WASHINGTON: US pop queen Jennifer Lopez is set to campaign for Kamala Harris at a glitzy rally in Las Vegas, the vice president’s team announced Tuesday, as the Democrat seeks to turn out Hispanic voters in the home stretch of a nailbitingly close election.
The 55-year-old singer and “Unstoppable” actress — J-Lo to her army of fans — was among a number of stars of Puerto Rican heritage who publicly backed Harris after a speaker at her Republican opponent Donald Trump’s weekend rally called the US territory a “floating island of garbage.”
Lopez is not performing at Thursday’s event — the music will be provided by Mexican pop-rock band Mana — but she will drive home the importance of voting in the crucial swing state of Nevada, the campaign said, as well as explain why she is endorsing Harris.
In a campaign notable for its star-studded rallies and celebrity endorsements, Harris has so far earned the backing of music stars Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Lizzo, Stevie Wonder, Pink and Bruce Springsteen.
The rally is part of a series of “When We Vote We Win” events in key battleground states featuring recording artists focused on turning out the few remaining undecided voters, with polling showing a neck-and-neck race.
“These artists and public figures are trusted voices for millions of Americans, who listen to their music, follow them on social media, or otherwise are inspired by them,” the campaign said in a statement.
“The Harris-Walz campaign believes that by using their voices to lay out the stakes of this election, it will further encourage and mobilize people to go vote.”
Lopez, singer Ricky Martin and reggaeton star Bad Bunny — all of whom boast social media followings in the tens of millions — gave Harris a boost this week by sharing her campaign video targeting voters in Puerto Rico on social media.
Jennifer Lopez to boost Harris at glitzy Las Vegas event
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Jennifer Lopez to boost Harris at glitzy Las Vegas event
Climate change is making temperatures deadlier, food less reliable, experts warn
- The study’s authors urged the upcoming UN climate summit, COP29, to direct climate finance toward public health
Climate change, driven by fossil fuel emissions, is raising temperatures to dangerous new heights, while also worsening drought and food security, a new report by doctors and health experts warned on Tuesday.
The record temperatures of 2023 — the hottest year on record — meant the average person experienced 50 more days of dangerous temperatures than they would have without climate change, according to the Lancet Countdown, an annual report based on work by dozens of experts, academic institutions, and UN agencies, including the World Health Organization.
Especially vulnerable are the elderly, with the number of heat-related deaths in people over 65 last year reaching a level 167 percent above the number of such deaths in the 1990s. Without climate change, researchers would have expected that number to rise by 65 percent from the 1990s, the report said.
“Year on year, the deaths directly associated with climate change are increasing,” said Marina Belén Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown.
“But heat is also affecting not just the mortality and increasing deaths, but also increasing the diseases and the pathologies associated with heat exposure,” she said.
For example, people who exercise outdoors are increasingly at risk, she said. Companies are facing limited capacity for working outdoors.
In fact, last year’s extreme heat cost the world an estimated 512 billion potential labor hours, worth hundreds of billions of dollars in potential income, the report said.
“Similar to what we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is key workers who tend to be most exposed and unable to shield as easily during heatwaves, such as those working in one of our many hospitals without air conditioning, or outdoor construction workers,” said data scientist Nathan Cheetham at King’s College London in a statement. Cheetham was not involved in the study.
Climate change is also making food more unreliable, the authors warned.
With up to 48 percent of the world’s land area facing extreme drought conditions last year, the researchers said, about 151 million more people would be experiencing food insecurity as a result, compared with the years 1981-2010.
Extreme rainfall last year also affected roughly 60 percent of lands, unleashing floods and raising risks from water contamination or infectious disease.
The study’s authors urged the upcoming UN climate summit, COP29, to direct climate finance toward public health. The COP29 talks begin Nov. 11 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called on countries to “cure the sickness of climate inaction” by slashing fossil fuel use and emissions in order “to create a fairer, safer, and healthier future for all.”
Canada alleges Indian minister Amit Shah behind plot to target Sikh separatists
- Canada in mid-October expelled Indian diplomats, linking them to the 2023 murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil
The Canadian government alleged on Tuesday that Indian Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah, a close ally of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was behind the plots to target Sikh separatists on Canadian soil.
The Indian government has dismissed Canada’s prior accusations as baseless, denying any involvement.
The Washington Post newspaper first reported that Canadian officials alleged Shah was behind a campaign of violence and intimidation targeting Sikh separatists in Canada.
Canadian Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister David Morrison said to a parliamentary panel on Tuesday that he told the US-based newspaper that Shah was behind the plots.
“The journalist called me and asked if it (Shah) was that person. I confirmed it was that person,” Morrison told the committee, without providing further details or evidence. The High Commission of India in Ottawa and the Indian foreign ministry had no immediate comment.
India has called Sikh separatists “terrorists” and threats to its security. Sikh separatists demand an independent homeland known as Khalistan to be carved out of India. An insurgency in India during the 1980s and 1990s killed tens of thousands.
That period included the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that left thousands dead following the assassination of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards after she ordered security forces to storm the holiest Sikh temple to flush out Sikh separatists.
Canada in mid-October expelled Indian diplomats, linking them to the 2023 murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. India also ordered the expulsion of Canadian diplomats.
The Canadian case is not the only instance of India’s alleged targeting of Sikh separatists on foreign soil.
Washington has charged a former Indian intelligence officer, Vikash Yadav, for allegedly directing a foiled plot to murder Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a dual US-Canadian citizen and Indian critic in New York City.
The FBI warned against such a retaliation aimed at a US resident. India has said little publicly since announcing in November 2023 it would formally investigate the US allegations.
The accusations have tested Washington and Ottawa’s relations with India, often viewed by the West as a counterbalance to China.
Russia expanded use of torture after Ukraine invasion: UN expert
- Katzarova, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Russia, noted that the use of torture had been documented in the country for the past three decades
UNITED NATIONS, United States: Russia has expanded its use of torture at home and abroad since invading Ukraine, with the practice notably used to clamp down on dissent during the war, a report by a UN rights expert said Tuesday.
Torture has become “a tool for stifling the civic space, for silencing all anti-war or dissidents, anybody who disagrees with the policies and the Russian authorities,” report author Mariana Katzarova told reporters.
Katzarova, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Russia, noted that the use of torture had been documented in the country for the past three decades.
“But now, after the full-scale invasion, it has become a concerted strategy,” she said.
Those subjected to torture have included conscientious objectors to the draft as well as mobilized men and regular troops who have refused orders to fight against Ukraine, according to the report, which was presented to the UN General Assembly.
At least 15 “unofficial places of detention” exist near the conflict’s frontlines, where “hundreds are kept and subjected to torture to punish them,” the report said.
It noted that Katzarova’s requests to meet with Russian authorities and visit the country “have remained unanswered.”
The findings were based on a review of Russian legislation, reports and analysis from human rights groups, Russian defense lawyers and testimony from survivors, including LGBTQ Russians and detained Ukrainians who have since been released back to their home country.
“Russian authorities rarely face accountability. This impunity has contributed to its ‘normalization’ in society and the ‘legitimization’ of a culture of violence,” it said.
The report also documented a variety of methods used by law enforcement, prison guards and inmates acting under government orders.
“Brutal methods... are designed not just to punish but also to purposefully humiliate and inflict lasting injuries, both psychological and physical, or even death.”
The report also criticized prolonged solitary confinement, such as that inflicted upon opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who died in prison earlier this year.
Trump says his New York rally marked by crude and racist insults was ‘an absolute lovefest’
PALM BEACH, Florida: Urged by some allies to apologize for racist comments made by speakers at his weekend rally, Donald Trump took the opposite approach on Tuesday, saying it was an “honor to be involved” in such an event and calling the scene a “lovefest” — the same term he has used to describe the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
Trump gathered supporters and reporters to his Mar-a-Lago resort two days after a massive rally at Madison Square Garden featured a number of crude remarks by various speakers, including a set by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in which he joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.” Some of Trump’s top Republican allies have condemned the remarks, and his campaign took the rare step of publicly distancing itself from Hinchcliffe’s joke, though not the other comments.
But given the opportunity to apologize at events and in an interview, Trump instead leaned in. Speaking at his Florida resort, he said that “there’s never been an event so beautiful” as his Sunday rally in his hometown of New York.
“The love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he said. “It was like a lovefest, an absolute lovefest. And it was my honor to be involved.”
With just a week before Election Day, some Trump allies have voiced alarm that the rally, which was supposed to highlight the Republican presidential nominee’s closing message in grand New York fashion, has instead served as a distraction and even a liability, given the electoral importance of Puerto Ricans who live in Pennsylvania and other key swing states.
At a roundtable outside Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon, Trump got some praise from a retired occupational therapist from Puerto Rico, Maribel Valdez. “Puerto Rico stands behind you and Puerto Rico loves you,” Valdez told him.
Trump thanked her and reminisced about his administration’s efforts to help the island after storms. “I think no president has ever done more for Puerto Rico than I have,” responded Trump, who delayed the release of billions of dollars in assistance to repair years-old hurricane damage in Puerto Rico until shortly before the 2020 election.
Trump was set to hold a rally later in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a large Hispanic population, where Puerto Rico’s shadow US senator, Zoraida Buxo, will join him, according to a campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement.
Buxo, who does not have a vote in the Senate because Puerto Rico is not a state, voiced her support for Trump in a post on the social media site X. She said Trump is the “strong leader” that Puerto Rico needs.
The fallout from the Madison Square Garden event risked highlighting voters’ concerns about Trump’s rhetoric and penchant for controversy in the closing stretch as both campaigns are scrambling for votes. Speakers at the rally also made racist comments targeting Latinos, Black people, Jews and Palestinians, along with sexist insults directed at Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
On Tuesday, Trump tried to move past the controversy and pivot back to Harris, lashing his rival’s record on the border and inflation, saying that, “on issue after issue, she broke it” and “I’m going to fix it and fix it very fast.”
Trump, who took no questions at the event, accused Harris of running a “campaign of absolute hate,” and claimed she keeps “talking about Hitler and Nazi, because her record’s horrible.”
Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff said in recent interviews with The New York Times and The Atlantic that the former president praised Adolf Hitler while in office and suggested that the Nazi leader “did some good things.”
In an interview with ABC News earlier Tuesday, Trump tried to distance himself from Hinchcliffe but did not denounce what he said.
“I don’t know him. Someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” Trump said, according to the network, insisting that he hadn’t heard Hinchcliffe’s comments. When asked what he made of them, Trump “did not take the opportunity to denounce them, repeating that he didn’t hear the comments,” ABC reported.
The comments have drawn outrage from Puerto Rican leaders.
The archbishop of Puerto Rico called on Trump to disavow them, saying it wasn’t enough for the campaign to say the joke didn’t reflect Trump’s views. The president of Puerto Rico’s Republican Party called the “poor attempt at comedy” by Hinchcliffe “disgraceful, ignorant and totally reprehensible.”
In Pennsylvania, where Trump was to campaign later Tuesday, the Latino eligible voter population has nearly tripled since 2000. More than half of those are Puerto Rican eligible voters.
Angelo Ortega, a longtime Allentown resident and former Republican who’s planning to vote for Harris this time, said he couldn’t believe what he’d heard about Trump’s rally.
“I don’t know if my jaw dropped or I was just so irritated, angry. I didn’t know what to feel,” said Ortega, who was born in New York but whose father came from Puerto Rico. Ortega has been campaigning for Harris and said he knows of at least one Hispanic GOP voter planning to switch from Trump to Harris as a result of Hinchcliffe’s comments.
“They’ve had it. They’ve had it. They were listening to (Trump), but they said they think that that was like the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Ortega, a member of the Make the Road PA advocacy group.
Still, some voters of Puerto Rican descent weren’t fazed. Maricelis Torres, 24, a waitress studying to be a radiologist, waited to get into the Allentown rally and said she and her family laughed at Hinchcliffe’s joke.
“If you don’t understand humor, then that’s what I’m saying, people are way too soft these days,” said Torres, whose father is from the island.
The Harris campaign has released an ad that will run online in battleground states targeting Puerto Rican voters and highlighting the comedian’s remarks.
Five killed in attack on dam construction site in Pakistan’s Balochistan
- Baloch Liberation Army (BLA): ‘We accept responsibility for killing seven informers and instrumentalists in Panjgur, Kech and Quetta’
- Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif: ‘Such cowardly attacks will not deter the government’s resolve to develop Balochistan’
QUETTA, Pakistan: Five people were killed in an attack by armed men on the construction site of a small dam in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, officials said on Tuesday, underscoring a worsening security situation in the mineral-rich area.
The province has seen an increase in strikes by separatist ethnic militants. This month, 21 miners working at privately run coal mines were killed in an attack.
“We accept responsibility for killing seven informers and instrumentalists in Panjgur, Kech and Quetta,” said separatist militant group the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) in a statement emailed to journalists.
A decades-long insurgency in Balochistan by separatists has led to frequent attacks against the government, army and Chinese interests in the region to press their demands for a share in regional resources.
China runs a strategic deepwater port as well as a gold and copper mine in the province and has been working with Islamabad to improve infrastructure in the underdeveloped province. Several attacks have targeted migrant workers employed by smaller, privately operated mines.
The five dead, and two wounded, all worked at the construction site in Panjgur, spokesperson for the Balochistan government Shahid Rind said in a statement, saying the attack took place late at night.
A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said close to a dozen assailants were involved in the attack and that the victims were watching over equipment at the dam construction site on behalf of a private contractor.
“Such cowardly attacks will not deter the government’s resolve to develop Balochistan,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement.
Besides the separatists, the region is also home to Islamist militants, who have become resurgent since 2022 after revoking a ceasefire with the government.
