PARIS (AP) — Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson, known for his decades-long fight against Japanese whaling and arrested in Greenland in July, has asked France's president for political asylum, Sea Shepherd France said Wednesday.
Watson faces extradition to Japan, where he could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. He was detained after a Japanese request to Interpol over his confrontational tactics aimed at disrupting Japanese whaling operations in the Antarctic.
Sea Shepherd France told journalists they delivered a letter from Watson “in the last few days” to French President Emmanuel Macron, who previously expressed his support for Watson and emphasized the importance of the case to environmental advocacy and human rights.
There was no immediate comment from Macron's office Wednesday.
Watson “wrote a letter in prison, which he gave to me, and it has been presented to the president through his counselors,” said the group's president, Lamya Essemlali.
“Paul is very attached to France, and it is also the second largest marine territory in the world, which means a lot for ocean conservation. Paul is currently living in France with his family,” she added.
Watson was “down” and “isolated,” but “resilient,” Essemlali said.
Jean Tamalet, a lawyer associated with Sea Shepherd France, emphasized that the call for political asylum is largely symbolic and aimed at securing his release.
Critics of Watson's arrest in Greenland have asserted that it stemmed from long-standing political motivations tied to Japan’s whaling practices, which are banned internationally under a 1986 treaty. Japan considers the practices part of its cultural heritage.
For decades, Watson has led high-profile confrontations with whaling ships in the Southern Ocean.
The arrest occurred when Watson's ship docked in Nuuk, Greenland, for refueling on its way to intercept a Japanese whaling ship. Danish authorities are reviewing Japan’s request for his extradition.
Over a decade ago, Japan issued a Red Notice through Interpol, which is not an international arrest warrant but a request for cooperation between member states to locate and detain individuals pending extradition.
In the past, international authorities paid little attention, allowing Watson to travel freely, according to Tamalet, who added: “That has obviously changed."
FILE- People gather in Paris, France, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024 to demand the release of activist Paul Watson who was arrested in Greenland in July and asked French President Emmanuel Macron for "political asylum". (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard, File)
FILE- A woman holds a placard in Paris, France, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024 as she protest to demand the release of activist Paul Watson who was arrested in Greenland in July and asked French President Emmanuel Macron for "political asylum". (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard, File)
With just 21 days to go before the final votes are cast in the 2024 presidential season, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are scrambling to win over and turn out Black voters, women and other key constituencies in what looks to be a razor-tight election.
A coalition of Republicans backing Harris will campaign with the Democratic presidential nominee in pivotal Pennsylvania before she sits down with Fox News for an interview airing Wednesday evening.
GOP nominee Donald Trump, meanwhile, will appear on TV Wednesday in two town halls — one with a woman-only audience that Fox News Channel recorded Tuesday, and the other with with Hispanics, hosted by Univision, the nation’s largest Spanish-language television network.
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Here's the latest:
Jimmy Carter has cast his ballot in the 2024 Election. The former president voted by mail on Wednesday, according to The Carter Center in Atlanta.
Carter celebrated his 100th birthday on Oct. 1 at his home in Plains, Georgia, where he’s been living in hospice care.
His son Chip Carter said before the family gathering that his father had this election very much in mind.
“He’s plugged in,” Chip Carter told The Associated Press. “I asked him two months ago if he was trying to live to be 100, and he said, ‘No, I’m trying to live to vote for Kamala Harris.’”
The Carter Center statement said Jimmy Carter had voted by mail and that the center had no more details to share.
Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are competing for workers in blue wall states with deep union roots.
Harris is rallying in union halls, standing alongside Michigan's most powerful labor leader, while Trump fires back from rural steel factories, urging middle-class workers to trust him as their true champion. They're making their case in starkly different terms. Campaigning for Harris, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain says the American dream now depends on electing Democrats.
But Harris failed to secure two key union endorsements that went to President Joe Biden, who calls himself the most labor-friendly president in U.S. history. The International Association of Firefighters and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters both declined to endorse anyone. Any break in labor movement unity can have an amplifier effect in a place like Michigan, where most people have a family member or close friend in a union.
Many Midwestern communities once core to the labor movement have shifted to the right as jobs moved overseas. And non-college-educated white voters have been voting more conservatively, concerned about cultural issues involving race and gender.
Trump has seized on these trends while accusing Harris of mandating electric vehicles in the home of America's Big Three automakers. Trump also labeled Fain a “stupid idiot” and praised Tesla CEO Elon Musk for firing workers who went on strike.
Former first lady Michelle Obama will headline a turnout-minded, celebrity-studded “Party at the Polls” rally in Atlanta aimed at engaging younger and first-time voters as well as voters of color.
The Oct. 29 event will be hosted by When We All Vote, a nonpartisan civic engagement group that Obama founded in 2018 to “change the culture around voting” and reach out to people who are less likely to engage in politics and elections.
The group’s co-chairs include professional basketball players Stephen Curry and Chris Paul; musical artists Becky G, H.E.R., Selena Gomez, Jennifer Lopez and Janelle Monáe; beauty influencer Bretman Rock; and actors Tom Hanks, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Kerry Washington.
The group has hosted more than 500 “Party at the Polls” events, ranging from pop-up block parties in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Philadelphia to voter registration partnerships with professional sports leagues and music festivals. Executive Director Beth Lynk said the group chose Atlanta for Obama's appearance because of the state’s diversity and the impact that only a handful of voters can make in Georgia.
“A lot of people don’t believe that their votes have power. But they do, plain and simple,” Lynk said. “We know that democracy has to work for all of us and that’s what we will be stressing at this rally.”
A coalition of Republicans backing Kamala Harris will campaign with the Democratic presidential nominee in pivotal Pennsylvania before she sits down with Fox News for an interview airing at 6 p.m. Wednesday.
GOP nominee Donald Trump, meanwhile, will appear on TV Wednesday in two town halls — one with a woman-only audience that Fox News Channel recorded Tuesday, and the other with with Hispanics, hosted by Univision, the nation’s largest Spanish-language television network.
As the race entered its final three weeks, Harris is expected to talk about upholding the Constitution and defending patriotism in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a vote-rich stretch of suburban Philadelphia where Democrats have held a narrow advantage in recent presidential elections. Flanking her will be former U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and other GOP officials who argue that Trump is a threat to American democracy.
Trump's Univision event Wednesday afternoon in Miami will air at 10 p.m. Trump is counting on increased Latino support even as he centers his campaign on a darker view of immigration, suggesting migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation.
Attention, American men: Donald Trump and his allies want you to believe your vote says big things about your masculinity. The Republican nominee is amping up his hypermasculine tone and support of traditional gender roles, a reflection of the surgical campaign-within-a-campaign for the votes of men in a showdown with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
But where Harris is deploying “dudes” who use bro-ey language and occasional scolding to boost her support particularly among Black and Hispanic males, Trump’s camp is meeting men in alpha-male terms, often with crude and demeaning language.
“If you are a man in this country and you don’t vote for Donald Trump, you’re not a man,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said on his podcast.
As the razor’s edge contest elevates the importance of small caches of voters who are apathetic or on the fence in battleground states, both camps are reaching beyond their ideological bases.
“You’re thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is?” former President Barack Obama scolded Black men last week in Pennsylvania, the largest battleground state. “That’s not acceptable.”
An Associated Press survey finds that more than 63,000 Georgia voters have had their qualifications challenged since July 1. That’s a big surge from 2023 and the first half of 2024, when the AP found that about 18,000 voters were challenged. But only about 1% of those challenged in recent months have been removed from the voting rolls or placed into challenged status, mostly in one county.
The challenges are part of a wide-ranging national effort coordinated by Donald Trump’s allies to enlist Republican activists to remove people they view as suspect from the voting rolls.
The Georgia push is part of a national effort coordinated by Donald Trump’s allies to remove people they view as suspect from the voting rolls. The effort to remove voters has drawn scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department, which in September issued a seven-page guidance memo that aims to limit challenges and block parts of the new Georgia law by citing 1993’s National Voter Registration Act.
Donald Trump told the Economic Club of Chicago that "the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff.’”
He's defended his plan to impose high tariffs on imported goods as an economic cure-all, despite warnings from economists that businesses will have to pass the costs to American consumers, raising prices and deepening inflation.
“Inflation will vanish completely" if he's able to return to the White House, Trump insisted.
Most mainstream economists say Trump’s policy proposals would make inflation worse. Deporting millions of migrant workers and demanding a voice in the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policies also would send prices surging, they say.
Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists signed a letter in June expressing fear that Trump’s proposals would “reignite’’ inflation, which has plummeted since peaking at 9.1% in 2022 and is nearly back to the Fed’s 2% target.
Last month, the Peterson Institute for International Economics predicted that Trump’s policies — the deportations, import taxes and efforts to erode the Fed’s independence — would drive consumer prices sharply higher two years into his second term. Peterson’s analysis concluded that inflation, which would otherwise register 1.9% in 2026, would instead jump to between 6% and 9.3% if Trump’s economic proposals were adopted.
A judge has blocked a new rule requiring Georgia Election Day ballots to be counted by hand after the close of voting. The same judge ruled a day earlier that county election officials cannot refuse to certify election results by the deadline set in law.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney late Tuesday blocked enforcement of the hand count rule while he considers the merits of a challenge by Democrats and liberal voting rights groups who raised concerns that Donald Trump’s allies could refuse to certify the results if the former president loses to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
They have also argued that new rules enacted by the Trump-endorsed majority on the State Election Board could be used to stop or delay certification and to undermine public confidence in the results.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump greets supporters at a campaign town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Oaks, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris claps on stage during a campaign rally at Erie Insurance Arena, in Erie, Pa., Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem dance to the song "Y.M.C.A." at a campaign town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Oaks, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a stop at Cred Cafe, a local Detroit small business owned by former NBA players Joe and Jamal Crawford, in Detroit, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
