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Harris assails Trump, promises compassion over chaos in debut rally

Vice President Kamala Harris waves before boarding Air Force Two as she departs on campaign travel to Milwaukee, Wisc., Tuesday, July 23, 2024 at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. (AP)
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Updated 23 July 2024
Reuters
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Harris assails Trump, promises compassion over chaos in debut rally

  • Harris led Trump 44 percent to 42 percent among registered voters in the national Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted on Monday and Tuesday
  • Her rise dramatically reshapes an election in which many voters were unhappy with their options
Updated 23 July 2024
Reuters

MILWAUKEE: Vice President Kamala Harris assailed Donald Trump on Tuesday at her first campaign rally since replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate, while a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll showed her taking a marginal lead over Trump, the Republican nominee.
“In this campaign, I promise you I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week,” she told a cheering crowd of several thousands at West Allis Central High School in a Milwaukee suburb in Wisconsin, a crucial battleground state in the Nov. 5 election.
“Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate?” she asked.
Harris led Trump 44 percent to 42 percent among registered voters in the national Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted on Monday and Tuesday after Biden dropped out of the contest on Sunday and endorsed Harris as his successor.
Previous surveys taken before Biden’s exit found Harris and Trump tied at 44 percent a week ago and Trump ahead of her by a percentage point at the beginning of the month.
In all three cases, the difference was within the poll’s 3-point margin of error, but the results could signal some limited movement in Democrats’ direction — and may suggest that Harris’ elevation to the top of the ticket blunted whatever momentum Trump may have gained from last week’s Republican National Convention, also in Milwaukee.
Harris swiftly consolidated her party’s support after Biden, 81, abandoned his reelection campaign under pressure from members of his party who worried about his ability to beat Trump or to serve for another four-year term.
She wrapped up the nomination on Monday night by winning pledges from a majority of the delegates who at next month’s party convention will determine the nominee, the campaign said.
Most Democratic lawmakers have lined up behind her candidacy, including the party’s leaders in the Senate and House, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who endorsed Harris on Tuesday at a joint press conference.
An unofficial survey of delegates by the Associated Press showed Harris with more than 2,500 delegates, well over the 1,976 needed for the nomination. Delegates could still change their minds, but no one else received any votes in the AP survey; 54 delegates said they were undecided.
Harris’ rise dramatically reshapes an election in which many voters were unhappy with their options.
Saddled with concerns that included his health and persistent high prices crimping Americans’ household finances, Biden had been losing ground against Trump in opinion polls, particularly in the competitive states that are likely to decide the election, including Wisconsin and the Sun Belt states of Arizona and Nevada.

CAMPAIGN RESET
The Wisconsin event offered another opportunity for Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as vice president, to reset the Democrats’ campaign.
Harris has been raking in campaign contributions. Her campaign said on Monday she had raised $100 million since Sunday, topping the $95 million that the Biden campaign had in the bank at the end of June.
While a wave of senior Democrats have lined up behind Harris, the racial justice group Black Lives Matter on Tuesday challenged the party’s swift move.
It called for a national virtual snap primary ahead of the Aug. 19-22 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the party will formally nominate its candidate.
“We call for the Rules Committee to create a process that allows for public participation in the nomination process, not just a nomination by party delegates,” Black Lives Matter said in a statement to Reuters.
RUST BELT PUSH
Biden said on X that he would deliver a speech on Wednesday night from the Oval Office explaining his decision to end his campaign. He was returning to Washington on Tuesday after spending several days in isolation at home with COVID-19. The president has tested negative and no longer has symptoms, the White House doctor said in a letter on Tuesday.
Biden’s dramatic exit followed Trump’s narrow survival of a July 13 assassination attempt that raised questions about security failures in the US Secret Service. The agency director, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned on Tuesday after numerous lawmakers called for her to step down.
Trump and his allies have tried to tether Harris to some of Biden’s more unpopular policies, including his administration’s handling of the surge of migrants at the southern border with Mexico.
“Kamala Harris’ dismal record is one of complete failure and utter incompetence. Her policies are Biden’s policies, and vice versa,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said.
Wisconsin is among a trio of Rust Belt states, along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, that are critical for Democrats’ chances of defeating Trump.
“There are independents and young people who did not like their choices, and Harris has a chance to win them,” said Paul Kendrick, executive director of the Democratic group Rust Belt Rising.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, a Democrat, said Harris could also help bring back crucial Black voters.
“Many of them didn’t come along because they were distracted by his (Biden’s) age, distracted by his appearance,” he said.
Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison, in an interview on NBC’s “Today” program, said the party had to move quickly to get the ticket on ballots in all 50 states, and that the vice presidential pick needed to be made by Aug. 7.
“This process is going to be fair, transparent, open but it’s going to be fast,” Harrison said.
Potential running mates include Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, according to people familiar with internal policy discussions.

Topics: US US Vice President Kamala Harris Donald Trump

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Typhoon Yagi kills 2 and injures 92 in China’s Hainan as it makes its way to northern Vietnam

Updated 5 sec ago
AP
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Typhoon Yagi kills 2 and injures 92 in China’s Hainan as it makes its way to northern Vietnam

  • Vietnamese authorities describe Yagi as ‘one of the most powerful typhoons in the region over the past decade’
  • China’s national meteorological authorities said Yagi was the strongest autumn typhoon to have landed in China
Updated 5 sec ago
AP
HONG KONG: A powerful typhoon killed two people and left at least 92 injured in the southern Chinese island of Hainan, authorities said Saturday, with heavy rains and winds causing power outages in over 800,000 households.
The typhoon Yagi is currently en route to northern Vietnam over the Gulf of Tonkin Saturday, with Vietnamese authorities describing Yagi as “one of the most powerful typhoons in the region over the past decade.”
The typhoon on Friday afternoon struck Hainan’s Wenchang city, with wind speeds of up to about 245 kph (152 mph) near its center.
China’s national meteorological authorities said Yagi was the strongest autumn typhoon to have landed in China.
Some 420,000 residents were relocated in Hainan prior to the typhoon’s landfall in Hainan. Another half a million people in Guangdong province were evacuated before Yagi made a second landfall in the province’s Xuwen County on Friday night.
Haikou’s meteorological observatory downgraded its typhoon signal from red to orange on Saturday, as the typhoon moved further away from the city.
In Hong Kong, more than 270 people were forced to seek refuge at temporary government shelters on Friday, and more than 100 flights in the city were canceled due to the typhoon. Heavy rain and strong winds felled dozens of trees, and trading on the stock market, bank services and schools were halted.
Yagi was still a storm when it blew out of the northwestern Philippines into the South China Sea on Wednesday, leaving at least 16 people dead and 17 others missing mostly in landslides and widespread flooding and affecting more than 2 million people across the archipelago.
More than 47,600 people were displaced from their homes in Philippine provinces and classes, work, inter-island ferry services and domestic flights were disrupted for days, including in the densely populated capital region, metropolitan Manila.

Without astronauts, Boeing’s Starliner returns to Earth

Updated 55 min 38 sec ago
Reuters
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Without astronauts, Boeing’s Starliner returns to Earth

  • NASA astronauts Wilmore and Williams to return on SpaceX vehicle in February 2025
  • Boeing’s Starliner program faces $1.6 billion in cost overruns since 2016
Updated 55 min 38 sec ago
Reuters

WASHINGTON: Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft landed uncrewed in a New Mexico desert late on Friday, capping a three-month test mission hobbled by technical issues that forced the astronauts it had flown to the International Space Station to remain there until next year.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who became the first crew to fly Starliner in June, remained on the ISS as Starliner autonomously undocked at 6:04 p.m. ET (2204 GMT) on Friday, beginning a six-hour trek to Earth using maneuvering thrusters that NASA last month deemed too risky for a crew.
Starliner returned to Earth seemingly without a hitch, a NASA live stream showed, nailing the critical final phase of its mission.
The spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere at around 11 p.m. ET at orbital speeds of roughly 17,000 miles (27,400 km) per hour. About 45 minutes later, it deployed a series of parachutes to slow its descent and inflated a set of airbags moments before touching down at the White Sands Space Harbor, an arid desert in New Mexico.
Though the mission was intended to be a final test flight before NASA certifies Starliner for routine missions, the agency’s decision last month to keep astronauts off the capsule over safety concerns threw the spacecraft’s certification path into uncertainty, despite the clean return Boeing executed.
Wilmore and Williams, stocked with extra food and supplies on the ISS, will return to Earth on a SpaceX vehicle in February 2025. What was initially supposed to be an eight-day test has turned into an eight-month mission for the crew.
The ISS, a football field-sized science lab some 250 miles (402 km) in space, has seven other astronauts on board who arrived at different times on other spacecraft, including a Russian Soyuz capsule. Wilmore and Williams are expected to continue doing science experiments with their crewmates.
Five of Starliner’s 28 maneuvering thrusters failed with Wilmore and Williams on board during their approach to the ISS in June, while the same propulsion system sprang several leaks of helium, which is used to pressurize the thrusters.
Despite successfully docking on June 6, the failures set off a monthslong investigation by Boeing — with some help from NASA — that has cost the company $125 million, bringing total cost overruns on the Starliner program just above $1.6 billion since 2016, according to a Reuters analysis of securities filings.
Boeing’s Starliner woes have persisted since the spacecraft failed a 2019 test trip to the ISS without a crew. Starliner did a re-do mission in 2022 and largely succeeded, though some of its thrusters malfunctioned.
The aerospace giant’s Starliner woes represent the latest struggle that call into question Boeing’s future in space, a domain it had dominated for decades until Elon Musk’s SpaceX began offering cheaper launches for satellites and astronauts and reshaped the way NASA works with private cFompanies.
Boeing will recover the Starliner capsule after its touchdown and continue its investigation into why the thrusters failed in space.
But the section that housed Starliner’s thrusters — the “service module” trunk that provides in-space maneuvering capabilities — detached from the capsule as designed just before it plunged into Earth’s atmosphere.
The service module bearing the faulty thrusters burned up in the atmosphere as planned, meaning Boeing will rely on simulated tests to figure out what went wrong with the hardware in space.

Topics: China China space

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Schools closed in restive Indian state after rocket attack

Updated 07 September 2024
AFP
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Schools closed in restive Indian state after rocket attack

  • The day before, a rebel group had fired rockets in the state’s Bishnupur district
  • A 78-year-old man was killed in the barrage and six people were wounded
Updated 07 September 2024
AFP

MUMBAI: Schools were ordered shut from Saturday in the restive Indian state of Manipur after a rocket attack by insurgents killed a civilian and wounded six others.
Fighting broke out in the northeastern state more than a year ago between the predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and the mainly Christian Kuki community.
The conflict has simmered since then, splitting previously cohabitating communities along ethnic lines.
A local government notice said all schools in the state would be closed on Saturday, when classes are usually held, to protect the “safety of the students and teachers.”
The day before, a rebel group had fired rockets in the state’s Bishnupur district, an attack that local police attributed to “Kuki militants.”
A police statement said a 78-year-old man was killed in the barrage and six people were wounded.
Officers responding to the attack “were fired upon by suspected Kuki militants but the police team retaliated robustly and repelled the attack,” the statement said.
Local media reports said the elderly man was killed when a rocket hit the residence of the late Mairenbam Koireng Singh, a former chief minister of Manipur.
The Indian Express newspaper, citing an unnamed security source, said that the rockets appeared to be “improvised projectiles” made using “galvanized iron pipes attached to explosives.”
Friday’s attack came days after insurgents used drones to drop explosives in what police called a “significant escalation” of violence in the state.
A 31-year-old woman was killed and six people were wounded in that incident, which police described as an “unprecedented attack” by rebels.
Longstanding tensions between the Meitei and Kuki communities revolve around competition for land and public jobs, with rights activists accusing local leaders of exacerbating ethnic divisions for political gain.

Topics: India

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North Korea sends hundreds more trash balloons south: Seoul’s military

Updated 07 September 2024
AFP
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North Korea sends hundreds more trash balloons south: Seoul’s military

  • North Korea has launched more than 900 trash balloons over the past three days
Updated 07 September 2024
AFP

SEOUL: North Korea has floated hundreds more trash-filled balloons southward, Seoul’s military said Saturday, the latest salvo in the two countries’ tit-for-tat campaigns of provocation and propaganda.
North Korea has launched more than 900 trash balloons over the past three days, including about 190 late Friday, around 100 of which have already landed, mainly in Seoul and northern Gyeonggi province, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
The bags attached to the balloons contained “mostly paper and plastic waste,” the military said, adding they posed no safety risk to the public.
North Korea has sent nearly 5,000 trash-filled balloons south since May, saying they are retaliation for propaganda balloons launched northwards by South Korean activists.
In response, Seoul has suspended a tension-reducing military deal with Pyongyang and restarted some propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers along the border.
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said the balloon barrages were an ineffective propaganda ploy for North Korea.
Kim Yo-jong, leader Kim Jong Un’s sister and a key regime spokesperson, “may think that trash balloons exacerbate political divisions in South Korea, but they do more to tarnish North Korea’s international image,” Easley said.
Residents of the South, however, are “annoyed by the requisite clean-up operations and worry about potential escalation,” he added.
“The most reasonable way out of the current impasse is for Pyongyang to restart diplomacy with Seoul, contingent on South Korean civic groups voluntarily abstaining from balloon launches.”
The most recent launches took place as Japan’s outgoing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was in Seoul for a two-day visit, meeting with South Korean leader Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday.
The two discussed the importance of “cooperation between Korea and Japan and also with the United States, to respond to the North Korean nuclear issue.”
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with the North recently announcing the deployment of 250 ballistic missile launchers to its southern border.

Topics: North Korea South Korea

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Pope urges end to Papua New Guinea tribal conflicts and fair, sustainable extraction of resources

Updated 07 September 2024
AP
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Pope urges end to Papua New Guinea tribal conflicts and fair, sustainable extraction of resources

  • The pope appealed for a sense of civic responsibility and cooperation to prevail, to benefit everyone
  • Francis is on an 11-day, four-nation tour through Southeast Asia and Oceania, the longest and most challenging of his pontificate
Updated 07 September 2024
AP

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea: Pope Francis called Saturday for an end to tribal conflicts that have wracked Papua New Guinea for decades and appealed for equitable development of its natural resources during a visit that also surfaced its problem of violence against women.
Dancers in swishing grass skirts performed for Francis as he opened his first full day in the South Pacific country with a mix of political and church business. He met with the governor general and dignitaries from around the region, and then addressed government authorities before visiting with local priests, nuns and street children.
Francis is on an 11-day, four-nation tour through Southeast Asia and Oceania, the longest and most challenging of his pontificate. He landed on Friday evening in Port Moresby, the capital of the Commonwealth nation, from Jakarta, Indonesia to open the second leg of his journey.
During his speech to government authorities and diplomats, Francis marveled at the diversity of Papua New Guinea’s people – there are some 800 languages spoken here – saying their variety must be “a challenge to the Holy Spirit, who creates harmony amid differences!”

An Indigenous man waits for the arrival of Pope Francis at APEC Haus in Port Moresby on Saturday. (REUTERS)

But he also noted that such diversity has long created conflict here, a reference to the tribal violence over land and other disputes that have long characterized the country’s culture but have grown more lethal in recent years. Francis appealed for a sense of civic responsibility and cooperation to prevail, to benefit everyone.
“It is my particular hope that tribal violence will come to an end, for it causes many victims, prevents people from living in peace and hinders development,” he said.
If people agree to sacrifice their personal interests for the common good, he said, “the necessary forces can be used to improve infrastructure, address the health and educational needs of the population and increase opportunities for dignified work.”
The poor, strategically important Commonwealth nation is home to more than 10 million people, most of whom are subsistence farmers.
Papua New Guinea’s governor general, Bob Bofeng Dadae, referred to the violence in his remarks, calling in particular for the need to protect women and respect their rights. It was a reference to the gender violence that has been normalized in a country where allegations of sorcery are common.
According to UN Women, 60 percent of the country’s women have experienced physical and or sexual violence from an intimate partner at some time in their lives, double the global average. Papua New Guinea ranked 160 out of 161 countries on a UN gender inequality index in 2021.
“We want to acknowledge the role of the woman and air the need for protection,” Bofeng Dadae said. “We also recognize the physical and the spiritual care that the church continues to give to those that are being abused, neglected or rejected by families and communities.”

Pope Francis hands a gift to a traditional dancer as he arrives at APEC Haus in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, on Sept. 7, 2024. (AP)

Francis amended his remarks to pick up on the theme, saying women “are the ones who carry the country forward, they give life, build and grow a country, let us not forget the women who are on the front line of human and spiritual development.”
Francis also called for fair and environmentally sustainable extraction of country’s vast natural resources, which include gold, nickel and natural gas. Disputes over how wealth should be distributed and who is entitled to mining royalties which have often led to conflicts.
Francis, who has written entire encyclicals about the environment, has long insisted that development of natural resources must benefit local people, not just the multinational companies that extract them, and be pursued in an environmentally responsible way to preserve them for future generations.
He made that argument again Saturday, saying Papua New Guinea’s resources “are destined by God for the entire community.”
“Even if outside experts and large international companies must be involved in the harnessing of these resources, it is only right that the needs of local people are given due consideration when distributing the proceeds and employing workers,” he said.
“These environmental and cultural treasures represent at the same time a great responsibility, because they require everyone, civil authorities and all citizens, to promote initiatives that develop natural and human resources in a sustainable and equitable manner,” he said.
Finally, Francis called for a “definitive solution” to the question of Bougainville, an island region whose people voted overwhelmingly to become independent from Papua New Guinea in 2019. The outcome of the nonbinding referendum has not been implemented.
Later Saturday, Francis was visiting with charity workers who care for street children and then meeting with Papua New Guinea’s clergy and religious sisters at a Marian sanctuary. On Sunday, he travels deep into the jungle to meet with Argentine missionaries.
Despite the rigors of the trip and jet lag (Papua New Guinea is eight hours ahead of Rome time), the 87-year-old Francis appeared in relatively good form, though he coughed through his speech. He smiled as he handed out candies to young children dressed in traditional clothes who had performed for him.
Francis is the second pope to visit Papua New Guinea, after St. John Paul II visited first in 1984, then in 1995 to beatify Peter To Rot, a Catholic layman who was declared a martyr for the faith after he died in prison during World War II.
 

Topics: Pope Francis Papua New Guinea

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