34 2GM Tuesday July 21 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
A veteran congresswoman with a
strong personal bond with Joe Biden is
rising fast in the race to become his
running-mate for November’s election
as more polls gave the Democratic
challenger a healthy lead over Presi-
dent Trump.
Karen Bass, a former Speaker of the
California state assembly who was
elected to Congress ten years ago, is
seen as an emerging prospect partly
because she has indicated that she
would not use the role of vice-president
as a springboard to the White House.
At the age of 66 but with a low media
profile, she offers Mr Biden a stark con-
trast to better-known names under
consideration, including senators Eliz-
abeth Warren, 71, and Kamala Harris,
55, a fellow Californian, both of whom
ran for the presidential nomination.
Mr Biden, 77, announced that he
would choose a female running-mate
and there has been pressure in the
party for him to pick a black woman
given the protests over racial injustice
after the death of George Floyd. There
is also a belief that Mr Biden would be
a one-term president, putting his vice-
president in pole position for a run for
the White House in 2024 and making
his choice of running-mate even more
significant than usual.
Ms Bass, who is divorced, told The
Atlantic that she “cannot envision” run-
ning for president in 2024 or 2028.
The head of the Congressional Black
Caucus, she has a close affinity with Mr
Biden through personal loss — she
spoke at an event with him about her
struggle to come to terms with the
death of her only daughter and son-in-
law in a car crash. The former vice-
Karen Bass has
no ambition to be
president, unlike
other candidatesTranslator linked to
Soleimani hit executed
Iran A former translator said by
prosecutors to have helped the
US to track and kill General
Qasem Soleimani in a drone
strike near Baghdad airport in
January has been executed.
Mahmoud Mousavi Majd was
earlier convicted of spying for the
US and Israel. The death of
Soleimani, head of the elite Quds
Force who was identified by
President Trump as the “No 1
terrorist anywhere in the world”,
took Iran and the US to the brink
of war in the days that followed.
Iran said last week that it had
executed another man, Reza
Asgari, for selling details of the
country’s missile programme to
the CIA. (AFP)Journalist and activist
arrested over protest
Zimbabwe Police have detained a
journalist and a politician before
anti-government protests
planned for July 31. Hopewell
Chin’ono posts about alleged
corruption to a huge following on
Twitter. Jacob Ngarivhume, the
leader of Transform Zimbabwe, is
an organiser of the protest. Police
said the two had been charged
with inciting violence and would
appear in court soon. (AFP)Missing dog’s 50-mile
walk to old address
United States A
labrador that
vanished from
Olathe, Kansas,
was found at the
house its owner
had left in 2018,
more than 50 miles away. Cleo,
four, was reported missing on July- She was found days later at the
home in Lawson, Missouri, and
identified by a microchip implant.
Rescue effort for crew
kidnapped by pirates
Benin Pirates kidnapped 13
Ukrainian and Russian crew
members from a Greek-owned
tanker in the Gulf of Guinea.
MV Curacao Trader was attacked
210 miles off Benin on July 17 and
had been left drifting, the Alison
Management Corporation said. It
added that a vessel had been sent
to help the tanker and that “no
effort shall be spared” to secure
the crew’s release. (AFP)Mexican murders hit
17,400 in six months
Mexico Murders in Mexico edged
up to a record high of 17,439 in
the first half of this year. The rate
has fallen slightly during the
coronavirus pandemic but the
figure is up 1.7 per cent on the
same period last year. President
López Obrador took office in
2018 promising to reduce violence
but the number of murders is still
rising. Other serious crimes have
fallen in the lockdown. (Reuters)Saudi King Salman, 84,
admitted to hospital
Saudi Arabia King Salman bin
Abdulaziz, 84, has been taken to
King Faisal hospital in Riyadh
with an inflamed gall bladder.
The royal court said that he
would undergo “some medical
tests due to cholecystitis”. It is
rare for Saudi Arabia to report on
the health of the king, who came
to the throne in 2015. A visit by
the Iraqi prime minister, Mustafa
al-Kadhimi, was postponed. (AFP)Kanye West launched his campaign for
the US presidency with an eccentric
rally during which he suggested that
new mothers be paid a million dollars to
help to deter abortion.
The rapper and music producer, who
is married to the celebrity Kim Kar-
dashian, also claimed that Harriet
Tubman, a 19th-century abolition-
ist, did not free slaves.
The singer, who had “2020”
shaved into his hair, gave a
rambling speech to several
hundred people in South
Carolina, where the
deadline to register for
November’s election
passed yesterday. He
needed to collect 10,000
signatures.
West, 43, a former
backer of President
Trump who would run as
PASCAL LE SEGRETAIN/AMFAR14/WIREIMAGEBiden looks for
ally who won’t
overshadow him
president lost his first wife and one-
year-old daughter in a car accident in- “We both just shared that you
learn how to get up in the morning,” she
told The Atlantic. “You learn how to live,
but your life is fundamentally changed,
dramatically changed.”
Campaign advisers believe that Ms
Bass has other qualities that might be
attractive to Democratic and general
voters alike, as well as Mr Biden. Her
low profile means there is no danger of
her overshadowing the candidate, un-
like some of the frontrunners, while she
is seen as expert at reaching consensus
with Republicans, counting Kevin
McCarthy, the minority House leader,
among her friends from their days mak-
ing political deals in California. This
could make her a less divisive figure to
floating voters than other potential
choices.
At the same time she has pulled off
the trick of satisfying both the moder-
ate and radical wings of the Democratic
party. Ilhan Omar, 37, a Somali-born
congresswoman demonised by Repub-
licans, has called her “a dear friend”.
Other rival black female candidates
include Susan Rice, 55, a former UN
ambassador and national security ad-
viser to President Obama; Val Dem-
ings, 63, a Florida congresswoman and
former police chief; and Keisha Lance
Bottoms, 50, the mayor of Atlanta.
James Clyburn, 80, the senior black
congressman from South Carolina who
was instrumental in Mr Biden seizing
the nomination when he backed him to
win the state primary, has said that Ms
Bass has three big things in her favour:
her “legislative acumen” honed passing
laws in California and the House; the
fact that she “is no stranger to foreign
affairs”; and “the biggest thing of all”,
that Mr Biden would not need to worry
about her “one-upping him” because
“she has no aspirations” to become
president.
Two polls yesterday put Mr Biden in
a strong lead over Mr Trump. Fox News
put Mr Biden on 49 per cent and Mr
Trump on 41 per cent and ABC/Wa s h -
ington Post had Mr Biden up by 54 to
44 per cent among probable voters.
United States
David Charter Washington
Kanye West launches eccentric
campaign without filing papers
an independent, said, pausing to wipe
away tears: “My mom saved my life. My
dad wanted to abort me. Even if my wife
wants to divorce me after this speech,
she brought North [their daughter] into
the world even when I didn’t want to.
She stood up and she protected that
child. You know who else protected a
child? Forty-three years ago, who do
you think protected a child?” West
said, crying. “My stance is not to
make abortion illegal at all. It
should always be legal. But there
should be an option... everybody
that has a baby gets a million
dollars.”
Fans expressed concern
on social media about the
rapper’s mental health; he
was admitted to hospital in
2016 in a “psychiatric
emergency”.
South Carolina board of elec-
tions said later that West had
not met the deadline.David Charter
T
he Israeli model
Bar Refaeli, 35,
above, was given
nine months’
community service by
a Tel Aviv court after
admitting not paying
tax on $10 million.
Her mother, Tzipi, 65,was jailed for 16
months. The pair, who
had signed a plea
bargain deal, agreed
to pay eight million
Israeli shekels
(£1.85 million) in back
taxes and a fine of
five million shekels.Top model
admits
tax dodge
on $10m
Men’s rights lawyer suspected
of shooting dead judge’s son
A federal judge’s son was shot dead and
her husband wounded in an attack at
her home in New Jersey by a suspect
identified as a men’s rights activist.
Daniel Anderl, the son of Esther
Salas, 51, a district judge since 2011, was
shot through the heart by a man in a
FedEx uniform. He had turned 20 last
week and was a student at the Catholic
University of America in Washington.
Ms Salas’s husband, Mark Anderl, 63,
was also shot and was in a critical but sta-
ble condition. He is a criminal defence
lawyer. Daniel was their only child.
The suspect was later found dead
with an apparently self-inflicted gun-
shot wound in a car near the town of
Liberty in New York, a two-hour drive
away. NBC reported that law enforce-
ment officials named him as Roy Den
Hollander, a New York lawyer who has
a long history of anti-feminist work.
Hollander’s website calls for clients to“help battle the infringement of Men’s
Rights by the Feminists”. Police were
investigating whether a gun found at
the scene was the murder weapon.
Ms Salas presided over a 2015 case
brought by a New Jersey woman,
Elizabeth Kyle-Labell, challenging the
male-only military draft. Last year she
ruled that the lawsuit could go forward.
Hollander had appeared in that case,
court records show.
The attack took place at about 5pm
on Sunday in North Brunswick, about
40 miles southwest of New York City.
“As a judge, she had threats from time
to time, but everyone is saying that
recently there had not been any,” said
Francis Womack, the North Brunswick
mayor and a friend of the family.
Bob Menendez, a Democratic sena-
tor from New Jersey, said: “I know
Judge Salas and her husband well, and
was proud to recommend her to Presi-
dent Obama for nomination to New
Jersey’s federal bench.”Henry Zeffman Washington