Ovidio ‘the Mouse’ Guzman was flown across the border from a prison in Mexico to face drug charges in the US.
Ovidio Guzman, 32, a son of jailed Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, has been extradited to the United States, where he is wanted on fentanyl trafficking charges, Mexican and US authorities said.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday that Ovidio Guzman – who is known by the alias “The Mouse” – had been extradited, calling it the latest step in US efforts to attack “every aspect” of the drug trafficking operations run by the Sinaloa Cartel long associated with the Guzman family.
“The fight against the cartels has involved incredible courage by United States law enforcement and Mexican law enforcement and military service members, many of whom have given their lives in the pursuit of justice,” he said.
“The Justice Department will continue to hold accountable those responsible for fuelling the opioid epidemic that has devastated too many communities across the country.”
Guzman, one of the heirs to his father’s trafficking empire, was briefly arrested in the northern city of Culiacan in 2019 but released on the orders of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to avoid bloodshed when his cartel struck back following his arrest.
The Mexican army used Black Hawk helicopter gunships against the cartel’s truck-mounted heavy machine guns. The cartel’s gunmen hit two military aircraft forcing them to make emergency landings and then sent gunmen to Culiacan city’s airport where military and civilian aircraft were also hit by gunfire.
The son was captured again in January after an intense firefight in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa.
Mexican media including news network Milenio reported that Guzman had been taken out of a maximum security prison in central Mexico to be flown across the US border.
In April, US prosecutors unsealed sprawling indictments against Guzman and his brothers, known collectively as the “Chapitos”.
They laid out in detail how following their father’s extradition and eventual life sentence in the US, the brothers steered the cartel increasingly into synthetic drugs like methamphetamine and the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. The indictment said their goal was to produce huge quantities of fentanyl and sell it at the lowest price.
The Chapitos are also known for their grotesque violence that appeared to surpass any notions of restraint shown by earlier generations of cartel leaders.
They have denied the allegations of drug trafficking.
In 2021, the US Department of State offered a $5m reward for information leading to Ovidio’s arrest or conviction.
His father, “El Chapo” Guzman, rose to prominence at the helm of the Sinaloa Cartel and was extradited to the US in 2017 after twice escaping from prison in Mexico.
The elder Guzman is now at a high-security “supermax” prison in the state of Colorado.
“This time, we beat Big Pharma”, United States President Joe Biden tweeted, after finally giving his government the power to negotiate the price of 10 prescription drugs, including medicines used to treat diabetes, blood cancer and kidney disease.
Through these negotiations, it’s expected that millions of Americans will save a small fortune, as the price of drugs provided through the government’s national insurance programme tumble. The pharmaceutical giants are furious. For decades they have been able to charge Americans with public insurance whatever the market will bear for their products. Big Pharma, as these giants are known by their detractors, has now launched multiple legal actions to protect its monopoly power.
By European standards, Biden’s actions are moderate. Most countries negotiate the price of drugs purchased by public health systems. While drug prices are still high across Europe, putting severe strain on overburdened health systems, they are a fraction of the price paid by Americans. What makes Biden’s action so significant is precisely that, up to now, Big Pharma has always had the upper hand in the US, using its power to extract whatever profits it likes from the American public. Despite the unpopularity of the industry, only a few brave politicians would stand up to it.
What’s changed? First, it’s difficult to overstate the impact of the so-called “opioid crisis” on American society. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from opioid overdoses. The real scandal is that the major contributor to this epidemic was a drug company called Purdue Pharma, which spent years pushing an opioid called OxyContin on patients. The drug is so strong and addictive that it shouldn’t be prescribed for any but the most serious, end-of-life, pain. But Purdue spent a fortune cajoling doctors into prescribing the drug for even moderate pain, pretending there was little chance of getting hooked. The levels of addiction and death that followed hollowed out whole towns, as can be seen in the recent dramatisation by Netflix, Painkiller.
So the opioid crisis has created mass hostility to the pharma industry. But there’s something deeper going on too, a realisation that these corporations, which we assume are inventing the life-saving medicines of the future, are actually seriously failing in that task.
A big wake-up moment was the COVID-19 pandemic. In the run-up to the pandemic, Big Pharma had little interest in researching pathogens that might cause a major epidemic, or indeed in researching vaccines full stop. They simply didn’t represent the sort of jackpot that, say, a new cancer drug could produce.
The research that had been done into coronaviruses was carried out with public money. Once the pandemic struck, that public funding was multiplied many times over: Big Pharma was handed billions of dollars to bring vaccines to us as fast as possible. But then, the intellectual property was privatised. Big Pharma owned vaccines created using public money, and got to decide who produced them, at what price, and who got to buy them. Corporate executives, employed to maximise their shareholder returns were in charge of who lived and who died.
The Biden administration was horrified when Moderna’s vaccine – almost entirely paid for by the public purse – was making Moderna’s CEO into a multibillionaire, while the US government seemingly had little power to get the vaccine know-how shared and produced more widely. Moderna seemed more interested in legal action to shore up its control of this technology – even going as far as refusing to recognise three government scientists as co-inventors on some of its patents.
Pfizer’s vaccine did involve some private funds but was still made with vast sums of public money. Imagine the horror of the US administration when Pfizer tried to charge the government an eye-popping $100 a dose – on a vaccine that seems to have cost somewhere between $0.95 and $4 to produce. One former official accused them of “war profiteering” while another complained, “It’s not even their vaccine.”
COVID-19 was not a one-off. Almost all medicines receive substantial public funding. Meanwhile, the folks we think create medicines – Big Pharma – actually invent very few new drugs. Rather, these corporations behave like hedge funds – buying up the monopoly rights to produce medicines which others have made. They then aggressively squeeze everything they can out of this intellectual property – even if it means the vast majority of humanity has no access to medicines.
Just look at the drug known as Humira, a treatment for diseases like Crohn’s and rheumatoid arthritis. The technology behind Humira was created at Cambridge University, and the drug itself was devised by a spin-off company. At some point in the 2000s, AbbVie effectively bought the company and the rights to Humira. They spent some money on the drug but, according to a US congressional committee, a large part of that money was “dedicated to extending the company’s market monopoly.” They then jacked up the price 470 percent from its launch price. In the US, Humira costs around $77,000 for a year’s supply. Even in Europe, the price means the drug, where available, is often rationed.
The distrust that this behaviour had bred is by no means restricted to Biden’s administration. Price-jacking on insulin in the US forces one in four US diabetics to ration their medication. To overcome the problem, California, Michigan and Maine have all started looking at public manufacturing, with California allocating $100m to make insulin through a public enterprise at close to cost price, available to all.
While Big Pharma is ripping off Americans, and breaking health systems across Europe, it’s also failing to provide the medicines people across the world most need. The search for goldmine drugs means research into diseases suffered by less wealthy people, in less wealthy countries, takes a back seat. So does research into potentially catastrophic epidemics or new-generation antibiotics. Even though antibiotic resistance is likely to lead to tens of millions of deaths a year in coming decades, it’s simply not profitable enough for corporations used to making eye-watering returns.
Biden’s recent action against Big Pharma is a sign that things may be beginning to change. But he’ll have to go much further if we’re to build a medicine model which realises the right to healthcare of everyone in the world. Across the world, governments need to back medical research and development, build public manufacturing infrastructure and ensure that the know-how produced is open knowledge, fostering sharing and cooperation. The medicines we need are too important to be treated as financial assets. It’s time for change.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
US Senator Chris Murphy calls for additional $235m to be withheld over Egypt’s ‘egregious human rights record’.
The United States plans to withhold $85m in military aid to Egypt owing to Cairo’s failure to uphold US conditions on freeing political prisoners and other human rights issues, a US senator said, with some of the withheld funds being redirected to Taiwan.
Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, also urged US President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday to withhold $235m more in military aid for what he described as Egypt’s “egregious human rights record”.
“The administration rightly decided to withhold that first tranche – $85m tied to the release of political prisoners – because there’s just no question there has not been enough progress,” Murphy said.
“I would urge the administration to finish the job and withhold the full $320m … until Egypt’s human rights and democracy record improves,” he said.
Of the $85m that is being withheld from Egypt, $55m will be redirected to Taiwan, and the remaining $30m to Lebanon, according to a US State Department letter to congressional committees laying out foreign military financing.
The Egyptian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Egypt has released more than 1,600 political prisoners since early 2022. That’s good news,” Murphy said.
“During that same time, they have jailed 5,000 more. So for every political prisoner that Egypt releases, three more are jailed. That’s one step forward, and three steps back,” he said.
“That’s not the kind of ‘clear and consistent progress’ in releasing political prisoners that the law requires. The administration was right to withhold the $85m.”
Human rights groups have long accused Egypt of widespread human rights abuses under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s government, including torture and enforced disappearances.
Egyptian authorities have taken some steps since late 2021 that they say aim to address rights, including launching a human rights strategy and ending a state of emergency, but critics have dismissed the measures as largely cosmetic.
Some high-profile detainees have been pardoned or released, but activists say new detentions have outnumbered releases and that thousands of political prisoners remain in jail, with restrictions on free speech as tight as ever.
The announced withholding of military aid is significant, said Seth Binder of the Project on Middle East Democracy rights group.
“But if the administration withholds less than it has the last two years it would in essence be saying to al-Sisi that it believes the Egyptian government has improved its rights record, which is just not true,” Binder said.
Under US law, $85m in military aid is contingent on Egypt “making clear and consistent progress in releasing political prisoners, providing detainees with due process of law, and preventing the intimidation and harassment of American citizens”.
These conditions cannot be waived by the executive branch.
A further $235m is conditioned on Egypt meeting democracy and human rights requirements. These conditions, however, can be waived if the executive branch certifies that it is in the US national security interest to do so.
Canadian prime minister’s participation at G20 summit in New Delhi highlights growing tensions between India and Canada.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has left India after aircraft trouble delayed his departure following a rocky two-day Group of 20 summit that highlighted growing tensions between Ottawa and New Delhi.
Canadian media outlets reported that Trudeau left the country on Tuesday – two days later than planned – after a mechanical fault detected with the aeroplane was resolved.
Air traffic tracker Flightradar24 showed Royal Canadian Air Force plane CFC01 taking off from Delhi airport shortly after 1pm local time (07:30 GMT).
Relations between India and Canada have been tense over a range of issues, including a decision by Ottawa earlier this month to pause talks on a proposed trade treaty with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
Modi, who held bilateral meetings with many world leaders during the G20 summit, did not hold one with Trudeau.
The pair spoke on the sidelines of the event, however, with the Indian government saying in a statement after the talks that Modi conveyed strong concerns about protests by Sikh community members in Canada.
Canada has the highest population of Sikhs outside their home state of Punjab in India, and the country has been the site of many protests that have irked Indian government leaders.
In June, India criticised Canada over a float that appeared in a parade depicting the 1984 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards, perceived to be a glorification of violence by Sikh separatists.
“They are promoting secessionism and inciting violence against Indian diplomats, damaging diplomatic premises and threatening the Indian community in Canada and their places of worship,” the Indian government said in this week’s statement.
Trudeau later told reporters that Canada would always defend “freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and freedom of peaceful protest” while acting against hatred.
“We are always there to prevent violence, to push back against hatred,” he said, adding that the actions of the few “do not represent the entire community or Canada”.
Rights advocates have accused the Modi government of targeting minorities, as well as overseeing an erosion of democracy and human rights in India – and many have called on world leaders to pressure New Delhi over its rights record.
1/7. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took an important step in the right direction at the latest #G20 meetings as he showed and voiced discomfort at India’s worsening human rights record, while also speaking to issues of foreign interference. pic.twitter.com/ykAV2L7WMy
The National Council of Canadian Muslims, an advocacy group, welcomed Trudeau’s approach during the G20 “as he showed and voiced discomfort at India’s worsening human rights record, while also speaking to issues of foreign interference”.
“Canada needs to live up to its commitment to international human rights and turn words into action. We cannot build strong trade agreements without strong human rights protections,” the group said on social media.
Meanwhile, a readout from Trudeau’s office on his talks with Modi said the prime minister “raised the importance of respecting the rule of law, democratic principles, and national sovereignty” on the margins of the G20.
The pair also discussed “inclusive economic growth, support for low-and middle-income countries, and access to concessional finance for sustainable development”, the statement said.
Biden administration says Vladimir Putin is ‘begging’ Kim Jong Un for weapons due to failures with his Ukraine invasion.
Washington, DC – As Russian President Vladimir Putin prepares to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the United States has threatened to “aggressively” enforce existing sanctions and add new ones if Pyongyang provides weapons to Moscow for its war in Ukraine.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday that the US will continue to “hold accountable” entities that help Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.
“I will remind both countries that any transfer of arms from North Korea to Russia would be in violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions,” Miller told reporters.
“We, of course, have aggressively enforced our sanctions against entities that fund Russia’s war effort, and we will continue to enforce those sanctions and will not hesitate to impose new sanctions if appropriate.”
He did not specify whether the US would impose penalties on North Korea, Russia or both, saying that the US is monitoring the situation and will “wait and see what the outcome of the meeting is before speculating”.
Both Russia and North Korea are already under heavy US sanctions. Moscow and Pyongyang have confirmed that Putin and Kim are set to meet in the coming days.
On Monday, the Russian president travelled to attend an economic forum in the far eastern Pacific port city of Vladivostok, where he met Kim in 2019.
Miller argued that, by turning to Kim — an “international pariah” — for help, Putin is showing that his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was a “strategic failure”.
“There’s no better evidence of that than now. A year and a half later, not only has he failed to achieve his goals on the battlefield, but you see him travelling across his own country, hat in hand, to beg Kim Jong Un for military assistance,” Miller said on Monday.
After failing to capture the Ukrainian capital in the early weeks of the invasion, Russia has limited its war goals to occupying eastern parts of the country. Ukraine launched a counteroffensive earlier this year but has only made modest gains against Russian forces.
“We continue to assess that the Ukrainians are making progress in their counteroffensive, and we have confidence in the ability of their forces,” Miller said.
The US, which provides billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, has been warning its competitors and adversaries — including China — against helping Russia in its military offensive.
In the past two weeks, Washington has repeatedly urged Pyongyang against selling arms to Moscow.
When asked on Monday why the US is concerned that the Kim-Putin meeting would be about a weapons deal, Miller responded that it is not a “social gathering”.
Russia and North Korea have signalled that their relations have grown closer in recent months. In July, for example, Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu visited North Korea — the first time a Russian defence chief had done so since 1991. While there, Shoigu met with Kim to discuss “strategic and tactical collaboration”.
Kim and Putin also exchanged letters last month vowing to bolster cooperation between their two countries.
Last year, the US also accused North Korea of covertly shipping artillery shells to Russia, an allegation that was denied by both Moscow and Pyongyang.
Separately, tensions have been intensifying between Pyongyang and Washington over North Korea’s nuclear programme and increased missile testing. North Korea has framed these missile launches as a defensive response to joint US military drills with South Korea and Japan near the Korean Peninsula.
The 19-year-old American wins the US Open women’s singles title with 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory over Belarus’s Sabalenka.
United States teenager Coco Gauff has beaten Belarusian second seed Aryna Sabalenka 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 in the US Open women’s final to claim her first Grand Slam title.
With the win on Saturday, sixth seed Gauff became the first American to win a US Open singles title since Sloane Stephens in 2017.
Gauff, 19, fed off an adoring home crowd as she mounted a terrific second set fight back and kept the momentum up through until the end of the battle before she fell to the court on Arthur Ashe Stadium after clinching the title with a backhand winner.
Sabalenka had a superb start but could not keep the momentum going as unforced errors piled up and she closed her 2023 Grand Slam run, which included an Australian Open title and semifinals at Roland Garros as well as Wimbledon, on a disappointing note.
Gauff, who is from Florida, is the first American teenager to win the country’s major tennis tournament since Serena Williams in 1999.
This is the sort of triumph that had – fairly or not – been expected of Gauff ever since she burst onto the scene at 15 by becoming the youngest qualifier in Wimbledon history and making it to the fourth round in her Grand Slam debut in 2019.
She reached her initial major final at last year’s French Open, finishing as the runner-up, and now has earned the biggest trophy of her still-nascent career. Gauff earned a 12th consecutive victory and 18th in her past 19 matches dating to a first-round exit at the All England Club in July.
The number six-seeded Gauff did it on Saturday by withstanding the power displayed by Sabalenka on nearly every swing of her racket, eventually getting accustomed to it and managing to get back shot after shot. Gauff broke to begin the third set on just one such point, tracking down every ball hit her way until eventually smacking a put-away volley that she punctuated with a fist pump and a scream of, “Come on!”
Soon it was 4-0 in that set for Gauff. At 4-1, Sabalenka took a medical timeout while her left leg was massaged. Gauff stayed sharp during the break – it lasted a handful of minutes, not the 50 as during a climate protest in the semifinals – by practising some serves.
When the game resumed, Sabalenka broke to get within 4-2. But Gauff broke right back and soon was serving out the victory, then dropping onto her back on the court. She soon climbed into the stands to find her parents and others for hugs.
“You did it!” Gauff’s mom told her, with both of them in tears.
Gauff embraces Sabalenka after the final [Mike Segar/Reuters]
Rescuers from across Europe have launched an operation to save an American researcher in Turkey, who became trapped almost 1,000 metres (3,280 feet) below a cave’s entrance after suffering stomach bleeding.
Experienced caver Mark Dickey, 40, suddenly became ill during an expedition with a handful of others, including three other Americans, in the Morca cave in southern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains, the European Association of Cave Rescuers said.
In a video message from inside the cave and made available by Turkey’s communications directorate on Thursday, Dickey thanked the caving community and the Turkish government for their efforts.
“The caving world is a really tightknit group and it’s amazing to see how many people have responded on the surface,” said Dickey. “I do know that the quick response of the Turkish government to get the medical supplies that I need, in my opinion, saved my life. I was very close to the edge.”
Dickey, who is seen standing and moving around in the video, said that while he is alert and talking, he is not “healed on the inside” and will need a lot of help to get out of the cave. Experts said the rescue operation could take days or even weeks depending on conditions.
Dickey, who had been bleeding and losing fluid from his stomach, has stopped vomiting and has eaten for the first time in days, according to a New Jersey-based cave rescue group he is affiliated with. It is unclear what caused his medical issue.
The New Jersey Initial Response Team said the rescue will require many teams and constant medical care. The group says the cave is also quite cold – about 4-6 degrees Celsius (39-42 degrees Fahrenheit).
Communication with Dickey takes about five to seven hours and is carried out by runners, who go from Dickey to the camp below the surface where a telephone line to speak with the surface has been set up.
Dinko Novosel, a Croatian cave rescuer who is head of the European Association of Cave Rescuers, said it will be a challenge to successfully rescue Dickey.
The operation to bring him up from the depths involves rescue teams from Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Turkey.
Yusuf Ogrenecek, of the Speleological Federation of Turkey, said that Dickey’s condition had stabilised and was improving. He said the American was in “good spirits” and doctors would decide if Dickey could leave the cave on a stretcher or under his own power.
Turkish disaster relief agency AFAD and rescue team UMKE are working with Turkish and international cavers on a plan to hoist Dickey out of the cave system, the rescue association said.
The rescue effort currently involves more than 170 people, including doctors and paramedics who are tending to Dickey, as well as experienced cavers, Ogrenecek said, adding that the rescue operation could take up to two or three weeks.
A team of rescuers from Italy’s National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Team will be flying to Turkey on Thursday night. A total of around 50 rescuers will be at the entrance of the cave early on Friday ready to participate in the operation directed by Turkish authorities.
Marton Kovacs of the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service said that the cave is being prepared for his safe extraction. Narrow passages are being widened to accommodate a stretcher, and the danger of falling rocks is also being addressed.
The rescue teams hope that the extraction can begin on Saturday or Sunday. Kovacs said that lifting Dickey will likely take several days and that several bivouac points are being prepared along the way so that Dickey and rescue teams can rest.
The cave has been divided into several sections, with each country’s rescue team being responsible for one section.
The Hungarian Cave Rescue Service, made up of volunteer rescuers, was the first to arrive at Dickey’s location and provided emergency blood transfusions to stabilise his condition.
American caver Mark Dickey, left, 40, talks to a colleague inside the Morca cave near Anamur, southern Turkey [Turkish Government Directorate of Communications via AP]
‘Highly trained caver and rescuer’
Dickey was described by the European Cave Rescue Association as “a highly trained caver and a cave rescuer himself” who is well known as a cave researcher, or speleologist, from his participation in many international expeditions. He is secretary of the association’s medical committee.
Dickey was on an expedition mapping the 1,276-metre (4,186-feet) deep Morca cave system for the Anatolian Speleology Group Association (ASPEG) when he ran into trouble about 1,000 metres (3,280 feet) down, according to Ogrenecek.
Justin Hanley, a 28-year-old firefighter from near Dallas, Texas, said he met Dickey a few months ago when he took a cave rescue course Dickey taught in Hungary and Croatia. He described Dickey as upbeat and as someone who sees the good in everyone.
“Mark is the guy that should be on that rescue mission that’s leading and consulting and for him to be the one that needs to be rescued is kind of a tragedy in and of itself,” he said.
Hanley said he had talked to Dickey about a month ago about the mission in Turkey and that the aim of the expedition was to survey, collect information and set up camps in the cave.
A United States federal judge has ordered Texas to remove a controversial floating border barrier from the Rio Grande after the massive buoys and underwater nets came under fire for endangering migrants and asylum seekers as they crossed the river from Mexico.
In a ruling on Wednesday, US District Judge David Ezra said that the barriers could violate treaty agreements between the US and Mexico. He also cast doubt on their effectiveness.
“The State of Texas did not present any credible evidence that the buoy barrier as installed has significantly curtailed illegal immigration across the Rio Grande River,” Ezra wrote. He ordered the barrier to be moved to an embankment on the Texas side of the river by September 15.
Within hours of the decision, Texas had already filed an appeal, with Governor Greg Abbott calling the judge’s ruling an attack on the state’s “sovereign authority”.
“Texas is prepared to take this fight all the way up to the Supreme Court,” Abbott, a Republican, said in a statement on Wednesday shared via social media.
The four-foot-wide orange buoys became the subject of debate after being installed by Abbott’s administration in July as part of a larger migration deterrence effort known as Operation Lone Star.
Critics, however, denounced the barrier as a dangerous political stunt. By the end of July, the Department of Justice — under Democratic President Joe Biden — had sued the state for refusing to remove the barrier, saying the buoys violated federal law.
BREAKING: a federal judge has ordered Gov Abbott to remove his border buoy death trap from the Rio Grande.
They should also remove the miles of deadly razor-wire strung along the river, which continues to pose a life-threatening risk to people & wildlife.pic.twitter.com/EKgC7ReMwQ
In the suit, the Justice Department alleged that Texas had installed the barrier on an international boundary without properly consulting federal authorities.
Abbott, meanwhile, has dismissed the lawsuit as a political attack and blamed Biden for failing to crack down on unauthorised border crossings.
“Today’s court decision merely prolongs President Biden’s willful refusal to acknowledge that Texas is rightfully stepping up to do the job that he should have been doing all along,” Abbott said in a press release.
But Abbott’s administration has come under increasing scrutiny for its tactics along the US-Mexico border.
A letter released in July, reportedly authored by a Texas state trooper, expressed concerns with policies and decisions being implemented to repel migrants and asylum seekers.
The trooper explained he believed in the mission of Operation Lone Star, but that he had grave concerns with directions he had been given to “push” struggling migrants back into the Rio Grande and deny them water to drink.
“I believe we have stepped over a line,” his letter reads.
In August, two bodies were found in the Rio Grande near the border barrier, one of which was tangled in the buoys. Texas authorities said it appeared the two people had drowned in the river, known for its deadly currents.
Questions also arose over whether the barrier violated Mexican sovereignty.
In an August statement, Mexico’s foreign ministry expressed concern “about the impact on migrants’ human rights and personal security that these state policies could have, as they go in the opposite direction to close collaboration”.
While the Biden administration has criticised the barriers on humanitarian grounds, migrant rights groups have slammed the president for enacting policies that they say severely restrict the right to seek asylum.
The administration is currently facing an ongoing legal challenge to a policy that requires asylum seekers to first apply in the countries they pass through before arriving in the US, similar to the “safe third country” rule enacted under former President Donald Trump.
Critics have called the policy an “asylum ban” and a violation of international law.
For decades, critics have likewise denounced policies that drive migrants and asylum seekers to dangerous border crossings by blocking safer areas.
This tactic, known as “prevention through deterrence”, has its roots in the 1990s, but many immigration rights advocates believe it has pushed migrants and asylum seekers to take on greater risks in the absence of accessible legal pathways into the country.
US president takes repeated shots at his predecessor’s economic record as 2024 election campaign begins to heat up.
US President Joe Biden has hit out at the economic policies of his predecessor and likely 2024 election challenger Donald Trump, noting that the United States lost jobs under the former Republican president’s tenure.
In a speech in Philadelphia to mark the US Labor Day holiday on Monday, Biden repeatedly took shots at Trump’s record in the White House.
“It wasn’t that long ago we were losing jobs in this country,” said Biden, who is expected to make his administration’s employment and economic policies a central plank of his 2024 re-election campaign.
“In fact, the guy who held this job before me was just one of two presidents in history who left office with fewer jobs in America than when he got elected.”
When Trump left the White House in early 2021, the US and global economies were battered by the outbreak of COVID-19, which led to the loss of millions of jobs. But the Trump administration says it oversaw historically low unemployment prior to the pandemic.
Still, Biden on Monday argued that the American economy has been transformed under his watch, with his Democratic administration putting a focus on empowering workers and strengthening the US middle class.
“When the last guy was here, he looked at the world from Park Avenue,” Biden said, referring to a wealthy street in New York City. “I look at it from Scranton, Pennsylvania. I look at it from Claymont, Delaware.”
Biden’s comments underscore his ongoing rivalry with Trump, who maintains a sizeable lead in the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination race and is widely expected to take on Biden in what would be a rematch of 2020.
Trump is seeking re-election despite facing four separate criminal indictments, including two cases in which he is accused of seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 vote that he lost to Biden.
The former Republican president has denied any wrongdoing in all the cases against him and accused US prosecutors of trying to derail his 2024 campaign.
On Monday, Biden talked up his own success in passing a $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill – again drawing a contrast with Trump.
“The great real estate builder – the last guy – he didn’t build a damn thing,” the US president said of Trump, a real estate mogul.
Trump had announced “Infrastructure Week” in 2017 to promote a plan to fix highways and bridges, but the push was derailed by political turmoil in Washington at that time. “Infrastructure Week” subsequently became a joke about the chaos that engulfed the Trump administration.
Biden on Monday also criticised the right-wing theory of “trickle-down economics”, which contends that deregulation and tax cuts for the rich produce economic growth that eventually benefits working people.
“Not a whole lot of ‘trickle down’ ended up on my dad’s kitchen table, and he busted his neck,” Biden said.
Overall, Biden voiced optimism about the future of the US economy, stressing that efforts to rein in inflation are working.
But public perception of the economy could prove to be a major hurdle for the 80-year-old president’s re-election bid.
Trump often bemoans soaring US inflation, saying the country is “going to hell” under Biden.
In a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month, 60 percent of Americans – including one in three Democratic Party voters – said they disapproved of Biden’s handling of inflation.
Public opinion polls also show that voters are concerned about Biden’s age.
But on Monday, the US president seemed to dismiss the issue. “The only thing that comes with age is a bit of wisdom. I’ve been doing this longer than anybody, and I guess what, I’m going to continue to do it with your help,” Biden said.
Joe Biden, the president of the United States, has surveyed the destruction caused by Hurricane Idalia in the state of Florida but did not meet with Governor Ron DeSantis, a potential presidential rival, who opted not to come.
Biden offered support and condolences to those affected by Idalia on Saturday after taking an aerial tour and receiving a briefing from local officials as well as first responders in Live Oak, a town hit hard by the storm.
He saw houses with fallen trees on them and said that no one “intelligent” could doubt that climate change was happening.
“I’m here today to deliver a clear message to the people of Florida and throughout the southeast,” Biden said as he spoke outdoors, near a church that had parts of its sheet metal roof peeled back by Idalia’s powerful winds and a home half crushed by a fallen tree.
“As I’ve told your governor, if there’s anything your state needs, I’m ready to mobilise that support,” he continued. “Anything they need related to these storms. Your nation has your back and we’ll be with you until the job is done.”
But politics hung over Biden’s trip.
The president, a Democrat who has spoken to DeSantis multiple times this week, said on Friday that he and the Republican governor would meet in person. But DeSantis’s spokesperson said on the same day that the governor had no plans to meet Biden, adding that “the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts”.
The governor’s decision caught the White House off guard.
Asked if he was disappointed that DeSantis did not come, Biden said, “No, I’m not disappointed.”
“He may have had other reasons. … But he did help us plan this,” Biden told reporters. “He sat with FEMA and decided where we should go where would be the least disruption,” he added, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Biden said he was pleased that Senator Rick Scott, a Republican former governor of Florida, had come despite their disagreements on many issues.
DeSantis, 44, spent the day about 80km (50 miles) south, touring small communities along Florida’s Gulf Coast, according to his official schedule.
DeSantis is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination to remove Biden from the White House but trails former President Donald Trump in opinion polls.
Biden and DeSantis have spoken regularly this week about the hurricane, which pummelled Florida’s Big Bend region with Category 3 winds of nearly 200km/h (125 mph). On Wednesday, the president said politics had not crept into their conversations.
It could have been politically perilous for DeSantis to be photographed with Biden overlooking storm damage now, as the nominating race intensifies. Though he trails far behind Trump, DeSantis leads the other Republican candidates in the race.
When Biden visited Florida after Hurricane Ian last year, a photo of DeSantis standing awkwardly to the side as the president talked animatedly with a local couple went viral, highlighting the difference between the two politicians’ styles of public interaction.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is also running for the 2024 Republican nomination, drew criticism for his praise of then-President Barack Obama in 2012 when the Democrat visited his state following superstorm Sandy.
During his visit to Live Oak, Biden received praise from Republican Senator Scott for declaring an official disaster early on.
The president, for his part, complemented Scott and DeSantis.
“The governor was on top of it,” Biden said.
FEMA said Biden and DeSantis’s failure to meet will not have any effect on recovery efforts.
Deanne Criswell, who heads FEMA, told reporters that search and rescue operations had wrapped up and officials were now focused on restoring power to affected regions. Less than 1 percent of Floridians were without power as of Saturday, she said, though that figure was significantly higher in some areas directly affected by the hurricane.
The post-Idalia political consequences are high for both Biden and DeSantis.
As Biden seeks re-election, the White House has asked for an additional $4bn to address natural disasters as part of a supplemental funding request to Congress. That would bring the total to $16bn and highlight that intensifying extreme weather is imposing ever higher costs on US taxpayers.
DeSantis, a sharp critic of Biden, has built his White House bid around dismantling what he calls Democrats’ “woke” policies. The governor also frequently draws applause at Republican rallies by declaring that it is time to send “Joe Biden back to his basement”, a reference to the Democrat’s Delaware home, where he spent much of his time during the early lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But four months before the first ballots are to be cast in Iowa’s caucuses, DeSantis still lags far behind Trump, the Republican primary’s dominant early frontrunner. And he has cycled through repeated campaign leadership shakeups and reboots of his image in an attempt to refocus his message.
A major political group supporting DeSantis’s candidacy also has halted its door-knocking operations in Nevada, which votes third on the Republican presidential primary calendar, and several states holding Super Tuesday primaries in March – a further sign of trouble.
Yuri Borisov, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said Sarmat missiles have “assumed combat duty”, according to Russian news agency reports on Friday.
“The Sarmat strategic system has assumed combat alert posture,” the state-run TASS news agency quoted the Roscosmos chief as saying.
“Based on experts’ estimates, the RS-28 Sarmat is capable of delivering a MIRVed warhead weighing up to 10 tonnes to any location worldwide, both over the North and South Poles,” TASS said in its report.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Friday that he was not in a position to confirm reports that Russia had put the Sarmat on combat readiness.
In 2022, some two months after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Putin said the Sarmat would “reliably ensure the security of Russia from external threats and make those, who in the heat of aggressive rhetoric try to threaten our country, think twice”.
The Sarmat is an underground silo-based missile that Russian officials say can carry up to 15 nuclear warheads, though the United States military estimates its capacity to be 10 warheads.
Known to NATO military allies by the codename “Satan”, the missile reportedly has a short initial launch phase, which gives little time for surveillance systems to track its takeoff.
Weighing more than 200 tonnes, the Sarmat has a range of some 18,000km (11,000 miles) and was developed to replace Russia’s older generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICMBs) that dated from the 1980s.
Russia test-fired the Sarmat missile in April 2022 in the Plesetsk region of the country, located some 800km (almost 500 miles) north of Moscow, and the launched missiles hit targets on the Kamchatka peninsula, in Russia’s far east region.
Taipei, Taiwan – GoFundMe froze a fundraising campaign for the far-left news outlet The Grayzone due to “external concerns”, in the latest case to highlight the contentious role of tech companies in regulating controversial speech.
The Grayzone says it was unable to access more than $90,000 donated by 1,100 contributors to support the work of three reporters.
Max Blumenthal, the founder and editor of The Grayzone, said the California-based crowdfunding company informed him in mid-August that he would not be allowed to transfer the donations pending a review of the campaign related to unspecified “external concerns”.
The donations were later refunded to the donors after The Grayzone moved the fundraising campaign to a rival platform.
Blumenthal said he believes the review was undertaken for “political reasons” related to its coverage of the war in Ukraine.
“They only told me due to some external concerns, and I assume that someone would have to be fairly powerful to get GoFundMe to overlook the profit motive that usually governs companies like this to cancel a fundraiser that is extremely successful,” Blumenthal told Al Jazeera on Friday.
Blumenthal added that The Grayzone’s managing editor Wyatt Reed has had similar problems with payment platforms Paypal and Venmo following his reporting on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
GoFundMe said that every fundraiser on its platform is subject to review and that The Grayzone could continue to solicit donations.
“Throughout this evaluation, the fundraiser continued to be live and open to donations on the site,” GoFundMe’s Director of Public Affairs Jalen Drummond told Al Jazeera.
Drummond did not elaborate on the concerns related to The Grayzone, but confirmed that the platform’s terms of service do not allow users to “promote inaccurate or misleading information”.
The Grayzone is known for its critical coverage of US foreign policy and anti-war views, but has been accused of spreading misinformation and Chinese and Russian government propaganda, including debunked claims about the conflict in Ukraine and whitewashed accounts of Beijing’s repression of ethnic minority Muslims in far-western Xinjiang.
The Grayzone has been accused of whitewashing China’s repression in Xinjiang [File: Thomas Peter/Reuters]
The move by GoFundMe is the latest case to underline thorny questions about the role of Big Tech in adjudicating truth online.
Over the past decade, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LINE and PayPal have been embroiled in an increasingly polarised debate about the line between protecting free speech and combatting misinformation.
The COVID-19 pandemic, the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, among other events, have underscored the potential real-world harms of online misinformation.
GoFundMe’s treatment of controversial views has come under scrutiny before, including a decision last year to freeze millions of dollars in funds collected on behalf of the “Freedom Convoy” truckers in Canada.
GoFundMe President Juan Benitez later told the Canadian Parliament that the campaign was initially approved but the company reversed course after the movement became increasingly violent and confrontational.
Last year, the platform also suspended fundraising efforts by a Canadian First Nations group engaged in blockading a rail line through British Columbia.
Free speech advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have raised concerns about tech companies suppressing unpopular speech given their “utility-like” status and role as “gatekeeper to the modern-day public square”.
The ACLU has also criticised payment platforms for denying access to sex workers, likening such moves to “financial censorship”.
The International Federation of Journalists and Reporters Without Borders did not respond to requests for comment. The Committee to Protect Journalists did not provide a comment in time for publication.
Some tech companies have recently backed off from their role of moderating online speech amid calls for greater tolerance of controversial and fringe views.
Ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, Facebook owner Meta and Youtube have walked back policies aimed at combatting misinformation about COVID-19 and the 2020 election result.
Those moves have prompted alarm among some disinformation analysts and lawmakers, with Democratic Senator Mark Warner warning that allowing election information to proliferate “undermines trust and has dangerous consequences.”
Last year, PayPal came under fire for appearing to add misinformation to its list of prohibited activities subject to a $2,500 fine before clarifying that the update was an “error” and would not go ahead.
X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter, has significantly scaled back its moderation of misinformation and hate speech under owner Elon Musk, whose management of the platform has polarised critics.
Blumenthal said that The Grayzone has since moved its fund-raising campaign to rival crowdfunding platform Spotfund, where it has raised $110,000 towards a $150,000 goal.
“The way that misinformation is defined and applied by social media sites from Wikipedia to the old regime of Twitter and Facebook is determined by state-sponsored entities and those state-sponsored entities want to suppress the flow of any information or reporting that contravenes their objective,” Blumenthal said.
“In this case, the objective is to maintain public support for massive amounts of US military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine,” he added. “So anything we do could be called misinformation but no one ever defines what it is.”
Less than 24 hours after the United States urged its citizens to leave Haiti “as soon as possible” due to increased violence, authorities deported dozens of Haitian nationals back to the country, an immigration rights advocate has confirmed.
Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance advocacy group, told Al Jazeera she has been in contact with some of the families of the Haitians who were on Thursday’s removal flight from Alexandria, Louisiana, to Port-au-Prince.
US media outlets, including The Hill and the Miami Herald, also reported on the deportation flight, which Jozef said carried more than 60 people. Several flight-tracking websites showed that a plane was set to arrive in the Haitian capital from Alexandria shortly before noon local time.
Resuming deportations to Haiti is “inhumane”, Jozef said, explaining that asylum seekers and migrants are being sent back to the same conditions they fled in the first place, if not worse.
She compared the crisis in Haiti to a raging fire. “You have a burning house, and you have people, including children, in that burning house,” she said. “Instead of sending the firefighters to save the people, you’re dropping people into the fire.”
One of the poorest countries in the world, Haiti has been facing rampant gang violence. It has also suffered from periodic natural disasters and a longstanding political deadlock made worse by the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021.
On Wednesday, the US embassy in Haiti called on American citizens to leave the country, citing “the current security situation and infrastructure challenges”.
The announcement went a step further than previous warnings against travelling to Haiti. In July, Washington also ordered the departure of non-emergency government employees from Haiti.
“Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and poor healthcare infrastructure,” a US state department travel advisory for Haiti reads.
Last year, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported 1,532 Haitian citizens, compared with 353 in fiscal year 2021.
But the latest removal flight has left Haitians in the US in disbelief, Jozef said, particularly after the state department’s recent warnings about security conditions in the country.
“Everybody’s afraid because they don’t know what will happen. They cannot believe this is happening, that there could be deportation to Haiti right now,” she said.
ICE and the state department did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment by the time of publication.
Asked about US immigration policy more generally during a news briefing on Thursday, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden is seeking to rebuild a “broken” system, highlighting policies designed to stem arrivals across the US-Mexico border.
“The president has done more to secure the border to deal with this issue of immigration than anybody else,” Jean-Pierre said.
But Jozef said that while Biden has pushed for certain reforms, he kept many policies from his predecessor, former Republican President Donald Trump, including deportations.
Rights advocates have long warned against deporting people back to Haiti.
In April, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) called on countries in the Americas to “suspend the forced return of Haitians to their country, taking into account the current situation in Haiti”.
In 2021, Daniel Foote resigned as the US special envoy for Haiti in response to the mass deportations under the Biden administration. Later that year, he told US lawmakers that sending people back to Haiti worsens the situation on the ground.
“Haiti is too dangerous,” Foote said at that time. “Our own diplomats cannot leave our compound in Port-au-Prince without armed guards.”
On Thursday, Jozef also told Al Jazeera that deporting people under the chaotic conditions further destabilises Haiti. “The situation is extremely bad,” she said.
Disclosure of three trips last year comes as top US court faces heightened scrutiny over connections to wealthy donors.
United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has acknowledged that he took three trips last year on board a private plane owned by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.
It is the first time in years that Thomas has reported receiving hospitality from Crow.
In a report made public on Thursday, the 75-year-old justice said he was complying with new guidelines from the federal judiciary for reporting travel.
The filing came amid a heightened focus on ethics at the high court that stems from a series of reports revealing that Thomas has for years received undisclosed expensive gifts, including international travel, from Crow, a wealthy businessman and benefactor of conservative causes.
Crow also bought the house in Georgia where Thomas’s mother continues to live and paid for two years of private school tuition for a child raised by Thomas and his wife, Ginni.
The Associated Press news agency also reported in July that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, aided by her staff, has advanced sales of her books through college visits over the past decade.
One trip Thomas reported was to Crow’s lodge in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, where the investigative news site ProPublica has reported that Thomas visits every year.
The other two trips were to Dallas, where he spoke at conferences sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
Thomas noted that court officials recommended that he avoid commercial travel for one of the trips, in mid-May, because of concerns about the justices’ security following the leak of the court’s draft abortion opinion that overturned Roe v Wade.
The justice also belatedly acknowledged that Crow had bought the home in Savannah, Georgia, where Thomas’ mother still lives. Thomas and other family members owned the house, along with two neighbouring properties.
The sale was completed in 2014, but Thomas said he erroneously thought he did not have to report it because “this sale resulted in a capital loss”.
In reporting that he and his wife have assets worth $1.2m to $2.7m, Thomas also corrected several other mistakes from earlier reports.
These include the omission of accounts at a credit union that last year were worth $100,000 to $250,000 and a life insurance policy in his wife’s name that was valued at less than $100,000.
Thomas is considering whether to amend prior reports to include more private plane travel, he noted.
The annual financial reports for Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito were released on Thursday, nearly three months after those of the other seven justices. Thomas and Alito were granted 90-day extensions.
Alito reported assets worth $2.8m to $7.4m. While most of his holdings are in mutual funds, Alito retains shares of stocks in energy and other companies that sometimes force his withdrawal from Supreme Court cases.
In our pursuit of transforming the future of education, we must confront the stark reality of global youth unrest. Recent events in countries like France have highlighted the deep divisions and fragmentation faced by young adults. The unfortunately frequent instances of youth responding to violence with violence, mirror their profound frustration and yearning for change.
This surge of unrest is not exclusive to France – it is a global trend. The tragic deaths of individuals like Nahel in France, George Floyd in the United States and Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, to name just a few instances, have ignited worldwide reactions, sparking movements that demand justice and equality from those who feel unheard and unseen.
In the face of these issues, higher education institutions – colleges and universities – have a unique and critical role to play. These places are not mere centres of learning but potent catalysts for transformation. Education today must provide young adults with the necessary knowledge, skills, and critical thinking abilities to engage in constructive dialogue and tackle complex problems.
To effectively drive positive change, higher education must foster inclusive environments that value diversity and create spaces where all voices are heard and respected. Too many young adults feel overlooked and anxious about the future.
These tragic events in different parts of the world have laid bare the systemic issues that afflict our societies. They have kindled a fire in the hearts of young people, inspiring them to seek solutions and demand change.
This is a generation that refuses to be silenced; a generation ready to challenge the status quo and fight for a brighter future. Leaders in all sectors must support them in finding their voice and the opportunities to fulfil their purpose responsibly.
As we process the news and share in the collective anger and pain, we know that violent responses are merely expressions of the frustration and anger felt by those who feel they have no other way to voice their grievances.
Yet any transformation will not stem from conference room conversations and auditorium speeches. It will need a recognition of the overlooked potential of education and employment, especially among the growing young population. It will come when we challenge the quiet acceptance of chronic obstacles in education and embrace greater diversity and inclusion among higher education leadership.
Higher education institutions must up their game and focus on practical solutions if they are to serve as the foundation for the leaders of today and tomorrow to engage in resilient, inclusive and forward-thinking innovations that cultivate peace, security, and sustainable development.
When these institutions foster an environment that not only educates but also empowers students to address societal issues, they cultivate leaders who make themselves and their communities resistant to recruitment tactics for radicalisation and violence.
Higher education has always aimed to equip students with the tools to dissect and understand complex problems, foster critical thinking and facilitate open dialogue. The world’s leading institutions empower students to become active contributors in their communities, promoting civic engagement and human rights.
This is most effective when there is a genuine, deep connection between the theoretical aspects of higher education and the realities of the non-academic setting – the world of work and growth opportunities surrounding these eager young minds.
The World Bank has highlighted youth unemployment in Arab states and its potential radicalisation implications. Universities and colleges can counteract this by prioritising practical skills aligned with job market demands, moving beyond purely academic teachings.
Discussions like those at the United Nations Transforming Education Summit in September 2022 are important but need to result in concrete actions.
One such action is the work of the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation, partnering with 24 universities as part of their outreach to provide 200,000 Arab youth with accessible professional learning for high-demand jobs.
As part of this effort, the foundation leverages participatory design methods to promote wider offerings of professional graduate diplomas that have employment outcomes for these youth. One such approach is in artificial intelligence and data science from the American University of Beirut, which includes regionally relevant applications and the integration of ethics as a core component, with connections to real market opportunities.
We must fervently engage with our youth, especially those who may feel sidelined or despondent, ensuring they feel embraced and empowered. Diversity is the key to understanding and connecting with the lived reality of those who were not born with privilege.
To truly transform higher education, we need practical leadership in higher education that empathises with the passion of youth who are grappling with extreme climates, high unemployment and profound disenchantment.
By nurturing inclusive environments that equip them with the tools and market practice to navigate real-world challenges, we can empower the youth to become positive agents of change and progress.
If we want to see real change, we must be willing to challenge existing norms within these institutions and break down some longstanding barriers to higher education.
If we don’t, we risk seeing further outbursts of anger and violence from a disappointed segment of society, ultimately causing harm to both themselves and the world around them.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
A federal judge in the United States has held former Mayor Rudy Giuliani liable in a defamation lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers who say they were falsely accused of fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
US District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the former New York city mayor gave “only lip service” to complying with his legal obligations, while trying to portray himself as the victim in the case.
Giuliani, Howell said, had ignored his duty as a defendant to turn over information requested by election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea’ ArShaye Moss, as part of their lawsuit.
The decision moves the case toward a trial in Washington that could result in Giuliani being ordered to pay significant damages, in addition to the tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees he is already being directed to pay.
Freeman and Moss filed their complaint in December 2021, accusing Giuliani of defaming them by falsely stating that they had engaged in fraud while counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia.
Georgia election workers Wandrea Moss (left) and Ruby Freeman attend a committee hearing in Congress on June 21, 2022, to testify about their experiences during the 2020 presidential election [File: Michael Reynolds/Reuters pool]
In a statement on Wednesday, the women said they had endured a “living nightmare” and an unimaginable “wave of hatred and threats” because of Giuliani’s comments.
“Nothing can restore all we lost, but today’s ruling is yet another neutral finding that has confirmed what we have known all along: that there was never any truth to any of the accusations about us and that we did nothing wrong,” they said.
“We were smeared for purely political reasons, and the people responsible can and should be held accountable.”
The ruling compounds the legal jeopardy Giuliani faces, at a time when he and Trump are among the 19 defendants charged in a state racketeering case related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
It also creates the potential for a massive financial penalty as the case proceeds to a federal trial in Washington, where a jury will determine any damages Giuliani may be liable for.
Judge Howell said Giuliani will have a “final opportunity” to produce the requested information, as part of a legal process called “discovery”, but could face additional sanctions if he fails to do so.
In the meantime, Howell said, Giuliani and his business entities must pay more than $130,000 in lawyers’ fees.
Howell expressed skepticism at Giuliani’s claims that he cannot afford to reimburse the plaintiffs in the case, noting that he recently listed his apartment in Manhattan for $6.5 million and was reported to have flown in a private plane to Atlanta to surrender to charges there. He has pleaded not guilty.
“Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straight-forward defamation case, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention,” Howell wrote.
Howell said that aside from an initial document production of 193 pages, the information Giuliani had turned over consisted largely of “a single page of communications, blobs of indecipherable data” and “a sliver of the financial documents required to be produced”.
“Perhaps, he has made the calculation that his overall litigation risks are minimized by not complying with his discovery obligations in this case,” Howell said. “Whatever the reason, obligations are case specific and withholding required discovery in this case has consequences.”
The judge said, “Giuliani has given only lip service to compliance with his discovery obligations”.
Giuliani has blamed his failure to produce the requested documents on the fact that his devices were seized by federal investigators in 2021, as a part of a separate Justice Department investigation that did not produce any criminal charges.
Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, said in a statement that the judge’s ruling “is a prime example of the weaponization of our justice system, where the process is the punishment. This decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence that was seized and held by the FBI.”
Last month, Giuliani conceded that he made public comments falsely claiming the election workers committed ballot fraud during the 2020 election, but he contended that the statements were protected by the First Amendment.
US President Joe Biden offers a Presidential Citizens Medal to Ruby Freeman on January 6, 2023, as her daughter looks on [File: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters]
That caveated stipulation, Howell said, has “more holes than Swiss cheese”. She suggested Giuliani was more interested in conceding the workers’ claims than actually producing meaningful discovery in the case.
“Yet, just as taking shortcuts to win an election carries risks — even potential criminal liability — bypassing the discovery process carries serious sanctions, no matter what reservations a noncompliant party may try artificially to preserve for appeal,” Howell said.
Moss had worked for the Fulton County elections department since 2012 and supervised the absentee ballot operation during the 2020 election. Freeman was a temporary election worker, verifying signatures on absentee ballots and preparing them to be counted and processed.
Giuliani and others alleged during a Georgia legislative subcommittee hearing in December 2020 that surveillance video from State Farm Arena showed the election workers committing election fraud.
As those allegations circulated online, the two women said, they suffered intense harassment, both in person and online. Moss detailed her experiences in emotional testimony before the members of Congress investigating the Capitol insurrection. The January 6 committee also played video testimony from Freeman during the hearing in June 2022.
Hundreds of people have gathered at prayer vigils and in church to mourn the killing of three Black people in Florida at the hands of a white man, as President Joe Biden said there was “no place” for white supremacy in the United States.
About 200 people attended a vigil on Sunday evening near the Dollar General store in Jacksonville where officials said 21-year-old Ryan Palmeter opened fire the day before using guns he had bought legally.
The southern state’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis – who has weakened Florida’s gun control laws and attacked so-called “wokeness” – was booed loudly as he addressed the vigil.
DeSantis promised financial support for security at Edward Waters University, the historically black college near where the shooting took place, and to help the affected families.
“What he did is totally unacceptable in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said of the killer. “We are not going to let people be targeted based on their race.”
Sheriff TK Waters identified the victims as Angela Michelle Carr, 52, who was shot multiple times in her car; store employee AJ Laguerre, 19, who was killed as he tried to escape; and customer Jerrald Gallion, 29, who was shot as he walked into the shop in a predominantly Black neighbourhood.
Jerrald Gallion (right), pictured with friend Sabrina Rozier was named as one of the victims. He was shot as he walked into the shop [Sabrina Rozier via AP Photo]
Gallion was part of the congregation at St Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville.
“In two weeks I have to preach a funeral of a man who should still be alive,” the church’s Bishop John Guns told those assembled for the vigil. “He was not a gangster, he was not a thug — he was a father who gave his life to Jesus and was trying to get it together.”
“We must say clearly and forcefully that white supremacy has no place in America,” President Joe Biden said in a statement on Sunday.
“We must refuse to live in a country where Black families going to the store or Black students going to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the colour of their skin.”
The Justice Department is investigating the shooting as a hate crime and an “act of racially motivated violent extremism”, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
Biden spoke to Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan and Sheriff Waters in the wake of the shooting. In both calls, he offered his full support to the people of Jacksonville, according to a White House statement.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (second from right) was booed when he addressed the vigil [John Raoux/AP Photo]
The latest in a long history of American racist killings unfolded on Saturday afternoon after Palmeter first parked at Edward Waters University.
The sheriff said a video posted on TikTok without a timestamp showed Palmeter donning a bullet-proof vest. A university security guard spotted Palmeter and parked near him. Palmeter drove off and the security guard flagged down a Jacksonville sheriff’s officer who was about to send out an alert to other officers when the attack began.
Covering his face with a mask, Palmeter used a handgun and an AR-15 style rifle, with swastikas on it, police said, referring to a lightweight semiautomatic long gun often used in mass shootings.
The gunman had no criminal record and while he had been involuntarily committed for a mental health examination in 2017, he was then released so it would not have shown up on his background checks, police added.
Right-wing rhetoric blamed
Palmeter lived with his parents in a suburb of Jacksonville. He texted his father during the shooting and told him to break into his room, Waters said. The father then found a suicide note, a will and the racist writings Waters described as “quite frankly, the diary of a madman”.
“He was just completely irrational,” Waters said. “But with irrational thoughts, he knew what he was doing. He was 100 percent lucid.”
The sheriff said Palmeter, wearing his vest covered by a shirt, gloves and a mask, first stopped in front of Carr’s vehicle and fired 11 shots with his rifle through her windscreen, killing her.
He entered the Dollar General store and turned to his right, shooting Laguerre, according to video. Numerous people fled through the back door, the sheriff said. He chased after them and fired, but missed. He went back inside the shop and saw Gallion entering the front door with his girlfriend. He fatally shot Gallion.
He then chased a woman through the store and fired, but missed.
Elected officials said racist attacks like Saturday’s have been encouraged by political rhetoric targeting “wokeness” and policies from the Republican-led state government headed by DeSantis, including one taking aim at the teaching of Black history in Florida.
“We must be clear, it was not just racially motivated, it was racist violence that has been perpetuated by rhetoric and policies designed to attack Black people, period,” said state Representative Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville Democrat.
“We cannot sit idly by as our history is being erased, as our lives are being devalued, as wokeness is being attacked,” Nixon said. “Because let’s be clear — that is red meat to a base of voters.”
Rudolph McKissick, a national board member of the Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Baptist bishop, and senior pastor of the Bethel Church in Jacksonville, was in the city on Saturday when the shooting happened.
“Nobody is having honest, candid conversations about the presence of racism,” McKissick said.
Past shootings targeting Black Americans include an attack at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022 and a historic African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston in 2015.
The Buffalo shooting, which killed 10 people, stands as one of the deadliest targeted attacks on Black people by a lone white gunman in US history. The killer was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Rescue efforts are under way after what Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a ‘tragic’ incident.
A rescue operation is under way after a United States military aircraft crashed off the northern coast of Australia with 20 Marines on board, in what Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a “tragic” incident.
Several people were rescued, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), after the Osprey V-22 came down near Melville Island about 60km (37 miles) from Darwin on Sunday.
One person was in critical condition, two were stable and there were no reports of fatalities, it reported.
Australia’s defence ministry said the accident happened during the annual Predator Run exercises involving the militaries of Australia, the United States, East Timor, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Albanese, speaking at a previously scheduled press conference, declined to provide details about the crash or rescue efforts.
“Our focus as a government and as a department of defence is very much on incident response and on making sure that every support and assistance is given at this difficult time,” he said.
Australian personnel were not involved, Albanese said.
The US and Australia, a key ally in the Pacific, have been stepping up military cooperation in recent years in the face of an increasingly assertive China.
Four Australian soldiers were killed last month when their helicopter crashed into the sea off the coast of Queensland.
The aircraft had been taking part in Talisman Sabre, a joint military exercise involving a total of 13 countries, including the US, Australia, Japan, France and Germany, and more than 30,000 personnel.
Ospreys are tilt-rotor aircraft that combine the features of both helicopters and turboprop planes, according to the US Air Force.
It has two swivelling engines positioned on fixed wingtips that allow it to land and take off vertically, but also move at faster speeds than a conventional helicopter.
The Osprey aircraft’s safety record has repeatedly come into question after a series of fatal incidents.
In March of that year, four Marines were killed when an Osprey crashed near a Norwegian town in the Arctic Circle during a NATO exercise.
In 2017, three Marines were killed when an Osprey crashed after clipping the back of a transport ship while trying to land at sea off Australia’s north coast.
At least six tornadoes have touched down in the midwestern state of Michigan as part of a series of severe storms, killing five people and leaving hundreds of thousands of residents without power.
The National Weather Service in the United States confirmed on Friday that a tornado with winds of 145 kph (90 mph) crossed from Michigan’s Ingham County into the western edge of adjacent Livingston County on Thursday night.
The storm was given a ranking of EF-1, the second lowest on the Enhanced Fujita scale. Four other EF-1 tornadoes were reported in Bellville and Gibraltar in Wayne County, as well as near South Rockwood and Newport in Monroe County.
A weaker EF-0 tornado with peak winds of 128 kph (80 mph) was on the ground for less than two miles in Wayne County’s Canton Township, west of Detroit, the weather service said. That tornado caused a tree to fall into a house, said meteorologist Sara Schultz.
The weather service office in Grand Rapids, in western Michigan, said officials would be in the field Friday conducting damage surveys on another suspected tornado in Kent County.
In western Michigan, the Kent County sheriff’s office said a 21-year-old woman and two girls, ages 1 and 3, died on Thursday night after their car struck an SUV.
Trees were uprooted during a violent summer storm on August 25 in Canton Township, Michigan [Mike Householder/AP Photo]
The driver in the car, a 22-year-old Gowen man, suffered serious injuries. The SUV driver received minor injuries.
“There was two vehicles traveling toward each other. One hydroplaned on water and it was occupied by four people,” Kent County Sergeant Eric Brunner told the news station WZZM-TV.
In Lansing, the state capital, an 84-year-old woman died on Thursday night after a tree fell on a home. Firefighters extricated the woman from the home, but she was pronounced dead at a hospital, Lansing Police Department spokeswoman Jordan Gulkis said.
In Ingham County, where Lansing is located, the sheriff’s office said Friday that one person was confirmed dead and several people severely injured as more than 25 vehicles were severely damaged along Interstate 96.
It was not immediately clear early Friday afternoon if the storm or a crash was responsible for the wrecks on the freeway.
In the north Detroit suburb of Southfield, Muqitu Berry said he was in his ranch home at approximately 9:30pm on Thursday when a large part of the trunk of a neighbor’s tree came crashing down, sounding “like a train coming through”.
The tree ended up across the front of Berry’s driveway and yard. As it fell, it took down power lines, dropping them onto Berry’s driveway and at least one vehicle, leaving him and his neighbors without power.
“I can’t get out of my driveway. I can’t go anywhere,” Berry said Friday morning. “We’re out of power, and it’s very frustrating.”
Fallen tree limbs and high winds caused widespread power outages across the midwestern state of Michigan [Corey R. Williams/AP Photo]
Wayne County Executive Warren Evans declared a state of emergency on Friday in Michigan’s largest county, which includes Detroit, due to power outages, flooding, fallen trees and power lines and storm debris.
The county also warned residents after flooding caused municipalities to discharge partially or fully untreated wastewater into various waterways.
Canton Township, a community of some 100,000 people, was hit earlier this week by flooding in its downtown business district.
“Some of our parks are destroyed,” township supervisor Anne Marie Graham-Hudak said, adding that the township received calls from 200 residents regarding flooding in their basements.
More than 390,000 customers in Michigan and over 120,000 in Ohio were without power as of about 7:15pm Friday, according to the Poweroutage.us website.
Thursday night’s storms followed a round of heavy rain Wednesday that left areas in southeast Michigan with over 12.7 centimeters (5 inches) of precipitation by Thursday morning, resulting in street flooding in the Detroit area.
On Friday, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency for Wayne and Monroe counties, which makes state resources available to help with response and recovery efforts related to storm damage.
The storms pushed east across Lake Erie and into northeast Ohio, uprooting trees and leaving thousands of homes and businesses without power.
A storm damaged the roof of the New Life at Calvary Church in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 24 [Sue Ogrocki/AP Photo]
A tornado also tore through part of Cleveland late Thursday night. Its path was about 150 yards (137 meters) wide and nearly a mile long. No injuries were reported, but several buildings were severely damaged.
Scientists say that, without extensive study, they cannot directly link a single weather event to climate change — but that climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme events such as storms, droughts, floods and wildfires.
Former US President Donald Trump and all 18 of his co-defendants in Georgia’s election interference case have turned themselves in to face charges, meeting a deadline for their surrender.
Each of the nineteen defendants, including Trump, presented themselves to the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta by the noon deadline on Friday (16:00 GMT).
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who filed the indictment against the ex-president and his allies earlier this month, had said an arrest warrant would have been issued for anyone who did not comply.
Georgia prosecutors have accused Trump and his co-defendants of joining a conspiracy to “unlawfully change the outcome” of the 2020 United States election in the state. They have denied wrongdoing.
All except one of those charged had previously negotiated a bond agreement before arriving at the jail this week and were immediately released after paying a percentage of their bond, and having their fingerprints and mugshots taken.
Willis has requested that arraignments – the court hearings where the accused will formally hear the charges against them and enter a plea – in the case take place on the week of September 5.
Trump is the first ex-president to have his mugshot taken [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office/Handout via Reuters]
Trump, the frontrunner in the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination race, turned himself in at the Fulton County jail at approximately 7:30pm (23:30 GMT) on Thursday.
He spent about 20 minutes inside the facility – becoming the first former president in US history to have his mugshot taken – before being released on $200,000 bond.
He faces 13 charges in the case, including racketeering, soliciting a public official to violate their oath of office, filing false statements, conspiracy to commit forgery and conspiracy to impersonate a public officer.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and accused Georgia prosecutors of seeking to derail his re-election campaign.
Rudy Giuliani
Giuliani previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office/Handout via AP Photo]
The former mayor of New York City, who also previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer, Giuliani faces the same number of charges as Trump – more than any other co-defendant.
Prosecutors have accused Giuliani of spearheading the effort in Georgia by making false statements and soliciting false testimony, conspiring to create phoney paperwork, and asking state lawmakers to violate their oath of office.
He has denied any wrongdoing. He surrendered on Wednesday and was released on $150,000 bond.
Mark Meadows
Meadows served as Trump’s White House chief of staff [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office/Handout via Reuters]
Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Meadows – like all the co-defendants – has been charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, also known as RICO.
He also has been charged with soliciting a public officer to violate their oath of office.
Meadows surrendered on Thursday and was released on $100,000 bond.
John Eastman
Eastman is the former dean of Chapman University Law School [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP Photo]
Eastman, a conservative lawyer, was widely considered the legal architect of the nationwide effort to keep Trump in power after the 2020 election that he lost to President Joe Biden.
The former dean of Chapman University Law School in Southern California turned himself in on Tuesday and was booked on nine charges.
“I am here today to surrender to an indictment that should never have been brought,” Eastman said in a statement released through his lawyers before his surrender. “I am confident that, when the law is faithfully applied in this proceeding, all of my co-defendants and I will be fully vindicated.”
He was released on $100,000 bond.
Kenneth Chesebro
Chesebro has requested a ‘speedy trial’ [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP Photo]
A lawyer who worked with the Trump campaign, Chesebro is accused of supporting a plan in Georgia and other states to manipulate the election process in order to delay the certification of Biden’s 2020 victory.
So far, Chesebro has been the only defendant to ask for a “speedy trial” and a judge approved that request this week, setting an October 23 start date.
Several defendants have since sought to “sever” their case from Chesebro’s, saying the timing was too soon.
Chesebro surrendered on Wednesday and was released on $100,000 bond.
Jeffrey Clark
Clark, a former Justice Department official, was released on $100,000 bond [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office/Handout via Reuters]
The former US Department of Justice official is accused of trying to use his position to shepherd through a plan to overturn the 2020 election results.
He surrendered on Friday on two charges – racketeering and committing false statements and writings – and was released on $100,000 bond.
Jenna Ellis
Ellis turned herself in on August 23, 2023 [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP Photo]
The Trump lawyer was charged with racketeering and soliciting a public official to violate their oath of office.
She turned herself in on Wednesday and released on $100,000 bond.
Robert Cheeley
Cheeley is a Georgia trial lawyer [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP]
The Georgia trial lawyer participated in public hearings with state legislators, where he pushed the false election fraud narrative and presented false evidence to support the claims, prosecutors have alleged.
Cheeley was hit with 10 charges, including perjury.
He turned himself in on Friday and was released on $50,000 bond.
Mike Roman
The Trump campaign official was hit with seven charges.
He turned himself in on Friday, with his bail set at $50,000.
A mug shot for Roman has not yet been released.
David Shafer
Shafer is the former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP Photo]
The former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party was set to serve as a so-called “fake elector” in the plot to undermine the Georgia election results, according to the indictment.
After surrendering on Wednesday and being released on $75,000 bond, he proudly made his mugshot his profile picture on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.
Shawn Still
Still is a current Georgia state senator [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP]
A Georgia state senator, Still was also set to be a “fake elector” in the scheme, according to prosecutors, and had signed paperwork saying Trump was the winner of the 2020 vote.
He was hit with seven charges and surrendered early on Friday. He was released on $10,000 bond.
Stephen Lee
The Lutheran pastor has been accused of helping to pressure an election worker to falsely admit to fraud.
Facing five charges, he was the last defendant to turn himself in on Friday.
His mugshot has not yet been released.
Harrison Floyd
Harrison Floyd’s mugshot [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP]
Floyd, a former marine and leader of “Black Voices for Trump”, was charged in connection with efforts to intimidate an election worker into falsely admitting to voter fraud.
Floyd had previously been arrested for assaulting an FBI agent in Maryland.
He was the only defendant to not be immediately released upon turning himself in on Thursday.
Trevian Kutti
Kutti, a Chicago-based publicist, previously worked with Kanye West [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP Photo]
The Chicago-based publicist, who previously worked with Kanye West, surrendered on Thursday.
Kutti faces three charges, with prosecutors saying she intimidated an election worker. Her bond was set at $75,000.
Sidney Powell
Powell was Trump’s 2020 campaign lawyer [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP]
Powell, Trump’s 2020 campaign lawyer, was the face of the former president’s post-election misinformation campaign.
She faces seven charges in Georgia, in part connected to a voting systems breach in Coffee County, southeast of Atlanta.
She surrendered on Wednesday and was released on $100,000 bond.
Cathy Latham
Latham is accused of being part of the ‘fake elector’ scheme [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office/Handout via Reuters]
Latham was another so-called “fake elector” in Georgia, according to prosecutors.
Her 11 charges are also connected to the alleged breach in Coffee County, where she previously served as county chair of the Republican Party.
She surrendered on Wednesday and was released on $75,000 bond.
Scott Hall
Hall, an Atlanta bail bondsman, was the first to surrender this week [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP Photo]
On Tuesday, bail bondsman Hall became the first defendant to surrender.
He faces seven charges, including some connected to accusations he helped breached a Coffee County voting machine.
He was released on $10,000 bond.
Misty Hampton
Hampton was a former election supervisor in Coffee County [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP Photo]
The former election supervisor of Coffee County, Hampton faces seven charges connected to accusations she helped to breach voting systems.
She surrendered early Friday and was released on $10,000 bond.
Ray Smith
Smith was another Trump campaign lawyer [Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via AP]
The Trump campaign lawyer has been hit with 12 charges related to his testimony to Georgia legislators.
He surrendered on Wednesday and was released on $50,000 bond.
