Kamala Harris campaign raises $200 million in a week

US Vice President Kamala Harris waves upon arrival at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, July 27, 2024. (Reuters)
US Vice President Kamala Harris waves upon arrival at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, July 27, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 26 August 2024
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Kamala Harris campaign raises $200 million in a week

US Vice President Kamala Harris waves upon arrival at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, July 27, 2024. (Reuters)
  • “In the week since we got started, @KamalaHarris has raised $200 million dollars. 66 percent of that is from new donors,” Harris’ deputy campaign manager said

WASHINGTON: US Vice President Kamala Harris’s election campaign said on Sunday it has raised $200 million and signed up 170,000 new volunteers in the week since she became the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.
President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid on Sunday last week and endorsed Harris for the Nov. 5 vote against Republican former President Donald Trump.
“In the week since we got started, @KamalaHarris has raised $200 million dollars. 66 percent of that is from new donors. We’ve signed up 170,000 new volunteers,” Harris’ deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty, posted on X.
Polls over the past week, including one by Reuters/Ipsos, show Harris and Trump essentially tied, setting the stage for a close-fought campaign over the 100 days left until the election.
Trump’s campaign said in early July that it raised $331 million in the second quarter, topping the $264 million that Biden’s campaign and its Democratic allies raised in the same period. Trump’s campaign had $284.9 million in cash on hand at the end of June while the Democratic campaign had $240 million in cash on hand at the time.
Harris has secured support from a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, likely ensuring she will become the party’s nominee for president next month.
“So our vice president is the presumptive nominee. We will have the official vote on August 1,” Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison told MSNBC on Sunday.
Biden withdrew from the race amid questions about his age and health following a faltering debate performance against Trump in late June. Biden pledged to remain in office as president until his term ends on Jan. 20, 2025.
Harris’ takeover has reenergized a campaign that had faltered badly amid Democrats’ doubts about Biden’s chances of defeating Trump or his ability to continue to govern had he won.
Polls showed that Trump had built a lead over Biden, including in battleground states, after Biden’s disastrous debate performance.
A New York Times/Siena College national poll published Thursday found Harris has narrowed what had been a sizable Trump lead while Trump had a two percentage point lead over her in a Wall Street Journal poll published on Friday. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published on July 23 showed a two point lead for Harris.
Mitch Landrieu, a campaign co-chair, said on MSNBC that Harris “had one of the best weeks that we’ve seen in politics in the last 50 years.”
“This is going to be a very close race,” he said..
Trump’s fundraising surged when he was convicted in late May on felony charges related to a hush-money payment to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election. An assassination attempt against him this month was also expected to spur campaign contributions.


Donald Trump makes surprise ‘spin room’ visit after US presidential debate

Donald Trump makes surprise ‘spin room’ visit after US presidential debate
Updated 2 sec ago
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Donald Trump makes surprise ‘spin room’ visit after US presidential debate

Donald Trump makes surprise ‘spin room’ visit after US presidential debate
PHILADELPHIA: Minutes after being hustled by Kamala Harris during their US presidential debate on Tuesday, Donald Trump appeared in front of reporters to get the last word.
As the debate drew to a close, cries of surprise went up at the entrance to the press room.
Trump had made an unexpected entrance to the “spin room,” where the candidates’ spokespeople and supporters usually hurry to distribute talking points to journalists.
Cameras and microphones in hand, dozens of reporters crowded behind thin ribbons to get as close as possible to the former president.
“What about black voters?” a reporter asked, managing to stand out from the crowd. “I love them. They love me,” the Republican billionaire declared.
Others tried to get his opinion on the 90-minute debate, during which 59-year-old Democratic candidate Harris had launched a relentless attack.
“I thought it was a great debate,” Trump said.
“I thought it was my best performance, actually, but I don’t even view it as a performance,” he added.
“Our country is in decline. We’re a nation in decline. And I thought that when we got that out, she was unable to defend it.”
Trump walked around the room, trailed by reporters, and after fielding a few questions, he finally disappeared behind black curtains.
“The fact that he showed up in the media filing center and spin room at the end, we haven’t seen that in years,” said Aaron Kall, director of debates at the University of Michigan.
“He wants to try to change the subject to something as quickly as possible.”
Both Trump and Harris will be back on the campaign trail on Wednesday, with less than two months left before the election.
They will take part in separate ceremonies to honor the victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Russian lawmaker warns the West over supplies of long-range missiles to Ukraine

Russian lawmaker warns the West over supplies of long-range missiles to Ukraine
Updated 3 min 20 sec ago
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Russian lawmaker warns the West over supplies of long-range missiles to Ukraine

Russian lawmaker warns the West over supplies of long-range missiles to Ukraine
  • Washington and other European states are becoming parties to the war in Ukraine – Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s Duma
  • Sources said last week that the US was close to an agreement to give Ukraine of long range weapons

MOSCOW: Russia will consider the United States and its allies to be parties to the Ukraine war and Moscow will use more powerful weapons if the West allows Ukraine to use long-range weapons for strikes deep into Russia, a senior lawmaker said on Wednesday.
“Washington and other European states are becoming parties to the war in Ukraine,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s Duma, the lower house of parliament, said on Telegram.
Volodin said that the United States, Germany, France, and Britain were becoming parties to the conflict.
“All this will lead to the fact that our country will be forced to respond using more powerful and destructive weapons to protect its citizens,” Volodin said.
US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that his administration was “working that out now” when asked if the US would lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long range weapons in the war.
Sources said last week that the US was close to an agreement to give Ukraine such weapons, but that Kyiv would need to wait several months as the US works through technical issues ahead of any shipment.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Iran had supplied Russia with ballistic missiles in what he said was a “dramatic escalation.” Tehran said the claims were “ugly propaganda.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pleading for Western countries to supply longer-range missiles and to lift restrictions on using them to hit targets such as military airfields inside Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June that he could deploy conventional missiles within striking distance of the United States and its European allies if they allowed Ukraine to strike deeper into Russia with long-range Western weapons.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine’s armed forces.
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 with thousands of troops, triggering the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War.
Putin casts the conflict in Ukraine as part of an existential battle with a declining and decadent West which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine.
The West and Ukraine describe the invasion as an imperial-style land grab by Putin and has vowed to defeat Russia on the battlefield.


Bangladesh ramps up border vigilance as thousands of Rohingya flee Myanmar

Bangladesh ramps up border vigilance as thousands of Rohingya flee Myanmar
Updated 39 min 31 sec ago
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Bangladesh ramps up border vigilance as thousands of Rohingya flee Myanmar

Bangladesh ramps up border vigilance as thousands of Rohingya flee Myanmar
  • The influx of refugees from Myanmar has mounted as fighting escalates between the troops of the ruling junta and the Arakan Army
  • The new arrivals add to more than one million Rohingya refugees already living in overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar district

DHAKA: Bangladesh has ramped up vigilance at its border with Myanmar, with at least 18,000 Rohingya Muslims crossing over in recent months to escape escalating violence in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, officials in Dhaka said.
The influx of refugees from Myanmar has mounted as fighting escalates between the troops of the ruling junta and the Arakan Army, the powerful ethnic militia that recruits from the Buddhist majority.
“Thousands of Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh and many are waiting to cross. The situation is dire,” said a foreign ministry official, who asked not to be named as he was not authorized to talk to media.
The new arrivals add to more than one million Rohingya refugees already living in overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar district after they fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017. They have little hope of returning to Myanmar, where they are largely denied citizenship and other basic rights.
Arrivals have more than doubled from what the government estimated earlier this month, despite Bangladesh repeatedly saying it cannot accept more Rohingya refugees as resources are already stretched thin.
“The vigilance at the border has increased, but managing our 271km (168 miles) border with Myanmar is challenging, especially without a security counterpart on the other side,” said another government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said many Rohingya were desperate and were finding ways to cross into Bangladesh.
The government was yet to make a decision on whether to register those who have entered recently and are living in refugee camps, said the foreign ministry official.
“If we decide to register them, it could open the floodgates, and that’s something we can’t afford,” he said. “But at the same time, how long can we ignore this issue? That’s the real question.”
The head of Bangladesh’s interim government, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, has called for a fast-tracked third-country resettlement of Rohingya as a long-term solution, but the foreign ministry official said progress on resettlement has been limited.
“Around 2,000 people have gone under the resettlement program since it resumed in 2022 after a gap of 12 years,” he said, adding that the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland were among countries taking in refugees.


Hundreds flee after Philippine volcano warning

Hundreds flee after Philippine volcano warning
Updated 11 September 2024
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Hundreds flee after Philippine volcano warning

Hundreds flee after Philippine volcano warning
  • About 300 residents of villages within four kilometers of the Kanlaon volcano crater were evacuated as a precaution
  • Kanlaon’s daily average emission of sulfur dioxide almost tripled to 9,985 tonnes on Tuesday

MANILA: Hundreds of people fled their homes in the Philippines on Wednesday after a volcano spurted harmful gases, an official said, as experts warned of a potential eruption.
About 300 residents of villages within four kilometers of the Kanlaon volcano crater in the center of the country were evacuated on Tuesday as a precaution, the local government of nearby Canlaon City said.
The evacuees have taken temporary shelter at schools and community centers away from the volcano, city information officer Edna Lhou Masicampo said on Wednesday.
“People from villages near the foot of the volcano have been complaining about the strong smell of sulfur,” Masicampo said, adding most residents are farmers.
Classes were suspended and some tourist spots in the city of around 60,000 people were closed on Wednesday due to the volcano warning.
Kanlaon’s daily average emission of sulfur dioxide almost tripled to 9,985 tonnes on Tuesday.
“This is the highest emission from the volcano recorded since instrumental gas monitoring began,” the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said in a statement.
“Current activity may lead to eruptive unrest,” it said, putting residents of the four villages at risk from red hot, swiftly moving ash clouds, “ballistic projectiles, rockfalls and others.”
Rising more than 2,400 meters (nearly 8,000 feet) above sea level on the central island of Negros, Kanlaon is one of 24 active volcanoes in the Philippines.
It has erupted 15 times in the past nine years.
Three hikers were killed in August 1996 due to ash ejection from Kanlaon.
The state volcanology agency raised the alert level for the volcano in June from one to two on a zero-to-five scale, warning more explosive eruptions were possible.
The Philippines is located in the seismically active Pacific “Ring of Fire,” which contains more than half the world’s volcanoes.


Kenya airport strike disrupts flights

Kenya airport strike disrupts flights
Updated 11 September 2024
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Kenya airport strike disrupts flights

Kenya airport strike disrupts flights
  • Kenya Airways warned of delays and possible cancelations of flights for both departing and arriving passengers
  • Strike would continue until the government scraps a plan to lease the airport to India’s Adani Group for 30 years

NAIROBI: Passengers were left stranded at Kenya’s main airport on Wednesday as staff went on strike over a planned takeover by an Indian company.
The walk-out by the Kenyan Aviation Workers Union began at midnight, disrupting flights at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).
Queues of passengers were outside the airport on Wednesday, some sitting on their luggage, and there were lines of cars trying to access the area, AFP reporters said.
The union said the strike would continue until the government scrapped a plan to lease the airport to India’s Adani Group for 30 years in exchange for a $1.85 billion investment.
“The strike is on and all shifts have been suspended,” union leader Moses Ndiema told workers at the airport.
“Adani must go, that is not optional,” he said.
Kenya Airways warned of delays and possible cancelations of flights for both departing and arriving passengers.
Critics say the plan to lease JKIA to Adani will lead to job losses for local staff and rob taxpayers of future airport profits.
Freight and passenger fees from the airport account for more than five percent of Kenya’s GDP.
The Law Society of Kenya and the Kenya Human Rights Commission won a delay on the deal from the High Court on Monday, arguing that it lacked “transparency.”
Kenya’s government has defended the plan as necessary to refurbish JKIA.
It is one of Africa’s busiest hubs, handling 8.8 million passengers and 380,000 tons of cargo in 2022-23, but is often hit by power outages and leaking roofs.
Adani would add a second runway and upgrade the passenger terminal, according to the Kenya Airport Authority.