Nation and World briefs for October 19

‘Stop whining,’ Obama tells Trump, chiding for fraud talk

WASHINGTON (AP) — “Stop whining,” President Barack Obama rebuked Donald Trump on Tuesday, speaking out as seldom before on next month’s election and chiding the Republican for sowing suspicion about the integrity of America’s presidential vote.

Obama also accused Trump of cozying up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin to a degree “unprecedented in American politics.”

The president said Trump’s intensifying pre-emptive warnings about voter fraud are unheard of in modern politics. The rhetoric is not based on any evidence, Obama said, but is simply aimed at discrediting the outcome before the first votes are counted.

“You start whining before the game is even over?” Obama said at a Rose Garden news conference. “If whenever things are going badly for you and you lose you start blaming somebody else — then you don’t have what it takes to be in this job.”

Campaigning in Colorado, the GOP candidate repeated his assertions about “corrupt” elections but did not respond directly to the president. Trump vowed to “drain the swamp” in Washington, and for the first time promised to push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.

In Mosul, residents report new terrors as Iraqi forces near

BAGHDAD (AP) — On the eerily quiet streets of Mosul, fighters from the Islamic State group are killing suspected spies, blocking roads and planting bombs ahead of a showdown with Iraqi forces.

Residents who have endured more than two years of militant rule describe a city under siege, and they say a new sense of terror has set in since Iraq announced the start of a long-anticipated operation to liberate its second-largest city.

Three residents who spoke with The Associated Press by telephone described a ghost town where people only venture out to buy basic goods that are increasingly running low.

They said large groups of IS militants have left the city in recent weeks, but those who remain have become increasingly brutal, killing anyone suspected of trying to communicate with the outside world. For that reason, the residents spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing for their safety.

“The situation inside Mosul is terrifying,” said one of them, a merchant. He said he has stocked food, water and cooking gas for 40 days and bought an oven to bake bread.

Russia, Syria halt Aleppo airstrikes ahead of 8-hour lull

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian and Syrian warplanes halted their airstrikes on Syria’s besieged city of Aleppo on Tuesday in preparation for a temporary pause in the military push that Moscow has announced for later in the week, the Russian defense minister said.

According to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the halt in the strikes should help pave way for militants to leave the eastern rebel-held parts of the contested city.

Both Russian and Syrian air raids on the northern city of Aleppo were suspended at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Shoigu said. He described the suspension as a precursor for the opening of humanitarian corridors.

Moscow on Monday announced a “humanitarian pause” between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Thursday to allow civilians and militants safe passage out of the city.

At that time, Russian and Syrian militaries will halt any offensive actions. Syrian rebels, including al-Qaida militants, as well as the wounded and the sick will be allowed to leave to the neighboring rebel-held province of Idlib.

A surprisingly high number of first-timers now buying homes

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, the U.S. housing market looked bleak for young couples hoping to buy their first homes but struggling with high student debt, low pay and meager down-payment savings.

But a new survey by the real estate firm Zillow suggests that first-time buyers may be entering the market in greater numbers than industry watchers had assumed.

Over the past year, the survey found, nearly half of home sales have gone to first-timers. That’s a much higher proportion than some other industry estimates had indicated. And it comes as a surprise in part because ownership rates for adults under 34 are at their lowest levels since the government began tracking the figure in 1994.

Zillow’s survey results suggest that the trend is shifting, and that some of this year’s growth in home sales has come from a wave of college-educated couples in their 30s, who are the most common first-time buyers.

They are people like Natasja Handy, a 32-year-old lawyer and new mother. She and her husband, a doctor, are about to close on their first home in the Northeast section of Washington, D.C. — a row house with about 1,900 square feet that cost $720,000.

Warren builds political capital — to what post-election end?

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — From liberal California to conservative Missouri, there are few places Sen. Elizabeth Warren won’t go this election season. The Massachusetts Democrat is campaigning for Hillary Clinton, for Senate Democratic candidates and for liberal policies.

And she’s banking political capital that she could end up spending in ways that make Clinton and other Democratic leaders uncomfortable.

Already Warren has been laying down markers for Clinton, in public and private, to consider activist progressives over Wall Street allies for appointments to key financial positions like Treasury secretary. The months to come will tell whether Warren serves as ally, antagonist, or both, to a new Democratic president and leadership in Congress.

Warren’s stature has never been more evident. The wind-down of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has left her onstage as arguably the most influential liberal politician in the country.

She gets rock-star treatment from Democrats everywhere she goes. “This is bucket list territory. … She is a hero!” Judy Baker, Democratic candidate for Missouri state treasurer, shouted to an excited crowd in Kansas City, Missouri, before Warren appeared last Friday with Senate candidate Jason Kander.

Class-action lawsuit seeks sweeping help for Flint students

DETROIT (AP) — Several families filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday against the state of Michigan and the Flint school district, saying more needs to be done to help students whose academic performance and behavior have worsened because of the city’s lead-tainted water.

The school system was already struggling before Flint’s water supply was contaminated by lead over an 18-month period. The city switched to a new water source, the Flint River, in 2014, but the corrosive water wasn’t properly treated, causing lead from old pipes and fixtures to flow through taps.

The 15 families say the state Education Department, the Flint district and a countywide district already are not complying with laws intended to help disabled students, and that the lead crisis is only compounding the problem.

“The extensive lead poisoning in Flint has combined with the lack of essential special education resources in the Flint schools to create a tragic crisis,” attorney Gregory Little said.

There is no dispute that lead affects the brain and nervous system, especially in children. No safe lead level in kids has been identified by experts.

Chibok leader: 100-plus girls unwilling to leave Boko Haram

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria’s government is negotiating the release of another 83 of the Chibok schoolgirls taken in a mass abduction two-and-a-half years ago, but more than 100 others appear unwilling to leave their Boko Haram Islamic extremist captors, a community leader said Tuesday.

The unwilling girls may have been radicalized by Boko Haram or are ashamed to return home because they were forced to marry extremists and have babies, chairman Pogu Bitrus of the Chibok Development Association told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Bitrus said the 21 Chibok girls freed last week in the first negotiated release between Nigeria’s government and Boko Haram should be educated abroad, because they will probably face stigma in Nigeria.

The girls and their parents were reunited Sunday and are expected to meet with Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday or Wednesday, Bitrus said. Buhari flew to Germany on an official visit the day of the girls’ release.

Buhari said Monday that his government is prepared to talk with Boko Haram as long as the extremists agree to involve organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was an intermediary in last week’s release.

Rolling Stone defamation trial over rape article begins

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — The woman who claimed she was gang raped in a now-discredited story in Rolling Stone magazine said the University of Virginia dean who counseled her after she came forward about her alleged assault “did everything right,” an attorney said Tuesday.

The attorney’s comment came during the opening of a $7.85 million defamation trial against the magazine over its November 2014 story “A Rape on Campus.” It was the first time that any portion of the deposition from the woman identified in the article only as “Jackie” has been publicly revealed.

University administrator Nicole Eramo claims the article cast her as the “chief villain” who sought to protect the school by discouraging Jackie from reporting her alleged assault to police.

Eramo’s attorney said Jackie’s remarks contradict the magazine’s portrayal of the dean as indifferent. Attorney Tom Clare read part of Jackie’s deposition aloud in court.

“I never felt like she suppressed my sexual assault,” Jackie said in the deposition. “I personally thought that she did everything right.”