US Business

Former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon must stand trial for contempt next week, a judge ruled Monday, despite his belated U-turn in agreeing to testify before the committee investigating the US Capitol riot.

“I see no reason for extending this case any longer,” said Judge Carl Nichols, according to US media reports.

Bannon, the 68-year-old co-founder of far-right media site Breitbart News who led Trump’s successful 2016 election campaign, was among dozens of people called to testify on last year’s insurrection aimed at shutting down Congress over then-president Trump’s baseless claims that widespread voter fraud helped Joe Biden win the 2020 election.

In November last year, Bannon — who served in the White House as Trump’s strategy chief before being sacked — was charged with contempt of Congress after refusing to testify, and his trial is set to begin on July 18.

His lawyers sought to delay the start of the hearings until October, so that they would not take place at the same time as the public hearings of the congressional committee, but the judge refused.

Last weekend, Bannon finally did a U-turn and agreed to cooperate with the investigation, a move prosecutors said was a “last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability” by stalling his court appearance.

Cuba’s government committed “systematic human rights violations” in response to last summer’s unprecedented anti-government protests, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report Monday.

The report, published on the first anniversary of the demonstrations, accuses the Cuban authorities of having carried out “arbitrary detention, abuse-ridden prosecutions, and torture.”

The aim was to punish protesters and deter future demonstrations, the New York-based NGO said in “Prison or Exile: Cuba’s Systematic Repression of July 2021 Demonstrators.”

“A year ago today, thousands of Cubans protested, demanding rights and freedoms, but the government gave many of them only two options: prison or exile,” Juan Pappier, senior Americas researcher at HRW said.

“Governments in Latin America and Europe should urgently escalate their human rights scrutiny over Cuba and prioritize a concerted, multilateral response before this human rights crisis becomes even worse,” he added.

Mass protests broke out across Cuba on July 11 and 12 last year, with demonstrators demanding freedom amid economic strife, shortages of food and medicine, and growing anger at the government.

They were the biggest protests in Cuba since the 1959 revolution.

A crackdown by the security forces left one dead, dozens injured and 1,300 people detained, according to the Justicia 11J civil society organization.

HRW’s report documents 155 cases of protesters who were unfairly treated.

They include Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo, a 50-year-old evangelical pastor who joined the protests with his 17-year-old son.

Police detained Fajardo, “dragging him, beating him with batons  on his back and face, and knocking out a tooth and several fillings,” HRW said, citing a family member.

When Fajardo’s son asked for his father’s whereabouts, he was detained as well, the report said.

Fajardo was sentenced to seven years in prison in April.

HRW wrote that Cuba’s courts have confirmed convictions against more than 380 protesters and bystanders, including several children.

The rights body said it interviewed more than 170 people in Cuba, including abuse victims, their relatives and lawyers, for the report.

The Cuban government accuses the United States of being behind the protests.

In a statement marking the anniversary, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States “will always remain with the Cuban people in your desire to build a better future.”

The families of Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan have asked veteran US hostage negotiator Bill Richardson to seek their release from Russia, his office said Monday.

According to news reports, the former US governor and ambassador, who has negotiated the freedom of several Americans held prisoner by other countries, will travel to Russia in the coming weeks for talks.

Mickey Bergman, vice president of the Richardson Center for Global Engagement, would not confirm the reports. 

“What I can say is that both the Whelan and Griner families have asked us to help with the release of their loved ones,” he told AFP.

Richardson has a record since the 1990s of negotiating the release of US citizens imprisoned in countries such as North Korea and Myanmar.

While he acts as a private citizen, his involvement usually has the tacit blessing of the US government.

He held discussions with Russian officials over the past two years for the release of another American, former US Marine Trevor Reed.

Reed was freed in April when the two governments agreed to swap him for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was jailed in the United States for drug trafficking.

Griner, a two-time Olympic basketball gold medalist and WNBA champion who had played in Russia, was detained in February, just one week before Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine.

The 31-year-old was charged with drug smuggling for possessing vape cartridges with cannabis oil.

On July 7, she pleaded guilty and now faces up to 10 years in a Russian prison.

Whelan, a security official at an auto parts company and a former US Marine, was arrested in Moscow in December 2018 for allegedly holding classified materials.

He was convicted of espionage in June 2020 and sentenced to 16 years in prison. 

Griner’s case has been enmeshed in the freeze in US-Russia relations since the invasion of Ukraine.

President Joe Biden was accused of ignoring her plight until he spoke on the phone last week with Griner’s wife. 

Shortly after that, Biden also spoke with members of Whelan’s family.

David Whelan, Paul’s brother, underscored that Richardson does not have a mandate from the Biden administration for negotiations.

“The hope is that Governor Richardson may be able to have discussions that are not possible when you are limited to governmental channels,” he told AFP.

After Griner’s conviction, former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul urged the Biden administration to exchange imprisoned Russian arms deal Viktor Bout for the two Americans.

“Tragically, the only leverage we have is a Russian in detention,” McFaul said on Thursday on NBC News.

“Viktor Bout is a real criminal… and the Russians want him out,” said McFaul.

A swap “might be the only way to get Brittney Griner out as soon as possible,” he said.

Hundreds of firefighters scrambled Monday to prevent a wildfire engulfing an area of rare giant sequoia trees in California’s Yosemite National Park.

The Washburn fire, in the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias, was first reported on July 7 and doubled in size over the weekend to 2,340 acres (946 hectares), according to a park report.

Yosemite’s fire management service said 545 firefighters were battling the blaze, including “proactively protecting” the grove — the largest sequoia grove in Yosemite, with over 500 mature trees.

Further reinforcements were due to be deployed Monday, as the blaze remained out of control with increasingly hot and dry weather forecast, Nancy Phillipe, spokeswoman for Yosemite Fire Information, told AFP.

“It’s still showing zero percent containment,” Phillipe said.

“We are doing everything we can to put this fire out,” including deploying air tankers and helicopters along with ground crews, she added.

At the sequoia grove, crews worked to remove quick-burning leaves, sticks and branches as well as drenching the ground and trees.

The Yosemite fire service tweeted footage of emergency sprinklers set up specifically to douse the grove’s “Grizzly Giant” — the most renowned sequoia in the park, which is the second largest tree in Yosemite at 209 feet (63 meters), and one of the oldest.

Phillipe said the response team was “feeling confident that we’ve set up the trees for as much protection as we can” with the recent efforts, aided by previous prescribed burns.

– ‘A long season’ –

Giant sequoias are the world’s largest trees by volume. Their relatives, the California redwoods, can grow taller — well over 100 meters — but are not as wide.

Both kinds of tree are adapted to fires, with thick bark that protects them from heat.

In their lifetimes, which are measured in thousands of years, they typically endure many fires, the heat from which helps their cones to open, allowing the seeds to disperse.

But longer, hotter and more aggressive fires can damage them, sometimes irreparably, and California has recently seen multiple severe fire seasons in a row.

Scientists say global warming, which is being driven chiefly by humanity’s unchecked burning of fossil fuels, is making extreme weather events more likely.

Last year, California and other parts of the western United States were ravaged by huge, hot and fast-moving wildfires, driven by years of drought and a warming climate.

Two of those fires in California burned 3,600 giant sequoias, each more than four feet (120 centimeters) in diameter. 

The year before, 10,000 of the giants — up to 14 percent of the world’s total — perished in another fire.

With drought and scorching temperatures, fire chiefs have warned of longer and longer fire seasons.  

More than 3,500 fires have been reported already by California state firefighters CalFire in 2022, burning an estimated 22,900 acres.

“It is only just the beginning of July,” said Phillipe, echoing concern at the lengthening seasons. 

“Every year we say ‘wow this is going to be a long season’ and the seasons are lasting longer and longer.”

Ukraine warned Monday that Russian forces were preparing to intensify their fight for key cities in the Donbas, where the death toll from a weekend attack rose to 30 as rocket strikes killed six in the country’s second city.

The attacks in Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine came as Europe braced for deeper cuts in gas supplies from Russia.

Kharkiv regional chief Oleg Synyegubov said Russian fire on Monday targeted “a shopping centre and civilian residences”.

Prosecutors in his region said “six civilians were killed, including a 17-year-old and his father, who were driving past” at the time of the attack, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

Russian state-run news agency TASS reported meanwhile that the pro-Moscow head of the Russian-occupied village of Velikiy Burluk in Kharkiv had been killed after his car was blown up.

The Russian-run administration there blamed Yevgeny Yunakov’s death on a “terror attack” organised by Ukrainian authorities, according to TASS.

In eastern Ukraine — the focal point for a grinding Russian offensive — 30 people were left dead by Russian strikes over the weekend on the town of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region, the emergency services said.

Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed “more than 300” Ukrainian combatants had been killed in a Russian strike near Chasiv Yar, without giving a date.

Having fought long battles to capture areas of the eastern Lugansk region, Russian troops are now turning their focus to Donetsk as they look to take control of the whole Donbas.

The eastern region was under persistent shelling, but Russian ground attacks were all but paused, the Ukrainian army said Monday.

– ‘No safe place’ –

It warned, however, that Russian troops were likely planning to launch some of their heaviest attacks yet in the Donetsk region.

“There are signs of enemy units preparing to intensify combat operations in the direction of Kramatorsk and Bakhmut,” it said, referring to two main cities still under Ukrainian control.

Moscow’s slow advance into the east — despite fierce Ukrainian resistance emboldened by recent deliveries of Western-supplied artillery — contrasts with their failure to capture the capital Kyiv at the start of the invasion.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte during a visit to Kyiv said his country would supply Ukraine with more long-range artillery and an aid package worth 200 million euro ($201 million).

“This war may last longer than we all hoped or expected. But that does not mean we can sit back and passively watch how it unfolds. We have to stay focused and continue to support Ukraine in every way,” Rutte told a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Western weapons — in particular, precision, long-range artillery — were “already changing the course of the war,” Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said earlier Monday.

In Bucha, a town outside Kyiv, 36-year-old web designer Maxim said just three months ago, Russian soldiers were rummaging through his home and sleeping in his children’s bedroom.

“In this atmosphere, I feel like nothing can happen and that life is normal,” he said, sitting with his family outside his home. 

“But we know there’s a war and there’s no place safe in Ukraine right now.”

– Gas worries –

The repercussions of the conflict were being felt in western Europe as Russian gas giant Gazprom on Monday began more than a week of routine maintenance on its Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

Germany and other European countries cast a worried eye on energy supplies after Italy’s Eni and Austria’s OMV said Gazprom was further reducing the supply of gas.

Eni said flows were dropping to 21 million cubic meters (741 million cubic feet) per day, down from a recent average of about 32 million, while OMV said it would see a 70-percent reduction.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Germany suspended certification of a second pipeline, Nord Stream 2, as fears grew over Europe’s massive dependence on Russian gas.

In a bureaucratic swipe at Kyiv, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a decree to fast-track citizenship for all Ukrainians.

The foreign ministry in Kyiv hit back calling  it “another encroachment on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, incompatible with the norms and principles of international law.

The decree builds on previous orders — including one issued earlier in the invasion — making it easier for Ukrainians living under Moscow-occupied territory to receive Russian passports.

Putin and his Belarusian counterpart, strongman Alexander Lukashenko, meanwhile discussed possible joint measures against neighbouring Lithuania over its “illegal” transit restrictions affecting Moscow’s exclave of Kaliningrad.

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US President Joe Biden said Monday that a flood of guns is turning US communities into “killing fields” and vowed to reinstate a ban on assault rifles.

In a White House ceremony to mark new gun control legislation that he signed on June 25, Biden said it was the first significant progress in 30 years, but did not go far enough to rein in US gun violence.

“This has taken too long, with too much of a trail of bloodshed and carnage,” Biden said.

“The past many years, across our schools, places of worship, workplaces, stores, music festivals, nightclubs, and so many other everyday places, they have turned into killing fields.”

Biden cited recent mass shootings that left 19 students and two teachers dead at the primary school in Uvalde, Texas, 10 dead at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and seven killed at a Highland Park, Illinois July 4 parade.

In addition, Biden said, every day there are “tragic killings that don’t make the headlines.”

“Neighbourhoods and streets have been turned into killing fields as well,” he said.

Biden pledged to restore a ban on assault rifles that existed from 1994 to 2004. After it was lifted, millions of the high-powered semi-automatic war weapons were sold across the country, and used repeatedly in mass shootings.

“I’m determined to ban these weapons again…. I’m not going to stop until we do it,” he said.

Biden also called for legislation that would require gun owners to store their guns securely in homes, saying he himself did so with the shotguns he owns — two his, and two of his late son.

“I have four shotguns… that are locked up,” he said. “Every responsible gun owner that I know does that.”

Biden said he supports the constitutional right to bear arms, but also pointed out that guns have become the number one killer of children across the country.

“We also have a right to live freely, without fear for our lives,” he said.

British composer Monty Norman, best known for writing the iconic theme music for the James Bond films, died on Monday at the age of 94, his official website announced.

“It is with sadness we share the news that Monty Norman died on 11th July 2022 after a short illness,” read the statement.

Norman was born Monty Noserovitch in east London, to Jewish parents, on April 4, 1928.

He began his singing career with big bands before turning to composing, penning songs for musicals and films including “Songbook” and “Poppy and Make Me An Offer” and for pop stars such as Cliff Richard.

His best-known work came when he was asked to score the first James Bond film, “Dr No”, in 1962, although the producers drafted in John Barry to rearrange the piece.

Barry said he had actually written the piece, but Norman won a libel case against the Sunday Times when it made similar claims.

The theme became an integral part of the Bond brand, featuring in 24 subsequent films.

In a first, a pharmaceutical company applied Monday for US approval to make its birth control pill available over-the-counter, weeks after the US Supreme Court overturned a federal right to abortion care.

HRA Pharma, a subsidiary of Perrigo, said in a statement it was seeking the switch away from prescription-only for its product Opill, a progestin-only daily birth control pill — also referred to as a mini pill or non-estrogen pill. 

Over-the-counter (OTC) birth control has long been backed by major medical organizations as a way to reduce barriers to contraception access.

The timing of the application — which comes amid a wave of state-level restrictions and bans on abortion following the top court’s ruling — was “coincidental,” according to an HRA spokeswoman, who said the company had been compiling research for its application for the past seven years.

“This historic application marks a groundbreaking moment in contraceptive access and reproductive equity in the US,” said Frederique Welgryn, chief strategic operations and innovation officer at HRA Pharma, in a statement. 

“Moving a safe and effective prescription birth control pill to OTC will help even more women and people access contraception without facing unnecessary barriers.”

Over-the-counter birth control is backed by major medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

It is also standard practice in many countries, including Brazil, Greece, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, South Korea and Turkey. 

Generally speaking, wealthier countries favor more regulations and thus prescription only birth control.

But according to ACOG, “Data support that progestin-only hormonal methods are generally safe and carry no or minimal risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE),” also known as blood clots.

“Several studies have demonstrated that women are capable of using self-screening tools to determine their eligibility for hormonal contraceptive use,” adds the organization, in an opinion on the matter published on its website.

A 2016 study found that nearly one third of US women who have tried to obtain prescription contraception reported access barriers.

The application will now be reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration, a process that would normally take around a year to complete.

Twitter shares tumbled Monday as Elon Musk issued a mocking, defiant commentary about a looming court battle after he ditched a $44 billion buyout of the social media giant.

About 60 minutes into trading Monday, Twitter shares sank 7.0 percent to $34.24.

After weeks of threats, Musk on Friday pulled the plug on the deal, accusing the company of “misleading” statements about the number of fake accounts, according to a letter from his lawyers included in a US securities filing.

In his first public remarks since the announcement, Musk took to Twitter late Sunday night to troll the company after it said it would sue to enforce the deal. 

“They said I couldn’t buy Twitter. Then they wouldn’t disclose bot info. Now they want to force me to buy Twitter in court. Now they have to disclose bot info in court,” Musk wrote in a tweet, with each of the four statements accompanied by pictures of Musk laughing with increasing glee.

A second tweet showed an image of martial arts star Chuck Norris behind a chess board, which Musk captioned, “Chuckmate.”  

Musk’s termination of the takeover agreement he inked in April sets the stage for a potentially lengthy court battle with the company, which initially opposed a transaction with the unpredictable billionaire entrepreneur. 

The original merger agreement contained a $1 billion breakup fee.

Twitter has defended its fake account oversight and said it will sue to force Musk to complete the deal.

The social network says the number of fake accounts is less than five percent, a figure challenged by the multi-billionaire who believes the number to be much higher.

According to several US media reports, Twitter has hired prominent New York law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Twitter declined to comment to AFP.

– Still a chance at deal? –

The latest back-and-forth follows weeks of public squabbling between the sides after Musk amplified the fake accounts issue, with some analysts speculating that he was getting cold feet about a deal announcement that had aroused criticism from progressive advocacy groups concerned about Musk’s political agenda.

Musk’s norm-defying conduct has come as little surprise to longtime watchers of the Tesla boss, who are accustomed to a constant stream of statements that flout or test convention and sometimes provoke a crackdown from regulators.

Some market watchers predicted the deal would fall apart shortly after it was announced, but others still saw a way forward on Monday even in the wake of the latest happenings.

“While the two parties likely are facing a lengthy battle of which the final decision remains very uncertain, we believe Twitter may have the stronger case,” said Morningstar analyst Ali Mogharabi. “We also think that a scenario remains where Musk and Twitter reach a new, lower-price agreement.”

But Mogharabi lowered his estimate for Twitter shares to $47 from Musk’s bid price of $54.20, saying, “we expect Twitter will likely face distractions that set back its efforts to grow revenue and expand margins.”

For analyst Dan Ives at Wedbush Securities, “this is a ‘code red’ situation for Twitter and its Board as now the company will go head to head against Musk in a Game of Thrones court battle.”

“We see no other bidders emerging at this time while legal proceedings play out in the courts.”