NEW YORK: Facing thousands of cheering supporters in the nation’s largest city, Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren on Monday decried President Donald Trump as “corruption in the flesh” and outlined her plans to root out corruption in the White House, Congress and courts.
“Corruption has put our planet at risk. Corruption has broken our economy. And corruption is breaking our democracy,” said Warren, a Massachusetts senator who has emerged as a leading presidential contender.
While aggressive, the message was a familiar one. Warren has embraced corruption as a central campaign theme from the beginning of her 2020 presidential bid. But rarely has Warren addressed such a crowd with such a symbolic backdrop.
The crowd — which exceeded 20,000 people, according to the Warren campaign — filled almost the entirety of the 10-acre (4-hectare) Washington Square Park, wrapping around a massive fountain and clogging the pathways that connect the street chess games to the classrooms of New York University to the giant marble arch the downtown park is best known for.
It was a younger audience, racially diverse and packed with women. One of the biggest applause lines of the night: “We’re not here tonight because of famous arches or famous men. In fact, we’re not here because of men at all.”
The event was set close to the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire, which killed more than 140 workers in 1911.
She framed those deaths as the direct result of corruption. Many women died because factory owners neglected safety features to save money, with the implicit support of local elected officials who declined to intervene.
Warren charged that the same thing is happening today.
“Giant corporations have bought off our government,” she said.
Specifically, her anti-corruption plan would “end lobbying as we know it” by instituting a lifetime ban on members of Congress and White House Cabinet secretaries from ever becoming lobbyists. At the same time, corporate lobbyists would be blocked from working for the federal government.
Both practices are common today.
She also would prohibit federal judges from avoiding misconduct investigations by leaving their posts, prevent courts from sealing settlements in public health and safety cases and ban class-action waivers for all cases involving employment, consumer protection, antitrust and civil rights.
And taking direct aim at issues involving the Trump administration, Warren would require candidates for public office to post their tax returns online. Presidents, Cabinet secretaries and members of Congress would also be prohibited from owning businesses on the side.
Trump, of course, has refused to release his tax returns years after promising to do so, and the Trump organization continues to do business around the world.
“Donald Trump is corruption in the flesh,” Warren said. “He is sworn to serve the people of the United States, but he serves only himself and his partners in corruption.” Warren noted, however, that Trump is only a symptom of the corruption that has infected the US political and economic systems.
Warren has long argued that the nation’s modern government only works for “the wealthy and the well-connected” like big energy, health care and insurance companies that employ lobbyists to advance their priorities over the best interests of ordinary citizens.
She wrote that popular policies championed by the Democratic Party’s progressive wing — and many in its crowded field of presidential hopefuls — like universal child care, an overhaul of the federal criminal justice system, gun reform and plans to promote affordable housing have been “stymied because giant corporations and billionaires who don’t want to pay taxes or follow any rules use their money and influence to stand in the way.”
Warren’s campaign noted that she already proposed a series of anti-corruption measures in Congress last year, but it says the proposal released Monday goes farther.
Warren has emerged as a central player in the broader fight for the direction of the Democratic Party in the age of Trump.
Like her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders, Warren is demanding transformational change that Trump and his allies deride as socialism. Warren and Sanders are up against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, a favorite of the party’s establishment wing.
Warren didn’t identify any of her Democratic opponents by name.
She noted, however, that “too many politicians in both parties have convinced themselves that playing the money-for-influence game is the only way to get things done.”
Warren doesn’t participate in high-dollar fundraising events as a 2020 candidate, though she did before launching her presidential campaign.
On Monday, looking out at the swelling crowd, Warren noted that she typically takes selfies with everyone who wants one at her events.
“Tonight is a little something different,” Warren said.
Elizabeth Warren decries Trump as ‘corruption in the flesh’
Elizabeth Warren decries Trump as ‘corruption in the flesh’
- Warren, a Massachusetts senator, has emerged as a leading Democratic presidential contender
- Warren is demanding transformational change that Trump and his allies deride as socialism
Mali’s army claims arrest of an Daesh group leader
BAMAKO: Mali’s army said Saturday its forces had arrested two men, one of them a leading figure in the Sahel branch of the Daesh group.
The army announced they had also killed several of the group’s fighters during an operation in the north of the country.
A statement from the army said they had arrested “Mahamad Ould Erkehile alias Abu Rakia,” as well as “Abu Hash,” who they said was a leading figure in the group.
They blamed him for coordinating atrocities against people in the Menaka and Gao regions in the northeast of the country, as well as attacks against the army.
Mali has faced profound unrest since 2012 linked both to militants associated with Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, and to local criminal gangs.
The country’s military rulers have broken ties with former colonial power France and turned, militarily and politically, to Russia.
Iran protests Afghan dam project in new water dispute
- The dam in Herat province will store approximately 54 million cubic meters of water, irrigate 13,000 hectares of agricultural land and generate two megawatts of electricity
TEHRAN: Iran’s foreign ministry said on Friday that an upstream dam being built by neighboring Afghanistan on the Harirud River restricts water flow and could be in violation of bilateral treaties.
Water rights have long been a source of friction in ties between the two countries, which share a more than 900-kilometer (560-mile) border.
Esmaeil Baqaei, spokesman for Tehran’s foreign ministry, voiced on Friday “strong protest and concern over the disproportionate restriction of water entering Iran” due to the Pashdan Dam project.
He said in a statement that the Iranian concerns had been communicated “in contact with relevant Afghan authorities.”
“Exploitation of water resources and basins cannot be carried out without respecting Iran’s rights in accordance with bilateral treaties or applicable customary principles and rules, as well as the important principle of good neighborliness and environmental considerations,” Baqaei added.
Abdul Ghani Baradar, Afghanistan’s deputy prime minister for economic affairs, said in a video statement last month that the Pashdan project was “nearing completion and water storage has commenced.”
According to the video, the dam in Herat province will store approximately 54 million cubic meters of water, irrigate 13,000 hectares of agricultural land and generate two megawatts of electricity.
In April, Baradar said the dam was a “vital and strategic project” for Herat province.
The foreign ministry statement on Friday follows remarks by an Iranian water official, similarly criticizing the dam construction.
“The situation has led to social and environmental issues, particularly affecting the drinking water supply for the holy city of Mashhad,” Iran’s second-largest and home to a revered Shiite Muslim shrine near the Afghan border, national water industry spokesman Issa Bozorgzadeh was quoted as saying on Monday by official news agency IRNA.
Harirud River, also known as Hari and Tejen, flows from the mountains of central Afghanistan to Turkmenistan, passing along Iran’s borders with both countries.
In his statement, Baqaei said Iran expects “Afghanistan... to cooperate in continuing the flow of water from border rivers” and to “remove the obstacles created” along their path.
In May 2023, Iran issued a stern warning to Afghan officials over another dam project, on the Helmand River, saying that it violates the water rights of residents of Sistan-Baluchistan, a drought-hit province in southeastern Iran.
Series of Ethiopia earthquakes trigger evacuations
- The earthquakes have damaged houses and threatened to trigger a volcanic eruption of the previously dormant Mount Dofan, near Segento in the northeast Afar region
ADDIS ABABA: Evacuations were underway in Ethiopia Saturday after a series of earthquakes, the strongest of which, a 5.8-magnitude jolt, rocked the remote north of the Horn of Africa nation.
The quakes were centered on the largely rural Afar, Oromia and Amhara regions after months of intense seismic activity.
No casualties have been reported so far.
Ethiopia’s government Communication Service said around 80,000 people were living in the affected regions and the most vulnerable were being moved to temporary shelters.
“The earthquakes are increasing in terms of magnitude and recurrences,” it said in a statement, adding that experts had been dispatched to assess the damage.
The Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission said 20,573 people had been evacuated to safer areas in Afar and Oromia, from a tally of over 51,000 “vulnerable” people.
Plans were underway to move more than 8,000 people in Oromia “in the coming days,” the agency said in a statement.
The latest shallow 4.7 magnitude quake hit just before 12:40 p.m. (0940 GMT) about 33 kilometers north of Metehara town in Oromia, according to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Center.
The earthquakes have damaged houses and threatened to trigger a volcanic eruption of the previously dormant Mount Dofan, near Segento in the northeast Afar region.
The crater has stopped releasing plumes of smoke, but nearby residents have left their homes in panic.
Earthquakes are common in Ethiopia due to its location along the Great Rift Valley, one of the world’s most seismically active areas.
Experts have said the tremors and eruptions are being caused by the expansion of tectonic plates under the Great Rift Valley.
Jimmy Carter’s 6-day funeral begins with a motorcade through south Georgia
- A motorcade with Carter’s flag-draped casket is heads to his hometown of Plains
- The 39th US president died at his home on Dec. 29 at the age of 100
PLAINS, Georgia: Jimmy Carter ‘s long public goodbye began Saturday in south Georgia where the 39th US president’s life began more than 100 years ago.
A motorcade with Carter’s flag-draped casket is heading to his hometown of Plains and past his boyhood home on the way to Atlanta. The procession began at the Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, where former Secret Service agents who protected the late president served as pallbearers. A mournful train whistle filled the clear air as the pallbearers turned to face the hearse for a final goodbye, their hands on their hearts.
The Carter family, including the former president’s four children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, are accompanying their patriarch as his six-day state funeral begins.
The longest-lived US president, Carter died at his home in Plains on Dec. 29 at the age of 100.
Families lined the procession route in downtown Plains, near the historic train depot where Carter headquartered his presidential campaign. Some carried bouquets of flowers or wore commemorative pins bearing Carter’s photo.
“We want to pay our respects,” said 12-year-old Will Porter Shelbrock, who was born more than three decades after Carter left the White House in 1981. “He was ahead of his time on what he tried to do and tried to accomplish.”
It was Shelbrock’s idea to make the trip to Plains from Gainesville, Florida, with his grandmother, Susan Cone, 66, so they could witness the start of Carter’s final journey. Shelbrock said he admires Carter for his humanitarian work building houses and waging peace, and for installing solar panels on the White House.
Carter and his late wife Rosalynn, who died in November 2023, were born in Plains and lived most of their lives in and around the town, with the exceptions of Jimmy’s Navy career and his terms as Georgia governor and president.
The procession will stop in front of Carter’s home on his family farm just outside of Plains. The National Park Service will ring the old farm bell 39 times to honor his place as the 39th president. Carter’s remains then will proceed to Atlanta for a moment of silence in front of the Georgia Capitol and a ceremony at the Carter Presidential Center.
There, he will lie in repose until Tuesday morning, when he will be transported to Washington to lie in state at the US Capitol. His state funeral is Thursday at 10 a.m. at Washington National Cathedral, followed by a return to Plains for an invitation-only funeral at Maranatha Baptist Church.
He will be buried near his home, next to Rosalynn Carter.
Gunmen from Nigeria kill five Cameroonian soldiers, MP says
YAOUNDE: Gunmen from Nigeria have killed at least five Cameroonian soldiers and wounded several others in the village of Bakinjaw on Cameroon’s border with Nigeria, a member of parliament for the district and a traditional leader said on Saturday.
It is the latest in a series of attempts to seize territory in the area.
Aka Martin Tyoga, MP for the district of Akwaya in southwestern Cameroon, where the incident took place, told Reuters the attack happened early on Friday, when hundreds of armed Fulani herdsmen crossed the border from Taraba state in Nigeria to attack a military post.
He said it was a retaliation after Cameroonian soldiers killed several herdsmen the day before.
Agwa Linus, traditional ruler of Bakinjaw, said the attackers also burnt down his home.
“This is not the first time they are attacking — it’s very unfortunate,” he said.
