Harris introduces new running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as the 'vice president America deserves'
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Kamala Harris introduced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to the nation at a raucous rally Tuesday in battleground Pennsylvania that was aimed at building momentum for the newly minted Democratic presidential ticket in the sprint toward Election Day.
“He’s the kind of person who makes people feel like they belong and then inspires them to dream big. ... That’s the kind of vice president America deserves,” Harris said while standing with Walz in Philadelphia.
Taking the microphone after Harris, Walz revved up the crowd for the rigorous campaign to come. “We’ve got 91 days. My God, that’s easy. We’ll sleep when we’re dead," he said.
The remarks reflected the urgency of the moment, with Harris tapping Walz for the ticket during one of the most turbulent periods in modern American politics. Republicans have rallied around former President Donald Trump after he was targeted in an attempted assassination in July. Just days later, President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign, forcing Harris to scramble to unify Democrats and decide on a running mate over a breakneck two-week stretch.
In choosing the 60-year-old Walz, Harris is elevating a Midwestern governor, military veteran and union supporter who helped enact an ambitious Democratic agenda for his state, including sweeping protections for abortion rights and generous aid to families.
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Takeaways from a Harris-Walz ticket now that the stage is set for a reimagined presidential race
WASHINGTON (AP) — The stage is set for an election that was unimaginable mere weeks ago when President Joe Biden was atop the Democratic ticket. Now Vice President Kamala Harrishas tapped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate to take on Republican Donald Trump and his No. 2, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
As different as they are, Walz and Vance both qualify as picks meant to reassure their party’s loyal base voters rather than adding homegrown heft in a critical battleground state.
The two No. 2s will also get a chance to square off in almost real time as Walz is traveling this week with Harris to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada, while Vance will follow an overlapping itinerary to offer his own counterprograming in some places.
Some takeaways on the race now that Harris has settled on Walz:
Opting for the Minnesota governor immediately calms the Democratic Party’s left wing, which was worried that another contender, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, might have pushed the party closer to Israel and disheartened Arab American and younger voters. Some in Harris' inner circle saw Walz as a do-no-harm choice who can keep the party unified heading into the Democratic National Convention opening in Chicago on Aug. 19.
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Tropical Storm Debby drenches Southeast with rain, high water as it drifts along the Atlantic coast
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Tropical Storm Debby drenched coastal cities in Georgia and South Carolina, stirred up tornadoes and submerged streets with waist-high floodwaters Tuesday in what is just the beginning of a prolonged storm that could dump staggering rain totals of up to 25 inches (64 centimeters).
Charleston and Savannah took the first blow, with up to a foot (30 centimeters) of rain falling along the coast between the two cities in just over 24 hours. Police blocked all the roads into Charleston’s downtown peninsula as a precaution. Dozens of roads were closed in the historic city because of flooding similar to what it sees several times a year because of rising sea levels.
As Debby swirls just offshore, the heavy rain is expected to move north into parts of South Carolina and North Carolina that have already seen two billion-dollar floods in eight years.
In one Savannah neighborhood, firefighters used boats Tuesday afternoon to evacuate some residents and waded in waist-deep in floodwaters to deliver bottled water and supplies to others who refused to leave.
Michael Jones said downpours sent water gushing into his home Monday evening, overturning the refrigerator and causing furniture to float. Outside, the water seemed to be everywhere and was too deep to flee safely. So Jones spent a sleepless night on his kitchen table before firefighters going door-to-door came to his home in a boat Tuesday morning.
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Hamas names Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks, as its new leader in show of defiance
BEIRUT (AP) — Hamas on Tuesday named Yahya Sinwar, its top official in Gaza who masterminded the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, as its new leader in a dramatic sign of the power of the Palestinian militant group's hardline wing after his predecessor was killed in a presumed Israeli strike in Iran.
The selection of Sinwar, a secretive figure close to Iran who worked for years to build up Hamas' military strength, was a defiant signal that the group is prepared to keep fighting after 10 months of destruction from Israel's campaign in Gaza and after the assassination of Sinwar's predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh.
It is also likely to provoke Israel, which has put him at the top of its kill list after the Oct. 7 attack, in which militants killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took about 250 as hostages.
The announcement comes at volatile moment. Fears are high of an escalation into a wider regional war, with Iran vowing revenge against Israel over Haniyeh's killing and Lebanon's Hezbollah threatening to retaliate over Israel's killing of one of its top commanders in an airstrike in Beirut last week. American, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are trying to salvage negotiations over a cease-fire and hostage release deal in Gaza, shaken by Haniyeh' killing.
Hamas said in a statement it named Sinwar as the new head of its political bureau to replace Haniyeh, who was killed in a blast that Iran and Hamas blamed on Israel. Israel has not confirmed or denied responsibility. Also last week, Israel said it had confirmed the death of the head of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, in a July airstrike in Gaza. Hamas has not confirmed his death.
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Pakistani man with ties to Iran is charged in plot to carry out political assassinations on US soil
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Pakistani man alleged to have ties to Iran has been charged in a plot to carry out political assassinations on U.S. soil, including potentially of former President Donald Trump.
The case disclosed by the Justice Department on Tuesday is the latest murder-for-hire plot originating from abroad to target American public figures, coming two years after officials disrupted a separate scheme that they said was aimed at former Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton.
Asif Merchant traveled to New York in June for the purpose of meeting with men he thought he was recruiting to carry out the killings, even paying a $5,000 advance to two would-be assassins who were actually undercover law enforcement officers, federal officials said. He was arrested last month as he prepared to leave the U.S. and after having told the men that he would provide further instructions, including the names of the intended targets, in August or September after he returned to Pakistan.
Court documents do not identify any of the potential targets. But U.S. officials acknowledged last month that a threat on Donald Trump’s life from Iran prompted additional security in the days before a Pennsylvania rally in which Trump was injured by a gunman's bullet. That July 13 shooting, carried out by a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man, was unrelated to the Iran threat and Merchant's arrest has no connection to the Trump assassination attempt, a law enforcement official said.
But an FBI agent's affidavit suggests Merchant had current or former high-level officials like Trump in mind. He told an associate who was secretly cooperating with law enforcement that he wanted a “political person" to be killed, the complaint said, mapping out on a napkin the different scenarios in which the target could be assassinated and warning that there would be security “all around."
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Weak spots in metal may have led to fatal Osprey crash off Japan, documents obtained by AP reveal
WASHINGTON (AP) — A gear crack that led to a fatal crash of a V-22 Osprey last year may have been started by weak spots in a metal used to manufacture that part, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The November crash killed eight Air Force Special Operations Command service members. It was the second time in less than two years that a catastrophic failure of a part of the Osprey's proprotor gearbox, which serves as its transmission, caused a fatal accident. In June of 2022, five Marines were killed when a different part of the proprotor gearbox system failed.
The crashes have led to an aggressive effort by the V-22 program office and manufacturer Bell Flight to find fixes for the critical system, which has had some components wear down earlier than the military expected. While investigators still don't know for certain what caused either crash, this latest finding might hold some clues.
There’s no other aircraft like the Osprey in the fleet. It can speed to a target like an airplane then rotate its engines to land like a helicopter. Program leaders have pointed out that the Osprey has been vital in special operations and combat missions and has flown hundreds of thousands of hours successfully.
But the aircraft also has a troubled crash history, and the proprotor gearbox has been a persistent problem.
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A Nobel laureate will head Bangladesh's interim government after unrest ousted Hasina, official says
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus will head Bangladesh's interim government after longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country amid a mass uprising that left hundreds of people dead and pushed the South Asian nation to the brink of chaos.
The decision, announced early Wednesday by Joynal Abedin, the press secretary of the country’s figurehead President Mohammed Shahabuddin, came during a meeting that included military chiefs, organizers of the student protests that helped drive Hasina from power, prominent business leaders and civil society members.
A longtime political opponent of Hasina, Yunus is expected to return soon from Paris, where he is advising Olympic organizers, media reports said.
An economist and banker, he was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work developing microcredit markets. Yunus has been hailed for bringing thousands out of poverty through Grameen Bank, which he founded in 1983, and which makes small loans to businesspeople who wouldn't qualify for regular bank loans.
Other members of the new government would be decided soon, after discussions with political parties and other stakeholders, Abedin said. The president had dissolved Parliament on Tuesday, clearing the way for an interim administration and new elections.
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Calm returns to Wall Street, and stocks bounce back after their worst drop in nearly 2 years
NEW YORK (AP) — A rising tide swept stocks higher, and calm returned to Wall Street after Japan’s market soared earlier Tuesday to claw back much of the losses from its worst day since 1987.
The S&P 500 climbed 1% to break a brutal three-day losing streak. It had tumbled a bit more than 6% on a raft of concerns, including worries the Federal Reserve had pressed the brakes too hard for too long on the U.S. economy through high interest rates in order to beat inflation.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 294 points, or 0.8%, while the Nasdaq composite gained 1%. Stocks of all kinds climbed in a mirror opposite of the day before, from smaller companies that need U.S. households to keep spending to huge multinationals more dependent on the global economy.
Stronger-than-expected profit reports from several big U.S. companies helped drive the market. Kenvue, the company behind Tylenol and Band-Aids, jumped 14.7% after reporting stronger profit than expected thanks in part to higher prices for its products. Uber rolled 10.9% higher after easily topping profit forecasts for the latest quarter.
Caterpillar climbed 3% after the maker of heavy machinery reported stronger earnings than expected.
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Fossils suggest even smaller ‘hobbits’ roamed an Indonesian island 700,000 years ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Twenty years ago on an Indonesian island, scientists discovered fossils of an early human species that stood at about 3 1/2 feet (1.07 meters) tall — earning them the nickname “hobbits.”
Now a new study suggests ancestors of the hobbits were even slightly shorter.
“We did not expect that we would find smaller individuals from such an old site,” study co-author Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo said in an email.
The original hobbit fossils — named by the discoverers after characters in “The Lord of the Rings” — date back to between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. The new fossils were excavated at a site called Mata Menge, about 45 miles from the cave where the first hobbit remains were uncovered.
In 2016, researchers suspected the earlier relatives could be shorter than the hobbits after studying a jawbone and teeth collected from the new site. Further analysis of a tiny arm bone fragment and teeth suggests the ancestors were a mere 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) shorter and existed 700,000 years ago.
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Boxer Imane Khelif advances to gold-medal bout with another victory amid gender misconceptions
PARIS (AP) — Boxer Imane Khelif of Algeria advanced to the gold-medal bout in the women’s welterweight division at the Paris Olympics on Tuesday night, moving one win away from what she calls the best response to the worldwide scrutiny she has faced over misconceptions about her gender.
With one more victory, Khelif would win Algeria’s second boxing gold medal and its first in women's boxing.
Khelif defeated Janjaem Suwannapheng of Thailand 5:0 in the semifinals at Roland Garros, where the crowd roared for her and chanted her name repeatedly during her three-round fight. Khelif has won three consecutive bouts in Paris, and she will win either a gold or a silver medal when she completes the tournament on Friday against Yang Liu of China.
Khelif has thrived inside the ring in Paris amid criticism and stigmatization outside of it. The trouble has stemmed from the Olympic-banished International Boxing Association’s decision to disqualify her and fellow Paris medalist Lin Yu-ting of Chinese Taipei from the world championships last year for allegedly failing an eligibility test.
The controversy has become one of the biggest stories of the Paris Olympics, but it isn't causing any negative effects on her performances in the ring.
The Associated Press
