Donald Trump on Monday named right-wing Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate in the US presidential election, rewarding a one-time harsh critic who became one of his most loyal supporters in Congress.
International News
Trump Picks 39-Year-Old Senator Vance As Running Mate
Trump, 78, announced his pick on the first day of the Republican Party convention in Milwaukee, an extravaganza turbocharged by the attempted assassination of the former president.
Seen as the standard-bearer for a new kind of populism that has come to the fore under Trump, 39-year-old Vance embraces the ex-president’s isolationist, anti-immigration America First movement.
One of the least experienced VP picks in modern history, the one-term senator is further to the right than the ex-president on many issues including abortion, where he embraces calls for federal legislation.
He made his name with the 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” a best-selling account of his Appalachian family and modest Rust Belt upbringing, which gave a voice to rural, working-class resentment in left-behind America.
Critics have pointed to numerous awkward remarks one-time “Never Trump guy” Vance has made in the past, including calling the billionaire an “idiot,” “noxious” and “reprehensible” and suggesting he was “America’s Hitler.”
Vance reinvented himself as a Trump supporter in recent years and ultimately won the ex-president’s key endorsement in the 2022 Ohio Senate race.
Trump could have dropped his big reveal at any point in the days before Milwaukee, but all his pre-convention plans were upended when a gunman made an attempt on his life at a rally in Pennsylvania Saturday.
– ‘Supposed to be dead’ –
With the country still reeling from images of the bloodied Trump being escorted off a rally stage, some 50,000 Republicans descended on the shores of Lake Michigan for the four-day gathering, four months before the election against Democratic President Joe Biden.
The attempted assassination — in which one bystander was killed, and two more wounded — was expected to dominate proceedings, with Trump dismissing calls to postpone and vowing to be “defiant in the face of wickedness.”
“I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,” he told the New York Post in an interview aboard his plane to Milwaukee, during which he reportedly had a white bandage on his ear and a large bruise on his forearm from where Secret Service agents gripped him.
The Secret Service, which is battling criticism it failed to protect Trump from the shooter, said it was “fully prepared” to ensure security at the convention.
Leading in multiple polls, despite being convicted at his hush-money criminal case in New York, Trump is exuding confidence.
Biden, 81, meanwhile is facing calls from his own side to quit the race over concerns around his age.
Trump scored another victory Monday as a judge dismissed the criminal case against him over accusations he endangered national security by holding on to top secret documents after leaving the White House.
– Message of unity –
He immediately took to Truth Social to call for the dismissal of all legal cases against him, insisting again that he was being targeted for political reasons.
Trump told the Post he had “prepared an extremely tough speech” about Biden’s “horrible administration” to deliver when he becomes the official Republican nominee on Thursday.
As some Republicans — including Vance — sought to blame Democrats’ anti-Trump rhetoric for the attack, Trump also said he hopes to “unite our country.”
Still, that would see him have to rein in the instinct to settle scores — demonstrated by his cry for supporters to “fight” in the seconds after Saturday’s attack.
The Milwaukee gathering is largely designed in Trump’s image, with digital banners beaming out a message in the cavernous convention arena: “Make America Great Once Again.”
The branding reflects his takeover of the party.
A diminished figure after his 2020 election loss and a subsequent riot at the Capitol by his supporters, Trump has spent much of the last four years reshaping Republican politics.
Installing loyalists including his daughter-in-law Lara Trump atop the Republican National Committee, the billionaire has effectively crushed dissent.
The Milwaukee convention is also a family affair, with Lara and the former president’s two eldest sons, Don Jr and Eric, all due to address delegates.
AFP
The Israeli military announced on Wednesday it had struck two naval cruise missile production facilities operating under Iran’s ministry of defence in Tehran.
“In recent days, the Israeli air force acting on IDF intelligence struck two key naval cruise missile production sites in Tehran,” the military said.
It said the facilities were used to “develop and manufacture long-range naval cruise missiles, which are capable of rapidly destroying targets at sea and on land”.
The strikes “represent another step in deepening the damage done to the regime’s military production infrastructure”, the military added.
Last week, the military announced its fighter jets had struck several Iranian naval ships in the Caspian Sea, including vessels equipped with anti-submarine missiles.
AFP
The number of migrants who died on the “Eastern Route” from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula doubled to a record high of 922 last year, the UN migration agency said Wednesday.
Tens of thousands of migrants from Ethiopia, Somalia and neighbouring countries take the route across the Red Sea each year, mostly from Djibouti to Yemen, in search of work as labourers or domestic workers in wealthy Gulf countries.
“2025 was the deadliest year ever recorded on the Eastern migration route… with 922 people dead or missing — double the number from the previous year,” Tanja Pacifico, head of mission for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Djibouti, told AFP.
The majority of victims were from Ethiopia, the second most-populous country in Africa with more than 130 million people. It is plagued by multiple internal conflicts and deep poverty.
“IOM remains fully committed to working alongside the government of Djibouti to promote safe and dignified migration pathways, in order to prevent further tragedies,” said Pacifico.
Many migrants who cross the Red Sea find themselves stuck in Yemen, the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula, which has been embroiled in a civil war for nearly a decade, and some even choose to return.
Rapid economic growth in Ethiopia — estimated to reach around 10 percent in 2026 — could encourage less migration, IOM says, but that is mitigated by high inflation, also around 10 percent in February.
AFP
Denmark’s political parties began the thorny process of forming a government Wednesday, with the centrist Moderates as kingmaker after the prime minister’s Social Democrats scraped through a general election without a majority.
Danes were braced for a weeks-long process as Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen seeks to consolidate power in the deeply splintered parliament after Tuesday’s snap vote.
A left-wing bloc made up of five parties, including Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, won 84 seats; the right-wing and far-right claimed 77; and the Moderates won 14 in the election.
The Social Democrats posted their worst election score since 1903—though they remained Denmark’s largest single party, with 38 seats in the 179-seat parliament.
Frederiksen formally tendered her coalition government’s resignation to King Frederik on Wednesday, telling a televised party leader debate she wanted to try to form a centre-left government.
“The most realistic scenario” would be a coalition with the five parties on the left and the centre-right Moderates, she said.
But it is not certain the Moderates, led by Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, would agree to that.
“I don’t believe that Denmark needs policies aligned with” the leftist Red-Green Alliance, Lokke said.
King Frederik was to meet party leaders individually later Wednesday to determine who should be asked to try to form the next government.
“My expectation is that Mette Frederiksen will become prime minister,” University of Copenhagen political science professor Rune Stubager told reporters.
“But I don’t know with the backing of which parties, like the left wing or the right wing,” he said.
He noted that Lokke, a two-time former prime minister, would likely vie for the position of prime minister, even though he has adamantly denied any interest in the job.
“Danes want me and not another prime minister. I still have the backing to be able to continue on behalf of the Danish people,” Frederiksen insisted during the debate.
Frederiksen has for the past four years headed an unprecedented left-right coalition made up of her Social Democrats, the Moderates and the Liberals.
The Liberals have refused to continue in a Social Democrat-led government.
‘Too Hard To Say’
Danes are now prepared for long negotiations. After the 2022 election, the talks lasted six weeks.
“It’s a long process, which means the government won’t be formed and it will be quite difficult to pass laws during this period,” lamented Jesper Dyrfjeld Christensen, a 54-year-old engineer.
“It’s really too hard to say who will be part of the coalition,” admitted Stubager.
With 12 parties in parliament, the political landscape is jagged — though Denmark is accustomed to minority governments.
“To some extent, this is the way Danish politics works. You have a minority government in the centre which forms a majority with the left on some issues and with the right on others,” he explained.
The negotiations are expected to focus on economic and pension issues, pollution and immigration, he said.
The traditional far-right party, the Danish People’s Party, which has heavily influenced policy since the late 1990s but slumped in the 2022 election, more than tripled its result to 9.1 per cent of votes.
The three anti-immigration groups together garnered 17 per cent, a stable figure for Denmark’s populist right over the past two decades.
“If negotiations take place in the left-wing bloc with the moderates, then there will be more focus on green issues than on immigration,” Stubager said.
“But if, instead, the Moderates negotiate with the parties on the right, then the central issue will be immigration.”
Four seats in Denmark’s parliament are held by its two autonomous territories — two for Greenland and two for the Faroe Islands.
While the Faroese renewed the mandates of the two outgoing lawmakers, with one for each bloc, Greenland overwhelmingly backed the left-wing party and Naleraq, which advocates rapid independence from Denmark.
AFP
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