US Elections

I have lived in the UK for 25 years but every summer I go back to Canada with my family. We have a cottage on the St Lawrence River, in a region of spectacular natural beauty called the Thousand Islands.

It's part of a summer community built in the 1880s on the sloping hills and the flats above a small bay. The place once had an abundance of butternut trees, now sadly diminished by a lethal pest.

But the trees gave the community its name: Butternut Bay. All the cottages share a large communal dock that juts out into the river.

Clinton is expected to get 332 electoral votes, while Trump is predicted to get just 206, according to the Moody's Analytics model, which is based on three economic and three political factors.

With Democratic nerves jangling amid tightening polls and the fallout of the FBI's email curveball in the final days of the election, Clinton is fervently trying to make the race about Trump's character and foibles -- not hers.

Clinton has spent months emphasizing a message that Trump is morally and intellectually unfit for the presidency. The hope was that the strategy would deliver in the last days of the election, with wavering voters struggling with their conscience over a vision of the volatile billionaire in the Oval Office.

Her departure was announced Monday amid fresh revelations that she sent questions to Hillary Clinton's campaign in advance of a CNN debate and a CNN-TV One town hall.

In a statement, CNN said it was "completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor."

CNN said it "never gave Brazile access to any questions, prep material, attendee list, background information or meetings in advance of a town hall or debate."

A string of strong swing state polls, an expanding battleground map and the end of the presidential debates had Clinton -- and her aides -- feeling good about the final days of the campaign. The normally careful candidate was dancing on television, celebrating her birthday with gifts of tequila and seemingly having fun during a campaign that, at times, seemed to be a slog for her.

Then her nagging email controversy roared back.

Thousands of kilometers away from the US soil, in the middle of the bustling city of Copenhagen, Denmark, several buses are traveling with massive mock-images of the US presidential candidate's forehead with wheels for eyes.

The campaign's message -- ordered by the Danish Socialist People's Party (SF)-- reads in bold red letters: "Americans abroad, vote."

"Just thinking to myself right now, we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump," the Republican presidential nominee said during a rally here on Thursday.

"Her policies are so bad. Boy, do we have a big difference," he added of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

The apparently lighthearted comment falls against the backdrop of Trump's repeated and serious questioning of the legitimacy of the presidential election in recent weeks as he has tumbled in the polls.

The election is 12 days away but Republicans are already promising years of investigations and blocked nominees if Hillary Clinton wins.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, says he has lined up enough material from Clinton's four years as secretary of state for two years of probes.

Trump delivered the news in a sit-down interview alongside Melania on ABC's "Good Morning America," their first joint appearance since a cascade of allegations of sexual assault against the Republican presidential nominee, which were also discussed.

Asked by host George Stephanopoulos if she wants "to get out there yourself and help (Trump) out in the final two weeks," Melania Trump said "we'll see" before Trump jumped in.

But the Republican nominee wasn't exactly taking time off the campaign trail. Instead, he used his private business to prop up his campaign.

Taking the podium to tout his new hotel as "one of the great hotels of the world," the billionaire, who has touted his business success as a key qualification for assuming the presidency, quickly turned the corporate-themed ribbon-cutting into a campaign event, albeit far from any of the battleground states he needs to win to clinch the presidency.