Harris and Trump ride debate buzz into election sprint

Update Harris and Trump ride debate buzz into election sprint
A screen displays the presidential debate hosted by ABC between Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Sep. 10, 2024. (Reuters)
Short Url
Updated 11 September 2024
Follow

Harris and Trump ride debate buzz into election sprint

Harris and Trump ride debate buzz into election sprint
  • Rivals remain neck-and-neck in both nationwide and swing state polling
  • Both candidates declared victory after coming face to face for the first time

NEW YORK: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump set out Wednesday to ride the momentum from their high-stakes White House debate into the two-month final sprint to November as they sought to mop up undecided voters and shake up a presidential race that has ground to a dead heat.

The Democratic vice president and her Republican rival remain neck-and-neck in both nationwide and swing state polling, days before first ballots are mailed out and early in-person voting begins in several key states.

Both candidates declared victory after coming face to face for the first time on the biggest night so far of the campaign — although any boost or dent in support is unlikely to show up in polling for several days.

The ABC News-hosted debate in Philadelphia was punctuated by tense exchanges, although Harris focused on policy while Trump’s answers were littered with wild falsehoods and were often about his past grievances.

“She focused on the major thematic contrasts between her and Trump.... For his part, Trump didn’t hurt himself with his loyal followers but he likely didn’t make any inroads with undecided voters either,” said PR expert Andrew Koneschusky, a former press secretary to Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer.

Republican strategist Liam Donovan said while Harris scored points on Trump, the Republican “largely whiffed” in his efforts to tie his opponent to President Joe Biden’s more unpopular policies, instead accusing her of Marxism “and going on angry tirades about migrants run amok.”

“Don’t expect this debate to have an immediate impact in the polls, but it will surely boost morale at a time when Democrats are getting anxious,” he said.

After replacing Biden as the candidate in July, Harris rode a wave of enthusiasm through the Democratic convention that hugely boosted her popularity and gave her record fundraising numbers.

And with Biden gone, 78-year-old Trump finds himself as the candidate facing questions about his advanced age and mental acuity, with renewed focus on his eccentric and often rambling speeches.

But Harris, 59, had seen her polling momentum begin to stall ahead of the debate.

The Democrat has been reaching to the center, showcasing a parade of anti-Trump Republicans — most recently former vice president Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz, who was thrown out of the House leadership over her opposition to the tycoon.

Trump has been largely appealing to his own base, with apocalyptic warnings about migrant criminals and painting a dark picture of a country in “decline” that only he can save.

In a threatening social media post at the weekend, Trump vowed to prosecute Democratic donors, lawyers and elections officials who engage in behavior he deems “unscrupulous” in November.

He used the debate on Tuesday to double down on his bogus voter fraud claims from 2020.

Trump and Harris could cross paths again Wednesday when they attend ceremonies marking the 23rd anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda. It wasn’t clear if they would come face-to-face.

Trump was also due to talk up his debate performance in the morning on conservative-leaning Fox News.

Harris heads Thursday to North Carolina — one of a handful of closely run states expected to decide the election, where Harris has erased a six-point Trump lead over the last month to draw level — before returning to the key swing state of Pennsylvania on Friday.

Trump is due onstage in Tucson, Arizona on Thursday focusing on “our struggling economy and the rising cost of housing” and will deliver remarks in Las Vegas on Friday on the cost of living.

Harris’s running mate Tim Walz will travel to Michigan and Wisconsin from Thursday to Saturday, as his gaffe-prone Republican opposite number J.D. Vance deals with the fallout from another round of controversial remarks.

The Republican vice presidential nominee — who angered women earlier in the campaign with resurfaced comments about “childless cat ladies” — amplified a false claim Monday that Haitian immigrants are abducting and eating pets in Ohio.

In the debate, Trump repeated the bizarre claim, which has been debunked by local authorities.


Japanese atomic bomb survivor group Nihon Hidankyo wins Nobel Peace Prize

Japanese atomic bomb survivor group Nihon Hidankyo wins Nobel Peace Prize
Updated 5 sec ago
Follow

Japanese atomic bomb survivor group Nihon Hidankyo wins Nobel Peace Prize

Japanese atomic bomb survivor group Nihon Hidankyo wins Nobel Peace Prize
  • The Nobel committee expressed alarm that the international “nuclear taboo” that developed in response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945 was “under pressure“
OSLO: The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to the Japanese anti-nuclear group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha.
The group, founded in 1956, received the honor “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again,” said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.
The co-head of the group expressed surprise at winning the award.
“Never did I dream this could happen,” Toshiyuki Mimaki told reporters in Tokyo with tears in his eyes.
“It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace,” he said.
But “if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won’t end there,” he warned. “Politicians should know these things.”
The Nobel committee expressed alarm that the international “nuclear taboo” that developed in response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945 was “under pressure.”
“This year’s prize is a prize that focuses on the necessity of upholding this nuclear taboo. And we all have a responsibility, particularly the nuclear powers,” Frydnes told reporters.
Moscow has repeatedly brandished the nuclear threat in a bid to dissuade the West from supporting Ukraine, which has been fending off Russia’s invasion since February 2022.
Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin updated his country’s nuclear doctrine, saying the country would allow the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states when they are supported by nuclear powers — a clear reference to Ukraine and its Western backers.
The new rules would also allow Russia to unleash a nuclear response in the event of a “massive” air attack, Putin said.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said the award for Nihon Hidankyo was “extremely meaningful.”
The Nobel committee noted that next year will mark 80 years since two American atomic bombs killed an estimated 120,000 inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and a comparable number later died of burn and radiation injuries.
Frydnes noted that “today’s nuclear weapons have far greater destructive power. They can kill millions and would impact the climate catastrophically.”
“A nuclear war could destroy our civilization,” he warned.
The committee noted that nuclear powers are modernizing and upgrading their arsenals, and new countries “appear to be preparing to acquire nuclear weapons.”
There are currently nine nuclear-armed states, a list that has grown rather than shrunk over the years: the United States, Russia, France, Britain, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and likely Israel.
A report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in June noted that with rising geopolitical tensions in the world, nuclear powers were modernizing their arsenals.
In February 2023, Russia announced it was suspending its participation in the New START treaty, the last remaining arms control treaty between the world’s two main nuclear powers, Russia and the United States.
In January, there were 12,121 nuclear warheads in the world, SIPRI said.
“While the global total of nuclear warheads continues to fall as Cold War-era weapons are gradually dismantled, regrettably we continue to see year-on-year increases in the number of operational nuclear warheads,” SIPRI director Dan Smith said.
This is not the first time the Nobel Peace Prize has honored disarmament efforts.
In 1975, the prize went to Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War won in 1985. In 1995 it went to Joseph Rotblat and his Pugwash movement.
In 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director Mohamed ElBaradei won the prize, and in 2017 it went to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
Last year, the Nobel was awarded to imprisoned women’s rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.
The Nobel Prizes consist of a diploma, a gold medal and a $1 million prize sum.
They will be presented at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist and prize creator Alfred Nobel.

Japanese atomic bomb survivor group Nihon Hidankyo wins Nobel Peace Prize

Japanese atomic bomb survivor group Nihon Hidankyo wins Nobel Peace Prize
Updated 11 October 2024
Follow

Japanese atomic bomb survivor group Nihon Hidankyo wins Nobel Peace Prize

Japanese atomic bomb survivor group Nihon Hidankyo wins Nobel Peace Prize
  • Nihon Hidankyo is a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha

OSLO: The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to the Japanese anti-nuclear group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha.
The group, founded in 1956, received the honor “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again,” said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.
The Nobel committee expressed alarm that the international “nuclear taboo” that developed in response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945 was “under pressure.”
“This year’s prize is a prize that focuses on the necessity of upholding this nuclear taboo. And we have all a responsibility, particularly the nuclear powers,” Frydnes told reporters.
Last year, the prestigious prize went to imprisoned women’s rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.
The prize comes with a gold medal, a diploma and a prize sum of $1 million (913,000 euro).
The award will be presented at a formal ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of the prizes’ creator, Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel.
The Peace Prize is the only Nobel awarded in Oslo, with the other disciplines announced in Stockholm.
On Thursday, South Korean author Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her work exploring the correspondence between mental and physical torment as well as historical events.
The Nobel season winds up Monday with the economics prize.


Pope Francis meets Ukraine’s Zelensky at Vatican

Pope Francis meets Ukraine’s Zelensky at Vatican
Updated 11 October 2024
Follow

Pope Francis meets Ukraine’s Zelensky at Vatican

Pope Francis meets Ukraine’s Zelensky at Vatican
  • Zelensky is traveling across Europe this week to discuss his proposed ‘victory plan’ with region’s leaders
  • Western officials and Zelensky have said the war with Russia is at a critical point

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Vatican on Friday morning for their second face-to-face encounter in four months.
The pope and the Ukrainian leader, who met on the sidelines of the Group of Seven (G7) summit in southern Italy this summer, held private talks at the Vatican’s apostolic palace.
Zelensky is traveling across Europe this week to discuss his proposed “victory plan” with the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Germany, and the head of NATO.
Western officials and Zelensky have said the war with Russia is at a critical point and Ukraine is keen for further support to try to change the balance on the battlefield to put itself in a strong position for eventual peace talks.
The pope drew the ire of Ukrainian officials in March when he suggested they should have the courage of the “white flag” to negotiate an end to the war with Russia. At the time, Zelensky dismissed the pope’s remarks as “virtual mediation” from a distance.
Francis has also criticized Ukrainian lawmakers’ plans to ban activities of a Russia-linked branch of the Christian Orthodox church, which the Ukrainians have accused of spreading pro-Russian propaganda and housing spies.
The pope met privately on Thursday with the leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk. The prelate, who is based in Kyiv, has been in Rome for an ongoing Vatican summit of global bishops.
“I wanted to tell the pope about the disaster of the war and the challenges coming this winter,” Shevchuk told the Vatican’s media outlet.


Blinken says US wants Lebanon solution, not ‘broader conflict’

Blinken says US wants Lebanon solution, not ‘broader conflict’
Updated 11 October 2024
Follow

Blinken says US wants Lebanon solution, not ‘broader conflict’

Blinken says US wants Lebanon solution, not ‘broader conflict’
  • Blinken said the United States would work to support the fragile Lebanese state to build itself up after Hezbollah’s long-held sway

Vientiane: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced hope Friday for a diplomatic solution in Lebanon and preventing a broader conflict, as he backed efforts by the fragile state to assert itself against Hezbollah.
Blinken again said that Israel, which has been carrying out deadly strikes on Lebanon, “has a right to defend itself” against Hezbollah, but voiced alarm over the humanitarian situation.
“We continue to engage intensely to prevent broader conflict in the region,” Blinken told reporters after an East Asia Summit in Laos.
“We all have a strong interest in trying to help create an environment in which people can go back to their homes, their safety and security, kids can go back to school,” he said.
“So Israel has a clear and very legitimate interest in doing that. The people of Lebanon want the same thing. We believe that the best way to get there is through a diplomatic understanding, one that we’ve been working on for some time, and one that we focus on right now.”
He said the United States would work to support the fragile Lebanese state to build itself up after Hezbollah’s long-held sway.
“It’s clear that the people of Lebanon have an interest — a strong interest — in the state asserting itself and taking responsibility for the country and its future,” he said.
He also said that the United States was voicing concern directly to Israel on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“I have real concern about the inadequacy of the assistance that’s getting to them,” Blinken said, adding that the United States has been “very directly engaged with Israel” on the topic.

Concern in Asia about prospect of Middle East conflicts

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said also on Friday there was deep concern in Asia about the plight of people in Gaza and conflict in the Middle East and stressed Washington was doing everything in its power to prevent those from spreading.
Speaking in Laos after the East Asia Summit, Blinken said concerns about the Middle East came up in conversations with other leaders, during which he reiterated Washington was dedicated to diplomacy to control the situation in the face of what he called an Iranian-led axis of resistance.
“The intense focus of the United States, which has been the case going back a year, and doing just that, (is) preventing these conflicts from spreading. And we’re working on that every day,” Blinken told a press conference.
“We’re working very hard through deterrence and through diplomacy to prevent that from happening. There’s also obviously deep concern that we share about the plight of children, women, and men in Gaza, who for now a year have been caught in a terrible crossfire of Hamas’ instigation.”
Blinken also said the United States was directly engaged with Israel to stress how imperative it was that the humanitarian needs of people in Gaza are met.
Israel had the right to defend itself from attacks from Hezbollah, he added, and like the United States, it had a clear and legitimate interest in creating an environment where tens of thousands of displaced people in southern Lebanon can return to their homes.
“It’s also vitally important that in doing that, they focus on making sure that civilians are protected and, again, are not being caught in a terrible crossfire,” he said.
Blinken also gave his reassurances of the US commitment to the Indo-Pacific region, regardless of the outcome of the upcoming US presidential election, adding it was critical to US interests.
“Even with everything else going on, our focus has remained intensely on this region,” he said.
“It’s my belief that basic approach will continue, irrespective of who’s president, because it’s so manifestly in our interest.”
“There’s strong support in Congress for our engagement in the region across parties and across both houses of Congress. And I don’t see that changing,” he said.


Prince and Princess of Wales meet with families of dance class stabbing attack

Prince and Princess of Wales meet with families of dance class stabbing attack
Updated 11 October 2024
Follow

Prince and Princess of Wales meet with families of dance class stabbing attack

Prince and Princess of Wales meet with families of dance class stabbing attack
  • The royal couple spent 90 minutes meeting privately with the families of the victims

LONDON: Prince William and the Princess of Wales on Thursday carried out their first joint public engagement since the end of Kate’s chemotherapy by meeting the bereaved parents of victims of a stabbing rampage in the seaside town of Southport.
The royal couple spent 90 minutes meeting privately with the families of Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, who were killed at the Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29. They also met with their teacher.
The couple later met with emergency workers at a community center, and told them how much their efforts had helped the families of the victims.
“I can’t underestimate how grateful they all are for the support you provided on the day,” Kate said. “On behalf of them, thank you.”
William and Kate sat beside each other on a bench and listened to their stories. Once the cameras left, Kate offered a hug to responders who were struggling to express their feelings.
“You’re all heroes,” William said. “Please make sure you look after yourselves, please take your time, don’t rush back to work.”
The Princess of Wales revealed in March that she was undergoing treatment for cancer, in a stunning announcement that followed weeks of speculation about her health and whereabouts.
The princess disclosed her condition in a video message that followed relentless speculation on social media that began when she was hospitalized for unspecified abdominal surgery in January.
In a recent video, Kate said she had completed chemotherapy, and planned to slowly return to public duties, “undertaking a few more public appearances” in the coming months.
But she acknowledged that the path to recovery would be long and she would “take each day as it comes.”