"Cat Lady, Brat": Media Attacks On Kamala Harris Follow A Bleak Pattern

07/27/24 11:42 AM

Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. And while she will not be the Democrat's first woman nominee, nor the first person of colour, she faces the compounding challenge of being both.

'Back to zero': Manila flood victims clean up, start again

07/25/24 10:20 AM

Manila street vendor Zenaida Cuerda said Thursday she is "back to zero" after floodwaters washed away the food she sells for a living and swept through her house.She is one of thousands in the Philippine capital coming to terms with their losses from the relentless rain, after Typhoon Gaemi intensified the seasonal monsoon."All my capital is gone. I have nothing now," Cuerda told AFP, as she wiped away tears outside the concrete house she shares with her sister."I don't have a husband anymore. I can't rely on my children because they have their own families," she said.At least 20 people were killed in Manila and surrounding provinces as the heavy rain triggered floods and landslides.More than 320 millimetres (12 inches) of rain fell in the capital in the 24 hours to 8:00 am (0000 GMT) on Thursday.Floodwaters quickly reached chest-height in parts of the city, trapping vehicles and forcing people to use small boats to get around.When the waters receded, they left behind muddy streets strewn with rubbish and other debris.As AFP journalists drove around the city on Thursday, mattresses, wooden furniture and bags of rubbish were piled outside houses and shops as people got on with the task of cleaning up.At the pharmacy where he works, Pedro Parado was still coming to terms with the suddenness of the flooding."We couldn't believe that the floods would be that great. Everyone here was surprised," Parado, 40, told AFP."When the rain poured, we went upstairs. We carried all of our things, including the medicines, so they wouldn't get wet."President Ferdinand Marcos joined relief efforts on Thursday, handing out food parcels to people hardest hit by the floods who also tend to be the city's poorest.Marcos said more areas of the city were flooded than when Typhoon Ketsana, known in the Philippines as Tropical Storm Ondoy, hit in 2009."The amount of water was as not as bad as Ondoy, but the effect was greater than Ondoy," Marcos said in a hard-scrabble neighbourhood near Manila Bay."This is what the effects of climate change are."Despite having experienced flooding in the past, Cuerda thought she would avoid it this time after authorities deepened the river next to her house."We really thought we weren't going to be flooded," she said."Everything was so sudden. We're now back to zero. It's always like this."

'Completely unhinged': Trump stuns with demand that Iran be 'obliterated'

07/25/24 6:54 PM

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday he hopes the U.S. "obliterates Iran" in a post quoting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Trump suggested Iran's approximately 88.55 million citizens should die if an Iranian plot to assassinate him — first revealed to the public earlier this month and denied by Irani officials — proves successful. "If they do 'assassinate President Trump,' which is always a possibility, I hope that America obliterates Iran, wipes it off the face of the Earth," Trump wrote. "If that does not happen, American Leaders will be considered 'gutless' cowards!"Trump also shared a clip from Netanyahu's congressional address Wednesday during which he said, "they brazenly threatened to assassinate President Trump." In the same speech, Netanyahu scolded protesters outside as "Iran's useful idiots," claiming without evidence the nation was funding anti-Israel protests. EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s ‘secretary of retribution’ has a ‘target list’ of 350 people he wants arrestedA national security official told CNN on July 16 that the Secret Service was made aware of an Iranian threat before the July 13 rally when a 20-year-old with an AR-style rifle attempted to assassinate Trump. The Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations denied such a plot in a comment to CNN.“These accusations are unsubstantiated and malicious," a spokesperson told CNN. "From the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law."The spokesperson referenced Qasem Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander killed by a U.S. airstrike at Baghdad International Airport in January 2020, CNN reports. "Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice,” the spokesperson said. Trump's threat arrived as Iranian officials openly threaten to build a nuclear weapon. According to the Associated Press, "Iran resumed progress on its nuclear program after the Trump administration ended U.S. cooperation with a 2015 deal that gave Iran relief from sanctions in return for allowing tougher oversight of the program." Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel in April, the Associated Press reports.Trump's comment was swiftly condemned by readers. "This is a bad man who is engaging in incitement to war crimes," replied the educational platform History Speaks on X. "No, we shouldn't 'obliterate Iran' or 'wipe it off the face of the earth' if they kill a former US President, although of course that would be an act of war. Trump has often promoted war crimes in his rhetoric.""This is completely unhinged, do you understand that?" wrote a user on Trump Media's Truth Social platform."We can't have a world leader who talks like this. He sounds like Kim Jong Un threatening to nuke California and we just laugh at him because we know he'll never do it."