World Briefing: August 27, 2024
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is casting fresh doubt on whether a September 10 debate will take place on ABC amid a dispute over the rules, a source familiar with the matter tells CNN. Trump’s team, according to the source, would like for the microphones to be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak, as was the case during the first debate with President Joe Biden. The Harris campaign, however, is requesting that ABC and other networks seeking to host a potential October debate keep microphones on, according to a senior campaign official, marking a change from the June debate when the then-Biden campaign wanted microphones muted except when it was a candidate’s turn to speak.
The United Nations says it has had to temporarily suspend its aid operation in the Gaza Strip because of Israeli military evacuation orders in the centre of the Palestinian territory. A senior UN official told reporters that its humanitarian staff had been unable to operate on Monday because of safety concerns. Evacuation orders covering parts of the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in and around the central town of Deir al-Balah - where the UN has its main operations centre - had forced staff to relocate quickly and leave equipment behind, they said. However, the official stressed that UN agencies would not be leaving Gaza and were now trying to find somewhere to operate safely. More than 40,430 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry. - BBC
Russian rockets and drones were aimed at Ukrainian cities for a second day-in-a-row in what’s likely a Kremlin response to Kyiv’s incursion into the Kursk region. Just before 6am a loud explosion was heard in the capital. There are massive and widespread power outages due to hits in power plants. The Ukrainian Air Force said almost 100 incoming pieces of aviation were detected - about half of the previous day’s count. At least 11 people were killed in the two days of attacks. In the morning hours a hotel in Kryvij Ruh was massively destroyed. Over the weekend, another hotel sustained a direct strike in Kramatorsk, killed a British member of the Reuters news agency and injuring others.
Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov’s arrest in France on Saturday could complicate Russian military plans in Ukraine, experts claim. Telegram is very popular among Russian speakers and plays a crucial role in the war in Ukraine, both for the operations on the ground and in spreading Moscow’s narrative. According to the Institute for the Study of War think tank, it is “the main alternative to official communications for Russian military personnel in Ukraine…It's not just a news source, but it's a kind of key messenger that is used for coordination of action at different levels, to store videos, to share large files and all this kind of things, and you've got a lot of channels more or less directly connected with the Kremlin or with the Department of Defence of Russia," Christine Dugoin-Clément, a researcher at the Sorbonne Business School, told Euronews.
Separately, Politico reported that the arrest of Telegram’s CEO has upended Kremlin military comms, which used the platform for vital army coordination in Ukraine. “They practically detained the head of communication of the Russian army,” said a Russian military blogger channel.
Japan’s top government spokesperson said Tuesday a Chinese military aircraft had briefly entered Japanese airspace the day before, calling the incident an “absolutely unacceptable” territorial violation and safety threat. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said that a Chinese Y-9 reconnaissance plane briefly entered Japan’s southwestern airspace Monday, forcing its military to scramble fighter jets. He added that it was the first time the Japanese Self Defense Force detected a Chinese military aircraft in Japan’s airspace. “The Chinese military aircraft’s incursion into Japan’s airspace not only is a serious violation of our territorial rights but also a safety threat,” Hayashi told a regular news conference. “We found it absolutely unacceptable.” - AP
Australia has recorded its hottest-ever winter temperature in Yampi Sound, WA’, with the mercury reaching. 41.6C. Now, experts are warning a warm winter means an even hotter summer. - The Project TV
Over 350 flights could not depart on schedule from Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport over two days in June. Aeroflot, Russia's state-owned flagship carrier, which claims to be one of the world's largest airlines, had run out of cabin crews. This tale was shared on the Telegram channel Aviatorshchina, a Russian airline-industry forum. And it was not a onetime event. In late July, a shortage of pilots led to the cancellation of 68 Aeroflot flights out of Sheremetyevo, according to Aviatorshchina. Several other flights were postponed. RFE/RL confirmed these accounts of unprecedented shortages of pilots and crews with three Russian airline-industry sources, who, like other interviewed sources, requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “At the peak of the season, when there's enormous demand and people are ready to spend money on tickets, we couldn't handle it," commented a Russian Airbus A320 copilot. But the situation changed on February 24, 2022, with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Two and a half years later, hampered by sanctions that have increased costs and reduced revenues, Aeroflot cannot always find the planes, pilots, and crew it needs to operate efficiently, an investigation by RFE/RL's Russian Service found.
