MIAMI, USA: Donald Trump denied dozens of criminal counts of willfully mishandling US government secrets and scheming to prevent their return, in a historic first appearance Tuesday in federal court.
It was the former president’s second arraignment as he battles a deluge of legal threats, coming just 10 weeks after he was charged with a string of felonies in Manhattan over hush money payments to a porn star.
Trump appeared before a judge in Miami to be formally presented with 37 charges brought by the government following a special counsel probe that opened after an FBI raid of his Florida mansion last August.
“We are certainly entering a plea of not guilty,” Todd Blanche, his attorney, told the hearing.
The US government accuses Trump — who is vying to win back the White House next year — of violating the Espionage Act and other laws when he removed classified documents upon leaving office and failed to give them up to the National Archives.
Authorities say he conspired to thwart investigators and knowingly shared national security secrets with people who did not have the requisite clearance.
Trump, who flew aboard his private jet to Miami on Monday, is expected to head back afterwards to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he plans to deliver a speech protesting his innocence.
“One of the saddest days in the history of our country. We are a nation in decline,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform as he was driven to court.
Miami officials were preparing for large scale protests, and police ramped up security well in advance of what turned out to be a few dozen Trump supporters converging near the courthouse.
Some wore “Make America Great Again” baseball caps and one with a sign reading “Indict Jack Smith” — the special prosecutor who brought the charges.
Police, including some on horseback and bicycles, were out in force braced for protests and the possibility of unrest, but the atmosphere was festive with a local radio station blasting Cuban salsa music.
Trump, who made the 25-minute trip from his Doral golf course to the courthouse in a motorcade of at least six black SUVs, earlier lashed out at Smith on Truth Social, calling the prosecutor a “thug” and a “lunatic.”
The runaway frontrunner in the 2024 Republican primary has vowed to stay in the race regardless of the outcome of the documents case.
The 49-page indictment, dismissed by Trump as “ridiculous,” includes photographs showing boxes of documents stacked at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach residence, in a ballroom and in a bathroom and shower.
Trump, who leads the Republican race for president by more than 30 points has been impeached twice over allegations of misconduct in office and was recently found liable for sexual abuse.
He faces indictment or ongoing scrutiny in four criminal probes — in Washington, Florida, Georgia and New York — and could find himself on trial in multiple cases as he campaigns to return to the White House.
The pugnacious billionaire, who turns 77 on Wednesday, continues to defend and even praise the rioters who ransacked the Capitol to halt the certification of the 2020 election, and has promised pardons for many if he is reelected.
Trump — who has repeatedly complained that the investigations against him amount to a baseless “witch hunt” — vowed Monday to appoint a special prosecutor on his return to office to investigate President Joe Biden and his family.
He appeared in court with strong backing from Republican voters, 81 percent of whom believe charges against the former president are politically motivated, according to a new Ipsos poll.
“In recent years we have seen the rise of politically-motivated prosecutors who don’t care for impartiality, who don’t care for due process or equal protection of laws,” Trump lawyer Alina Habba told CNN.
“They have been quietly but aggressively cultivating a two-tiered system of justice where selective treatment is the norm.”
Republican leaders in Congress and Trump’s rivals for the party’s presidential nomination have largely glossed over the gravity of the allegations, instead attacking the Justice Department.
The pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. launched an ad Monday noting that an ongoing investigation into Biden’s own handling of classified documents has not yielded an indictment.
The two cases bear few similarities as Biden is not accused of refusing to return classified documents or suspected of thwarting government attempts to recover them.
Trump pleads not guilty in government secrets case
https://arab.news/5d23f
Trump pleads not guilty in government secrets case
- Trump appeared before a judge in Miami to be formally presented with 37 charges brought by the government following a special counsel probe
- “We are certainly entering a plea of not guilty,” Todd Blanche, his attorney, told the hearing
Netherlands kicks off 4 days of European Union elections across 27 nations
Estonians can cast their ballots across six days that started Monday, but the Netherlands is the only EU country to start its single-day vote so early, followed by Ireland on Friday and the rest of the EU nations over the weekend. Europe-wide results will be announced Sunday night after all member states have completed voting.
The Dutch voting comes six months after Geert Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom sent shockwaves around Europe by becoming the biggest party in the Dutch national parliament. Polling suggests Wilders will build on that popularity and set the tone for much of the bloc.
Since the last EU elections five years ago, populist, far-right and extremist parties are leading governments in three EU nations, are part of governing coalitions in several others, and appear to have surging public support across the continent.
The EU elections are the world’s second-biggest exercise in democracy behind the election in India, and the stakes are high.
Almost 400 million voters will be electing 720 members of the European Parliament from beyond the Arctic circle to the edges of Africa and Asia. They will have an impact on issues ranging from global climate policies and defense to migration and geopolitical relations with China and the United States.
Since the last European elections in 2019, war has broken out on the fringe of the bloc following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a country that desperately wants to join the EU.
A founding member, the Netherlands was long unwavering in its support of EU policies. Research from the Clingendael think tank, though, suggests dissatisfaction with the EU among Dutch people, and that while most believe that the Netherlands should remain in the bloc, many also believe it should be more self-sufficient.
While many voters are predicted to lurch to the right, the Christian Democrat-dominated European People’s Party led by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, is currently the EU legislature’s biggest bloc and is bound to be the coalition kingmaker when the dust settles on the election results.
In the Netherlands, Wilders’ PVV could build on its domestic success and surge, possibly overtaking the combined Labour Party and Green Left. Labor topped the Dutch EU Parliament election in 2019 with 19 percent of the vote for six seats while the Greens took 11 percent and three seats. Wilders’ party at the time only managed 3.5 percent and no seats.
Wilders and one of his likely coalition partners, the Farmer Citizen Movement, are popular among farmers in the Netherlands who have staged regular protests to call for an easing of EU legislation they say is crippling their livelihoods.
Wilders has in the past called for the Netherlands to leave the EU as Britain did, but his party’s manifesto for the election starting Thursday makes no mention of a so-called Nexit. Instead, it urges voters to back the PVV so it can change the EU from within, similar to plans of many other hard right parties across the bloc.
The number of members elected in each country depends on the size of the population. It ranges from six for Malta, Luxembourg and Cyprus to 96 for Germany. In 2019, Europeans elected 751 lawmakers. Following the United Kingdom’s departure from the EU in 2020, the number of MEPs fell to 705. Some of the 73 seats previously held by British MEPs had been redistributed to other member states.
The lawmakers, known as Members of the European Parliament of MEPs, can vote on a wide range of legislation laws relating to climate, banking rules, agriculture, fisheries, security and justice. They also vote on the EU budget, which is crucial to the implementation of European policies, including, for instance, the aid delivered to Ukraine.
After the election, MEPs will elect their president at the first plenary session, from July 16-19. Then, most likely in September, they will nominate the president of the European Commission, following a proposal made by the member states. In 2019, von der Leyen narrowly won a vote to become the first woman to head the institution.
India’s opposition, written off as too weak, makes a stunning comeback to slow Modi’s juggernaut
- The election also marked a revival for the main opposition Congress party and its allies
NEW DELHI: India’s bruised and battered opposition was largely written off in the lead-up to the national election as too weak and fragmented to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his powerful Hindu nationalist governing party.
It scored a stunning comeback, slowing the Modi juggernaut and pushing his Bharatiya Janata Party well below the majority mark. It’s unchartered territory for the populist prime minister, who needs the help of his allies to stay in power. That could significantly change his governance style after he enjoyed a commanding majority in Parliament for a decade.
The election results released Wednesday also marked a revival for the main opposition Congress party and its allies, who defied predictions of decline and made deep inroads into governing party strongholds, resetting India’s political landscape. The opposition won a total of 232 seats out of 543, doubling its strength from the last election.
“The opposition has proved to be tremendously resilient and shown courage of conviction. In many ways it has saved India’s democracy and shown Modi that he can be challenged — and even humbled by denting his image of electoral invincibility,” said journalist and political analyst Rasheed Kidwai.
The unwieldy grouping of more than two dozen opposition parties, called INDIA, was formed last year. Beset with ideological differences and personality clashes, what glued them together was a shared perceived threat: what they call Modi’s tightening grip on India’s democratic institutions and Parliament, and his strident Hindu nationalism that has targeted the country’s minorities, particularly Muslims.
The election battle is between “Narendra Modi and INDIA, his ideology and INDIA,” the alliance’s campaign face, Rahul Gandhi, said at an opposition meeting last year.
Gandhi, heir to India’s Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, has long been mocked by Modi, his party and his supporters as a beneficiary of dynastic politics. Gandhi’s father, grandmother and great-grandfather were all prime ministers.
Under his leadership, the Congress party was reduced to a paltry 52 seats in 2019 when Modi romped to victory in a landslide win. And last year he was expelled from Parliament due to a defamation case after Modi’s party accused him of mocking the prime minister’s surname. (He was later returned to his seat by India’s top court.)
But ahead of the 2024 election, Gandhi went through a transformation — he embarked on two cross-country marches against what he called Modi’s politics of hate, re-energizing his party’s members and rehabilitating his image.
During the election campaign, he, along with other opposition leaders, sought to galvanize voters on issues such as high unemployment, growing inequality and economic and social injustice, while targeting Modi over his polarizing campaign and anti-Muslim rhetoric.
“They certainly gained significant momentum through the course of the campaign, to the point where the opposition agendas became the agenda points of this election,” said Yamini Aiyar, a public policy scholar.
The election results showed his messaging worked with the voters, as his party made substantial gains in BJP-governed states such as Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Maharashtra by tapping into economic stress. It won 99 seats across India.
“Rahul Gandhi has emerged as a strong national leader and that should worry Modi,” Kidwai said.
The opposition proved even more successful in a Modi party bastion where it flipped the largest number of seats: Uttar Pradesh, which sends the most lawmakers of any state — 80 — to Parliament.
Long considered the biggest prize in Indian elections, the opposition clinched a staggering 44 parliamentary seats in the state, with the regional Samajwadi Party winning a whopping 37, leaving Modi’s party with less than half of the seats. In the 2019 election, the BJP won 62 seats in the state.
The opposition also managed to wrest away BJP’s seat in Ayodhya city, a deeply symbolic loss for Modi’s party after the prime minister opened a controversial grand Hindu temple on the site of a razed mosque there in January. The opening of the temple dedicated to Lord Ram, at which Modi performed rituals, marked the unofficial start of his election campaign, with his party hoping it would resonate with the Hindu majority and bring more voters into its fold.
“The BJP lost because its leadership did not have its ears to the ground. They believed that the issue of the Ram Temple would secure their victory, but they overlooked important issues like jobs and inflation,” said political analyst Amarnath Agarwal.
A strong showing by the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party in Tamil Nadu further boosted the opposition’s numbers, denying Modi the supermajority he hoped for after exhibiting confidence his alliance would take 400 seats.
It also meant that the regional parties, once relegated to the margins after Modi’s dominating wins in 2014 and 2019, will acquire a greater political space in Indian politics.
“It also gives a lot of power back to the states,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “We’ve seen a lot of centralization in the hands of the executive, in the hands of the Prime Minister’s Office specifically.”
The opposition’s surprise gains came against the backdrop of what it calls Modi’s intensified political crackdown against them.
Modi and his government have increasingly wielded strong-arm tactics to subdue political opponents. In the run-up to the election, opposition leaders and parties faced a slew of legal and financial challenges. The chief ministers of two opposition-controlled states were thrown in jail and the bank accounts of the Congress party were temporarily frozen.
Aiyar, the public policy scholar, said the opposition was able to “palpably catch on to signs of discontentment” even as it faced “fairly significant constraints of their own.”
“This was certainly not a level playing field at the start of the election,” she said.
As election results showed the opposition doing better than expected on Tuesday, a beaming Gandhi pulled out a red-jacketed copy of India’s Constitution that he had displayed on the campaign trail and said his alliance’s performance was the “first step in its fight” to save the charter.
“India’s poorest stood up to save the Constitution,” he said.
Migrants rattled and unsure as deportations begin under new rule halting asylum
- Homeland Security Department officials say the first deportations occurred Wednesday under the rule, which is triggered when border arrests top 2,500 a day
DULZURA: Abigail Castillo was about to cross the US border illegally when she heard President Joe Biden was halting asylum. She continued anyway, walking hours through the mountains east of San Diego with her toddler son, hoping it wasn’t too late.
“I heard that they were going to do it or were about to do it,” Castillo, 35, said Wednesday as she and her son were escorted to a Border Patrol van with about two dozen others from Brazil, Ecuador and her village in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, which she said she left because it was gripped by violence.
They had missed the deadline, and were now subject to the new deportation rule.
Her sense of uncertainty prevailed among many migrants after Biden invoked presidential powers to stop asylum processing when arrests for illegal crossings top 2,500 in a day. The measure took effect at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Wednesday because that threshold was met.
Two senior Homeland Security Department officials confirmed the first deportations under the new rule took place Wednesday, though they did not say how many were deported. The officials briefed reporters on condition their names not be used in keeping with regulations.
Sergio Franco, who clutched his baby girl after a nearly two-month journey from Ecuador with his family, walking through the perilous Darien jungle on the border between Colombia and Panama, said he was confident that he would prevail in his plea to find a safe haven in the United States.
“If we have evidence, there shouldn’t be a problem,” he said as he got into the van with Castillo and the others.
As the group was driven away, several migrants from India walked up to the same dusty area near a gun shop in the town of Dulzura, one of several that have popped up over the last year in the remote rural outskirts of San Diego for migrants to surrender to Border Patrol agents. There was no water or restrooms and little shade.
Several Guatemalan women arrived later. Among them was Arelis Alonzo Lopez, who said she was nearly five months pregnant and had walked for two nights. A Border Patrol agent asked how she felt.
“I can’t take any more,” she answered.
Asylum remains suspended until average daily arrests fall below 1,500 for a week straight. The last month that crossings were that low for that long was in July 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Migrants who express fear for their safety if they are deported will be screened by US asylum officers but under a higher standard than what’s currently in place. If they pass, they can remain to pursue other forms of humanitarian protection, including those laid out in the UN Convention Against Torture.
There are serious questions about whether the new measure can stop large-scale migrant entries. Mexico has agreed to take back migrants who are not Mexican, but only limited numbers and nationalities. And the Biden administration doesn’t have the money and diplomatic support it needs to deport migrants long distances, including to Ecuador and India.
In Matamoros, Mexico, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, Esmeralda Castro of El Salvador worried the asylum halt will drive more people to compete for the 1,450 slots awarded daily to enter legally through US Customs and Border Protection’s heavily oversubscribed online app, known as CBP One. Castro, 40, said she has tried for nine months for an appointment using the app.
“Imagine what’s going to happen with what they’ve done. The system is going to collapse again,” said Castro, speaking at a migrant camp near the banks of the Rio Grande where she has been living with about 10 others. The app has become so overwhelmed at times that users got error messages and experienced other technical failures.
Juan Daniel Medina of the Dominican Republic said he was determined to stick with CBP One, even after eight months of fruitless attempts to get an appointment.
“It’s the correct way because that way you do everything legally. They won’t have to jump the river and risk facing criminal charges,” the 30-year-old Medina said.
Two hours before the sun set Tuesday in San Diego, four busloads of migrants were dropped off by Border Patrol agents at a transit center, many of them to seek asylum in one of 68 immigration courts across the country. Asylum-seekers can generally work while their claims slowly wind through overwhelmed immigration courts.
Jesus Gomez of Medellin, Colombia, said Border Patrol agents told him he was one of the last people to be released to seek asylum and that he should tell friends and family back home that they will be deported if they attempt to enter illegally. He said he didn’t know if it was true.
“It’s a very difficult thing to navigate,” Gomez, 49, said as he waited for his wife to be released by the Border Patrol before they fly to Boston, where their daughter lives.
UN condemns mass public flogging in Afghanistan
- About 63 people were publicly lashed in the northern Saripul province on Tuesday, says UN mission in Afghanistan
KABUL: The United Nations on Wednesday slammed a mass flogging of dozens of people in Afghanistan, and called on the Taliban authorities to end the practice.
About 63 people were publicly lashed in the northern Saripul province on Tuesday, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported.
“UNAMA reiterates its condemnation of corporal punishment and calls for respect for international human rights obligations,” the mission said in a statement posted on X.
Since their return to power in August 2021, the Taliban authorities have reintroduced an extreme interpretation of Islamic law — or sharia.
Crowds have watched public executions and corporal publishments, mainly flogging.
The latter is mostly employed for crimes including theft, adultery and alcohol consumption.
More than 1 in 4 children under age 5 face ‘severe’ food poverty: UNICEF
- Some 440 million children under the age of five living in about 100 low- and middle-income countries are living in food poverty
- Severe child food poverty is concentrated in about 20 countries, with particularly dire situations in Somalia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Afghanistan
UNITED NATIONS: More than one in four children under the age of five globally live in “severe” food poverty, UNICEF has warned — meaning more than 180 million are at risk of experiencing adverse impacts on their growth and development.
“Severe child food poverty describes children who are surviving on severely deprived diets so they’re only consuming two or less food groups,” Harriet Torlesse, a lead writer of a new UNICEF report published late Wednesday, told AFP.
“It is shocking in this day and age where we know what needs to be done.”
UNICEF recommends that young children eat foods daily from five of eight main groups — breast milk; grains, roots, tubers and plantains; pulses, nuts and seeds; dairy; meat, poultry and fish; eggs; vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables; and other fruits and vegetables.
But 440 million children under the age of five living in about 100 low- and middle-income countries are living in food poverty, meaning they do not have access to five food groups each day.
Of those, 181 million are experiencing severe food poverty, eating from at most two food groups.
“Children who consume just two food groups per day — for example, rice and some milk — are up to 50 percent more likely to experience severe forms of malnutrition,” UNICEF chief Catherine Russell said in a statement accompanying the report.
That malnutrition can lead to emaciation, a state of being abnormally thin that can be fatal.
And even if these children survive and grow up, “they certainly don’t thrive. So they do less well at school,” Torlesse explained.
“When they’re adults, they find it harder to earn a decent income, and that turns the cycle of poverty from one generation to the next,” the nutrition expert said.
“If you think of what a brain looks like and the heart and the immune system, all these important systems of the body that are so important for development, for protection against disease — they all depend on vitamins and minerals and protein.”
Severe child food poverty is concentrated in about 20 countries, with particularly dire situations in: Somalia, where 63 percent of young children are affected; Guinea (54 percent); Guinea-Bissau (53 percent) and Afghanistan (49 percent).
While data is not available for wealthy countries, children in low-income households there also suffer from nutritional gaps.
The report from the UN Children’s Fund notes the current circumstances in the Gaza Strip, where Israel’s military offensive in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas militants “have brought the food and health systems to collapse.”
From December to April this year, the agency collected five rounds of data by text message from families receiving financial aid in the besieged Palestinian territory.
It showed that about nine in 10 children were living in severe food poverty.
While the data is not necessarily representative, it indicates what UNICEF called an “appalling escalation in nutrition deprivation since 2020, when only 13 percent of children in the Gaza Strip were living in severe child food poverty.”
Worldwide, the agency noted “slow progress over the past decade” in addressing the crisis, and called for better social services and humanitarian aid for the most vulnerable children.
It also called for a rethink of the global food processing system, saying that sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods were being “aggressively marketed to parents and families and are the new normal for feeding children.”
Torlesse explained: “These foods are cheap but they’re also very high in calories. They’re high-energy, high salt, high fat. So they’ll fill stomachs and they’ll remove hunger, but they won’t provide the vitamins and minerals that children need.”
Sugary and salty foods — which children quickly develop a taste for, a habit they can take into adulthood — also contribute to the development of obesity.
