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Trump Speaks in Battleground Pennsylvania, Harris Makes Michigan Push
Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump looks on during a rally at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, in Uniondale, New York, US, Sept. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Republican Donald Trump made a last pitch for support in Pennsylvania, the largest of the seven states expected to decide this week’s US presidential election, while Democratic rival Kamala Harris focused her energy on Michigan on Sunday.
Opinion polls show the pair locked in a tight race, with Vice President Harris, 60, bolstered by strong support among women voters while former President Trump, 78, gains ground with Hispanic voters, particularly men.
Voters overall view both candidates unfavorably, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, but that so far has not dissuaded them from casting ballots. More than 76 million Americans have already done so ahead of Tuesday’s Election Day, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, approaching half the total 160 million votes cast in 2020, which saw the highest US voter turnout in more than a century.
North Carolina, another swing state, reported setting a record when its early-vote period ended on Saturday.
Control of the US Congress is also up for grabs on Tuesday, with Republicans favored to capture a majority in the Senate while Democrats are seen as having an even chance of flipping Republicans’ narrow majority in the House of Representatives. Presidents whose parties have not controlled both chambers have struggled to pass major new legislation over the past decade.
“Here’s all you need to know: Kamala broke it and we’re going to fix it,” said Trump, beginning his rally in Lititz, in central Pennsylvania, an hour late and his voice raspy. In a speech where he repeatedly criticized the US election process, he added, “It’s a damn shame and I’m the only one who talks about it because everyone is damn afraid to talk about it.”
Trump is later due to speak in Kinston, North Carolina, before ending his day with an evening rally in Macon, Georgia. Those two states are the second-biggest prizes up for grabs on Tuesday, with each holding 16 of the 270 votes a candidate needs to win in the state-by-state Electoral College to secure the presidency. Pennsylvania offers 19 electors.
Nonpartisan US election analysts reckon Harris would need to win about 45 electoral votes in the seven swing states to win the White House, while Trump would need about 51, when accounting for the states they are forecast to win easily.
HARRIS IN MICHIGAN PUSH
Harris is due to speak at a church in Detroit, the largest majority-Black US city, at around noon ET (1700 GMT) on Sunday before heading to East Lansing, a college town in an industrial state that is viewed as a must-win for the Democrat.
She faces skepticism from some of the state’s 200,000 Arab Americans who are frustrated Harris has not done more to help end the war in Gaza and scale back aid to Israel. Trump visited Dearborn, the heart of the Arab American community, on Friday and vowed to end the wars in the Middle East.
Harris, who has met behind closed doors with selected Arab American and Muslim leaders, will focus her energy on Black neighborhoods on Sunday.
Samah Noureddine, 44, a Lebanese American from Grosse Ile, a town near Detroit, said she voted for Biden in 2020 but was casting a ballot for Jill Stein of the Green Party this year.
“I’m upset because Harris is funding the genocide and if we get Trump we’re going to suffer too,” she said. “I’m sick of both of them.”
COST OF LIVING
In the campaign’s final days, Harris has sought to convince voters that she will bring down the cost of living, a top concern after several years of high inflation. She has also portrayed Trump as dangerous and erratic and urged Americans to move on from his divisive approach to politics.
“We have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other. We’re done with that,” she said in Charlotte on Saturday.
Trump has argued that Harris, as the sitting vice president, should be held responsible for rising prices and the high levels of immigration of the past several years, which he has portrayed as an existential threat to the country.
The stakes are high, with Harris and Trump having starkly different views of the economy, the role of government in American life and the role of the US in the world.
One illustration of that came from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a Trump supporter and opponent of military aid to Ukraine as it fights off a Russian invasion. Orban said Europe will need to rethink its support of Ukraine if Trump wins.
Trump’s public comments have suggested he could seek to wind down US aid for Ukraine if he wins on Tuesday.
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Fake Plan to Attack Australia Synagogue Fabricated by Organized Crime, Police Say
Car in New South Wales, Australia graffitied with antisemitic message. Photo: Screenshot
A fake plan to attack on a Sydney synagogue using a caravan of explosives was fabricated by an organized crime network in order to divert police resources, Australian police said on Monday.
Authorities in January found explosives in a caravan, or trailer, that could have created a blast wave of 40 meters (130 feet), along with the address of a Sydney synagogue.
But police on Monday said the discovery was part of a “criminal con job,” with the ease with which the caravan was found along with the lack of a detonator suggesting there was never any intent to attack Jewish targets.
“The caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit,” Krissy Barrett, the Australian Federal Police‘s Deputy Commissioner for National Security, told a news conference.
“Almost immediately, experienced investigators … believed that the caravan was part of a fabricated terrorism plot – essentially a criminal con job.”
Police are yet to make any arrests in relation to the planning of the fabricated plot but have gone public with the information in order to provide comfort to the Jewish community in Sydney, Dave Hudson, New South Wales Police Deputy Commissioner, told the news conference.
“It was about causing chaos within the community, causing threat, causing angst, diverting police resources away from their day jobs, to have them focus on matters that would allow them to get up to or engage in other criminal activity,” Hudson said.
Police are investigating a suspect involved in an organized crime network, he added.
Australia has suffered a spate of antisemitic attacks in recent months, with homes, schools, synagogues, and vehicles targeted by vandalism and arson, drawing the ire of the country’s traditional ally Israel.
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Israel Urging UN Agencies, Aid Groups to Replace UNRWA in Gaza, Envoy Says
A truck, marked with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) logo, crosses into Egypt from Gaza, at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, during a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah, Egypt, Nov. 27, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Israel is actively encouraging UN agencies and other aid groups to take over the work of the UN Palestinian relief agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, Israel‘s ambassador said on Monday, after banning the agency on Israeli territory in January.
“We, the State of Israel, are working to find substitute to the act, to the work of UNRWA inside Gaza,” Daniel Meron, Israel‘s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told reporters.
He declined to give specifics but said Israel was “encouraging the UN agencies and NGOs to take over each one in its own field that they specialize in.”
The Israeli government and research organizations have publicized findings showing numerous UNRWA-employed staff, including teachers and school principals, are active Hamas members, some of whom were directly involved in the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, while many others openly celebrated it.
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Man Who Scaled London’s ‘Big Ben’ Clock Tower With Palestinian Flag Appears in Court
A man with a Palestinian flag sits on the Elizabeth Tower, commonly known as Big Ben, next to Houses of Parliament, in London, Britain, March 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
A man who climbed part way up the “Big Ben” clock tower at London’s Palace of Westminster early on Saturday and stayed there all day as part of a pro-Palestinian protest appeared in court on Monday.
Clutching a Palestinian flag, Daniel Day, 29, scaled 25 meters (82 feet) up the building, officially known as the Elizabeth Tower, at about 7:20 am on Saturday, remaining there for 16 hours until agreeing to come down, his lawyer and prosecutors told London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
He was subsequently charged by police with climbing and remaining on the tower which created “a risk or caused serious harm to the public,” and also trespassing on a protected site.
Prosecutors said Day’s actions had led to serious disruption in that area of central London with roads closed and buses diverted, and the cancellation of parliamentary tours had cost 25,000 pounds ($32,300).
Day’s lawyer said he would plead not guilty to the first charge, saying his action was designed to spread awareness regarding the situation in Gaza and Britain’s response to it.
The second charge of trespass requires the authorization of the attorney general, and so the case was adjourned until March 17 for a decision to be made.
Day, from a seaside town in eastern England, was remanded in custody, with his supporters clapping and shouting “Hero” and “Free Palestine” as he was led away.
Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker of parliament’s House of Commons, which is also located in the Palace of Westminster, said he had asked for a review of the incident.
($1 = 0.7745 pounds)
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