US presidential debate: Trump won't commit to accept election result

• US Election 2016

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Media captionPresidential debate: The moment Trump v Clinton turned nasty

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• Who won the debate?
• Trump v Clinton: Who's ahead in the polls?
• Key issues - where candidates stand
• US election 2016: Full coverage

Republican Donald Trump has refused to commit to accepting the election result if he loses, in the final TV debate against Hillary Clinton.

"I will tell you at the time," he told moderator Chris Wallace. For days he has claimed the election is "rigged".
The Las Vegas debate continued the campaign's bitter tone, with Mr Trump calling Mrs Clinton a "nasty woman".
Polls show Mr Trump is losing in key battleground states after facing a slew of sexual assault allegations.
The final battle of wits came less than three weeks before election day on 8 November.

• Trump v Clinton: Who won the debate?
• What if Trump refuses to accept defeat?
• Reality Check: Clinton v Trump round three
• 'Bad Hombres' quip inspires mocking memes
• 'Nasty woman' insult embraced by Clinton's female fans

The candidates declined to shake hands before and after the political sparring, setting the tone for another debate marked by shouting and interrupting.
Mr Trump appealed to the Republican establishment by vowing to appoint Supreme Court justices with a "conservative bent" who would overturn a key ruling that made abortion legal in the US and protect gun rights.
He also stuck to his pledge to deport undocumented immigrants and secure US borders.
Meanwhile, Mrs Clinton firmly declared she would stand up for the LGBT community, defend abortion rights, focus on restoring the middle class and equal pay for women.
"The government has no business in the decisions that women make," she said.

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Media captionHillary Clinton: "He [Putin] would rather have a puppet as president"

In one of the more striking moments, Mr Trump twice declined to say whether he would accept the election's outcome, breaking with the country's long-standing tradition of a losing candidate's concession after the votes are counted.
"That's horrifying," Mrs Clinton shot back.
"He is denigrating and he is talking down our democracy. And I, for one, am appalled that somebody who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that kind of a position."
Is the US election really rigged?
Mr Trump's response drew sharp criticism from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who said the candidate was "doing the party and country a great disservice by continuing to suggest the outcome of the election is out of his hands and 'rigged' against him," according to a statement.
Nicolle Wallace, an NBC News analyst and advisor to Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, said on NBC: "He may as well have laid down in his own coffin with a hammer and nail and pounded it in himself."
Other highlights from the debate at the University of Nevada, include:

• Mrs Clinton said Mr Putin wants Mr Trump elected because he wants a puppet as US president
• "We have some bad hombres and we are going to get them out," said Mr Trump, as he stood by his pledge to build a border wall
• Mrs Clinton said she would introduce the biggest jobs programme since World War II
• Mr Trump suggested she and President Barack Obama co-ordinated the violence at his rally in Chicago earlier this year

When asked about her paid speech to a Brazilian bank in which she spoke of her dream of open trade and open borders, Mrs Clinton said she was talking about energy policy.
In one key exchange, he attacked her 30 years of "very bad experience" and she responded by going through her timeline, comparing where she was to where Trump was.
While she was in the White House helping to track down Osama Bin Laden, "he was hosting the Celebrity Apprentice", she said.

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Not a good night for Trump - Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Las Vegas

Donald Trump tried to be restrained. He really did. During the first section of the third presidential debate, when the topic was the Supreme Court, if you squinted you could almost imagine that this was just another presidential race, with two candidates squaring off and vigorously discussing their public policy positions on abortion and gun control.
To read the rest, go to Anthony's blog

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Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Donald Trump was joined by his family after the debate ended

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What the US media says

Many agree that the headline-grabbing moment of the debate was when Donald Trump said he would not commit to accepting the result of the election.
The right-leaning Fox News said it had been Mr Trump's "strongest debate performance" so far and felt he was "evenly matched" with Clinton. "But Trump may have undone whatever progress he made with a single answer," about the result, which will "undoubtedly be the big headline coming out of the debate and will dog Trump between now and Election Day".
Even readers of Breitbart News, a strong supporter of Mr Trump, thought he had failed to turn things around for himself. In a readers' poll, of 172,550 people who voted, 58% said Mrs Clinton won the debate compared with 41% for Mr Trump.
The Washington Post agreed with Fox that Mr Trump started well, but "by the end, it was the story of Trump in Campaign 2016 in microcosm, a series of angry exchanges, interruptions, insults that served to undercut the good he might have accomplished earlier".
The New York Times was full of praise for Mrs Clinton's performance, saying she "outmanoeuvred Mr Trump with a surprising new approach - his. Flipping the script, she turned herself into his relentless tormentor, condescending to him repeatedly and deploying some of his own trademark tactics against him".

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Mr Trump has faced damaging fallout after a video emerged of him making obscene comments about groping women, with senior Republicans deserting him.
When pressed about sexual assault allegations made against him by several women in the wake of the video, Mr Trump said the claims had been "largely debunked".
In addressing the groping accusations, Mrs Clinton said: "Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger".
"Nobody has more respect for women than I do," Trump said as the crowd was heard scoffing.
He also blamed Mrs Clinton, whose campaign he said was responsible for drumming up the allegations.

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More on the US election

• Where Clinton and Trump stand on key issues
• All you need to know about US election
• Who's ahead in the polls?
• US election glossary: A-Z guide to political jargon

Polls suggest Mrs Clinton is ahead nationally and in key battleground states.

Who is ahead in the polls?

51%

Hillary Clinton

41%

Donald Trump

See full poll tracker

Last updated October 18, 2016

Clinton camp: Trump ‘perhaps’ coping with potential loss to ‘first woman president’

LAS VEGAS — Hillary Clinton’s top campaign staffers criticized Donald Trump’s Wednesday night refusal to say he would accept the election results on Nov. 8, suggesting he is having trouble coping with the fact that he may lose to a woman.

“I think he’s just trying to find an excuse for the fact that he’s going to lose,” Clinton’s communications director, Jen Palmieri, told reporters after the third and final debate. “And perhaps the fact that he’s going to lose to the first woman president is making it a little harder.”

During the debate, Trump said he could not promise to accept the presidential election results until he sees them next month, saying he would keep the country in “suspense” until then. In recent days, Trump has told his supporters that there is massive voter fraud in the U.S. and he believes that the system is “rigged” against him. Trump has also fallen in the polls over the past few weeks.

“This is someone who either doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to obey the peaceful transfer of power,” Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook said. “It’s a chilling preview of what his administration could be like. “I think the results are going to be very clear on Election Day. I’m sure he’ll try to do all sorts of things to deflect and blame others.”

Palmieri said it’s possible Trump would not actually contest the election results. “I don’t think he’s going to find a lot of support even in the Republican Party for continuing beyond the election,” she said. “Even his own campaign manager today said he will abide by the result of the election.”

She added: “We’ll see what actually happens and how he chooses to handle it. He’s not a great loser.”

View photos

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump debate in Las Vegas. (Photo: Mark Ralston-Pool/Getty Images)

 

The largest living thing on Earth is mostly hidden from view

• Lydia Ramsey

• Oct. 8, 2016, 1:00 PM
• 41,636
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Armillaria ostoyae Rocky Houghtby/Flickr
The world's largest living thing is even bigger than a blue whale (the largest animal living now).
Meet Armillaria ostoyae, or, as it's nicknamed, the Humongous Fungus.
It's an organism that covers 2,385 acres (almost 4 square miles) of the Malheur National Forest in Oregon. 
But it's a lot more harmful than the nickname might suggest: The Amarillia grows by feeding off of tree roots, leaching off of them and actually killing them, causing them to decay. So, in a forest, it has a good shot of  growing to a massive size (at the cost of a few thousand acres of trees). 
The fungus has a huge network of roots, called mycellia, that permeate below the ground of the forest. What shows up above ground are the mushrooms that get produced about once a year, according to the USDA. They usually pop up around the base of infected or newly-killed trees. 
Here's a map showing just how big the Humongous Fungus, highlighted in red, is compared to other, less humongous Armillaria (in yellow). 
USDA

Inside the Most Expensive Home in America

It could be yours — but a bowling alley, wine cellar and a full beauty salon don't come cheap.

Hilton & Hyland

By Rachel Kashdan

Oct 9, 2016

107

In your homeowner history, you may have erred away from buying the most expensive home on the block. But what would you do if presented with the most expensive home in the nation?

If you've got a couple hundred million dollars to spare, it be yours for a record-breaking price tag. The 56,500-square-foot chateau-style mansion in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles is now on the market for $200 million, making it America's most expensive home.

They call it "The Manor."

Here's why: The 4.6 acre property includes a bowling alley, movie theater, tennis court, a wine cellar, a two-story master closet and a full beauty salon, plus parking space for 100 cars. The mansion resembles a luxury hotel more than it does your average family estate.

The 14-bedroom and 27-bath compound was built in 1988 for producer Aaron Spelling and his wife Candy, and became infamous for its very unapologetic lavishness.

In 2009, it became the most expensive home in the country when Candy Spelling put it on the market for $150 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. It ultimately sold for $85 million to British heiress Petra Stunt, daughter of billionaire and Formula One executive Bernie Ecclestone.

When Stunt remodeled the home in 2011, Candy Spelling's chintz-all-over style went out the window, and the new owners renovated with features such as black and white marble, dark velvet walls and a basement that looks like a nightclub, according to W Magazine. The master bedroom could be a home of its own, with a private kitchen and living room, Business Insider reports.

Now that the mansion is breaking real-estate records once again, it beats out two $195 million listings previously dubbed the most expensive on the market.

To top that, if the home sells for its hefty asking price, it would steal the title for the most expensive home actually sold in Los Angeles from the Playboy Mansion, which was snagged for $100 million in August.

Originally, however, like "The Manor," the Playboy Mansion was also listed for $200 million — so breaking this particular record might prove to be a big feat.

h/t: Business Insider

From: ELLE Decor

Forget the iPhone 7 — here are 9 reasons the 2017 iPhone will blow everyone away

ConceptsiPhone/YouTube
Next year marks the 10-year anniversary of the iPhone, and all rumors are pointing to a radical redesign.
This month, we've seen the rumor of a third iPhone model with a larger screen resurface, and it could even have a frame made out of steel.
Check out the latest rumors surrounding Apple's next NEXT iPhone.

This will not be an "S" model of the iPhone 7.

Apple

MacRumors spotted a report from an analyst at Barclay's that claims Apple will skip the "S" model this year, which has historically followed each new phone version, and jump directly from the iPhone 7 to the iPhone 8, or possibly "10," in 2017.
Since 2017 marks the iPhone's 10th anniversary, it wouldn't be surprising if Apple does something special to mark the anniversary of its most important product.

The front surface will be all display with no borders or bezels.

ConceptsiPhone/YouTube

Rumors that the iPhone 10 will have an all-display front surface first emerged from John Gruber, the plugged-in Apple blogger and podcaster from Daring Fireball.
Gruber claims he has heard insider scuttlebutt that the iPhone 10's front won't have any bezels or borders, and that it'll be one large display.

It will mostly be made of glass with an aluminum frame.

Tyler/Flickr

A report from Apple analyst Ming Chi Kuo, who often accurately predicts new Apple products and features, says that the iPhone 10's body will be made of glass. If so, it could have a similar aesthetic as the iPhone 4 and 4s, both of which had a glass back.

There will be a third "high-end" model with a larger screen with a stainless steel frame.

A custom iPhone 5s made to look even more premium than the original models.Gold genie

A report from Kuo predicts Apple will release a third "high-end" model with a larger 5.8-inch screen compared to the Plus model's 5.5-inch screen.
Kuo also claims it'll have a stainless steel frame rather than the aluminum, which is more often used than steel in smartphones.

The home button will be invisible.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Tech Insider

Gruber claims the home button, which also houses the fingerprint sensor, will be embedded into the front glass panel, making it invisible.
Gruber's claims line up nicely with rumors posted by tech site i4u that a future iPhone will have an embedded home button.
Recently, Chinese tech giant Xiaomi released new phones with the same technology that Apple described in a patent for alternative home buttons, which could give us an idea of how a future home button on the iPhone 10 could work.

It will have an incredible screen.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider

Rumors from The Korea Herald news site suggest the 2017 iPhone will have an AMOLED display, which would look better than the LCD display in current iPhones.

It will have wireless charging.

SCAVidsHD/YouTube

The Barclay's analyst report summarized by MacRumors claims that the iPhone 10 will have wireless charging.
Most recently, a patent submitted by Apple on September 9 shows the company is still looking to optimize wireless charging solutions. 

It won't have a headphone jack.

AP

Since the iPhone 7 doesn't have a headphone jack, we can expect future iPhones won't feature a headphone jack, either.

The smaller model will not get the a dual lens camera like the iPhone 7 Plus.

Andri Koolme/Flickr

Ming Chi Kuo believes the dual-lens camera will remain an exclusive feature for the larger iPhone models from 2017 onward.
There might have been a glimmer of hope that the dual-lens camera would make its way down to the smaller iPhone model, as the optical image stabilization (OIS) that was exclusive to the iPhone 6s Plus trickled its way down to the regular iPhone 7. But if Kuo's predictions are true, this will not be the case.

real page from ( http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-10-2017-9-rumors-features-2016-10/#the-smaller-model-will-not-get-the-a-dual-lens-camera-like-the-iphone-7-plus-9)

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The mystery of why left-handers are so much rarer

Relatively few people are lefties, and it’s a puzzle why. Still, the science of handedness is revealing fascinating insights about you – from how it could change the way you think, to the fact that you might be ‘left-eared’.

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• By Hannah Fry

3 October 2016

From the time we pick up a chunky crayon and start scribbling as children, it begins to become clear whether we’re right- or left-handed. But what makes one hand dominate? And why are left-handers in the minority?

Curious Cases

To find out more:

Download ‘The Curious Case of the Sinister Hand’ from the Radio 4 website, and discover moreanimations and articles from Rutherford & Fry on BBC Future.

To find out more, Adam Rutherford and I decided to investigate the science and history behind human handedness for the BBC Radio 4 series The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry.

It soon became clear that there was more to the question than we thought: for example, I had never realised that our body is lopsided in other ways too. Take your eyes, for instance. You can tell whether you are right or left-eyed by trying the following test:

Hold a thumb out at arm’s length in front of you. First, look at it with both eyes, then try covering each eye in turn. Your strongest eye is the one which gives the nearest picture to stereo vision.

Similarly, you can test your ears: which ear would you naturally use on the telephone? Or to listen, clandestinely, against a wall?

Overall 40% of us are left-eared and 30% are left-eyed  

It’s funny to spot these strange asymmetries in action – I often find myself holding the phone with my left hand and pressing it, rather awkwardly, against my right ear, whilst scribbling down notes with my right hand. If ease was the biggest consideration, this odd arrangement certainly doesn’t deliver. It’s all about playing to our natural strengths.

Overall 40% of us are left-eared, 30% are left-eyed and 20% are left-footed.

But when it comes to handedness, only 10% of people are lefties.

Why could this be? Why are left-handers in the minority?

You can be 'right-eyed' as well as right-handed (Credit: iStock)

In times gone by, left-handedness was drummed out of errant schoolchildren, and oddly negative connotations still linger in our language. The word ‘left’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘lyft’, meaning ‘weak’. And the opposite in Latin is ‘dexter’ which is associated with skill and righteousness.

The word ‘left’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘lyft’, meaning ‘weak’  

So what determines whether we are right- or left-handed? From an evolutionary standpoint, specialising with one hand makes sense. Chimpanzees tend to choose a favourite hand for different tasks.

Take termite fishing. After selecting the perfect stick, the chimp pokes it into the termite mound, their sense of touch providing a host of information about how deep, wide and full of tasty termites their house may be. Then they’ll gently pull the stick out to reveal their prey, the termites’ jaws clamping down hard on the foreign invader. Unbeknown to them, they are about to get chomped by a hungry chimp. By specialising with one hand, chimps become more dexterous, and more termites bite the dust.

But when primatologists study chimpanzees in the wild, their patterns of handedness look very different to ours. For each task around 50% are right-handed, and 50% left. So where in our evolutionary tree does this 1 in 10 ratio emerge?

An important clue comes from Neanderthals’ teeth. Neanderthals, it turns out, were clever, but clumsy. Our ancestors used their teeth to anchor slabs of meat, whilst they held a knife in their dominant hand to carve it up. Now and again, they would scratch their teeth. The distinctive pattern of grooves in their front incisors reveals which hand must have been holding the food, and which was grasping the knife. Incredibly, when you compare the number of left- and right-handed Neanderthals, this same ratio of 1 in 10 left-handers that we see today pops out.

We know that left- and right-handedness has a genetic origin. However, geneticists are still trying to pinpoint which bits of DNA are involved, and there may well be up to 40 different genes at play. As things stand, the answer to what determines left or right handedness and why lefties are in the minority remains a resounding “don’t know”. 

But does being left-handed have any impact on people’s lives, beyond finding right-handed scissors, zips and fountain pens a little bit annoying?

Left-handers are much more variable in the way that their brains are organised  

There’s been a long running debate about how being left-handed affects your brain. The right side of the brain controls the left hand, and vice versa. And so being left-handed can have knock-on effects on the way the brain is arranged.

“Left-handers are much more variable in the way that their brains are organised,” explains psychologist Chris McManus, from University College London, author of the book Right Hand, Left Hand.

“My personal hunch is that left-handers are both more talented, and suffer deficits. If you are left-handed you might find yourself with a slightly unusual way your brain is organised and suddenly that gives you skills that other people don’t have.”

However, not everyone agrees. Dorothy Bishop is Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology at the University of Oxford and she has a personal interest. “I myself am left-handed and I always wondered why I was different from other people.

“There’s been all sorts of claims over the years linking left-handedness with disabilities like dyslexia and autism. On the other hand, there have been positive attributes – it’s claimed that architects and musicians are more likely to be left-handed.”

A lot of associations between disabilities and handedness are the result of selective reporting bias  

But after looking into the data, Bishop is not convinced. A lot of these associations, she says, are the result of what’s called selective reporting bias. Scientists add a question about handedness into their study on, for example, creativity, and become excited if they find a positive association, but don’t report the instances when no connections are found.

It’s true, she says, that when you look at rare conditions, like Down Syndrome, epilepsy and cerebral palsy, the ratio of left- to right-handers is more like 50:50 rather than 1:10.

Children very quickly show a preference for which hand they use (Credit: iStock)

But, Bishop says, left-handedness may be symptomatic, rather than causal.

“It’s not the left-handedness itself that’s creating problems,” she explains, “it’s more that it can be a symptom of some underlying condition. But in most people it doesn’t have any significance at all for intellectual cognitive development.”

The debate rages on, and there is still so much we need to discover about the left-handed brain. Part of the problem is that when neuroscientists look at various aspects of behaviour, MRI studies are only done on right-handed people, in order to try and minimise the variation between different participants. Only specific studies on left-handedness will invite lefties to take part.

Since I’m currently seven months pregnant, it’s fascinating to think that my baby has already determined whether she is right- or left-handed. We know this because Peter Hepper, from Queen's University in Belfast, has done some wonderful ultrasound studies looking at babies’ movements inside the womb.

He found that nine out of 10 foetuses preferred sucking their right thumb, mirroring the familiar pattern we see in the general population. And when he followed those children up many years later, the babies who were sucking their right thumb in the womb became right-handed, and the ones who preferred their left, stuck with that.

So, even though my baby is already favouring one hand over the other, I won’t be in on the secret until she decides to pick up those chunky crayons and start scribbling.

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