Category: Новини

WASHINGTON — Emerging from their near-clean sweeps of Super Tuesday contests, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump head to Georgia, where they’ll campaign for votes in Tuesday’s presidential primary in a state that will play a pivotal role in deciding their fates in November.

For Trump, the day will likely have additional significance, as voters in Georgia and three other states may award him enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination for president. Biden’s first possible date to clinch has also moved up to March 12.

Aside from that, Georgia’s presidential primary will be largely anti-climactic. Trump’s main rival for the GOP nomination, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign this week after a rout on Super Tuesday, when she won the Vermont primary but lost 14 other contests. Biden also will face fewer challengers in the primary after U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota ended his campaign, although neither Phillips nor self-help author Marianne Williamson has had much of an impact on primary and caucus vote totals so far this campaign.

On Saturday, Biden will hold a campaign event in Atlanta, while about 70 miles (112 kilometers) away, Trump will hold a rally in Rome in northwest Georgia. It’s the second time in a little over a week the two will hold dueling events in a state about to hold a primary while eyeing the general election campaign to come. Biden and Trump were in Texas on Feb. 29 ahead of its presidential primary to hold immigration-themed events along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Georgia is likely again to play a key role in the general election as it did in 2020, when Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since Bill Clinton in 1992. Biden narrowly defeated Trump in Georgia by less than a quarter of a percentage point, a margin of 11,779 votes. Trump’s efforts to overturn those results are at the heart of an ongoing criminal case in Fulton County, although the judge is considering a motion to have District Attorney Fani Willis removed from the case.

Trump’s actions in Georgia and other swing states also play a role in a federal prosecution of his attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, but that case is on hold as the Supreme Court prepares to consider the Trump defense team’s argument that the former president is immune from prosecution.

Georgia is the biggest delegate prize and the only swing state among the contests taking place Tuesday. Super Tuesday put both Biden and Trump on the brink of having enough delegates to clinch their parties’ presidential nominations. Tuesday is the earliest either could reach that milestone.

The Associated Press allocated delegates from Delaware and Florida to Biden on Friday, as both states have canceled their Democratic presidential primaries, with all their delegates going to the sitting president. With that allocation, Biden’s first possible date to clinch moves up to March 12, when he needs to win just 40% of the available delegates to do so.

Here’s a look at what to expect on election night:

Primary day

The Georgia presidential primary will be held Tuesday. Polls close at 7 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot

The Associated Press will provide coverage for the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. The candidates listed on the Democratic ballot are Biden, Phillips and Williamson. Besides Trump and Haley, the Republican ballot will list Florida businessman David Stuckenberg and former candidates Ryan Binkley, Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson, Perry Johnson, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott.

Who can vote

Any registered voter may participate in either primary. Voters in Georgia do not register by party.

 

Delegate allocation rules

There are 108 pledged Democratic delegates at stake in Georgia, and they’re awarded according to the national party’s standard rules. Twenty-three at-large delegates are allocated in proportion to the statewide vote, as are 14 PLEO delegates, or “party leaders and elected officials.” The state’s 14 congressional districts have a combined 71 delegates at stake, which are allocated in proportion to the vote results in each district. Candidates must receive at least 15% of the statewide vote to qualify for any statewide delegates, and 15% of the vote in a congressional district to qualify for delegates in that district.

Georgia has 59 Republican delegates at stake in the primary. The 14 at-large delegates are awarded in proportion to the statewide vote to candidates who receive at least 20%. A combined 42 delegates are at stake in the 14 congressional districts, with three delegates per district. The candidate who wins a majority of the vote in a district wins that district’s three delegates. If no candidate wins a vote majority in a district, the top vote-getter wins two delegates, and the second-place finisher wins one. The state’s three Republican National Committee members, the state chair and the Republican National Committeeman and Committeewoman, are bound to the statewide winner.

Decision notes

Unlike the general election, Tuesday’s primaries in Georgia are not likely to be competitive, as Biden and Trump face no major opposition in their campaigns for renomination. In both races, the first indications that Biden and Trump are winning statewide on a level consistent with the overwhelming margins seen in most other contests held so far this year may be sufficient to determine the statewide winners.

 

What do turnout and advance voting look like

Turnout in 2022 was about 11% of registered voters in the Democratic primaries for U.S. Senate and governor. It was 17% in the GOP U.S. Senate primary and 18% in the gubernatorial primary. There were nearly 8 million registered voters in Georgia as of Feb. 13.

As of Thursday, nearly 359,000 ballots had been cast before Election Day, about 66% in the Republican primary and about 34% in the Democratic primary. In 2022, pre-Election Day voting made up about 51% of the total vote in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary and about 41% in the GOP gubernatorial primary.

Are we there yet?

As of Tuesday, there will be 125 days until the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, 160 days until the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and 238 until the November general election.
…

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS — Microsoft said Friday it’s still trying to evict the elite Russian government hackers who broke into the email accounts of senior company executives in November and who it said have been trying to breach customer networks with stolen access data.

The hackers from Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service used data obtained in the intrusion, which Microsoft disclosed in mid-January, to compromise some source-code repositories and internal systems, the software giant said in a blog and a regulatory filing.

A company spokesperson would not characterize what source code was accessed and what capability the hackers gained to further compromise customer and Microsoft systems. Microsoft said Friday that the hackers stole “secrets” from email communications between the company and unspecified customers — cryptographic secrets such as passwords, certificates and authentication keys — and that it was reaching out to them “to assist in taking mitigating measures.”

Cloud-computing company Hewlett Packard Enterprise disclosed on January 24 that it, too, was an SVR hacking victim and that it had been informed of the breach — by whom it would not say — two weeks earlier, coinciding with Microsoft’s discovery it had been hacked.

“The threat actor’s ongoing attack is characterized by a sustained, significant commitment of the threat actor’s resources, coordination and focus,” Microsoft said Friday, adding that it could be using obtained data “to accumulate a picture of areas to attack and enhance its ability to do so.”

Cybersecurity experts said Microsoft’s admission that the SVR hack had not been contained exposes the perils of the heavy reliance by government and business on the Redmond, Washington, company’s software monoculture — and the fact that so many of its customers are linked through its global cloud network.

“This has tremendous national security implications,” said Tom Kellermann of the cybersecurity firm Contrast Security. “The Russians can now leverage supply chain attacks against Microsoft’s customers.”

Amit Yoran, the CEO of Tenable, also issued a statement, expressing alarm and dismay. He is among security professionals who find Microsoft overly secretive about its vulnerabilities and how it handles hacks.

“We should all be furious that this keeps happening,” Yoran said. “These breaches aren’t isolated from each other, and Microsoft’s shady security practices and misleading statements purposely obfuscate the whole truth.”

Microsoft said it had not yet determined whether the incident is likely to materially affect its finances. It also said the intrusion’s stubbornness “reflects what has become more broadly an unprecedented global threat landscape, especially in terms of sophisticated nation-state attacks.”

The hackers, known as Cozy Bear, are the same hacking team behind the SolarWinds breach.

When it initially announced the hack, Microsoft said the SVR unit broke into its corporate email system and accessed accounts of some senior executives as well as employees on its cybersecurity and legal teams. It would not say how many accounts were compromised.

At the time, Microsoft said it was able to remove the hackers’ access from the compromised accounts on or about January 13. But by then, they clearly had a foothold.

It said they got in by compromising credentials on a “legacy” test account but never elaborated.

Microsoft’s latest disclosure comes three months after a new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule took effect that compels publicly traded companies to disclose breaches that could negatively affect their business.
…

The commander overseeing U.S. military operations in the Middle East is warning that deterrence of Iranian proxies is temporary and that Iran is not paying the price for its role in violence across the Middle East. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has details.
…

…

…

Houston, Texas — The Republican National Committee voted Friday to install Donald Trump’s handpicked leadership team, completing his takeover of the national party as the former president closes in on a third straight presidential nomination.

Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican who has echoed Trump’s false theories of voter fraud, was elected the party’s new national chairman in a vote  in Houston, Texas. Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, was voted in as co-chair.

Trump’s team is promising not to use the RNC to pay his mounting personal legal bills. But Trump and his lieutenants will have firm control of the party’s political and fundraising machinery with limited, if any, internal pushback.

“The RNC is going to be the vanguard of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee, Donald J. Trump, as the 47th president of the United States,” Whatley told RNC members in a speech after being elected.

Whatley will carry the top title, replacing longtime chair Ronna McDaniel after she fell out of favor with key figures in the former president’s “Make America Great Again” movement. But he will be surrounded by people closer to Trump.

Lara Trump is expected to focus largely on fundraising and media appearances.

The functional head of the RNC will be Chris LaCivita, who will assume the committee’s chief of staff role while maintaining his job as one of the Trump campaign’s top two advisers.

With Trump’s blessing, LaCivita is promising to enact sweeping changes and staffing moves at every level of the RNC to ensure it runs seamlessly as an extension of the Trump campaign.

In an interview Thursday, LaCivita sought to tamp down concerns from some RNC members that the cash-strapped committee would help pay Trump’s legal bills. Trump faces four criminal indictments and a total of 91 counts as well as a $455 million civil fraud judgment, which he is appealing. His affiliated Save America political action committee has spent $76 million over the last two years on lawyers.

People speculating about the RNC paying for legal bills, LaCivita said, do so “purely on the basis of trying to hurt donors.” Trump’s legal bills are instead being covered largely by Save America, a separate political entity.

“The fact of the matter is not a penny of the RNC’s money, or for that matter, the campaign’s money, has gone or will go to pay legal fees,” he said.

The RNC was paying some of Trump’s legal bills for New York cases that started while he was president, The Washington Post reported, but McDaniel said in November 2022 that the RNC would stop paying once Trump became a candidate again and joined the 2024 presidential race.

When Trump announced his plans to replace the party’s leadership, it raised fresh questions about whether the committee would pay his bills. Those questions intensified after Lara Trump said last month that she wasn’t familiar with the party’s rules about paying her father-in-law’s legal fees, but she thought the idea would get broad support among Republican voters.

Facing such mixed messages, some RNC members remain skeptical.

Republican committeeman Henry Barbour of Mississippi proposed a nonbinding resolution explicitly stating that RNC funds could not be used for Trump’s legal bills. Yet the resolution died when Barbour failed to earn the support of RNC members from at least 10 states.

“People I’ve talked to on the committee privately all agree that donor money needs to be devoted to winning elections, not legal fees,” said Republican committeeman John Hammond of Indiana.

The new leadership team is also expected to more fully embrace Trump’s focus on voter fraud and his debunked claims about the election he lost to President Joe Biden. Multiple court cases and Trump’s own Justice Department failed to reveal any evidence of significant voting irregularities.

Whatley, an attorney, has largely avoided using Trump’s characterization of Biden’s victory and said in one 2021 interview that Biden “absolutely” was legitimately elected and won the majority of the Electoral College votes. But he said in another interview in the weeks after the 2020 election that there was “massive fraud.” He has also made focusing on “election integrity” a top priority for his state party in the years since.

In a letter announcing her candidacy for co-chair, Lara Trump wrote to members of the committee telling them she intends to focus on battleground states, getting out the vote in close races and to comb through the RNC’s finances, including all of its contracts and agreements, and cut spending “that doesn’t directly go to winning elections.”

A key priority, she wrote, is working to ensure that the election is secure, something her father-in-law has made a chief focus.

“The goal on November 5 is to win, as my father-in-law says, ‘bigly,’ ” she said Friday.
…

houston — A federal judge in Texas on Friday upheld a key piece of President Joe Biden’s immigration policy that allows a limited number of migrants from four countries to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds, dismissing a challenge from Republican-led states that said the program created an economic burden on them.

U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton ruled in favor of the humanitarian parole program that allows a total of 30,000 asylum-seekers into the U.S. each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela combined.

Eliminating the program would undercut a broader policy that seeks to encourage migrants to use the Biden administration’s preferred pathways into the U.S. or face stiff consequences.

Texas and 20 other states that sued argued the program is forcing them to spend millions on health care, education and public safety for the migrants. An attorney working with the Texas attorney general’s office in the legal challenge said that the program “created a shadow immigration system.”

Advocates for the federal government countered that migrants admitted through the policy helped with a U.S. farm labor shortage.

An appeal appeared likely.

Esther Sung, an attorney for Justice Action Center, which represented seven people who were sponsoring migrants as part of the program, said she was looking forward to calling her clients to let them know of the court’s decision.

“It’s a popular program. People want to welcome other people to this country,” she said.

A message was left seeking comment from the Texas attorney general’s office.

During an August trial in Victoria, Texas, Tipton declined to issue any temporary order that would have halted the parole program nationwide. Tipton is an appointee of former President Donald Trump who ruled against the Biden administration in 2022 on an order that determined whom to prioritize for deportation.

Some states said the initiative has benefited them.

Tipton questioned how Texas could be claiming financial losses if data showed that the parole program actually reduced the number of migrants coming into the U.S.

Proponents of the policy also faced scrutiny from Tipton, who questioned whether living in poverty was enough for migrants to qualify. Elissa Fudim, a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, responded: “I think probably not.”

Federal government attorneys and immigrant rights groups said that in many cases, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans are also fleeing oppressive regimes, escalating violence and worsening political conditions that have endangered their lives.

The lawsuit did not challenge the use of humanitarian parole for tens of thousands of Ukrainians who came after Russia’s invasion.

The program’s supporters said each case is individually reviewed and some people who had made it to the final approval step after arriving in the U.S. have been rejected, though they did not provide the number of rejections that have occurred.

The lawsuit is among several legal challenges the Biden administration has faced over immigration policies.
…

WASHINGTON — The United States on Saturday marks its first U.S. Hostage and Wrongful Detainee Day to commemorate Americans being held abroad.

First designated last year by bipartisan House and Senate legislation, the day marks the anniversary of the kidnapping of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who was considered to be the longest-held American hostage in history.

The legislation also created an official flag as a symbol to recognize those Americans.

Currently 56 Americans are held hostage or wrongfully detained, according to the Foley Foundation. The nonprofit was set up in memory of American journalist James Foley, who was kidnapped and later killed by extremists in Syria.

The Bring Our Families Home campaign, James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, Richardson Center for Global Engagement and members of the Levinson family advocated for Congress to pass the legislation to broaden attention toward the issue.

“The establishment of this annual day of observance is an important symbolic milestone that not only recognizes the importance of the issue but will also encourage greater public awareness and understanding of this enduring national crisis,” Benjamin Gray of the Foley Foundation told VOA.

Senator Christopher Coons, a Delaware Democrat, and Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, introduced the legislation days after the release of American basketball player Britany Griner from Russian custody in March 2023.

Among the Americans held overseas are two American journalists.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been imprisoned in Russia for nearly a year. Moscow accuses him of espionage, which the reporter and his newspaper deny.

The American-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva has been in custody since October. Kurmasheva, an editor for VOA’s sister network Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, denies the charges against her, including failing to register as a foreign agent.

The Foley Foundation said in a statement to VOA: “We continue to advocate for the release of both journalists from captivity in Russia. We believe that both have been unjustly targeted by the Russian government for leverage against the United States. In the case of Alsu, we urge the U.S. government to declare her as wrongfully detained.”

President Joe Biden mentioned Gershkovich’s case during his State of the Union speech Thursday, saying that the U.S. “will work around the clock” to bring him home.

The reporter’s parents attended the annual address as guests of House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson.

The Bring Our Families Home campaign has expressed frustration with the administration and organized a sit-in Friday at the White House aiming to highlight what they called a “lack of substantive support and action” from Biden.

In a statement Friday, campaign spokesperson Jonathan Franks said: “While the hostage and wrongful detainee flag championed by the campaign is flown over the White House on a day that is supposed to spur action on their loved ones’ plights, families express their frustration and exhaustion in front of the closed doors of the White House.”
…

washington — A Pentagon study released Friday that examined reported sightings of UFOs over nearly the last century found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence, a conclusion consistent with past U.S. government efforts to assess the accuracy of claims that have captivated public attention for decades. 

The study from the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office analyzed U.S. government investigations since 1945 of reported sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena, more popularly known as UFOs. It found no evidence that any of them were signs of alien life, or that the U.S. government and private companies had reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology and were hiding it. 

“All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” said the report, which was mandated by Congress. Another volume of the report focused on more recent research will be out later. 

U.S. officials have endeavored to find answers to legions of reported UFO sightings over the years, but so far have not identified any actual evidence of extraterrestrial life. 

A 2021 government report that reviewed 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories found no extraterrestrial links, but it drew few other conclusions and called for better data collection. 

The issue received fresh attention last summer when a retired Air Force intelligence officer testified to Congress that the U.S. was concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects. The Pentagon has denied his claims and said in late 2022 that a new Pentagon office set up to track reports of unidentified flying objects — the same one that released Friday’s report — had received “several hundreds” of new reports but had found no evidence so far of alien life. 

The authors of Friday’s report said the purpose was to apply a rigorous scientific analysis to a subject that has long captured the American public’s imagination. 

“AARO recognizes that many people sincerely hold versions of these beliefs which are based on their perception of past experiences, the experiences of others whom they trust, or media and online outlets they believe to be sources of credible and verifiable information,” the report said. 

“The proliferation of television programs, books, movies, and the vast amount of internet and social media content centered on UAP-related topics most likely has influenced the public conversation on this topic and reinforced these beliefs within some sections of the population,” it added. 
…

A son of Korean immigrants last week became the interim chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. He is the first Asian American to hold this position. Genia Dulot has the story.
…