36 2GM Thursday May 26 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
Donald Trump’s status as kingmaker of
the Republican Party suffered a sting-
ing setback as candidates endorsed by
the former president slumped to defeat
in key primary races.
Republican voters in Georgia, a
fixation for Trump since his narrow
defeat in the state to Joe Biden, 79,
rejected his campaign of retribution
against party officials who refused to
overturn the results of the 2020
election.
The outcome of the primary contests
held in four states on Tuesday night
exposed potential limitations to
Trump’s power over the party and
swing voters before the midterm elec-
A high-speed train service linking Paris
and Berlin is planned in the latest
attempt by rail operators to woo inter-
national travellers away from airlines.
The SNCF French railways and
Deutsche Bahn said the daily railway
service would run from December next
year between the two capitals, which
are more than 700 miles apart.
The service will connect the Gare de
l’Est in Paris to Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof
via Frankfurt aboard German ICE
high-speed trains. It is expected to take
seven hours, cutting at least two hours
from the present service, which in-
volves at least one change and takes up
to nine hours. Line improvements in
Germany should cut the time further in
- “We are going to take a chance
Georgia voters deny Trump his revenge
United States
Hugh Tomlinson
tions in November and as he weighs up
a run for the White House in 2024.
Most of Trump’s hand-picked candi-
dates, who embraced his claims that the
2020 vote was “stolen”, were crushed by
incumbents who focused on conserva-
tive policies popular with voters.
The most closely watched races were
in Georgia where, two years ago,
Trump, 75, was recorded pressuring
officials to “find 11,780 votes” to swing
the state his way. A string of rivals,
including Mike Pence, 62, his former
vice- president, campaigned against his
endorsed candidates in the state.
In the state-wide race for the
governor’s nomination, the incumbent
Brian Kemp trounced the Trump-
endorsed challenger, David Perdue.
Kemp, 58, who publicly refused tointervene and overturn Trump’s defeat
in 2020, had held a comfortable lead
over Perdue, 72, throughout the race,
despite a barrage of attacks from the
former president, who denounced him
as “a turncoat” and “a coward”. He
extended that lead into a massive 52-
point victory margin.
“Conservatives across our state didn’t
listen to the noise,” Kemp told support-
ers at his victory party. “They didn’t get
distracted. They knew our record offighting and winning for hard-working
Georgians.” There was further embar-
rassment for Trump in the Republican
primary for Georgia’s secretary of state,
where the incumbent, Brad Raffen-
sperger, held off a challenge from the
congressman Jody Hice, who was
backed by the former president.
Raffensperger, 67, the object of
Trump’s desperate phone call demand-
ing that he “find” more votes two years
ago, hailed his triumph as a victory for
“the rule of law, election integrity and
the truth”. Hice’s challenge had raised
fears that Trump loyalists might seize
power over certifying future elections
in Georgia.
“My thinking was the vast majority of
Georgians are looking for honest
people for elected office. Someone whowould do their job, follow the law, look
out for them, regardless of the personal
cost to do so,” Raffensperger said.
There was, however, some cheering
news for Trump. Marjorie Taylor
Greene, 47, comfortably won her
primary race in Georgia and issued a
warning to the Republican establish-
ment and “globalist elites”. She said:
Sending me back to Washington will
send a message to the blood-sucking
establishment. It is we who will set the
political agenda for the next decade,
and not them.”
Sarah Huckerbee Sanders, 39,
Trump’s former press secretary, won a
convincing victory in the Republican
primary for governor in Arkansas and
will be strong favourite to secure the
post at the midterms.Brian Kemp had
incurred Donald
Trump’s wrath
after refusing to
overturn the 2020
election resultIn deep water Divers freed a ten-metre humpback whale that was entangled in a drift net off the Balearic islands. A team from Palma de Mallorca’s marine rescue
centre cut it free with knives in a risky 45-minute operation. “I think she knew we were there to help her and she just relaxed,” Gigi Torras, 33, one of the divers, said
North Korea
tests nuclear
detonator
North Korea
Richard Lloyd Parry Asia EditorNorth Korea has trialled a detonator
for a nuclear warhead, South Korea
said yesterday, in the latest sign that
Kim Jong-un is preparing for an
underground nuclear test.
A South Korean security official said
that a test was a possibility within a few
days. The assessment was announced
soon after the North test-fired three
ballistic missiles, including a long-
range weapon potentially capable of a
nuclear attack on the United States.
According to South Korea’s joint
chiefs of staff, three missiles were fired
eastward from Sunan, the location of
Pyongyang’s international airport,
between 6am and 6.42am.
That prompted the defence ministers
of South Korea and the US to deploy
“strategic military assets”, which could
include aircraft carriers and nuclear-
capable bombers. The missiles were
fired the day after President Biden and
Asia-Pacific leaders met in Japan and
denounced North Korea for its weap-
ons programme.
North Korea last performed a
nuclear test in 2017, after which it
announced a self-imposed moratori-
um. In March, however, it abandoned
its freeze on testing Hwasong-17 long-
range intercontinental ballistic missil-
es, the same weapon believed to have
been fired yesterday morning.SPLASH NEWSParis to Berlin by high-speed rail
and launch this train,” Jean-Pierre
Farandou, the SNCF chief, said. “It
makes sense because we have noticed
that people are accepting longer and
longer journeys. There are people who
are ready to stay five, six, seven hours in
a train.”
Farandou suggested the trend was
caused by stressful airports, a desire to
reduce carbon emissions and rising air
fares.
Tickets on the existing indirect Ber-
lin-Paris service cost from €200. There
was no word on the high-speed train
fare.
The express will come after the re-
launch next year of a Paris-Berlin night
service, part of a renaissance of conti-
nent-wide sleeper trains, which almost
died out with the rise of cheap air travel
in the 1990s. A Paris-Nice service
opened this year and Germany is work-ing on plans for a network of 40 sleeper
services extending as far as Edinburgh
and Glasgow.
Cross-border high-speed rail ser-
vices took off with the opening in 1994
of the Eurostar between London, Paris
and Brussels, but have been held back
by the different national networks.
To lure people off airlines, continen-
tal governments and the EU Commis-
sion are trying to ease practical barriers
to cross-border train travel, including
the lack of a centralised booking system
and airline-style responsibility for
ensuring connections.
Last year France forced airlines to
halt flights between cities that can be
reached by train in under two and a half
hours. Austria followed suit, eliminat-
ing Austrian airlines’ 50-minute flights
between Vienna and Salzburg because
the train journey takes three hours.France
Charles Bremner Paris
A romance novelist who wrote an essay
titled “How to Murder Your Husband”
has been convicted of murdering her
husband.
Nancy Crampton Brophy, 71, had
denied shooting Daniel Brophy, a
63-year-old chef, in what prosecutors
said was a crime motivated by greed
and a $1.4 million insurance policy.
A court in Portland, Oregon, was told
the writer had bought gun components
and a handgun before killing her hus-
band. Brophy was shot twice — once in
the back and again as he lay dying —
while preparing for work at the Oregon
Culinary Institute in June 2018.
Jurors accepted the prosecution’s‘How to kill a husband’ writer
murdered her own partner
argument that she had executed a con-
voluted plot for murder. “She had the
plan in place,” Shawn Overstreet, a dep-
uty district attorney, said during closing
arguments. “She had the opportunity to
carry out this murder. She was the only
person who had the motive.”
The court had ruled that Crampton
Brophy’s 2011 essay on murdering one’s
husband could not be admitted in
evidence. It was written while applying
to a writer’s group. One of the essay’s
sections debated the merits of different
methods of killing. For guns, Crampton
Brophy wrote: “Loud, messy, require
some skill. If it takes ten shots for the
sucker to die, either you have terrible
aim or he’s on drugs.”
She will be sentenced at a later date.Keiran Southern Los Angeles