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The flags of Russia and North Korea.
Hard Numbers: North Korean arms to Russia, terror in Brussels, Meloni eyes tax cuts, pro-Russian Georgian politicking, Palestinian-American boy murdered
1,000: White House officials say North Korea has sent up to 1,000 shipping containers of “equipment and munitions” to Russia recently. Satellite images purportedly show clear evidence of Russian ships linked to military transport networks collecting the cargo – signs that Pyongyang is aiding Moscow’s war efforts.
2: Two Swedish nationals were killed in a shooting in Brussels on Monday. The attack in the Belgian capital took place during the Belgium-Sweden Euro 2024 qualifier soccer match, and play was subsequently halted. The gunman, who is believed to have been Tunisian, posted a video on social media claiming to have waged the attack in the name of God. He was shot dead by police late Monday.
24 billion: Italian PM Giorgia Meloni aims to cut taxes and boost public sector incomes next year, and her cabinet approved a budget on Monday to spend 24 billion euros ($25.3 billion) to make it happen. Meloni needs to boost growth and consumption quickly, before next June’s European Parliament elections, which could test her coalition government.
100: The Constitutional Court of Georgia found the country's pro-western President Salome Zourabichvili guilty on Monday of breaching the constitution by conducting visits with European leaders and lobbying for her country's membership of the European Union without government consent. While her opponents in the ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia are unlikely to get the 100 votes they need to remove her, the president – who constitutionally represents the country in foreign relations – is expected to face intense pressure to resign, perhaps paving a route for a pro-Russian leader to take the helm.
26: As we’ve mentioned, the war in the Middle East has sparked an uptick in hate crimes around the globe. One of the latest victims was six-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea Al-Fayoume, from the Chicago area, who was stabbed 26 times on Saturday and died from his injuries. His mother was also stabbed and remains in hospital, and police have charged the suspect with murder and hate crimes.Donald Trump and his co-defendents
Trump delivers America’s first presidential mug shot
On Thursday evening, former President Donald Trump surrendered to authorities at Fulton County Jail, in Atlanta, GA. Arriving by motorcade, he was greeted by supporters – many of whom started hours earlier – who held signs referring to the indictments as political persecution. Trump posted his $200,000 bail, presumably putting down the required 10%, and posed for the first-ever presidential mugshot. He then gave a thumbs up to his fans before departing – all in 20 minutes or less.
Some quick background: Trump and 18 others were indicted last week for their alleged involvement in trying to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. This is Trump’s fourth indictment, but this one is potentially more serious for three reasons:
- RICO: The prosecutor is crafting a racketeering case. Georgia’s RICO laws allow prosecutors to charge multiple people who commit separate crimes for a common goal. This enables Trump to be held responsible for any crime committed by his co-defendants, who include former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliant, former White House staffers, and low-level Georgia GOP functionaries.
- It’s unpardonable: A president can pardon their own federal convictions, but state convictions – these are state charges – are outside the presidential purview.
- It will likely be televised: If the trial plays out on television for all of America to see, the unfiltered footage could influence independent voters and moderate Republicans.
What’s coming? The next step is Trump’s arraignment, where he will come before the judge to be formally charged and enter a plea. Prosecutor Fani T. Willis has asked the court to hold the arraignments the week of Sept. 5.
Willis also requested an Oct. 23 trial date. The judge has already approved the request for a speedy trial on that date for Trump’s co-defendant and former lawyer Kenneth Chesebro. Chesebro is accused of being the architect behind the scheme to use fake electors to subvert the election results in Georgia and several other states.
But Trump’s legal team has contested the early date and is calling for his case to be severed from Chesebro. A quick case is the last thing Trump wants because it would interfere with his primary campaign and could stick him with an unpardonable conviction before the election in 2024.
Brandon Flowers of The Killers performs at the Virgin Festival in Baltimore, Maryland
Russia kills the mood at The Killers concert
Somebody told me you had a boyfriend ... but, apparently, not that Georgia is a former Soviet state!
Those could be new lyrics to The Killers song after the band invited a Russian fan on stage at a concert in Georgia and encouraged the audience to embrace him as a brother. Yep, you read that right.
Frontman Brandon Flowers introduced the audience member as Russian during their ritual of inviting a fan to play the drums on stage. When the crowd responded with boos, Flowers responded, "You can't recognize if someone's your brother? We all separate on the borders of our countries? Am I not your brother, being from America?"
What Flowers overlooked: Calling for Russian brotherhood in Georgia brings back memories of the 2008 Russo-Georgian war. Russia invaded the former Soviet state 15 years ago and has occupied 20% of its territory ever since. Fears of Russian aggression have skyrocketed among Georgians since the invasion of Ukraine, and tensions have been exacerbated by thousands of Russians entering the country to flee the draft.
“Inviting a Russian drummer to serenade a crowd of Georgians on their soil amid a crawling Russian occupation was a mind-blowing oversight,” says Tinatin Japaridze, a Eurasian political risk analyst at Eurasia Group and native Georgian. “While we cannot expect every rockstar to have an in-house geopolitical risk analyst on speed dial, I find it hard to believe that The Killers had not been at least casually informed that the place where they were about to perform had spent 70 years under Soviet occupation, and relations with Russia — a northern neighbor that invaded my country in 2008 — continue to be tumultuous, to say the least.”
“Hopefully, The Killers will spread the word among their colleagues in entertainment and make it public knowledge in the West that for as long as Moscow continues to occupy our sovereign territory, Russians cannot and will not be our siblings,” she adds.
Flowers has since apologized, but we’re skeptical he’ll be invited to bring “Mr. Brightside” back to Georgia anytime soon.
Will Trump's indictment in Georgia do him in?
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.
Trump's fourth indictment: is this the one that does him in?
Former President Trump was indicted this week in Georgia on charges that he attempted to overturn the election results there. He was indicted along with a broad group of co-conspirators by a local prosecutor. And this case represents some more serious legal jeopardy for Trump because even if he wins the White House, there's not much he can do to either pardon himself or get the charges dropped. There's now four criminal indictments against the President, one in Manhattan on a relatively minor set of document charges that he probably won't go to jail for. Two in a federal courtroom, one in Florida and one in Washington DC about his mishandling of classified documents and his attempts to overturn the election on the day of the Capitol riot on January 6th.
Both of those he could be convicted of, but if he wins the White House, he can either drop the charges against him if they're still pending or pardon himself. If he doesn't win the White House, then he faces some legal risk. However, in Georgia, whether or not he wins the White House, this case will be brought and he will be trialed. And if he's found guilty, the state may attempt to force the sitting president of the United States to go to jail. Truly an unprecedented situation. Never had anything like it in the United States. Never even had somebody facing criminal indictment like this, running for the White House. So this is going to be the dominant news story over the most of the campaign. Over the better part of the next year and a half, as President Trump sits in a courtroom in Georgia potentially with the cameras rolling or sits in the federal courthouse or the courthouse in Manhattan facing the hearing, the charges that are being leveled against him.
By day and then at night he goes out in campaigns in Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, and talks all about how the system is corrupt and trying to take them down. And longer term, this is going to end up eroding support for law enforcement among Trump's Republican supporters, which is going to be ultimately bad for the rule of law as Republicans start to turn away from the local prosecutors and the federal law enforcement that are going after President Trump for what they believe are purely politically motivated issues. So, huge story. You're not going to be able to avoid it. He's the most famous man in the world. He's facing four trials overlapping to one degree or another that'll probably play out over the next several years. Good luck trying not to hear about that.
Former President of the United States Donald J. Trump.
Georgia poses new dangers for Trump
Late Monday night, Donald Trump and 18 other people were indicted by a grand jury in Atlanta for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state of Georgia.
Trump will face 13 felony charges. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and other alleged co-conspirators are charged with taking part in a “criminal enterprise” to flip the presidential election in a crucial state.
You can read the full indictment here.
Let’s cut to the chase: Trump has already been indicted three times – in New York City, Washington, DC, and Florida – and he faces dozens of other felony charges in those cases. And though it’s too soon to know the likelihood of a Trump conviction in any of them, there’s no evidence yet that they’ve dented his popularity. Here are the latest GOP primary numbers and matchups with President Joe Biden.
Is this case different? Might this one put Trump in real legal and political jeopardy?
In fact, Georgia may offer Trump a much tougher set of both legal and political problems. Here are three reasons why.
RICO
Georgia law features something called the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, widely known as RICO. Legal experts have warned that the broad powers this law gives a prosecutor – in this case, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis – can be used to charge Trump with all sorts of crimes related to the core charge of election fraud.
Under Georgia’s RICO law, prosecutors can bring such a case simply by showing the existence of an “enterprise” involved in at least two “qualifying” crimes that form part of a “pattern of racketeering activity.” He could, for example, be charged with solicitation to commit election fraud, perjury, forgery and/or improperly influencing government officials. These crimes need not have taken place in Georgia if their purpose was to overturn Georgia’s election results.
Crucially, the law doesn’t require the state to prove that Trump personally ordered, or even knew about, the commission of every crime in the indictment. It need only prove he led the enterprise that committed them.
Cameras rolling
In the interest of transparency, Georgia law requires there be cameras in the courtroom, unless a judge has a compelling reason not to allow them. This entire case may well play out on live television.
Yes, Trump is still riding high in Republican primary polls and running neck and neck with Biden. But undecided general election voters, particularly the independents Trump needs to win over in Nov. 2024, can now have a much closer look at the evidence against him. They won’t simply hear about it from Trump himself or from Trump-friendly media.
He also faces the risk that after months of televised daily legal grind, public fatigue with his long list of criminal charges will start to set in.
Unpardonable crimes
Despite all this, Trump may well be elected president next November, and the president of the United States can legally pardon convicted criminals. In theory, a president could pardon himself, though that idea has never been tested by US courts. But the charges facing Trump in Georgia are for state, not federal, crimes. No president can pardon someone convicted in state court.
Complicating matters further, under Georgia law, the governor couldn’t pardon a convicted president either. (There are already plenty of hard feelings between Trump and Governor Brian Kemp, who refused to help Trump reverse the state’s presidential election results in 2020.) If Trump were convicted in Georgia, only a five-member pardon board could absolve him. That’s a far more complicated problem.
The bottom line: Donald Trump has defied political and legal gravity for years. A poorly prepared prosecution, a friendly juror or two, and continued support from committed followers might well keep him aloft through 2024.
Or, Georgia might prove the band Radiohead right: “Gravity always wins.”
Capitol riot tops list of most serious charges against Trump
Donald Trump has already been indicted for business fraud in New York. But that's not the only open case against the former US president, who's running again in 2024.
So, where is he in most legal jeopardy? On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer asks Preet Bharara, former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, to rank the severity of the other potential charges Trump faces.
According to Bharara, “the most severe charge is related to the Jan. 6 riot, followed by the issue surrounding the Georgia election, and then the issue of mishandling classified documents.”
What's more, Bharara says that the conduct surrounding Jan. 6 is particularly severe as it threatened the peaceful transfer of power and led to several deaths.
Watch this episode of GZERO World: Parsing Donald Trump's indictment
Car drivers queue to fill their fuel tank at a TotalEnergies gas station in Nice as petrol supplies are disrupted by a strike of French refineries and depots, France, March 20, 2023.
Hard Numbers: French oil refinery blockades, China’s mRNA milestone, Moscow comes to Bali, IMF tweaks rules for Ukraine, TikTok hearing
13: As French protesters continue to strike and block oil refineries in response to the government’s recently passed pension reform, 13% of petrol stations around the country are running short on gas. What’s more, a lack of shipments from LNG terminals is raising fears of shortages – and elevated prices – across Europe.
1: China has finally approved its first mRNA COVID vaccine for emergency use. Beijing says that the drug shows high rates of protection when administered as a booster, though it provided few other details.
22,000: Most Russians fleeing conscription and oppression have gone to Georgia, Armenia, and even Turkey. But many have also fled to faraway … Bali. Now, Bali’s governor has asked Indonesia’s central government to rescind a rule allowing Russians and Ukrainians to apply for visas upon arrival, pointing to the fact that 22,000 Russians arrived on the island in January alone. Jakarta introduced the measure to get a post-COVID tourism bump, but some say the newcomers are ruining the island’s zen.
15.6 billion: The IMF has agreed to a preliminary loan for Ukraine worth a whopping $15.6 billion, the biggest package for Kyiv since Russia’s invasion began in Feb. 2022 – though it still needs to be approved by the board. In order to get this deal across the line, the IMF, whose main shareholder is the US, recently changed a rule to allow loans to go to countries facing “exceptionally high uncertainty.”
5: The Federal Reserve hiked interest rates by a quarter point, bringing its key short-term interest rate up to 5%. The decision signals that the Fed is continuing its campaign to temper inflation and consumer price increases, even after the recent banking turmoil.
150 million: That’s how many of its users TikTok claims are US-based, according to its CEO, Shou Zi Chew. On Thursday, Sou will testify before a US House committee hearing to answer questions about the suspected ties of ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to China’s ruling Communist Party amid growing calls for a US ban.
Emergency workers extinguish fire in vehicles at the site of a Russian missile strike, amid Russia?s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 9, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Russian air strikes, South African economic squeeze, day of resistance in Israel
Russia pummels Ukraine
On Thursday, Russia launched a wave of early-morning air strikes with missiles and Iranian-made drones on Ukrainian cities, its worst attack targeting civilians in a month. At least six people died, and almost half of Kyiv residents were left without electricity. Meanwhile, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — Europe's largest — was knocked offlinefor the sixth time and is now operating on diesel power. It's unclear why Moscow did this or has waited so long, but perhaps the Russians are running so low on weapons and ammo that it's much harder to carry out coordinated attacks. For their part, Ukrainians living in urban areas have become so accustomed to the barrages that they are hardly intimidated, which is the whole point for Vladimir Putin. On the battlefield, Russia is still struggling to conquer Bakhmut, a key town in eastern Ukraine, amid an ongoing rift between the Russian military and top mercenary warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin.
South Africa’s shrinking economy
Things are going from bad to worse in South Africa. Amid a deepening energy crisis that’s plunged parts of Africa’s most industrialized nation into darkness for up to 15 hours a day, new figures show that the country’s economy contracted by 1.3% in the last quarter of 2022. (Analysts had anticipated a 0.4% squeeze). In a bid to address the deep-rooted energy crisis, President Cyril Ramaphosa this week tapped a new electricity minister, but members of the business community don’t appear to have been placated as fear remains high that Pretoria could be headed for a recession. For context on how corruption-plagued Eskom – the state-owned energy company that runs 90% of the country’s electricity – reached breaking point, and what effect this is having on South Africa’s economy, see this explainer. Crucially, South Africa's economy is just marginally bigger than it was four years ago (0.3%), but the population has grown by 3.5% since then, increasing pressure on ailing infrastructure.