Arab American community, key unions encouraged by Harris’ choice of Walz as runningmate

Arab American community, key unions encouraged by Harris’ choice of Walz as runningmate
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US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz hold a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on August 7, 2024. (REUTERS)
Arab American community, key unions encouraged by Harris’ choice of Walz as runningmate
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US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz hold a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on August 7, 2024. (REUTERS)
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Updated 08 August 2024
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Arab American community, key unions encouraged by Harris’ choice of Walz as runningmate

Arab American community, key unions encouraged by Harris’ choice of Walz as runningmate
  • Democratic enthusiasm has surged since VP Harris announced her candidacy and picked Walz as her running mate
  • “Picking Walz is another sign of good faith,” says Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan

EAU CLAIRE, Wisconsin: Leaders of the Arab American community and key unions in America’s Midwest on Wednesday said Vice President Kamala Harris made the right choice in picking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as his running mate in the November elections.

Some Democratic Party leaders in Michigan had grown concerned that choosing the wrong running mate could slow the momentum and fracture a coalition that has only recently started to unify following President Joe Biden’s momentous decision to drop out of the race and give way to Harris.

Walz’s addition to the ticket has soothed some tensions, signaling to some leaders that Harris had heard concerns about another leading contender for the vice presidential slot, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who they felt had gone too far in his support for Israel.

“The party is recognizing that there’s a coalition they have to rebuild,” said Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan. “Picking Walz is another sign of good faith.”

Harris and Walz on Wednesday spent their first full day campaigning together across the Midwest, where they got an unusual glimpse of how hotly contested the region will be when they overlapped on a Wisconsin tarmac with Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance.

The Democrats visited Wisconsin and Michigan, hoping to shore up support among the younger, diverse, labor-friendly voters who were instrumental in helping President Joe Biden win the 2020 election.

Harris told the day’s first rally in Eau Claire, “As Tim Walz likes to point out, we are joyful warriors.” Contributing to that feeling, the Harris campaign said it had raised $36 million in the first 24 hours after she announced Walz as her running mate.

The vice president said the pair look on the future with optimism, unlike former President Donald Trump whom she accused of being stuck in the past and preferring a confrontational style of politics — even as she criticized her opponent herself.

“Someone who suggests we should terminate the Constitution of the United States should never again have the chance to sit behind the seal of the United States,” Harris said, her voice rising amid applause from a crowd her campaign said numbered more than 12,000.

 

 

Wednesday’s campaign swing was especially important for her and Walz since Biden’s winning coalition from four years ago has showed signs of fraying over the summer — particularly in Michigan, which has emerged as a focal point of Democratic divisions over Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Addressing the Democrats’ Wisconsin rally ahead of Harris, Walz had some critical words for Vance but trained most of his sharpest words on Trump, saying the former president “mocks our laws, he sows chaos and division among the people and that’s to say nothing of the job he did as president.”

Republicans are trying to portray Harris and Walz as too liberal for the Midwest, with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, saying on a conference call that Walz is “part of the radical, crazy left as is Vice President Harris.”

Surging enthusiasm

But Democratic enthusiasm has surged since Harris announced her candidacy and picked Walz as her running mate.

“We love Joe. Joe has been an incredible president, but he just isn’t the same messenger. And sometimes you need a better messenger,” said Dan Miller, from Pelican Lake, Wisconsin, who attended the Walz-Harris rally. “And that’s Kamala.”

The momentum could be pivotal in Detroit, which is nearly 80 percent Black, where leaders for months had warned administration officials that voter apathy could cost them in a city that’s typically a stronghold for their party.

Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the NAACP Detroit branch, said the excitement in the city now is “mind-blowing.” He likened it to Barack Obama’s first run for president in 2008, when voters waited in long lines to help elect the nation’s first Black president.

Some Democratic leaders in Michigan had grown concerned that choosing the wrong running mate could slow that momentum, however, and fracture a coalition that has only recently started to unify.

Arab American leaders, who hold significant influence in Michigan due to a large presence in metro Detroit, had been vocal in their opposition to Shapiro due to his past comments regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Those leaders specifically pointed to a comment he made earlier this year regarding protests on university campuses, which they felt unfairly compared the actions of student protesters to those of white supremacists. Shapiro, who is Jewish, has criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while remaining a staunch supporter of Israel.

Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab American News and a prominent leader in Michigan’s large Muslim community, was among those who met with White House adviser Tom Perez in Michigan last week.

Although Perez was in the state on official business, he has maintained contact with some Dearborn leaders since he and other top officials traveled there with Biden in an effort to mend ties with the community.

Siblani said he met with Perez for over an hour on July 29 and told him that if Harris chose Shapiro, it would “shut down” future conversations.

“Not picking Shapiro is a very good step. It cracks the door open a little more for us,” said Siblani, who along with Hammoud emphasized that any meaningful conversations must include policy discussions.

Dueling schedules

Trump, too, has put emphasis on appealing to voters in Midwestern states with his choice of Vance an Ohio Republican senator, as his running mate. Vance was even bracketing the Harris-Walz ticket with Michigan and Wisconsin appearances of his own on Wednesday.

The dueling schedules overlapped enough that while Harris was still greeting a group of Girl Scouts who came to see her arrive at Chippewa Valley Regional Airport in Wisconsin, Vance’s campaign plane landed nearby and was taxiing in the distance.

Harris posed for a group picture with the girls around the same time Vance was deplaning, and he began walking over to Air Force Two, trailed by his security detail.

The vice president eventually climbed into her motorcade, and it pulled away before they could interact. Still, that the pair came so close to doing so on a tarmac was unusual given the carefully scripted nature of campaign schedules.

“I just wanted to check out my future plane,” Vance later told reporters, meaning that he’d travel on Air Force Two should he and Trump be elected in November. He also criticized Harris for not taking questions from reporters, though she sometimes answers shouted questions while boarding or leaving her plane for campaign stops.

Vance later told the crowd at his Eau Claire event, “We actually just saw the vice president’s plane” and then joked of reporters traveling with him, “I figured they must be lonely because Kamala Harris doesn’t take any questions.”

“If those people want to call me weird I call it a badge of honor,” Vance said, responding to a moniker Walz used to describe him that made the Minnesota governor notable online in the days before Harris tapped him as her running mate.

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Ghana’s VP and former president among 13 candidates for election

Ghana’s opposition supporters take part in a protest in Accra. (Reuters)
Ghana’s opposition supporters take part in a protest in Accra. (Reuters)
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Ghana’s VP and former president among 13 candidates for election

Ghana’s opposition supporters take part in a protest in Accra. (Reuters)
  • No party has won more than two consecutive terms in government in Ghana’s democratic history

ACCRA: Ghana’s Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and ex-President John Dramani Mahama are among 13 candidates approved for the 2024 presidential poll, the electoral commission said on Friday.
Voters in the West African gold- and cocoa-producing nation head to the polls on Dec. 7 to elect a successor to President Nana Akufo-Addo, who will step down in January after serving the constitutionally mandated eight years.
Former President Mahama, 65, represents the main opposition National Democratic Congress, or NDC, party. Bawumia, a 60-year-old economist and former central banker, was picked by Akufo-Addo’s ruling New Patriotic Party as
its candidate.
No party has won more than two consecutive terms in government in Ghana’s democratic history.
The commission said it had also accepted the candidacies of Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen, a former trade and industry minister who resigned from the ruling party to stand as an independent, Nana Kwame Bediako, a businessman competing for the first time for the top job, and Nana Akosua Frimpomaa, one of two women in the race.
On Tuesday, Mahama’s NDC party held nationwide protests against alleged irregularities, saying the electoral commission had illegally transferred voters to different voting stations without their knowledge.
The electoral commission said it would review a petition submitted by the party at the end of the demonstrations and provide a response in the
coming days.
The allegations dent the electoral authority’s image when public confidence is low.
A July survey by pan-African research group Afrobarometer showed trust in Ghana’s electoral commission at a historic low since confidence polls started in 1999.

 


Missing Kenyans freed as rights groups blame security forces

Missing Kenyans freed as rights groups blame security forces
Updated 3 min 14 sec ago
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Missing Kenyans freed as rights groups blame security forces

Missing Kenyans freed as rights groups blame security forces
  • The Independent Police Oversight Authority has said it was looking into multiple complaints of unlawful arrests and abductions in the wake of large-scale anti-government protests that broke out in Kenya in June

NAIROBI: Three Kenyans at the heart of a high-profile abduction case have been freed, rights groups said on Friday, accusing security forces of keeping them captive for weeks after they took part in anti-government protests.
The three were allegedly abducted by men identifying themselves as police on Aug. 19 in Kitengela, some 30 km south of the capital Nairobi.
Images on social media showed two of the men, looking shaken, following their release late Thursday.
“Our partners have confirmed their release,” said Cornelius Oduor, of the Kenyan Human Rights Commission, said.
“(The images) clearly shows that the men were in distress ... It points to the fact that they have been in captivity.”
There has been no confirmation of where Bob Njagi, Aslam Longton and his brother Jamil Longton were held.
But Oduor said: “We strongly believe that they were taken by security agents of Kenya.”
The two brothers were dropped near the capital, according to tweets from the Kenyan Law Society, while Njagi presented himself to a nearby police station.
The case has dominated the Kenyan news in recent days after a court in Nairobi held the acting police chief, Gilbert Masengeli, in contempt for failing to appear to answer questions about the disappearance of the three men.
Having been given seven days to attend court or face a six-month prison sentence, Masengeli made a last-minute appearance on Friday and apologized for his absence, thus avoiding the conviction.
“We believe (the men’s release) was intended to provide immediate grounds for (Masengeli) to challenge his conviction,” said Oduor.
While the contempt charge against Masengeli was dropped, the case into the men’s disappearance was set to continue.
The Independent Police Oversight Authority has said it was looking into multiple complaints of unlawful arrests and abductions in the wake of large-scale anti-government protests that broke out in Kenya in June.
More than 60 people died during the protests themselves, leading to the resignation of police chief Japhet Koome.
Previous abduction cases have sparked furious protests in Kenya.
In February 2023, three police officers were handed sentences ranging from 24 years in jail to the death penalty for the brutal murder of rights lawyer Willie Kimani and two other people.
Their bodies were found wrapped in sacks and dumped in a river outside Nairobi in June 2016.

 


Rotterdam knife attack possibly a terrorist act, prosecutors say

Rotterdam knife attack possibly a terrorist act, prosecutors say
Updated 20 September 2024
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Rotterdam knife attack possibly a terrorist act, prosecutors say

Rotterdam knife attack possibly a terrorist act, prosecutors say
  • The 22-year-old man stabbed his first victim in a parking garage beneath Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge before moving to street level
  • Prosecutors said he had been charged with murder and attempted murder with a terrorist motive

AMSTERDAM: Dutch prosecutors on Friday said a knife-wielding assailant who allegedly stabbed and killed a man and wounded another in Rotterdam on Thursday night may have had a terrorist motive.
The 22-year-old man stabbed his first victim in a parking garage beneath Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge before moving to street level, where he fatally attacked another person, local media reported.
He was subsequently overpowered by bystanders and police and taken into custody.
Prosecutors said he had been charged with murder and attempted murder with a terrorist motive.
“Initial investigation shows the suspect was possibly driven by ideology,” the prosecutors said in a statement, as they said the man had shouted “Allahu Akbar,” which means “God is Greater” in Arabic, several times during the attack.
“But other motives cannot be excluded,” they added.
The victim who was killed was a 32-year-old man from Rotterdam, while the one who was wounded was a 33-year-old man from Switzerland, the prosecutors said.
The suspect lives in Amersfoort, a city located about 80 km (50 miles) from Rotterdam, they said.
De Telegraaf newspaper reported that a personal trainer who had been giving an outdoor class knocked the suspect unconscious with a squat stick that he had broken in two, and other bystanders threw chairs at him.
Witnesses described the suspect as carrying two large knives and targeting random individuals.


Russia charges soldiers with killing pro-Moscow US fighter

Russia charges soldiers with killing pro-Moscow US fighter
Updated 20 September 2024
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Russia charges soldiers with killing pro-Moscow US fighter

Russia charges soldiers with killing pro-Moscow US fighter
  • The authorities did not say what had motivated the soldiers to kill Russell Bentley
  • The Russian Investigative Committee said on Friday it had “established all the persons involved in the death of Russell Bentley and the circumstances of the offenses committed“

MOSCOW: Russia on Friday charged four of its soldiers serving in occupied Ukraine with torturing a US citizen living in Russian-held Donetsk who had fought with pro-Moscow forces since 2014.
It is rare instance for Russia to accuse active soldiers in Ukraine — who are glorified at home — of committing crimes.
The authorities did not say what had motivated the soldiers to kill Russell Bentley, who regularly appeared on pro-Kremlin social media channels, backing Moscow’s full-scale military offensive in Ukraine.
Known as “Texas,” 64-year-old Bentley was declared dead in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk in April. His wife said at the time he had been abducted and killed by Russian troops.
The Russian Investigative Committee said on Friday it had “established all the persons involved in the death of Russell Bentley and the circumstances of the offenses committed.”
It named the four soldiers involved as Vladislav Agaltsev, Vladimir Bazhin, Andrei Iordanov and Vitaly Vansyatsky.
They are accused of “using physical violence and torture, causing the death of a victim by negligence, as well as the concealment of a particularly serious crime by moving the remains of the deceased to another place,” the committee said.
According to the investigation, the soldiers tortured and killed Bentley in Donetsk on April 8.
Two of them then blew up a military car containing his body, before another moved the remains to cover up the crime, investigators said.
Moscow said the soldiers were “familiarising” themselves with the charge before the case is sent to court.
Bentley, from Austin in Texas, had served in the US army in the 1980s.
He often wore a cap, styled on Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, with a red badge bearing hammer and sickle.


Ukraine joins NATO drill to test anti-drone systems

Ukraine joins NATO drill to test anti-drone systems
Updated 20 September 2024
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Ukraine joins NATO drill to test anti-drone systems

Ukraine joins NATO drill to test anti-drone systems
  • The drills at a Dutch military base tested cutting-edge systems to detect and counter drones and assessed how they work together
  • The 11-day exercise ended with a demonstration of jamming and hacking drones in a week when their critical role in the Ukraine war was demonstrated once again

VREDEPEEL, Netherlands: NATO concluded a major anti-drone exercise this week, with Ukraine taking part for the first time as the Western alliance seeks to learn urgently from the rapid development and widespread use of unmanned systems in the war there.
The drills at a Dutch military base, involving more than 20 countries and some 50 companies, tested cutting-edge systems to detect and counter drones and assessed how they work together.
The 11-day exercise ended with a demonstration of jamming and hacking drones in a week when their critical role in the Ukraine war was demonstrated once again.
On Wednesday, a large Ukrainian drone attack triggered an earthquake-sized blast at a major Russian arsenal. The following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was ramping up drone production tenfold to nearly 1.4 million this year.
The proliferation of drones in the war – to destroy targets and survey the battlefield – has prompted NATO to increase its focus on the threat they could pose to the alliance.
“NATO takes this threat very, very seriously,” said Matt Roper, chief of the Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center at the alliance’s technology agency.
“This is not a domain we can afford to sit back and be passive on,” he said at the exercise site, Lt. Gen. Best Barracks in the east of The Netherlands.
Experts have warned NATO that it needs to catch up quickly on drone warfare.
“NATO has too few drones for a high-intensity fight against a peer adversary,” a report from the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank declared last September.
“It would be severely challenged to effectively integrate those it has in a contested environment.”

THREAT EVOLUTION
The drills that wrapped up on Thursday — complete with ice cream for onlookers provided by a radar company — were the fourth annual iteration of the exercise.
Claudio Palestini, the co-chair of a NATO working group on unmanned systems, said the exercise had adapted to trends such as the transformation of FPV (first-person view) drones — originally designed for civilian racers – into deadly weapons.
“Every year, we see an evolution of the threat with the introduction of new technology,” he said. “But also we see a lot of capabilities (to counter drones) that are becoming more mature.”
In a demonstration on Thursday, two small FPV drones whizzed and whined at high speed through the blue sky to dart around a military all-terrain vehicle before their signal was jammed.
Such electronic warfare is widespread in Ukraine. But it is less effective against long-range reconnaissance drones, a technology developer at Ukraine’s defense ministry said.
The official, giving only his first name of Yaroslav for security reasons, said his team had developed kamikaze drones to destroy such craft – a much cheaper option than firing missiles, which Ukraine had previously done.
“You need to run fast,” he said of the race to counter the impact of drones. “Technology which you develop is there for three months, maybe six months. After, it’s obsolete.”