DeSantis to enter race; bitter face-off with Trump

WASHINGTON—Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is set to launch his 2024 presidential campaign Wednesday, signaling 18 months of acrimony ahead as he and Donald Trump lock horns in what is expected to be an attritional contest for the Republican nomination.

DeSantis was considered a rising Republican star, but has been caught flat-footed by months of relentless attacks from the former president, who has surged into a commanding lead despite being engulfed in a firestorm of criminal investigations.

The 44-year-old governor will make his announcement in a live-streamed chat with billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk on the network’s audio platform as he bids to co-opt some of the tech mogul’s star power to upstage Trump.

Typhoon Mawar set for direct hit on Guam with catastrophic winds

LOS ANGELES—Typhoon Mawar was expected to pass directly over the US territory of Guam on Wednesday, bringing potentially catastrophic winds to the Pacific military outpost.

The storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour (225 kilometers per hour), making it a dangerous Category Four typhoon, forecasters said.

Local authorities issued evacuation orders and opened temporary shelters, and US President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency on the island of 170,000 people, paving the way for federal aid.

“I am in a concrete-reinforced house and my windows are shuttered. I did go outside briefly and winds are getting very gusty with intermittent rains,” Beckie Merrill, a 46-year-old middle school teacher, told AFP from a southern area of the island.

As of 1:31 pm Wednesday local time (0331 GMT), the storm was 45 miles (70 kilometers) southeast of the island, the National Weather Service (NWS) office in Guam said in an advisory.

“The current track of Mawar shows a high probability of the eye passing over Guam,” the NWS said, adding that conditions were gradually deteriorating across the island.

A flash flood warning had been issued for the island and winds of 74 miles per hour had already been recorded, forecasters said.

“I am worried for the safety of our people. This is the first storm of this magnitude for 20 years,” Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero said. AFP

“I’m endorsing Governor DeSantis— he doesn’t hold back and he’s trying to make changes,” one backer said in a video compilation of messages of support posted on Twitter by the Never Back Down political organization. Musk teased the 6:00 pm (2200 GMT) Twitter Spaces event in remarks to a conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal, promising it would be live and unscripted, with “real-time questions and answers.” The announcement will come with a campaign launch video and the start of a three-day retreat in Miami for some of DeSantis’s wealthiest donors, who will be briefed on the campaign before the governor hits several early-voting states next week.

National profile

Long viewed as the most viable chal- lenger to twice-impeached Trump, DeSantis is better known than most of the hopefuls in the chasing pack for the Republican nomination—but still lacks the frontrunner’s national profile.

The launch format offers him a dual advantage—giving him precious access to Musk’s 140 million followers, many of whom are in Trump’s base, and, if he wins the nomination, the attention of a chunk of younger, less conservative voters he will likely need for a shot at the White House.

DeSantis has used his platform as Florida’s chief executive to burnish his conservative credentials, signing off on some 80 new state laws this spring, many targeting “woke indoctrination” in schools and other public institutions. AFP

The 2023-2024 budget was ultimately passed early Wednesday with the support of all 64 coalition lawmakers in the 120seat parliament. Netanyahu and his allies—who took office in December—stood and clapped as the outcome of the vote was announced.

“We won the elections, we passed the budget, we’ll continue for four more years,” Netanyahu wrote on Facebook. ‘Endless extortion’

The premier spent recent weeks cutting deals with his ultra-Orthodox and extreme-right coalition partners, to meet a May 29 deadline to pass the budget or face fresh elections. AFP

Drone hits halted at Russian border

MOSCOW—A Russian official in the southern Belgorod region bordering Ukraine said Wednesday that the territory was targeted by numerous drones overnight, following an armed incursion into the territory from Ukraine.

“The night was not entirely calm. There were a large number of drone attacks. Air defense systems handled most of them,” Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a post on social media.

“The most important thing is that there are no casualties,” he added.

The statement came a day after Moscow announced it had deployed jets and artillery to destroy the armed group that penetrated its border from Ukraine and the Kremlin ordered its military to prevent any repeat attack.

Members of two anti-Kremlin groups, the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, claimed responsibility while Kyiv denied official Ukrainian involvement.

The border region of Belgorod has been targeted by attacks since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but the days-long skirmish was the most significant since Russian began large-scale hostilities in Ukraine last year.

Gladkov said the drone barrage overnight had damaged several private homes, offices, and vehicles but that the full extent of the damage was still being assessed.

He added that a gas pipeline was damaged in the Graivoron district and that “a small fire is burning”.

Gladkov said that several settlements that lost power as a result of fighting between the armed incursion group and the Russian security forces, would be reconnected by the end of Wednesday. AFP

BEIJING—A scammer in China used artificial intelligence (AI) to pose as a businessman’s trusted friend and convince him to hand over millions of yuan, authorities have said.

The victim, surnamed Guo, received a video call last month from a person who looked and sounded like a close friend.

But the caller was actually a con artist “using smart AI technology to change their face” and voice, according to an article published Monday by a media portal associated with the government in the southern city of Fuzhou.

The scammer was “masquerading as (Guo’s) good friend and perpetrating fraud,” the article said.

Guo was persuaded to transfer 4.3 million yuan ($609,000) after the fraudster claimed another friend needed the money to come from a company bank account to pay the guarantee on a public tender.

The con artist asked for Guo’s personal bank account number and then claimed an equivalent sum had been wired to that account, sending him a screenshot of a fraudulent payment record. Without checking that he had received the money, Guo sent two payments from his company account totaling the amount requested.

“At the time, I verified the face and voice of the person video-calling me, so I let down my guard,” the article quoted

Guo as saying. He only realised his mistake after messaging the friend whose identity had been stolen, who had no knowledge of the transaction.

Guo alerted police, who notified a bank in another city not to proceed with the transfers, and he managed to recover 3.4 million yuan, the article said.

It added that efforts to claw back the remaining funds were ongoing but it did not identify the perpetrators of the scheme.

The potential pitfalls of groundbreaking AI technology have received heightened attention since US-based company OpenAI in November launched ChatGPT, a chatbot that mimics human speech. AFP