Bedugul Coffee: Where Kamala Harris stands

Weekend Briefing

From Reuters Daily Briefing

By Robert MacMillan, Reuters.com Weekend Editor

Welcome to the Weekend Briefing. Our World News podcast looks at how Ukraine's Kursk offensive in Russia could play out, and we're watching developments Germany, where an unknown assailant killed and wounded several people in a stabbing attack in Solingen.

'I am not going to get ahead of the vice president'

Chicago, August 22, 2024. REUTERS/Vincent Alban

Where Harris stands: Now that the Democratic convention is over, Kamala Harris' policy plans for her presidential run face new scrutiny. Will she try to revive the Iran nuclear deal? What about paying for expanded child tax credits? Helping first-time home buyers? The answer her senior policy adviser gave repeatedly are the words in the headline above.
Throwing in with Trump: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ended his presidential campaign and said he would support Donald Trump for president. He wants a cabinet-level job in a potential Trump administration, the head of a Super PAC supporting Kennedy said.

The CharmingKittens who hacked the Trump campaign

Invasive espionage: The hackers of APT42, also known as CharmingKitten, are known for placing surveillance software on the mobile phones of their victims, enabling them to record calls, steal texts and silently turn on cameras and microphones. They are widely believed to be associated with an intelligence division inside Iran's military and are known for targeting high-value quarry in Washington and Israel.
Middle East roundup: Israeli strikes on Lebanon killed eight fighters and a child. Disagreements over Israel's future military presence in Gaza and releases of Palestinian prisoners are holding up a ceasefire and hostage deal. A baby was paralyzed by type 2 polio in the first such case in Gaza in more than two decades. Israeli police arrested four people suspected of taking part in a Jewish settler attack on a village in the occupied West Bank.

Russian snipers kill Islamist hostage takers

Prison siege: Four inmates in a prison in the Volgograd region stabbed four staff to death and took a dozen hostages. They posted online videos describing themselves as Islamic State militants. It was the latest in a surge in Islamist militant attacks in Russia.
Ukraine: The U.S. imposed sanctions on more than 400 people and groups for supporting Russia's war effort, including Chinese companies it suspects are helping Moscow skirt Western sanctions. Russia accused Ukraine of using a drone to target a nuclear-power station in Kursk, the region where Ukraine launched a surprise incursion.

CN rail workers will go on strike

Economic threat: The Teamsters union said conductors, locomotive engineers and others at Canadian National Railway will walk off the job on Monday, just days after returning to work following lockouts by Canada's two largest rail companies. Here's the background and what it means for the North American economy.
Business: Canada's Alimentation Couche-Tard may buy the Japanese parent company of 7-Eleven. Nestle booted its CEO over underperformance. Stellantis' CEO is taking a personal role in fixing the automaker's North American operations and Ford tanked its three-row electric SUV. Veteran media executive Edgar Bronfman raised his bid for Paramount Global to $6 billion and Walt Disney Co. is searching for a new CEO while trying to land a complicated deal on a merger with India's Reliance without having to sell its cricket-broadcasting rights.

Before I forget…

- Racist riots that targeted Muslims, immigrants and police after misinformation about a deadly knife attack on young girls spread online have left Black Britons shaken. Excellent story by my colleague Sharon Kimathi.
- U.S.-led mediators said they secured guarantees from Sudan's warring parties to improve access for humanitarian aid, but that the army's absence from discussions in Switzerland hindered progress. Cholera is spreading among the population.
- An Italian prosecutor opened a manslaughter investigation into the deaths of British tech magnate Mike Lynch and six other people who were killed when a luxury yacht sank off Sicily.
- Irmgard Furchner, 99, worked as a typist in the Stutthof concentration camp when she was in her late teens. The German Federal Court upheld her conviction for accessory to murder.
- It's time to begin cutting interest rates, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said. Investors responded as you might think they would.
- Do you want babies or not? Demographers who examined China's push to increase its birth rate while getting more people into cities to boost housing demand and economic growth say you can't have both.
- Starmen waiting in the sky: NASA will say today whether astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams can return to earth on board a glitchy Boeing Starliner spacecraft or must wait until February for a SpaceX vehicle.

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