Anti-racism protesters rally across UK

Thousands of anti-racism demonstrators rallied across the UK yesterday to protest recent rioting blamed on the far-right in the wake of the Southport knife attack that killed three children. Crowds massed in London, Glasgow, Belfast, Manchester and numerous other English towns and cities, as fears of violent confrontations with anti-immigration agitators failed to materialise.It followed a similar situation unfolding on Wednesday night, when anticipated far-right rallies up and down the country were instead replaced by gatherings organised by the Stand Up To Racism advocacy group. More than a dozen places across England as well as Belfast had been hit by unrest prior to that, following the July 29 stabbing spree, which was wrongly linked on social media to a Muslim immigrant.Rioters targeted mosques and hotels linked to immigration, as well as police, vehicles and other sites. However, recent nights have been largely peaceful in English towns and cities, prompting hope among authorities that the more than 700 arrests and numerous people already being jailed has deterred further violence.However, in Northern Ireland, which has seen sustained disorder since last weekend, police said they were investigating a suspected racially motivated hate crime overnight.A petrol bomb was thrown at a mosque in Newtownards, east of Belfast, in the early hours of Saturday, with graffiti sprayed on the front door and walls of the building, according to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). It said the petrol bomb thrown at the property did not ignite.“This is being treated as a racially motivated hate crime, and I want to send a strong message to those who carried this out, that this type of activity will not be tolerated and any reports of hate crime are taken very seriously,” PSNI Chief Inspector Keith Hutchinson said. There was also overnight reports of damage to property and vehicles in Belfast, as nightly unrest there rumbled on.The disturbances in Northern Ireland were sparked by events in England but have also been fuelled by pro-UK loyalist paramilitaries with their own agenda, according to the PSNI. Around 5,000 anti-racism demonstrators rallied in Belfast on Saturday without incident. In London, hundreds massed outside the office of Brexit architect Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party before marching to parliament, as a large police presence looked on.Farage and other far-right figures have been blamed for helping to fuel the riots through anti-immigrant rhetoric and conspiracy theories.“It’s really important for people of colour in this country, for immigrants in this country, to see us out here as white British people saying ‘no, we don’t stand for this’,” attendee Phoebe Sewell, 32, from London, told AFP.Fellow Londoner Jeremy Snelling, 64, said he had turned out because “I don’t like the right-wing claiming the streets in my name”. He did not hold Farage “personally responsible” for the violence but argued that the Reform party founder had “contributed” to the volatile environment.“I think he is damaging and I think he’s dangerous,” Snelling added.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688383/international/anti-racism-protesters-rally-across-uk

Bangladesh leader Yunus hails slain student in appeal for unity

Bangladesh’s interim leader Mohamed Yunus appealed for religious unity after embracing the weeping mother of a student shot dead by police, a flashpoint in mass protests that ended Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule. Nobel laureate Yunus, 84, returned from Europe this week to helm a temporary administration facing the monumental challenge of ending disorder and enacting democratic reforms.“Our responsibility is to build a new Bangladesh,” he told reporters. Several reprisal attacks against the country’s Hindu minority since autocratic ex-premier Hasina’s toppling have caused alarm in neighbouring India as well as fear at home. Yunus called for calm during a visit to the northern city of Rangpur by invoking the memory of Abu Sayeed, the first student slain during last month’s unrest. “Don’t differentiate by religion”, he said.“Abu Sayeed is now in every home. The way he stood, we have to do the same,” he added. “There are no differences in Abu Sayeed’s Bangladesh.”Sayeed, 25, was shot dead by police at close range on July 16 at the start of a police crackdown on student-led protests against Hasina’s government. His mother sobbed as she clung to a visibly emotional Yunus, who had come to pay his respects alongside members of the “advisory” cabinet now administering the country.Fellow cabinet member Nahid Islam, a 26-year-old sociology graduate who led the protests that culminated in Hasina’s ouster, wept by the leader’s side. Hasina, 76, fled by helicopter to neighbouring India on Monday as protesters flooded Dhaka’s streets in a dramatic end to her iron-fisted rule.Her government was accused of widespread human rights abuses including the extrajudicial killing of thousands of her political opponents. Cabinet ministers left blindsided by her sudden fall have gone to ground, while several top appointees have been forced out of office – including the national police chief and the central bank governor.The chief justice of the Supreme Court became yesterday the latest to announce his departure. “It’s not possible anymore for me to perform the duty,” Obaidul Hassan said in a statement. “Therefore, I have decided to resign.”Appointed last year, Hassan earlier oversaw a much-criticised war crimes tribunal that ordered the execution of Hasina’s opponents, and his brother was her longtime secretary.His announcement came after hundreds of protesters gathered outside the court to demand he and other judges step down by the early afternoon.“No one should do anything that pits the Supreme Court against the mass uprising of the students and the people,” Asif Nazrul, a student protest leader now serving in Yunus’ government, told reporters.In the immediate aftermath of Hasina’s fall, some businesses and homes owned by Hindus were attacked, a group seen by some in Muslim-majority Bangladesh as having been her supporters. Bangladeshi Hindus account for around eight percent of the country’s population. Hundreds have since arrived on India’s border, asking to cross.Hasina’s flight has heightened rancour towards India, which played a decisive military role in securing Bangladesh’s independence, but also backed her to the hilt.Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday urged “safety and protection of Hindus and all other minority communities”. More than 450 people were killed in the unrest leading up to Hasina’s departure, including dozens of police officers killed during clampdowns on demonstrations. The caretaker administration Yunus helms has said that restoration of law and order is its “first priority”.Complicating its efforts is a strike declared Tuesday by the police union, saying its members would not return to work until their safety was assured. Bangladesh’s police force said more than half of the country’s police stations had since reopened. They are being guarded by soldiers from the army, an institution held in higher public regard than the police for opting not to forcibly quell the protests. “We are happy that police are returning to their duty,” university pupil Umar Faruk, 22, told AFP.“Police are needed to maintain law and order. But it’s also a matter of concern for us whether the police can gain the trust of the people.” Two attempted jailbreaks were staged at prisons north of the capital Dhaka this week, with more than 200 inmates fleeing one facility.Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his pioneering work in microfinance, credited with helping millions of Bangladeshis out of grinding poverty. He took office Thursday as “chief adviser” to a caretaker administration, comprised of fellow civilians bar one retired brigadier-general, and has said he wants to hold elections “within a few months”.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688382/international/bangladesh-leader-yunus-hails-slain-student-in-appeal-for-unity

Brazil authorities recovering bodies from plane crash that killed 62

Work was underway yesterday by Brazilian authorities in recovering the remains of passengers on a plane that crashed on Friday in the town of Vinhedo, near Sao Paulo, killing all 62 people on board.At least 31 bodies had been recovered by 1pm local time (1600 GMT) yesterday, the Sao Paulo state government said.The crash transformed the plane’s fuselage into a mass of twisted iron.A steady overnight rain complicated the recovery efforts by some 200 workers, Vinhedo mayor Dario Pacheco told reporters.With many victims badly burned, so far only “two bodies have been identified: the pilot and the co-pilot”, he said.All the bodies are being moved to Sao Paulo’s police morgue.A Venezuelan man and Portuguese woman are among the dead, state civil defence official Roberto Farina said, adding that the local consulates have already been contacted.On Friday regional carrier Voepass said the plane was carrying 57 passengers and four crew, but yesterday the firm confirmed another unaccounted-for passenger was on the flight, putting the number of casualties at 62.Authorities are using seat assignments, physical characteristics, documents and belongings such as cell phones to identify the victims, firefighter Maycon Cristo said at the crash site.“Once all this evidence has been collected, we will remove the victims from the wreckage and place them in the vehicle to be transported to Sao Paulo,” he said.Relatives of the victims have been brought to Sao Paulo to provide DNA samples to aid in identification of the remains, said state civil defence co-ordinator Henguel Pereira.The plane’s so-called “black box” containing voice recordings and flight data is undergoing analysis, said Marcelo Moreno, the head of Brazilian aviation accident investigation centre Cenipa, at a press conference in Vinhedo.The plane, an ATR-72 turboprop, was bound for Sao Paulo from Cascavel, in the state of Parana, and crashed around 1.30pm (1630 GMT) in Vinhedo, some 80km (50 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo.Videos showed the plane in a downward spin on Friday before it crashed.Despite coming down in a residential area, no one on the ground was hurt.The aircraft was flying normally until 1.21pm, when it stopped responding to calls, and radar contact was lost at 1.22pm, Brazil’s air force said in a statement.Pilots did not report an emergency or adverse weather conditions, the air force added.Franco-Italian ATR, jointly owned by Airbus and Leonardo, is the dominant producer of regional turboprop planes seating 40-70 people.ATR told Reuters on Friday that its specialists were “fully engaged” with the investigation into the crash.The plane had been in use since 2010 and was in compliance with current standards, the National Civil Aviation Agency said, adding that the four crew members were all fully certified.Marcel Moura, regional carrier Voepass’s operations director, said the plane had undergone routine maintenance the night before the accident and that “no technical problems” were found.However, experts suggested that icing of the plane’s wings may have been behind the accident.Moura said the plane was a type that flies at an altitude “where there is a greater sensitivity to icing”.Friday’s weather report had predicted possible icing but “within acceptable parameters for a flight”, he said.Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has declared three days of national mourning for what was one of the worst aviation accidents in the country’s history.In 2007, an Airbus A320 of Brazil’s TAM airlines overran a runway at Sao Paulo’s Congonhas airport and crashed into a warehouse, killing all 187 on board and 12 runway workers.Two years later, an Air France A330 on a Rio de Janeiro-to-Paris flight crashed into the Atlantic. All 228 people on board died.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688380/international/brazil-authorities-recovering-bodies-from-plane-crash-that-killed-62

Workers begin recovering bodies from Brazil plane crash

Emergency crews on Saturday began removing the victims of a plane crash in Brazil's Sao Paulo state that killed all 62 people aboard, as authorities sifted through the wreckage to try to determine what caused the plane's dramatic plunge.Videos showed the ATR 72-500 plane in a sickening downward spin Friday before it crashed into a residential area of the town of Vinhedo, some 80 kilometers northwest of Sao Paulo city.The Voepass airlines said Saturday that verification of the passenger list showed there were 62 people on board, not 61 as reported earlier. All 62 were Brazilian; there were no survivors.While some houses at the crash site were damaged, no injuries or deaths were reported among their residents.The crash transformed the plane's fuselage into a mass of twisted iron. As of Saturday morning, 16 bodies had been removed, firefighters said.In all, some 200 people were working on the recovery effort. The dead are being transported to the Sao Paulo morgue.The normally peaceful, wooded enclave where the plane came down was swarming Saturday with police cars, ambulances and firetrucks.A steady overnight rain complicated recovery work, which could 'take days,' according to Captain Maycon Cristo, a spokesman for local firefighters.The twin-engine turboprop, built by French-Italian aviation firm ATR, was on a flight from Cascavel in southern Parana state to Sao Paulo's Guarulhos international airport.The company said its experts will assist in the investigation.According to the Flight Radar 24 website, the plane flew for about an hour at 17,000 feet, until at 1:21 pm (1621 GMT) it began rapidly losing altitude.Radar contact was lost at 1:22 pm, the Brazilian air force reported.Brazil's Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center (CENIPA) has opened an inquiry into the cause of the crash.Its investigators on Friday recovered the 'black box' containing flight data that might be useful in the inquiry.The plane had been in use since 2010 and was in compliance with current standards, the National Civil Aviation Agency said, adding that the four crew members were all fully certified.Voepass's operations director, Marcel Moura, said the plane had undergone routine maintenance the night before the accident and that 'no technical problems' were found.Residents of the neighborhood where the plane fell said they had heard a loud noise and then watched in horror as the plane came down in an almost vertical free-fall.Videos showed an enormous cloud of smoke rising from the scene.Military police told local media there were no casualties on the ground, and that fires sparked by the crash had been brought under control.It was one of the worst aviation accidents in the country's history.In 2007, an Airbus A320 of Brazil's TAM airlines overran a runway at Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport and crashed into a warehouse, killing all 187 on board and 12 runway workers.Two years later, an Air France A330 on a Rio de Janeiro-to-Paris flight crashed into the Atlantic. All 228 people on board died.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688364/international/workers-begin-recovering-bodies-from-brazil-plane-crash

Maduro turns to Supreme Court to cement disputed election victory

President Nicolas Maduro appeared before Venezuela’s Supreme Court yesterday, asking the country’s top judicial body to affirm his disputed re-election.Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado meanwhile continued to challenge the July 28 vote, telling AFP that she would offer Maduro “guarantees and incentives” for a “negotiated transition” of power that would see him leave office.The South American nation has been in political crisis since election authorities declared Maduro the winner of last month’s poll, a decision questioned both at home and abroad.The National Electoral Council (CNE) has yet to release detailed results from the vote, while the opposition has released copies of 84% of ballots cast, showing an easy win for their candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.The government says those results are forged.The Supreme Court – widely seen as aligned with Maduro – has summoned all presidential candidates before it, though some of the opposition has refused to attend.Maduro arrived at the court alongside his wife Cilia Flores, state attorney Reinaldo Munoz and several members of his government.The contested election sparked protests that have left at least 24 people dead, according to rights groups, and more than 2,000 arrested.“We want peace, tranquillity, that is why I filed this contentious appeal before the Supreme Court,” Maduro said on Thursday at a rally in Caracas. “There have been two days of hearings, all candidates and all parties were summoned...it’s my turn.”Machado called for greater support from the international community.Speaking to AFP via voice notes sent while in hiding amid fears for her safety, she said the opposition was “determined to move forwards in a negotiation”.“It will be a complex, delicate transition process, in which we are going to unite the whole nation,” said the 56-year-old Machado, who was barred from running herself against Maduro.She added that Maduro has “completely, absolutely, lost legitimacy” and that “all Venezuelans and the world know that Edmundo Gonzalez won in a landslide”.Lawmaker Diosdado Cabello, a powerful Maduro ally, dismissed Machado’s offer.“She is not in a position to negotiate anything,” he told reporters as he arrived at the Supreme Court, shortly before Maduro. “Offering conditions, to whom? Here the CNE, which is the governing body, gave a result: Nicolas Maduro won.”Giulio Cellini, a director at the political consultancy group LOG Consultancy, said that the whole process was an “ambush” of Gonzalez Urrutia since both the high court and election authority are “controlled by Maduro”.Fellow left-wing governments from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico noted the verification process undertaken by the court but asked that the CNE “transparently disclose the electoral results”.The CNE ratified Maduro’s victory, saying he had earned 52% of votes. In addition to not publishing detailed results, it has also claimed to have been hacked.Jennie Lincoln, head of the Carter Centre delegation that was invited to monitor the Venezuelan election, told AFP that it had “no evidence” of a cyberattack.Furthering his post-election crackdown on Thursday, Maduro suspended access to the social media site X as he faced continued international pressure.The president announced his government was blocking the social media platform formerly known as Twitter for 10 days, while accusing the site’s owner Elon Musk of “inciting hate and fascism” in Venezuela.Maduro and Musk have been locked in a war of words via X.Maduro has overseen a national collapse, including an 80% drop in the once-wealthy oil-rich country’s GDP, amid domestic economic mismanagement and international sanctions.According to the United Nations, more than 7mn Venezuelans have fled the country of 30mn since Maduro took over in 2013, mostly to other Latin American countries and the United States.Meanwhile, Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino told broadcaster CNN yesterday that he would give Maduro safe passage to act as a “bridge” to a third country in order to allow for a political transition in Venezuela.“If that’s the contribution, the sacrifice that Panama has to make, by offering our soil so that this man and his family can leave Venezuela, Panama would do it without a doubt,” Mulino said in an interview.Panama is part of a group of Latin American countries that have cut diplomatic ties with Venezuela since the disputed July 28 election, including Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Uruguay.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688328/international/maduro-turns-to-supreme-court-to-cement-disputed-election-victory

Turkiye to open 58th civilian airport on Saturday

Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Oraloglu has announced the opening of Cukurova International Airport in the south of the country on August 10.The Minister noted that the new airport will be the 58th civilian airport in Turkiye. He added that the airport will serve 5 million people, given its location close to as it is near to Mersin, Adana, Osmaniye and Nigde.He said that the widest aircraft can land on the airport's main runway, which is 3,500 meters long and 60 meters wide.The airport's capacity is 8 million passengers annually, and its hall area is 110,000 square meters, he added.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688294/international/turkiye-to-open-58th-civilian-airport-on-saturday

Trump says he’s willing to debate Harris three times

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said that he is willing to debate his Democratic rival Kamala Harris three times in September on different networks during a news conference yesterday at his Palm Beach, Florida, residence.Trump said he wanted to hold debates on September 4 on Fox, September 10 on NBC, and September 25 on ABC.He did not offer specific terms, such as whether there would be an audience, and it was not immediately clear whether his campaign had made a proposal to Harris’s camp.The conference was Trump’s first public appearance since Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday.Harris, the US vice-president, and Walz headlined rallies in the battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday, drawing tens of thousands of attendees in a fresh sign of how her late entry into the race has galvanised Democrats.Her rapid rise, following President Joe Biden’s decision last month to abandon his faltering campaign, has sent Trump’s team scrambling to recalibrate their strategy and messaging.Opinion polls show Harris has erased the lead Trump had built over Biden, and Democrats have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from voters and big donors in a matter of weeks.Harris and Walz were scheduled to meet with auto workers in Detroit yesterday, following the United Auto Workers union’s endorsement of their candidacy, as part of a push to mobilise blue-collar workers in key battleground states.The Harris campaign cancelled events yesterday in North Carolina and today in Georgia, where Tropical Storm Debby is bringing heavy rain and dangerous flooding.The Democrats will head to Arizona and Nevada later this week, visiting two more swing states likely to play a key role in the November 5 election.Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, also cancelled campaign events in North Carolina yesterday due to the storm.He has spent the last few days trailing Harris and Walz around the country, an unusual move intended to provide a “contrast”, he told reporters on Wednesday.The Trump campaign has criticised the Democrat vice-president for not taking questions from reporters since launching her campaign 2-1/2 weeks ago.Trump has conducted a steady stream of media interviews, though they are usually with friendly, right-leaning outlets and reporters.On Wednesday, he called into the Fox & Friends morning programme and took questions from the programme’s hosts.Biden has meanwhile warned that he is “not confident at all” of a peaceful handover of power to Harris if Trump loses November’s election, in an extract of a CBS interview broadcast on Wednesday.The president said Trump’s hints on the campaign trail about not accepting a defeat should be taken seriously.“If Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” Biden told the US network in the interview, which was due to air fully on Sunday, when asked if he believed there would be a calm transfer in January 2025.“He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it – all the stuff about ‘if we lose there’ll be a bloodbath,’” added Biden.While campaigning earlier this year, Biden regularly brought up the fact that Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, after Biden beat him in the 2020 election.Biden also frequently quoted Trump as saying there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost – although the Republican said he was talking in the context of electric car imports from China.Trump has, however, maintained his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and in the CBS interview Biden accused the former president of trying to install allies in key electoral positions in US states to manipulate counts if the same thing happened again.“You can’t love your country only when you win,” said Biden.The ageing president has long framed Trump as a threat to US democracy.Harris has sometimes echoed that theme, while focusing more on a positive vision in a campaign that has reenergised Democrats, brought in millions of dollars and helped her nose ahead of Trump in opinion polls.In the news conference at his residence yesterday, Trump said that there would be a peaceful transfer of power after the US presidential vote – but immediately questioned whether there would be “honest elections”.“Of course there’ll be a peaceful transfer, and there was last time,” Trump told a news conference, despite a mob of his supporters storming Congress in 2021 after his loss. “I just hope we’re going to have honest elections.”

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688265/international/trump-says-hes-willing-to-debate-harris-three-times

Europe condemns Israeli Minister's statements on "starving Gaza

'The European Union and several European countries strongly condemned the statement of the Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, in which he said, 'the starvation of two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip may be just and moral.'In a statement, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said 'we strongly condemn the recent statements made by the Israeli Finance Minister last Monday.' Borrell considered Smotrich's statement 'extremely shameful'. He stressed that 'deliberately starving civilians is a war crime.'France, for its part, expressed its 'deep dismay at the outrageous remarks' made by Smotrich.A French Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement that 'France calls on the Israeli government to condemn these unacceptable remarks in the strongest possible terms.'In London, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a post on the social media platform X: 'There can be no justification for Minister Smotrich's comments.'Lammy called on the Israeli government to 'retract and condemn his statements,' adding that 'deliberately starving civilians is a war crime.'For its part, the German Foreign Ministry condemned Smotrich's statements.A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Berlin said, 'the statements of the Israeli Finance Minister are unacceptable and completely outrageous. We reject them in the strongest terms.'The spokesman added, 'it is a humanitarian duty and a basic principle of international humanitarian law that even in war, civilians must be protected and must have, for example, the right to access water and food.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688236/international/europe-condemns-israeli-ministers-statements-on-starving-gaza

Bangladesh’s new interim leader Yunus heads home

The Nobel Peace laureate tapped to lead an interim government in Bangladesh called for calm and boarded a flight yesterday to return home, a day before his new government is expected to be sworn in to replace ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina.Mohamed Yunus, 84, was picked by President Mohamed Shahabuddin to lead the new interim government, a key demand of student demonstrators whose uprising drove Hasina to flee to India on Monday.“Let us make the best use of our new victory,” he said in a statement before departing Paris, where he had been receiving medical treatment while out on bail from criminal cases brought under Hasina. “I fervently appeal to everybody to stay calm. Please refrain from all kinds of violence.”Outside the airport, he told reporters: “I’m looking forward to going back home and see what’s happening there and how we can organise ourselves to get out of the trouble that we’re in.“I’ll go and talk to them. I’m just fresh in this whole area,” said Yunus, an economist who was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding a bank that pioneered fighting poverty with small loans to ordinary people.President Shahabuddin said the rest of the interim government needed to be finalised soon to overcome the crisis and pave the way for elections. Nahid Islam, a key student leader, said he expected the members to be chosen soon.Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman said that he was hopeful the interim government would be sworn in by late today and that the situation in the country was improving and was expected to become normal in the next 3-4 days.He also said that military leaders had held discussions with student leaders, political parties, and the president and that he was confident that Yunus would be able to take the country towards a democratic process.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688215/international/bangladeshs-new-interim-leader-yunus-heads-home

Upbeat Harris swings by the swing states

Kamala Harris took her breakneck presidential campaign on a tour of US election battlegrounds yesterday as she seeks to build a coalition of Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans to power her to the White House.The 59-year-old vice-president has been riding a wave of excitement and an upward swing in polling in the two weeks since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate to take on Republican Donald Trump on November 5.Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will take their double act to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, before travelling to Detroit, Michigan, for a rally with members of the United Auto Workers union.Just hours after Walz was announced on Tuesday, the pair held the biggest Democratic event of the election so far in front of a raucous crowd of around 14,000 in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.“We are the underdogs in this race, but we have the momentum and I know exactly what we are up against,” Harris told the crowd.Walz, a 60-year-old former Army National Guard officer, has been governor of the staunchly Democratic state of Minnesota since 2019 but before that he had a record as a congressman of winning over moderate and independent voters.Seen initially as an outsider for the VP pick, Walz enjoyed viral success in distilling Democrats’ attack lines against Republicans into a relatable one-word characterisation — “weird” — that propelled him up Harris’s shortlist. He is scheduled to appear with Harris in each of the swing states, with stops in Arizona and Nevada later in the week. Events in North Carolina and Georgia were postponed due to bad weather.Team Harris-Walz plans to have more than 750 staff on the ground in the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — crucial for victory in November — when the Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago in mid-August.“Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz’s momentum across the battlegrounds, including the blue wall, is real and will be on full display today,” said Dan Kanninen, Battleground States Director for the Harris campaign.But many Republicans have voiced delight that Walz was chosen over the more centrist Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, a popular leader of a state that most pundits agree will be the biggest prize in 2024.Republicans are seeking to brand Walz as a far-left ideologue who offered benefits to undocumented migrants and tolerated rioting in the streets in 2020 after the police murder of African-American George Floyd.House Majority Leader Steve Scalise posted on X that Walz had “let rioters burn Minneapolis to the ground in 2020.”The Trump campaign itself has been accusing Walz — who retired from the National Guard in 2005 — of having “deserted” his unit just as it was being deployed to Iraq.It’s not clear how decisive the VP issue will be for either side. Trump himself acknowledged in a recent interview that “the vice president — in terms of the election — does not have any impact.... The choice of a vice president makes no difference.”Trump has declined to focus on Harris’s policy weaknesses, instead favouring personal attacks to try to halt her rise.Harris has a 51-48% lead over Trump in the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist survey and has edged ahead by 0.5 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics nationwide average of polls.The organisation had Trump three points ahead of Biden at the point when the president made way for Harris, 17 days ago.Where Trump used to be famed for his knack of defining his opponents with an incisive one-word sobriquet — such as “Crooked Hillary” Clinton or “Sleepy Joe” Biden — he has struggled to come up with a nickname that sticks on Harris. His latest taunt — calling her “Kamabla” — looks more like a typo than an effective insult and has left pundits scratching their heads.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688213/international/upbeat-harris-swings-by-the-swing-states

Thousands evacuated as Russia fights major Ukrainian border incursion

Russia yesterday battled a major cross-border incursion from Ukraine for a second day, the most serious attack on Russian territory by Ukraine’s forces in months that prompted both countries to evacuate several thousand civilians.A local state of emergency was introduced in Russia’s Kursk region yesterday evening, 36 hours after Ukrainian soldiers, tanks and armoured vehicles stormed into the western border region.Russia said it launched air and artillery firepower to repel the attack throughout yesterday, after having rushed reinforcements to the region in a bid to halt Ukrainian advances.After two days of fighting, both the extent of the damage and the depth of the Ukrainian advance into Russian territory was unclear — though several reports from both Ukrainian and Russian military bloggers suggested the fighters had gained several kilometres.President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine had attacked civilian buildings while Russia’s top general vowed to crush the incursion.“The Kyiv regime has undertaken another large-scale provocation,” Putin said in a televised meeting with government officials. “It is firing indiscriminately from various types of weapons, including rockets, at civilian buildings, residential houses and ambulances,” he added.Kursk Governor Alexei Smirnov introduced a localised state of emergency in the region last evening, a move that gives authorities additional powers to bring the situation under control.At least five civilians have been killed and 31 wounded since the incursion began, Russian health officials said yesterday.Senior Ukrainian officials have not commented directly on the attack.Authorities in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, just across the border from Kursk, announced they were evacuating about 6,000 people, without elaborating.Several thousand were also evacuated from the Kursk region.Some Russian military bloggers were reporting Ukrainian troops had reached the town of Sudzha, some 8km from the border, and were shelling it constantly.The small town of about 5,000 people is home to the Sudzha metering station, the last major transit point for Russian pipeline gas still heading to Europe via Ukraine.A priest in the town, Evgeny Shestopalov, said in a video shared by Russian media that Sudzha was “on fire” and that residents unable to evacuate were sheltering at his church.“Our church is full of people, children. Not everyone has shelters, not everyone can leave,” he said.A local Russian TV station broadcast images from the centre of the city showing destroyed buildings, debris strewn across the street and large craters in the ground from artillery hits.Russia’s National Guard said it was strengthening defences at the Kursk nuclear power station, some 60km from the border with Ukraine.The Chief of Russia’s General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, said up 1,000 combatants from Ukraine had been involved in the offensive, and that Russian forces had stopped them penetrating deeper into the Kursk region.“The operation will end with the enemy’s defeat and them being pushed back to the state border,” he told Putin in a televised meeting.Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the incursion, the most serious cross-border attack in months.President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday thanked Ukrainian troops for their “bravery” in an evening address published on social media.“The more pressure we put on Russia...the closer we will get to peace. A just peace through just force,” he said, without making any specific reference to the fighting in Kursk. A security source in Ukraine told AFP that Kyiv had struck a Russian helicopter using a drone on Tuesday over the Kursk region, but did not explicitly link it to the incursion.Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak also alluded to the attacks. Moscow had used its “border regions with impunity for massive air and artillery attacks”, he said on social media.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688214/international/thousands-evacuated-as-russia-fights-major-ukrainian-border-incursion