PITTSBURGH: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are veering sharply in how they gear up for Tuesday’s presidential debate, setting up a showdown that reflects not just two separate visions for the country but two politicians who approach big moments very differently.
The vice president is cloistered in a historic hotel in downtown Pittsburgh where she can focus on honing crisp two-minute answers, per the debate’s rules. She’s been working with aides since Thursday and chose a venue that allows the Democratic nominee the option of mingling with swing-state voters.
Trump, the Republican nominee, publicly dismisses the value of studying for the debate. The former president is choosing instead to fill his days with campaign-related events on the premise that he’ll know what he needs to do once he steps on the debate stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
“You can go in with all the strategy you want but you have to sort of feel it out as the debate’s taking place,” he said during a town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Trump then quoted former boxing great Mike Tyson, who said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
Harris has said she is prepared for Trump to rattle off insults and misrepresent facts, even as her campaign has seen value in focusing on the middle class and the prospects of a better future for the country.
“We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth,” Harris said in a radio interview for the Rickey Smiley Morning Show. “He tends to fight for himself, not for the American people, and I think that’s going to come out during the course of the debate.”
In her own preparation, Harris has the Democratic consultant Philippe Reines, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton, portraying Trump. She likes to describe Trump as having a “playbook” of falsehoods to go after Democrats such as Clinton and former President Barack Obama.
Harris has said she understands Trump on a deeper psychological level. She has tried in speeches like her remarks at the Democratic National Convention to show that she would be a stronger leader than him — an argument that gets at Trump’s own desire to project and show strength.
Trump’s June 27 debate against President Joe Biden shook up the election, with Biden’s disastrous performance ultimately leading to him stepping aside as the Democratic nominee and endorsing Harris. Both campaigns know the first in-person meeting between Harris and Trump could be a decisive event in a tight race.
Trump is preemptively criticizing the ABC News debate moderators, claiming he will not be treated fairly. But he said he plans to let Harris speak, just as he did during his debate with Biden.
“I let him talk. I’m gonna let her talk,” he said during the Hannity town hall.
Trump aides said that this time would be no different than the previous debate and that the former president would not be doing any more traditional prep. There are no stand-ins, no sets, no play-acting.
Instead, they point to Trump’s frequent interviews, including taking questions at lengthy press conferences, sitting for hourlong podcasts, and participating in town halls with friendly hosts like Hannity.
Trump also meets regularly with policy advisers who are experts on issues that may come up during the debate. During these informal sessions, they talk about the issues, Trump’s policies while he was in office, and the plans he’s put forth for a second term.
“I have meetings on it. We talk about it. But there’s not a lot you can do. You either know your subject or not. You either have good policy or not,” he said in a New Hampshire radio interview.
Before the last debate Trump held sessions with notable Republicans like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who at the time was under consideration to be Trump’s vice presidential pick. This time he has held sessions with Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and Democratic presidential candidate who is now backing Trump.
Gabbard, who is also now a member of Trump’s transition team, was brought in specifically to help Trump this time around because she knows Harris, having debated her when the two were running for the Democratic nomination in 2020. She also hosted a recent town hall with Trump in Wisconsin.
Trump, aides insist, intends to put Harris on the defensive. He wants to portray her as too liberal as he tries to tie her to Biden’s economic record and points out her reversals on issues such as a fracking ban that she no longer supports.
“We look forward for the opportunity for Americans to see her on stage, incapable of defending her policies and flip-flops,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt. “The president’s proven he has a command of the issues, she does not.”
Harris’ team is banking that Trump will come off as extreme and that they can use the debate as a springboard to further build on the momentum that her short campaign has generated. The campaign plans to use the pre-debate weekend to hold 2,000 events with volunteers and reach more than one million voters.
“With hundreds of offices and thousands of staff across the battlegrounds, we are able to harness all the buzz around the debate and break through to hard-to-reach voters,” said Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground states director, in a statement.
Harris and Trump are getting ready for Tuesday’s debate in sharply different ways
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Harris and Trump are getting ready for Tuesday’s debate in sharply different ways
- The vice president is cloistered in a historic hotel in downtown Pittsburgh where she can focus on honing crisp two-minute answers, per the debate’s rules
- Trump, the Republican nominee, publicly dismisses the value of studying for the debate
Russia hits civilian, critical infrastructure, injures 10 in Ukraine
Russian troops also shelled Kherson and damaged energy equipment
KYIV: Attacks by Russian forces on Ukraine overnight and on Thursday across the country hit civilian and critical infrastructure facilities, injuring at least 10 people, Ukrainian authorities said.
Russia launched two ballistic missiles on the southern city of Mykolaiv in the early afternoon, targeting critical infrastructure, regional Governor Vitaliy Kim said.
Two people were wounded and a piece of equipment destroyed, he said in televised comments, without giving more details.
Russian troops also shelled Kherson and damaged energy equipment, according to Roman Mrochko, head of the southern city's military administration. Several settlements and part of the city were facing power outages, he said.
Separately, a flurry of Russian guided bombs early in the morning injured six people, including a 17-year-old girl, and damaged 29 buildings in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, its regional governor Ivan Fedorov, said.
Ukraine's air force said on the Telegram messaging app that it had downed 41 out of 62 drones launched by Russia. Russian forces also launched eight missiles, it added, while 14 drones were "locationally lost".
"As a result of the Russian missile and drone attacks civilian objects and critical infrastructure facilities in the Odesa, Poltava and Donetsk regions were hit," it said.
A drone attack on the central city of Kryvyi Rih injured two people and damaged a five-storey residential building, causing a fire, Dnipropetrovsk region governor, Serhiy Lysak, said.
The emergency services rescued seven people from the damaged part of the building and put out the fire at the site, he added.
Separately, a cruise missile attack late on Wednesday damaged a storage area at an infrastructure facility in the southern Ukrainian region of Mykolaiv, causing a blaze that was later extinguished, the governor said.
Regional authorities also reported late on Wednesday that a ballistic missile attack had hit port infrastructure in the Odesa region, killing eight people and damaging a Panama-flagged container ship.
UK religious hate crime hits record high over Gaza war
- There were 3,866 hate crimes against Muslims and hate crimes against Jewish people more than doubled to 3,282
- “The appalling levels of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate crimes outlined in today’s figures are a stain on our society,” said interior minister Yvette Cooper
LONDON: Religious hate crime in England and Wales rose by a record 25 percent in the last year, fueled by a spike since the start of the war in Gaza, government data showed Thursday.
The highest annual figure of religious hate crimes in over a decade was due to a rise in offenses “against Jewish people and to a lesser extent Muslims” since the Hamas attack of October 7 last year, the interior ministry said.
Overall, there were 140,561 hate crimes — defined as an offense based on a person’s race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity — recorded by the police in the 12 months to March.
Most — 98,799 or 70 percent — were racially motivated.
Both the overall and race hate crime figures are down five percent on the previous 12 months.
But religious hate crimes surged from 8,370 in 2022-23 to nearly 10,500 — the highest annual figure since data collection began in 2012.
Hate crimes against Jewish people more than doubled to 3,282 while there were also 3,866 hate crimes against Muslims.
“The appalling levels of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate crimes outlined in today’s figures are a stain on our society,” said interior minister Yvette Cooper.
She promised to tackle “this toxic hatred wherever it is found,” adding: “We must not allow events unfolding in the Middle East to play out in increased hatred and tension here on our streets.
“Those who push this poison — offline or online — must face the full force of the law.”
The latest data comes just days after marches and memorials took place across the country to mark the first anniversary of Hamas’s attack against Israel and Israel’s retaliation in Gaza, which the group controls.
British faith leaders, including from Jewish and Muslim communities, have called for the public to reject “prejudice and hatred in all its forms.”
Police in England and Wales recorded a fall in hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation, disability, and against transgender people.
Myanmar junta authorities arrest prominent protest leader
- Paing Phyo Min was arrested late Wednesday after authorities entered a residence in east Yangon’s Thaketa township
BANGKOK: Myanmar security forces have arrested a prominent democracy activist and protest leader in a nighttime raid in commercial hub Yangon, a member of his protest group said on Thursday.
Paing Phyo Min was arrested late Wednesday after authorities entered a residence in east Yangon’s Thaketa township, Nan Lin of the “Anti-junta Alliance Yangon” protest group said.
Paing Phyo Min had not been heard from since, he said, adding, “We are very concerned about his life and safety.”
Amnesty International said it understood Paing Phyo Min and Shein Wai Aung, another activist, “were arrested on 9 October and sent to an interrogation center.”
Shein Wai Aung and his father, mother and sister were all uncontactable, Amnesty said.
Junta authorities in Yangon were not immediately reachable when contacted by AFP.
In 2019, under the quasi-civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, Paing Phyo Min was jailed for six years for performing a satirical poem criticizing the military.
The sentence sparked criticism from rights group Amnesty International and he was released in 2021, according to the watchdog.
Following the military’s 2021 ouster of Suu Kyi’s government, Paing Phyo Min helped organize pro-democracy demonstrations in Yangon that were later crushed by security forces.
The junta maintains a widespread network of informants and undercover police in Yangon and has largely squashed open challenges to its rule in the city of around eight million.
“The Myanmar military must urgently account for the whereabouts and wellbeing of Paing Phyo Min and of Shein Wai Aung and his family,” Amnesty’s Myanmar researcher Joe Freeman said.
“Unless they can be charged with an internationally recognized crime, they must be immediately and unconditionally released.”
More than 27,000 people have been arrested by the junta in its crackdown on dissent since the coup, according to a local monitoring group.
“Protesting in Myanmar today is not the same as it was before the coup. Anyone involved in any kind of dissent against the military faces long jail terms, torture and other ill-treatment, and even death in custody,” Freeman said.
Security forces have used torture and sexual violence in their crackdown on dissent, according to rights groups, and the United Nations rights office said in 2022 at least 290 people had died in custody.
Shooting at Israeli company in Sweden, no injuries: police, media
- No injuries had been reported and that a young suspect had been arrested
Stockholm: An office of Israeli military technology firm Elbit Systems in Gothenburg was the target of a shooting Thursday, according to media, with Swedish police saying there were no injuries.
Police told AFP that they had responded to a shooting “against an Israeli object in Kalleback” in Gothenburg, a coastal city in southwestern Sweden.
They added that no injuries had been reported and that a young suspect had been arrested.
Newspaper Aftonbladet said the suspect was under the age of 15.
An investigation has been opened into “attempted murder” and an “aggravated weapons crime,” police spokesman Fredrik Svedemyr said.
Svedemyr said police had sent several patrols and a helicopter to the scene.
Elbit Systems said in an email to AFP that they “currently had no comment.”
In early June, police said they had found a “suspected explosive object” outside the offices of the military technology firm, known for its unmanned aerial systems.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, there have been several incidents apparently targeting Israeli interests in Sweden.
In February, police found a grenade on the grounds of the Israeli embassy compound, which the ambassador said was an attempted attack.
In mid-May, gunshots were fired outside the Israeli embassy, which prompted the country to boost security measures around Israeli interests and Jewish community institutions.
The Scandinavian country’s intelligence agency Sapo said in late May that Iran was recruiting members of Swedish criminal gangs to commit “acts of violence” against Israeli and other interests in Sweden — a claim Iran denied.
Last week, police said once again that it was stepping up security around Israeli and Jewish interests in response to a second shooting at the Israeli embassy in Stockholm and twin blasts, suspected to be caused by hand grenades, outside the Israeli embassy in neighboring Denmark.
Ukraine’s Zelensky arrives in London for talks with UK’s Starmer, NATO’s Rutte
- Zelensky and Starmer have both said the war with Russia is at a critical point
- Ukrainian leader is keen for the West to deliver long-range missiles to change the balance on the battlefield
LONDON: President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in London for talks with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO chief Mark Rutte on Thursday, a boost for Ukraine after a summit of its main backers was canceled at a difficult moment in its fight against Russia.
Zelensky and Starmer have both said the war with Russia is at a critical point, and the Ukrainian leader is keen for the West to deliver long-range missiles and other support to try to change the balance on the battlefield.
The Ukrainian president had been due to present a “victory plan” for the war to allies in Germany this week, but the summit was postponed after US President Joe Biden canceled his visit to focus on Hurricane Milton.
Starmer said at the start of his meeting with Zelensky in Downing Street that it was “very important we are able to show our continued commitment to support Ukraine” and it was a chance to “go through the plan, to talk in more detail.”
NATO’s new secretary-general, Mark Rutte, was also due to meet Starmer and Zelensky in Downing Street later on Thursday.
Zelensky is traveling in Europe to meet allies this week. He was in Croatia on Wednesday and will meet Pope Francis on Friday.
Ukraine’s arms donors had been set to convene at the Ramstein Air Base for their highest-level meeting on the sidelines of a Biden state visit to Germany.
But the White House said Biden needed to oversee preparations for Hurricane Milton and relief efforts after another hurricane last month killed more than 200 people.
