Headline
Biden Falters In Fiery Debate With Trump

A halting Joe Biden struggled Thursday to allay concerns he is too old for a second term in the White House in a fiery debate with Donald Trump marked by personal insults.
A bombastic Trump lashed out at his successor, calling him a failure on the economy and the world stage.
Biden looked to hit back, but his delivery was faltering as he spoke rapidly in a raspy, trailing-off voice, stumbled on his words and stared open-mouthed.
His performance, after he spent the week secluded in preparation, sparked new concern within his Democratic Party as polls show Trump is tied or ahead for the November election.
It was the first debate ever between a president and former president — and each accused the other of being history’s worst.
Trump and Biden, who were each the oldest president when first elected, even accused each other of being childlike as they argued over their golf swings.
Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, did not shake hands as they walked to their podiums at the CNN headquarters in Atlanta. There was no live audience and their microphones were muted as the other spoke.
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Biden hit Trump with clearly rehearsed lines as he sought to remind millions of television viewers that Trump would be the first convicted felon in the White House.
“You have the morals of an alley cat,” Biden said.
Trump, a veteran of rallies and reality television, spoke loudly as he ran through a long list of complaints about Biden’s record.
“I’m friends with a lot of people. They cannot believe what happened to the United States of America. We’re no longer respected,” Trump said.
Trump sought to seize on Biden’s delivery, saying at one point, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
– ‘Slow start’ –
Stopping by a Waffle House restaurant to pick up food after the debate, Biden told reporters he had soar throat but “I think we did well.”
The White House was clearly in damage-control mode.
Vice President Kamala Harris, in a live interview on CNN, said Biden’s record was “extraordinarily strong” but acknowledged concerns about his debate performance.
“Yes, there was a slow start, but it was a strong finish,” Harris said.
Kate Bedingfield, a former Biden communications director, said on CNN that “it was a really disappointing” evening for the president.
READ ALSO: Supreme Court Judge Refuses To Step Aside In Trump Case
“I don’t think there is any other way to slice it,” she said.
A CNN poll found 67 percent of debate watchers thought Trump had won.
Democrats are set formally to name Biden as their candidate in August in Chicago, with little way to change course unless the president himself withdraws.
But Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University, said Biden’s supporters would be “extremely concerned.”
“Biden fueled the basic perception that has continued to overshadow him,” he said.
At a watch party in San Francisco, Hazel Reitz said she would still vote for Biden but added: “I can’t understand a word that he says. Isn’t it sad?”
READ: Trump Accused Of Saying N-word On Season 1 Of ‘Apprentice’ When Talking About Black Contestant
– Personal attacks –
Neither candidate laid out new policies, with most of the exchanges consisting of attacks on the other’s record.
In one of the most personal moments, Biden cited accounts that Trump had described soldiers who died in the Normandy landing as “suckers” and noted his own son Beau, who served in Iraq and later died of cancer.
“My son was not a loser, was not a sucker. You’re the sucker. You’re the loser,” Biden said.
Trump denied the remarks and repeatedly accused Biden of not being coherent.
On foreign policy, Trump accused Biden — who faces a backlash from parts of his Democratic base over his support for Israel — of not helping Israel “finish the job” against Hamas.
“He doesn’t want to do it. He’s become like a Palestinian — but they don’t like him because he’s a very bad Palestinian, he’s a weak one,” Trump said.
Trump described Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan as the “most embarrassing moment in the history of our country” and said it encouraged Russia to invade Ukraine.
Biden, however, noted that he was the first recent president who has not had soldiers at risk overseas.
Trump and Biden also locked horns over abortion and immigration, key issues for their respective bases.
Biden, attacking Trump for appointing justices to the Supreme Court who ended Roe vs. Wade, the decision that allowed abortion rights around the country, said: “It’s been a terrible thing, what you’ve done.”
One candidate not on the stage was anti-establishment activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who failed to meet CNN’s threshold of reaching 15 percent in four national polls.
Kennedy instead spent the 90 minutes taking questions on a livestream.
AFP
Headline
Eswatini Jails 10 Africans Deported From US

The African kingdom of Eswatini said it received and jailed 10 more deportees from the United States on Monday as part of a US scheme to expel undocumented migrants.
Eswatini took in a first group of five men in July, with Ghana, Rwanda, and South Sudan also accepting US deportees in recent months in a programme criticised by rights groups.
The tiny southern African nation agreed in May to accept up to 160 deportees in exchange for $5.1 million to “build its border and migration management capacity”, according to a deal signed with the United States and seen by AFP.
Its correctional services department said in a statement Monday it “confirms the arrival of ten (10) third country nationals from the United States of America”.
It did not give details but said they had been “securely accommodated in one of the country’s correctional facilities” and the government would “facilitate their orderly repatriation”.
A US-based attorney representing some of the deportees said the new group included “three Vietnamese, one Filipino, one Cambodian”.
READ ALSO:US Deports Six Nigerians For Various Offences
The lawyer, Tin Thanh Nguyen, represents two of the Vietnamese nationals who arrived Monday.
“One of my clients … tried to assert a reasonable fear of harm being deported to Eswatini, but ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) ignored him and put him on the plane anyways,” he told AFP.
He also represents a Vietnamese and a Laotian who were part of the first group which also included nationals from Cuba, Jamaica and Yemen.
– ‘Legal black hole’ –
The deal that Eswatini signed with the United States on May 14 says that the US deportees may include third country nationals “with criminal backgrounds and/or who are designated suspected terrorists”.
Washington said the first group of men had been convicted of crimes in the United States, including child rape and murder, but their lawyers told AFP that all five had long finished serving their sentences.
READ ALSO:Venezuelan Deportees: US Embassy Gives Reason For Reducing Visa Validity For Nigerians
Eswatini jailed them in its maximum security Matsapha Correctional Centre which is notorious for holding political prisoners and for overcrowding.
One of them, a 62-year-old Jamaican who had reportedly completed a sentence for murder in the United States, was sent back to his country around two weeks ago.
Nguyen said Eswatini was a “legal black hole” and the deportees were denied legal counsel.
His two clients had been detained since mid-July without a charge, he said.
“I cannot call them. I cannot email them. I cannot communicate through local counsel because the Eswatini government blocks all attorney access,” he told AFP.
Lawyers and civil society groups in Eswatini have gone to court to challenge the legality of the detentions.
READ ALSO:Judge Halts US Govt Effort To Detain Student For Deportation
A local lawyer on Friday won a court ruling allowing him to visit the four men still detained, but the government immediately appealed, suspending the ruling.
US President Donald Trump has overseen a drastic expansion of the practice of deporting people to countries other than their nation of origin, notably by sending hundreds to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
But rights experts have warned the deportations risk breaking international law by sending people to nations where they face the risk of torture, abduction and other abuses.
Human Rights Watch last month urged African governments to refuse to accept US deportees and to terminate deals already in effect, saying they violated global rights law.
Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland and landlocked by neighbours South Africa and Mozambique, has been led by King Mswati III since 1986 and his government has been accused of human rights violations.
Headline
Russian Strikes Kill Five In Ukraine, Cause Power Outages

Russian strikes Sunday on Ukraine killed five people and badly damaged energy infrastructure, temporarily severing power supplies to tens of thousands and prompting neighbouring Poland put ground defence on high alert.
Russia has stepped up strikes on energy networks, increasing fears Moscow would resume its widespread campaign of attacks on power facilities, which have plunged millions into darkness in past winters.
Russian forces fired 496 drones and 53 missiles at Ukraine, the majority of which were shot down, according to the Ukrainian air force.
“Sadly, five people were killed. My sincere condolences to everyone who lost loved ones to this terror,” Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Strikes killed four people near Lviv, which lies in western Ukraine and is hundreds of kilometers from the front line, and has been largely spared the attacks that have hit cities further east.
“Near Lviv, an entire family of four was killed in their home, including a teenage girl,” Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said.
READ ALSO:Russia Arrests Woman For Detonating Bomb On Railway
Emergency services released photos showing firefighters battling flames in a destroyed building, and helping elderly residents to safety.
Attacks also killed one person in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia and wounded people near the eastern front, local authorities said.
“Russians once again targeted our infrastructure -– everything that ensures normal life for our people,” Zelensky said.
The strikes cut power to over 110,000 subscribers across several regions, Ukraine’s emergency services said, with the hardest hit being Zaporizhzhia.
– ‘Gas, heat and light’ –
Overnight, more than 73,000 people in Zaporizhzhia were left without electricity, regional head Ivan Fedorov said, though power had been partially restored by the afternoon.
Ukraine’s state-run gas company Naftogaz network also reported damage to its network.
“These maniacal terrorist strikes are aimed solely at one thing — depriving Ukrainians of gas, heat, and light,” Naftogaz CEO Sergii Koretskyi said in a statement.
READ ALSO:Badenoch Unveils Strict UK Immigration Plan, Targets 150,000 Yearly Deportations
The Russian army said it launched an attack “against enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine and gas and energy infrastructure facilities that ensured their operation.”
Russian attacks have also rattled Ukraine’s European allies after a spate of alleged Russian airspace violations into Europe.
NATO boosted its defences along its eastern borders throughout the month as it accused Moscow of testing the alliance’s air defences with drone incursions into several members and by flying military jets in Estonian airspace.
Overnight Poland’s armed forces said on X that they had mobilised planes and put ground defences on high alert to secure the country’s airspace, especially in areas close to Ukraine.
Ukraine also said Russia was intensifying a campaign of air strikes on its railway network in an attempt to isolate frontline communities ahead of winter.
Russia launched drones at two passenger trains in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region on Saturday, killing one person and wounding dozens, according to Ukrainian officials.
Headline
Badenoch Unveils Strict UK Immigration Plan, Targets 150,000 Yearly Deportations

Kemi Badenoch, leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, has unveiled an aggressive immigration reform plan aimed at detaining and deporting 150,000 illegal migrants annually, in what she described as the “toughest reforms Britain has ever seen” in border policy. The announcement was made in a video message posted on her X account on Sunday.
The plan, dubbed the Radical Borders Plan, envisages the establishment of a new Removals Force modelled after the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which would replace the current Home Office Immigration Enforcement unit. According to Badenoch, the Removals Force will have a mandate to remove all illegal entrants, foreign criminals, and undocumented migrants, while also monitoring illegal work. She stated, “My message is clear: if you’re here illegally, you will be detained and deported.”
Badenoch sharply criticised previous administrations, accusing both Conservative and Labour governments of failing to manage the migration crisis effectively. “Successive governments have failed on immigration. Labour promised to smash the gangs. Instead, in just a year, they delivered record small boat crossings, over 50,000 illegal arrivals, 32,000 people in asylum hotels, billions wasted. It’s pure weakness. Britain needs a serious, credible plan and the backbone to deliver it,” she said.
READ ALSO:Badenoch Slams UK’s Palestine Recognition Decision As ‘Absolutely Disastrous’
The proposed plan includes several controversial measures. Asylum claims from illegal entrants would be banned, the Human Rights Act repealed, and the United Kingdom withdrawn from the European Convention on Human Rights. Badenoch added that all new illegal arrivals would be deported within a week, with legal obstacles to mass removals removed and visa sanctions imposed on countries that refuse to repatriate their citizens. She also pledged to “shut down the asylum hotel racket,” which she said would save taxpayers billions and restore public confidence in the UK’s border controls.
The Removals Force, if approved, will operate with an annual budget of £1.6 billion, double that of the current Immigration Enforcement unit, funded by savings from the closure of asylum hotels and other measures within the asylum system. The force will have sweeping powers, including the use of facial recognition technology without prior warning, and will integrate closely with the police. Priority for removals will include new illegal entrants, foreign criminals, failed asylum seekers, visa over-stayers, and others identified as residing in the UK illegally.
In an interview on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Badenoch faced criticism for her refusal to specify the destinations to which deported migrants would be sent. She responded, “I’m tired of all of these irrelevant questions about where they should go. They will go back to where they should be or another country, but they should not be here.” When pressed further, she added, “They will go back to where they came from.”
READ ALSO:Badenoch Slams UK PM For Cutting Defence Funding Amid Global Threats
According to the Conservative Party document detailing the plan, the proposed measures are intended to increase removals from the current 34,000 per year to approximately 150,000, marking a five-fold increase in enforcement activity. The party argues that the reforms are necessary to address what it describes as uncontrolled migration and to strengthen public trust in the country’s border system.
Badenoch’s announcement has intensified the ongoing debate in the UK over immigration policy, balancing border security with human rights considerations. Critics have expressed concern over the repeal of the Human Rights Act and the use of facial recognition technology without oversight, while supporters have welcomed the proposed measures as a decisive step in tackling illegal immigration.
The Radical Borders Plan is expected to be submitted for parliamentary consideration in the coming months, with its implementation contingent on legislative approval and coordination with existing law enforcement structures.
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