Author: chicagoinquirer

by Seung Min Kim and Jonathan J. Cooper WASHINGTON — The crowds are psyched. The campaign donations are flooding in. Volunteers are showing up at field offices in droves. After a mostly smooth two-week campaign startup, Vice President Kamala Harris is headed into a crucial week that includes her most critical decision yet — choosing a running mate — while grappling with how to keep that early political momentum alive. Harris, a former prosecutor known for being deliberative, effectively has a deadline of Tuesday to select who will be her No. 2 from a list that has been whittled down…

by Chinedu Asadu ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigeria’s leader on Sunday called for an end to mass protests over economic hardship, saying the rallies have turned violent and blaming “a few with a political agenda” for driving them. The protests, which began Thursday, have been accompanied by reports of looting and vandalism, as well as accusations that security forces have used excessive force. Amnesty International has reported the deaths of nine protesters in clashes with police, while another four were killed by a bomb. The Nigerian police denied the Amnesty report. “I have heard you loud and clear,” President Bola Tinubu…

by Go Nakamura and Ted Hesson HEREFORD – Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance blamed Vice President Kamala Harris for illegal immigration during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona on Thursday and claimed that migrants were overwhelming U.S. schools and hospitals. Vance, speaking in front of the border wall in the town of Hereford, called Harris a failed “border czar” and said she should have worked with U.S. agencies to deal with illegal crossings, even though Harris was tasked with a narrower role of addressing migration from Northern Central America. “Kamala Harris as border czar was asked to…

by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Karen Braun PARIS -If anyone needed any confirmation about Simone Biles’ standing in gymnastics, the sparkling GOAT necklace she slipped on and ecstatically showed off to the camera after she sealed the all around title at the Paris Olympics on Thursday confirmed her number one status. The world’s most decorated gymnast clinched her sixth Olympic gold medal in front of a delirious crowd at Bercy Arena after she left all her challengers in her shade, completing a triumphant comeback three years after withdrawing from the same final at the Tokyo Games. In a tight race between…

Moscow – Russian nationals involved in a complex swap of prisoners with Western countries arrived in Moscow late on Thursday and were met at the airport by President Vladimir Putin, Russian news agencies reported. The agencies quoted Putin as saying that the eight returnees would all be presented with state awards and that he told them that their homeland “had not forgotten them, not for a single minute”. Also meeting the returnees, according to the agencies, were the head of the FSB intelligence service, Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the SVR foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, and Defence Minister Andrei…

by Thomas Escritt, Sarah Marsh and Kirsti Knolle BERLIN -The German government said it had not taken lightly the decision to release Vadim Krasikov, a Russian convicted of the murder of a former Chechen militant in Berlin in 2019, as part of a major prisoner swap between Moscow and the West on Thursday. Krasikov was among the Russians released by the West in exchange for 15 people imprisoned “unjustly” in Russia and a German who had been sentenced to death in Belarus, the German government said in a statement. Those released from Russia included U.S. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan…

by Andrew Osborn, Filipp Lebedev, Lucy Papachristou MOSCOW/ANKARA – Jailed U.S. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and ex-U.S. Marine Paul Whelan were among two dozen detainees from the United States, Russia and a number of their allies freed on Thursday in the biggest prisoner exchange since the Cold War. The White House said the U.S. had negotiated the complex trade with Russia and other countries. It said eight prisoners held in the West were being sent back to Russia. Germany confirmed that they included Vadim Krasikov, convicted of murdering an exiled dissident in Berlin. Turkey, which coordinated the exchange,…

by Trevor Hunnicutt WASHINGTON -The landmark prisoner swap agreed by Russia, the United States and several of its allies that brought home journalist Evan Gershkovich and former marine Paul Whelan and freed 14 others was more than two years in the making, involving secret talks and complex diplomacy involving Germany, Russia and the U.S., which all had divergent interests. It nearly didn’t happen. This chronology is based on three interviews with senior Biden administration officials and public statements, and includes information from other governments and the Wall Street Journal. The Russian embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for…

y Andrew Goudsward WASHINGTON – The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday debuted its first-ever whistleblower program offering monetary awards to tipsters who report certain types of corporate misconduct, an effort designed to ratchet up the pressure on companies who face allegations of wrongdoing. The program, which officials previewed in March, is designed to fill gaps in existing U.S. government whistleblower programs and incentivize both people with knowledge of corporate wrongdoing and companies who might be implicated to inform the government. “We’re doubling down on a proven strategy to ferret out criminal activity that might otherwise go unreported,” Deputy Attorney General…

by Luc Cohen and Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK -A New York state appeals court on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s challenge to a gag order in his hush money criminal case, where the former U.S. president was convicted in May on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star. The decision by the Appellate Division in Manhattan means the Republican presidential nominee cannot comment publicly about individual prosecutors and others in the case until Justice Juan Merchan sentences him on Sept. 18, seven weeks before the Nov. 5 election. Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for…