International
Kamala Harris Secures Democratic Presidential Nomination

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
International
South African Court Halts Burial of Former Zambian President Mid-Ceremony

In a dramatic turn of events, a South African court has intervened to halt the burial of a former Zambian president, president Edgar Lungu, temporarily suspending the proceedings mid-ceremony.
Lungu, who died on June 5 while seeking medical care in South Africa, was a rival of President Hakainde Hichilema, who wanted to lead a state funeral for his predecessor in Zambia.
Lungu’s family opposed the plans and blocked his body from being repatriated, saying he would not have wanted Hichilema at his funeral.
Zambia in turn filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the burial in South Africa.In a ruling delivered as Lungu’s widow and other mourners were already gathered in the church, a Gauteng region High Court judge said that, after an agreement between the parties, “respondents undertake not to proceed with the funeral or burial of the late president”.
The case will be heard on August 4, he said, in a decision that was carried by national broadcaster SABC — which also showed live images of people gathered for the service for Lungu, president from 2015 to 2021.
The adjournment “is extending the pain, the grief, that the family and the people are going through”, Zambian lawmaker Chanda Katotobwe, part of the delegation present at the memorial service, told SABC News.
The cause of the former president’s death at age 68 was not announced. He had been receiving specialised treatment in a clinic in Pretoria, his Patriotic Front party said.
International
Cargo ship carrying 3,000 vehicles, including 800 EVs, sinks in the Pacific Ocean
The shipping company said that the cargo ship had sunk on June 23.

A cargo ship that caught fire earlier this month in the Pacific Ocean has sunk, its manager has said.
MINT reports that The Morning Midas, which was left abandoned as it caught fire, was carrying about 3,000 vehicles, among which around 800 were electric vehicles.
Electric vehicles contain lithium-ion batteries, which are generally safe but can overheat and ignite if damaged.
The shipping company said that the cargo ship had sunk on June 23.
Zodiac Maritime in a statement further said that the damage caused by the fire was compounded by heavy weather, and subsequently water entered inside the vessel, causing it to sink.
Credit: MINT
Crime
JUST IN: Russia attacks Ukraine, kill 11

Russian missiles on Tuesday crashed into schools, hospitals and kindergartens in central Ukraine, killing at least 11 and wounding dozens more in a region coming under mounting pressure.
The attacks came as President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in the Netherlands to meet with allies on the sidelines of the NATO defence alliance summit.
He is expected to meet with US President Donald Trump on Wednesday to discuss more sanctions on Russia and arms procurement, a senior Ukrainian source told AFP.
Emergency services in the Dnipropetrovsk region, now threatened by Russian battlefield advances, published photos of rescuers helping civilians covered in blood after the attack.
“This is not a fight where it’s hard to choose a side. Standing with Ukraine means defending life,” Zelensky said after the attack.
Ukraine’s foreign minister said the strikes amounted to a “rejection of peace” from Russia, which has rejected US and Ukrainian ceasefire proposals.
“It is a matter of credibility for allies to step up pressure on Moscow,” Andriy Sybiga said.
Ukrainian police said 11 residents of Dnipro were killed and two more were left dead in the nearby town of Samar. More than 100 people were wounded, according to a statement.
Police added that an administrative building, shops, educational facilities and a children’s hospital were damaged.
– Toddler killed –
Russian forces, which invaded Ukraine just over three years ago, recently claimed to have reached the border of the central industrial Dnipropetrovsk region, to gain a foothold there for the first time of the war.
The attacks on Dnipro city, the region’s capital, came just hours after deadly overnight drone attacks.
Three people including a toddler were killed earlier in the northeastern Sumy region that borders Russia during the barrage, local officials said.Oleg Grygorov, head of the Sumy region’s military administration, said a five-year-old boy was pulled from the rubble of a destroyed house.
“The strike took the lives of people from different families. They all lived on the same street. They went to sleep in their homes but the Russian drones interrupted their sleep — forever,” he said.
One man died next to his spouse in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s western border region of Belgorod, the region’s governor said, adding that the woman survived the attack.
Another drone had targeted a residential building in Moscow overnight, wounding two people, including a pregnant woman, the local authorities said.
Russia occupies around a fifth of Ukraine and claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions as its own since launching its invasion in 2022 — in addition to Crimea, which it captured in 2014.Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately sabotaging peace talks to prolong its full-scale offensive and to seize more territory.
AFP
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