out guns ablazing,” White House Communications Director Jennifer Psaki told the New York Times in an interview. “We are actively thinking through how to use the president on the campaign trail — what works for the nominee, what works for him, and how to utilize his strengths and his appeal.”

Hillary, meanwhile, was hoping to be endorsed by the president, according to her communications director, Jennifer Palmieri. “We are actively thinking through how to use the president on the campaign trail,” Palmieri said.

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