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  • Putin’s war is forcing Russians to ditch a favorite holiday destination | CNN

    Putin’s war is forcing Russians to ditch a favorite holiday destination | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    For more than nine years, Russian tourists vacationing in Crimea didn’t need to give much thought to the fact that their country was waging war on Ukraine – or that their sun lounger was parked on occupied territory.

    But with Kyiv’s counteroffensive underway, the southern Ukrainian peninsula is no longer the safe haven such holidaymakers had become accustomed to since Moscow annexed it in 2014.

    Crimea has experienced a spate of attacks in recent weeks, including a seaborne raid by Ukrainian special forces on Thursday and a series of drone attacks on Friday. The bridges that connect Crimea to Russia and to southern Ukrainian areas under Russian control have been struck repeatedly in recent months.

    Ukraine has claimed responsibility for some of these strikes and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has warned its assaults will continue.

    The attacks are forcing Russian tourists to reconsider their plans. Svitlana, a Russian woman who used to work as a manager at a tourist agency in Crimea, told CNN the security situation has caused her work to dry up.

    Svitlana asked for her last name to remain private, as she was scared about the consequences of speaking to Western media. She left Crimea earlier this summer and moved to St. Petersburg in Russia.

    “I recently went there again in the hope that everything will end soon and they will agree on something to end the conflict. But I stayed for four months and realized that nothing will end anytime soon,” she told CNN.

    “Tourism is all gone. There was less tourism last year and this year it has completely disappeared. Last year, tourists canceled reservations when it all started and this year they didn’t even book,” she said.

    Crimea is economically dependent on the tourism industry, which is why the Russian-installed local authorities keep encouraging visitors to come despite the attacks. The Crimean Ministry of Resorts and Tourism has set up a new helpline for Russian tourists this summer and said it was working with hotels to make sure those who arrive or leave late because of security issues do not face additional charges or cancellations.

    Tour operators and hotels are also offering heavily discounted trips and free perks to lure in more tourists. The Russian Union of Travel Industry said that hotel prices in Crimea have dropped by 30% this summer season compared to 2022 because of falling demand.

    But the discounts are not working. The Russia-appointed administration said the average booking rate for August stood at 40%, meaning the majority of hotel rooms remained empty this summer.

    Svitlana said that most people who are still vacationing in Crimea are booking low budget holidays, either camping or staying in the cheapest hotels or private accommodation. People who could afford to stay in the more upscale resorts are going to other, safer destinations.

    She told CNN she did not enjoy her time in Crimea. “I’m so tired of the constant warplanes overhead, of the constant military in the city, of the wounded, of these poor people running away with frightened eyes, of the military equipment that almost crushed me a couple of times,” she said, recalling an incident when an armored personnel carrier nearly collided with her car.

    Crimea has always been popular with Russian tourists, many of whom remember vacationing there during Soviet times. But the number visiting the peninsula ballooned following Moscow’s annexation in 2014.

    While 5 million came in 2015, the first full year under Russian control, that number had risen to 9.4 million by 2021, according to the Russia-installed Crimean tourism ministry.

    Svitlana still remembers the bumper season. “Profits brought that year were more than in the last 10 years. During the pandemic, people stayed at home and then rushed into (Crimea) when everything opened,” she said.

    Ukraine says the influx of Russian citizens hasn’t been limited to tourism. Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in March that 800,000 Russians had moved to Crimea permanently since it was annexed.

    People relax on a beach on the Black Sea in Yalta, Crimea, on June 19, 2023.

    The peninsula has seen a flow of cash from tourism and the Russian government, which has poured money into Crimean infrastructure.

    Chief among these investments was the $3.7 billion Kerch Strait Bridge, Europe’s longest bridge and a pet project of Putin. Its 2018 opening was hailed as the physical “reunification” of Crimea with the Russian mainland.

    The 19-kilometer (nearly 12-mile) bridge made it even easier for Russian tourists to travel to Crimea at a time when the rest of the world had become a lot more expensive. Many Western countries imposed economic sanctions on Russia following the annexation, and the value of the ruble nosedived.

    After Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, a number of countries closed their doors to Russian tourists. The European Union suspended its visa facilitation agreement with Russia, making it harder for Russians to apply for an EU visa. According to the Association of Russian Tour Operators (ATOR), trips by Russians to European countries were down by 88% in the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2019, the last year unaffected by travel bans or pandemic restrictions. There are no direct flights between Russia and the EU.

    Crimea suddenly became one of the few sunny beach destinations Russian tourists could still visit without having to spend a lot of money.

    “People come to Crimea because Europe is closed and prices are very expensive in Turkey now. Where else can we rest? Sochi (a resort city in Russia) is crowded, (and has) crazy prices. We have nowhere else (to go) so people go to the Crimea,” Svitlana told CNN.

    But the Kerch bridge’s strategic and symbolic importance has made it an attractive target for the Ukrainians.

    The first strike came last October, when a huge explosion severely curtailed road and rail traffic on the bridge. While Kyiv did not comment on the incident at the time, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) acknowledged in June that it was behind the attack.

    Another major assault came last month, when a Ukrainian experimental sea drone caused serious damage to the road lanes of the bridge, and, according to Russian officials, killed two civilians.

    The attack was frightening enough to scare away many of the Russian tourists who had still been planning to come. The Russia-appointed head of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov, said that 10% of holiday bookings in Crimea were canceled in the following days.

    ATOR said hotel bookings dropped 45% in the second half of July compared to the first half.

    Security on the bridge has increased following the attacks and ATOR said last month that on some occasions, traffic jams stretching for eight miles formed on it.

    The authorities told tourists to avoid the bridge and travel instead through occupied Ukraine, a route that is about 800 kilometers (500 miles) long and cuts through numerous areas heavily impacted by the war, including Mariupol, which was nearly leveled by Russian bombardment last spring.

    “There are military and police checkpoints along the route,” the guidance tells tourists wanting to travel to Crimea through the occupied areas, adding that clearing each checkpoint shouldn’t take “more than 10 minutes per vehicle.” The guidance suggests bringing cash and downloading all maps in advance so that they can be accessed without internet.

    Explosions are seen in June near the Kerch bridge that connects occupied Crimea to Russia.

    The security situation is unlikely to improve any time soon.

    Kyiv’s forces have stepped up attacks in the past two months, striking both the peninsula and ships navigating Ukrainian territorial waters around it several times. The Crimean port city of Sevastopol is a major naval base for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

    The Ukrainian military said that its latest operation against the peninsula on Thursday morning had left at least 30 Russians dead.

    Ukraine has been using aerial and sea drones to target ammunition depots, oil storage facilities and other structures. “All these targets are official targets because it will reduce their capacity to fight against us (and) will help to save the lives of Ukrainians,” Reznikov, the defense minister, said last month in an interview with CNN.

    Asked if Ukraine’s goal was to permanently disable the bridge, Reznikov responded that it was “normal tactics to ruin the logistic lines of your enemy, to stop the options to get more ammunition, to get more fuel, to get more food.”

    According to the Ukrainian government, more than 50,000 people fled Crimea to other parts of Ukraine after the annexation. However, Crimean NGOs estimate the number of refugees might be twice as high, as not everyone has officially registered with the government.

    Roughly 2.5 million people lived in Crimea before the annexation.

    Many of those who left had their properties confiscated and auctioned off by the Russian authorities, with the proceeds going to Russia’s armed forces, according to the authorities. Holiday homes owned by Ukrainians living elsewhere – including a Yalta apartment belonging to President Volodymyr Zelensky himself – were nationalized by Russia, according to the Russia-appointed chairman of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov.

    Svitlana told CNN that some of the properties confiscated by the Russian authorities were passed onto Russian citizens and people coming to Crimea from Russian-occupied areas in southern Ukraine.

    Those loyal to Kyiv who have stayed have been subjected to a brutal regime. Human rights groups have documented cases of activists, politicians, public figures and residents being kidnapped and held by pro-Russian authorities.

    Remaining Ukrainian citizens have been forced to apply for Russian citizenship. Those who have refused have been persecuted, according to the Crimean Human Rights Group.

    CNN has spoke to one Ukrainian resident of Crimea who confirmed the atmosphere of terror. The person was so scared for their safety that they asked for their identity to be concealed and no quotes to be published.

    Ukrainian officials, including Zelensky, have repeatedly said the war will not end until Crimea is back under Ukrainian control.

    Before its annexation, Crimea was home to about 5% of the Ukrainian population and accounted for almost 4% of its GDP. “We cannot imagine Ukraine without Crimea. And while Crimea is under the Russian occupation, it means only one thing: The war is not over yet,” Zelensky told CNN in an interview last month.

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  • Vivek Ramaswamy has Iowa voters curious, but not yet committed, after standout debate | CNN Politics

    Vivek Ramaswamy has Iowa voters curious, but not yet committed, after standout debate | CNN Politics

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    Urbandale, Iowa
    CNN
     — 

    At the conclusion of Vivek Ramaswamy’s second campaign stop here on Saturday – his sixth event out of eight over two days in Iowa – his staff rushed him towards their campaign bus. The businessman-turned-politician was late for a flight across the state to his next event. But as reporters and camera crews crowded the bus to see him off, Ramaswamy stopped and took time for questions.

    It was hardly a new occurrence. He’d held impromptu press availabilities after nearly every event on this tour up to that point. More striking was that, nearly 72 hours after playing a starring role in Wednesday’s heated and highly combative Republican primary debate, he was still taking stock of the defining moment of his campaign thus far.

    “I think it’s a major accomplishment that many people are able to pronounce my name now. That’s the true mark of a real milestone on this campaign,” Ramaswamy joked. “If we got there, anything’s possible.”

    Ramaswamy’s ascent from political unknown to attention-grabbing insurgent has been one of the most unexpected developments of the Republican primary so far. The only candidate in the race with no previous role in public life, he became a central figure in the first primary debate, standing in the middle of the stage and receiving sharp attacks from several Republican rivals after pre-debate nationwide polls of Republican voters put him in third place behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump, who did not attend the event.

    For many voters in Iowa, the debate was their introduction to the 38-year-old candidate. Some told CNN they came away intrigued, if not entirely convinced, by his message.

    “I’m really intrigued by this new candidate. He’s very young, very personable. There’s a spark there,” Mara Brown, a retired teacher from Des Moines, Iowa, said.

    Brown considered herself a “dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporter” heading into Wednesday night’s debate. But after seeing Ramaswamy speak, she said she’s giving his candidacy further consideration. She felt she was able to connect with Ramaswamy personally when he spoke and commended him for how he handled the barrage of attacks.

    “When it was dished out, he was able to very calmly and compassionately turn it around on the other candidates,” she said. “He is absolutely the biggest standout out of all the candidates.”

    Those who tuned in saw Ramaswamy’s policies and perspective under intense scrutiny from the other candidates on stage. Former Vice President Mike Pence called Ramaswamy a “rookie” and frequently emphasized his lack of experience in public office. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie poked at his verbose rhetorical style, comparing him to the ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool. Arguably the most piercing blow came from former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who forcefully attacked Ramaswamy’s polarizing proposals to amend US foreign policy toward Russia, China and the Middle East at the expense of Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel respectively.

    “Under your watch, you will make America less safe,” Haley said to Ramaswamy. “You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.”

    Yet despite being the subject of a deluge of criticisms, early indications show voters thought Ramaswamy made a strong impression. A survey of potential Republican primary voters who watched the debate conducted by The Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos showed 26% of voters thought Ramaswamy won the debate, second highest behind DeSantis. Ramaswamy’s favorability ratings rose among voters who watched the debate compared to their views beforehand, but his unfavorability ratings rose, too. Still, the Ramaswamy campaign said it raised $600,000 in the day after the debate, the largest single-day total since its launch.

    After the debate concluded, Ramaswamy told CNN in the spin room that he viewed the critiques against him as an indicator of the strength of his campaign.

    “I took it as a badge of honor,” he said in Milwaukee on Wednesday. “To be at center stage and see a lot of establishment politicians that threatened by my rise, I am thrilled that it actually gave me an opportunity to introduce myself to the people of this country.”

    In his first campaign stops after the debate, Iowans packed into restaurants and event halls, looking to hear more about his vision for the country. Melissa Berry, a nurse from Winterset, Iowa, came to see Ramaswamy speak in her hometown because she’d never heard his views prior to the debate but liked what she saw in his performance. She said economic issues and safety were her two biggest concerns and connected with how Ramaswamy talked about those issues.

    “I feel like all the principles that he brings forth is what I support and there wasn’t anything that I really disagreed with,” Berry said. “I like what he stands for and he’s been very successful, and I felt like that can bring a lot to our country and help our country flourish.”

    Jake Chapman, Ramaswamy’s Iowa co-chair, said the candidate’s impassioned delivery and highly-charged message are creating a unique atmosphere at his recent campaign stops.

    “There is an energy level in these rooms where people come out of the room inspired and wanting to do something,” Chapman said. “It’s one thing to go hear a boring political speech. That’s not what you get with Vivek Ramaswamy.”

    These Iowa voters thought Republican debate had a clear winner. Hear who

    Ramaswamy’s recent rise in the polls was among the biggest storylines heading into Wednesday night’s debate. A former biotechnology CEO, he first stepped into politics when he found an investment management firm that specialized in “anti-woke” asset management and refused to consider environmental, social and corporate governance factors when investing. His wife, Apoorva, told The Atlantic magazine recently that Ramaswamy hadn’t mentioned running for political office until December 2022, when he floated the idea of running for president.

    When his campaign launched in February, many Republicans didn’t seriously consider the Ohio-based entrepreneur amid a wide field of possible presidential hopefuls. A Quinnipiac poll from March showed Ramaswamy with less than 1% support from Republicans and Republican-leaning voters nationally.

    But since then, Ramaswamy has catapulted himself from unknown outsider to center stage, largely through a combination of non-stop interviews and cross-country campaign travel mixed with a willingness to embrace and engage with ideas that fall outside the mainstream principles of many of his Republican rivals.

    Ahead of the debate, national Republican primary polling showed Ramaswamy as high as third behind Trump and DeSantis, but still lagging behind in support among Republicans in Iowa.

    Milt Van Grundy, a retired physician from Marshalltown, Iowa, started to seriously consider Ramaswamy after seeing him at the debate. His wife had been intrigued by him before Wednesday, but he said he liked hearing Ramaswamy propose a forward-looking vision for the country.

    “He’s offering a new way of trying to do business in Washington, DC, that I think is good for the country,” he said.

    Van Grundy voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but said Ramaswamy’s youth and Trump’s age have turned his head away from the former president, self-effacingly referencing his own age in explaining his thinking.

    “I’m 77, and I don’t want to be president,” he joked. “These guys that are 80 and up, not interested.”

    Ramaswamy has closely tied himself to Trump’s ideology, and, at times, to Trump himself. He has referred to the former president as a “friend” and credited him with redefining conservative thinking on a number of issues, from immigration and foreign policy to the federal bureaucracy. He has also gone further than any other candidate in defending Trump amid the multiple state and federal indictments he currently faces. Ahead of Trump’s arraignment hearing in Florida following the former president’s indictment for retaining classified documents, Ramaswamy held a news conference outside the courthouse where he pledged as president to fully pardon Trump and called on other candidates to do the same. During Wednesday’s debate, Ramaswamy praised Trump as “the best president of the 21st century.”

    When he does distance himself from Trump, he does so primarily to pitch himself as the candidate who can advance Trump’s agenda more successfully than the former president. Ramaswamy told reporters after speaking to a crowded restaurant in Indianola on Friday he believes his background – and Trump’s baggage – make him more likely to bring their overlapping worldview to a broader group of voters.

    “President Trump, through no fault of his own in my view, in large part is – when he’s in office, about 30% of this country loses their mind. They become psychiatrically ill, disagreeing with things they once agreed with, agreeing with things they never agreed with,” Ramaswamy said. “I’m not having that effect on people. I think it’s because I’m a member of a different generation, because I’m somebody who’s lived the American dream, because I speak about the country for what is possible for where we can go even though I do recognize the downward slide we’ve long been in.”

    “I think that positions me to not only unite the country, but to go further than Trump did with the America first agenda,” he added.

    Haloti Tukuafu grew up in Maui but moved to Clarion, Iowa, after his wife got a job nearby. He said he sees Ramaswamy as a “mini-Trump,” and likes that he’s reaching out to younger voters. He supported Trump in 2016 and 2020, but currently he’s split between Trump and Ramaswamy and concerned the multiple indictments against Trump could negatively affect his chances of beating President Joe Biden.

    “Trump didn’t have the younger voters. Vivek has that connection with the younger crowd to bring in more in the Republican party than anybody else,” Tukuafu said.

    Despite their different faiths, Pam McCumber – a Christian from Newton, Iowa, who came to see Ramaswamy, a practicing Hindu, speak at a Pizza Ranch restaurant in her hometown – said she feels she can connect with the Ohio-based entrepreneur, and recognizes some characteristics of the former president in him.

    “He’s got the energy that Trump does, but then he’s also got the personality that most, I say, hometown Christians want. You know, don’t have to be worried about what he’s going to say next,” McCumber said.

    His willing alignment with Trump made Ramaswamy a focal point for many of his rivals even before the debate. A strategy and research memo released by a research firm aligned with the super PAC backing DeSantis urged the Florida governor to “hammer” Ramaswamy and outlined various contradictory statements he’s made on several issues. Haley tipped off her forthcoming attack on Ramaswamy’s foreign policy views with a statement ahead of the debate highlighting his proposal to withdraw aid from Israel. And Pence helped elevate a podcast interview Ramaswamy gave earlier this month where he suggested an openness to conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks, an issue that resurfaced just ahead of the debate when The Atlantic published an interview he gave questioning whether federal officials may have been involved in the attacks.

    The underlying criticisms made by his rivals have left lingering questions in the minds of some, including Gene Smith, a retiree from Des Moines. She and her husband, Terry, like Ramaswamy’s message, but she’s concerned his lack of government experience would make it difficult for him to execute his policy vision if he became president. She cited the pushback Trump received during his four years in office toward some of the policies he tried, but ultimately failed, to enact.

    “He’s never held political office, and it is truly a swamp in DC,” she said. “I think even Trump, who’s a very experienced person, was I think blindsided by it. I think when you get into politics you are blindsided by the corruption.”

    Gay Lee Wilson, a retiree from Pleasant Hill, Iowa, and a Christian, cares deeply about Israel, and was confused by Ramaswamy’s proposal to suspend aid to the US’ strongest ally in the Middle East, a proposal Ramaswamy has since backed away from.

    “That is a big deal for me. And I thought, well, maybe somebody’s misstating, misquoting him. But then he said it himself. But then he was saying, ‘no, that isn’t exactly –’ So, I don’t know where he stands,” Wilson said.

    To her, the questions about his policy toward Israel raise questions about his broader foreign policy judgment and his commitment to protecting Judeo-Christian values.

    “I think if his thought process is of backing away from our support of Israel, that I want to know why he’s thinking that. Because as a believer, I don’t think you would think that if you knew biblically, and if you knew world politics and everything, I think you would think differently about that,” she said.

    After Ramaswamy’s prepared remarks in Winterset, Iowa, Ramaswamy took a question from Cory Christensen, who had traveled a half hour from Waukee, Iowa, to hear him speak. He said he responded to almost everything Ramaswamy said at the event but had “one residual doubt” about his proposal to negotiate a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine that would see Russia take control of territory they currently occupy in Ukraine.

    “I’m hard pressed to believe that allowing Russia’s aggression to stand is in our American interests, so can you help me understand your policy?” Christensen asked.

    Ramaswamy proceeded to give a winding, intricate, nearly 10-minute long answer to Christensen’s question, touching on former President Richard Nixon’s foreign policy strategy, criticizing the US aid packages to Ukraine, warning of Chinese technology inside US critical infrastructure systems, and portraying the stark danger of a nuclear war with either Russia or China before ultimately laying out the details of his proposal to allow Russia to claim Ukrainian territory and receive assurance Ukraine would not join NATO in exchange for commitment from Russia to “exit its military alliance” with China.

    After the event, Christensen said he found Ramaswamy’s answer “persuasive.” He said he’s nearly ready to commit to caucusing for Ramaswamy and has already donated to his campaign but is holding out for now with the caucuses still over four months away.

    “I found it pretty persuasive,” Christensen said. “I’m not 100% of the way there yet, but well on the way.”

    Christensen said he much preferred to hear him speak in an unrestricted format like the event in Winterset, as opposed to hearing him at the debate, which left him with unanswered questions following his back-and-forth with Haley.

    “The tagline and attacking Nikki on you know, you’ve got your Raytheon board seat or whatever – that doesn’t help me. It didn’t help me at all. And I want to like him,” Christensen said.

    “I would have loved to see it in the debate, something, even if he condensed his argument here on Ukraine into like, five bullet points. I would rather see that than sort of just attacking her on ‘Hey, you’re just a part of the establishment,’ and those sort of superficial answers,’ he added.

    Ramaswamy acknowledged the downsides of being an inexperienced politician while speaking to reporters after an event in Clarion, Iowa, but also highlighted the benefits of approaching issues with a different perspective.

    “There’s always going to be tradeoffs, but with experience comes tiredness, defeat, status quo, biases, corruption. I don’t have any of that. And I think that that’s both an advantage and – and also, in some ways, you don’t know what you don’t know. So, I’ll admit that,” he said.

    The Ramaswamy campaign plans to continue visiting Iowa and answering voter questions like Christensen’s around the state, Chapman told CNN. He dismissed state polling that showed Ramaswamy lagging behind where he stands in the national polls and said Ramaswamy will continue to show up in towns around the state to carry his post-debate momentum forward.

    “We go from having 20 people in a room to now hitting max capacity of some of these rooms, and we’re going to continue to build that energy,” Chapman said.

    “I think here in Iowa, ultimately, we reward people who are willing to put in the hard work. And he’s willing to do that,” he added.

    Chapman says the campaign doesn’t plan on advancing Ramaswamy’s message in the state through television advertising any time soon, dismissing the traditional campaign strategy as a “short-lived tactic” that he believes only helps some candidates marginally.

    “You have career politicians that they believe they can buy elections. The more money they spend, they can get more votes, and sure, that has helped some of them here and there. But Iowans see right through that,” he said.

    Hillary Ferrer, a former teacher and writer from Pella, Iowa, said she really likes Ramaswamy’s ideas, but is concerned about his appeal to a mainstream audience and wants to support a candidate she sees as electable. She thinks more exposure to voters around the state could help him leapfrog DeSantis and Trump, but acknowledged one built-in disadvantage for Ramaswamy she encountered when spreading his message to her circle of friends.

    “I mean, he’s not lying. He’s got a hard name to say,” Ferrer said. “I couldn’t spell it out when I posted something today.”

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  • DeSantis said he would send Special Forces after the cartels in Mexico as president. Can he do that? | CNN Politics

    DeSantis said he would send Special Forces after the cartels in Mexico as president. Can he do that? | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Saturday reiterated his pledge to send US Special Forces into Mexico to confront drug cartels if he is elected president, saying, “We are going to act.”

    Speaking to reporters at Saturday’s first stop of the “Never Back Down” bus tour through Iowa, the Republican presidential hopeful said, “It’s humiliating to see the cartels have that type of control. They are effectively invading our country and killing our people.”

    The Florida governor first addressed the issue Wednesday night at the GOP presidential debate. When asked whether he would support sending Special Forces into Mexico, DeSantis answered clearly: “Yes, and I will do it on day one.”

    “The president of the United States has got to use all available powers as commander in chief to protect our country and to protect the people. So when they’re coming across, yes we’re going to use lethal force, yes we reserve the right to operate,” he said Wednesday. He later repeated that pledge in a tweet.

    DeSantis spokesperson Bryan Griffin told CNN, “Ron DeSantis will declare a national emergency on day one, mobilize all military resources, declare the cartels to be narco-terrorists, and change the rules of engagement on the border. The full force of the federal government will be utilized to ensure that illegal drug flow is stopped, and he will bring to bear every tool he has to this end.”

    DeSantis is not the only Republican to call for military action against drug cartels. But while experts said frustration over the cartels in Mexico and their impact on Americans is valid, they warned that taking military action on the soil of the US’ southern neighbor could trigger a diplomatic crisis.

    Pressed about taking such action on another country’s soil, DeSantis on Saturday defended the idea, arguing that the cartels are bringing “death and destruction” to America.

    Vanda Felbab-Brown, director of the Brookings Institution’s Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors, explained that designating the cartels as a foreign terrorist organization would allow “for lethal action,” though that “doesn’t eliminate the diplomatic controversy and outrage in Mexico that any Mexican government would have.”

    Such a designation could have “major implications for trade,” Felbab-Brown said.

    “We can say what we want on our side – from the perspective of the Mexican government and Mexican military, that would be very much seen as a massive violation of sovereignty,” she said.

    Earl Anthony Wayne, a career diplomat who was the US ambassador to Mexico from 2011 to 2015, echoed that sentiment, saying US military action in Mexico has been “an extremely sensitive issue” for years.

    “Doing this in the way that he sounded like he was going to do it would create a massive crisis with Mexico,” Wayne said of DeSantis’ comments. “Whoever’s in charge” of Mexico, even if it were someone with a good relationship with the US, “would be forced to take drastic action and close the borders or do other things.”

    As for the authority to deploy US forces in that way, Wayne said it would fall “under the same rubric of launching a military operation in any other country around the world.” And while presidents don’t always get approval from Congress before taking military action, they do have to contend with Congress afterward.

    “There would have to be a justification,” he said. “And Congress would raise questions – why didn’t you seek authority for this, what’s the emergency that set this off? I mean, if you wanted to do it without telling anybody and without working anything out with the government of Mexico, it would create a lot of uproar in the United States, as well as with Mexico.”

    Ezra Cohen, a fellow with the Hudson Institute who was an acting assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict in the Trump administration, said a president would “almost certainly” need to notify Congress after taking such an action.

    “Congress could pass a law prohibiting funding for such operations, but it would be hard for Congress to prevent this sort of activity,” he said.

    Cohen added, however, that the US is “out of options” in how to deal with the cartels because the Mexican government has proven to be “too corrupt and not strong enough to deal with this.”

    Both Wayne and Felbab-Brown agreed that the situation is dire but said the best path forward would be to find a way to work with the Mexican government. They acknowledged, however, that it has become increasingly difficult to do so.

    Felbab-Brown said that right now, “there is no cooperation” with the government, but there “are still officers, law enforcement officials, government officials who understand the narcos are taking over Mexico.” Taking military action, she said, would narrow options for future cooperation “tremendously.”

    “It’s not just that they are not cooperating with us; they are letting Mexico be eaten alive by the cartels,” Felbab-Brown said. “But, you know, lethal military action, certainly involving US soldiers … would be enormously challenging in terms of the optics and the bilateral relationship, and it would just sour even people who want to cooperate with the US. It would make it very difficult for them.”

    And military action, Wayne said, is not a serious idea to deal with what has become a “massive problem.”

    “These groups have grown and become powerful; they’re all mixed with the civilian population,” he said. “Give me a serious solution here. Don’t just make us all feel happy because you say you’re going to send the Special Forces in. … The point is to cut the flows off, it’s not just to kill a couple of cartel members in a small place where they put fentanyl together in a warehouse.”

    This story has been updated with new reporting.

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  • Surfer fights for his life after shark attack in Australia | CNN

    Surfer fights for his life after shark attack in Australia | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A surfer is fighting for his life in the hospital after he was attacked by a shark off Australia’s east coast, police said Friday.

    The 44-year-old man was surfing near Lighthouse Beach, Port Macquarie when a shark launched a “sustained and prolonged attack,” New South Wales (NSW) police said in a statement.

    The surfer tried to fight the shark for about 30 seconds before swimming back to shore where he realized the extent of his injuries, CNN regional affiliate 9News reported.

    Police said a bystander applied a tourniquet before paramedics transferred the surfer to Port Macquarie Hospital in critical condition.

    “[He is in] a serious condition with life threatening injuries, sustained from the lower leg injuries, and also significant blood loss,” NSW Police Chief Inspector Martin Burke said.

    A witness told 9News the scene was “really scary”.

    “I have never seen anything like it,” the unnamed teenager said. “His foot ripped off and basically he was bleeding everywhere.”

    Lighthouse Beach will remain closed for at least 24 hours, Port Macquarie Hastings ALS Lifeguards said on Facebook. Meanwhile, a drone will be used to conduct surveillance flights and monitor shark activity in the area, the group said.

    Experts from the Department of Primary Industries (Fisheries) have begun an investigation into the incident, according to Surf Life Saving NSW.

    Australia ranked behind only the United States in the number of unprovoked shark encounters with humans last year, according to the Florida Museum’s International Shark Attack File.

    The museum describes “unprovoked bites” as incidents in which a bite on a human takes place in the shark’s natural habitat with no human provocation of the shark. “Provoked bites” are classified as when a human initiates interaction with a shark in some way.

    According to the Australian Shark Incident Database, there were 10 shark encounters in New South Wales in 2022, resulting in seven injuries and one death.

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  • Putin sends condolences to Wagner chief Prigozhin’s family after crash | CNN

    Putin sends condolences to Wagner chief Prigozhin’s family after crash | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Russian President Vladimir Putin made his first public comments Thursday on the plane crash believed to have killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, saying the Wagner leader had made “serious mistakes in life.”

    Putin said he was sending condolences to “Wagner Group employees” on board the plane that crashed on Wednesday.

    The crash took place northwest of Moscow and killed all on board, said Russia’s aviation agency, including Prigozhin, chief of the mercenary group that gained prominence for its brutal methods worldwide and its battleground victories in the Ukraine war.

    “First of all, I want to express my sincere condolences to the families of all the victims, this is always a tragedy. Indeed, if they were there, it seems … preliminary information suggests that Wagner Group employees were also on board,” Putin said during a meeting with the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Denis Pushilin in the Kremlin. 

    Speaking about Prigozhin in the past tense, Putin said he’d known the Wagner chief “for a very long time,” and that he was “a talented man, a talented businessman.”

    “He was a man of difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life, and he achieved the results needed both for himself and when I asked him about it – for a common cause, as in these last months,” the Russian president said.

    The crash of Prigozhin’s plane happened two months after Prigozhin and Wagner staged their insurrection, the biggest challenge to Putin’s rule in over two decades.

    Just days after the mutiny, a furious Putin made it clear that he viewed the actions of Wagner as a form of treason. While he did not mention Prigozhin by name, he accused “the organizers of the rebellion” of betraying Russia itself.

    A witness to the crash told Reuters he saw a wing fly off the plane before it headed toward the ground on Wednesday. “It glided down on one wing. It didn’t nose-dive, it was gliding,” he said.

    Prigozhin’s apparent death follows a series of incidents in which Kremlin critics have died or had attempts made on their life.

    No evidence has been presented that points to the involvement of the Kremlin or Russian security services in the crash. The cause of the crash is unknown and Russian authorities have launched a criminal investigation.

    Putin pledged this investigation would be thorough. “But what is absolutely certain, the head of the Investigative Committee reported to me this morning. They have already launched a preliminary investigation into this incident. And it will be carried out in full and brought to completion,” Putin said. 

    US President Joe Biden, prominent Russia critic Bill Browder and Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak have all suggested they believe Putin was behind the crash.

    CNN spoke to several individuals in Russia about the crash on Thursday. All agreed to be identified only by their first name so they could speak freely without fear of retribution.

    No one CNN spoke to believed Ukraine was responsible for the crash. Many openly speculated about its cause, including whether Russian President Vladimir Putin brought down the jet as retribution for Prigozhin’s failed mutiny in June.

    “He was killed by Putin, who does not forgive betrayal,” said Alexey from Moscow. “Putin was behind it or it could have been his Politburo but Putin knew and approved.”

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  • Saudi Arabia, UAE and Iran among six countries invited to join BRICS group | CNN Business

    Saudi Arabia, UAE and Iran among six countries invited to join BRICS group | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Oil powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been invited to become members of the BRICS group of developing nations in its first expansion in over a decade.

    Also invited are Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and Argentina, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Thursday as he wrapped up the annual summit of the group in Johannesburg.

    Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said the kingdom was awaiting details from the BRICS group on the nature of the membership, and would take an “appropriate decision” accordingly.

    All six countries invited had already expressed an interest in joining. The BRICS group currently includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

    “The membership will take effect from the first of January, 2024,” Ramaphosa said.

    In a video message, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated the new BRICS members, adding that the bloc’s global influence would continue to grow.

    “I would like to congratulate the new members who will work in a full-scale format next year,” Putin said.

    “And I would like to assure all our colleagues that we will continue the work that we started today on expanding the influence of BRICS in the world,” the Russian president added.

    China’s President Xi Jinping called the bloc’s expansion “historic,” reflecting its determination to “unite and cooperate with developing countries.”

    “[It will] inject new impetus into the BRICS cooperation mechanism and further strengthen the power of world peace and development,” Jinping said.

    Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also welcomed the expansion, saying his country had always believed that adding new members would strengthen the bloc.

    Speaking to Saudi TV channel Al Arabiya, the Saudi foreign minister added that the bloc had “proven itself to be a useful and important channel to strengthen economic cooperation with countries of the so-called Global South.”

    Bin Farhan told the BRICS conference earlier Thursday that the kingdom would continue to be a “secure and reliable energy provider,” adding that total bilateral trade between Saudi Arabia and BRICS nations exceeded $160 billion in 2022.

    If Saudi Arabia accepts the invitation, the world’s largest crude oil exporter will find itself in the same economic bloc as the world’s biggest oil importer, China.

    It will also mean that Russia and Saudi Arabia — both members of OPEC+, a group of major oil producers — will join each other in a new economic bloc. The two countries often coordinate their oil output, which has in the past put Saudi Arabia at odds with its ally, the United States.

    The bloc’s expansion raises the question of potential de-dollarization, a process by which members would gradually switch to using currencies other than the US dollar to conduct trade. The BRICS countries have also been talking about a common currency, an idea analysts have described as unworkable and “unlikely” in the near future.

    Putin said the issue of a common currency was a “difficult question” but added “we will move towards solving these problems.”

    The expansion takes place at a time when some BRICS members, namely Russia and China, are locked into rising tensions with the West.

    Experts have said that choosing to include countries that are openly antagonistic toward the West, such as Iran, could swing the group further toward becoming an anti-Western bloc.

    Built off a term originally coined by former Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill to describe key emerging markets, the group has persisted despite deep differences in political and economic systems among its members.

    “Economically, not many of the countries that are applying to join are particularly large,” O’Neill told Bloomberg earlier this week.

    Existing BRICS members have “had enough difficulty trying to agree just between the five of them,” he added. “So beyond the admittedly hugely powerful symbolism, I’m not quite sure what having a lot more countries in there is going to achieve.”

    BRICS held its first summit in 2009 with four members and then added South Africa the following year. It launched its New Development Bank in 2015.

    The United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan said on X, formerly Twitter: “We appreciate the inclusion of the UAE as a member to this important group.”

    Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said his country looked forward to joining BRICS in order to strengthen economic cooperation among its members, as well as “raise the voice of the Global South,” according to the presidential spokesperson.

    — Manveena Suri, Mostafa Salem, Lizzy Yee, Mengchen Zhang and Nadeen Ebrahim contributed to this article.

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  • Moscow court extends WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich’s pre-trial detention | CNN

    Moscow court extends WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich’s pre-trial detention | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Moscow court has extended the pre-trial detention of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, who had been arrested on espionage charges, by three months.

    His pretrial detention has been extended until November 30, the press service of the Lefortovo Court said Thursday. It had been due to end on August 30.

    Gershkovich has been detained in Russia since March following his arrest on charges that he, the WSJ, and the US government vehemently deny.

    The US State Department has officially designated Gershkovich as wrongfully detained in Russia. US President Joe Biden has also been blunt about Gershkovich’s arrest, urging Russia to “let him go.”

    This is a breaking news story. More details to follow.

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  • Fact check: The first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election | CNN Politics

    Fact check: The first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidates delivered a smattering of false and misleading claims at the first debate of the 2024 election – though none of the eight candidates on stage in Milwaukee delivered anything close to the bombardment of false statements that typically characterized the debate performances of former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner who skipped the Wednesday event.

    Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina inaccurately described the state of the economy in early 2021 and repeated a long-ago-debunked false claim about the Biden-era Justice Department. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie misstated the sentence attached to a gun law relevant to the investigation into the president’s son Hunter Biden. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis misled about his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, omitting mention of his early pandemic restrictions.

    Below is a fact check of those claims and various others from the debate, some of which left out key context. In addition, below is a brief fact check of some of Trump’s claims from a pre-taped interview he did with Tucker Carlson, which was posted online shortly before the debate aired. Trump made a variety of statements that were not true.

    DeSantis and the pandemic

    DeSantis criticized the federal government for its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming it had locked down the economy, and then said: “In Florida, we led the country out of lockdown, and we kept our state free and open.”

    Facts First: DeSantis’s claim is misleading at best. Before he became a vocal opponent of pandemic restrictions, DeSantis imposed significant restrictions on individuals, businesses and other entities in Florida in March 2020 and April 2020; some of them extended months later into 2020. He did then open up the state, with a gradual phased approach, but he did not keep it open from the start.

    DeSantis received criticism in March 2020 for what some critics perceived as a lax approach to the pandemic, which intensified as Florida beaches were packed during Spring Break. But that month and the month following, DeSantis issued a series of major restrictions. For example, DeSantis:

    • Closed Florida’s schools, first with a short-term closure in March 2020 and then, in April 2020, with a shutdown through the end of the school year. (In June 2020, he announced a plan for schools to reopen for the next school year that began in August. By October 2020, he was publicly denouncing school closures, calling them a major mistake and saying all the information hadn’t been available that March.)
    • On March 14, 2020, announced a ban on most visits to nursing homes. (He lifted the ban in September 2020.)
    • On March 17, 2020, ordered bars and nightclubs to close for 30 days and restaurants to operate at half-capacity. (He later approved a phased reopening plan that took effect in May 2020, then issued an order in September 2020 allowing these establishments to operate at full capacity.)
    • On March 17, 2020, ordered gatherings on public beaches to be limited to a maximum of 10 people staying at least six feet apart, then, three days later, ordered a shutdown of public beaches in two populous counties, Broward and Palm Beach. (He permitted those counties’ beaches to reopen by the last half of May.)
    • On March 20, 2020, prohibited “any medically unnecessary, non-urgent or non-emergency” medical procedures. (The prohibition was lifted in early May 2020.)
    • On March 23, 2020, ordered that anyone flying to Florida from an area with “substantial community spread” of the virus, “to include the New York Tri-State Area (Connecticut, New Jersey and New York),” isolate or quarantine for 14 days or the duration of their stay in Florida, whichever was shorter, or face possible jail time or a fine. Later that week, he added Louisiana to the list. (He lifted the Louisiana restriction in June 2020 and the rest in August 2020.)
    • On April 3, 2020, imposed a statewide stay-home order that temporarily required people in Florida to “limit their movements and personal interactions outside of their home to only those necessary to obtain or provide essential services or conduct essential activities.” (Beginning in May 2020, the state switched to a phased reopening plan that, for months, included major restrictions on the operations of businesses and other entities; DeSantis described it at the time as a “very slow and methodical approach” to reopening.)

    -From CNN’s Daniel Dale

    Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations, said: “Donald Trump added $8 trillion to our debt, and our kids are never going to forgive us for this.”

    Facts First: Haley’s figure is accurate. The total public debt stood at about $19.9 trillion on the day Trump took office in 2017 and then increased by about $7.8 trillion over Trump’s four years, to about $27.8 trillion on the day he left office in 2021.

    It’s worth noting, however, that the increase in the debt during any president’s tenure is not the fault of that president alone. A significant amount of spending under any president is the result of decisions made by their predecessors – such as the creation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid decades ago – and by circumstances out of a president’s control, notably including the global Covid-19 pandemic under Trump; the debt spiked in 2020 after Trump approved trillions in emergency pandemic relief spending that Congress had passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

    Still, Trump did choose to approve that spending. And his 2017 tax cuts, unanimously opposed by congressional Democrats, were another major contributor to the debt spike.

    -From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Katie Lobosco

    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum claimed that Biden’s signature climate bill costs $1.2 trillion dollars and is “just subsidizing China.”

    Facts First: This claim needs context. The clean energy pieces of the Inflation Reduction Act – Democrats’ climate bill – passed with an initial price tag of nearly $370 billion. However, since that bill is made up of tax incentives, that price tag could go up depending on how many consumers take advantage of tax credits to buy electric vehicles and put solar panels on their homes, and how many businesses use the subsidies to install new utility scale wind and solar in the United States.

    Burgum’s figure comes from a Goldman Sachs report, which estimated the IRA could provide $1.2 trillion in clean energy tax incentives by 2032 – about a decade from now.

    On Burgum’s claim that Biden’s clean energy agenda will be a boon to China, the IRA was specifically written to move the manufacturing supply chain for clean energy technology like solar panels and EV batteries away from China and to the United States.

    In the year since it was passed, the IRA has spurred 83 new or expanded manufacturing facilities in the US, and close to 30,000 new clean energy manufacturing jobs, according to a tally from trade group American Clean Power.

    -From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

    With the economy as one of the main topics on the forefront of voters’ minds, Scott aimed to make a case for Republican policies, misleadingly suggesting they left the US economy in record shape before Biden took office.

    “There is no doubt that during the Trump administration, when we were dealing with the COVID virus, we spent more money,” Scott said. “But here’s what happened at the end of our time in the majority: we had low unemployment, record low unemployment, 3.5% for the majority of the population, and a 70-year low for women. African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians had an all-time low.”

    Facts First: This is false. Scott’s claims don’t accurately reflect the state of the US economy at the end of the Republican majority in the Senate. And in some cases, his exaggerations echo what Trump himself frequently touted about the economy under his leadership.

    By the time Trump left office and the Republicans lost the Senate majority in January 2021, US unemployment was not at a record low. The US unemployment rate dropped to a seasonally adjusted rate of 3.5% in September 2019, the country’s lowest in 50 years. While it hovered around that level for five months, Scott’s assertion ignores the coronavirus pandemic-induced economic destruction that followed. In April 2020, the unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% — the highest level since monthly records began in 1948. As of December 2020, the unemployment rate was at 6.7%.

    Nor was the unemployment rate for women at a 70-year low by the end of Trump’s time in office. It reached a 66-year low during certain months of 2019, at 3.4% in April and 3.6% in August, but by December 2020, unemployment for women was at 6.7%.

    The unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians were also not at all-time lows at the end of 2020, but they did reach record lows during Trump’s tenure as president.

    -From CNN’s Tara Subramaniam

    Scott said that the Justice Department under President Joe Biden is targeting “parents that show up at school board meetings. They are called, under this DOJ, they’re called domestic terrorists.”

    Facts First: It is false that the Justice Department referred to parents as domestic terrorists. The claim has been debunked several times – during the uproar at school boards over Covid-19 restrictions and anti-racism curriculums; after Kevin McCarthy claimed Republicans would investigate Merrick Garland with a majority in the House; and even by a federal judge. The Justice Department never called parents terrorists for attending or wanting to attend school board meetings.

    The claim stems from a 2021 letter from The National School Boards Associations asking the Justice Department to “deal with” the uptick in threats against education officials and saying that “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials” could be classified as “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” In response, Garland released a memo encouraging federal and local authorities to work together against the harassment campaigns levied at schools, but never endorsed the “domestic terrorism” notion.

    A federal judge even threw out a lawsuit over the accusation, ruling that Garland’s memo did little more than announce a “series of measures” that directed federal authorities to address increasing threats targeting school board members, teachers and other school employees.

    -From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

    Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina, said the US is spending “less than three and a half percent of our defense budget” on Ukraine aid, and that in terms of financial aid relative to GDP, “11 of the European countries have given more than the US.”

    Facts First: This is partly true. Haley’s claim regarding the US aid to Ukraine compared to the total defense budget is slightly under the actual percentage, but it is accurate that 11 European countries have given more aid to Ukraine as a percentage of their total GDP than the US.

    As of August 14, the US has committed more than $43 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, according to the Defense Department. In comparison, the Fiscal Year 2023 defense budget was $858 billion – making aid to Ukraine just over 5% of the total US defense budget.

    As of May 2023, according to a Council of Foreign Relations tracker, 11 countries were providing a higher share in aid to Ukraine relative to their GDP than the US – led by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

    -From CNN’s Haley Britzky

    Former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that the Trump administration “spent funding to backfill on the military cuts of the Obama administration.”

    Facts First: This is misleading. While military spending decreased under the Obama administration, it was largely due to the 2011 Budget Control Act, which received Republican support and resulted in automatic spending cuts to the defense budget.

    Mike Pence, a senator at the time, voted in favor of the Budget Control Act.

    -From CNN’s Haley Britzky

    Christie said President Biden’s son Hunter Biden was “facing a 10-year mandatory minimum” for lying on a federal form when he purchased a gun in 2018.

    Facts First: Christie, a former federal prosecutor, clearly misstated the law. This crime can lead to a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, but it doesn’t have a 10-year mandatory minimum.

    These comments are related to the highly scrutinized Justice Department investigation into Hunter Biden, which is currently ongoing after a plea deal fell apart earlier this summer.

    As part of the now-defunct deal, Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and enter into a “diversion agreement” with prosecutors, who would drop the gun possession charge in two years if he consistently stayed out of legal trouble and passed drug tests.

    The law in question makes it a crime to purchase a firearm while using or addicted to illegal drugs. Hunter Biden has acknowledged struggling with crack cocaine addiction at the time, and admitted at a court hearing and in court papers that he violated this law by signing the form.

    The US Sentencing Commission says, “The statutory maximum penalty for the offense is ten years of imprisonment.” There isn’t a mandatory 10-year punishment, as Christie claimed.

    During his answer, Christie also criticized the Justice Department for agreeing to a deal in June where Hunter Biden could avoid prosecution on the felony gun offense. That deal was negotiated by special counsel David Weiss, who was first appointed to the Justice Department by former President Donald Trump.

    -From CNN’s Marshall Cohen

    Burgum and Scott got into a back and forth over IRS staffing with Burgum saying that the “Biden administration wanted to put 87,000 people in the IRS,” and Scott suggesting they “fire the 87,000 IRS agents.”

    Facts First: This figure needs context.

    The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed last year without any Republican votes, authorized $80 billion in new funding for the IRS to be delivered over the course of a decade.

    The 87,000 figure comes from a 2021 Treasury report that estimated the IRS could hire 86,852 full-time employees with a nearly $80 billion investment over 10 years.

    While the funding may well allow for the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS employees over time, far from all of these employees will be IRS agents conducting audits and investigations.

    Many other employees will be hired for the non-agent roles, from customer service to information technology, that make up most of the IRS workforce. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

    The IRS has not said precisely how many new “agents” will be hired with the funding. But it is already clear that the total won’t approach 87,000. And it’s worth noting that the IRS may not receive all of the $80 billion after Republicans were able to claw back $20 billion of the new funding as part of a deal to address the debt ceiling made earlier this year.

    -From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

    Trump repeated a frequent claim during his interview with Carlson that streamed during the GOP debate that his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House was “covered” under the Presidential Records Act and that he is “allowed to do exactly that.”

    Facts First: This is false. The Presidential Records Act says the exact opposite – that the moment presidents leave office, all presidential records are to be turned over to the federal government. Keeping documents at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency concluded was in clear contravention of that law.

    According to the Presidential Records Act, “upon the conclusion of a President’s term of office, or if a President serves consecutive terms upon the conclusion of the last term, the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.”

    The sentence makes clear that a president has no authority to keep documents after leaving the White House.

    The National Archives even released a statement refuting the notion that Trump’s retention of documents was covered by the Presidential Records Act, writing in a June news release that “the PRA requires that all records created by Presidents (and Vice-Presidents) be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the end of their administrations.”

    -From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

    While discussing electric vehicles, Trump claimed that California “is in a big brownout because their grid is a disaster,” adding that the state’s ambitious electric vehicle goals won’t work with the grid in such shape.

    Facts First: Trump’s claim that California’s grid is currently in a “big brownout” and is a “disaster” isn’t true. California’s grid suffered rolling blackouts in 2020, but it has performed quite well in the face of extreme heat this summer, owing in large part to a massive influx of renewable energy including battery storage. These big batteries keep energy from wind and solar running when the wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining. (Batteries are also being deployed at a rapid rate in Texas, a red state.)

    Another reason California’s grid has stayed stable this year even during extreme temperature spikes is the fact that a deluge of snow and rain this winter and spring has refilled reservoirs that generate electricity using hydropower.

    As Trump insinuated, there are real questions about how well the state’s grid will hold up as California’s drivers shift to electric vehicles by the millions by 2035 – the same year it will phase out selling new gas-powered cars. California state officials say they are preparing by adding new capacity to the grid and urging more people to charge their vehicles overnight and during times of the day when fewer people are using energy. But independent experts say the state needs to exponentially increase its clean energy while also building out huge amounts of new EV chargers to achieve its goals.

    -From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

    Trump and the border wall

    Trump claimed to Carlson, “I had the strongest border in the history of our country, and I built almost 500 miles of wall. You know, they’d like to say, ‘Oh, was it less?’ No, I built 500 miles. In fact, if you check with the authorities on the border, we built almost 500 miles of wall.”

    Facts First: This needs context. Trump and his critics are talking about different things when they use different figures for how much border wall was built during his presidency. Trump is referring to all of the wall built on the southern border during his administration, even in areas that already had some sort of barrier before. His critics are only counting the Trump-era wall that was built in parts of the border that did not have any previous barrier.

    A total of 458 miles of southern border wall was built under Trump, according to a federal report written two days after Trump left office and obtained by CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez. That is 52 miles of “primary” wall built where no barriers previously existed, plus 33 miles of “secondary” wall that was built in spots where no barriers previously existed, plus another 373 miles of primary and secondary wall that was built to replace previous barriers the federal government says had become “dilapidated and/or outdated.”

    Some of Trump’s rival candidates, such DeSantis and Christie, have used figures around 50 miles while criticizing Trump for failing to finish the wall – counting only the primary wall built where no barriers previously existed.

    While some Trump critics have scoffed at the replacement wall, the Trump-era construction was generally much more formidable than the older barriers it replaced, which were often designed to deter vehicles rather than people on foot. Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff tweeted in 2020: “As someone who has spent a lot of time lately in the shadow of the border wall, I need to puncture this notion that ‘replacement’ sections are ‘not new.’ There is really no comparison between vehicle barriers made from old rail ties and 30-foot bollards.”

    Ideally, both Trump and his opponents would be clearer about what they are talking about: Trump that he is including replacement barriers, his opponents that they are excluding those barriers.

    -From CNN’s Daniel Dale

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  • Iran rounds up activists and relatives of killed protesters ahead of Mahsa Amini anniversary | CNN

    Iran rounds up activists and relatives of killed protesters ahead of Mahsa Amini anniversary | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.



    CNN
     — 

    Iran is moving to head off a possible repeat of unrest ahead of the first anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, arresting women’s rights activists and family members of people killed during last year’s nationwide protests, local and international human rights groups said Wednesday.

    Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died last September after being detained by the regime’s infamous morality police and taken to a “re-education center,” allegedly for not abiding by the country’s conservative dress code.

    Protests sparked by Amini’s death, the largest Iran has witnessed in years, were met with a brutal crackdown by Iran’s security forces.

    More than 300 people were killed in the protests, including more than 40 children, the UN said in November last year. US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) in January placed the number at more than 500, including 70 children.

    Thousands were arrested during months of protests across the country, the UN said in a report in June, citing research released last year by their Human Rights Committee.

    Iran executed seven protesters for their involvement in the unrest, according to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

    A group of volunteer lawyers who defend rights activists alleged in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that Iran arrested the father of one of the executed protesters and the family’s legal counsel on Tuesday.

    CNN has reached out to the Iranian Foreign Ministry for comment.

    In a separate case, Shermin Habibi, the wife of Fereydoon Mahmoodi, a protester killed by security forces during the demonstrations, was arrested and transported to an undisclosed location on Tuesday, according to a report from HRANA.

    Across 10 provinces, families of 33 people killed during the protests have been subjected to “human rights violations” in recent months, and the families of two people executed in connection with the protests were harassed and intimidated, Amnesty International said in a report this week.

    Meanwhile, Bidarzani, an independent women’s rights group, alleges in social media posts that 11 women’s rights activists and one man were arrested in Gilan province over the last week.

    State-affiliated media said 12 people were arrested for “preparing unrest and insecurity” in the province, which is northwest of Tehran on the Caspian Sea. Prosecutors in Gilan refused to provide details on which security entity was behind the arrests, according to Bidarzani.

    “Iranian authorities are using their go-to playbook of putting maximum pressure on peaceful dissidents ahead of the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death,” a senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, Tara Sepehri Far said in a press release.

    “The arbitrary arrests of a dozen activists are aimed at suppressing popular discontent with ongoing impunity and rights violations.”

    It is unclear if more protests are planned to coincide with the anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by Iran’s morality police for not wearing her hijab correctly.

    Ten months after her death, Iran’s morality police resumed headscarf patrols and now Iranian authorities are considering a draconian new bill on hijab-wearing that experts say would enshrine unprecedentedly harsh punitive measures into law.

    The 70-article draft law sets out a range of proposals, including much longer prison terms for women who refuse to wear the veil, stiff new penalties for celebrities and businesses who flout the rules, and the use of artificial intelligence to identify women in breach of the dress code.

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  • Top Russian general who vanished after Wagner rebellion fired as head of aerospace forces | CNN

    Top Russian general who vanished after Wagner rebellion fired as head of aerospace forces | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A top Russian general who went missing after the mercenary group Wagner’s insurrection in June has been fired from his role as head of the country’s aerospace forces, Russian state media reported Wednesday citing unnamed sources.

    Gen. Sergey Surovikin has spent four decades as part of the Russian military, including a brief stint running Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.

    He was put in charge of the conflict in October 2022, shortly after a major explosion severely damaged the Kerch bridge connecting the annexed Crimean Peninsula to mainland Russia. Surovikin was removed from that post just months later.

    He has not been seen in public since June, when he released a video pleading for Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to stop his insurrection. A Russian lawmaker said in July that Surovikin is “resting.”

    Documents shared with CNN in June suggested that Surovikin was a secret VIP member of Wagner. The New York Times reported in June that Surovikin may have had advanced knowledge of the rebellion, prompting widespread speculation about his role the mutiny.

    Surovikin’s ouster comes about a month after another senior general, Ivan Popov, was removed from his post after accusing Moscow’s Defense Ministry leadership of betraying his troops by not providing sufficient support.

    Surovikin’s military career began with service in Afghanistan in the 1980s before commanding a unit in the Second Chechen War ​in 2004. He was named the commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces of Russia in 2017, the position he was reportedly removed from on Wednesday.

    As the head of the aerospace forces, Surovikin oversaw the Kremlin’s campaign in Syria, during which Russian combat aircraft were accused of causing widespread devastation in rebel-held areas. While Surovikin was rewarded in Moscow for his service in Syria, Human Rights Watch alleged that Surovikin may have been responsible for attacks that violated the laws of war and killed at least 1,600 civilians.

    The brutality of those alleged attacks earned Surovikint the nickname “General Armageddon.” One of his former subordinates, Gleb Irisov, told CNN last year that Surovikin was disliked because of the way he tried to implement his infantry experience into the air force

    “He made a lot of people very angry – they hated him,” Irisov said.

    The news of Surovikin’s removal was initially reported by prominent Russian journalist and former chief of the now-closed Echo of Moscow radio station, Alexey Venediktov.

    The Venediktov posted on his Telegram channel on Tuesday that Surovikin had been dismissed from his post but would continue serving the Ministry of Defense in another capacity.

    According to sources cited by Russia’s business news outlet RBC, Surovikin’s removal from his post is due to his transfer to a different role, and he is currently on a short vacation.

    Surovikin’s official bio on the Russian Defense Ministry’s website still lists him as the head of the aerospace forces.

    CNN has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment.

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  • ‘You gave me strength’: Spain’s Carmona learns of father’s death after firing team to World Cup victory | CNN

    ‘You gave me strength’: Spain’s Carmona learns of father’s death after firing team to World Cup victory | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Within the span of hours this weekend, Spain’s Women’s World Cup hero Olga Carmona experienced a career high and a deep loss, the latter of which was kept from her so she could focus on Sunday’s final.

    Carmona, who scored Spain’s winning goal against England, learned of her father’s death after the game, the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) said in a statement.

    “The RFEF deeply regrets to report the death of Olga Carmona’s father. The soccer player learned the sad news after the World Cup final. We send our most sincere hugs to Olga and her family in a moment of deep pain. We love you, Olga,” RFEF added.

    In an emotionally charged post on X, formally known as Twitter, Carmona likened her father to a star looking down on her while she played the final.

    “And without being aware of it, I had my Star before kick off,” she wrote. “I know you gave me the strength to accomplish something truly unique. I know you were watching me tonight and that you are proud of me. Rest in peace, dad.”

    Carmona posted another emotional tribute on X on Monday, the day after the World Cup final.

    “I don’t have the words to thank all of your love,” the post read. “Yesterday was the best and worst day of my life.

    “I know you’d want me to enjoy this historic moment – because of that I’ll be with my teammates, so that wherever you are, you’ll know that this star is also yours, Dad.”

    Carmona’s club, Real Madrid, also issued a statement expressing its condolences.

    “Real Madrid C.F., the president and the Board of Directors are deeply saddened by the passing of the father of our player Olga Carmona. Real Madrid would like to extend our condolences and heartfelt sympathy to Olga, her family and all her loved ones. May he rest in peace,” the statement read.

    Carmona’s 29th-minute strike proved to be the winner, making La Roja only the second country, after Germany, to win both the men’s and women’s World Cups.

    Following the goal, Carmona lifted her shirt in celebration. After the match, she explained the reason she did that was to honor the mother of her best friend who recently passed away.

    Carmona’s goal delivered Spain the win against the odds. That La Roja triumphed against the reigning European champion and pre-match favorite despite the disputes and divisions that have clouded the national team throughout the tournament makes this achievement extraordinary.

    Last year, 15 Spanish players declared themselves unavailable for selection, saying they were unhappy with the training methods of head coach Jorge Vilda, who had described the situation at the time as a “world embarrassment.”

    Only three of those 15 players who had written letters to RFEF last year, saying the “situation” within the national team was affecting their “emotional state” and health, were selected for the World Cup squad.

    The country is now the best in the world, but the international futures of those exiled players remain unclear. With victory, the questions surrounding the national set-up, of whether or how the dispute can be resolved, do not disappear.

    If the off-pitch issues can be resolved, Spain’s future shines bright, because now, incredibly, the Iberian nation is a Women’s World Cup winner at Under-17, Under-20 and senior level.

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  • Anti-corruption candidate Bernardo Arévalo wins Guatemala’s presidential election | CNN

    Anti-corruption candidate Bernardo Arévalo wins Guatemala’s presidential election | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Anti-corruption candidate Bernardo Arévalo, from the progressive Movimiento Semilla party, appeared to have won Guatemala’s presidential election on Sunday, beating former first lady Sandra Torres in a race marred by fears of democratic backsliding.

    Speaking to reporters shortly after preliminary election results showed him winning a majority, Arévalo said the people have “spoken loudly.”

    “What the people are shouting at us is: ‘Enough of so much corruption’ – This is a demonstration of the change of mind that we are witnessing in Guatemala,” he said. “Guatemalans today have hope and we are celebrating in the streets the recovery of the sense of hope in our country.”

    He added that he had already received calls from President Alejandro Giammattei congratulating him on his victory as well as the presidents of Mexico and El Salvador.

    With more than 95% of the ballots counted, Arévalo won 59.1% of the vote compared to Torres’ 36.1%, according to official data from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

    It marks a stunning win for the former diplomat who reinvigorated a race that has been plagued by controversy after the state disqualified opposition candidates who spoke out against corruption – drawing concerns from rights groups and Western allies.

    “Corruption is a phenomenon that has penetrated the different institutions of society and has infiltrated the different spaces. Our task will be to recover those spaces,” Arévalo said Sunday.

    The president of the electoral tribunal, Irma Palencia, said during a press conference on Sunday night that “today, the people voice’s spoke,” as it became apparent that Arévalo had won by a large margin.

    In a post on X, formally known as Twitter, Arévalo wrote: “Long live Guatemala!”

    Guatemala’s President Alejandro Giammattei congratulated Arévalo for his win in a post on X, saying he would “extend the invitation to start the ordered transition the day after the results are official.”

    The center-left politician Arévalo tapped into widespread public discontent with his promises to curb crime and corruption, tackle malnutrition, and bring growth to a country that has one of the highest levels of inequality in the region.

    Achieving those goals won’t be easy for Arévalo, whose father was the country’s first democratically elected president, as Congress is set to be largely controlled by establishment parties, including Torres’ Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza.

    Analysts caution there could also be attempts to undermine the victory by Arévalo, pointing to efforts by state actors to disqualify him after his surprise second place finish during the first round of voting in June.

    A Guatemalan court suspended his Movimiento Semilla party on the request of Rafael Curruchiche, who heads the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity and is on the US State Department’s Engel List of “corrupt and undemocratic actors.”

    Curruchiche said they were investigating Movimiento Semilla for allegedly falsifying citizens’ signatures – a claim Arévalo has denied.

    His win comes as regional observers say rising kleptocracy, graft and weakening rule of law have exacerbated inequality in the Central American country, driving thousands of Guatemalans to move to the United States in recent years.

    The situation worsened after a United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission, known as CICIG, credited for assisting in hundreds of convictions, was dissolved in 2019, rights groups say.

    Prosecutors and judges associated with the commission were arrested and investigated and many have since fled the country. The ensuing years have seen high rates of poverty and malnutrition.

    Members of the media who have opposed corruption in their reporting have also faced legal consequences. This year, prominent Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora was sentenced to six years in prison for money laundering, in a ruling press groups described as an attack on free speech.

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  • Ecuador votes in historic referendum on oil extraction in the Amazon | CNN

    Ecuador votes in historic referendum on oil extraction in the Amazon | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The people of Ecuador are heading to the polls – but they’re voting for more than just a new president. For the first time in history, the people will decide the fate of oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

    The referendum will give voters the chance to decide whether oil companies can continue to drill in one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, the Yasuní National Park, home to the last uncontacted indigenous communities in Ecuador.

    The park encompasses around one million hectares at the meeting point of the Amazon, the Andes and the Equator. Just one hectare of Yasuní land supposedly contains more animal species than the whole of Europe and more tree species than exist in all of North America.

    But underneath the land lies Ecuador’s largest reserve of crude oil.

    “We are leading the world in tackling climate change by bypassing politicians and democratizing environmental decisions,” said Pedro Bermo, the spokesman for Yasunidos, an environmental collective who pushed for the referendum.

    It’s been a decade-long battle that began when former President Rafael Correa boldly proposed that the international community give Ecuador $3.6 billion to leave Yasuní undisturbed. But the world wasn’t as generous as Correa expected. In 2016, the Ecuadorian state oil company began drilling in Block 43 – around 0.01% of the National Park – which today produces more than 55,000 barrels a day, amounting to around 12% of Ecuador’s oil production.

    Aerial picture of the Tiputini Processing Center of state-owned Petroecuador in Yasuni National Park, June 21, 2023.

    A continuous crusade of relentless campaigning and a successful petition eventually made its mark – in May, the country’s constitutional court authorized the vote to be included on the ballot of the upcoming election.

    It’s a decision that will likely be instrumental to the future of Ecuador’s economy. Supporters who want to continue drilling believe the loss of employment opportunities would be disastrous.

    “The backers of the request for crude to remain underground made it ten years ago when there wasn’t anything. 10 years later we find ourselves with 55,000 barrels per day, that’s 20 million barrels per year,” Energy Minister Fernando Santos told local radio.

    “At $60 a barrel that’s $1.2 billion,” he added. “It could cause huge damage to the country,” he said, referring to economic damage and denying there has been environmental harm.

    Alberto Acosta-Burneo, an economist and editor of the Weekly Analysis bulletin, said Ecuador would be “shooting itself in the foot” if it shut down drilling. In a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, he said that without cutting consumption all it would mean is another country selling Ecuador fuel.

    But ‘yes’ campaigners have ideas to fill the gap, from the promotion of eco-tourism and the electrification of public transport to eliminating tax exemptions. They claim that cutting the subsidies to the richest 10% of the country would generate four times more than what is obtained extracting oil from Yasuní.

    “This election has two faces,” explained Bermo.

    “On one hand we have the violence, the candidates, parties, and the same political mafias that governed Ecuador without significant changes.

    “On the other hand, the referendum is the contrary – a citizen campaign full of hope, joy, art, activism and a lot of collective work to save this place. We are very optimistic.”

    Among those campaigning to stop the drilling is Helena Gualinga, an indigenous rights advocate who hails from a remote village in the Ecuadorian Amazon – home of the Kichwa Sarayaku community.

    A crude oil sample taken from an oil well in Yasuní National Park, where the referendum vote could mean leaving the crude oil in the ground indefinitely.

    “This referendum presents a huge opportunity for us to create change in a tangible way,” she told CNN.

    For Gualinga, the most crucial part of the referendum is that if Yasunidos wins, the state oil company will have a one-year deadline to wrap up its operations in Block 43.

    She explained that some oil companies have left areas in the Amazon without properly shutting down operations and restoring the area.

    “This sentence would mean they have to do that.”

    Those who wish to continue drilling in the area argue that meeting the one-year deadline to dismantle operations would be impossible.

    The referendum comes as the world faces blistering temperatures, with scientists declaring July as the hottest month on record, and the Amazon approaching what studies are suggesting is a critical tipping point that could have severe implications in the fight to tackle climate change.

    And according to Antonia Juhasz, a Senior Researcher on Fossil Fuels, it’s time for Ecuador to transition to a post-oil era. Ecuador’s GDP from oil has dropped significantly from around 18% in 2008, to just over 6% in 2021.

    She believes the benefits of protecting the Amazon outweigh the benefits of maintaining dependence on oil, particularly considering the cost of regular oil spills and the consequences of worsening the climate crisis.

    “The Amazon is worth more intact than in pieces, as are its people,” she said.

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  • Customs officers seize over $380,000 worth of cocaine off bus from Mexico | CNN

    Customs officers seize over $380,000 worth of cocaine off bus from Mexico | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    US customs officers in Texas discovered nearly two dozen packages of cocaine on a commercial bus coming from Mexico.

    Field operations officers with the US Customs and Border Protection seized the “significant amount” of narcotics at the Roma International Bridge in Roma, Texas, the agency reported. Roma is along the Rio Grande in South Texas, roughly 50 miles northwest of McAllen.

    Officers came across the drugs on August 12, according to a news release Tuesday. After the bus arrived, officers conducted a canine and non-intrusive inspection.

    The examination uncovered 22 packages that contained nearly 50 pounds of cocaine, the agency said.

    The seized narcotics had a street value of more than $380,000, CBP said.

    The agency has seized more than 65,000 pounds of cocaine since October 2022, CBP data shows.

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  • Two Israeli civilians killed in flashpoint West Bank town, Israel military says | CNN

    Two Israeli civilians killed in flashpoint West Bank town, Israel military says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two Israeli civilians were shot and killed on Saturday in the flashpoint West Bank town of Huwara, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

    IDF soldiers have been pursuing the suspects and have set up blockades in the area, the military said in a statement.

    The Magen David Adom (MDA) rescue service said they received a report of a shooting at 3:04 p.m. local time. Medics and paramedics arrived and performed CPR on two men – ages 60 and 29 – alongside IDF medics.

    MDA paramedic Tomer Gusman said the victims were unconscious with gunshot wounds.

    Huwara, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, was the scene of the fatal shooting of two Israeli settler brothers in February, following that night by revenge attacks by settlers on the Palestinian town.

    The IDF has deployed extra troops in the town in the wake of the violence.

    Videos taken in Huwara showed an ambulance and army vehicles at the scene, with a road checkpoint closed off to vehicles and traffic at a standstill.

    Hamas, the Palestinian militant movement that runs Gaza and is increasingly popular in the West Bank, praised the attack without directly claiming responsibility for it.

    Spokesperson Abdel-Latif al-Qanou said the shooting was “the product of the promise to defend our people and respond to the crimes of the occupation,” a reference to Israel.

    In a statement released by his office on Saturday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said security forces were “working diligently to find the murderer.”

    “I send my condolences to the family of the two murdered – a father and son – whose lives were cut short in such a cruel and criminal way during Shabbat,” Netanyahu said.

    “The security forces are working diligently to find the murderer and come to terms with him, just as we have done with all the murderers so far.”

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  • Willie Garson’s character on ‘And Just Like That…’ received a heartfelt tribute inspired by real life | CNN

    Willie Garson’s character on ‘And Just Like That…’ received a heartfelt tribute inspired by real life | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    In the second to last episode of Season 2 of Max’s “Sex and the City” follow-up series “And Just Like That…” this week, the late actor Willie Garson’s beloved character Stanford Blatch received an extended and unexpected tribute, and its origins come from a bit of a surprising place.

    In the episode, titled “The Last Supper, Part I: Appetizer,” Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) invites Stanford’s estranged husband Anthony Marentino (Mario Cantone) over to share an update on her good friend.

    Garson, who died in 2021 after a bout with pancreatic cancer, played Carrie’s longtime confidant Blatch throughout the original series as well as three episodes in the first season of “AJLT,” but was too sick to continue and was written off the show with a device involving a sudden business move to Japan. (Max, like CNN, is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery.)

    In the scene in Thursday’s episode, Carrie tells Anthony while Stanford lost his job in Japan, he decided to stay and become a Shinto monk. She reads him a letter from Stanford stating how he is letting go of everything from his previous life, including his marriage to Anthony. The scene ends with Carrie and Anthony toasting Stanford with martinis, made all the most emotional due to Garson’s passing.

    On the companion podcast for the show “And Just Like That… The Writers Room” this week, executive producer, writer and director Michael Patrick King discussed the telling moment, and mentioned how the maligned 2010 feature film sequel “Sex and the City 2” factored in as inspiration.

    King, who also cowrote and directed the film, said on the podcast, “I went to Kyoto with Sarah Jessica after the second movie, which, spoiler alert, was not received well.”

    While he said he had “growth” since the experience, he added “the critics were not nice to that movie. And we were in Japan, and we opened it, and then we went to Kyoto, and I was in some sort of an emotional shock wave, and I was going from temple to temple with Sarah Jessica. I was sitting there trying to release these complicated feelings, and I felt kind of at peace.”

    “Sarah Jessica was just sitting there with me, and it was so beautiful,” King also said. “There wasn’t tears, but there wasn’t laughs. It was just feeling the space and these beautiful temples.”

    Earlier in the podcast, King acknowledged the way they wrote Stanford off the show in the first season was “a band-aid, a fast fix” because, while Garson was tragically ill, “we didn’t want Stanford to die.”

    “When I started thinking about where is Stanford, and what do we do, I somehow tapped into that feeling that Sarah Jessica and I had (in Japan), because I know Carrie and Stanford had a very deep bond, and I’m happy to say Sarah Jessica and I have a very deep personal bond. So I thought, what if he just stayed there in that beautiful blissful temple?”

    King also said he wanted to “put Stanford someplace where it was golden and filled with light, because I hope Willie’s someplace that’s golden and filled with light, and it was poetic and it’s very emotional.”

    Garson’s death was just one of several extenuating circumstances complicating the show’s first season. The others involved actor Chris Noth’s sexual assault allegations causing him to no longer be part of the show in a flashback scene later in the first season after his character Mr. Big’s shocking death in the series pilot, and the fact Kim Cattrall – one fourth of the quartet of women who made “Sex and the City” so special – was refusing to join the new show.

    The last point will be changing, however, as next week’s Season 2 finale of “AJLT” will see a much-hyped cameo from her fan-favorite character Samantha Jones.

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  • ECOWAS sets ‘D-Day’ for possible military intervention in Niger | CNN

    ECOWAS sets ‘D-Day’ for possible military intervention in Niger | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The West African regional bloc ECOWAS says it has chosen an undisclosed “D-Day” for a possible military intervention to restore Niger’s democratically elected president following last month’s coup.

    Abdel-Fatau Musah, the Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace & Security of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) bloc, said that military forces are “ready to go anytime the order is given” for military intervention in Niger.

    “The D-day is also decided, which we are not going to disclose,” Musah told journalists after the two-day meeting of West African defense chiefs in the Ghanaian capital of Accra.

    Last week, ECOWAS ordered the “activation” of a regional standby force to prepare itself to enter Niger, which was taken over by a military junta on July 26.

    On Friday, Musah reiterated that the bloc’s priority remains “the restoration of the constitutional order in the shortest possible time.”

    “We are not going to engage in endless dialogue. It must be fruitful,” the commissioner added.

    He also called once again for the release of the country’s “legitimate” leader, the ousted president Mohamed Bazoum, who has been held under house arrest with his wife and son since he was overthrown by the armed junta.

    Niger’s junta claimed it had gathered evidence to prosecute him for what it says amount to “high treason.”

    Niger, which lies at the heart of Africa’s Sahel, was one of the few remaining democracies in the region.

    Bazoum’s election win in 2021 marked a relatively peaceful transfer of power and capped years of military coups following Niger’s independence from France in 1960.

    Leaders ECOWAS responded to the coup by enacting sanctions and issuing an ultimatum to the ruling military junta: stand down within a week or face a potential military intervention.

    “That is why we say all options are on the table. If they [the junta] want to take the peaceful pathway to the restoration of constitutional order in the country, then we can stand down the military option because it is not our preferred option,” Musah said.

    The commissioner said the bloc had decided that the “coup in Niger is one coup too many,” for the region, adding that there will be no further meetings of ECOWAS defense chiefs on the issue.

    “We are putting a stop to it at this time,” Musah said in his concluding remarks.

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  • Thousands scramble to evacuate capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories as more than 200 ‘unprecedented’ wildfires blanket region | CNN

    Thousands scramble to evacuate capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories as more than 200 ‘unprecedented’ wildfires blanket region | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Thousands of residents are rushing to evacuate the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories as more than 200 fires burn, leaving many to face dangerous road conditions or stand in line for hours for desperately needed emergency flights. Evacuations were also under way in British Columbia.

    The Northwest Territories capital Yellowknife – home to about 20,000 – and several other Northwest Territories communities have been ordered to evacuate as crews battle 236 active wildfires, and a massive fire creeps toward the city and a major highway.

    The infernos in the Northwest Territories are among more than 1,000 fires burning across Canada as the country endures its worst fire season on record. Smoke from the fires has drifted into the US, bringing harmful pollution and worsening air quality.

    A little rain was possible but strong northwest and west-northwest winds could push the fire to the outskirts of Yellowknife by the weekend, according to a Facebook post from a government fire-monitoring account.

    At a Friday news briefing, Canadian leaders pledged no one would be left behind during the unprecedented evacuation from Yellowknife and getting residents out safely would continue through the weekend.

    “We’ll continue to focus on helping the most vulnerable and will be there for as long as it takes,” Defense Minister Bill Blair said.

    While most were encouraged to leave via the only road out of the community, as many as 5,000 residents had requested flights out of the city.

    Smoke continues to shroud Yellowknife, as it has for weeks, but an unpredictable wind and a raging fire, now about 10 miles from Yellowknife, forced officials to order a complete evacuation.

    However, federal officials said they were confident they could continue to protect the majority of the community from fire damage and are working on building fire breaks by clearing trees and applying fire retardant.

    In West Kelowna, officials confirmed several structures were lost in the fire, including many homes. However, officials said there were no reports of loss of life despite descriptions of harrowing rescues.

    The Canadian Armed Forces are assisting with firefighting and airlifting efforts in the Northwest Territories. The Royal Canadian Air Force has deployed several planes and helicopters to support regional emergency crews.

    The first CAF aircraft, a CC-130 J Hercules, conducted an evacuation flight Thursday and transported 79 passengers to Edmonton, the CAF said. Additional flights are scheduled for Friday.

    Incoming and outgoing commercial flights at airports in the Northwest Territories have been canceled because of the wildfires. Commercial flights in and out of Yellowknife Airport will stop after the last flight departs on Friday evening, according to an update on the government website.

    Evacuation flights will still be able to operate out of the airport as well as medical evacuations, firefighting and military-related flights, the government site said.

    More than 1,000 people were flown out of Yellowknife on emergency flights Thursday, and close to an additional 2,000 seats were available Friday, territory officials said in an online update. Many hoping to fly out Thursday stood for hours in a winding, slow-moving line only to be told they would need to try again on Friday, CNN partner CBC reports.

    People line up in Yellowknife to register for an evactuation flight on August 17.

    “We understand that this is deeply frustrating for those who have been in line for several hours and who will need to line up again tomorrow,” the territory update said. It added people who are immunocompromised, have mobility issues or have other high-risk conditions were moved up in the line.

    Officials are encouraging people to leave by car, if possible, and carpool to reduce traffic and assist those without vehicles.

    “Evacuation flights should be used as a last resort for those who do not have the option to evacuate by road,” territory officials said.

    But some driving out of the area have faced thick smoke and roadways flanked with flames. Yellowknife resident Ruoy Pineda told CNN he and his family struggled to navigate through the heavy haze after the evacuation order was announced Wednesday.

    “We were not actually fully prepared,” Pineda said. “On the road, we were all scared of what we saw ahead of us, but we keep reminding ourselves it is better to be out than stranded.”

    Pineda described the dangerous road conditions as he and others tried to flee the capital.

    “On the road you could see the fire and we were struggling because of the smoke,” he said. “The visibility on the road was very bad. We couldn’t even see if someone was ahead of us.”

    He and his family were still on the road Thursday morning and were headed to seek shelter in Edmonton, about 900 miles to the south.

    “We are very exhausted right now. We’ve barely slept and are very worried about our house in Yellowknife and if we’ll still have a home,” Pineda said.

    People line up outside a school to be evacuated in Yellowknife.

    Fires in Canada have burned more than six times more land this year when compared to the 10-year annual average, according to data from the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System.

    There have been more fires in Canada this year than compared to the 10-year average, with a 128% difference. Yet the fires appear to be spreading much wider than before, and so far this year, more than 13 million hectares have been burned – an area larger than Pennsylvania.

    The data, current as of August 9, show the 10-year average of area burned to date sits at just over 2 million hectares.

    British Columbia evacuates thousands

    Approximately 4,500 people are under evacuation orders in British Columbia due to threats from wildfires, Canadian officials said in a press conference Friday.

    “People who choose to ignore evacuation orders put themselves and emergency personnel at risk,” said Bowinn Ma, the province’s Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness.

    Another 23,500 people in British Columbia are under evacuation alerts, which means they must be prepared to evacuate immediately if an order is issued, Ma said.

    Some fires have reached over 400 feet tall and are moving “faster than we can effectively put firefighting resources on them,” said Cliff Chapman, director of provincial operations for BC Wildfire Service.

    “There is very little that response tactics can do with these winds and that type of fire behavior,” Chapman said.

    The McDougall Creek fire near West Kelowna has experienced “significant growth” in the past 12 hours and currently spans more than 6,000 hectares, he said.

    Kelowna International Airport closed to commercial flights to allow space for fire fighting activity to take place, according to a news release from the airport.

    British Columbia has more than 360 active fires – more than any other Canadian province, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. The forecast winds and lightning may cause fires to move and grow quickly, officials have warned. Chapman said that lightning has been the primary cause of new fires.

    Nearly 60 evacuation orders were in effect across the province Thursday, the British Columbia Wildfire Service said.

    Among the displaced are residents of at least 4,800 properties who were ordered to evacuate in the province’s West Kelowna area on Wednesday and Thursday as the McDougall Creek fire advanced, local emergency officials announced.

    A state of emergency has been declared in Kelowna, as crews are combating spot fires coming from across the Central Okanagan Lake, stemming from the McDougall Creek fire, according to a news release Friday.

    Video taken by resident Todd Ramsay shows a lake rimmed by large hills engulfed in a wall of fire.

    “Absolutely devastating,” Ramsay said of the devastation in a Facebook post. “The fire jumped the lake and was right behind our house.”

    Ramsay said he was eventually able to evacuate to safety.

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  • British nurse guilty of murdering seven babies, making her UK’s worst child serial killer in recent times | CNN

    British nurse guilty of murdering seven babies, making her UK’s worst child serial killer in recent times | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A British nurse has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others at the hospital where she worked, making her the country’s worst baby serial killer in recent times.

    Lucy Letby, 33, harmed babies in her care by injecting air into their blood and stomachs, overfeeding them with milk, physically assaulting them and poisoning them with insulin, Manchester Crown Court in northern England heard.

    Police found a trove of handwritten notes while searching Letby’s house during their investigation, including one that read: “I am evil I did this.”

    She secretly attacked 13 babies on the neonatal ward at the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2016, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said in a statement.

    Her intention was to kill the babies while duping her colleagues into believing there was a natural cause of death, prosecutors argued.

    Doctors at the hospital began to notice a steep rise in the number of babies who were dying or unexpectedly collapsing, the court heard.

    But concerns raised by consultants over the increased mortality rate of patients under Letby’s care were initially dismissed by the hospital’s management, the UK’s PA Media news agency reported.

    In September 2016, Letby filed a grievance against her employers after she was relocated from the hospital’s neonatal ward. She was put back on clerical duties after two male triplets died and a baby boy collapsed on three days in a row in June 2016.

    Later that year, she was notified of the allegations against her by the Royal College of Nursing union, but the complaint was later resolved in her favor. Doctors were asked to formally apologize to Letby in writing.

    She was scheduled to return to the neonatal department in March 2017, but her return did not take place. The hospital trust contacted the police, who opened an investigation.

    Nurse said ‘I killed them’ in handwritten notes

    In 2018 and 2019, Letby was arrested twice by police in connection with their investigation, PA said. She was arrested again in November 2020.

    Authorities found notes Letby had written during searches of her address.

    “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them,” she wrote in one memo, adding in another, “I am a horrible evil person” and in capital letters “I am evil I did this.”

    Pascale Jones of the CPS called Letby’s actions a “complete betrayal of the trust placed in her.”

    “Lucy Letby sought to deceive her colleagues and pass off the harm she caused as nothing more than a worsening of each baby’s existing vulnerability,” she said.

    “In her hands, innocuous substances like air, milk, fluids – or medication like insulin – would become lethal. She perverted her learning and weaponised her craft to inflict harm, grief and death.”

    Victims’ families said they “may never truly know why this happened.”

    “To lose a baby is a heartbreaking experience that no parent should ever have to go through,” a joint statement said.

    “But to lose a baby or to have a baby harmed in these particular circumstances is unimaginable,” the statement added.

    “Justice has been served and the nurse who should have been caring for our babies has been found guilty of harming them.

    “But this justice will not take away from the extreme hurt, anger and distress that we have all had to experience.

    “We are heartbroken, devastated, angry and feel numb.”

    Letby will be sentenced at Manchester Crown Court on August 21.

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  • Tesla cuts Model S and X prices by over 6% in China | CNN Business

    Tesla cuts Model S and X prices by over 6% in China | CNN Business

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    Beijing
    Reuters
     — 

    Tesla has cut prices for its existing inventories of its premium Model S and Model X cars in China by as much as 6.9%, it said on Wednesday.

    A post from the carmaker on social media platform Weibo showed the price of the Model S cut by 6.7% to 754,900 yuan ($103,477.58) from 808,900 yuan earlier.

    The Model X now starts from 836,900 yuan, down 6.9% from 898,900 yuan earlier.

    Tesla

    (TSLA)     on Monday said it cut prices in China for its Model Y’s long-range and performance versions starting on August 14, which triggered concerns around its profit margins.

    The moves come after sales of Tesla’s China-made vehicles fell 31% in July from June, their first month-on-month decline since December, as the automaker idled some production to prepare for a revamped Model 3 launch.

    By contrast, China’s BYD

    (BYDDF)    increased sales from June.

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