NEW YORK: Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has told his aides to draw up plans for an independent campaign for the US presidency, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Bloomberg has advised friends and associates that he would be willing to spend at least $1 billion of his own money on a campaign for the November 2016 election, according to the source, who spoke on condition on anonymity to discuss the former mayor’s thinking.
News of Bloomberg mulling a presidential run was first reported Saturday by the New York Times.
Bloomberg, 73, has given himself an early March deadline for entering the race, the source said, after commissioning a poll in December to see how he would fare against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the Republican and Democratic frontrunners.
No third-party candidate has ever won a US presidential election. But Bloomberg, who has close Wall Street ties and liberal social views, sees an opening for his candidacy if Republicans nominate Trump or Texas Senator Ted Cruz and the Democrats nominate Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the source said.
Bloomberg, who has long privately flirted with the idea of mounting a presidential run, served as mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013. He switched his party affiliation from Republican to independent in 2007 and in recent years has spent millions on national campaigns to tighten US gun laws and reform immigration.
One unnamed Bloomberg adviser told the Times the former mayor believes voters want “a non-ideological, bipartisan, results-oriented vision” that has not been offered in the 2016 election cycle by either political party.
A well-financed presidential run by Bloomberg would likely disrupt the dynamics of the election, but the billionaire would face significant hurdles in a race that has been in full swing for nearly a year.
Though no third-party candidate has ever claimed the White House, several previous bids have affected the overall makeup of the race. In 1992 Texas businessman Ross Perot ran as an independent, a decision that some believe helped Democrat Bill Clinton defeat incumbent Republican George H. W. Bush.
Bloomberg earned 13 percent support when facing a hypothetical three-way race against Clinton and Trump, according to a poll of 4,060 registered voters conducted January 14-17 by Morning Consult. Trump and Clinton were virtually tied at 37 and 36 percent, respectively, the survey found.
Bloomberg taking steps toward presidential bid
Bloomberg taking steps toward presidential bid
Moscow says ‘part’ of its diplomatic personnel in Syria evacuated by plane
- His fall from power was a serious setback for Moscow, which was along with Iran the main ally of the former Syrian president and which had intervened militarily in Syria since 2015
MOSCOW: Russia’s foreign ministry said it has evacuated some of its diplomatic staff from Syria Sunday, a week after the fall of Bashar Assad.
“On December 15, the withdrawal of part of the personnel of the Russian (diplomatic) representation in Damascus was carried out by a special flight of the Russian Air Force from the Hmeimim air base” in Syria, the ministry’s crisis situations department said on Telegram.
The ministry said the flight arrived at an airport near Moscow, without specifying how many people were aboard.
The flight also carried members from the diplomatic missions of Belarus, North Korea and Abkhazia, a Moscow-backed separatist region of Georgia, the department said.
“The Russian embassy in Damascus continues to function,” said the press release published on Telegram.
Following an 11-day offensive, a rebel coalition dominated by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) overthrew Assad, who fled to Russia along with his family.
His fall from power was a serious setback for Moscow, which was along with Iran the main ally of the former Syrian president and which had intervened militarily in Syria since 2015.
The fate of Russia’s two military bases in Syria — the Tartus naval base and the Hmeimim military airfield — is now uncertain.
The sites are key to Russia maintaining its influence in the Middle East, in the Mediterranean basin and as far as Africa.
On Wednesday, a Kremlin spokesperson said Moscow was in contact with the new authorities in Syria regarding the bases’ future.
Britain has had ‘diplomatic contact’ with Syria’s HTS group
- “HTS remains a proscribed organization, but we can have diplomatic contact and so we do have diplomatic contact as you would expect,” Lammy said
LONDON: Britain has had diplomatic contact with the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group that swept Syrian President Bashar Assad from power last week, British foreign minister David Lammy said on Sunday.
“HTS remains a proscribed organization, but we can have diplomatic contact and so we do have diplomatic contact as you would expect,” Lammy told broadcasters.
“Using all the channels that we have available, and those are diplomatic and, of course, intelligence-led channels, we seek to deal with HTS where we have to.”
On Saturday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States has had direct contact with HTS.
Israel will close its Ireland embassy over Gaza tensions as Palestinian death toll nears 45,000
- Israeli forces continued Sunday to pound Gaza, including the largely isolated north, as the Palestinian death toll in the war approached 45,000
- Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said the decision was deeply regrettable
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Israel said Sunday it will close its embassy in Ireland as relations deteriorated over the war in Gaza, where Palestinian medical officials said new Israeli airstrikes killed over 46 people including several children.
The decision to close the embassy came in response to what Israel’s foreign minister has described as Ireland’s “extreme anti-Israel policies.” In May, Israel recalled its ambassador to Dublin after Ireland announced, along with Norway, Spain and Slovenia, it would recognize a Palestinian state.
The Irish Cabinet last week decided to formally intervene in South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Israel denies it.
“We are concerned that a very narrow interpretation of what constitutes genocide leads to a culture of impunity in which the protection of civilians is minimized,” said Ireland’s foreign affairs minister, Micheal Martin.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar’s statement on the embassy closure said “Ireland has crossed every red line in its relations with Israel.”
Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris called the decision to close the embassy “deeply regrettable.” He added on X: “I utterly reject the assertion that Ireland is anti-Israel. Ireland is pro-peace, pro-human rights and pro-international law.”
Israeli strikes in Gaza kill a journalist and children
Israeli forces continued Sunday to pound Gaza, including the largely isolated north, as the Palestinian death toll in the war approached 45,000.
A large explosion lit up the southern Gaza skyline on Sunday night. An Israeli airstrike hit a school and killed at least 16 people in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital, where the bodies were taken. There was no immediate Israeli military statement.
In the north, an airstrike hit the Khalil Aweida school in the town of Beit Hanoun and killed at least 15 people, according to nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital where casualties were taken. The dead included two parents and their daughter and a father and his son, the hospital said.
And in Gaza City, at least 17 people including six women and five children were killed in three airstrikes that hit houses sheltering displaced people, according to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.
“We woke up to the strike. I woke up with the rubble on top of me,” said a bandaged Yahia Al-Yazji, who grieved for his wife and daughter. “I found my wife with her head and skull visible, and my daughter’s intestines were gone. My wife was three months pregnant.” His hand rested on a body wrapped in a blanket on the floor.
Israel’s military in a statement said it struck a “terrorist cell” in Gaza City and a “terrorist meeting point” in the Beit Hanoun area.
Another Israeli airstrike killed a Palestinian journalist working for Al Jazeera, Ahmed Al-Lawh, in central Gaza, a hospital and the Qatari-based TV station said.
The strike hit a point for Gaza’s civil defense agency in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp, Al-Awda Hospital said. Also killed were three civil defense workers including the local head of the agency, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital. The civil defense is Gaza’s main rescue agency and operates under the Hamas-run government.
One of the bodies was covered with an orange work jacket marked “ambulance” in English.
“We, the civil defense, are carrying out humanitarian work like in any country in the world. Why are we being targeted?” said colleague Kerem Al Dalou.
Israel’s military said it struck a militant command center embedded in the civil defense offices.
The war in Gaza began after Hamas and other militants from Gaza stormed southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking well over 200 hostage.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed almost 45,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry’s count does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but it says over half of the dead have been women and children.
Most of Gaza’s population of over 2 million has been displaced, often multiple times. The hospitals that are still functioning say they lack medicines, fuel and other basic supplies, while aid groups warn of widespread hunger.
The head of the World Food Program, Cindy McCain, told CBS on Sunday that the UN agency was able to get just two trucks of supplies into Gaza in November, citing insecurity there.
“We need a ceasefire, and we need it now,” she said. “We can no longer sit by and just allow these people to starve to death.”
Swiss court mulls closing Assad uncle war crimes case
- His part in February 1982 massacre in Hama, which left between 10,000 and 40,000 dead, earned him the nickname of “the Butcher of Hama”
- Tribunal said the defendant in his 80s was suffering from ailments preventing him from traveling and taking part in his trial
GENEVA: Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court is considering dropping a case charging an uncle of deposed Syrian president Bashar Assad with alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, newspapers reported on Sunday.
Rifaat Assad is accused by Swiss prosecutors of a long list of crimes, including having ordered “murders, acts of torture, inhumane treatment and illegal detentions” while an officer in the Syrian army.
His part in the notorious February 1982 massacre in the western town of Hama, which left between 10,000 and 40,000 dead, earned him the nickname of “the Butcher of Hama.”
The date of the former vice president’s trial has not been announced.
On November 29, just a few days before his nephew’s overthrow by militants, the Federal Criminal Court informed the victim plaintiffs that “it wished to close the proceedings” into Rifaat Assad, according to the Swiss Sunday newspapers Le Matin Dimanche and SonntagsZeitung.
The tribunal said that the defendant in his 80s was suffering from ailments preventing him from traveling and taking part in his trial, the papers reported.
The federal public prosecutor’s office opened the criminal proceedings in December 2013 following a report by the Swiss non-governmental organization Trial International.
Alerted by Syrians living in Geneva, the rights group traced Assad to a major Geneva hotel.
“Trial confirms the intention expressed by the court to the parties to close the case. But the formal decision has not yet been taken,” Benoit Meystre, the NGO’s legal adviser, told AFP on Sunday.
“If the case is closed, the possibility of an appeal will be examined, and it is highly likely that this decision will be contested,” Meystre said, adding that any appeal would have to be brought by the plaintiffs and not the NGO.
Swiss prosecutors opened the proceedings on the grounds of universal jurisdiction in crimes against humanity and war crimes cases.
Assad went into exile in 1984 after a failed attempt to overthrow his brother, the country’s then-ruler Hafez Assad.
He then presented himself as an opponent of Bashar Assad, traveling to Switzerland and later France.
He returned to Syria after 37 years in exile in France to escape a four-year prison sentence for money laundering and misappropriation of Syrian public funds.
Bangladesh inquiry recommends feared police unit shut over rights abuses
- The police unit was launched in 2004, billed as a way to provide rapid results in a country where the judicial system was slow
- But the unit earned a grim reputation for extrajudicial killings and was accused of supporting ec-PM Hasina’s political ambitions
DHAKA: A Bangladesh commission probing abuses during the rule of toppled leader Sheikh Hasina has recommended a much-feared armed police unit be disbanded, a senior inquiry member said Sunday.
Hasina, 77, fled by helicopter to neighboring India on August 5 as a student-led uprising stormed the prime minister’s palace in Dhaka.
Her government was accused of widespread human rights abuses, including the extrajudicial killing of hundreds of political opponents and the unlawful abduction and disappearance of hundreds more.
The Commission of Inquiry into Enforced Disappearances, set up by the caretaker government, said it found initial evidence that Hasina and other ex-senior officials were involved in the enforced disappearances alleged to have been carried out by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB).
The RAB paramilitary police force was sanctioned by the United States in 2021, alongside seven of its senior officers, in response to reports of its culpability in some of the worst rights abuses committed during Hasina’s 15-year-long rule.
“RAB has never abided by the law and was seldom held accountable for its atrocities, which include enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and abductions,” Nur Khan Liton, a member of the commission, told AFP.
The commission handed its preliminary report to the leader of the interim government Muhammad Yunus late Saturday.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), one of the country’s largest political parties, also called for RAB’s abolition.
Senior BNP leader M. Hafizuddin Ahmed told reporters that the force was too rotten to be reformed.
“When a patient suffers from gangrene, according to medical studies, the only solution is to amputate the affected organ,” he said.
The elite police unit was launched in 2004, billed as a way to provide rapid results in a country where the judicial system was notoriously slow.
But the unit earned a grim reputation for extrajudicial killings and was accused of supporting Hasina’s political ambitions by suppressing dissent through abductions and murders.
