International
Biden faces donor pressure in his re-election bid
Biden faces donor pressure in his re-election bid
President Joe Biden is facing pressure from some major Democratic donors as he faces a critical few days in his campaign for re-election.
A number of donors are publicly warning they will withhold funds unless Mr Biden is replaced as the party’s candidate following his disastrous debate performance last week.
They include Abigail Disney, an heiress to the Disney family fortune, Hollywood producer Damon Lindelof, Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel, and philanthropist and entrepreneur Gideon Stein.
Mr Biden is seeking to shore up his candidacy this weekend, including with a rare primetime TV interview on Friday and a rally in Wisconsin.
Pressure on Mr Biden, 81, to step aside has grown following a debate marked by several instances where he lost his train of thought and was incomprehensible.
While he admitted that he “screwed up” that night, he has vowed to stay on as his party’s standard-bearer taking on Donald Trump in the November presidential election.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said on Thursday at a White House gathering marking 4 July Independence Day in the US.
Ms Disney told the US business news channel CNBC that she did not believe that Mr Biden could win against Trump in November.
She said her intent to pull support was rooted in “realism, not disrespect”.
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“Biden is a good man and has served his country admirably, but the stakes are far too high,” Ms Disney, who has supported a number of Democrats and Democratic causes over the years, said.
“If Biden does not step down the Democrats will lose. Of that I am absolutely certain. The consequences for the loss will be genuinely dire.”
With her warning, she joined a handful of other wealthy donors.
Mr Stein told the New York Times that his family was withholding $3.5m (£2.8m) to non-profit and political organisations active in the presidential race unless Mr Biden steps aside.
Mr Lindelof, who has donated more than $100,000 to Democrats this election cycle, wrote a public essay urging other donors to withhold their funds in what he dubbed a “DEMbargo”.
“When they text you asking for cash, text back that you’re not giving them a penny and you won’t change your mind until there’s change at the top of the ticket,” Mr Lindelof wrote in Deadline.
Mr Emanuel – the brother of Rahm Emanuel, a former Barack Obama chief of staff – told a conference in Colorado that withholding funding was the key to ensuring Mr Biden’s exit from the race, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.
“The lifeblood to a campaign is money, and maybe the only way . . . is if the money starts drying up,” he said, according to the newspaper.
“You’ll see in the next couple weeks, if the money comes in . . . I talked to a bunch of big donors, and they’re moving all their money to Congress and the Senate.”
Some other major donors have not threatened to cut funding but are putting public pressure on the president to withdraw.
Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix and one of the biggest donors to the Democratic Party, told US media that Mr Biden “needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous”.
Others have expressed concerns about the possibility of a damaging and chaotic race to replace Mr Biden if he does leave.
Ramesh Kapur, a Massachusetts-based Indian-American industrialist, has organised fundraisers for Democrats since 1988.
“I think it’s time for him to pass the torch,” Mr Kapur told the BBC this week. “I know he has the drive, but you can’t fight Mother Nature.”
“What I know of him, he will decide what’s good for the country,” he added.
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There are some who are worried there’s not enough time left for a new candidate to join the race, and they have decided to back Biden if he stays on.
A mega-donor the BBC spoke to this week, who declined to be named, said he planned to go ahead with a fundraiser for the president scheduled for later this month at his Virginia home.
“We all want to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, and probably that will keep us together,” he said.
The Biden campaign has said it raised $38m from debate day through to the weekend, mainly through small donations – and a total of $127m in June alone.
The Biden team and the president have conceded he had a difficult debate but have said he is ready to show the public he has the stamina for the campaign.
On Friday, he is scheduled to sit down with ABC – the first television interview after the debate – to help quell concerns about his age and mental faculties.
He will also travel to Madison, Wisconsin to campaign with Governor Tony Evers.
But the president is facing a series of negative polls which suggest his Republican rival’s lead has widened in the wake of the Atlanta debate.
A New York Times poll published on Wednesday suggested Trump was now holding his biggest lead yet at six points.
And a separate poll published by the BBC’s US partner CBS News suggested a slight shift towards Trump, who had a three-point lead over Mr Biden in the crucial battleground states.
Brajesh Upadhyay contributed to this report
Biden faces donor pressure in his re-election bid
BBC
International
$100m coin collection buried for decades to be auctioned
$100m coin collection buried for decades to be auctioned
A coin collection, much of which remained buried underground for over 50 years, is expected to surpass $100 million at auction, according to experts.
Named the Traveller Collection, this extraordinary assemblage is believed to be the most valuable coin collection ever brought to auction.
The coins will be sold gradually over the next three years, with the first auction set for May 20.
Beyond its immense value, the collection’s origins make for a fascinating tale.
Spanning over 100 territories and encompassing coins from ancient times to the modern era, the collection is being auctioned by Numismatica Ars Classica.
What sets it apart is that most of the coins remained hidden underground for half a century before resurfacing.
According to a press release shared with CNN, the anonymous collector behind the collection began acquiring gold coins after the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
Over time, he developed “a taste for coins with great historical interest, beauty and rarity” and eventually amassed approximately 15,000 coins.
During the 1930s, he and his wife traveled extensively across the Americas and Europe, acquiring rare and historically significant coins while meticulously documenting their purchases.
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Despite settling in Europe at a time when Hitler’s Nazi party loomed over the continent, the collector sensed the impending danger. In response, he carefully packed the coins into cigar boxes, which were then placed inside aluminum containers and buried underground, where they remained undisturbed for five decades.
Among the collection is a 50 Toman coin, part of an “exceedingly rare” set minted in Tehran and Isfahan during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
International
AI will replace doctors, teachers, others in 10 years – Bill Gates
AI will replace doctors, teachers, others in 10 years – Bill Gates
Bill Gates, a co-founder of Microsoft, has claimed that improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) over the next decade may render humans superfluous for the majority of work.
In a recent interview with comedian Jimmy Fallon on NBC’s The Tonight Show in February, the billionaire philanthropist discussed how AI may take over many facets of life and business.
Gates remarked that expertise is currently “rare”, emphasising the continuous reliance on human specialists in industries such as medicine and education.
For example, we continue to rely on highly trained individuals, such as “a great doctor” or “a great teacher”, whose knowledge cannot be simply replaced by AI.
However, “with AI, over the next decade, that will become free, commonplace — great medical advice, great tutoring,” Gates said.
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In other words, Gates believes that the world is entering a new era of “free intelligence”, as he described in a recent interview with Harvard University professor and happiness specialist Arthur Brooks.
According to Gates, this transition will result in rapid breakthroughs in AI-powered technology, making them more accessible and affecting almost every part of our lives.
These breakthroughs will vary from more effective treatments and diagnoses to widely available AI instructors and virtual assistants.
“It’s very profound and even a little bit scary — because it’s happening very quickly, and there is no upper bound,” Gates told Brooks.
The discussion of how humans will fit into an AI-powered future continues.
Some analysts suggest that artificial intelligence will improve human productivity rather than completely replacing labour, hence driving economic growth and creating new jobs.
However, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman cautions that technological improvements in the coming years will disrupt the nature of most occupations across nearly all industries, potentially exerting a “hugely destabilising” influence on the workforce.
AI will replace doctors, teachers, others in 10 years – Bill Gates
International
Poland suspends migrants’ right to apply for asylum
Poland suspends migrants’ right to apply for asylum
Poland has temporarily suspended the right of migrants arriving in Poland via its border with Belarus to apply for asylum.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced it would be happening after the controversial bill, which will allow Polish authorities to suspend this right for up to 60 days at a time, was signed into law by President Andrzej Duda.
Tusk had said it would be adopted “without a moment’s delay” while Duda said the changes were needed to strengthen security on the country’s borders.
But the law has been criticized by rights groups including Human Rights Watch, which said the EU should take legal action against Poland if it was implemented.
The group urged the country’s parliament last month to reject the bill, saying it “flies in the face of Poland’s international and EU obligations” and could “effectively completely seal off the Poland-Belarus border, where Polish authorities already engage in unlawful and abusive pushbacks”.
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The government said previously the suspension would only be applied temporarily to people who pose a threat to state security, for example large groups of aggressive migrants trying to storm the border.
Exemptions will be made for unaccompanied minors, pregnant women, the elderly or unwell, anyone exposed to “real risk of serious harm” by being returned and citizens of countries accused of conducting the instrumentalization of migration – like Belarus
Tusk has dismissed criticism from human rights groups.
“Nobody is talking about violating human rights, the right to asylum, we are talking about not granting applications to people who illegally cross the border in groups organised by Lukashenko,” he said in October.
Since 2021, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Finland have seen a huge increase in the number of people crossing into their countries illegally from Belarus and Russia.
Polish authorities have sent thousands of troops and border guards to police its border with Belarus and built a 5.5-metre-high steel fence along 186 km of the frontier where at times several thousand migrants have been left stranded.
Rights groups estimate more than one hundred people have died on the borders between Belarus and Poland, Lithuania and Latvia since 2021.
EU eastern flank countries and the European Commission have accused the Belarusian and Russian authorities of weaponising migration to create a new route into the EU to destabilize the bloc.
Poland suspends migrants’ right to apply for asylum
BBC
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