Jennifer Lopez to boost Harris at glitzy Las Vegas event
Updated 21 sec ago
AFP
WASHINGTON: US pop queen Jennifer Lopez is set to campaign for Kamala Harris at a glitzy rally in Las Vegas, the vice president’s team announced Tuesday, as the Democrat seeks to turn out Hispanic voters in the home stretch of a nailbitingly close election.
The 55-year-old singer and “Unstoppable” actress — J-Lo to her army of fans — was among a number of stars of Puerto Rican heritage who publicly backed Harris after a speaker at her Republican opponent Donald Trump’s weekend rally called the US territory a “floating island of garbage.”
Lopez is not performing at Thursday’s event — the music will be provided by Mexican pop-rock band Mana — but she will drive home the importance of voting in the crucial swing state of Nevada, the campaign said, as well as explain why she is endorsing Harris.
In a campaign notable for its star-studded rallies and celebrity endorsements, Harris has so far earned the backing of music stars Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Lizzo, Stevie Wonder, Pink and Bruce Springsteen.
The rally is part of a series of “When We Vote We Win” events in key battleground states featuring recording artists focused on turning out the few remaining undecided voters, with polling showing a neck-and-neck race.
“These artists and public figures are trusted voices for millions of Americans, who listen to their music, follow them on social media, or otherwise are inspired by them,” the campaign said in a statement.
“The Harris-Walz campaign believes that by using their voices to lay out the stakes of this election, it will further encourage and mobilize people to go vote.”
Lopez, singer Ricky Martin and reggaeton star Bad Bunny — all of whom boast social media followings in the tens of millions — gave Harris a boost this week by sharing her campaign video targeting voters in Puerto Rico on social media.
Trump says his New York rally marked by crude and racist insults was ‘an absolute lovefest’
Updated 10 sec ago
AP
PALM BEACH, Florida: Urged by some allies to apologize for racist comments made by speakers at his weekend rally, Donald Trump took the opposite approach on Tuesday, saying it was an “honor to be involved” in such an event and calling the scene a “lovefest” — the same term he has used to describe the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. Trump gathered supporters and reporters to his Mar-a-Lago resort two days after a massive rally at Madison Square Garden featured a number of crude remarks by various speakers, including a set by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in which he joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.” Some of Trump’s top Republican allies have condemned the remarks, and his campaign took the rare step of publicly distancing itself from Hinchcliffe’s joke, though not the other comments. But given the opportunity to apologize at events and in an interview, Trump instead leaned in. Speaking at his Florida resort, he said that “there’s never been an event so beautiful” as his Sunday rally in his hometown of New York. “The love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he said. “It was like a lovefest, an absolute lovefest. And it was my honor to be involved.” With just a week before Election Day, some Trump allies have voiced alarm that the rally, which was supposed to highlight the Republican presidential nominee’s closing message in grand New York fashion, has instead served as a distraction and even a liability, given the electoral importance of Puerto Ricans who live in Pennsylvania and other key swing states. At a roundtable outside Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon, Trump got some praise from a retired occupational therapist from Puerto Rico, Maribel Valdez. “Puerto Rico stands behind you and Puerto Rico loves you,” Valdez told him. Trump thanked her and reminisced about his administration’s efforts to help the island after storms. “I think no president has ever done more for Puerto Rico than I have,” responded Trump, who delayed the release of billions of dollars in assistance to repair years-old hurricane damage in Puerto Rico until shortly before the 2020 election. Trump was set to hold a rally later in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a large Hispanic population, where Puerto Rico’s shadow US senator, Zoraida Buxo, will join him, according to a campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement. Buxo, who does not have a vote in the Senate because Puerto Rico is not a state, voiced her support for Trump in a post on the social media site X. She said Trump is the “strong leader” that Puerto Rico needs. The fallout from the Madison Square Garden event risked highlighting voters’ concerns about Trump’s rhetoric and penchant for controversy in the closing stretch as both campaigns are scrambling for votes. Speakers at the rally also made racist comments targeting Latinos, Black people, Jews and Palestinians, along with sexist insults directed at Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On Tuesday, Trump tried to move past the controversy and pivot back to Harris, lashing his rival’s record on the border and inflation, saying that, “on issue after issue, she broke it” and “I’m going to fix it and fix it very fast.” Trump, who took no questions at the event, accused Harris of running a “campaign of absolute hate,” and claimed she keeps “talking about Hitler and Nazi, because her record’s horrible.” Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff said in recent interviews with The New York Times and The Atlantic that the former president praised Adolf Hitler while in office and suggested that the Nazi leader “did some good things.” In an interview with ABC News earlier Tuesday, Trump tried to distance himself from Hinchcliffe but did not denounce what he said. “I don’t know him. Someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” Trump said, according to the network, insisting that he hadn’t heard Hinchcliffe’s comments. When asked what he made of them, Trump “did not take the opportunity to denounce them, repeating that he didn’t hear the comments,” ABC reported. The comments have drawn outrage from Puerto Rican leaders. The archbishop of Puerto Rico called on Trump to disavow them, saying it wasn’t enough for the campaign to say the joke didn’t reflect Trump’s views. The president of Puerto Rico’s Republican Party called the “poor attempt at comedy” by Hinchcliffe “disgraceful, ignorant and totally reprehensible.” In Pennsylvania, where Trump was to campaign later Tuesday, the Latino eligible voter population has nearly tripled since 2000. More than half of those are Puerto Rican eligible voters. Angelo Ortega, a longtime Allentown resident and former Republican who’s planning to vote for Harris this time, said he couldn’t believe what he’d heard about Trump’s rally. “I don’t know if my jaw dropped or I was just so irritated, angry. I didn’t know what to feel,” said Ortega, who was born in New York but whose father came from Puerto Rico. Ortega has been campaigning for Harris and said he knows of at least one Hispanic GOP voter planning to switch from Trump to Harris as a result of Hinchcliffe’s comments. “They’ve had it. They’ve had it. They were listening to (Trump), but they said they think that that was like the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Ortega, a member of the Make the Road PA advocacy group. Still, some voters of Puerto Rican descent weren’t fazed. Maricelis Torres, 24, a waitress studying to be a radiologist, waited to get into the Allentown rally and said she and her family laughed at Hinchcliffe’s joke. “If you don’t understand humor, then that’s what I’m saying, people are way too soft these days,” said Torres, whose father is from the island. The Harris campaign has released an ad that will run online in battleground states targeting Puerto Rican voters and highlighting the comedian’s remarks. ___ Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York, Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Michael Rubinkam in Allentown, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.
Five killed in attack on dam construction site in Pakistan’s Balochistan
Baloch Liberation Army (BLA): ‘We accept responsibility for killing seven informers and instrumentalists in Panjgur, Kech and Quetta’
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif: ‘Such cowardly attacks will not deter the government’s resolve to develop Balochistan’
Updated 47 min 35 sec ago
Reuters
QUETTA, Pakistan: Five people were killed in an attack by armed men on the construction site of a small dam in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, officials said on Tuesday, underscoring a worsening security situation in the mineral-rich area.
The province has seen an increase in strikes by separatist ethnic militants. This month, 21 miners working at privately run coal mines were killed in an attack.
“We accept responsibility for killing seven informers and instrumentalists in Panjgur, Kech and Quetta,” said separatist militant group the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) in a statement emailed to journalists.
A decades-long insurgency in Balochistan by separatists has led to frequent attacks against the government, army and Chinese interests in the region to press their demands for a share in regional resources.
China runs a strategic deepwater port as well as a gold and copper mine in the province and has been working with Islamabad to improve infrastructure in the underdeveloped province. Several attacks have targeted migrant workers employed by smaller, privately operated mines.
The five dead, and two wounded, all worked at the construction site in Panjgur, spokesperson for the Balochistan government Shahid Rind said in a statement, saying the attack took place late at night.
A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said close to a dozen assailants were involved in the attack and that the victims were watching over equipment at the dam construction site on behalf of a private contractor.
“Such cowardly attacks will not deter the government’s resolve to develop Balochistan,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement.
Besides the separatists, the region is also home to Islamist militants, who have become resurgent since 2022 after revoking a ceasefire with the government.
Norway to ask ICJ to clarify Israel’s aid obligations to Palestinians
For more than seven decades, UNRWA has provided critical support to Palestinian refugees
Israel claims that a dozen UNRWA employees were involved in Oct. 7 attack
Updated 29 October 2024
AFP
OSLO: Norway on Tuesday said it would ask the UN’s International Court of Justice to clarify Israel’s aid obligations to Palestinians, a day after Israel banned the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Despite international concerns, Israeli lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly voted to bar the agency, UNRWA, from operating in Israel and east Jerusalem.
For more than seven decades, UNRWA has provided critical support to Palestinian refugees.
But it has faced mounting criticism from Israeli officials that has escalated since the start of the war in Gaza after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
Israel claims that a dozen UNRWA employees were involved in the deadly assault.
Norway said it was “requesting that the ICJ pronounces on Israel’s obligations to facilitate humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population, delivered by international organizations, including the UN and states,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in a statement.
He said Norway would submit a resolution to the UN General Assembly with the request that the ICJ give an advisory opinion on the matter.
Norway angered Israel in May when it recognized the Palestinian state, together with Ireland and Spain.
And, unlike other donors, it increased its aid to UNRWA in June despite the controversy over whether the agency’s employees were involved in the October 7 attack.
“The Israeli government’s policy is making it increasingly difficult for Palestinians to access life-saving assistance and basic services such as health care and education,” Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in the same statement.
The UNRWA ban would have “severe consequences for millions of civilians already living in the most dire of circumstances,” he said, adding that it “also undermines the stability of the entire Middle East.”
“Israel’s behavior contravenes international law and undermines efforts to establish a viable Palestinian state and the two-state solution,” Barth Eide said.
Germany recalls envoy to Iran over execution of dual national
Sharmahd, who also holds US residency, was sentenced to death in 2023 on charges of “corruption on earth,” a capital offense under Iran’s Islamic laws
Updated 29 October 2024
Reuters
BERLIN: Germany has recalled its ambassador to Iran over the execution of German Iranian national Jamshid Sharmahd and summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires to voice Berlin’s protest, the German foreign office said on Tuesday.
“We have sent our strongest protest against the actions of the Iranian regime & reserve the right to take further action,” the Foreign Ministry said in a post on X.
Germany’s ambassador in Tehran protested in the strongest possible terms against the killing of Sharmahd, the post said, adding that German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock had recalled the ambassador to Berlin for consultations. Iranian state media said on Monday Sharmahd was put to death after he was convicted of carrying out terrorist attacks. “No terrorist enjoys impunity in Iran. Even if supported by Germany,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on X.
“Iranian national Jamshid Sharmahd openly and unashamedly led a terrorist attack on a mosque that killed 14 innocent people.”
Iranian state media reported on Tuesday that the German ambassador was summoned by the Foreign Ministry over “interventionist comments” made by German officials against the Iranian judiciary’s decision.
“Support for Sharmahd contradicts the German government’s claims in regards to the rule of law, the protection of human rights, and the fight against terrorism,” the Foreign Ministry said according to state media.
Sharmahd, who also holds US residency, was sentenced to death in 2023 on charges of “corruption on earth,” a capital offense under Iran’s Islamic laws.
He was accused by Iran of heading a pro-monarchist group accused of a deadly 2008 bombing and planning other attacks.
His daughter Gazelle Sharmahd, also on X, demanded proof of his execution and called for the immediate return of her father.
Police say British teen accused of fatally stabbing 3 girls also made poison and had a terror manual
Axel Rudakubana, 18, who is charged with murdering three girls and stabbing 10 other people on July 29, produced the deadly poison ricin that was later found in his home
Updated 29 October 2024
AP
LONDON: The teenager accused in a stabbing rampage that killed three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England has been charged with producing the deadly poison ricin and now faces a terror offense for possessing a jihadi training manual, police said Tuesday.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, who is charged with murdering three girls and stabbing 10 other people on July 29, produced the deadly poison ricin that was later found in his home, Merseyside Police said. Police also found he had a computer file with an Al-Qaeda training manual titled: “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants.”
Ricin is derived from the castor bean plant and is one of the world’s deadliest toxins. It has no known vaccine or antidote and kills cells by preventing them from making proteins.
Police stressed that the stabbing attack has not been classed as a “terrorist incident,” which would require a motive to be known.
The stabbing occurred on the first week of summer vacation as girls aged about 6 to 11 participated in a two-hour session led by a yoga instructor and a dance instructor.
Witnesses described hearing blood-curdling screams and seeing children covered in blood running from the studio.
The first officers who arrived were shocked to find so many casualties, Chief Constable Serena Kennedy said.
Rudakubana already faced three counts of murder over the July deaths of Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6, in the seaside town of Southport in northwest England.
He also has been charged with 10 counts of attempted murder for the eight children and two adults who were injured.
The stabbings were used by far-right activists to stoke anger at immigrants and Muslims after misinformation spread on social media identifying him as an asylum seeker and misreporting his name.
Violence spread from Southport and led to rioting across England and Northern Ireland that lasted a week.
Rudakubana was born in Wales to Rwandan parents, police said. British media reported that he was raised Christian.
Dr. Renu Bindra of the UK Health Security Agency said “there was no evidence that any victims, responders or members of the public were exposed to ricin either as part of the incident or afterwards,” and the risk to the public was low. No ricin was found at the site of the stabbing attack.
Ricin is estimated to be 6,000 times more poisonous than cyanide and can be fatal when inhaled, ingested, injected or swallowed. Two millionths of an ounce — roughly the weight of a grain of salt – is enough to kill an adult.
Several people have gone on trial around the world in recent years charged with attempting to use ricin for murder or terror plots, but examples of its successful fatal use are rare.
Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov was killed in London in 1978 when a pinhead-sized pellet laced with ricin was injected into his thigh — reportedly by a rigged umbrella.
