President Barack Obama has nominated the first-ever Muslim American to serve as a federal judge in the US capital, according to a report. Abid Riaz Qureshi, a partner in a Washington law firm, was nominated to the US District Court for the District of Columbia, The Huffington Post reported on Tuesday.

“I am pleased to nominate Mr. Qureshi to serve on the United States District Court bench,” Obama said in a statement. “I am confident he will serve the American people with integrity and a steadfast commitment to justice.”

Muslim rights advocates hailed the historic nomination. “A judiciary that reflects the rich diversity of our nation helps ensure the fair and just administration of the law, and it is vital for American Muslims to be included,” Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy organization, told The Post.

However, it is unlikely that Qureshi’s nomination will be confirmed before Obama leaves office in January. Senate Republicans have promised not to hold any hearings on Obama’s nominees since he picked Judge Merrick Garland to serve in the US Supreme Court in March.

That nomination was intended to replace late Justice Antonin Scalia, who died earlier this year. Qureshi’s nomination comes amid a particularly tense presidential election campaign in which anti-Muslim rhetoric has been a dominating theme.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made a series of controversial policy proposals on how the US should treat Muslims, including banning Muslims entering the country and establishing a database to register all Muslims. The New York businessman has also suggested that a Muslim judge could be unfit for the job.

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US President Barack Obama has canceled a planned meeting with his Filipino counterpart Rodrigo Duterte after the latter insulted him with vulgar and undiplomatic language.   The two leaders were scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the 28th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit on Tuesdayafternoon in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

White House officials previously said Obama would confront Duterte about his country’s handling of drug dealers, including alleged extrajudicial killings. Hours later, a US spokesman announced the cancellation of the meeting after Duterte lashed out at Obama for wading into his campaign against drugs.

“President Obama will not be holding a bilateral meeting with President Duterte of the Philippines this afternoon,” US National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in Washington, DC. Price said the US president, who is in Laos for meetings with South Asian leaders, instead will meet with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Hours earlier, the outspoken Filipino leader harshly criticized the US president and said, “I am no American puppet. I am the president of a sovereign country and I am not answerable to anyone except the Filipino people.”

“You must be respectful. Do not just throw away questions and statements. Son of a b***, I will curse you in that forum,” Duterte told reporters when asked about his message for Obama whose country is a former colonial ruler of the Philippines.

Duterte said that he would not be lectured by the US leader on human rights, and blamed Washington for causing unrest in the southern Philippines. Obama learned about the insult while emerging from the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China.

Duterte expresses regret

Later on Tuesday, Duterte issued a statement, expressing regret for his undiplomatic remarks. “While the immediate cause was my strong comments to certain press questions that elicited concern and distress we also regret it came across as a personal attack on the US president,” the statement said.

Duterte’s statement said Philippine and American officials would hold face-to-face talks “at a later date”. “Our primary intention to chart an independent foreign policy while promoting closer ties with all nations especially the US with which we have a long standing partnership,” the statement said.

“We look forward to ironing out differences arising out of national priority perceptions and working in mutually responsible ways for both countries,” it added.

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A majority of young white Americans now say they support Black Lives Matter, a protest movement calling for police accountability in the deaths of African Americans. A new GenForward poll shows that 51 percent of white adults between the ages of 18 and 30 “strongly” or “somewhat” support the anti-racism movement, a 10-point increase since June.

Forty-two percent of the white youth said they do not support the protest movement, according to the survey conducted by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Black Lives Matter enjoys widespread backing among the African-American community, with 85 percent of young blacks expressing support for the protesters. Sixty-seven percent of Asian and 62 percent of Hispanic young adults agreed with that sentiment. Young African-American, Hispanic and Asian adults had already expressed majority support for the movement in the June version of the poll.

Some respondents interviewed by the AP said watching police brutality against African Americans online helped cement their support for Black Lives Matter. “The fact is that the police target blacks and they discriminate against blacks,” said Sean Bradley, 26, of Clearwater, Florida.

“Because of how they’ve treated blacks over the years, of course they (blacks) don’t trust them and I know for a fact that some of the things the police do are illegal. I would be upset as well,” he added.

The Black Lives Matter movement first emerged in 2012 after unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by Florida neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who was later acquitted by a grand jury.

The protest movement gathered strength in ensuing years following the high-profile deaths of a number of African Americans at the hands of white police officers in New York City, Baltimore, Ferguson and elsewhere.

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The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has congratulated the Gabonese leader, Ali Bongo following his electoral victory in the recent presidential election. In a telephone conversation on Sunday with President Ali Bongo Ondimba, Ban noted that “After a series of false information disseminated on many networks, I and the UN recognize you as the elected president.”

Ban Ki Moon also urged the losing candidate Jean Ping to use exclusively peaceful and legal means to seek recourse in any dispute relating to the outcome of the presidential election. The UN diplomat told the Gabonese President to take steps to end the violence that followed the disputed presidential election.

The Secretary General welcomed the release of 27 pro-Ping Jean militants and regretted the loss of life that occurred. Ban Ki Moon has asked his Special Representative for Central Africa, Abdoulaye Bathily, “to continue to work with the parties to defuse the tensions.”

By Chi Prudence Asong

US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s lead over her Republican rival Donald Trump has slimmed in a new national poll. The Morning Consult poll, released Sunday, shows the former secretary of state has 42 percent of the votes as compared to the New York billionaire having a 40 percent support. The survey has the same — 2 percentage points — margin of error.

Clinton was leading Trump by 7 points in the same poll, 44 percent to 37 percent, only three weeks ago. Clinton maintained her 2 points lead over Trump in the poll in a four-way match-up that included Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein. She received 38 percent to his 36 percent. In that scenario, Johnson earned 9 percent, while Stein bagged 4 percent.

Approximately 13 percent of likely voters have not decided yet or say they prefer another candidate. The poll was conducted on September 1-2 of 2,001 registered voters. Clinton has led Trump throughout most of the 2016 presidential campaign. But her lead in recent polls has slimmed.

Rather, in the Rasmussen poll, released on Friday, Trump took over Clinton in terms of national support. The Rasmussen poll put Trump ahead of Clinton by a tiny 1-point lead, 40 percent to 39 percent. But according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Clinton still leads Trump by about 4 points nationally.

Trump has been trying to refocus his campaign over the past weeks, laying out in detail his immigration plans and economic policies. He has also directed fierce attacks against Clinton regarding an email fiasco, as well as her allegedly declining health.

Clinton, on the other hand, has been trying to fend off criticism about the lack of clarity surrounding the Clinton foundation. Trump’s campaign has accused her of engaging in “pay-for-play” with the family foundation’s donors.

The organization has come under bipartisan fire for its foreign funding and the suspicious nature of its activities over the past years. In early August, newly released emails from Clinton’s time as the former secretary of state raised questions about possible links between the department and the Clinton Foundation.

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President Barack Obama has said the US and Russia remain deeply divided over the Syria crisis, adding it is difficult to “get to the next phase.” “We have grave differences with the Russians in terms of both the parties we support but also the process that is required to bring about peace in Syria,” Obama said in a joint press conference with UK Prime Minister Theresa May in Hangzhou, China, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 economic summit. “We’re not there yet,” he said. “I think it’s premature for us to say there’s a clear path forward, but there’s the possibility at least for us to make some progress.”

His remarks come as US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are negotiating a deal to boost military cooperation between the two countries in the fight against Daesh in Syria. According to a senior US State Department official, Washington is close to a deal with Russia, but some issues remain to be resolved.

The inability to achieve a deal will bring another missed deadline for the UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, to get the Syrian government and “moderate” militants back to the negotiating table. Moscow maintains its airstrikes have targeted “legitimate” terrorist targets, while Washington says they have hit “moderate” US-backed militants.

During the press conference, Obama said the US and the UK must cooperate to ensure that their ongoing trade links do not unravel after Britain leaves the European Union. “I’ve committed to Theresa that we will consult closely with her as she and her government move forward on Brexit negotiations to make sure we don’t see adverse effects in our trading and commercial relationship.”

Trade “is not going to stop,” Obama said. “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that the consequences of the [Brexit] decision don’t end up unraveling what is already a very strong and robust economic relationship.” “But first things first. The first task is figuring out what Brexit means with respect to Europe.”

The UK prime minister said she had used her first meeting with Obama to discuss the Brexit process and what it meant to the UK’s relationships with the US and European countries. “The UK has always been a strong partner for the US and that will remain to be the case. We have a thriving economic relationship,” May said. Nearly 52 percent of British voters opted to leave the EU in a referendum on June 23, in hopes of taking back control over their borders and having more economic freedom.

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