Five people were shot Tuesday night at Morgan State University in Baltimore and police have yet to locate a suspect as the investigation into the shooting continues, officials said.
University police heard gunshots around 9:25 p.m. local time and responded to find multiple gunshot victims on campus and saw multiple shattered windows, Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley said in a media briefing.
The victims, four men and one woman aged 18 to 22, were taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries, according to the commissioner. Four of the victims are Morgan University students, according to Morgan State University Police Chief Lance Hatcher.
A SWAT team and officers from several agencies responded to search for the suspect at the university – a small HBCU in northeast Baltimore – while students and teachers were urged to shelter in place and avoid the area.
“We did not locate the suspect at this time,” Worley said. No suspect description was provided by police as of early Wednesday morning and it’s unclear whether the person is affiliated with the university.
Officials said the incident is no longer considered an active shooter situation and lifted a shelter in place order.
Footage from CNN affiliate WJZ showed multiple emergency response vehicles surrounding a taped-off student dormitory building. The glass of one of the building’s upper-floor windows appears to be shattered.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott was on scene at the university early Wednesday as law enforcement and school officials were handling the ongoing investigation, he posted on X.
ATF Baltimore said its agents were assisting police in responding to the shooting.
As police combed the university for a suspect Tuesday night,they also asked concerned family members of students to continue toavoid the campus area.
“Please stay clear of the area surrounding Thurgood Marshall Hall and the Murphy Fine Arts Center and shelter in place,” the university said in a notice on its website. Police said they were responding to the 1700 block of Argonne Drive.
Morgan State is a historically Black university and had about 9,000 students enrolled in Fall 2022. The shooting occurred at the beginning of its Homecoming week as it prepared to welcome alumni and community members to campus for celebratory events including a pep rally, gala and parade.
It also falls just days before a scheduled candlelight memorial service intended to honor university members who have died over the past year.
Morgan State University President David Wilson announced that classes will be canceled Wednesday and counselors will be available to students.
The governing party called it a ceremonial passing of the baton. But the opposition lambasted it as a “passing of the scepter.”
Constitutionally barred from running for reelection, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sought to show last month, in a very public way, that presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum has his blessing. So he handed his hoped-for successor an actual baton, in a ceremony outside a Mexico City restaurant not far from the National Palace – the seat of the country’s executive power.
Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old former Mexico City mayor and longtime political ally of Lopez Obrador, hit all the right notes in thanking him. Accepting the baton along with the leftist Morena party’s presidential nomination, Sheinbaum said she would assume “the full responsibility of continuing the course marked by our people, that of the transformation initiated by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.”
When Mexicans go to the polls next June, they will choose between two women for president – a first in the country’s history. Only four days before Morena nominated Sheinbaum, Mexico’s opposition coalition Broad Front chose another formidable female candidate, former senator Xochitl Gálvez from the conservative PAN party.
It’s not the first time Mexico sees women running for the presidency; before Sheinbaum and Gálvez, were six other female presidential candidates. But with the two major political sides nominating women, this is the first time that it’s practically a given that starting in December 2024, Mexico, a country previously known for machismo, will be run by a woman.
Still, some critics say the outgoing Lopez Obrador’s shadow looms over the contest.
Meet the candidates: Sheinbaum and Galvez
Gálvez’s rise in Mexican politics has been meteoric; this spring, she said she wasn’t even the favorite of the PRI, PAN and PRD, the parties that now form the Broad Front coalition. It was a public spat with Lopez Obrador himself – who regularly attacked her as a “wimp,” “puppet,” and “employee of the oligarchy” in news conferences – that ultimately rocketed her into the spotlight.
In June, Gálvez went viral when she attempted to enter the National Palace with a judicial order that granted her the right to reply to the president, after successfully suing López Obrador. “This is not a show,” she told reporters at the doors of the National Palace. “The law is the law, period.”
The daughter of an indigenous father and a mixed-race mother, Gálvez served as the top official for indigenous affairs under former President Vicente Fox before becoming a senator. Unfiltered and irreverent, she described herself in an interview with CNN en Español as “an all-terrain, 4-by-4, kind of woman.”
In some respects, she appears progressive. Gálvez has advocated in the Mexican Congress for the rights and welfare of indigenous groups and Afro-Mexicans, and in a regional forum earlier this year in Monterrey, said that oil-rich Mexico should shift to renewable energy. “We haven’t done it because we are dumbasses,” Gálvez unapologetically said.
She has also said leftist Lopez Obrador’s pension for all senior citizens should continue, and proposes what she calls a “universal social protection system” of welfare programs for a large portion of the middle and lower classes.
But when it comes to security and the fight against organized crime, Gálvez’s three-pronged plan is muscular, based on what she describes as “intelligence, heart and a firm-hand”: strengthening local and state police and giving them access to intelligence, advocating for and protecting victims, and respecting the rule of law.
Macario Schettino, a political analyst and Social Science professor at ITESM, a renowned Mexican university, describes Gálvez’s political momentum as impressive, considering that only a few months ago, she wasn’t even considered a candidate with a national profile. “She barely begun to register in political terms, and she’s already had great growth. Many people in Mexico still don’t know her. She is going to grow [..] in popularity,” Schettino said, “While Claudia Sheinbaum can no longer move from where she is because she is already known by most Mexicans.”
Sheinbaum, a physicist with a doctorate in environmental engineering, would also be the first president with Jewish heritage if she wins, although she rarely speaks publicly about her personal background and has governed as a secular leftist.
She is currently ahead in most polls, and will be a formidable opponent to beat. Not only does Sheinbaum have the full support of the governing party, she has also long enjoyed the spotlight as mayor of Mexico’s most important city for the last five years until her resignation in June to run for the presidency.
On policy, Sheinbaum has vowed to continue many of Lopez Obrador’s policies and programs, including a pension for all senior citizens, scholarships for more than 12 million students and free fertilizers for small farm owners. But the high-profile ex-mayor rejects criticism of her close political alignment with the president. “Of course we’re not a copy (of the president),” she said in July.
Still, she does not shy away from touting the principles they share: “For everybody’s good, let’s put the poor first. There cannot be a rich government if the people are poor. Power is only a virtue when it’s used to serve the people,” Sheinbaum said, repeating the same campaign slogans Lopez Obrador has used for years.
Schettino believes the immensely popularly Lopez Obrador views Sheinbaum as his extension in power. He points to their party Morena’s roots in the authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party that governed Mexico for more than seven decades until 2000, which came to be known as “The Dinosaur,” and the Party of Democratic Revolution that branched off from it.
In 2012, Lopez Obrador created Morena as a political party. Schettino describes the party today as a “tyrannosaurus” under Lopez Obrador’s influence – representing what he says is the current leader’s desire for a successor to hew closely to his own agenda. “President López Obrador, a dinosaur who not only is a dinosaur, but also has the vocation of a tyrant. He doesn’t want to go. He wants to stay in power,” Schettino said.
“I believe that he built Claudia’s candidacy,” Schettino said.
López Obrador however has repeatedly dismissed accusations of authoritarian leanings or that he favors a candidate he will be able to control. Earlier this year, Lopez Obrador denied he had any favorites among his party’s hopefuls or that he was pushing for one candidate or another behind the scenes.
He has also said that he is going “retire completely” after his six-year term in office comes to an end. “I am retiring, I will not participate in any public event again, of course. I am not going to accept any position, I do not want to be anyone’s advisor, much less am I going to act as a chief. I am not going to have relations with politicians. I am not going to talk about politics,” the president told press in February.
Michael Duane Zack III, who was convicted of the 1996 killings of two women he met at bars along the Florida panhandle, is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. at the Florida State Prison, according to the state’s Department of Corrections.
The US Supreme Court on Monday denied a request to halt the execution of the death row inmate after attorneys for Zack filed a stay of execution last week, court records show.
In the filing, Zack’s lawyers allege a lower court was wrong to “deny his claim that he is intellectually disabled.”
“At trial, Zack’s defense counsel argued that Zack suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome and posttraumatic stress disorder which are classified as a brain dysfunction and a mental impairment respectively,” according to a state capital case summary.
On Thursday, attorneys for the state of Florida filed a response opposing the stay of execution, court records show.
The nation’s highest court denied the appeal Monday afternoon without comment, court records show.
In 1997, Zack was convicted and sentenced to death for the June 1996 murder of Ravonne Smith, whom he violently killed in her home after meeting at a bar near Pensacola, according to a state capital case summary. Zack received a life sentence for the murder of Laura Rosillo at an Okaloosa County, Florida, beach, whom he also met at a bar before killing, according to the case summary.
“After his arrest, Zack confessed to the murder of Ravonne Smith,” said the case summary.
Zack’s execution will be the eighth under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the sixth in the state this year, according to state death row data.
A critically endangered Sumatran rhinoceros calf has been born in a national park in Indonesia, the third successful pairing between a local female rhino named Ratu and Andalas, a former resident of Ohio’s Cincinnati Zoo.
The unnamedfemale was born on Saturday at the Way Kambas National Park on southern Sumatra island, Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry said on X, formerly Twitter.
Environment and forestry minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said it was “happy news not just for Indonesia but the rest of the world.”
Sumatran rhinos were once found in great numbers across Southeast Asia but fewer than 80 remain in fragmented areas across Indonesia, according to the International Rhino Foundation (IRF).
The calf’s birth represents hope for a species threatened with extinction due to illegal poaching and habitat loss.
Photos shared by the forestry ministry showed the newborn calf, weighing about 27 kilograms (60 pounds), covered in black hair and looking bright-eyed next to her mother.
In one picture, Ratu was seen giving her baby a gentle nudge.
Within 45 minutes of her natural birth, the calf was able to stand and began feeding from her mother within four hours, the ministry said.
Sumatran rhinos are the world’s smallest rhinos, standing at roughly 4 to 5 feet tall (about 1.5 meters), with an average body length of around 8.2 feet (2.5 meters).
They are moreclosely related to extinct woolly rhinos than other rhino species and are covered in long hair.
Sumatran rhinos typically live in dense tropical forest, both lowland and highland, on Sumatra and are generally solitary in nature, according to IRF. Females give birth to one calf every three to four years and gestation periods can last between 15 to 16 months.
Habitat loss has driven them to occupy smaller areas of the Indonesian jungle and conservationists are concerned about the survival of the species.
“As this reclusive species seems to disappear further into dense jungles, direct sightings have become rare and indirect signs like footprints are getting harder to find,” the IRF said.
“The beacon of hope for the species is the breeding program at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary… that has produced three calves and continues its breeding efforts to create an insurance population of rhinos.”
The species was declared locally extinct in neighboring Malaysia in 2019.
A 25-year-old female named Iman died of cancer on November 24, 2019 at the Borneo Rhino Sanctuary. Her death came months after Tam – the last surviving male rhino – succumbed to organ failure, officials said.
At least 11 people were killed and two people seriously injured on Sunday after the roof of a church in northern Mexico collapsed, officials said.
Preliminary reports indicate that about 100 people were inside the building in Ciudad Madero at the time of the incident, according to a statement from security services in the state of Tamaulipas. Thirty people were believed to be buried in the rubble, Reuters reported.
At least 60 people were injured, with two people sustaining serious injuries, Tamaulipas security spokesperson said.
Units from the National Guard, State Guard, Civil Protection and the Red Cross were assisting in the rescue operation.
Bishop Jose Armando Alvarez, from the diocese of Tampico, said the roof of the church collapsed while worshipers were taking communion, Reuters reported. He urged other members of the community to pray for survivors.
“In this moment the necessary work is being carried out to pull out the people who are still under the rubble,” Bishop Armando said in a recorded message shared on social media, according to Reuters.
Turkey’s military carried out airstrikes targeting Kurdish militants in northern Iraq on Sunday, just hours after the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) claimed responsibility for a deadly bombing in the capital in the latest attack of its nearly four-decade long insurgency.
In a statement, the Turkish Defense Ministry said its warplanes destroyed 20 PKK targets including caves, bunkers, shelters and warehouses in the regions of Metina, Hakurk, Kandil, and Gara.
“Many terrorists were neutralized by using the maximum amount of domestic and national ammunition,” said the statement, which cited self-defense rights from Article 51 of the United Nations Charter to justify the strikes.
The PKK, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union, earlier said it was behind the blast Sunday outside Turkey’s Interior Ministry building that left one dead and two injured, the pro-PKK Firat News Agency reported.
The ministry said in a statement that two attackers murdered a civilian and stole his vehicle ahead of the opening of parliament in Ankara. Two police officers reportedly received non-life-threatening injuries.
One assailant blew himself up and the other was “neutralized,” the ministry said.
Investigators found four different types of guns, three hand grenades, one rocket launcher, and C-4 explosives at the scene.
The ministry confirmed at least one of the two attackers is a PKK member. The second attacker has yet to be identified, it said.
Kurds, who do not have an official homeland or country, are the biggest minority in Turkey, making up between 15% and 20% of the population, according to Minority Rights Group International.
Portions of Kurdistan – a non-governmental region and one of the largest stateless nations in the world – are recognized by Iran, where the province of Kordestan lies; and Iraq, site of the northern autonomous region known as Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) or Iraqi Kurdistan.
According to Ankara, the PKK trains separatist fighters and launches attacks against Turkey from its bases in northern Iraq and Syria, where a PKK-affiliated Kurdish group controls large swaths of territory.
Terror attacks in Turkey were tragically common in the mid to late 2010s, when the insecurity from war-torn Syria crept north above the two countries’ shared border.
In recent years, Turkey has carried out a steady stream of operations against the PKK domestically as well as cross-border operations into Syria.
In an address to lawmakers Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed that Turkey would continue its fight against terrorism “until the last terrorist is eliminated domestically and abroad.”
Sunday’s attack marked the “final flutters of terrorism” in the country, he added.
Top Senate Republicans look at the prospects of a Donald Trump primary victory with trepidation, fearful his polarizing style and heavy baggage may sink GOP candidates down the ticket as their party battles for control of the chamber.
The Montana Republican, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has spent the past year working to ensure Trump and Senate Republican leaders don’t clash about their preferred candidates in key primaries, after the 2022 debacle that saw a bevy of Trump-backed choices collapse in the heat of the general election and cost their party the Senate majority. So far, the two are on the same page.
Daines argues that Trump is “strengthening” among independent voters and that could be a boon for his Senate candidates – even in purple states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The senator says that his down-ticket candidates should embrace the former president, even as he’s facing four criminal trials with polls showing that he remains a deeply unpopular figure with wide swaths of voters.
“What’s key is we want to make sure we have high-quality candidates running with President Trump,” Daines said. “Candidates that can again appeal beyond the Republican base – that’s my goal.”
In an interview with CNN at NRSC headquarters, Daines detailed his latest thinking about the GOP strategy to take back the Senate, saying his candidates need to have a stronger position on abortion, signaling he’s eager to avoid a primary in the Montana race and arguing that neither Sens. Kyrsten Sinema nor Joe Manchin could hold onto their seats if they ran for reelection in their states as independents.
And as Kari Lake is poised to announce a Senate bid in Arizona as soon as next week, Daines has some advice for the former TV broadcaster, who falsely blamed mass voting fraud for her loss in last year’s gubernatorial race in her state.
“I think one thing we’ve learned from 2022 is voters do not want to hear about grievances from the past,” Daines said. “They want to hear about what you’re going to do for the future. And if our candidates stay on that message of looking down the highway versus the rearview mirror, I think they’ll be a lot more successful particularly in their appeal to independent voters, which usually decide elections.”
Daines, who called Lake “very gifted” and said he’s had “positive” conversations with her, added: “I think it’s just going to be important for her to look to the future and not so much the past.”
Asked if Trump’s repeated false claims of a “stolen” election could be problematic down-ticket, Daines instead pointed out that Trump was the last GOP president since Ronald Reagan to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan in 2016, though he lost those states in 2020.
“As we continue to watch the president strengthen, we’ll see what happens here in ’24, but I’ll tell you he provides a lot of strength for us down ballot in many key states,” said Daines, who was the first member of Senate GOP leadership to endorse Trump.
Daines’ assessment comes as he is benefitting from a highly favorable map, with 23 Democrats up for reelection, compared to just 11 for the GOP. Democratic incumbents in three states that Trump won – Ohio, Montana and West Virginia – are the most endangered, while the two best Democratic pickup opportunities – Texas and Florida – remain an uphill battle.
“We’ll have to keep an eye on Texas – the Ted Cruz race,” Daines said. “Just because he’s Ted Cruz he’ll draw a lot of money from the other side to try to defeat Ted Cruz.”
Beating incumbents is usually a complicated endeavor, plus Republicans are facing messy primaries that could make it harder to win a general election, including in Daines’ home-state of Montana. There, Daines has gotten behind Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL who owns an aerial firefighting company. But there’s a possibility that Sheehy could face Rep. Matt Rosendale in the primary, something that Republicans fear could undercut their effort to take down 17-year incumbent Sen. Jon Tester.
Rosendale, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, narrowly lost to Tester in 2018 and is considering another run in 2024.
“I’ve known Matt a long time. He’s a friend of mine. I like Matt Rosendale,” Daines said. “I think it’s best if he were to stay in the US House and gain seniority.”
Unlike in the last cycle when the NRSC stayed neutral under previous leadership, the campaign committee now is taking a much heavier hand in primaries, picking and choosing which candidates to endorse. While Daines declined to say how his committee would handle the Arizona primary, he indicated they would stay out of the crowded Ohio primary, arguing the three GOP candidates battling it out there are on solid footing in the race for Sen. Sherrod Brown’s seat.
While West Virginia remains perhaps the best pickup opportunity for the GOP, the NRSC will have a much harder time if Manchin decides to run for reelection. In an interview, Manchin signaled that if he runs again, it may be as an independent – not a Democrat.
“I think everyone thinks of me as an independent back home,” Manchin told CNN. “I don’t think they look at me as a big D or a big R or an anti-R or anti-D or anything. They say it’s Joe, if it makes sense, he’ll do it.”
Daines said that wouldn’t make much of a difference.
“It’d be very difficult for Joe to get reelected in West Virginia based on looking at the numbers,” Daines said, pointing to Manchin’s support for the Inflation Reduction Act.
Similarly, Daines said that if Sinema runs in Arizona, he doesn’t believe she can win as a third-party candidate, as she faces a GOP candidate and the likely Democratic nominee, Rep. Ruben Gallego.
“I think Sinema will have a difficult path if she gets in the race,” he said.
In addition to facing weaker candidates last cycle, many Republicans continue to sidestep questions on their positions over abortion – a potent issue in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
But Daines says he doesn’t think abortion will be “as potent this cycle,” indicating he is pressing candidates to do a “better job” messaging on the issue to suburban women. He said that Republicans need to impress upon voters that they support limits on late-term abortions, with exceptions for rape, incest or life of the mother, arguing that’s a “more reasonable position” in line with most Americans – all the while rejecting calls for a national ban on all abortions.
“I think we actually had candidates who just kind of ran away from the issue and kind of hoped it went away,” Daines said. “And when you do that, if you don’t take a position, the Democratic opponents there will define the issue for them. And that’s a losing strategy.”
Daines is also in the middle of another internal party war – between Trump and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, as the two men have been at sharp odds since the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Asked if he believed the two could work with each other if Trump is president again and McConnell returns as Republican leader, Daines said: “It’d be a privilege to have a Republican president and a Republican majority leader working – that’d be a nice problem to have.”
Opposition candidate Mohamed Muizzu has won the Maldives presidential election, beating incumbent President Ibrahim Solih in a second-round runoff that could herald a pro-China shift for the Indian Ocean archipelago from traditional partner India.
With nearly all votes counted, the Elections Commission of the Maldives said on its website that Muizzu had received 54% of the ballots in Saturday’s vote, with 46% for Solih.
About 85% of 282,000 eligible voters in the Maldives, known for its pristine beaches and high-end resorts, turned up at more than 586 polling stations across 187 islands.
“I congratulate Muizzu for winning the election and thank the people for their exemplary democratic spirit,” Solih said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Solih, who championed an “India First” policy during his time in power, will remain as president until Muizzu’s inauguration on Nov. 17.
The coalition backing Muizzu has supported Chinese loans and investment projects in the past.
Former President Abdulla Yameen, who has close links to Muizzu, is serving an 11-year prison term for corruption and money laundering. Yameen’s supporters say the charges against him were politically motivated.
“Today the people made a strong decision to win back Maldives independence,” Muizzu told reporters in the capital, Male.
“All of us, working together with unity, Insha Allah, we will be successful.”
Muizzu also called on President Solih to release Yameen to house arrest.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent a congratulatory message to Muizzu following the announcement of his victory.
“India remains committed to strengthening the time-tested India-Maldives bilateral relationship and enhancing our overall cooperation in the Indian Ocean Region,” Modi said on X.
Rishi Sunak will gather with members of his governing Conservative Party on Sunday for what is likely to be their final party conference before the UK’s next general election, which Sunak is currently projected to lose.
The Conservatives come together for their annual meeting with little good news to celebrate. The party is trailing the opposition Labour Party in the polls by a significant distance.
Sunak has been criticized by moderates in the party for tacking to the right on key issues like immigration and commitments to reducing carbon emissions. He is also being attacked from the party’s right for what they perceive to be an anti-conservative approach to taxation and public debt.
As if Sunak’s job uniting his party this week wasn’t hard enough, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the leading economic research institute in the UK, published a report projecting that taxes will account for around 37% of national income by the next election – the highest level since World War II.
Party conference season is an important date fixture in the annual British political calendar. Taking place in the early fall, these jamborees are the principal forums for each party to outline its priorities for the next 12 months.
For the governing party, conference is typically a time when members rally around the leadership and unite against the opposition, insulated from whatever is happening in the wider world of politics.
This should be especially true as an election approaches. However, Sunak, who wasn’t even the Conservatives’ leader this time last year, has inherited a broken party that has been in power for so long it seems out of ideas and already preparing for the post-mortem and blame game that follows any election loss.
And factions on both the left and right of the party are already publicly criticising Sunak on a range of issues.
Examples coming into this year’s conference:
Former cabinet minister Priti Patel told British channel GB News on Friday that the tax burden was “unsustainable” before unfavourably comparing Sunak to tax-cutting former PM, Margaret Thatcher.
The Conservative-supporting Daily Mail newspaper ran a column titled: “Didn’t the Tories used to be party of tax CUTS?”
Sunak can also expect vocal criticism from the environmental wing of his party after a significant U-turn last week on climate policy. Sunak delayed a planned moratorium on the sale new gasoline and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035 and pushed back on plans to phase out gas boilers in homes.
Some Conservatives who support action on the climate crisis, not least former PM Boris Johnson, criticised Sunak, saying the UK “cannot afford to falter now” or “lose our ambition.”
Such a direct criticism of a sitting PM by a former PM is highly unusual. What makes it particularly painful for Sunak is that Johnson is at the heart of perhaps the most crucial internal battle within the Conservative Party.
Johnson was forced to resign from office because of a range of scandals last summer. However, Johnson’s most loyal acolytes believe that Sunak’s decision to quit as Johnson’s finance minister was the straw that broke the camel’s back and made Johnson’s position untenable. They believe he was motivated by the opportunity to take a run at the top job himself, something Sunak denies.
This battle between Sunak and Johnson has created a very strange dynamic within the party.
Johnson, darling of the Conservative right since the Brexit referendum, is in many ways politically to the left of Sunak. However, his pragmatism over Brexit and cautious economics has led to his allies painting Sunak as a Conservative sellout.
They also believe that Sunak’s betrayal of Johnson and apparent wish-washy centrism is what will ultimately cost the Conservative Party the next general election – ignoring the damage that Johnson did to the party and its standing in the polls through his scandal-ridden premiership.
Sunak has made attempts to counter these attacks by throwing red meat at Conservative MPs and voters. The U-turn on climate policies is just the most recent example. He’s made a crackdown on immigration – particularly the route across the English Channel from France in so-called small boats – a key plank of his agenda since taking office.
He’s been accused of sowing division over over the complex issue of trans rights in attempts to win over his own MPs and has leant into the Johnsonite position of attacking “lefty lawyers” over opposition to his plans, including those on immigration.
His hard-line shift doesn’t necessarily resonate with the public, most polls show. Which is why experts believe that Sunak is doubling down on his Conservative base, which might be his only real path to retaining power at the next election.
“Sunak’s strategy of taking on issues like net zero and small boats is very much a ‘core vote’ strategy, aimed at securing the Conservative base,” says Will Jennings, professor of politics at the University of Southampton.
“This is not without risk – firstly because it’s not clear how large that core vote is without Boris Johnson, Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn (the controversial, hard-left former Labour leader) and also because voters have other concerns right now – most notably the economy,” he adds.
If you talk to senior Conservatives right now, there is a quiet acceptance that a loss is the most likely result of the next election. Most agree that not only does this look like a government in its death throes, but also that everyone is already thinking about who will replace Sunak after his defeat. Factions on the right and left of the party are already forming and people on both sides are already talking about how to win the battle for the soul of their party.
While the next election may not be a foregone conclusion, the next few months will be critical if Sunak is to start turning the polls around and make the comeback of all comebacks. All of that starts this week in Manchester: a good conference could lift the mood and rally the troops; a bad conference could be the kiss of death to any hope his party had left.
Indonesia is launching Southeast Asia’s first-ever bullet train on Sunday, a high-speed rail service line that will connect two of the country’s largest cities.
Part of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and largely funded by Chinese state-owned firms, the $7.3 billion project opened to the public on Sunday, following a series of delays and setbacks.
The train will travel between the capital Jakarta and Bandung in West Java, Indonesia’s second-largest city and a major arts and culture hub.
The 86-mile (138-kilometer) high-speed rail line, officially named WHOOSH – which stands for “time saving, optimal operation, reliable system” in Indonesian – runs on electricity with no direct carbon emissions and travels at a speed of roughly 217 miles per hour – cutting travel time between Jakarta and Bandung from three hours to under less than an hour, officials say.
Overseen by the joint state venture PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (PT KCIC), the train travels between the Halim railway station in East Jakarta and Padalarang railway station in West Bandung, and is well connected to local public transport systems.
The trains, modified for Indonesia’s tropical climate, are equipped with a safety system that can respond to earthquakes, floods and other emergency conditions, officials added.
There are talks to extend the high-speed line to Surabaya – a major port and capital of East Java Province, PT KCIC director Dwiyana Slamet Riyadi told Chinese state media outlets at a ceremony earlier in September.
Stops at other major cities like Semarang and Yogyakarta, the gateway to Borobudur – the largest Buddhist temple in the world – are also being planned, Dwiyana said.
According to information released by PT KCIC, the railway features eight cars – all equipped with Wi-Fi and USB charging points – and seats 601 passengers.
There will be three classes of seats – first, second and VIP.
Indonesia, the world’s fourth-largest country and Southeast Asia’s largest economy, has been actively and openly courting investment from China, its largest trade and investment partner.
A high-profile meeting in July between Indonesian and Chinese leaders Joko Widodo and Xi Jinping unveiled a series of projects, including plans to build a multi-billion dollar Chinese glass factory on the island of Rempang in Indonesia’s Riau Islands Archipelago as part of a new ‘Eco-City,’ sparking weeks of fierce protests from indigenous islanders opposed to their villages being torn down.
Widodo and Chinese Premier Li Qiang were photographed taking test rides on the new high-speed railway throughout September.
The train deal was first signed in 2015 as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and construction began later that year.
It was initially expected to be completed in 2019 but has faced multiple operational delays as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as land procurement and ballooning costs.
PT KCIC’s director Dwiyana hailed the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway as an “outstanding example of bilateral cooperation between Indonesia and China.” It will not only improve Indonesian infrastructure but “promote the development of Indonesia’s railroad and manufacturing industries,” he said.
Built on the land of the Wakka Wakka people, Cherbourg’s modern motto of “many tribes, one community” reflects the varied origins of its 1,700 residents, descendants of people once forced to live there under laws of segregation.
Between 1905 and 1971, more than 2,600 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were forcibly moved from their land to Cherbourg, then known as Barambah, according to the Queensland government.
Some were marched barefoot through the Australian bush by colonial settlers under a law that called for the removal of Indigenous people from their traditional lands to be housed and educated in colonial ways.
Today residents live in neat rows of single story houses, their rent paid to a council that’s determined to turn the former government reserve into a thriving community where people want to live – and it seems to be working.
“We’ve got around 260 people waiting on our waiting list,” said Cherbourg Council CEO Chatur Zala. “There’s a huge demand for social housing because our rent is pretty reasonable.
“The rent in the big cities is so expensive, people can’t afford it.”
Life has changed for people in Cherbourg, but a divide still exists in Australia between non-Indigenous and Indigenous people on a whole range of measures – from infant mortality to employment, suicide and incarceration.
Indigenous people have proposed an idea they say may help close the gap, and on October 14 the entire country will vote on it.
A Yes vote would recognize First Nations people in the constitution and create a body – a Voice to Parliament – to advise the government on issues that affect them. A No vote would mean no change.
So how does Cherbourg, a community created from policies of segregation andassimilation, feel about what’s being billed as an historic step forward for Indigenous reconciliation?
“My community is very, very confused,” said Mayor Elvie Sandow, from her air-conditioned office in the center of Cherbourg. “They’re confused with the Voice, and then the pathway to [a] treaty.”
The mayor said residents will vote because if they don’t, they’ll be fined under Australia’s compulsory voting laws, then she immediately corrects herself.
“Well, they probably won’t vote,” she said. “They’ll just go out and get their name ticked off the [electoral] roll, so that avoids them getting a fine.”
A record number of Australians – some 17.67 million of a population of 25.69 million – have registered to vote in the country’s first referendum in almost 25 years, according to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).
Early voting has already started in remote communities, with AEC staff traveling vast distances by 4WDs, helicopters, planes and ferries to reach them.
Campaigners for both sides – Yes and No – have also been traversing the same routes, speaking to locals, organizing rallies and spending millions of dollars on radio, television and online advertising to win their votes.
“I think this is one of the most important events of my life,” said Erin Johnston, who was among thousands of people marching at a recent Yes rally in Brisbane, organized by the charity Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition.
“We have an opportunity to right a big wrong,” Johnston said.
But with two weeks to go before the vote, polls are showing that the referendum is on track to fail, a potential blow for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who made it an election pledge.
The prime minister has stressed that the Voice is not his idea but a “modest request” made by representatives of hundreds of Aboriginal nations who held meetings around the country in 2017.
Together they agreed a one-page statement called the Uluru Statement from the Heart which calls for “a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.”
“We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country,” it said.
Aunty Ruth Hegarty remembers her early days as a child in Cherbourg. There, children did not flourish, they did not walk in two worlds, and their culture was not seen as a gift but something to be erased.
Now 94, Aunty Ruth has written an award-winning book about growing up in the settlement. She was just a baby when her parents moved there from the Mitchell district in southwest Queensland looking for work during the Great Depression.
On arrival, the family was separated into different areas of the settlement. Then they realized they couldn’t leave.
Aunty Ruth was allowed to stay with her mother in the women’s section of a crowded dormitory until she was 4-and-a-half years old.
But after her first day at school, she was told she wouldn’t be living with her mother anymore. “You’re a schoolgirl now,” she was told, before being directed to the girls’ section where she shared beds, baths, towels and meals with other students.
“We were not allowed to cry,” Aunty Ruth wrote. “Crying always resulted in punishment.”
Punishment meant being caned, having their heads shaved, or being locked alone in a wooden cell at the back of the property, she wrote.
Mothers were sent to work as domestic staff for settlers while the men did manual labor, and when she was 14, Ruth was also sent away to earn money. At 22 she applied for permission from the state to marry, and when restrictions eased in the late 1960s, she moved with her husband and six children to Brisbane to start a new life outside the settlement.
“We escaped all right. But we had to convince my husband,” she told CNN at her home in Brisbane. “I said to him, there’s no jobs for the kids. Even if they went through high school, they wouldn’t get a job in our town. Every office in Cherbourg had White people working in it, so there’d be no jobs for them. So I had to tell him, we’re going,” she said.
Sitting beneath a pergola surrounded by flowers in her garden, Ruth still has the energy of an activist who has spent much of her life working to improve the lives of her people.
She wears an orange Yes badge and says she hopes the referendum will produce change.
“All I want is my constitutional recognition for me and my kids,” she said, leaning forward. “We need a change. We need change.”
Sitting to her right, her daughter Moira Bligh, president of the volunteer Noonga Reconciliation Group,said, “We’ve overcome disadvantage, but unless we’re all at our stage, we won’t stop.”
“I won’t stop,” Aunty Ruth added, “because I think it’s the right thing for us to do.”
Across town on a Wednesday night, an audience of No voters at an event organized by conservative political lobby group Advance gives an indication of why this referendum is so contentious.
Wearing No caps and T-shirts handed out at the door, they cheer loudly as the leaders of the No camp urge them to reject division.
“The Yes campaign focuses on the past. We focus on the now and the future, the making of Australia the envy of the world,” said Nyunggai Warren Mundine, a member of the Bundjalung, Gumbaynggirr and Yuin people.
Sitting in the back row, carpenter Blair Gilchrist says Indigenous people wouldn’t need a Voice if politicians were doing their jobs properly and spending money where it was needed. He’s not a fan of Albanese’s Labor government.
“Money has got to be scrutinized better. I think that’s probably the main thing. That the money is spent well,” he said.
Successive governments have spent billions of dollars to close the persistent gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in national health and welfare statistics, yet many targets aren’t being met. And on some measures, the gap is widening – including rates of incarceration, suicide and children in care.
The Voice seeks to give non-binding advice to government about what might work to end the disparity – but critics say it’s not needed.
“Infant mortality has dropped, life expectancy has increased, it might not be at the levels we need it, but it’s heading in that direction,” Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a descendant of the Warlpiri people, told the audience.
The death rate for Indigenous children ages 0-4 was 2.1 times as high as the rate for non-Indigenous between 2015 and 2019, according to government figures. On average, non-Indigenous men live 8.6 years longer than Indigenous men – for women it’s 7.8 years. The gap’s even wider in remote communities, statistics show.
“The Voice, it suggests that Indigenous Australians … are inherently disadvantaged, for no other reason but because of our racial heritage,” Price said. “It’s suggested that every one of us needs special measures and [to be] placed in the constitution. That again is another lie. I mean, look at me and Warren, we’re doing all right, aren’t we?” she said.
Boththe Yes and No camps want more accountability – some proof that the billions of dollars spent each year on Indigenous programs are being used to help the most vulnerable. And both want a brighter future for the most disadvantaged Indigenous people, though they disagree about how to get there.
Many in the Yes camp say that future needs to start with recognition that, as the world’s oldest continuous civilization, First Nations people occupied the land for 60,000 years before the arrival of British settlers just over 200 years ago.
The official No camp believes nothing separates Australians – from First Nations people to new migrants – and changing the constitution embeds division. For the Yes camp, Indigenous people do hold a special place in the country’s history and their existence must be acknowledged, along with a permanent body that can’t be dissolved on the political whim of future governments.
Other Indigenous people are voting No because it’s not enough – they want treaties negotiated between the land’s traditional owners and those occupying it.
Back in Cherbourg, visitors walk through the old ration shed, where people from hundreds of Aboriginal nations once queued for their weekly allowance of tea, sugar, rice, salt, sago, tapioca, slit peas, porridge, flour and meat.
It’s now a museum, where elders share stories of life in those days.
Zala said Cherbourg Council has made gains in recent years, since Mayor Elvie was elected in 2020. The number of council jobs has doubled to 130, mostly filled by local staff, Zala said.
“The highest employment rate of any Indigenous community,” he boasted.
They’ve opened the first recycling center in an Indigenous community, which handles waste from surrounding areas; and the first Digital Service Center staffed by Indigenous workers, who gain experience and qualifications.
Plans are afoot to expand the water treatment plant beyond upgrades unveiled last year. But most of all, the council is working on ways to provide new homes for the hundreds of people wanting to move there.
It’s a tough task – Cherbourg still operates as a Deed of Grant in Trust (DOGIT) community, meaning it relies on government funding. There’s very little private ownership – almost all homes there are owned and maintained by the council.
For years, the council has encouraged residents to buy the homes their families have lived in for decades, but few financial incentives exist – there’s no market for houses, meaning no capital gains, and some prospective homeowners balk at the cost of private upkeep after so many years of council support, Zala said.
As a lifelong resident, Mayor Elvie knows the issues well. Her mother lived in the Cherbourg dormitory until she was old enough to marry. By the time the future mayor was born in the 1970s, restrictions were being phased out.
She is not afraid of change, but she doesn’t see how a Voice to Parliament in Canberra is going to help address the daily challenges she faces to keep her community employed, housed and educated.
For that reason, she’s going to vote No.
“I don’t make my decision lightly,” she said.”I have had a number of conversations with different mayors and communities and some mayors are for the Yes vote. It’s very divided right up the middle.
“I’m going No because I just feel it’s a duplication. At the end of the day, I am the voice of Cherbourg because I’m the elected mayor for this community.”
Zala is one of the newer Australians the No camp says would be done a disservice if the country’s Indigenous population was given special recognition in the constitution. Born in Gujarat, India, he moved to Australia in 2006 and has been working to close the gap in Cherbourg since 2011.
“That’s still my motivation every day when I come here. I don’t accept why we have to be different than any other community. I always believed that we don’t want to create a community which is so much behind,” he said.
Of the Voice, he said he’ll be voting Yes.
“At least by voting Yes, you have hope. We don’t know the detail [of] what’s going to happen after the Voice, but it’s best to get it through and see if there might be something good come to the community,” he said. “And I think lots of people are going to do the same.”
Rep. Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building on Saturday morning, shortly before the House was scheduled to vote on a government funding bill, which the New York Democrat said was an accident.
The incident was first revealed by House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin.
“Rep (Jamaal) Bowman pulled a fire alarm in Cannon this morning. An investigation into why it was pulled is underway,” Steil said in a statement.
Bowman’s office said it was an accident, and the congressman told reporters later Saturday: “I was trying to get to a door. I thought the alarm would open the door and I pulled the fire alarm to open the door by accident.”
“I was just trying to get to my vote and the door that’s usually open wasn’t open, it was closed,” Bowman added.
Leadership in both parties was informed of the situation once Bowman was identified in security footage, a source familiar said.
Rep. Lisa McClain, a Michigan Republican and member of the GOP leadership team, told CNN she is circulating a resolution to censure Bowman over the incident. She said she already has co-sponsors.
Bowman, however, laughed off the GOP response to the incident on Saturday, telling reporters, “They’re gonna do what they do. This is what they do.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
Federal agencies are making final preparations with the government on the brink of a shutdown and congressional lawmakers racing against Saturday’s critical midnight deadline – as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy mounts a last-minute push to avert the lapse in funding.
McCarthy announced that the House will vote on a 45-day short-term spending bill Saturday, and it will include the natural disaster aid that the White House requested.
The bill does not include $6 billion in funding to aid Ukraine, a key concession that many House Republicans demanded and a blow to allies of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who lobbied Congress earlier this month for additional assistance.
Asked if he is concerned that a member, including Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, could move to oust him over this bill, McCarthy replied, “If I have to risk my job for standing up for the American public, I will do that.”
Infighting among House Republicans has played a central role in bringing Congress to a standoff over spending – and it is not yet clear how the issue will be resolved, raising concerns on Capitol Hill that a shutdown, if triggered, may not be easy to end.
Democrats in the House have been trying to slow down passage of the GOP-led continuing resolution throughout the day Saturday, objecting to being forced to vote on a bill just introduced and wanting to keep Ukraine aid. It’s unclear how long Democrats will stall the House from voting.
House Republicans met throughout Saturday morning, seesawing between options for how to proceed. Republicans including veteran appropriators and those in swing districts pushed to bring a short-term resolution to keep the government funded for 45 days to the House floor for a vote Saturday.
McCarthy has faced threats to keeping his job throughout the month if he works with Democrats as he endures a consistent resistance from the hardline conservatives in his own party.
A shutdown is expected to have consequential impacts across the country, from air travel to clean drinking water, and many government operations would grind to a halt – though services deemed essential for public safety would continue.
Both chambers are scheduled to be in session Saturday, just hours before the deadline. The Senate was expected to take procedural steps to advance their own plan to keep the government funded – GOP Sen. Rand Paul had vowed all week to slow that process beyond the midnight deadline over objections to the bill’s funding for the war in Ukraine. The Senate is now waiting to see how the House developments shake out before proceeding.
But Paul told CNN on Saturday afternoon that he won’t slow down the Senate’s consideration of the House GOP’s 45-day spending bill, if it passes the House and the Senate takes it up, allowing the Senate the ability to move the bill quickly – though any one other senator could slow that down beyond the midnight deadline.
House Republicans have so far thrown cold water on a bipartisan Senate proposal to keep the government funded through November 17, but they have failed to coalesce around a plan of their own to avert a shutdown amid resistance from a bloc of hardline conservatives to any kind of short-term funding extension.
“After meeting with House Republicans this evening, it’s clear the misguided Senate bill has no path forward and is dead on arrival,” McCarthy wrote on X. “The House will continue to work around the clock to keep government open and prioritize the needs of the American people.”
His late Friday night message came after a two-hour conference meeting in the Capitol, where McCarthy floated several different options – including putting the Senate bill on the floor or passing a short-term bill that excludes Ukraine money. But there is still no consensus on what – if anything – they will put on the House floor Saturday to avoid a government shutdown.
McCarthy suffered another high-profile defeat on Friday when the House failed to advance a last-ditch stopgap bill.
In the aftermath of Friday’s failed vote, McCarthy told reporters he had proposed putting up a “clean” stopgap bill, and said he was “working through maybe to be able to do that.”
“We’re continuing to work through – trying to find the way out of this,” McCarthy said.
The Senate’s bipartisan bill would provide additional funds for Ukraine aid, creating a point of contention with the House where many Republicans are opposed to further support to the war-torn country.
McCarthy argued on Friday that aid to Ukraine should be dropped from the Senate bill. “I think if we had a clean one without Ukraine on it, we could probably be able to move that through. I think if the Senate puts Ukraine on there and focuses on Ukraine over America, I think that could cause real problems,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju.
The Senate, meanwhile, is working to advance its own bipartisan stopgap bill. The chamber is on track to take a procedural vote Saturday afternoon to move forward with the bill, particularly if the last-minute House bill falters. But it’s not yet clear when senators could take a final vote to pass the bill and it may not happen until Monday, after the government has already shut down.
Border security has also become a complicating factor for the Senate bill as many Republicans now want to see the bill amended to address the issue.
Senate Republicans said Friday that they were still discussing what kind of border amendment they would want to add to the bill, and were unsure if the chamber could even advance the bill in Saturday’s procedural vote without the addition of a border amendment.
“Nothing’s really coming together, too many moving parts at this stage,” said Sen. Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican. “I think what I understand is we’re going to have a vote tomorrow … and other than that, there’s nothing that’s really crystallized in anything that probably would be palatable with the House.”
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “vertical of power” – the way in which the entire structure of Russian political power rests on one man – has undergone profound stress testing in the wake of the Wagner mercenary group’s aborted march on Moscow in June.
But everything is now business as usual, and the remnants of Wagner are back in the government’s control, if Kremlin messaging is to be believed.
In a televised meeting Friday, Putin met with Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and former Wagner commander Andrey Troshev, according to a partial transcript published by the Kremlin.
The meeting was held in a long-familiar format. Putin was seated at the head of a conference table with briefing papers and notes, making some general remarks before settling down to official business. The language was sober, competent and relatively substance-free: It could have been a routine meeting with a regional governor to discuss economic plans, at least judging by the official readout.
But unpack the language, and Putin’s Friday meeting appeared to put a reassuring gloss on the Russian government’s attempt to bring the mercenary group to heel. Troshev – who goes by the call sign, ‘Sedoy,’ meaning ‘grey hair’ – is the man Putin tapped to run the mercenary outfit after its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s dramatic fall from grace.
After leading the group’s insurrection this summer and then accepting an apparent deal to end it, Prigozhin died in late August when his private jet plummeted from the skies over Russia’s Tver region. But the damage that Prigozhin did to Putin’s image of infallibility has lingered.
So Putin on Friday did one of the things he does best: Delving into the minutiae of governing.
“I would like to talk to you about issues of a social nature,” Putin told Troshev, without naming Wagner. “You maintain relationships with your comrades with whom you fought together, and now you continue to carry out these combat missions.”
Continued Putin: “We have created the ‘Defenders of the Fatherland’ fund, and I have said many times and want to emphasize again: regardless of the status of the person who performs or has performed combat missions, social guarantees must be absolutely the same for everyone.”
By dangling the carrot of “social guarantees,” one might conclude that the Russian government will be taking on the system of cash handouts and compensation that Wagner fighters in Ukraine enjoyed under Prigozhin’s leadership, something that won the mercenary leader some measure of loyalty. That such guarantees accrue “regardless of status” would appear to acknowledge that mercenary activities are technically proscribed by Russian law.
The Russian leader also alluded to an earlier offer made to Wagner fighters after the short-lived rebellion: Sign contracts with the Russian ministry of defense, or head for neighboring Belarus. Wagner’s future in Belarus has since been thrown into doubt and the Russian government appears to be moving more energetically to bring the remnants of Wagner into conventional military structures, along with all the benefits that might entail.
“At the last meeting, we talked about the fact that you will be involved in the formation of volunteer units that can perform various combat missions, primarily, of course, in the zone of a special military operation,” Putin said, using the official doublespeak for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“You yourself fought in such a unit for more than a year. You know what it is, how it’s done, you know about the issues that need to be resolved in advance so that combat work goes on in the best and most successful way.”
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported Friday that Troshev “is already working with the defense ministry” – citing Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov – signaling that he will not be a freelance entrepreneur as Prigozhin was.
But that doesn’t answer the somewhat broader question of what the Russian state plans to do with all the work it has outsourced to Wagner in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. Wagner fighters have been active in several African countries, including Mali, the Central African Republic, and Libya.
The presence of Yevkurov in the meeting may offer one clue. In late August, Yevkurov led a Russian military delegation to the Libyan city of Benghazi to meet with the Libyan National Army, led by the renegade general Khalifa Haftar.
Wagner has supported the Libyan National Army for several years, reportedly backing Haftar’s 2019-2020 military campaign against the Tripoli-based government. The US military says Wagner has also used Libya as a logistical foothold, flying cargo flights into bases in eastern Libya to resupply its operations there.
Evidence has also emerged that Wagner has used bases in Libya to supply Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces.
Wagner has long acted as an often-deniable extension of Russian foreign policy. If Friday’s meeting is any guide, Yevkurov appears to be a point man for future Wagner activity while Troshev takes on a different brief: overseeing Wagner 2.0 for the war in Ukraine.
The French government has vowed action to “reassure and protect” the public as its capital Paris reports a “widespread” rise in bedbugs.
French Transport Minister Clement Beaune said Friday he would “bring together transport operators next week” to “undertake further action” to “reassure and protect” the public from the reported surge in the numbers of the blood-sucking insect.
The announcement comes as calls for government action from Paris officials and trade unions mount after several videos of bedbugs spotted in public transport and other locations such as cinemas have surfaced on social media.
Speaking to French TV station LCI on Friday, deputy mayor of Paris Emmanuel Gregoire called the phenomenon “widespread.”
“You have to understand that in reality no one is safe, obviously there are risk factors but in reality, you can catch bedbugs anywhere and bring them home,” he said.
Three years ago, the French government launched an anti-bedbug campaign, which includes a dedicated website and an information hotline, as numbers of the insect surged.
But Gregoire said that despite that plan, “there are 3.6 million people who come into Paris every day, and bedbugs do not stop on the outskirts of the city.”
An expert from France’s national health and sanitary body, Anses, said the problem was “an emerging phenomenon in France and almost everywhere in the world.”
“It’s mainly due to the movement of people, populations traveling, the fact that people stay in short-term accommodation and bring back bedbugs in their suitcases or luggage,” Johanna Fite from the Anses department of risk assessment told CNN.
She added there was an “escalation” in numbers because bedbugs were increasingly resistant to insecticides.
“We are observing more and more bedbug populations which are resistant, so there is no miracle treatment to get rid of them,” Fite said.
However, the Paris deputy mayor warned against “hysteria” over the issue, noting there had been an “increase in Parisians who are referring to the town hall’s information services for information on bedbugs”.
“Professional companies which intervene in residential areas are telling us that currently the proportion of interventions for bedbugs is atypical compared to normal and is increasing rapidly,” he said.
The news comes as Paris gets ready to host the 2024 Olympics Games, but officials say they are not worried.
“There is no threat to the Olympic Games,” Gregoire said.
“Bedbugs existed before and they will exist afterward,” he added, saying the games were an “opportunity” for everybody to work together on the issue.
Record-setting rain overwhelmed New York City’s sewer system Friday, sending a surge of floodwater coursing through streets and into basements, schools, subways and vehicles throughout the nation’s most populous city.
The water rose fast and furious, catching some commuters off guard as they slogged through Friday morning’s rush hour. First responders jumped into action where needed, plucking people from stranded cars and basements filling like bathtubs.
More rain fell in a single day at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport – nearly 8 inches – than any other since 1948. A month’s worth of rain fell in Brooklyn in just three hours as it was socked by some of the storm’s most intense rainfall rates Friday morning.
The prolific totals are a symptom of climate change, scientists say, with a warmer atmosphere acting like a massive sponge, able to sop up more water vapor and then wring it out in intense spurts which can easily overwhelm outdated flood protections.
“Overall, as we know, this changing weather pattern is the result of climate change,” Rohit Aggarwala, New York City’s Chief Climate Officer said in a Friday morning news conference. “And the sad reality is our climate is changing faster than our infrastructure can respond.”
A widespread 3 to 6 inches of rain had fallen across the New York City by late Friday afternoon. More rain was set to fall through the evening and then gradually taper off.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency for New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley Friday morning as the worst of the flooding hit. In an interview with New York’s WNBC-TV, she urged residents to stay home because of widespread dangerous travel conditions.
“This is a very challenging weather event,” Hochul said. “This a life-threatening event. And I need all New Yorkers to heed that warning so we can keep them safe.” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy also declared a state of emergency for his state Friday afternoon.
Firefighters performed rescues at six basements in New York City flooded by torrents of water, according to the New York City Fire Department.
The water also found its way into 150 of New York City’s 1,400 schools, which remained open on Friday, New York City school chancellor David Banks said at a news briefing.
One school in Brooklyn evacuated when floodwater caused the school’s boiler to smoke, he said.
“Our kids are safe and we continue to monitor the situation,” Banks said.
Floodwater spilled into subways and onto railways and caused “major disruptions,” including suspensions of service on 10 train lines in Brooklyn and all three Metro-North train lines. Gov. Hochul said the city was deploying additional buses to help fill the gap caused by the train outages.
Limited service resumed by Friday evening on the Metro-North lines. And the Metropolitan Transportation Authority fully restored service on seven subway lines by Friday evening, according to Demetrius Crichlow, senior vice president of the New York City Transit Department of Subways.
“Today was just not an easy day for us but like New Yorkers, we are resilient, we continue to press on,” Crichlow said.
MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said Friday evening one of three Metro-North Railroad lines was back up and running – the Hudson line – and noted the Long Island Railroad also has good service. The MTA also said it is working to restore limited service to the remaining two lines on Friday night.
Air travel didn’t fair any better. Flight delays hit all three New York City area airports Friday. Flooding inside the historic Marine Air Terminal in New York’s LaGuardia Airport forced it to close temporarily. The terminal, which is the airport’s smallest and serves Spirit and Frontier airlines, was open again Friday night.
By late Friday, flood watches had expired for the region except in Suffolk County on Long Island in New York and parts of northwestern and southern Connecticut, where watches were set to be in effect until Saturday morning.
The extreme rainfall rates produced prolific totals:
• In Brooklyn: A month’s worth of rain, up to 4.5 inches, fell in only 3 hours on Friday morning, according to National Weather Service data. This three-hour rainfall total is only expected about once every 100 years in Brooklyn, according to NOAA estimates.
• In Manhattan: Nearly 2 inches of rain fell in one hour in Central Park, the second-wettest hour there in 80 years. More than 5 inches of rain have fallen there so far.
• In Queens: It’s the wettest day on record at John F. Kennedy International Airport, preliminary data from the National Weather Service shows. At least 7.88 inches of rain has fallen there since midnight.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated when the NYC travel advisory went into effect. It was 2 a.m. ET.
Early 1960s – Joins Sinn Fein, which supports the reunion of British-ruled Northern Ireland with the rest of Ireland.
1972 – Suspected of being an Irish Republican Army leader, Adams is interned without trial.
July 1972 – Is released to participate in secret peace talks with the British government.
1973-1977 – After peace talks fail, Adams is imprisoned again.
1978 – Elected vice president of Sinn Fein.
1983 – Elected president of Sinn Fein.
1983-1992 – Is the elected representative for West Belfast in the British House of Commons. Following Sinn Fein policy, Adams never takes his seat in order to avoid taking the obligatory oath of loyalty to the Queen of England.
1984 – Is shot and seriously wounded during an assassination attempt.
1988 – Begins talks with John Hume, the leader of Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic and Labour Party.
1993 – Adams and Hume issue a statement suggesting ways to peacefully settle the conflict in Northern Ireland.
February 10, 2018 – Steps down as president of Sinn Fein.
July 13, 2018 – An explosive device is thrown at Adams’ home in Belfast, and at the home of Bobby Storey, another Sinn Fein leader. An arrest is made on July 17 in connection to the attacks.
October 2018 – “The Negotiator’s Cook Book,” which contains recipes Adam’s calls “the best-kept secrets” behind the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, is published.
October 17, 2019 – A Belfast court dismisses a case against former IRA member Ivor Bell, also clearing Adams of any links to the murder of McConville.
February 2020 – The Guardian reports that Adams is part of Sinn Fein’s government formation negotiating team, according to a leaked brief. His name does not appear on the list of the negotiating team released by the party. This follows Sinn Fein’s win of a number of seats during Ireland’s general election earlier in the month. In his blog, Adams writes the that the party has always had additional advisers.
May 13, 2020 – The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court rules that Adams was unlawfully imprisoned in the 1970s and overturns two convictions against him for trying to escape from prison.
April 28, 2023 – Belfast’s high court rules that Adams was wrongly denied compensation after his convictions were overturned in 2020.
July 4, 2023 – The House of Lords announces amendments to the government’s legacy bill which would deny compensation to Adams and others who were imprisoned without trial in the 1970s.
Dianne Feinstein, whose three decades in the Senate made her the longest-serving female US senator in history, has died following months of declining health. She was 90.
Feinstein’s death, confirmed to CNN by a source familiar, will hand California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom the power to appoint a lawmaker to serve out the rest of Feinstein’s term, keeping the Democratic majority in the chamber through early January 2025. In March 2021, Newsom publicly said he had a list of “multiple” replacements and pledged to appoint a Black woman if Feinstein, a Democrat, were to retire.
News of Feinstein’s death also comes as federal funding is set to expire, as Congress is at an impasse as to how to avoid a government shutdown, though Senate Democrats still retain a majority without her.
Feinstein, a former mayor of San Francisco, was a leading figure in California politics for decades and became a national face of the Democratic Party following her first election to the US Senate in 1992. She broke a series of glass ceilings throughout her political career and her influence was felt strongly in some of Capitol Hill’s most consequential works in recent history, including the since-lapsed federal assault weapons ban in 1994 and the 2014 CIA torture report. She also was a longtime force on the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees.
In her later years, Feinstein’s health was the subject of increasing scrutiny and speculation, and the California Democrat was prominent among aging lawmakers whose decisions to remain in office drew scrutiny, especially in an age of narrow party margins in Congress.
A hospitalization for shingles in February led to an extended absence from the Senate – stirring complaints from Democrats, as Feinstein’s time away slowed the confirmation of Democratic-appointed judicial nominees – and when she returned to Capitol Hill three months later, it was revealed that she had suffered multiple complications during her recovery, including Ramsay Hunt syndrome and encephalitis. A fall in August briefly sent her to the hospital.
Feinstein, who was the Senate’s oldest member at the time of her death, also faced questions about her mental acuity and ability to lead. She dismissed the concerns, saying, “The real question is whether I’m still an effective representative for 40 million Californians, and the record shows that I am.”
But heavy speculation that Feinstein would retire instead of seek reelection in 2024 led several Democrats to announce their candidacies for her seat – even before she announced her plans. In February, she confirmed that she would not run for reelection, telling CNN, “The time has come.”
Feinstein was fondly remembered by her colleagues on Friday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that he will address Feinstein’s death on the Senate floor later Friday morning, calling it a “very, very sad day for all of us.” North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called her a “trailblazer” and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said “she was always a lady but she never backed down from a cause that she thought was worth fighting for.”
“We lost one of the great ones,” Durbin said.
San Francisco native and leader
Feinstein was born in San Francisco in 1933 and graduated from Stanford University in 1955. After serving as a San Francisco County supervisor, Feinstein became the city’s mayor in 1978 in the wake of the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician from California to be elected to office.
Feinstein rarely talked about the day when Moscone and Milk were shot but she opened up about the tragic events in a 2017 interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.
Feinstein was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors then, and assassin Dan White had been a friend and colleague of hers.
“The door to the office opened, and he came in, and I said, ‘Dan?’ ”
“I heard the doors slam, I heard the shots, I smelled the cordite,” Feinstein recalled.
It was Feinstein who announced the double assassination to the public. She was later sworn in as the first female mayor of San Francisco.
Her political career was marked by a series of historic firsts.
By that time she became mayor in 1978, she had already broken one glass ceiling, becoming the first female chair of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
California’s first woman sent to the US Senate racked up many other firsts in Washington. Among those: She was the first woman to sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the first female chairwoman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, and the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Feinstein also served on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and held the title of ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2017 to 2021. In November 2022, she was poised to become president pro tempore of the Senate – third in line to the presidency – but declined to pursue the position, citing her husband’s recent death.
Feinstein reflected on her experience as a woman in politics in her 2017 interview with Bash, saying, “Look, being a woman in our society even today is difficult,” and noting, “I know it in the political area.” She would later note in a statement the week she became the longest-serving woman in US history, “We went from two women senators when I ran for office in 1992 to 24 today – and I know that number will keep climbing.”
“It has been a great pleasure to watch more and more women walk the halls of the Senate,” Feinstein said in November 2022.
Led efforts on gun control and torture program investigations
Though she was a proud native of one of the most famously liberal cities in the country, Feinstein earned a reputation over the years in the Senate as someone eager to work across the aisle with Republicans, and at times sparked pushback and criticism from progressives.
“I truly believe that there is a center in the political spectrum that is the best place to run something when you have a very diverse community. America is diverse; we are not all one people. We are many different colors, religions, backgrounds, education levels, all of it,” she told CNN in 2017.
A biography from Feinstein’s Senate office states that her notable achievements include “the enactment of the federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, a law that prohibited the sale, manufacture and import of military-style assault weapons” (the ban has since lapsed), and the influential 2014 torture report, a comprehensive “six-year review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program,” which brought to light for the first time many details from the George W. Bush-era program.
Feinstein’s high-profile Senate career made its mark on pop culture when she was portrayed by actress Annette Bening in the 2019 film “The Report,” which tackled the subject of the CIA’s use of torture after the Sept. 11 attacks and the effort to make those practices public.
In November 2020, Feinstein announced that she would step down from the top Democratic spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee the following year in the wake of sharp criticism from liberal activists over her handling of the hearings for then-President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
While Democratic senators could not block Barrett’s nomination in the Republican-led Senate on their own, liberal activists were angry when Feinstein undermined Democrats’ relentless attempt to portray the process as illegitimate when she praised then-Judiciary Chairman and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham’s leadership of it.
Feinstein said at the time that she would continue to serve as a senior Democrat on the Judiciary, Intelligence, Appropriations, and Rules and Administration panels, working on priorities like gun safety, criminal justice and immigration.
Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said he will meet the national army and police chiefs on Friday to combat a surge in gang violence, as the country reels from record shooting deaths this month.
“Tomorrow I will meet the national police chief and the commander in chief to see how the defense force can help the police in their work against the criminal gangs,” Kristersson said in an address to the nation on Thursday.
“I hope all parties in the Swedish parliament can come together in support of those strong and pattern-breaking actions that need to be taken.”
The Scandinavian nation has been rocked by a record number of shootings this month, amid a spread of gang violence from larger urban areas to smaller towns, Reuters reported.
There were 11 gun killings in September, making it the deadliest month since December 2019. Police said about 30,000 people in Sweden are directly involved with or have links to gang crime, according to the news agency.
On Wednesday, three people – two men and a woman – were killed in just 12 hours in incidents related to gang violence near the Swedish capital, Stockholm, Swedish police told CNN.
Children and innocent people are affected by the serious violence, Kristersson added.
“I can’t emphasize enough how serious the situation is. Sweden has never seen anything like it, no other country in Europe is experiencing anything like this,” the Swedish prime minister said.
“We will hunt the gangs, and we will defeat the gangs. We will take them to court. If they’re Swedish citizens they will be locked up for a long time in prison and if they are foreign citizens, they will also be expelled.”
China is behaving like a schoolyard bully toward smaller countries, the Philippine defense secretary told CNN Friday during an exclusive interview in which he warned his nation, and the wider world, had to stand up to Beijing’s territorial expansion in the South China Sea.
“I cannot think of any clearer case of bullying than this,” said Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr. “It’s not the question of stealing your lunch money, but it’s really a question of stealing your lunch bag, your chair and even enrollment in school.”
While tensions between China and the Philippines over the highly-contested and strategic waterway have festered for years, confrontations have spiked this summer, renewing regional fears that a mistake or miscalculation at sea could trigger a wider conflict, including with the United States.
The region is widely seen as a potential flashpoint for global conflagration and the recent confrontations have raised concerns among Western observers of potentially developing into an international incident if China, a global power, decides to act more forcefully against the Philippines, a US treaty ally.
Teodoro characterized the Philippines’ refusal to back down in the waters within its 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone as a fight for the very existence of the Philippines.
“We’re fighting for our fisherfolk, we’re fighting for our resources. We’re fighting for our integrity as an archipelagic state… Our existence as the Republic of the Philippines is vital to this fight,” Teodoro said in a sit down interview at the Department of National Defense in Manila. “It’s not for us, it’s for the future generations too.”
Video purportedly shows Chinese ship firing water cannon at Filipino vessel in disputed waters
“And if we don’t stop, China is going to creep and creep into what is within our sovereign jurisdiction, our sovereign rights and within our territory,” he said, adding that Beijing wont stop until it controls “the whole South China Sea.”
Beijing says it is safeguarding its sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea and warned the Philippines this week “not to make provocations or seek troubles.” It accused Philippine fishing and coast guard vessels of illegal entry into the area.
China claims “indisputable sovereignty” over almost all 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea, and most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles from mainland China. Along with the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan also hold competing claims.
Over the past two decades China has occupied a number of reefs and atolls across the South China Sea, building up military installations, including runways and ports, which the Philippines says challenges its sovereignty and fishing rights as well as endangering marine biodiversity in the resource-rich waterway.
In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a landmark maritime dispute, which concluded that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.
But Beijing has ignored the decision and continues to expand its presence in the waterway.
Video released of diver cutting China’s floating sea barrier
In his first sit-down TV interview with an international news outlet since he took the position in June, Teodoro was keen to stress whatever happens in the South China Sea impacts the globe.
Crucially, the waterway is vital to international trade with trillions of dollars in global shipping passing through it each year. It’s also home to vast fertile fishing grounds upon which many lives and livelihoods depend, and beneath the waves lie huge reserves of natural gas and oil that competing claimants are vying for.
With nations already suffering from inflation brought about by Russia’s war in Ukraine, there are concerns that any slow-down in travel and transporting of goods in the South China Sea would result in significant impact to the global economy.
“It will choke one of the most vital supply chain waterways in the whole world, it will choke international trade, and it will subject the world economy, particularly in supply chains to their whim,” Teodoro said, adding that if this were to happen, “the whole world will react.”
The defense secretary warned that smaller nations, including regional partners, rely on international law for their survival.
“Though they need China, they need Russia, they see that they too may become a victim of bullying. If they (China) close off the South China Sea, perhaps the next target may be the Straits of Malacca and then the Indian Ocean,” Teodoro said.
Why it matters who owns the seas (April 2021)
Only a few years ago the Philippines was treading a much more cautious path with its huge neighbor China.
But since taking office last year, Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr has taken a stronger stance over the South China Sea than his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte.
Marcos has also strengthened US relations that had frayed under Duterte, with the two allies touting increased cooperation and joint patrols in the South China Sea in the future.
In April, the Philippines identified the locations of four new military bases the US will gain access to, as part of an expanded defense agreement analysts say is aimed at combating China.
Washington has condemned Beijing’s recent actions in the contested sea and threatened to intervene under its mutual defense treaty obligations if Philippine vessels came under armed attack there.
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Lindsey Ford reiterated Washington’s commitment to the mutual defense treaty in testimony before a US House subcommittee on Tuesday.
She said the treaty covers not only the Philippine armed forces, but also its coast guard and civilian vessels and aircraft.
“We have said repeatedly and continue to say that we stand by those commitments absolutely,” Ford said.
Defense secretary Teodoro has concerns about a possible escalation “because of the dangerous and reckless maneuvering of Chinese vessels” but he was clear that any incident – accidental or otherwise – the blame would lie with China “squarely on their shoulders.”
And he called global powers to help pressure Beijing over its moves in the South China Sea.
“Peace and stability in that one place in the world will generate some relief and comfort to everyone,” he said.
As part of the Marcos administration’s commitment to boost the Philippines defense and monitoring capabilities in the South China Sea, Teodoro said further “air and naval assets” have been ordered.
“There will be more patrol craft coming in, more rotary aircraft and we are studying the possibility to acquiring multi-role fighters,” he said, adding that would “make a difference in our air defense capabilities.”
Preferring cooler heads to prevail, Teodoro said that diplomacy would provide a way forward providing Chinese leader Xi Jinping complies with international law.
“Filipinos I believe are always willing to talk, just as long that talk does not mean whispers in a back room, or shouting at each other, meaning to say there must be substantial talks, open, transparent and on a rules-based basis,” he said, while also adding that talks cannot be used as a delaying tactic by Beijing.
The Philippines, he said, has “no choice” but to stand up to China because otherwise “we lose our identity and integrity as a nation.”
But conflict, he added, was not the answer or desired outcome.
“Standing up doesn’t mean really going to war with China, heavens no. We don’t want that. But we have to stand our ground when our ground is intruded into.”
