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WASHINGTON: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with US Vice President Kamala Harris this week during his visit to Washington, an aide to Harris told AFP on Monday.
The White House meeting will be separate from President Joe Biden’s planned sit-down with Netanyahu, the aide said, and comes after Harris looks set to replace Biden atop the Democratic ticket following his shock end to his reelection bid.
LAS VEGAS: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told Jewish donors on Thursday that US universities would lose accreditation and federal support over what he described as “antisemitic propaganda” if he is elected to the White House.
“Colleges will and must end the antisemitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support,” Trump said, speaking remotely to a crowd of more than 1,000 Republican Jewish Coalition donors in Las Vegas.
Protests roiled college campuses in spring, with students opposing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and demanding institutions stop doing business with companies backing Israel.
Republicans have said the protests show some Democrats are antisemites who support chaos. Protest groups say authorities have unfairly labeled their criticism of Israel’s policies as antisemitic.
The Association of American Universities, which says it represents some 69 leading US universities, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the United States, the federal government does not directly accredit universities but has a role in overseeing the mostly private organizations that give colleges accreditation.
In his speech, Trump also said he would ban refugee resettlement from “terror infested” areas like Gaza and arrest “pro-Hamas thugs” who engage in vandalism, an apparent reference to the college student protesters.
Under both Trump and Biden, similar numbers of Palestinians were admitted to the US as refugees. From fiscal year 2017-2020, the US accepted 114 Palestinian refugees, according to US State Department data, compared with 124 Palestinian refugees from fiscal year 2021 to July 31 of this year.
While Trump sketched out few concrete Middle Eastern policy proposals for a second term, he painted a potential Harris presidency in cataclysmic terms for Israel.
“You’re going to be abandoned if she becomes president. And I think you need to explain that to your people... You’re not going to have an Israel if she becomes president,” Trump said without providing evidence for such a claim.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s speech.
Harris has hewed closely to President Joe Biden’s strong support of Israel and rejected calls from some in the Democratic Party that Washington should rethink sending weapons to Israel because of the heavy Palestinian death toll in Gaza.
She has, however, called for a ceasefire in Gaza, calling the situation there “devastating.”
Health authorities in Gaza say more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli assault on the enclave since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks led by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
Some 1,200 Israelis were killed in the surprise attack and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
The subsequent assault on Gaza has displaced nearly its entire 2.3 million population, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.
Wish list for Trump
The Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund says it is spending some $15 million to support Trump by helping bring out Jewish voters in battleground states.
The network has been financially supported by Sheldon Adelson, the late American casino mogul, and his Israeli-born widow Miriam Adelson. RJC members gathered this week for their annual conference at The Venetian Resort, which was developed by Sheldon Adelson’s company, the Las Vegas Sands Corp. Miriam Adelson is also the lead financier of a super PAC spending group that has said it is looking to raise over $100 million to support Trump.
In a half-dozen Reuters interviews at the conference, attendees broadly voiced three priorities for a potential second Trump term: Expanding the Abraham Accords, pursuing a tougher line on Iran, and either reforming or defunding the United Nations.
The Trump administration in 2020 helped broker the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and Arab nations.
But US-backed plans to normalize ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel were put on ice last year as war escalated between Israel and Hamas.
RJC chairman Norm Coleman, who is also a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia in Washington, told Reuters he was still hopeful the Abraham Accords could be expanded under Biden. “But if it’s not done, I would hope that President Trump would do what he did before and play a role in bringing the region together,” Coleman said.
NEW YORK: Donald Trump announced Thursday that if elected president he would appoint billionaire Elon Musk to lead an audit of government spending and implement “drastic” reform.
Trump said that at Musk’s suggestion, he would “create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government,” with the Tesla CEO as its chief.
Trump, who is known for hyperbole and at times outright fiction, told the Economic Club of New York the effort could save “trillions and trillions of dollars.”
“This commission will develop an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months,” Trump claimed.
Musk — who has said he previously voted for Democratic candidates — has thrown his weight and considerable wealth behind Trump since a gunman tried to assassinate the former president at a rally in July.
Musk has a history of sparring with regulators, as when the Securities and Exchange Commission required vetting of his Twitter posts following 2018 tweets that the agency characterized as “false and misleading.”
Other Musk initiatives, such as his pursuit of autonomous driving technology, also face oversight by government agencies.
Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, an NGO, said Trump’s proposal to appoint Musk was still too vague to really know if there is a conflict of interest.
But he said Musk should recuse himself from policy influence on decisions that directly affect his businesses, such as government contracts for SpaceX or policy actions on autonomous driving.
Libowitz also thought it was likely that Musk would need to disclose his financial holdings, which would be made public under US regulations.
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded quick results from his new top team after the biggest government reshuffle since Russia invaded his country in 2022.
Zelensky replaced a string of ministers in a shake-up that sources suggested was a bid for his office to exert more control over a host of issues related to the war, with Ukraine facing major challenges on the battlefield in the east.
“It is crucial that government institutions now operate as actively as possible — more actively than before — at all levels,” Zelensky said in an evening address published on social media.
He called on his new team to deliver more investment into Ukraine’s arms sector, advance negotiations on Ukraine’s EU membership bid, work to secure Ukraine’s financial stability and deliver “more support for the frontline.”
“There are dozens of such very specific tasks, and everyone in their position must deliver tangible results throughout the autumn,” Zelensky said.
Zelensky, a former comedian, shot to global prominence in February 2022 when Russia invaded.
He won respect, admiration and comparisons with Winston Churchill both at home and abroad when he stayed in Kyiv to lead Ukraine in a David-versus-Goliath battle against Russian forces.
But opinion polls show his popularity has dipped as the war drags through its third year, with no end to the fighting in sight and tens of thousands killed.
Zelensky said he hopes the reshuffle will inject “new energy” to Ukraine’s civilian leadership, with the changes coming seven months after he replaced his commander-in-chief in a major military overhaul amid setbacks on the battlefield.
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s popular foreign minister, was the most prominent departure in the reshuffle, making way for his deputy Andriy Sybiga.
Sybiga, 49, a career diplomat who speaks English and Polish, also had a stint in the presidential office and is seen as closer to Zelensky’s powerful chief of staff Andriy Yermak.
Kuleba had been the face of Ukrainian diplomacy abroad, pressing the West to come to Kyiv’s aid after Russia invaded and keep up the supply of billions of dollars worth of weapons.
Ukraine’s Parliament voted on Thursday to approve the changes.
According to AFP sources, Kuleba did not want to resign but had been under pressure from Yermak and has been criticized for the functioning of his ministry.
While Kuleba’s diplomatic skills were recognized, his removal was also part of a bid by the presidency to exert a tighter grip on foreign policy, sources suggested.
“He was giving interviews, speaking beautifully, going on trips, this handkerchief in his jacket. He was engaged in self-promotion, instead of improving the work of embassies, working systematically on countries and getting their support,” a source in Zelensky’s circle said.
In an address to lawmakers on Thursday, Sybiga appeared to reference those criticisms of his former boss, saying success in the role was about “the result, not self-promotion and social media posts.”
He added that Ukraine needed “both long-range weapons and far-sighted foreign policy” to be victorious on the battlefield.
“How quickly we will come to victory depends on how well-coordinated our actions are both on the battlefield and in the international arena,” he said.
Zelensky also removed several of his own advisers in the reshuffle.
The shake-up comes at a tense moment for Ukraine, which is struggling to halt Russian advances in the east even as it mounts a shock offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region.
It also takes place ahead of an election in the United States — Ukraine’s main backer — that could see Ukraine-skeptic Donald Trump back in the White House, something that could threaten Kyiv’s ability to wage a war of attrition against Moscow’s better resourced army.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that the reshuffle “will not affect anything,” according to Russian state-run agency TASS.
Ukraine’s parliament on Thursday approved a string of other ministerial changes, including at the ministries of justice, agriculture, strategic industries, European affairs, environmental protection, culture and veterans affairs.
N’DJAMENA: At least fifteen people — 14 students and their teacher — were killed overnight from Wednesday to Thursday as torrential rains hit a semi-arid province in eastern Chad, officials said.
The governor of Ouaddai province told AFP that the storms caused a home being used as a classroom to collapse, “causing the death of 15 people, including 14 children and their teacher.”
The prime minister’s office meanwhile said that “lightning tragically struck a school, resulting in the death of 15 people and several injured.”
Heavy rainfall had already inundated the northwestern province of Tibesti last month, when flooding killed at least 54 people in an area where rainfall normally struggles to reach 200 mm (nearly eight inches) a year.
The United Nations on Tuesday warned of the impact of “torrential rain and severe flooding” in central Africa, noting that “Chad is the country hit hardest, with 246,833 people impacted by floodwaters in just a few weeks.”
In neighboring Niger, rains that have pounded the country since June have killed 273 and affected more than 700,000, authorities said on Wednesday.
Scientists have long warned that climate change driven by fossil fuel emissions is making extreme weather events such as floods more frequent, intense and longer-lasting.
WASHINGTON: The United States charged five Russian military officers on Thursday for allegedly conducting cyberattacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine ahead of the Russian invasion.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said the members of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency indicted in Maryland waged a cyber campaign against Ukraine known as “WhisperGate.”
“The WhisperGate campaign included the targeting of civilian infrastructure and Ukrainian computer systems wholly unrelated to the military or national defense,” Olsen said at a press conference in Baltimore.
FBI special agent William DelBagno said the WhisperGate malware attack in January 2022 “could be considered the first shot of the war.”
It was intended to cripple Ukraine’s government and critical infrastructure by targeting financial systems, agriculture, emergency services, health care and schools, DelBagno said.
Olsen said the cyber campaign was not restricted to Ukraine but also included attacks on computer systems in the United States and other NATO countries backing Ukraine.
A Russian civilian, Amin Timovich Stigal, 22, was indicted in Maryland in June on charges of conspiracy to hack into and destroy computer systems for his alleged involvement in WhisperGate.
Stigal and the five Russian GRU members remain at large and the State Department offered a combined $60 million reward for information leading to their arrest.
Stigal’s indictment accused him and members of the GRU of distributing WhisperGate malware to dozens of Ukrainian government agency computer systems ahead of the Russian invasion.
The Justice Department said WhisperGate was designed to look like ransomware but was really a “cyberweapon designed to completely destroy the target computer and related data.”
It said patient health records were exfiltrated from computer systems and websites were defaced to read: “Ukrainians! All information about you has become public, be afraid and expect the worst.”
The hacked data was also offered for sale on the Internet.
US Attorney Erek Barron said the indicted GRU officers were members of a subset of unit 29155 of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, which he described as “a military intelligence agency responsible for attempted deadly dirty tricks around the world.”
They were named in the indictment as Col. Yuriy Denisov, commanding officer of cyber operations for Unit 29155, and four lieutenants: Vladislav Borovkov, Denis Denisenko, Dmitriy Goloshubov and Nikolay Korchagin.
The unsealing of the indictment comes a day after the United States accused Russia’s state-funded news outlet RT of seeking to influence the 2024 US presidential election.
Attorney General Merrick Garland also announced the seizure of 32 Internet domains that were part of an alleged campaign “to secure Russia’s preferred outcome,” which US officials have said would be Donald Trump winning the November vote.
