Biden ends faltering reelection campaign, backs Harris as replacement

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Updated 22 July 2024
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Biden ends faltering reelection campaign, backs Harris as replacement

  • Will remain in his role as president and commander-in-chief until his term ends in January 2025
  • Biden campaign on the ropes since disastrous June 27 debate against former President Trump

WASHINGTON DC: US President Joe Biden dropped his faltering reelection bid on Sunday, amid intensifying opposition within his own Democratic Party, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the party’s candidate against Republican Donald Trump.
Biden, 81, in a post on X, said he will remain in his role as president and commander-in-chief until his term ends in January 2025 and will address the nation this week.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote.

His initial statement had not included an endorsement of Harris, but he followed up a few minutes later with an expression of support.
Biden’s campaign had been on the ropes since a disastrous June 27 debate against former President Trump, 78, in which the incumbent at times struggled to finish his thoughts.
Opposition from within Biden’s party gained steam over the past week with 36 congressional Democrats — more than one in eight members of the caucus — publicly calling on him to end his campaign.
Lawmakers said they feared he could cost them not only the White House but also the chance to control either chamber of Congress in the Nov. 5 election, leaving Democrats with no meaningful grasp on power.
That stood in sharp contrast to what played out in the Republican Party last week, when members united around Trump and his running mate US Senator J.D. Vance, 39.

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Harris, 59, would become the first Black woman to run at the top of a major-party ticket in the country’s history.
Trump told CNN on Sunday that he believed Harris would be easier to defeat.
Biden had a last-minute change of heart, said a source familiar with the matter. The president told allies that as of Saturday night he planned to stay in the race before changing his mind on Sunday afternoon.
“Last night the message was proceed with everything, full speed ahead,” the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. “At around 1:45 p.m. today: the president told his senior team that he had changed his mind.”
Biden announced his decision on social media within minutes.
It was unclear whether other senior Democrats would challenge Harris for the party’s nomination — she was widely seen as the pick for many party officials — or whether the party itself would choose to open the field for nominations.
Congressional Republicans argued that Biden should resign the office immediately, which would turn the White House over to Harris and put House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, next in line in succession.
“If he’s incapable of running for president, how is he capable of governing right now? I mean, there is five months left in this administration. It’s a real concern, and it’s a danger to the country,” Johnson told CNN on Sunday before Biden’s announcement.

GAVE IT MY ALL
Biden’s announcement follows a wave of public and private pressure from Democratic lawmakers and party officials to quit the race after his shockingly poor debate.
His troubles took the public spotlight away from Trump’s performance, in which he made a string of false statements, and trained it instead on questions surrounding Biden’s fitness for another 4-year term.
Days later he raised fresh concerns in an interview, shrugging off Democrats’ worries and a widening gap in opinion polls, and saying he would be fine losing to Trump if he knew he’d “gave it my all.”
His gaffes at a NATO summit — invoking Russian President Vladimir Putin’s name when he meant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and calling Harris “Vice President Trump” -further stoked anxieties.
Only four days before Sunday’s announcement, Biden was diagnosed with COVID-19, forcing him to cut short a campaign trip to Las Vegas. More than one in 10 congressional Democrats had called publicly for him to quit the race.
Biden’s historic move — the first sitting president to give up his party’s nomination for reelection since President Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War in March 1968 — leaves his replacement with less than four months to wage a campaign.

If Harris emerges as the nominee, the move would represent an unprecedented gamble by the Democratic Party: its first Black and Asian American woman to run for the White House in a country that has elected one Black president and never a woman president in more than two centuries.
Biden was the oldest US president ever elected when he beat Trump in 2020. During that campaign, Biden described himself as a bridge to the next generation of Democratic leaders. Some interpreted that to mean he would serve one term, a transitional figure who beat Trump and brought his party back to power.
But he set his sights on a second term in the belief that he was the only Democrat who could beat Trump again amid questions about Harris’s experience and popularity. In recent times, though, his advanced age began to show through more. His gait became stilted and his childhood stutter occasionally returned.
His team had hoped a strong performance at the June 27 debate would ease concerns over his age. It did the opposite: a Reuters/Ipsos poll after the debate showed that about 40 percent of Democrats thought he should quit the race.
Donors began to revolt and supporters of Harris began to coalesce around her. Top Democrats, including former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime ally, told Biden he cannot win the election.
Biden initially resisted pressure to step aside. He held damage-control calls and meetings with lawmakers and state governors, and sat for rare television interviews. But it was not enough. Polls showed Trump’s lead in key battleground states widening, and Democrats began to fear a wipeout in the House and Senate. On July 17, California’s Rep. Adam Schiff called on him to exit the race.
Biden’s departure sets up a stark new contrast, between the Democrats’ presumptive new nominee, Harris, a former prosecutor, and Trump who is two decades her senior and faces two outstanding criminal prosecutions related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election result. He is due to be sentenced in New York in September on a conviction for trying to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star.

BIDEN STRUGGLED BEFORE DEBATE
Earlier this year, facing little opposition, Biden easily won the Democratic primary race to pick its presidential candidate, despite voter concerns about his age and health.
His staunch support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza eroded support among some in his own party, particularly young, progressive Democrats and voters of color, who make up an essential part of the Democratic base.
Many Black voters say Biden has not done enough for them, and enthusiasm among Democrats overall for a second Biden term had been low. Even before the debate with Trump, Biden was trailing the Republican in some national polls and in the battleground states he would have needed to win to prevail on Nov. 5.
Harris was tasked with reaching out to those voters in recent months.
During the primary race, Biden accumulated more than 3,600 delegates to the Democratic National Convention to be held in Chicago in August. That was almost double the 1,976 needed to win the party’s nomination.
Unless the Democratic Party changes the rules, delegates pledged to Biden would enter the convention “uncommitted,” leaving them to vote on his successor.
Democrats also have a system of “superdelegates,” unpledged senior party officials and elected leaders whose support is limited on the first ballot but who could play a decisive role in subsequent rounds.
Biden beat Trump in 2020 by winning in the key battleground states, including tight races in Pennsylvania and Georgia. At a national level, he bested Trump by more than 7 million votes, capturing 51.3 percent of the popular vote to Trump’s 46.8 percent.


British PM urged to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles as Russia continues to hit civilian targets

Updated 13 sec ago
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British PM urged to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles as Russia continues to hit civilian targets

  • Former PM Boris Johnson and former Conservative defense chiefs warned Starmer that “any further delay will embolden President Putin”
  • While Russia had been striking Ukrainian civilian targets at will, Ukraine's forces have been handicapped by Western restrictions

LONDON: British Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been urged by former defense secretaries and an ex-premier to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles inside Russian territory even without US backing, the Sunday Times reported on Saturday.
According to the Sunday Times, the call came from five former Conservative defense secretaries — Grant Shapps, Ben Wallace, Gavin Williamson, Penny Mordaunt and Liam Fox — as well as from ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
They warned Starmer that “any further delay will embolden President Putin,” the Sunday Times said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pleading with allies for months to let Ukraine fire Western missiles including long-range US ATACMS and British Storm Shadows deep into Russia to limit Moscow’s ability to launch attacks.
Starmer and US President Joe Biden held talks in Washington on Friday on whether to allow Kyiv to use the long-range missiles against targets in Russia. No decision was announced.
Some US officials are deeply skeptical that allowing the use of such missiles would make a significant difference in Kyiv’s battle against Russian invaders.
President Vladimir Putin has said the West would be directly fighting Russia if it allowed Ukraine to strike with Western-made long-range missiles.
While Russia had been striking Ukrainian civilian targets at will, Ukraine's forces have been handicapped by restrictions on use of Western-supplied weapons.

As of July 31, 2024, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had recorded 11,520 civilians killed and 23,640 injured in Ukraine since February 24, 2022, but said they believe the real number is higher.

On Saturday, Russian shelling killed at least seven people in four attacks on the south, southeast and east of Ukraine, regional Ukrainian governors said.
In the Zaporizhzhia region in southeast Ukraine, governor Ivan Fedorov said Russian shells struck an agricultural enterprise in the town of Huliaipole, killing three people.
“All the dead are employees of the enterprise,” Fedorov said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. Reuters could not verify details of these latest attacks in the war in Ukraine.
A missile attack in the suburbs of the Black Sea port city of Odesa killed a man and a woman born in 1958 and 1962 and injured a 65-year-old woman, Oleh Kiper, the Odesa regional governor, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
“A married couple died,” he said, adding that they were found during checks of residential and commercial buildings damaged earlier in the day and that Russian forces had used a prohibited cluster warhead.
Shelling killed a sixth person in the southern region of Kherson, governor Oleksandr Prokudin, said. “A 60-year-old man who suffered serious injuries this afternoon died in hospital,” Prokudin wrote on Telegram.
In Kharkiv region, Russia struck the village of Pisky-Radkivski with the high-speed Tornado-S multiple rocket launch system, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram.
The body of a 72-year-old woman was retrieved from the rubble, and two civilians, a man and a woman, were taken to hospital, he added.

 


Polish FM says EU must end benefits for exiled Ukrainian men to help Kyiv’s call for more troops to fight Russian forces

Updated 15 September 2024
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Polish FM says EU must end benefits for exiled Ukrainian men to help Kyiv’s call for more troops to fight Russian forces

  • Of more than 4.1 million Ukrainians on temporary protection status in the EU, 22 percent are adult males
  • Many Ukrainian men have reportedly fled abroad to avoid military service by bribing their way out

KYIV: European governments should halt welfare benefits to Ukrainian men of military age who are living in their countries, Poland’s foreign minister said, a measure he said would help Ukraine call up more troops to fight Russian forces.

Following a meeting in Kyiv with his Ukrainian counterpart, Poland’s Radoslaw Sikorski said ending social benefits for Ukrainian male refugees would also benefit state finances in host countries in Western Europe.

More than 4.1 million Ukrainians had temporary protection status in European Union countries as of July this year, and about 22 percent of them were adult men, according to data from the EU statistics office, Eurostat.

“Stop paying those social security payments for people who are eligible for the Ukrainian draft. There should be no financial incentives for avoiding the draft in Ukraine,” Sikorski said at a conference of international leaders in Kyiv. “It’s not a human right to be paid to avoid the draft, to defend your country. We in Poland don’t do it.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha welcomed Sikorski’s call. “It’s time really to raise the question of the European Union developing programs to return Ukrainians home. Certainly, appropriate conditions should be created for this. But this should be on the agenda. And I support the idea of Minister Sikorski,” Sybiha said.

Nearly 31 months into the war against Russia and with Moscow’s forces slowly but steadily advancing in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv needs more soldiers to maintain its defense lines, rotate out exhausted troops and make up for losses.

Russia has a significant advantage in staff numbers and weapons on the battlefield.

Earlier this year, Ukraine adopted new legislation and implemented other measures, including lowering the call-up age for combat duty to 25 from 27 to increase the pace of mobilization into the army.

Under the new law, Kyiv ordered Ukrainian men living abroad to renew their military draft information online and encouraged them to return to Ukraine and join the fight.

Ukraine imposed martial law at the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, banning men aged 18 to 60 from traveling abroad without special permission and beginning a rolling mobilization of civilian men into the armed forces.

But many men of military age have still fled abroad to avoid the draft amid reports of corruption in the army recruitment system, allowing some men to bribe their way out of army service.

 

 


Nigerian army rescues 13 hostages from extremist group

Updated 14 September 2024
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Nigerian army rescues 13 hostages from extremist group

  • Kidnappings have become common in parts of northern Nigeria, where dozens of armed groups take advantage of a limited security presence to carry out attacks in village

ABUJA, Nigeria: Nigerian troops have rescued 13 hostages who were kidnapped by an extremist group in the northwestern state of Kaduna, the country’s army said on Saturday.
The army said in a statement that “the troops successfully overwhelmed the terrorists, forcing them to abandon their captives.”
Several kidnappers were killed and others captured, the military added. It didn’t specify what armed group the kidnappers belonged to.
The rescued hostages were taken to a military facility for a medical assessment before being reunited with their families. Weapons, ammunition, solar panels and cash were also discovered during the rescue operation.
Kidnappings have become common in parts of northern Nigeria, where dozens of armed groups take advantage of a limited security presence to carry out attacks in villages and along major roads. Most victims are released only after the payment of ransoms that sometimes run into the thousands of dollars.
At least 1,400 students have been taken from Nigerian schools since the 2014 kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls by Boko Haram militants in the village of Chibok in Borno state shocked the world.
Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown jihadi rebels, launched its insurgency in 2009 to establish Islamic Shariah law in the country. At least 35,000 people have been killed and 2.1 million people displaced as a result of the extremist violence, according to UN agencies in Nigeria.


G7 foreign ministers condemn Iran’s export of ballistic missiles to Russia

Updated 14 September 2024
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G7 foreign ministers condemn Iran’s export of ballistic missiles to Russia

  • Iran has provided Russia with a large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles

ROME: The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized powers condemned on Saturday “in the strongest terms” Iran’s export and Russia’s procurement of Iranian ballistic missiles.
Iran has provided Russia with a large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, deepening the military cooperation between the two countries, which are both under US sanctions.
“Iran must immediately cease all support to Russia’s illegal and unjustifiable war against Ukraine and halt such transfers of ballistic missiles, UAVs (drones) and related technology, which constitute a direct threat to the Ukrainian people as well as European and international security more broadly,” the G7 ministers said in a statement.
“We remain steadfast in our commitment to hold Iran to account for its unacceptable support for Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine that further undermines global security. In line with our previous statements on the matter, we are already responding with new and significant measures.”
Italy currently holds the presidency of the G7 group of wealthy nations which also includes the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France and Canada.


British PM breached parliament’s rules over clothing donations to wife — Sunday Times

Updated 14 September 2024
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British PM breached parliament’s rules over clothing donations to wife — Sunday Times

  • Sunday Times said those donations were declared but the clothes given to his wife were not

LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has breached parliamentary rules by not declaring a wealthy businessman and Labour Party donor bought high-end clothes for his wife Victoria, the Sunday Times reported on Saturday.
According to the Sunday Times, Starmer, in power since July, faces an investigation after “neglecting to disclose” that major Labour donor Waheed Alli covered the cost of a personal shopper, clothes and alterations for his wife.
The premier’s registered financial interests, listed on the parliament’s website, show that he has received several donations from Alli, including multiple pairs of glasses, work clothes and accommodation.
The Sunday Times said those donations were declared but the clothes given to his wife were not.
A spokesperson for 10 Downing Street said in a statement sent to Reuters that Starmer and his team had sought advice from authorities on coming to office, and believed they had been compliant.
“However, following further interrogation this month, we’ve declared further items,” the spokesperson said.
Alli is British media entrepreneur and former chairman of the online fashion retailer ASOS.
Under the House of Commons code of conduct, members of parliament have to provide information about financial interests which might reasonably be thought to influence their work.
A Conservative Party spokesperson called for a full investigation over “apparent serious breaches of parliamentary rules.”