Activists say they never agreed to leave their homeland and vow to continue fighting for democracy in Russia
Russian dissidents freed as part of a prisoner swap between Moscow and the west have shared their mixed feelings about the deal and vowed to continue their political activity from abroad.
The exchange represented a “difficult dilemma”, said the Russian liberal opposition politician Ilya Yashin at an emotional press conference in Bonn.
Continue reading...This blog has now closed. Read more on the Harris delegate story here
Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, is widely speculated to be among Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential finalists.
Martin Pengelly explores Shapiro’s background for the Guardian:
July was the best grassroots fundraising month in presidential history.
Team Harris raised more across grassroots channels in the four days following President Biden’s endorsement of Vice-President Harris than Trump’s big donor-reliant operation raised in the entire month.
More than 3 million donors made over 4.2m contributions – with more than 2 million donors making their first donation this cycle.
This month, 94% of all our donations were under $200, and teachers and nurses continue to be among the most common donor occupations.
Compared with June, we saw more than 10 times the number of gen Z donors, and more than eight times the number of millennial donors.
Sixty per cent of all donors in July were women.
Coalition groups that organized calls since launch – like Black Women for Harris, Latinas for Harris, and White Dudes for Harris – raised more than $20m for Team Harris.
Continue reading...Vice-president ‘honored’ to be nominee after securing delegate votes – but nomination not official until Monday
Kamala Harris said on Friday she was “honored” to have secured enough votes from delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee, making her the first Black woman and person of south Asian heritage to lead a major party ticket.
Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, announced that the vice-president had earned the majority of delegates’ votes to become the party’s nominee to challenge Donald Trump in November, though her nomination would not be official until Monday, the end of the virtual roll-call vote.
Continue reading...Acting director Ronald Rowe says ‘this was a failure’ and admits errors in communications and surveillance
The US Secret Service takes “full responsibility” for the events that led up to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last month, the acting director of the agency said on Friday.
In a press conference in Washington, Ronald Rowe, who replaced Kimberly Cheatle after she stood down from her position as director of the service after Trump was shot, said: “This was a failure.”
Continue reading...Negotiations, which began months earlier, originally included release of late opposition leader
At Cologne airport on Thursday evening, a group of associates of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny gathered waiting for a plane to arrive from Ankara. On board were 13 people who, until that morning, had been incarcerated in Russian prisons, including three people who had worked as Navalny’s regional coordinators in various Russian cities and been jailed for “extremism”.
After a swap in Turkey, they were now free, along with the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and two other Americans, who were heading back home on a separate plane.
Continue reading...Vice-president’s fundraising haul dwarfed Trump’s $138.7m with polls indicating a tight contest in battleground states
Kamala Harris’s campaign said on Friday it raised $310m in July, the latest dramatic illustration of a US presidential race polls show has transformed from an apparent romp to victory by Donald Trump into a neck-and-neck race in battleground states, though Trump retains a narrow lead.
Harris doubled Trump’s July fundraising haul of $138.7m, which in any normal year would be an impressive result, boosted by the assassination attempt he survived in Pennsylvania and by the Republican convention in Milwaukee.
Continue reading...US economy added 114,000 jobs in July in significant dip from June while unemployment increased to highest level since October 2021
The US labor market cooled significantly last month as unemployment unexpectedly rose, sparking fears of a slowdown across the world’s largest economy.
American employers added 114,000 jobs in July – short of the 180,000 additions expected by economists, and a marked decrease from the 179,000 added in June.
Continue reading...US launches major vaccination campaign in a bid to prevent healthcare strain and potential mutations of H5N1 virus
In the face of serious concerns over the spreading bird flu virus in US agriculture, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is pushing a major flu vaccination campaign among farm workers in a bid to prevent healthcare strain and combat potential mutations from the highly pathogenic bird virus.
Part of the campaign will seek to combat disinformation about vaccines, which has hampered previous efforts.
Continue reading...Ella Milman pressed world leaders and researched the scheme that would eventually lead to the release of her son
Much has been made of the public diplomacy behind the largest prisoner swap between Russia and the US since the cold war, with officials from at least seven countries spending years making calls and holding secret meetings in far-flung capitals.
But since Evan Gershkovich, the formerly imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter, and others stepped off the plane in Maryland on Thursday, new details have emerged about the role of a crucial player in that effort: his mother.
Continue reading...Spokesperson hints killer exchanged in prisoner swap was linked to Putin’s personal guard
The Kremlin has admitted that Vadim Krasikov, the assassin freed by Germany in a historic prisoner swap on Thursday, is a serving officer of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), essentially an acknowledgment that his 2019 murder of a Chechen exile in Berlin was a state-ordered hit.
It also hinted that he was linked to Vladimir Putin’s personal guard.
Continue reading...Europe’s main indices all decline and Japanese equities suffer worst day since 2020 while gold hits fresh record
Stock markets in Europe, Asia and New York tumbled on Friday as fears of a US economic slump grew and technology shares were hit by underwhelming earnings.
Concerns that the US could be sliding towards a recession spurred a global sell-off, which accelerated after a poor employment report on Friday showed that the US jobs market was cooling fast, pushing up the unemployment rate.
Continue reading...This week, Paul Dans, the leader of the controversial Project 2025, resigned and signalled in a company email that work on it was ‘winding down’. The project had become a manifesto of rightwing policies that would serve as a guide for the next Republican president. However, there is a significant stumbling block: Donald Trump wants nothing to do with it.
Joan E Greve and Rachel Leingang discuss whether this marks the beginning of the end of Project 2025
Archive: CNN, PBS Newshour, CSPAN, Tik Tok: heathergtv
Continue reading...Emotional scenes at Andrews air force base as Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva step onto American soil
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris met the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and two other freed American prisoners just hours after Washington and Moscow completed their largest prisoner exchange since the cold war.
On a muggy evening at Andrews air force base near Washington DC, Gershkovich and the other freed prisoners, the ex-marine Paul Whelan and the journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, touched down on US soil and shortly later disembarked a Bombardier jet from Turkey. They were met by their families and the US president and vice-president.
Continue reading...Antony Blinken says there is ‘overwhelming evidence’ González beat Maduro in last weekend’s presidential poll
The US has recognised Edmundo González as the winner of Venezuela’s disputed election, claiming there is “overwhelming” evidence of Nicolás Maduro’s defeat, as anti-government protesters prepared to return to the streets to demand political change.
Maduro, under whose 11-year presidency Venezuela has taken an increasingly authoritarian tack and been plunged into economic chaos, has claimed victory in last Sunday’s vote, despite a mounting body of evidence suggesting he lost.
Continue reading...Joshua Jones reportedly admits that ‘collectively we did it. We killed him’ after Tony Mitchell died of hypothermia
A former corrections officer at an Alabama jail has pleaded guilty in the case of a mentally ill man who died of hypothermia after being held naked in a concrete cell for two weeks.
The officer, Joshua Conner Jones, entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors over the treatment of two prisoners at the Walker county jail.
Continue reading...Trump running mate made remarks to Catholic group in 2021, the same year he criticized ‘childless cat ladies’
In remarks to a Catholic group, JD Vance attacked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for having “a sociopathic attitude” about families and children.
“One of the politicians that I criticised is AOC,” said Vance in 2021, while campaigning for the US Senate seat in Ohio he would win the following year.
Continue reading...At least 23 sea lions with suspected domoic acid poisoning rescued from Santa Barbara and Ventura beaches
Sea lions are stranding themselves on a long stretch of the California coast in what experts say could be a sign of widespread poisoning by a harmful algae bloom this summer.
The Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute (Cimwi) said that since 26 July, it had been inundated by daily reports of sick sea lions along the shoreline in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
Continue reading...Newspaper mounted a high-profile campaign to stress reporter’s innocence and ensure he was not forgotten
The reporter Evan Gershkovich’s release from a Russian prison on Thursday was celebrated across US and global media but perhaps most happily by journalists at his own paper, the Wall Street Journal in New York.
In an email to staff after news of Gershkovich’s release as part of a large-scale prisoner swap, Emma Tucker, the Journal editor-in-chief, said: “A few moments ago, Evan walked free from a Russian plane. He will shortly be on a flight back to the US.
Continue reading...Ex-CNN anchor alleges fraud and breach of contract after X Corp owner abruptly ended video series partnership
The former CNN anchor Don Lemon has sued Elon Musk and X over a cancelled deal with the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
His filing in California superior court in San Francisco includes claims of fraud, negligent misrepresentation, misappropriation of Lemon’s name and likeness and breach of express contract.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed. You can read the latest story here:
As part of the deal, according to the Turkish presidency, Belarus has released German citizen Rico Krieger.
Krieger was sentenced to death but granted a pardon this week by the country’s autocratic leader, Alexander Lukashenko.
Continue reading...