Thursday morning news: August 1, 2024

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Vice President Kamala Harris steps up on foreign policy issues…as conflict in the Middle East goes up a notch. Does Harris have what it takes to become commander in chief?

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: We’ll talk about it with a foreign policy expert.

Also, combatting homelessness in California

Plus a camp designed to help children with their speech.

COALSON: We don’t even attempt to fix the stuttering. We want you to speak how you speak because that’s how you speak.

MAST: And Cal Thomas on the White House’s relationship with “coalition media.”

BROWN: It’s Thursday, August 1st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MAST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Good morning!

BROWN: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Iran response to death of Hamas leader » Iran is promising payback against Israel … after a missile strike in Tehran this week that killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

The Biden administration says it’s concerned about escalating conflict in the Middle East in the wake of that strike.

State Dept. Deputy spokesman Vedant Patel.

PATEL:  We are continuing to urge restraint to all parties to avoid an escalation into a wider regional conflict.

And some governments involved in trying to broker a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, including the U.S. … are concerned that this will greatly set back those efforts.

But GOP Sen. Tom Cotton says he believes the administration’s priorities are out of whack.

COTTON:  The most important thing is not getting to a ceasefire or managing escalation. The most important thing is helping Israel defeat its terrorist enemies, who are our enemies as well.

The Hamas official had been at the inauguration of the new Iranian president.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed plea bargain » The man accused of being the primary mastermind behind al-Qaida’s 9-11 attacks against the United States … has agreed to plead guilty as part of a new plea deal.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two accomplices in the attack are expected to enter the pleas at the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as soon as next week.

Pentagon officials declined to immediately release the full terms of the plea bargains … but it is believed that Mohammed will avoid the death penalty as part of his deal.

Venezuela election »

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Wednesday underscored the White House’s position on the highly suspect presidential election results in Venezuela.

KIRBY:  The United States joins other democracies in the region and actually around the world in expressing serious concerns about these subversions of democratic norms. Now, as you all know, the Venezuelan people have taken to the streets to demand that their votes be counted. You can't very well blame them for that.

The U.S. and many other governments believe disputed President Nicolás Maduro rigged the election … and that it’s not the first time he’s done so.

Maduro says he has asked the country’s Supreme Court to conduct an audit of the presidential election.

But that’s unlikely to convince many skeptics … given that Maduro has packed the courts at every level … with his political allies.

Federal Reserve » Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says the central bank is encouraged by progress toward curbing inflation … but they want to remain careful not to jump the gun.

POWELL: The broad sense of the committee is that we’re getting closer to the point at which it will be appropriate to reduce our policy rate, but that we’re not quite at that point yet.

Powell said the Fed’s key interest rate will stay at 5.3 percent for now. But he added that conditions, such as a cooling labor market … bring the U.S. closer to the first rate cut in four years.

Biden fentanyl proposal » President Biden is pushing federal agencies to do more to curb the flow of fentanyl into the United States. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre:

PIERRE: A new national security memorandum directing every federal agency and department to do even more to stop the flow of narcotics into the United States.

He’s also calling on Congress to pass legislation to, among other things … strengthen penalties against convicted drug smugglers and traffickers.

This comes just as Donald Trump steps up attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris over the border crisis.
Republicans say the president is trying to shift responsibility for the border away from the Biden-Harris administration.

Republicans on Secret Service accountability » The fallout continues over the Secret Service failure that almost led to the assassination of Donald Trump. GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley said at least one thing is clear after this week’s testimony from the acting director of the agency.

GRASSLEY: The Secret Service was not keeping in touch with local law enforcement, and they’re leaving some assumptions that they were leaving some responsibilities to local law enforcement without even communicating.

Local law enforcement in Butler, Pennsylvania is pushing back against testimony from Acting Director Richard Rowe. He suggested that local authorities had failed to place a police sniper on the roof that the would-be assassin used to take aim at Trump.

But local officials say that is absolutely wrong, and if the Secret Service had asked them to place a sniper on that roof, they would have.

Microsoft outage » Microsoft is providing more information about why its cloud platform Azure crashed for nearly 10 hours on Tuesday, wreaking havoc for many customers. WORLD’s Christina Grube has more.

CG: The tech giant says Azure [AA-zhure] was hit with a cyber attack … that overloaded the cloud platform with traffic and caused it to crash.

Microsoft said that protective cybersecurity measures were in place … but deployed improperly… and ultimately made the problem worse.

Azure crashed around 8 am eastern time and wasn’t back up until around 3 in the afternoon.

Microsoft says 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies use the cloud service… and that the company invests a billion dollars every year into its security.

Tuesday’s attack marks the second mass Microsoft outage in less than two weeks.

For WORLD, I’m Christina Grube.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Kamala Harris’s foreign policy chops.

Plus, cleaning the streets in California.

This is The World and Everything in It.

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