Kenyan app Ushahidi monitoring US elections

 A team in Kenya and the US are working on the project, Ushahidi's innovation manager has told the BBC.
The platform is being used to collect and verify information which can be shared to affiliated groups for action.
Republican candidate Donald Trump has said he believes the election will be rigged.
Some fear his call for his supporters to monitor the voting process could lead to intimidation.
His opponent, Hillary Clinton, has dismissed the voter fraud allegations.
Millions of Americans are voting to elect a president and leaders in federal and state levels. Other states are also running ballot measures to get the public to vote on local issues.
"The team is currently combing through social media and dealing with messages sent directly to its platform, verifying the content before escalating to the right people," Ushahidi's innovation manager Chris Mukuria told the BBC.
A statement on Ushahidi's website says that it has partnered with several institutions including the Election Protection Committee, "who run one of the largest non-partisan election monitoring organizations in the USA".
"Our honest hope is that all of this is for naught, and that end of the day Tuesday we look at all the reports and that 99.9% of reports say: 'Everything went great!'" Ushahidi's chief operating officer Nathaniel Manning said in a statement.

Ushahidi around the world

Ushahidi was launched in 2008 by a group of activists and developers to monitor and map the violence in Kenya after a disputed election.
The platform has been used in several countries and in different projects, from monitoring sexual harassment in Egypt and to respond to the needs during the earthquake Haiti in 2012.
The application that has been deployed to monitor the US elections has also been used in Mexico and Nigeria, Mr Mukuria said.
"The team plans to continue monitoring the elections until polls close," he added.
Mrs Clinton is the Democratic candidate for the presidential race and is aiming to become the first woman president of the United States.
Mr Trump, a real-estate billionaire and a reality-TV star, beat seasoned politicians in the primaries to emerge as the Republican candidate for the presidential race.

Samsung to recall 2.8 million washing machines in US

   Samsung Electronics, which is already reeling from a global recall of its Note 7 smartphones, said it will recall about 2.8 million of its top-load washing machines in the United States to address safety concerns.
The top of the washing machines can unexpectedly detach from the chassis during use, posing a risk of injury from impact, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said in a statement on Friday.
The machines being recalled were manufactured between March 2011 and November 2016.
   Samsung received nine related reports of injuries, including a broken jaw, injured shoulder and other fall-related injuries.
   Samsung, the world's top smartphone maker, is grappling with a global recall of at least 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 smartphones in 10 markets due to faulty batteries causing some phones to catch fire.

US election 2016: Trump faces new sex assault allegations

  Two more women have come forward to accuse Donald Trump of sexual assault, in the latest such allegations against the embattled Republican nominee.
Former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos said the businessman forced himself on her at a Los Angeles hotel and began "thrusting his genitals".
   Kristin Anderson told the Washington Post he reached up her skirt and groped her in a New York club in the 1990s.
The Republican nominee branded the allegations as "lies and smears".
   Ms Anderson, now 46, said the property mogul touched her through her underwear at a Manhattan nightspot when she was a waitress trying to make it as a model.
   She said she was "very grossed out and weirded out".
Ms Anderson said she turned round to find a man sitting on a red velvet couch whom she recognised instantly as the celebrity property mogul.
   "He was so distinctive looking," she told the Washington Post, "with the hair and the eyebrows. I mean, nobody else has those eyebrows."
    She added: "It wasn't a sexual come-on. I don't know why he did it. It was like just to prove that he could do it, and nothing would happen.
"There was zero conversation. We didn't even really look at each other. It was very random, very nonchalant on his part."
    The newspaper said it had approached Ms Anderson after learning of her story through a third party, and she had spent several days deciding whether to go public.
   Mr Trump's spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said in a statement emailed to the Washington Post: "Mr Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity. It is totally ridiculous."
   Meanwhile, Summer Zervos, a former contestant on season five of The Apprentice in 2006, said she was sexually assaulted by Mr Trump after she was invited by him to discuss job opportunities.
   Ms Zervos, 41, told an emotional news conference in Los Angeles that she met him in 2007 in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where the businessman greeted her by kissing her on the mouth.
   She said he asked her to sit next to him on a sofa where he "grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me again very aggressively and placed his hand on my breast".
   Ms Zervos fought back tears as she said Mr Trump attempted to lead her into the bedroom and "began thrusting his genitals", even as she fended off his advances.
   She said Mr Trump then began talking to her as if she were a candidate for a job interview.
Ms Zervos, who described herself as a Republican, said she was subsequently offered a low-paid job at a Trump-owned golf course.
   She was flanked during the press conference by well-known lawyer Gloria Allred, who has previously represented alleged sexual assault victims of entertainer Bill Cosby.
   At the time of the alleged assault, Mr Trump was recently married to his third and current wife, Melania Trump.

   His campaign said he "vaguely remembers" Ms Zervos, but insisted the meeting at the hotel never happened.
  In a statement, he said: "The media is now creating a theatre of absurdity that threatens to tear our democratic process apart and poison the minds of the American public."
   Referring to another of his accusers during a rally in North Carolina, he said: "Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you."

    Ms Zervos said she was spurred to come forward after Mr Trump denied during last Sunday's presidential debate ever having committed sexual assault.
   He rebutted the suggestion on national television as he was asked about a leaked recording from 2005 in which he is heard bragging that he can force himself on women because he is a star.
   Polls suggest Mr Trump is losing ground in some of the key battleground states against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, with just 24 days until the election.
SOURCE: www.naijacop.com

US bans Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones on Flights

   The US Department of Transportation has banned Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones on flights after reports of the device catching fire.
  Passengers will not be able to take the phones on flights or in their luggage to and from the US from 16:00 GMT on Saturday.
  The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had previously advised against packing the phones in luggage.
Samsung permanently stopped Galaxy Note 7 production this week.
  "We recognise that banning these phones from airlines will inconvenience some passengers, but the safety of all those aboard an aircraft must take priority," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement.
  "We are taking this additional step because even one fire incident in-flight poses a high risk of severe personal injury and puts many lives at risk."
  Samsung recalled around 2.5 million phones in September after complaints of exploding batteries.
While it later insisted that all replaced devices were safe, there were reports that those phones were catching fire too.
The company then said it would stop Galaxy Note 7 production.
  "The fire hazard with the original Note 7 and with the replacement Note 7 is simply too great for anyone to risk it and not respond to this official recall," said US Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairman Elliot Kaye.
  "I would like to remind consumers once again to take advantage of the remedies offered, including a full refund. It's the right thing to do and the safest thing to do."
SOURCE:www.naijacop.com

Those who stole from Nigeria recruited militants in the Niger Delta to fight us- Pres Buhari says

President Buhari today said those who stole Nigeria dry are angry with his government and so have recruited the services of militants in the Niger Delta to fight his government. He said this while addressing a group of Nigerians professionals residing in the US.

"We got into trouble as a country, because we did not save for the rainy day. For example, between 1999 and 2015, when we produced an average of 2.1 million barrels of oil per day, and oil prices stood at an average of $100 per barrel, we did not save, neither did we develop infrastructure. Suddenly, when we came in 2015, oil prices fell to about 30 dollars per barrel. I asked; where are the savings? There were none.
Where are the railways? The roads? Power? None. I further asked; what did we do with billions of dollars that we made over the years? They said we bought food. Food with billions of dollars? I did not believe, and still do not believe. In most parts of Nigeria, we eat what we grow. People in the South eat tubers, those in the North eat grains, which they plant, and those constitute over 60 per cent of what we eat. So, where did the billions of dollars go? We did a lot of damage to ourselves by not developing infrastructure when we had the money. Talking of our military, they earned respect serving in places like Burma, Zaire, Sudan, Liberia, Sierra-Leone, and then, suddenly, that same military could no longer secure 14 out of 774 local governments in the country. Insurgents had seized them, calling them some sort of caliphate, and planting their flags there; till we came, and scattered them. We raised the morale of our military, changed the leadership, re-equipped and retrained them; USA, Britain, and some other countries helped us, and today, the pride of our military is restored"he said

On Boko Haram, he said

"They ran riot, killing innocent people in churches, mosques, markets, schools, motor parks, and so on. And they would then shout Allahu Akbar. But if they truly knew Allah, they would not do such evil. Neither Islam, nor any other religion I know of, advocates hurting the innocent. But they shed innocent blood, killed people in their thousands. Now, we have dealt with that insurgency, and subverted their recruitment base. Those who stole Nigeria dry are not happy. They recruited the militants against us in the Niger Delta, and began to sabotage oil infrastructure. We lose millions of barrels per day, at a time when every dollar we can earn, counts. It is a disgrace that a minimum of 27 states, out of 36 that we have in Nigeria, can't pay salaries. But I prayed so hard for God to make me President. I ran in 2003, 2007, 2011, and in 2015, He did. And see what I met on ground. But I can't complain, since I prayed for the job. In the military, I rose from 2nd Lieutenant to Major-General. I was military governor in 1975 over a state that is now six states. I was head of state, got detained for three years, and headed the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), which had N53 billion of that time in Nigerian banks. God has been very good to me, so I can't complain. If I feel hurt by anybody, I ask God to help me forgive. He has done so much for me. After 16 years of a different party in government, no party will come and have things easy. It's human. We need quality hands to run Nigeria, and we will utilize them. I will like to welcome you home when it's time. But I'll like you to be ready."he said.

Source: www.naijacop.com

Trump mum while campaign says he believes Obama born in US

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump himself won't say it, but his campaign is now declaring that the Republican presidential candidate believes now that President Barack Obama was born in the United States. And his campaign is cheering Trump for bringing an end to an "ugly incident" that it blames, without evidence, on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
For many years, Trump was the most prominent proponent of the "birther" movement, which claimed Obama was born outside the U.S. and thus ineligible to be president — despite the fact that he was born in Hawaii. As recently as Thursday, Trump would not acknowledge Obama's birthplace, declining to address the matter when asked by The Washington Post.
"I'll answer that question at the right time," Trump told the paper. "I just don't want to answer it yet."
want to answer it yet."
Clinton seized on Trump's refusal during a speech Thursday night before the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
"He was asked one more time where was President Obama born and he still wouldn't say Hawaii. He still wouldn't say America," Clinton said. "This man wants to be our next president? When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?"
The answer to her question came hours later when campaign spokesman Jason Miller issued a statement that suggested the question had been settled five years ago — by Trump.
"In 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate," Miller said.

"Mr. Trump did a great service to the president and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised," he added. "Inarguably, Donald J. Trump is a closer. Having successfully obtained President Obama's birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States."
Yet Trump repeatedly stoked the issue in the years since Obama released his birth certificate. In August 2012, he was pushing the issue on Twitter.
"An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud," he wrote.
Trump has said repeatedly during the campaign that he no longer talks about the "birther" issue while refusing to retract his previous comments.
"I don't talk about it because if I talk about that, your whole thing will be about that," he told reporters aboard his plane last week. "So I don't talk about it."
Trump's comments speculating on Obama's birthplace have been seen by many as an attempt to delegitimize the nation's first black president, and have turned off many of the African American voters he is now courting in his bid for the White House.
Miller's claim that Clinton launched the birther movement during her unsuccessful primary run against Obama in 2008 is unsubstantiated and long denied by Clinton. On Twitter, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon did not address that allegation, but said that acceptance that Obama was born in the U.S. comes up short."Trump needs to say it himself. On camera. And admit he was wrong for trying to delegitimize the country's first African-American president," Fallon wrote.
Indeed, Trump himself has said that his aides shouldn't be trusted to speak on his behalf.
"Don't believe the biased and phony media quoting people who work for my campaign," he tweeted in May. "The only quote that matters is a quote from me!"
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AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace contributed to this report.