US President-elect Donald Trump has praised “very smart” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision not to retaliate Washington’s recent expansion of sanctions against Moscow. On Thursday, President Barack Obama ordered a series of new sanctions against Russia as well as the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats, accusing them of being spies.

However, Putin decided not to expel US diplomats in reprisal, saying he would rather wait to work with the Trump administration to solve the issue. “Great move on delay (by V. Putin) – I always knew he was very smart!” Trump said in a tweet on Friday.

The message soon made the rounds on the internet and was retweeted by the Russian Embassy in the US. The new sanctions came in retaliation for what the White House and the US intelligence community claim to be Russia’s hacks of Democratic operatives and groups during the recent presidential election.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has reportedly determined in a secret assessment that the Kremlin interfered in the November 8 election to particularly help Trump defeat his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Russia and Trump have both denied the accusations, with Putin saying that the US should either provide evidence or stop the allegations.

On Thursday, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provided technical details about the tools and cyber infrastructure they said Russian civilian and military intelligence services used for the hack attack, code named Grizzly Steppe.

The document said the cyber attack was carried out to “compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the US election, as well as a range of US government, political, and private sector entities.” However, it did not mention by name the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, whose emails were hacked and released during the campaign.

WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website that published the emails, has made it clear that a whistle-blower inside the DNC was behind the leaks and Russia had nothing to do with them. Obama’s move in slapping new sanctions on Russia was hailed by Republican heavyweights like Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain. Trump, however, criticized the US claims and said it was time to “move on.”

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Senegal has defended its recent UNSC vote to halt Israel’s illegal settlement activities on Palestinian territories, after Tel Aviv recalls its ambassador to Dakar. “Senegal’s position must be saluted. The international community hails Senegal’s stance, especially the Muslim nations,” said government spokesman Seydou Gueye in a televised statement on Sunday.

On Friday, the UNSC Resolution 2334 was passed with 14 votes in favor and one abstention — by the US. It condemned the establishment of settlements by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories a “flagrant violation under international law,” which it said was “dangerously imperiling the viability” of peace and the establishment of a Palestinian state. “Senegal abided by its diplomatic vision. Since 1975, Senegal has been a member of the (UN) Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People,” he added.

In relation to reports that Israel had also canceled all its aid programs in the west African nation, he noted that the government had not yet been officially informed of such a move. “When it is informed of such a decision, it will issue a response,” Gueye noted. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has summoned the US ambassador to Israel to discuss the Washington’s abstention in the UNSC vote. Earlier, Israel summoned the ambassadors to Britain, China, Russia, France, Egypt, Japan, Uruguay, Spain, Ukraine and New Zealand over the resolution.

Palestinian factions in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip have collectively welcomed the resolution, with Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki describing the vote as a “victory for the Palestinian people.” Prior to the vote, Tel Aviv attempted to block the vote and prompt a veto by its strongest ally, the United States.More than half a million Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.

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The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has called on Gambia’s longtime head of state, Yahya Jammeh, to hand over power to President-elect Adama Barrow, who won the December 1 polls in the West African country.

In a statement read at an open council meeting on Wednesday, the 15-member body said it was “encouraged” by decisions by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union to recognize Barrow as Gambia’s future leader.

Barrow and Jammeh secured 43.3 and 39.6 percent of the vote respectively. Jammeh, who has governed the country for 22 years, initially accepted the results but later reversed his position, saying the polls were riddled with irregularities and vowed to challenge the outcome in the Supreme Court.

ECOWAS, in turn, urged Jammeh to honor his initial pledge to accept electoral defeat and threatened “to take all necessary action to enforce the results” of the polls. However, Jammeh said he would not step down and accused West African leaders of violating the ECOWAS principle of non-interference. “I am not a coward. My right cannot be intimidated and violated. This is my position. Nobody can deprive me of that victory,” he said during a televised speech.

Reports said ECOWAS might seek approval from the UNSC, of which Senegal is a non-permanent member, for the use of force against the Gambia. The UNSC said ECOWAS initiatives “aimed at ensuring a peaceful and orderly transition process.” It further urged Barrow’s security to be “fully ensured” and called on Gambian defense and security forces to “demonstrate maximum restraint to maintain an atmosphere of calm” in the capital, Banjul.

Barrow’s inauguration ceremony is expected to be held on January 19. Jammeh, who seized power in a 1994 military coup, has come under fire by human rights groups for what is said to be his crackdown on opponents.

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The former French prime minister and the Republican party’s presidential candidate has criticized the Western policy towards Syria’s nearly six-year-old conflict, stating that Europe’s stance vis-à-vis the deadly crisis has shown “indignation.” Speaking to reporters following a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and leaders of European center-right parties in Brussels on Thursday, Francois Fillon stated that Europe has to engage in negotiations with parties involved in the Syrian conflict to save lives. “I told European leaders that what we are forced to concede today is that Western diplomacy and in particular European diplomacy has failed,” he said, rejecting the option of a US military onslaught against Syria.

The 62-year-old French politician, who has previously called for restoring ties with the Syrian government, added, “The other option is a strong European diplomatic initiative to bring around the table all those who can stop this conflict,” which started in March 2011. Commenting on the European strategy with regard to Russia, which has been conducting an air campaign against militants in Syria for over a year, the French presidential hopeful said, “I simply have a lot of respect for Russia. I’ve always said whether Russia’s leader is called Vladimir, Boris or Igor, he is the leader of the biggest country in the world. Europe must have a long-term strategy with Russia and not just act emotionally.”

Fillon’s comments come as Russia has criticized the West for its failure to contain extremist militants it supports in Syria and “indefinite” procrastination when it comes to peace talks for the war-ravaged Arab country. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said last month that the West had been unsuccessful to wield influence on Takfiri militants in Syria. “As a result, the prospects for the start of a negotiation process and the return to peaceful life in Syria are postponed for an indefinite period,” he said at the time.

The United States has been supporting militants it calls “moderate.” Russia has in return emphasized there are no such militants in Syria, and all militant groups are perpetrating savage acts of terror in the conflict-ridden country. Washington refuses to designate specifically what groups it deems “moderate,” even though Moscow has expressed preparedness for potential cooperation in that regard.

US officials have been campaigning strongly against Russian aerial attacks in Syria, saying the strikes may target the “moderates.” Russia began its air campaign against Daesh and other terrorist groups in Syria in September 2015 upon a request by the Damascus government. United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict. The UN has stopped its official casualty count in Syria, citing its inability to verify the figures it receives from various sources.

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US President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly called Mitt Romney, one of his fiercest critics and the 2012 Republican nominee, to tell him that he is not getting the post of secretary of state. After Bloomberg and some other sources revealed this information on Monday night, the former Massachusetts governor also confirmed that he was not being considered for the job by Trump.

“It was an honor to have been considered for Secretary of State of our great country,” Romney wrote on his Facebook page. “My discussions with President-elect Trump have been both enjoyable and enlightening. I have very high hopes that the new administration will lead the nation to greater strength, prosperity and peace,” he stated.

Trump announced on Monday night on his Twitter handle that he will pick a person to lead the State Department on Tuesday morning. Romney — a figure with orthodox Republican views — was on the shortlist for the post of top US diplomat until the end, Bloomberg reported. But now ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson is expected to be named by the president-elect as his secretary of state, according to reports.

Romney had been a virulent critic of Trump throughout his Republican primary campaign, imploring voters to reject his candidacy. In March, he said the victory of Trump in the 2016 presidential election “will have profound consequences for the Republican Party and, more importantly, for the country.”

“If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished,” he warned.  “Here’s what I know: Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud,” claimed Romney. The former Massachusetts governor said in June if Trump would be elected president, he could legitimize racism and bigotry and change the moral fabric of American society.

In response, Trump, who endorsed Romney in 2012, denounced him as an “ungrateful” person, adding that Romney begged for his endorsement and “would’ve dropped to his knees” for it. “I believe I won for him, or helped him win, fives states that he was going to lose in the primaries. … He was ungrateful,” Trump said.

Trump had propelled himself as the president-elect by framing himself as an anti-establishment outsider. However, his campaign had been defined by controversy from the beginning, including disparaging remarks about women, Mexican immigrants and Muslims.

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Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres has been sworn in as the United Nations’ ninth secretary general. Guterres, the former UN refugee chief, was sworn in on Monday in New York in front of Peter Thomson, the president of the UN General Assembly, and will replace outgoing Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on January 1, 2017.

“Fear is driving the decisions of many people around the world, and we must understand their anxieties and meet their needs without losing sights of our universal values,” said Guterres. He added that the time has come for citizens and leaders to reconstruct their relations, for leaders to start listening to their people, and for the UN to own up to its shortcomings and fix them.  “The organization is the cornerstone of multilateralism, and has contributed to decades of relative peace. But the challenges are now surpassing our ability to respond; the UN must be ready to change,” he added.

He stressed that the only way to re-establish confidence in human and international relations is to tell the truth. “I believe it is with truth that I need to engage with all governments in the world,” he added. Guterres, 67, led the country from 1995 to 2002. He was also the chief of the UN refugee agency for 10 years until 2015. He will be the first former head of government to lead the United Nations.

He was sworn in after the 193 General Assembly members paid tribute to Ban which ended with a standing ovation for the outgoing top UN official. “Even as I prepare to leave my heart will stay as it has since I was a child right here with the United Nations. And that heart is greatly comforted knowing that I am passing the baton to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a man of integrity and principle. I have no doubt that he with his passion and compassion will successfully navigate many complex challenges and steer the organization to a new and higher height,” said Ban.

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Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has announced his resignation after exit polls showed he had lost the constitutional reform referendum. “My experience of government finishes here,” said Renzi during a press conference held after the No campaign won what he referred to as an “extraordinarily clear” victory in the referendum.

An exit poll by Italian state broadcaster RAI showed that the 42-46 percent of participants in the referendum had voted to back the reforms, while 54-58 percent voted against them. “Good luck to us all,” added Renzi, noting that he would officially present his resignation to the country’s President Sergio Mattarella on Monday, after a final meeting of his cabinet.

After that, Mattarella will be charged with negotiating the appointment of a new government or with ordering early elections. If Renzi’s proposed changes to the constitution had won, they would have reduced the role of the Senate and limited the powers of regional governments.

Analysts say the victorious No vote will further boost the country’s opposition parties — among them the eurosceptic Five Star Movement — all of which favor exiting the eurozone. Italy is the eurozone’s third-largest economy, but its stock market has been performing the worst in Europe this year due to problems in its banking system and concerns over political instability.

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The bitter 2016 US presidential race is turning into a battle even as elections are over, with the campaign aides of defeated Democratic presidential nominee vowing a four-year insurgency against incoming President Donald Trump. Clinton’s vast network of supporters, staffers and operatives, enraged by the victory of a president-elect they view as disgraceful, are plotting an anti-Trump resistance and venting with a fury they never could have expressed during the presidential campaign of their flawed and awkward candidate, Polititco reported.

“Clinton allies like David Brock have been actively recruiting Democratic donors to fund an anti-Trump movement modeled on the armada of organizations that sued, flacked, opposition-researched and insulted Clinton into a 55 percent disapproval rating,” Politico said.

“Brock and other Democratic operatives are contemplating a Freedom of Information Act barrage against the president-elect comparable to the one undertaken against Clinton by the conservative group Judicial Watch,” it added. Other left-leaning groups, including the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based advocacy organization, are looking into ways of holding Trump accountable for his job-creating promises during his campaign.

“We’re going to throw everything at him that he threw at us,” said one longtime Democratic operative active in the effort. During a discussion on Thursday at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, tensions erupted between top operatives of Trump and Clinton. The forum was intended to record history by drawing out the internal deliberations of both campaigns four weeks after the election.

There were many moments where tempers flared and advisers on the opposing sides shouted over each other, with acrimony echoing the 2016 White House race. “Hey guys, we won,” Trump Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway said at one point, challenging Clinton’s team to “accept the results of the election.” “He was the better candidate. That’s why we won.”

Trump won the US presidency despite extreme unpopularity among minorities, underscoring deep national divisions that have fuelled incidents of racial and political confrontation across the country. Large protests have erupted nationwide in response to Trump’s election victory following a contentious presidential campaign involving two of the least popular major-party candidates in recent US history.

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US President-elect Donald Trump has denounced the effort to recount votes in Wisconsin as a “scam,” insisting voters should “accept this result and then look to the future.” The recount has been requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein. The state has until the federal deadline of December 13 to complete the recount process and announce the final results. Trump narrowly defeated his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by a small margin of over 27,000 votes in Wisconsin and grabbed all its 10 electoral votes.

“This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasn’t even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount,” Trump said in a statement on Saturday. Stein has raised millions of dollars for her push in just more than a week. She has called for an audit and recount of voting results in Michigan and Pennsylvania as well over fears that hackers might have manipulated the voting machines.

“All three states were won by large numbers of voters, especially Pennsylvania, which was won by more than 70,000 votes,” Trump said. “This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing,” the president-elect added. The Clinton campaign, which had kept quiet about Stein’s crusade, said it would now back her efforts to review the voting results in order to ensure a “fair” process for all involved.

“Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves,” campaign lawyer Marc Elias said. “But now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.” Clinton won the overall popular vote by around 2 million ballots in the Nov. 8 presidential election. However, Trump clinched most of the key battleground states in play, albeit by narrow margins.

“It is important to point out that with the help of millions of voters across the country, we won 306 electoral votes on Election Day— the most of any Republican since 1988— and we carried nine of 13 battleground states, 30 of 50 states, and more than 2,600 counties nationwide – the most since President Ronald Reagan in 1984,” Trump said in his statement. Earlier this week, speculation that electronic voting in key states might have been hacked prompted Clinton supporters to urge her to contest the election results.

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The US state of Wisconsin has announced a statewide recount of the ballots cast in the November 8 presidential election, upon a request by Green Party nominee Jill Stein. “The [Wisconsin Elections] Commission is preparing to move forward with a statewide recount of votes for President of the United States,” the Commission’s Administrator Michael Haas said in a statement on Friday. The state has until the federal deadline of December 13 to complete the recount process and announce the final results.

Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes went to US President-elect Donald Trump, who managed to beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by a small margin of over 27,000 votes. Stein, on the other hand, finished fourth in the race by receiving only 30,000 votes in the state and over 1 million votes nationwide. Her campaign announced on Wednesday afternoon that the candidate was seeking an audit and recount of the voting results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, following hacking allegations.

The candidate told CNN on Tuesday that “these concerns need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified.” A fundraiser launched by the Stein campaign to finance the costs of the recount bid had returned over $5 million as of Friday. Stein has reportedly set aside $2.5 million of the money for the recounts, which may cost around $1 million in Wisconsin alone.

Under the state’s rule, Wisconsin would pay for recounts only when the winner holds a margin smaller than 0.5 percent. This is while Trump won the state with a nearly 1-percent margin. Stein’s move came days after a group of academics and election lawyers called on Clinton to challenge the results of the November 8 vote in some counties of the same Rust Belt states.

According to the group, Clinton has “underperformed” in areas using electronic ballots compared to areas with paper ballots. In Pennsylvania, Trump won by over 60,000 votes, a surprising victory that brought him 20 more electoral votes. He also won Michigan’s 15 votes by a narrow margin of over 10,000. Trump defeated Clinton 306-232 in terms of electoral votes.

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