An anti-racist association said Friday it has filed a complaint with French prosecutors over racist comments posted on social media after a black woman from Guadeloupe was chosen Miss France 2020.
Clemence Botino has been the target of racist comments, especially on Twitter, since she won the title on December 14, the Representative Council of Black Associations (CRAN) said in a statement.
"These comments must be sanctioned, they are totally unacceptable," CRAN president Ghyslain Vedeux said.
He also criticised the platform Pharos, which the French government had put in place to fight against hate speech online.
"There was no reaction from the authorities, or the government," he added, especially complaining about the lack of action on the part of Marlene Schiappa, secretary of state in charge of fighting discrimination.
CRAN also pointed out that there had been racist tweets about Evelyne de Larichaudy, originally from Reunion, after she won the Miss Ile-de-France beauty contest.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - Former Vice President Joe Biden, a moderate who has made his appeal to working-class voters that deserted the Democrats in 2016 a key part of his political identity, launched a bid for the White House on Thursday as the party's instant frontrunner.
Biden announced the third presidential bid of his career by video on YouTube and other social media. He is expected to make his first public appearance as a candidate on Monday at an event in Pittsburgh featuring union members, a key constituency.
Biden, 76, had been wrestling for months over whether to run. His candidacy will face numerous questions, including whether he is too old and too centrist for a Democratic Party yearning for fresh faces and increasingly propelled by its more vocal liberal wing.
Still, he starts as the leader of the pack in opinion polls of a Democratic field that now will total 20 contenders seeking the chance to challenge President Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, in November 2020.
Critics say his standing in polls is largely a function of name recognition for the former U.S. senator from Delaware, whose more than four decades in public service includes eight years as President Barack Obama's No. 2 in the White House.
As speculation about his bid mounted, Biden faced new questions about his longtime propensity for touching and kissing strangers at political events, with several women coming forward to say he had made them feel uncomfortable.
Biden struggled in his response to the concerns, at times joking about his behavior. But ultimately, he apologized and said he recognized standards for personal conduct had evolved in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
Trump and his allies seized on the flap, attempting to weaken perhaps his top rival before Biden entered the race.
Even so, Biden was determined to push forward, arguing his background, experience and resume best positioned him to take on Trump next year.
In a speech to union members in April, Biden called Trump a "tragedy in two acts."
"This country can’t afford more years of a president looking to settle personal scores," he said.
Biden's candidacy will offer early hints about whether Democrats are more interested in finding a centrist who can win over the white working-class voters who went for Trump in 2016, or someone who can fire up the party's diverse progressive wing, such as Senators Kamala Harris of California, Bernie Sanders of Vermont or Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Biden's long history in the Senate, where he was a leading voice on foreign policy, will give liberal activists plenty to criticize. As Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, he angered women's rights activists with his handling of sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas during the justice's 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
He also has been criticized for his ties to the financial industry, which is prominent in his home state of Delaware, and for his authorship of a 1994 crime act that led to increased incarceration rates.
Biden has been one of the party's more aggressive Trump critics. Last year, he said he would "beat the hell" out of Trump if the two were in high school because of the way the president has talked about women. That prompted Trump to call him "Crazy Joe Biden" and claim on Twitter that Biden would "go down fast and hard, crying all the way" if they fought.
Biden later lamented the exchange, saying "I shouldn't get down in the mosh pit with this guy."
Known for his verbal gaffes on the campaign trail, Biden failed to gain traction with voters during his previous runs in 1988 and 2008.
He dropped his 1988 bid amid allegations he plagiarized some of his stump oratory and early academic work. But his experience and strong debate performances in 2008 impressed Obama enough that he tapped Biden as his running mate.
Biden decided against a 2016 presidential bid after a lengthy public period of indecision as he wrestled with doubts about whether he and his family were ready for a grueling campaign while mourning his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in May 2015. His son had urged him to run.
Biden faced some of the same family considerations this time around, as he is still coping with Beau's death while his other son, Hunter, has gone through a divorce amid a reported relationship with Beau's widow.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will not seek the Democratic nomination for US president in 2020 but will instead launch an effort aimed at combating climate change, he said on Tuesday.
A billionaire who could have sunk millions of his own dollars into a campaign, Bloomberg had publicly toyed with running and has become a vocal critic of Republican President Donald Trump. He spent millions of dollars last year helping Democrats retake control of the US House of Representatives in congressional elections and has invested in advocating for sweeping gun-control laws.
Bloomberg, 77, made his 2020 announcement in an opinion piece on the site of Bloomberg News, the company he runs.
He said he was mindful of the difficulty of prevailing in the Democratic Party nominating primary process, especially given the leftward turn the party has taken in recent years.
"I believe I would defeat Donald Trump in a general election," Bloomberg wrote. "But I am clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field."
A former Republican and independent, Bloomberg would have run as a more moderate candidate among the progressives who currently dominate the 12-member field, which so far largely consists of sitting US senators.
"Many people have urged me to run," he wrote. "Some have told me that to win the Democratic nomination, I would need to change my views to match the polls."
Any path to the nomination for Bloomberg would have been complicated by the entry of former Vice President Joe Biden, another moderate, into the race. Biden has said he will decide soon whether to mount a run.
Other possible candidates such as US Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Montana Governor Steve Bullock and former US Representative Beto O'Rourke of Texas are also considering jumping in.
CLIMATE PUSH
Rather than running, Bloomberg said he would use his massive personal fortune - estimated at more than $50 billion - to launch a new climate change push, Beyond Carbon, with the goal of moving the nation away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy sources.
Bloomberg already backs another effort, Beyond Coal, dedicated to shutting down coal-fired power plants. In 2014, the United Nations appointed him the first special envoy for cities and climate change to work with cities globally to combat global warming.
He has ripped Trump as a “climate denier” for pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.
"I’ve come to realize that I’m less interested in talking than doing," Bloomberg wrote. "And I have concluded that, for now, the best way for me to help our country is by rolling up my sleeves and continuing to get work done."
Bloomberg also founded Everytown for Gun Safety, the nonprofit advocacy group originally known as Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which has focused on requiring universal background checks for firearms purchases.
The group has backed candidates for office who support universal checks and argued against those who oppose them, as well as supporting state-level gun-control initiatives.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON- Hillary Clinton has for the first time ruled out running for president in 2020.
"I'm not running, but I'm going to keep on working and speaking and standing up for what I believe," Clinton said Monday in an interview with News 12, a local TV channel in New York.
Clinton was the frontrunner in 2016 but ended up losing to Donald Trump.
"I want to be sure that people understand I'm going to keep speaking out," Clinton said.
"I'm not going anywhere. What's at stake in our country, the kinds of things that are happening right now, are deeply troubling to me."
Clinton has held meetings with some of the Democrats who are now vying for the party nomination or considering a run. CNN has reported that they include former vice president Joe Biden, who has not yet said if he is running.
"I've told every one of them, don't take anything for granted, even though we have a long list of real problems and broken promises from this administration that need to be highlighted," Clinton said.
Asked if she would run again for some kind of public office, she seemed to avoid ruling that out.
"I don't think so, but I love living in New York and I'm so grateful that I had the chance to be a senator for eight years and to work with people across our state," said the former secretary of state and senator for New York state.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
