World
Georgia prosecutor seeks March trial for Trump in election meddling case
Proposed date would have trial start a day before ‘Super Tuesday’, when more than a dozen states hold primaries to decide the next Republican presidential nominee.
A prosecutor in the US state of Georgia has proposed a March start date for former President Donald Trump’s trial on charges of election interference.
Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, said on Wednesday that she wants the trial to start on March 4 next year, a date that would have Trump in court mid-campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
That proposed date would have the trial starting a day before “Super Tuesday”, during which voters in more than a dozen states – from California and Texas to Massachusetts and Maine – are set to cast their ballots for the Republican presidential nominee.
Trump is currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
There was no immediate comment from Trump’s lawyers.
A Fulton County grand jury on Tuesday indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing the former president of seeking to undo his 2020 election loss in the state of Georgia to President Joe Biden. The indictment was the fourth criminal case to be brought against Trump and the second this month to allege that he tried to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Willis said in her filing that she selected the dates “in light of defendant Donald Trump’s other criminal and civil matters pending in the courts of our sister sovereigns”.
She said the timetable she has proposed would not conflict with those other courts’ already scheduled hearings and trial dates.
Willis has already set a deadline of noon on August 25 for all the defendants to turn themselves in at the Fulton County Jail to be booked. She also asked the judge on Wednesday for a first procedural hearing for the defendants – known as the arraignment – for the week of September 5.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all four of the criminal cases against him.
His attorneys have argued in other criminal cases that any trial be scheduled after the November 2024 presidential election.
The former president, who has a packed courtroom calendar, is scheduled to stand trial in March in the state of New York involving dozens of charges of falsifying business records in connection with an alleged hush money payment to an adult film star.
He is also scheduled to stand trial in May in the federal case brought by special counsel Jack Smith alleging he illegally hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and thwarted government efforts to return them.
Smith’s team is also seeking a January 2 trial date in the federal case over Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
Trump’s attorneys face a Thursday deadline to propose their own trial date in that case.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in an interview with WNYC radio last month – before Trump was indicted in two other cases, including Georgia – that the various judges involved may “confer” about the schedules.
Public surveys meanwhile show the majority of people in the US are divided along party lines in their views on Trump and the criminal cases against him. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, conducted before the charges were filed in Georgia, showed that 53 percent of Americans approved of the federal indictment against Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
Eighty-five percent of Democrats approved of the criminal charges brought in early August, compared with 47 percent of independents and 16 percent of Republicans, according to the poll.
The poll – conducted from August 10 to 14 and released on Wednesday – also found that 35 percent of Americans overall hold a favourable view of Trump while 62 percent view him unfavourably.
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World
Climate activists glue themselves to Munich airport runway, pausing traffic
A group of climate protesters have been arrested in Germany after breaking into an airport and gluing themselves to the runway.
Six activists broke through security fencing at Munich airport in the German state of Bavaria on Saturday, according to the news outlet dpa.
Approximately sixty flights were canceled after the half-dozen protesters glued themselves to the tarmac, forcing officials to temporarily close the airport.
CLIMATE ACTIVISTS ARRESTED FOR BLOCKING AIRSTRIP IN MASSACHUSETTS
An additional fourteen flights into Munich were forced to divert to other nearby airports to avoid the disruption.
Climate protest coalition Last Generation took credit for the stunt, claiming it was intended to draw attention to the German government’s inaction on the airline industry’s environmental impact.
CLIMATE GROUP TAKES RESPONSIBILITY FOR US OPEN CHAOS, OFFERS WARNING: ‘NO TENNIS ON A DEAD PLANET’
All six protesters were arrested and charged by law enforcement.
“Trespassing in the aviation security area is no trivial offense. Over hundreds of thousands of passengers were prevented from a relaxed and punctual start to their Pentecost holiday,” German Airports Association General Manager Ralph Beisel told dpa.
“Such criminal actions threaten air traffic and harm climate protection because they only cause lack of understanding and anger,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wrote about the protests on social media platform X.
The Munich incident was just one of many similar protests around the world against air transportation. Last Generation has performed at least two similar airport disruptions in Germany since last year.
World
Russian court seizes two European banks’ assets amid Western sanctions
Freezing hundreds of billions of dollars in lenders’ assets was part of dispute over gas project halted by sanctions.
A Russian court has ordered the seizure of the assets, accounts, property and shares of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank in the country as part of a lawsuit involving the German banks, court documents showed.
The banks are among the guarantor lenders under a contract for the construction of a gas processing plant in Russia with the German company Linde. The project was terminated due to Western sanctions.
European banks have largely exited Russia after Moscow launched its offensive on Ukraine in 2022.
A court in St Petersburg ruled in favour of seizing 239 million euros ($260m) from Deutsche Bank, documents dated May 16 showed.
Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt said it had already provisioned about 260 million euros ($283m) for the case.
“We will need to see how this claim is implemented by the Russian courts and assess the immediate operational impact in Russia,” the bank added in a statement.
The court also seized the assets of Commerzbank, another German financial institution, worth 93.7 million euros ($101.85m) as well as securities and the bank’s building in central Moscow.
The bank is yet to comment on the case.
In a parallel lawsuit on Friday, the Russian court also ordered UniCredit’s assets, accounts and property, as well as shares in two subsidiaries, to be seized. The ruling covered 462.7 million euros ($503m) in assets.
UniCredit said it “has been made aware” of the decision and was “reviewing” the situation in detail. The bank was one of the most exposed European banks when Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine, with a large local subsidiary operating in Russia.
It began preliminary discussions on a sale last year, but the talks have not advanced. Chief executive Andrea Orcel said UniCredit wants to leave Russia, but added that gifting an operation worth three billion euros ($3.3bn) was not a good way to respect the spirit of Western sanctions on Moscow over the conflict.
Russia has faced heavy Western sanctions, including on its banking sector, since the start of the war in Ukraine. Dozens of US and European companies have also stopped doing business in the country.
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