GENEVA (AP) — The United States is expressing disappointment over a decision by the Swiss government not to adopt all measures in the latest round of European Union sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine.
Amb. Scott Miller, the top U.S. envoy in the Swiss capital, expressed hope that Bern will work to close a “loophole” that allows overseas subsidiaries to get around sanctions, which aim to punish the Russian government over President Vladimir Putin's all-out war in Ukraine launched in February 2022.
“It is essential we target sanctions circumvention to dent Russia the finances and materiel it needs to continue its brutal war. None of our companies should be complicit,” Miller said in a statement.
The Swiss Federal Council, the executive branch, announced Wednesday it had decided to adopt “most of the measures" included in the latest EU sanctions. While Switzerland isn't one of the bloc's 27 member countries, Bern has largely hewed to its sanctions against Russia in a bid to curtail its war machine in Ukraine.
In the statement sent Friday to The Associated Press, Miller said the council's decision “to not fully adopt all components of the 14th package of sanctions ... is disappointing."
Many developed countries have sought to curtail Russia’s access to Western finance, markets and technology, and shunned or limited imports of Russian goods. The measures have had a limited effect on Russia’s economy, not least because many countries — including major developing nations like China, India, Turkey and Brazil — are still doing a lot of business with Russia.
Meanwhile, some Russian natural gas still flows into the European Union — through Ukraine.
Switzerland said stiffer controls have been enacted in areas such as intellectual property and trade secrets, industrial know-how, messaging services in the financial sector, natural gas and Russian helium exports.
But it stopped short of joining EU restrictions on applications for patents, brands and other intellectual property of companies from Russia, saying “there have been no intellectual property rights violations committed by Russia against Swiss companies.”
The latest EU measures also call on businesses in the bloc to make sure foreign subsidiaries don't undercut the sanctions. The Swiss say their current sanctions law already allows for prosecution of companies that circumvent sanctions through subsidiaries and as a result, the council “decided not to adopt this EU measure in its current form.”
The government said some 2,250 individuals, companies and organizations in Switzerland are currently on the sanctions list in connection with the situation in Ukraine, and “the list is identical to that of the EU.”
FILE - U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Scott Miller gives a statement during the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano, Switzerland, on July 5, 2022. (Alessandro della Valle/Keystone via AP, File)
With the Nov. 5 election fast approaching, Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are setting their sites on the key battleground state of Michigan on Friday.
The vice president is scheduled to begin her day in Grand Rapids before holding events in Lansing and Oakland County, northwest of Detroit.
The former president has his own event in Oakland County in the afternoon before an evening rally in Detroit.
Trump laced into Harris and other Democrats in a pointed and at times bitter speech as he headlined the annual Al Smith charity dinner Thursday in New York. Harris appeared virtually for the event.
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Here’s the latest:
Former President Donald Trump said on Friday that rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, are being treated like Japanese Americans who were incarcerated on U.S. soil during World War II.
“Why are they still being held? Nobody’s ever been treated like this,” he said in an interview with conservative commentator Dan Bongino. “Maybe the Japanese during Second World War, frankly. They were held, too.”
Trump made the comments after claiming the defendants “won in the Supreme Court.” His reference concerns a ruling from this past June that limited a federal obstruction law that had been used to charge hundreds of Capitol riot defendants as well as the former president himself.
The justices, in a 6-3 opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, held that the charge of obstructing an official proceeding must include proof that defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents.
The overwhelming majority of the approximately 1,000 people who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to Capitol riot-related federal crimes were not charged with obstruction and will not be affected by the outcome.
Martin Luther King III, the son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., said on Friday said: “We must never forget our vote is our voice” while endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the nation's top executive.
Martin Luther King III, his wife Arndrea Waters King and other community leaders are working to rally Black voters ahead of the 2024 election, warning about civil rights should Trump win.
King said Republican Donald Trump is who he has “always been — a man willing to hurt others for his own profit and notoriety.”
Donald Trump is expected to visit a new campaign office in one of the nation’s only Muslim-majority cities.
That’s according to a person familiar with Trump’s schedule who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the event hasn’t been publicly announced.
The visit to Hamtramck, located in metro Detroit, comes after the city’s mayor endorsed him last month.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has tried to cut into Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’ support with Arab Americans in Michigan. Many Muslim and Arab voters are frustrated with Harris over the U.S. backing of Israel’s offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, both following Hamas’ attack on Israel last October.
Trump’s allies have held meetings for months with community leaders in Michigan, which is a critical swing state in the November election and has a sizable population of Arab Americans particularly in and around Detroit.
—From Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan
Former President Donald Trump says he wasn’t a fan of many of the jokes he told at last night’s Al Smith charity dinner.
“For the most part, I didn’t like any of them,” he said in a live appearance on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning.
Trump said a number of people had helped him with material, including some from Fox — though he didn’t say whom.
Trump made a similar aside midspeech after a particularly pointed joke targeting Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris.
He seemed to acknowledge he’d gone too far, calling the joke “nasty” and saying he’d told the “idiots” who’d written it that it was “too tough.”
He also said during the speech that he’d gone “overboard” in his 2016 appearance at the event when he laced into his then-rival Hillary Clinton.
Trump says he’ll “do what I have to do” to drum up support from one of his former GOP primary rivals, Nikki Haley.
Trump gave that response Friday during a live appearance on “Fox & Friends” when asked if he would seek the former South Carolina governor’s support on the campaigning trail in the election’s closing days.
Trump said Haley “is helping us already” and “is out campaigning” but questioned why political watchers seemed so concerned that she and not other former rivals, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, stump for him.
Harris has been courting some of Haley’s former supporters in the closing days of the general election campaign.
Haley, who also served as Trump’s United Nations ambassador, was the last foe remaining against Trump in the Republican primary earlier this year, shuttering her campaign after the former president’s romp through the Super Tuesday contests. She didn’t immediately endorse him in the race but said in May she’d vote for him, leaving it up to the former president to work toward winning over support from her backers.
Haley called for GOP unity around Trump in a speech at this summer’s Republican National Convention.
Grammy Award winning singer Marc Anthony in a new TV ad for Harris is lambasting Trump for blocking disaster relief for Puerto Rico after a 2017 hurricane devastated the U.S. territory.
The ad released Friday and aimed at Latino voters includes footage of the ravaged island following Hurricane Maria and Trump tossing rolls of paper towels into a crowd during a visit to an island church following a hurricane, behavior from the then-president that was derided by some as disrespectful.
“Even though some have forgotten, I remember what it was like when Trump was president,” said Anthony, who is of Puerto Rican descent. “I remember what he did and he said about Puerto Rico, our people.”
Trump publicly feuded with the mayor of San Juan over her criticism of his administration’s response to the storm that killed 3,000 and withheld billions in congressionally approved aid to Puerto Rico. He eventually relented and announced less than 50 days before his losing 2020 reelection bid that he was releasing $13 billion in aid. At the time, he declared himself the “best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico.”
The Harris campaign said that the ad will air on the popular Spanish-language Telemundo and WAPA America TV, during this Sunday’s coverage of the 2024 Billboard Latin Music Awards and in Pennsylvania on Telemundo and Univision.
Latino voters have historically favored Democrats, but Republicans have made inroads with the group in recent years.
Residents of Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory of more than 3 million people, cannot vote in the general election. But there are more people of Puerto Rican descent on the mainland than on the island, and they could play a key role in the Nov. 5 vote.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at the Resch Expo in Green Bay, Wis., Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., listens at the 79th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump gestures as he departs the 79th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
