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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Prosecutors in Brazil have filed charges of involvement in money-laundering and corruption against former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his wife. Federal prosecutors on Wednesday indicted the couple for alleged implication in graft schemes and the embezzlement of more than $2 billion from the country’s giant state-run oil company, Petrobras.

The former Brazilian president and his wife were also charged with receiving a luxury apartment at a seaside resort in Sao Paulo from a major construction company involved in the Petrobras corruption scandal. The 70-year-old ex-president has strongly denied any wrongdoing and repeatedly declared his innocence, saying the prosecution against him and his associates is politically motivated.

Lula’s lawyers also said that prosecutors lacked evidence to support their allegations, which they said were part of political scheme to hinder his chances to run for the 2018 presidential election in Brazil.

“This Lula-centered farce was trumped up as an affront to the democratic state and intelligence of Brazilian citizens,” Cristiano Zanin, one of his lawyers, said. Despite all accusations targeting Lula and his party, recent opinion polls have indicated that he enjoys sizable popularity among Brazilians and stands a much higher chance to win the next presidential election than potential rivals.

Lula, who was key to bringing the summer Olympics to Rio, left office with huge popularity thanks to social programs during his administration, which lifted tens of millions of Brazilians from poverty. His legacy, however, has been seriously tainted by the emergence of the Petrobras scandal, in which dozens of politicians and executives stand accused of having embezzled from the huge state oil company in a web of inflated contracts, kickbacks and bribes during his presidency.

A scandal also affected Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, leading to her impeachment by Congress last month over breaking budget rules and her handling of Brazil’s worst recession since the 1930s.

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The UN high commissioner for human rights has voiced concerns over allegations of continued violations of international law in southeast Turkey.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein made the remarks during a speech at the 33rd session of the Human Rights Council held in Geneva on Tuesday.

“We have received repeated and serious allegations of on-going violations of international law as well as human rights concerns, including civilian deaths, extrajudicial killings and massive displacement,” he said.

While adding that his concerns over people’s rights in the region remain “acute,” the high commissioner stressed that sufficient consideration must be lent toward the humanitarian and protection requirements for the thousands who have been displaced and affected by Ankara’s actions in the region.

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Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies in the Persian Gulf region have expressed dissatisfaction about recent legislation in the US that would enable the families of the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks to lodge complaints against Riyadh and demand reparations over the kingdom’s alleged role. The group of the six Arab nations, known as the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council ([P]GCC), issued a statement on Monday, claiming that the legislation was against international law and posed risks to relations between countries.

The head of the six-nation group said the law was “contrary to the foundations and principles of relations between states and the principle of sovereign immunity enjoyed by states.” “Such laws will negatively affect the international efforts and international cooperation to combat terrorism,” Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani added and hoped that the US would cast aside the bill.

In separate statements, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar, both members of the group, expressed concerns about the consequences of the congressional move on relations between the United State and other countries. The September 11 legislation was approved Friday in the US House of Representatives. It had initially gained the endorsement of the Senate. However, the White House has hinted that President Barack Obama may veto the move over concerns that it could prompt other countries to pursue similar lawsuits against the US.

Observers say, however, that Obama is more concerned about the economic impacts of the legislation as officials in oil-rich Saudi Arabia have previously threatened that any legal action against Riyadh over the 9/11 attacks would prompt them to rethink their future investment plans in the US. Sunday marked the 15th anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001 which saw nearly 3,000 killed in hijacked plane attacks in New York, the Washington, D.C. area and Pennsylvania.

Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi nationals. In July, excerpts of a congressional report on 9/11 were released which found that some of the hijackers had ties to Saudi government officials. However, the allegations have never been substantiated by an official body in the US. The government in Riyadh has strongly denied any role in the incidents and has lobbied against the bill. The [P]GCC, a body which also includes Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, is strongly influenced by Saudi Arabia and has a record of obeying the official policy of Riyadh in dealing with regional and international developments.

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An estimated 5,000 members of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group are currently living in the countries of the European Union. The revelation was made at a conference called the European Security Policy in the Belgian capital, Brussels, on Wednesday, where it was also revealed that the vast majority of the Takfiri terrorists living in the EU are themselves European citizens. Experts at the conference discussed the EU’s failed security police, saying the terrorists, who are scattered all across the 28-member bloc, have ambitions to carry out more deadly attacks on European soil.

The conference criticized the lack of a coordinated approach to tackling terrorism and poor levels of intelligence sharing among EU countries. “These threats, in Europe at least, stem from dysfunctional and difficult domestic politics, more than they stem from external sources,” said Jeremy Shapiro (pictured below), the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Stressing the need for securing the borders of EU countries, former EU Commissioner Michel Barnier said at the conference that the refugee crisis faced by Europe could potentially be exploited by the terrorists who might enter the bloc disguised as asylum seekers.

“There are about 250,000 Syrians in Libya waiting for the opportunity to cross the sea and about 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey without mentioning those in Lebanon and Jordan, so it is not over,” Barnier said. Large numbers of refugees fleeing from conflict zones in the Middle East and Africa have been arriving in Europe in search of a better life. Most of them take sea routes to the external borders of the EU.

Meanwhile, European states have been seeing a number of their citizens attempting to join terrorist groups in the Middle East over the past few years. In February, the EU’s criminal intelligence agency, Europol, said some 30,000 militants from over 100 countries have reportedly traveled to Syria and Iraq since 2011 to join the ranks of Takfiri terrorist groups.

The European terrorists can potentially return to their home countries, battle-hardened, to carry out attacks there. Back in November last year, Daesh launched a series of attacks in the French capital of Paris, killing a total of 130 people. Investigations into the incident revealed that the perpetrators were mostly Belgium-based.

In March, two bomb attacks in Brussels killed at least 14 people and left nearly 100 people wounded, while a separate bombing in a metro station killed around 20 people and injured about 100 others. Belgium, home to the main institutions of the European Union and the NATO headquarters, has been viewed as the prime source of recruitment for Daesh in Europe. Daesh terrorists are mainly operating in Syria and its eastern neighbor, Iraq.

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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