Headline

Kamala Harris Secures Democratic Presidential Nomination

Published

1 year ago

August 3, 2024

US Vice President Kamala Harris effectively secured the Democratic party’s presidential nomination Friday, confirming her remarkable rise to party standard bearer in November’s showdown against Republican Donald Trump.

Harris, 59, was the sole candidate on the ballot for a five-day electronic vote of nearly 4,000 party convention delegates. The first Black and South Asian woman ever to secure a major party’s nomination, she will be officially crowned at a Chicago convention later this month.

“I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States,” Harris said on a phone-in to a party celebration after securing enough votes by the second day of the marathon virtual vote.

In the two weeks since Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, Harris has gained full control of the party, smashing fundraising records, packing arenas and erasing the polling leads Trump had built over the president.

“I couldn’t be prouder,” Biden posted on X after her nomination.

The nomination milestone came with Harris preparing to hit the campaign trail next week for a swing across seven crucial election states alongside her yet-to-be-named running mate.

The Democratic Party decided on a virtual nomination process — departing with tradition and mirroring the procedure used in the pandemic-hit 2020 election — because of an early deadline in Ohio for submitting the names of certified candidates.

The virtual roll call marks the official beginning of the 2024 convention, with the more traditional festivities getting going when thousands of party faithful descend on Chicago on August 19.

The gathering will feature a ceremonial vote for Harris in what is expected to be a raucous celebration of her rise from California prosecutor to historic candidate vying for the nation’s highest office.

Trump’s White House bid was turned upside down on July 21 when 81-year-old Biden, facing growing concerns about his age and lagging polling numbers, withdrew his candidacy and backed Harris.

– Wave of momentum –

Energetic and two decades younger than 78-year-old Trump, the vice president has made a fast start, raising $310 million in July, according to her campaign — more than double Trump’s haul.

She and her running mate are scheduled to rally Tuesday in Pennsylvania — a crucial swing state, where Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro is on the shortlist to join Harris’s ticket.

Biden beat Trump in Pennsylvania in 2020 by around 80,000 votes and it is seen as the biggest prize of the closely fought battlegrounds that decide the Electoral College system.

The Keystone State is part of the so-called blue wall that carried Biden to victory in 2020, alongside Michigan and Wisconsin, two states where Harris is due to woo crowds on Wednesday.

Harris will also tour the more racially diverse Sun Belt and southern states of Georgia, North Carolina Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada as she seeks to shore up the Black and Hispanic vote that had been peeling away from the Democrats.

In a sign that the Harris campaign is thinking big, US media reported that a raft of senior advisors from Barack Obama’s own historic candidacies in 2008 and 2012 have taken up top positions with her.

Where the now defunct Biden reelection campaign made high-minded appeals to the nation’s founding principles, Harris’s messaging has focused on the future, repositioning the race as a battle for “freedom” rather than the less tangible “democracy” that the president emphasized.

She and her allies have also been more aggressive than the Biden camp — mocking Trump for reneging on his commitment to a September debate and characterizing the convicted felon as an elderly crook and “weird.”

“Some days I feel sorry for Republicans, because they’ve got to figure out how to run a criminal against a prosecutor,” Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock said at Harris’s Atlanta event.

On the detail, however, Harris has been tight-lipped.

While she has disavowed some of the leftist positions she took during her ill-fated 2020 primary campaign, she hasn’t given a wide-ranging interview since jumping into the race, meaning voters have no clear picture of her overall vision.

Meanwhile Trump and his Republicans have struggled to adapt to their new adversary or hone their attacks against Harris — at first messaging that she was dangerously liberal on immigration and crime before pivoting to accusing her falsely of pretending to be Black for political purposes.

AFP

Headline

Trump Gives Update On Israel, Hamas Peace Deal

Published

2 hours ago

October 8, 2025

Editor

Trump Gives Update On Israel, Hamas Peace Deal

US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he may go to the Middle East at the end of this week as a peace deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is “very close.”

Trump said during an event at the White House that he would “go to Egypt most likely” but that he would also consider going to war-torn Gaza.

“I may go there sometime toward the end of the week, maybe on Sunday, actually. And we’ll see, but there is a very good chance. Negotiations are going along very well,” Trump told reporters at the start of the event.

“Our final negotiation, as you know, is with Hamas, and it seems to be going well. So we’ll let you know, if that’s the case, we’ll be leaving probably on Sunday, maybe on Saturday.”

Near the end of the meeting, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio unexpectedly entered the room and handed Trump a note.

The US president told reporters the note said that “we’re very close to a deal” and that his presence was needed. “I have to go now to try and solve some problems in the Middle East,” he added.

Hamas and Israeli officials are having indirect talks in Egypt on a 20-point peace proposal unveiled by Trump to end the two-year-old war.

– ‘Very close’ –

Trump said as he began the event that he had come off the phone with officials in the Middle East, where his special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner had just joined discussions in Egypt.

“‘Peace for the Middle East,’ that’s a beautiful phrase, and we hope it’s going to come true, but it’s very close, and they’re doing very well,” Trump added.

“We have a great team over there, great negotiators, and they’re, unfortunately, great negotiators on the other side also. But it’s something I think that will happen.”

Asked if he would consider going to Gaza if a deal happens, Trump replied: “I would, yeah. I would. I might do that. I may do that. We haven’t decided exactly.”

Trump said he would insist on the release of hostages held by Hamas before traveling to the region.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said earlier that he had received “encouraging” signs and hailed the support of Trump.

Hamas too expressed “optimism” over the indirect discussions with its foe Israel.

Trump’s plan calls for a ceasefire, the release of all the hostages held in Gaza, Hamas’s disarmament and a gradual Israeli withdrawal from the territory.
AFP

Headline

INTERPOL Arrests Nigerian In Argentina Over Multi-country Romance Scam

Published

10 hours ago

October 8, 2025

Editor

A Nigerian national identified as Ikechukwu N. has been arrested in Argentina for allegedly orchestrating multiple online romance scams targeting thousands of victims across several countries, according to a statement released by INTERPOL on Tuesday.

The arrest was made under Operation Jackal, an INTERPOL-led operation focusing on West African organised criminal groups involved in cyber fraud, money laundering, and related transnational crimes.

INTERPOL announced via its official X handle that Ikechukwu’s arrest marked Argentina’s first arrest of a fugitive under a Red Notice who was simultaneously listed in the organisation’s Silver Notice database — a new project aimed at tracing and recovering criminal assets worldwide.

The statement read: “Argentine authorities have captured Nigerian national Ikechukwu N., marking the country’s first arrest of a #RedNotice fugitive who was also the subject of an INTERPOL Silver Notice. The suspect is accused of orchestrating multiple romance scams involving thousands of women, and leading an international cybercrime network.”

INTERPOL added that the arrest was jointly carried out by the Argentine Federal Police and the Airport Security Police, with assistance from the INTERPOL Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre (IFCACC), the Federal Intelligence Secretariat (FIS), and INTERPOL Brazil.

The Silver Notice project, piloted in January 2025, enables member countries to share intelligence on the location and recovery of illicitly acquired assets linked to transnational crime.

Although details of the victims and total financial losses remain undisclosed, the operation is part of a broader international crackdown on cyber-enabled fraud schemes traced to West African syndicates.

Nigeria has been a focal point of similar investigations. In December 2024, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) announced the arrest of 792 suspects — including foreign nationals — linked to a crypto-romance fraud ring operating from Lagos.

The syndicate reportedly targeted victims in the Americas and Europe through social media and messaging platforms, promising relationships and fake investment opportunities before defrauding them.

INTERPOL said further investigations into Ikechukwu’s activities are ongoing, with cooperation expected between Argentine authorities, Nigerian law enforcement, and other international partners involved in Operation Jackal.

Always ask who coin these words, who to benefit from such words

Headline

Eswatini Jails 10 Africans Deported From US

Published

2 days ago

October 6, 2025

Editor

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”.

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.

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.

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.