Haley ends Trump’s undefeated run with victory in DC primary
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley notched her first victory of the 2024 primary campaign, besting former President Donald Trump in Washington D.C. Haley won the contest with nearly 63% of the vote, according to an Associated Press call of the race about 90 minutes after polls closed Sunday. The results mean the former South Carolina governor will walk away with 19 delegates. Sunday’s primary had a lower turnout than in 2016. The tally now stands at 244 for Trump and 43 for Haley. Washington D.C. represented Haley’s possible best shot at notching a victory and ending Trump’s undefeated primary streak. While Trump won the district in an uncontested 2020 primary, he finished a distant third behind Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich during the 2016 primary. The district also leans heavily towards Democrats, with President Biden garnering 92% of the Washington D.C. vote in the 2020 Election. TRUMP WINS THE MICHIGAN GOP PRIMARY, BRINGING HIM ONE STEP CLOSER TO SECURING REPUBLICAN NOMINATION Trump has so far made easy work of this year’s GOP primary, notching victories in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, the Virgin Islands, South Carolina and Michigan. The seemingly easy stream of wins has solidified the former president’s frontrunner status in the race, with the campaign telling Fox News Digital ahead of the results that they have already begun to look forward to the general election. “Republican voters have delivered resounding wins for President Trump in every single primary contest and this race is over,” a spokesperson for the campaign said. “Our focus is now on Joe Biden and the general election.” DC PRIMARY REPRESENTS HALEY’S BEST CHANCE YET TO BEAT TRUMP The former president held a commanding lead heading into Washington D.C.’s contest, holding ten times as many delegates as Haley before his first primary loss. Trump still holds a commanding lead heading into the most important week on the calendar, with Haley only gaining 19 with the victory in the nation’s capital. Haley, meanwhile, has remained as the only other contender in the field, vowing to stay in the race despite a recent loss in her home state of South Carolina. The Haley campaign will look to carry the momentum to Monday’s contest in North Dakota, where 29 delegates will be up for grabs and this week’s “Super Tuesday,” where voters in 15 states will head to the polls to determine who gets a share of 865 total delegates. Haley has invested heavily in Super Tuesday, with her campaign announcing a seven-figure ad-buy in various states set to vote that day last week. The magic number to secure the nomination is 1,215 delegates, meaning no candidate will become the presumptive nominee yet in the upcoming week.
Thousands of inmates escape prison amid deepening Haiti violence
At least 12 people reported dead as gangs pushing for prime minister’s removal attack two prisons. At least 12 people have been killed as thousands of inmates escaped the main prison in Port-au-Prince in deepening gang violence designed to remove Prime Minister Ariel Henry from power. Gangs led by Jimmy Cherizier, a former police officer known as Barbecue, attacked the jail in the country’s capital overnight on Saturday. Pierre Esperance of the National Network for Defense of Human Rights said only about 100 of the National Penitentiary’s estimated 3,800 inmates remained inside after the assault. “We counted many prisoners’ bodies,” he added. A reporter from the AFP news agency who visited the prison on Sunday said they saw about a dozen bodies outside it. The gate was open and there was “hardly anyone” left inside, they added. The Reuters news agency reported that there were no signs of police officers at the prison and its main door was open. “I’m the only one left in my cell,” one unidentified inmate told Reuters. “We were asleep when we heard the sound of bullets. The cell barriers are broken.” In a statement, the Haitian government said police tried to repel the gang attack against that prison and at another facility called Croix des Bouquets. Esperance said it was not immediately clear how many inmates escaped from the second prison, which he said held 1,450 inmates. The government said the attacks left “several wounded” among prison staff and inmates. In a statement, it thanked “the population for their calm, despite these very difficult times.” Violence in Haiti has spiralled in recent days after calls by Cherizier for criminal groups to unite and overthrow Henry. Cherizier heads an alliance of gangs and faces sanctions from the United Nations and the United States. One voluntary prison worker on Sunday said that 99 prisoners had opted to remain in their cells in the main jail for fear of being killed in the crossfire. These included several retired Colombian soldiers who were jailed for their alleged involvement in the assassination of former President Jovenel Moise. Authorities warned people to be careful and “to continue to support the National Police who will do everything possible to track down fleeing prisoners and arrest those responsible for these acts”, the statement read. The prime minister’s exact whereabouts remained unclear on Sunday. Henry had been due to return from a visit to Kenya, where he signed a security deal to tackle gang violence. Nearly 15,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in recent days, with 10 sites hosting internally displaced people emptied over the weekend, according to the United Nations’s International Organization for Migration (IOM). Henry, who became prime minister in 2021 after Moise’s assassination, was supposed to step down by early February, but told a regional summit in Guyana before travelling to Kenya that he would only hold elections by August 2025 once the situation was more stable. The last elections took place in 2016. Adblock test (Why?)
US VP Harris calls for ‘immediate’ Gaza ceasefire in rare rebuke of Israel
Kamala Harris says ‘no excuses’ for Israel not to increase flow of aid to Palestinians in Gaza. United States Vice President Kamala Harris has called for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza while issuing a rare rebuke of Israel. “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table,” Harris said on Sunday. “This will get the hostages out and get a significant amount of aid in.” In some of the strongest criticism of Israel yet by the administration of US President Joe Biden, Harris said Israel must do more to allow the delivery of aid, including opening new border crossings and committing not to impose “unnecessary restrictions”. “People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane and our common humanity compels us to act,” Harris said during a speech to mark the violent suppression of civil rights protesters by police in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965. “The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses.” What we are seeing every day in Gaza is devastating, and our common humanity compels us to act. Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks. pic.twitter.com/mst8N9HxKa — Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) March 3, 2024 Harris also addressed Thursday’s incident during which more than 100 Palestinians were killed as they tried to access food aid in Gaza City, saying that “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”. “Our hearts break for the victims of that horrific tragedy,” she said. Harris also challenged Hamas to accept the terms of a ceasefire deal that US officials say has been broadly accepted by Israel. “Hamas needs to agree to that deal,” she said. “Let’s get a ceasefire. Let’s reunite the hostages with their families. And let’s provide immediate relief to the people of Gaza.” Harris’s comments come as Biden is facing mounting pressure from left-leaning voters over his support for Israel ahead of November’s presidential election. Democrats are increasingly concerned that Biden’s stance on the war could cost him votes, especially in Michigan, one of a handful of battleground states likely to decide the outcome of the election. During the Democratic primary in Michigan last week, more than 100,000 voters cast a vote for “uncommitted” in a rebuke of the president’s position on Gaza. Biden won Michigan, which has one of the largest Muslim populations in the country, by only about 150,000 votes in 2020. Former President Donald Trump carried Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016, becoming the first Republican to win the Midwestern state since 1988. Adblock test (Why?)
PM Narendra Modi to visit Chennai today, 15000 cops deployed
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Chennai on March 4 for a government event in Kalpakkam.
Delhi HC to hear wrestlers’ plea against WFI elections today
The petition by the wrestlers, who were at the forefront of last year’s protest at Jantar Mantar here demanding the arrest of former WFI chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.
JEE Main 2024 session 2: Registration window closing today; check how to apply
As per the previous schedule, the deadline to apply for the JEE Main Session 2 Exam 2024 was initially set on March 2, 2024. However, the NTA has extended the application deadline till March 4, 2024.
PM Modi chairs Council of Ministers’ meet brainstorm over ‘Viksit Bharat’ vision
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday chaired a day-long meeting of his Council of Ministers as they brainstormed over the vision document for “Viksit Bharat: 2047” and a detailed action plan for the next five years.
Panhandle residents begin rebuilding, even as fight to contain fires continues
The fire that engulfed their town was only 15% contained over the weekend, but Canadian residents were back to selling flowers and preparing for an election.
AG Garland pledges to fight voter ID laws, election integrity measures
Attorney General Merrick Garland appeared alongside Vice President Kamala Harris in Selma, Alabama on Sunday where he pledged to fight voter ID laws and other election integrity measures that he deemed “discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary.” Their appearance marked the 59th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday attacks on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama. Speaking at a Selma church service to mark the anniversary of the attack by Alabama law officers on civil rights demonstrators, Garland recounted the history of voting rights since the end of slavery – a history which, he told the crowd, has “never been steady” for Black Americans and “other voters of color.” He lamented that in recent years, certain measures such as voter ID laws and redistricting maps have made it harder “for millions of eligible voters to vote and to elect the representatives of their choice.” BIDEN ADMIN ACCUSED OF USING TAXPAYER FUNDS TO HELP HIS OWN CAMPAIGN WITH STUDENT VOTER REGISTRATION SCHEME “Those measures include practices and procedures that make voting more difficult; redistricting maps that disadvantage minorities; and changes in voting administration that diminish the authority of locally elected or nonpartisan election administrators,” Garland told worshippers at Selma’s Tabernacle Baptist Church, the site of one of the first mass meetings of the voting rights movement. “Such measures threaten the foundation of our system of government.” Garland said the DOJ was “fighting back.” He pointed to having doubled the number of lawyers in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, and his legal challenges to state and jurisdictions to implement when he deemed “discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on access to the ballot, including those related to mail-in voting, the use of drop boxes, and voter ID requirements. Polls consistently show that huge majorities of Americans favor voter ID. “That is why we are working to block the adoption of discriminatory redistricting plans that dilute the vote of Black voters and other voters of color,” he said, later adding that the DOJ “recognizes the urgency of this moment.” Garland’s remarks come at a time when illegal immigration into the country is at historic highs.
Around 170 people executed in Burkina Faso attacks, regional official says
The West African Sahel nation has been struggling to contain armed groups for a decade. Around 170 people were “executed” in attacks on three villages in northern Burkina Faso a week ago, a regional prosecutor has said, as violence flares in the country. Aly Benjamin Coulibaly said in a statement on Sunday that he had received reports of the attacks on the villages of Komsilga, Nodin and Soroe in Yatenga province on February 25, with a provisional toll of “around 170 people executed”. The attacks left others wounded and caused material damage, the prosecutor for the northern town of Ouahigouya said, without apportioning blame to any group. He said his office ordered an investigation and appealed to the public for information. Ongoing violence Survivors of the attacks told news agency AFP that dozens of women and young children were among the victims. Local security sources cited by AFP said the attacks were separate from deadly incidents that happened on the same day at a mosque in the rural community of Natiaboani in eastern Burkina Faso and a church in the northern village of Essakane. Authorities have yet to release an official death toll for those attacks, but a senior church official said at the time that at least 15 civilians were killed in the Natiaboani attack. About half of Burkina Faso is outside government control, as armed groups have ravaged the country for years. The violence has killed almost 20,000 people and displaced more than two million people in one of the world’s poorest countries in a region wracked by instability. Anger at the state’s inability to end the insecurity played a major role in two military coups in 2022. Current head of state Captain Ibrahim Traore has prioritised a strong security response in reclaiming land from the rebel groups. Ali Kabre, an independent journalist based in the capital, Ouagadougou, told Al Jazeera that the attacks were likely an attempt by armed groups to show they are “still relevant in the country” after being put on the back foot by the military who have targeted them with regular air strikes. Ibrahim Traore gives a news conference on October 2, 2022, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso [Anadolu Agency] Coordinated attacks There were a number of attacks on February 25, notably against a military detachment in Tankoualou in the east, a rapid response battalion in Kongoussi in the north and soldiers in the northern region of Ouahigouya. In response, the army and members of the Volunteers for the Defence of the Fatherland (VDP), a civilian force that supports the military, launched operations that were able “to neutralise several hundred terrorists”, according to security sources cited by AFP. At the beginning of the week, Security Minister Mahamadou Sana described the wave of attacks as “coordinated”. “This change in the enemy’s tactical approach is because terrorist bases have been destroyed as well as training camps, and actions were carried out to dry up the enemy’s source of financing, as well as its supply corridors,” said Sana. Mosques and imams have in the past been the target of attacks blamed on armed groups. Churches in Burkina Faso have also at times been targeted and Christians have been kidnapped. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) says that 439 people were killed in such violence in January alone. Adblock test (Why?)