AFP

US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on Syria to help secure the release of American journalist Austin Tice, who was abducted a decade ago in Damascus.

“We know with certainty that he has been held by the Syrian regime,” Biden said in a statement. “We have repeatedly asked the government of Syria to work with us so that we can bring Austin home.

“On the tenth anniversary of his abduction, I am calling on Syria to end this and help us bring him home,” he said.

Biden said Tice, a former US Marine turned journalist, “put the truth above himself and traveled to Syria to show the world the real cost of war.”

“There is no higher priority in my administration than the recovery and return of Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad,” Biden said.

“That is a pledge I have made to the American people and to Austin’s parents, and it is one that I am determined to uphold,” he added.

Tice was a freelance photojournalist working for Agence France-Presse, McClatchy News, The Washington Post, CBS and other news organizations when he disappeared after being detained at a checkpoint near Damascus on August 14, 2012.

Thirty-one years old at the time he was captured, Tice appeared blindfolded in the custody of an unidentified group of armed men in a video a month later but there has been little news since.

Donald Trump on Wednesday declined to answer questions under oath in New York over alleged fraud at his family business, as legal pressures pile on the former president whose house was raided by the FBI just two days ago.

Trump said he had “no choice” but to invoke the fifth amendment — which allows individuals to remain silent under questioning to protect against self-incrimination — during a deposition at the New York attorney general’s office.

In a statement apparently issued after the deposition began, Trump said, “I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution,” adding he took the advice from his legal counsel.

“I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question,” he continued. 

“When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and the Fake News Media, you have no choice.”

The deposition follows an extraordinary Federal Bureau of Investigation search earlier this week on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, signaling an escalation of legal probes into the 45th president.

Trump took aim at the search in his statement Wednesday, saying, “The current Administration and many prosecutors in this Country have lost all moral and ethical bounds of decency.” 

He arrived early Wednesday in a convoy of cars guarded by the secret service at the offices of New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose investigation is one of several active probes into the brash billionaire’s business practices and other actions.

James suspects the Trump Organization of fraudulently overstated the value of real estate properties when applying for bank loans, while understating them with tax authorities to pay less in taxes.

If James, a Democrat, finds any evidence of financial misconduct, she can sue the Trump Organization for damages but can not file criminal charges, as it is a civil investigation.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, meanwhile, is running a parallel probe into the Trump Organization that does have the potential for criminal charges. That investigation could be a reason Trump’s legal team advised him to remain silent, as his deposition could energize the case.

– Another White House run? –

The former president did not mince words in attacking James, calling her a “failed politician who has intentionally colluded with others to carry out this phony years-long crusade.”

“We cannot permit a renegade and out-of-control prosecutor to use this investigation as a means of advancing her political career,” Trump wrote in his statement.

The Trumps have denied any wrongdoing. Trump and his eldest children, Donald Jr and Ivanka, had been due to start testifying under oath in July, but the depositions were postponed due to the death of the former president’s first wife.

Trump’s son Eric hit out the state attorney general in a tweet Wednesday, calling her “corrupt.”

Trump’s myriad legal battles have the potential to complicate any bid for another run for the White House in 2024.

US authorities’ search of Donald Trump’s Florida residence drew renewed attention to the various investigations the former Republican leader is embroiled in.

The FBI — which is led by Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee — declined to provide a reason for the raid.

But US media outlets said agents were conducting a court-authorized search related to the potential mishandling of classified documents that had been sent to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House in January 2021.

Trump voiced outrage over the search, dubbing it “weaponization of the justice system.”

At the White House, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden did not have any advance notice about the raid and respected the independence of the Justice Department.

Since leaving office, Trump has remained the country’s most divisive figure, continuing to sow falsehoods that he won the 2020 presidential vote.

He also has faced intense legal scrutiny for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and over the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

Ukraine on Wednesday accused Russia of carrying out rocket strikes that killed 13 civilians in areas near a nuclear power plant, as the G7 warned that Russian control of the facility “endangers the region”.

The overnight strikes in the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine also injured 11 people, with five reported to be in a serious condition.

“It was a terrible night,” regional governor Valentin Reznichenko wrote on Telegram, urging residents to shelter when they hear air raid sirens.

“I am asking and begging you… Don’t let the Russians kill you,” he wrote, adding that Russia had fired a total of 80 rockets at the area.

Most of the casualties were in the town of Marganets, just across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s biggest.

Regional council head Mykola Lukashuk said the strikes had hit a local power line, leaving thousands of people without electricity.

– G7 call over nuclear plant –

Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of recent shelling around the plant, which has six reactors.

Ukraine says Russia has stationed hundreds of troops and stored ammunition at the facility since taking it over on March 4, shortly after starting its invasion.

The tensions have brought back memories of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in then Soviet Ukraine, which killed hundreds of people and spread radioactive contamination over much of Europe.

The Group of Seven industrialised nations condemned Russia’s occupation and called on Moscow to immediately hand back full control of the plant.

Ukrainian staff operating the plant “must be able to carry out their duties without threats or pressure. It is Russia’s continued control of the plant that endangers the region,” the G7 foreign ministers said in a statement.

The strikes came a day after major blasts at the Saki airfield, a key military base on the Russian-annexed Crimea peninsula.

Moscow insisted that the explosions were caused by detonating ammunition rather than Ukrainian fire and Ukraine has not claimed responsibility.

– ‘There is a lot of shooting’ –

Fighting also ground on in eastern Ukraine, where Russian troops are gradually advancing.

The city of Soledar was under constant shelling, AFP reporters saw, as Russian troops attempted to drive out Ukrainian forces and seize a foothold towards the larger city of Bakhmut.

The echoes of cluster bombs and artillery bounced off apartment buildings with their windows shattered, while roads were cratered and shops boarded up or destroyed.

The city was shrouded with black and white smoke arising from artillery and air strikes.

Some of those who remain now live their lives underground in cellars ill-suited as bomb shelters.

“Most have left. It’s very scary. There is a lot of shooting,” said 62-year-old Svitlana Klymenko.

“I just want to leave to grow old in a normal way, die a normal death, not be killed by a missile.”

– Vienna dims street lights –

The war has severely hampered grain supply from Ukraine, leading to an international food crisis as it is one of the world’s biggest producers.

Some ships have been able to leave Ukrainian ports in recent days after a deal with Russia brokered by the United Nations and Turkey.

The first grain shipment to leave on the Sierra Leone-flagged vessel Razoni departed the Ukrainian port of Odessa on August 1 and had been expected to dock in the Lebanese port of Tripoli at the weekend.

But the Ukrainian embassy said a new buyer for the shipment was being sought after the original Lebanese buyer cancelled the order.

A five-month delay after Russia’s invasion “prompted the buyer and the shipping agent to reach agreement on the cancellation of the order,” the Ukraine embassy said in a statement late Tuesday.

It is currently anchored off the Turkish port of Mersin.

Western countries have meanwhile imposed increasingly stringent sanctions on Russia, raising fears that Russia may cut off gas supplies.

EU countries have started putting into place different measures to save energy, with air conditioning curbs coming into force in Spain on Wednesday and Vienna dimming street lighting.

US teens have left Facebook in droves over the past seven years, preferring to spend time at video-sharing venues YouTube and TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center survey data out Wednesday.

TikTok has “emerged as a top social media platform for US teens” while Google-run YouTube “stands out as the most common platform used by teens,” the report’s authors wrote.

Pew’s data comes as Facebook-owner Meta is in a battle with TikTok for social media primacy, trying to keep the maximum number of users as part of its multi-billion dollar ad-driven business.

The report said some 95 percent of the teens surveyed said they use YouTube, compared with 67 percent saying they are TikTok users.

Just 32 percent of teens surveyed said they log on to Facebook — a big drop from the 71 percent who reported being users during a similar survey some seven years ago.

Once the place to be online, Facebook has become seen as a venue for older folks with young drawn to social networks where people express themselves with pictures and video snippets.

About 62 percent of the teens said they use Instagram, owned by Facebook-parent Meta, while 59 percent said they used Snapchat, researchers stated.

“A quarter of teens who use Snapchat or TikTok say they use these apps almost constantly, and a fifth of teen YouTube users say the same,” the report said.

In a bit of good news for Meta’s business, its photo and video sharing service Instagram was more popular with US teens than it was in the 2014-2015 survey.

Meanwhile, less than a quarter of the teens surveyed said they ever use Twitter, the report said.

The study also confirmed what casual observers may have suspected, 95 percent of US teens say they have smartphones, while nearly as many of them have desktop or laptop computers.

And the share of teens who say they are online almost constantly has nearly doubled to 46 percent when compared to survey results from seven years ago, researchers noted.

The report was based on a survey of 1,316 US teens, ranging in age from 13 years old to 17 years old, conducted from mid-April to early May of this year, according to Pew.