President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, faced resistance from Democrats in the Senate Armed Service Committee on Tuesday. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has details.
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Author: SeeUS
New Orleans attacker had researched similar rampage, and how to access Bourbon Street balcony
BATON ROUGE — Before plowing a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, killing 14 people, the man who carried out the Islamic State group-inspired attack had researched how to access a balcony on the city’s famed Bourbon Street and looked up information about a similar recent attack at a Christmas market in Germany, the FBI said.
Nearly two weeks after Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s rampage, the FBI continues to uncover new information detailing the extensive planning by the 42-year-old Army veteran who scouted out the area multiple times in the months leading up to the attack. Authorities also have been piecing together a timeline of his radicalization.
In the early hours of New Year’s Day, Jabbar could be seen on video surveillance placing two containers with explosive devices, which would remain undetonated, in the French Quarter. Shortly after, about 3:15 a.m., Jabbar sped a white pickup truck around a police car blockading the entrance of Bourbon Street, where partygoers continued to wander around the street lined with bars. He drove through revelers before crashing and being killed by police in a shootout. Fifty-seven people were injured, authorities said.
Just hours before the deadly onslaught, Jabbar had searched online for information about an attack at a busy outdoor Christmas Market in east Germany that occurred just 10 days earlier and where a car was also used as a mass weapon, the FBI said on Tuesday. The attack in Europe left five people dead and more than 200 injured after a car slammed into a crowd. Police arrested a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who has renounced Islam and supports the far-right AfD party.
In other online searches, Jabbar had looked up how to access a balcony on Bourbon Street, information about Mardi Gras, and several recent shootings in the city, the FBI said.
But Jabbar’s research ahead of the attack was not limited to online: He also made a one-day visit to New Orleans from Houston on Nov. 10, during which he looked for an apartment, the FBI said. While Jabbar applied to rent the apartment, he later told the landlord that he changed his mind.
That was not his only visit to New Orleans, though. The FBI had previously reported that Jabbar had traveled to the city for a planning trip on Oct. 31, when he used glasses from Meta, the parent company of Facebook, to record video as he rode through the French Quarter on a bicycle.
In a series of online videos, posted hours before he struck, Jabbar proclaimed support for the Islamic State militant group. The Bourbon Street attack was the deadliest Islamic State-inspired assault on U.S. soil in years. On Tuesday, the FBI continued to draft out a timeline of Jabbar’s radicalization, saying that he began isolating himself from society and became a more devout Muslim in 2022. By the spring of 2024, he began following extremist views.
While investigations into the attack are ongoing and additional information continues to trickle out about Jabbar’s planning of the deadly rampage, city officials face questions about safety concerns.
State and local authorities have launched probes into possible security deficiencies that left New Orleans vulnerable. The work is especially urgent since Carnival season, a monthslong celebration that attracts tens of thousands of visitors to the French Quarter, began last week. The city is also set to host the Super Bowl on Feb. 9.
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Biden issues executive order for building AI data centers on federal land
— U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order Tuesday directing the development of artificial intelligence data centers on six federal land sites, with a special focus on powering them with clean energy and upholding high labor standards.
Biden said in a statement that the United States is the world leader in AI, but cannot take that lead for granted.
“We will not let America be out-built when it comes to the technology that will define the future, nor should we sacrifice critical environmental standards and our shared efforts to protect clean air and clean water,” Biden said.
The order calls for the Department of Defense and Department of Energy to each identify three suitable sites where private companies will lease the land, pay for the construction and operation of the data centers and ensure the supply of enough clean energy to fully power the sites.
The developers will also have to buy “an appropriate share” of semiconductors produced in the United States to help ensure there is a “robust domestic semiconductor supply chain,” the White House said.
In addition to identifying the sites, the federal government will also commit under the order to expedite the permitting process for the data center construction.
Senior administration officials, in a phone call with journalists previewing the order, highlighted the national security need for the United States to have its own powerful AI infrastructure, both to protect it for its own use but also to prevent adversaries such as China from possessing those capabilities.
“From the national security standpoint, it’s really critical to find a pathway for building the data centers and power infrastructure to support frontier AI operations here in the United States to ensure that the most powerful AI models continue to be trained and stored securely here in the United States,” an official said.
A senior administration official cited the priority of making sure the AI industry had an anchor in the United States to avoid repeating the history of other technologies that moved offshore to areas with lower labor and environmental standards as well.
AI chip restrictions
Tuesday’s order comes a day after the Biden administration announced new restrictions on the export of the most advanced artificial intelligence chips and proprietary parameters used to govern the interactions of users with AI systems.
The rule, which will undergo a 120-day period for public comments, comes in response to what administration officials described as a need to protect national security while also clarifying the rules under which companies in trusted partner countries could access the emerging technology in order to promote innovation.
“Over the coming years, AI will become really ubiquitous in every business application in every industry around the world, with enormous potential for enhanced productivity and societal, health care and economic benefits,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters. “That being said, as AI becomes more powerful, the risks to our national security become even more intense.”
A senior administration official said the new rule will not include any restrictions on chip sales to Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom or the United States.
The rules build on 2023 curbs limiting the export of certain AI chips to China, a strategic competitor in the production of advanced semiconductors. Beijing attacked the new U.S. AI edict as a “flagrant violation” of international trade rules.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said the Biden administration announcement “is another example of the generalization of the concept of national security and the abuse of export control, and a flagrant violation of international multilateral economic and trade rules.”
Beijing said it would “take necessary measures to firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”
Countries that are under U.S. arms embargoes are already subject to export restrictions on advanced AI chips, but a senior administration official said they will now be under restrictions for the transfer of the most powerful closed weight AI models.
The weights in an AI model determine how it processes the inputs from a user and determines what to provide the user as a response, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. In a closed weight system, those parameters are secret, unlike with an open weight system in which users could see the settings the model is using to make its decisions.
Most countries — those not included in the closed partner or arms embargo lists — will not face licensing requirements for obtaining the equivalent of 1,700 of the most advanced AI chips currently available, nor for any less advanced chips.
Companies in the United States and allied countries will not face restrictions in using the most powerful closed weight AI systems, provided they are stored under adequate security, a senior administration official said.
your ad here153 winners of Nobel and World Food prizes seek new ways to grow food
DES MOINES, Iowa — More than 150 recipients of the Nobel and World Food prizes released an open letter Tuesday calling for a dramatic increase in research and a commitment to new food distribution efforts with a goal of producing more crops and avoiding a global hunger crisis in coming decades.
The letter notes that an estimated 700 million people now are “food insecure and desperately poor” but that without a “moonshot” effort to grow more and different kinds of food, far more people will be in dire need of food because of climate change and population growth.
“As difficult and as uncomfortable as it might be to imagine, humanity is headed towards an even more food insecure, unstable world by mid-century than exists today, worsened by a vicious cycle of conflict and food insecurity,” states the letter, signed by 153 recipients of the two prizes. “Climate change is projected to decrease the productivity of most major staples when substantial increases are needed to feed a world which will add another 1.5 billion people to its population by 2050.”
Corn production in Africa is expected to decline and much of the world could see more soil degradation and water shortages, the letter says.
“We are not on track to meet future food needs. Not even close,” it adds.
The letter grew from a meeting of food accessibility experts last fall. Despite the potential gloom, it holds out hope for an optimistic vision of the future if people take needed actions. The letter says that a dramatic increase in research funding coupled with more effective ways to share information and distribute food could prevent a hunger crisis.
Brian Schmidt, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2011, said the need to dramatically increase food production in the coming decades is a huge challenge. He calls it a “destination with destiny,” but one that can be achieved with proper funding to enhance existing knowledge as well as global leadership.
“It is an imminently solvable problem. It is a problem that will affect billions of people in 25 years. It is a problem that to solve it, there are no losers, only winners,” Schmidt said in an interview. “All we have to do is do it.”
Schmidt said he hopes governments in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere can commit to solving the problem, but he thinks private groups like the Gates Foundation may need to take the lead in funding initial steps that will draw attention and prompt action by politicians.
The letter calls for “transformational efforts” such as enhancing photosynthesis in essential crops such as wheat and rice, developing crops that are not as reliant on chemical fertilizers and lengthening the shelf life of fruits and vegetables.
Cynthia Rosenzweig, a climate research scientist at NASA who won the World Food Prize in 2022, said in an interview that researchers are already making progress toward breakthroughs, but their work needs to be turbocharged with more funding and emphasis from world leaders.
“It’s not that we have to dream up new solutions,” Rosenzweig said. “The solutions are very much being tested but in order to actually take them from the lab out into the agriculture regions of the world, we really do need the moonshot approach.”
The term moonshot refers to an unprecedented effort, stemming from President John F. Kennedy’s call in 1962 for Americans to rocket to the Moon. Rosenzweig, noting she works for NASA, said meeting the food needs of a growing population will take the kind of commitment the U.S. made in achieving Kennedy’s goal of reaching the Moon.
“Look at how the scientists had to come together. The engineers had to be part of it. The funding had to come together as well as the general public,” she said. “That base of support has to be there as well.”
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Jeff Bezos’ space company tries to launch rocket after last-minute postponement
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Blue Origin will try again to launch its massive new rocket as early as Tuesday after calling off the debut launch because of ice buildup in critical plumbing.
The 98-meter New Glenn rocket was supposed to blast off before dawn Monday with a prototype satellite. But ice formed in a purge line for a unit powering some of the rocket’s hydraulic systems and launch controllers ran out of time to clear it, according to the company.
Founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin said Tuesday’s poor weather forecast could cause more delay. Thick clouds and stiff wind were expected at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The test flight already had been delayed by rough seas that posed a risk to the company’s plan to land the first-stage booster on a floating platform in the Atlantic.
New Glenn is named after the first American to orbit Earth, John Glenn. It is five times taller than Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket that carries paying customers to the edge of space from Texas.
Bezos founded the company 25 years ago. He took part in Monday’s countdown from Mission Control, located at the rocket factory just outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
No matter what happens, Bezos said this weekend, “We’re going to pick ourselves up and keep going.”
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VOA Mandarin: US and China’s geopolitical battle over undersea cables
Recent incidents, including a Chinese cargo ship allegedly cutting a Taiwanese undersea cable, underscore the vulnerability of global undersea infrastructure. While most damage results from accidents, “gray zone” tactics — which involve deliberate but covert sabotage by states like China and Russia — are becoming a geopolitical threat. VOA China examines the geopolitical battle for undersea cables, which are the backbone of modern communication, handling 98% of international data transfers.
Click here for the full story in Mandarin.
your ad hereJudge clears way for release of special counsel Smith’s report on Trump’s Jan. 6 case
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department can publicly release its investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case, a federal judge said Monday — the latest ruling in a court dispute over the highly anticipated document days before Trump is set to take office again.
But a temporary injunction barring the immediate release of the report remains in effect until Tuesday, and it’s unlikely Judge Aileen Cannon’s order will be the last word on the matter. Defense lawyers may seek to challenge it all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Cannon had earlier temporarily blocked the department from releasing the entire report on former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump that led to two separate criminal cases. Cannon’s latest order on Monday cleared the way for the release of the volume on Trump’s 2020 election interference case.
She set a hearing for Friday on whether the department can release to lawmakers the volume on Trump’s classified documents case. The department has said it will not publicly disclose that volume as long as criminal proceedings against two of Trump’s co-defendants remain pending.
Smith resigned his position on Friday after transmitting his report to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department revealed in a footnote in a court filing over the weekend.
The ruling, if it stands, could open the door for the public to learn additional details in the coming days about Trump’s frantic but ultimately failed effort to cling to power in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol.
But even as Cannon permitted the release of the volume on election interference, she halted the Justice Department from immediately sharing with congressional officials a separate volume related to Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Lawyers for the Republican president-elect’s two co-defendants, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, had argued that the release of the report would prejudice them given that criminal proceedings remain ongoing against them in the form of a Justice Department appeal of Cannon’s dismissal of charges.
As a compromise, the Justice Department said that it would not make that document public but would instead share it with select congressional officials for their private review. But Cannon halted those plans and instead scheduled a hearing for Friday afternoon.
“All parties agree that Volume II expressly and directly concerns this criminal proceeding,” she wrote. “All parties also appear to agree that public release of Volume II would be inconsistent with the fair trial rights of Defendants Nauta and De Oliveira and with Department of Justice Policy governing the release of information during the pendency of criminal proceedings.”
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Who is Trump’s pick to go after ‘Big Tech’?
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Trade Commission has vowed to continue the agency’s drive to break up Big Tech monopolies while adding a new focus: free speech. VOA’s Matt Dibble has the story.
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Forecasters warn of ‘explosive fire growth’ conditions amid deadly California wildfires
Firefighters in southern California are battling to bring multiple major Los Angeles area wildfires under control Monday as forecasters warn of renewed strong winds that could cause “explosive fire growth.”
The new wind threat, with the biggest concern happening Tuesday, is expected to bring sustained winds of 80 kph and gusts up to about 110 kph, the National Weather Service warned.
Strong winds and dry conditions in an area that has not received significant rainfall for more than eight months helped fuel the fires that have already killed at least 24 people and caused billions of dollars in damage since they began a week ago.
A brief reprieve in the winds in recent days allowed firefighters aided by air drops of water and fire retardant to make some progress in bringing the blazes under control.
Of the three major fires still burning in the Los Angeles area, Cal Fire said late Sunday the Palisades Fire was 13% contained and has burned 96 square kilometers.
Eight of the deaths were attributed to the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades area, officials said.
Sixteen deaths were from the Eaton Fire, located farther inland in North Pasadena and Altadena, which was 27% contained and has burned nearly 60 square kilometers.
Another blaze, the Hurst Fire in the Sylmar area, was 89% contained, Cal Fire said, after burning more than three square kilometers.
The fires together have destroyed more than 12,000 structures.
About 100,000 people remained under evacuation orders late Sunday, with officials saying people would not be allowed back in fire risk areas while the new wind warnings were still in place.
Some schools that had canceled classes last week were resuming operations Monday. The National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers were also set to resume home games Monday after canceling games due to the fires.
Local officials expressed fears that as the fires spread, they could endanger more highly populated areas and threaten some of the city’s key landmarks, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, which houses renowned art works, and the University of California, Los Angeles, one of the top public U.S. universities.
California Governor Gavin Newsom told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the wildfires could be the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, “in terms of just the costs associated with it, in terms of the scale and scope.”
A preliminary estimate by AccuWeather put the damage and economic losses so far between $135 billion and $150 billion. The damages are so high in part because much of the housing that has burned to the ground is among the costliest in the country.
Newsom called for an independent review of how the fires raged on, with firefighters at times facing a shortage of water to fight the blazes as they quickly spread out of control.
The governor said he is asking the same questions “that people out on the streets are asking, yelling about, ‘What the hell happened? What happened to the water system?’
Newsom said he wants to know whether the water supply was simply overwhelmed, “Or were 99 mile-an-hour winds determinative and there was really no firefight that could’ve been more meaningful?”
Firefighting crews from California and nine other states are part of the ongoing response that includes 1,354 fire engines, 84 aircraft and more than 14,000 personnel, including newly arrived firefighters from Mexico.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday he told officials to prepare for the possibility of sending 150 Ukrainian firefighters to help the effort in California.
“The situation there is extremely difficult, and Ukrainians can help Americans save lives,” Zelenskyy said.
Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Here’s what happened when previous US presidents tried to downsize government
President-elect Donald Trump pledges to reduce government spending when he takes office. He has tasked billionaire businessman Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s worth an estimated $950 million, to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, a proposed presidential advisory commission. It’s not a new concept. U.S. leaders have tried to reduce the role of government since the founding of the republic.
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‘Den of Thieves 2’ is No. 1 at box office as ‘Better Man’ flops
New York — On a quiet weekend in movie theaters, while much of Hollywood’s attention was on the wildfires that continue to rage in Los Angeles, Lionsgate’s “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” debuted atop the box office with $15.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Mid-January is often a slow moviegoing period, and that was slightly exacerbated by the closures of about 10 theaters in Los Angeles, the country’s top box-office market.
A sequel to the Gerard Butler 2018 heist thriller, “Den of Thieves 2” performed similarly to the original. The first installment, released by STX, opened with $15.2 million seven years ago. O’Shea Jackson Jr. co-stars in the sequel, which debuted in 3,008 North American theaters.
Butler’s films are becoming something of a regular feature in January. He also starred in “Plane,” which managed $32.1 million after launching on Jan. 13 in 2023.
“Den of Thieves 2,” made for about $40 million, was a bit more costly to make. Audiences liked it well enough, giving it a “B+” CinemaScore. Reviews (58% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) weren’t particularly good. But it counted as Lionsgate’s first No.1 opening since “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” in November 2023.
Also entering wide release over the weekend was the Robbie Williams movie “Better Man,” one of the more audacious spins on the music biopic in recent years. Rather than going the more tradition routes of Elton John (“Rocketman”) or Elvis Presley (“Elvis”), the British popstar is portrayed by a CGI chimpanzee in Michael Gracey’s film.
The Paramount Pictures release, produced for $110 million and acquired by Paramount for $25 million, didn’t catch on much better than Williams’ previous forays into the United States. It tanked, with $1.1 million in ticket sales from 1,291 locations. Gracey’s previous feature, 2017’s “The Greatest Showman” ($459 million worldwide), fared far better in theaters. Reviews, however, have been very good for “Better Man.”
It was bested by “The Last Showgirl,” the Las Vegas drama starring Pamela Anderson. The Roadside Attractions release expanded to 870 theaters and collected $1.5 million.
Also outdoing “Better Man” was Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist.” Coming off winning best drama at the Golden Globes, the A24 postwar epic grossed a hefty $1.4 million from just 68 locations. It will expand wider in the coming weeks.
The weekend’s lion share of business went to holiday holdovers, including “Mufasa: The Lion King,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” “Nosferatu” and “Moana 2.”
In its fourth week of release, Barry Jenkins “Mufasa” continued to do well, adding $13.2 million to bring its total to $539.7 million worldwide. Also on its fourth weekend, “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” padded its $384.8 million global total with $11 million. Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu,” the surprise hit of the Christmas period, collected $6.8 million in ticket sales, bringing the vampire tale to $81.1 million domestically.
The Walt Disney Co.’s “Moana 2,” in its seventh week of release, added $6.5 million to bring its global tally to $989.8 million. In the coming days, it will become the third Disney film released in 2024 to notch $1 billion, joining “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool and Wolverine.”
Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
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“Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” $15.5 million.
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“Mufasa: The Lion King,” $13.2 million.
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“Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” $11 million.
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“Nosferatu,” $6.8 million.
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“Moana 2,” $6.5 million.
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“A Complete Unknown,” $5 million.
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“Wicked,” $5 million.
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“Babygirl,” $3.1 million.
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“Game Changer,” $1.9 million.
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“The Last Showgirl,” $1.5 million.
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Court ruling will help New Mexico stay a go-to state for women seeking abortions
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO — The New Mexico Supreme Court on Thursday struck down abortion restrictions by conservative cities and counties, helping to ensure the state remains a go-to destination for people from other states with bans.
The unanimous opinion, in response to a request from state Attorney General Raúl Torrez, reinforces the state’s position as having some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country.
Attorneys representing the cities of Hobbs and Clovis and Lea and Roosevelt counties had argued that provisions of a federal “anti-vice” law known as the Comstock Act block courts from striking down local abortion ordinances.
But Justice C. Shannon Bacon, writing for the majority opinion, said state law precludes cities and counties from restricting abortion or regulating abortion clinics.
“The ordinances violate this core precept and invade the Legislature’s authority to regulate access to and provision of reproductive healthcare,” she wrote. “We hold the ordinances are preempted in their entirety.”
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez praised the court’s ruling Thursday, saying that the core of the argument was that state laws preempted any action by local governments to engage in activities that would infringe on the constitutional rights of citizens.
“The bottom line is simply this: Abortion access is safe and secure in New Mexico,” he said. “It’s enshrined in law by the recent ruling by the New Mexico Supreme Court and thanks to the work of the New Mexico Legislature.”
New Mexico House Speaker Javier Martínez called access to health care a basic fundamental right in New Mexico.
“It doesn’t take a genius to understand the statutory framework that we have. Local governments don’t regulate health care in New Mexico. It is up to the state,” the Albuquerque Democrat said.
Opposition to abortion runs deep in New Mexico communities along the border with Texas, which has one of the most restrictive bans in the U.S.
But Democrats, who control every statewide elected office in New Mexico and hold majorities in the state House and Senate, have moved to shore up access to abortion — before and after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, eliminating the nationwide right to abortion.
In 2021, the New Mexico Legislature repealed a dormant 1969 statute that outlawed most abortion procedures as felonies, ensuring access to abortion even after the Roe v. Wade reversal.
And in 2023, Democratic New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill that overrides local ordinances aimed at limiting abortion access and enacted a shield law that protects abortion providers from investigations by other states.
In September, construction began on a state-funded reproductive health and abortion clinic in southern New Mexico that will cater to local residents and people who travel from neighboring states.
The new clinic is scheduled for completion by early 2026 to provide services ranging from medical and procedural abortions to contraception, cervical cancer screenings and education about adoptions.
In Thursday’s opinion, justices said they “strongly admonish” Roosevelt County, in particular, for an ordinance that would have allowed individuals to file lawsuits demanding damages of more than $100,000 for violations of the county’s abortion ordinance.
The provision would have created “a private right of action and damages award that is clearly intended to punish protected conduct,” the court said in its opinion.
Erin Hawley, a vice president at Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based Christian legal advocacy group, is an attorney who argued on behalf of Roosevelt County in the case. On Thursday, she criticized the court’s decision and emphasized its limitations.
“Roosevelt County and other New Mexico localities should be able to enforce ordinances that comply with federal law and protect the lives of their citizens,” said Hawley, the wife of U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. “We’re grateful that the New Mexico Supreme Court did not abandon common sense and find a so-called right to abortion in the state constitution.”
It was not immediately clear whether the ruling can be appealed in federal court or influence broader efforts to apply Comstock Act restrictions on abortion. The New Mexico Supreme Court opinion explicitly declined to address conflicts with federal law, basing its decision solely on state provisions.
Austin, Texas-based attorney Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general and architect of that state’s strict abortion ban, said he looked forward “to litigating these issues in other states and bringing the meaning of the federal Comstock Act to the Supreme Court of the United States.”
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Biden honors Pope Francis with the Presidential Medal of Freedom
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Saturday honored Pope Francis with the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction, the highest civilian award given by the president, saying the pontiff was “a light of faith, hope, and love that shines brightly across the world.”
Biden had been scheduled to present the medal to the pope in person on Saturday in Rome on what was to be the final overseas trip of his presidency, but Biden canceled his travel plans so he could monitor the wildfires in California.
The White House said Biden bestowed the award to the pope during a phone call in which they also discussed efforts to promote peace and alleviate suffering around the world.
It’s the only time Biden has presented the honor with distinction during his presidency. Biden himself is a recipient of the award with distinction, recognized when he was vice president by then-President Barack Obama in a surprise ceremony eight years ago. That was the only time in Obama’s two terms that he awarded that version of the medal.
The citation for the pope says “his mission of serving the poor has never ceased. A loving pastor, he joyfully answers children’s questions about God. A challenging teacher, he commands us to fight for peace and protect the planet. A welcoming leader, he reaches out to different faiths.”
Biden is preparing to leave office Jan. 20 and has doled out honors to prominent individuals, including supporters and allies, in recent weeks.
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Winter storm dumps snow in US South, maintains its icy grip
ATLANTA, GEORGIA — Flight cancellations piled up and state officials warned of continuing dangerous roads Saturday in the wake of a winter storm that closed schools and disrupted travel across parts of the southern United States.
A storm that brought biting cold and wet snow to the South was moving out to sea off the East Coast on Saturday, leaving behind a forecast for snow showers in the Appalachian Mountains and New England. But temperatures are expected to plunge after sundown Saturday in the South, raising the risk that melting snow will freeze and turn roadways slick with ice.
“I definitely don’t think everything’s going to completely melt,” said Scott Carroll, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Atlanta, Georgia. “Especially the secondary roads will probably still have some slush on them.”
Airport tie-ups remain
Major roads were mostly clear, but few ventured out early Saturday. The Atlanta Hawks postponed the pro basketball game they were supposed to host Saturday afternoon against the Houston Rockets, citing icy conditions.
Major airports including those in Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, continued to report disruptions Saturday. While flights were operating, airlines canceled and delayed more flights after Friday’s weather slowed airline travel to a crawl. By Saturday afternoon, about 1,000 flights in and out of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport were canceled or delayed, according to tracking software FlightAware.
Sarah Waithera Wanyoike, who lives in the Atlanta suburb of Lilburn, was starting her second day at Atlanta’s airport Saturday. Wanyoike arrived at the world’s busiest airport before sunrise Friday to catch an Ethiopian Airlines flight, on the way to her job in Zimbabwe.
The plane boarded after a delay Friday, but never left, discharging passengers back to the gate after taxiing around and never taking off for six hours. Wanyoike said her luggage remained stuck on the plane and she dared not try to go home because she was told to be back at the gate before dawn Saturday.
“People slept with their babies on the floors last night,” Wanyoike said.
Delta Air Lines, the largest carrier at the Atlanta airport, said late Friday that it was “working to recover” on Saturday, saying cancellations would be worst among morning flights because of crews and airplanes that weren’t where they were supposed to be after the airline canceled 1,100 flights Friday.
Richmond drops boil-water advisory
Meanwhile, the city of Richmond in the state of Virginia, lifted its boil-water advisory late Saturday morning, nearly a week after Monday’s snowstorm cut power and caused a malfunction to the city’s water system.
Mayor Danny Avula said lab tests confirmed that Richmond’s water was safe to drink, adding that boil-water advisories had been lifted for some surrounding counties as well.
The temporary halting of the water system affected more than 200,000 people, some of whom lacked water in their homes because of diminished pressure.
Freezing rain pushed up electricity outages above 110,000 in Georgia on Friday night, but most power was restored Saturday. The National Weather Service reported small amounts of ice accumulation around Atlanta from the freezing rain.
Parts of mountainous western North Carolina saw as much as 4.5 inches (about 11 centimeters) of snow in a 24-hour period that ended at 7 a.m. Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
Parts of middle Tennessee saw nearly 6 inches (about 15 centimeters) of snow by Saturday morning.
Earlier this week, the storm brought heavy snow and slick roads to much of the states of Texas and Oklahoma before moving east. The states of Arkansas and North Carolina mobilized National Guard troops for tasks such as helping stranded motorists, and governors declared states of emergency.
City starts digging out
Businesses and churches started digging out from under several inches of snow that fell on Nashville, Tennessee, in order to reopen for the weekend.
At Judah Temple of Praise, church members Saturday shoveled, salted and blew snow off sidewalks and the parking lot in advance of Sunday services.
“We’re not going to use the excuse of a parking lot covered in snow to not show up and praise our God tomorrow,” said elder Myyah Lockhart.
Andy Atkins, co-owner of the Bad Luck Burger Club food truck in east Nashville, brushed off picnic tables with a broom and shoveled snow off the sidewalk in front of his business. He closed the truck Friday but hoped that customers would show up Saturday.
“Having a day off is good for the soul, but is bad for the pocket, you know,” said Atkins.
Alabama schools could stay closed
School was canceled Friday for millions of children from Texas to Georgia and as far east as the state of South Carolina, giving them a rare snow day. Officials in northern Alabama on Saturday said schools could remain closed Monday if ice doesn’t melt off secondary roads.
The storm piled up more than a year’s worth of snowfall on some cities.
As much as a foot (about 31 centimeters) fell in parts of Arkansas, and there were reports of nearly 10 inches (about 25 centimeters) in Little Rock, which averages 3.8 inches (9.7 centimeters) a year.
More than 7 inches (about 18 centimeters) fell at Memphis International Airport in Tennessee. The city usually sees 2.7 inches (6.9 centimeters) a year.
The storm dumped as much as 7 inches (about 18 centimeters) in some spots in central Oklahoma and northern Texas.
The polar vortex of ultra-cold air usually spins around the North Pole, but it sometimes ventures south into the United States, Europe and Asia. Some experts say such events are happening more frequently, paradoxically, because of a warming world.
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Los Angeles wildfire switches direction, poses new threat
LOS ANGELES — The largest of the raging wildfires that have devastated parts of Los Angeles this week was reported to have shifted direction Saturday, triggering more evacuation orders and posing a new challenge to exhausted firefighters.
Six simultaneous blazes that have ripped across Los Angeles County neighborhoods since Tuesday have killed at least 11 people and damaged or destroyed 10,000 structures. The toll is expected to mount when firefighters are able to conduct house-to-house searches.
The fierce Santa Ana winds that fanned the infernos eased Friday night. But the Palisades Fire on the city’s western edge was heading in a new direction, prompting another evacuation order as it edged toward the Brentwood neighborhood and the San Fernando Valley foothills, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“The Palisades fire has got a new significant flare-up on the eastern portion and continues to northeast,” LA Fire Department Captain Erik Scott told local TV station KTLA, according to a report on the Times website.
The fire, the most destructive in the history of Los Angeles, has razed whole neighborhoods to the ground, leaving just the smoldering ruins of what had been people’s homes and possessions.
Before the latest flare-up, firefighters had reported progress in subduing the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire in the foothills east of the metropolis after it burned out of control for days. On Friday night, the Palisades Fire was 8% contained and the Eaton Fire 3%, said the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as CAL FIRE.
The two big fires combined had consumed 35,000 acres (14,100 hectares), or 54 square miles — 2½ times the land area of Manhattan.
Some 153,000 people remained under evacuation orders and another 166,800 faced evacuation warnings with a curfew in place for all evacuation zones, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said.
Seven neighboring states, the federal government and Canada have rushed aid to California, bolstering aerial teams dropping water and fire retardant on the flaming hills and crews on the ground attacking fire lines with hand tools and hoses.
The National Weather Service said that conditions in the Los Angeles area would improve through the weekend, with sustained winds slowing to about 20 mph (32 kph), gusting between 35 mph and 50 mph.
“It’s not as gusty, so that should help firefighters,” NWS meteorologist Allison Santorelli said, adding that conditions were still critical with low humidity and dry vegetation.
CAL FIRE said there was a chance of strong winds again on Tuesday.
“There will continue to be a high likelihood of critical fire weather conditions through next week,” it said.
Officials have declared a public health emergency due to the thick, toxic smoke.
Homes reduced to ash
Pacific Palisades residents who ventured back to their devastated neighborhoods Friday were shocked to find brick chimneys looming over charred waste and burnt-out vehicles as acrid smoke lingered in the air.
“This was a house that was loved,” Kelly Foster, 44, said while combing through the rubble where her house once stood.
Foster’s 16-year-old daughter, Ada, said she tried to get inside, but “I just became sick. I just couldn’t even … yeah, it’s hard.”
In Rick McGeagh’s Palisades neighborhood, only six of 60 homes survived, and all that remained standing at his ranch house was a statue of the Virgin Mary.
“Everything else is ash and rubble,” said McGeagh, 61, a commercial real estate broker who, along with his wife, raised three children at their home.
On Friday morning, hundreds of people streamed into a parking lot near the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena for donated clothing, diapers and bottled water.
Denise Doss, 63, said she was anxious to return to her destroyed home in Altadena to see if anything was salvageable, but officials stopped her due to safety concerns.
“At least to say goodbye until we can rebuild. I will let God lead me,” Doss said.
Billions in losses
Many Altadena residents said they were worried government resources would go to wealthier areas and that insurers might short-change those who cannot afford to contest denials of fire claims.
Beyond those who lost their homes, tens of thousands remained without power, and millions of people were exposed to poorer air quality, as the fires lofted traces of metals, plastics and other synthetic materials.
Private forecaster AccuWeather estimated the damage and economic loss at $135 billion to $150 billion, portending an arduous recovery and soaring homeowners’ insurance costs.
California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara called Friday for insurers to suspend pending nonrenewals and cancellations that homeowners received before the fires began and to extend the grace period for payments.
President Joe Biden declared the fires a major disaster and said the U.S. government would reimburse 100% of the recovery for the next six months.
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US ‘notorious markets’ report warns of risks from online pharmacies
BANGKOK — Nearly all of the world’s 35,000 online pharmacies are being run illegally and consumers who use them risk getting ineffective or dangerous drugs, according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s annual report on “notorious markets.” The report also singled out 19 countries over concerns about counterfeit or pirated products.
The report also named about three dozen online retailers, many of them in China or elsewhere in Asia that it said are allegedly engaged in selling counterfeit products or other illegal activities.
The report says 96% of online pharmacies were found to be violating the law, many operating without a license and selling medicines without prescriptions and safety warnings.
Their websites often look like legitimate e-commerce platforms, often with false claims that they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, said the report, released Wednesday. The FDA and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration have both issued warnings about risks of buying prescription medicines from such sources.
It cited a survey by the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies’ Global Foundation that found nearly one in four Americans who have used online pharmacies reported having encountered substandard, fake or harmful medicines.
Last year, federal prosecutors reported that a network of illegal drug sellers based in the U.S., the Dominican Republic and India had packaged potentially deadly synthetic opioids into pills disguised as common prescription drugs and sold millions of them through fake online drugstores, federal prosecutors said Monday. At least nine people died of narcotics poisoning between August 2023 and June 2024 after consuming the counterfeit pills, the indictment said.
Apart from the risks of using drugs that may contain inert ingredients or those that could cause allergies, the medicines are sometimes made in unsanitary conditions, said the report, which did not give annual statistics for those who may have died or otherwise been harmed.
Progress in fighting counterfeit and pirated goods
The USTR’s annual report cited examples from inside the United States, but and also mentioned risks of imported ingredients including fentanyl from China. Many of the illicit online pharmacies are based outside the U.S.
The “Notorious Markets List” did laud progress in fighting counterfeit and pirated goods.
In one case, U.S. authorities, industry groups and the police collaborated in shutting down a Hanoi, Vietnam-based piracy ring, Fmovies, and other related piracy sites, in July and August.
The report said the world’s then-largest pirated movies site had drawn more than 6.7 billion visits from January 2023 to June 2024.
In another Vietnam-linked case, two people operating pirate television platform BestBuyIPTV were convicted and ordered to pay fines and forfeit property.
The report also cited crackdowns on online piracy in Brazil and the United Kingdom and busts of sellers of counterfeit purses, clothing and shoes in Kuwait.
But problems remain with cyberlockers that thwart efforts to restrict piracy of movies and other content and of so-called “bulletproof” internet service providers, or ISPs, that promise people using them leeway for using pirate sites, it said.
One such ISP is Avito, a Russian-based ad platform that allegedly lets sellers advertise counterfeit products.
Baidu Wangpan, a cloud storage service of China’s largest search engine provider, Baidu, was named for allegedly failing to enforce or being slow to act on copyright protection.
The report also pointed to social-commerce site Pinduoduo and to Douyin Mall, a Chinese online platform owned by Tiktok owner ByteDance. It said the shopping platforms have sought to build up protections but that they still host many counterfeit goods.
It also named Shopee, a Singapore-based online and mobile e-commerce site, saying some country-focused platforms serving Southeast Asia and South American had better track records in fighting piracy than others.
IndiaMART, an big business-to-business marketplace in India, still offers a slew of counterfeit products, it said.
While a large share of theft of intellectual property has moved online, the report also highlighted real world locations notorious for selling counterfeit products, including markets in Turkey, bazaars in the United Arab Emirates and Saigon Square Shopping Mall in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.
The report said Bangkok’s MBK Center, a huge mall of about 2,000 stores, had actively cracked down on counterfeiting, though such products still can be found there.
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Biden team urges Trump administration to keep continuity in Indo-Pacific
white house —
Jake Sullivan, the outgoing U.S. national security adviser, is urging the incoming Trump administration to continue President Joe Biden’s strategy of bolstering ties with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific to counter adversaries including China and North Korea.
“The case we will make to them is that the American position in the region is incredibly strong right now,” Sullivan said in response to VOA’s question during a roundtable with journalists on Friday.
“There should be more continuity than significant change with respect to our Indo-Pacific strategy,” he said. “But I don’t know what the incoming team will actually end up doing.”
Sullivan, considered one of the main architects of the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, said the president’s approach is “working in a big way,” and he warned that straying from that will “bring risk.”
Sullivan acknowledged, however, that the administration failed to make substantial progress on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
As the threat from Pyongyang remains as acute as it has ever been, Sullivan highlighted key distinctions: closer cooperation between North Korea and Russia, and a “broader alignment of competitors and adversaries — Russia, China, North Korea, Iran.”
He repeated the administration’s warning against reducing U.S. support for Kyiv, something that President-elect Donald Trump has signaled he would do. What happens in Ukraine really matters for the Indo-Pacific, Sullivan said, because “China’s watching.”
Biden’s aides have often voiced concern that the West’s reluctance to bolster Kyiv’s defenses could embolden China to follow Russia’s lead and invade its smaller democratic neighbor, Taiwan, or act even more aggressively on its disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Bonnie Glaser, managing director of German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific Program, said that cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang has developed quickly, with North Korea sending its troops to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and is likely to expand.
“We have yet to see what weapons systems or military technologies [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has promised to deliver to [North Korean leader] Kim [Jong Un],” she told VOA. “Beijing has refused to apply leverage to stop this trend.”
Sullivan expressed confidence that the administration has “set up a great opportunity for the next team” to enhance the U.S. position and has “shifted the balance of power” in the Indo-Pacific.
He outlined Biden’s approach of creating a network of alliances and partnerships, including enhancing cooperation with the Quad, an informal grouping with India, Australia and Japan, as well as rolling out the AUKUS security deal with the United Kingdom and Australia to provide Canberra with nuclear-powered submarines to better patrol the waters of the region.
Sullivan also highlighted trilateral cooperation among the U.S., Japan and South Korea, with the two former adversaries now working together to deter North Korea’s nuclear threat, and among the U.S., Japan and the Philippines to push back against Beijing’s aggression in the South China Sea.
Continuity or change
Because relations between Washington and Beijing will likely remain adversarial, the region could see more continuity on U.S. policy toward China under the incoming administration.
Trump has selected two well-known China hawks for key roles in his “America First” Cabinet: Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, and Representative Mike Waltz, the man Trump is eyeing to become Sullivan’s successor.
However, Waltz earlier this week announced a sweeping directive to terminate all national security staffers loaned from other departments and agencies who serve in apolitical, nonpartisan senior staff roles. Waltz said the firings were meant to enforce absolute alignment with Trump’s policy agenda.
Aside from staffing the National Security Council with Trump loyalists, it’s unclear whether the president-elect will employ the same approach of leveraging alliances to deter China.
The first Trump administration saw that “multilateral alliances are more a burden than a reality,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. During his first term, Trump terminated U.S. membership in organizations and agreements including the Paris Climate Accord, the U.N. Human Rights Council and the World Health Organization.
“If you do form alliances, they’re going to have to be based on clear, specific quid pro quo transactions,” he told VOA.
During his first term, Trump also focused more on bilateral ties, and he may fall back on that approach.
“He might emphasize ties with strong conservative leaders like [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi in India but de-emphasize groups like the U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilat[eral], particularly if a new government in Seoul drifts a little away from Washington,” said Zack Cooper, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“What remains unclear is whether Trump will be confrontational with China outside the economic arena,” Cooper told VOA. Key uncertainties include whether the U.S. will pursue a less robust response to Beijing’s moves in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
“Trump personally seems more open to engagement with [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and focused on trade issues, but many in his administration will be pushing for a hard line on security and technology issues,” Cooper said.
Change of trade strategy
Trade is one area where analysts expect a significant change in strategy as Trump appears set to enact protectionist measures, threatening to wield tariffs as a weapon of punishment not only on adversaries but also on regional partners, particularly those with large trade surpluses, including Japan.
Trump is expected to undo the Biden’s administration’s effort to revitalize trade with the region. During his presidential campaign, Trump vowed to kill the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, Biden’s 2022 deal with countries in the region, saying that it will hurt American manufacturing and workers.
IPEF was Biden’s attempt to bolster economic ties with Indo-Pacific countries, five years after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Obama administration’s most important trade initiative, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, immediately upon entering his first term.
The framework pursues nontrade priorities such as supply chain resilience, secure digital infrastructure and sustainable clean energy transition. It has been criticized by many in the region for not offering market access measures as Beijing aggressively expanded its economic clout, including through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world’s largest regional free-trade pact that covers almost one-third of the world’s population and GDP.
VOA’s Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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Biden, Trump teams pushing for Gaza ceasefire before January 20
With less than two weeks before U.S. President Joe Biden leaves office, his aides are working with President-elect Donald Trump’s team in a last-ditch push for a ceasefire in Gaza. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports. Anita Powell contributed.
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Donald Trump sentenced without penalties in New York court
A New York judge Friday sentenced President-elect Donald Trump to an “unconditional discharge” over 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The sentence spares him penalties but allows the convictions to stand. During sentencing, the president-elect again said the case was politically motivated. VOA senior Washington correspondent Carolyn Presutti reports. Contributor: Kim Lewis; Video editor: Rob Raffaele
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Trump will be sentenced in hush money case, days before his inauguration
New York — In a singular moment in U.S. history, President-elect Donald Trump faces sentencing Friday for his New York hush money conviction after the nation’s highest court refused to intervene.
Like so much else in the criminal case and the current American political landscape, the scenario set to unfold in an austere Manhattan courtroom was unimaginable only a few years ago. A state judge is to say what consequences, if any, the country’s former and soon-to-be leader will face for felonies that a jury found he committed.
With Trump 10 days from inauguration, Judge Juan M. Merchan has indicated he plans a no-penalty sentence called an unconditional discharge, and prosecutors aren’t opposing it. That would mean no jail time, no probation and no fines would be imposed, but nothing is final until Friday’s proceeding is done.
Regardless of the outcome, Trump, a Republican, will become the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency.
Trump, who is expected to appear by video from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, will have the opportunity to speak. He has pilloried the case, the only one of his four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will.
The judge has indicated that he plans the unconditional discharge — a rarity in felony convictions — partly to avoid complicated constitutional issues that would arise if he imposed a penalty that overlapped with Trump’s presidency.
The hush money case accused Trump of fudging his business’ records to veil a $130,000 payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She was paid, late in Trump’s 2016 campaign, not to tell the public about a sexual encounter she maintains the two had a decade earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them, and he contends that his political adversaries spun up a bogus prosecution to try to damage him.
“I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge,” the Republican president-elect wrote on his Truth Social platform last week. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the charges, is a Democrat.
Bragg’s office said in a court filing Monday that Trump committed “serious offenses that caused extensive harm to the sanctity of the electoral process and to the integrity of New York’s financial marketplace.”
While the specific charges were about checks and ledgers, the underlying accusations were seamy and deeply entangled with Trump’s political rise. Prosecutors said Daniels was paid off — through Trump’s personal attorney at the time, Michael Cohen — as part of a wider effort to keep voters from hearing about Trump’s alleged extramarital escapades.
Trump denies the alleged encounters occurred. His lawyers said he wanted to squelch the stories to protect his family, not his campaign. And while prosecutors said Cohen’s reimbursements for paying Daniels were deceptively logged as legal expenses, Trump says that’s simply what they were.
“There was nothing else it could have been called,” he wrote on Truth Social last week, adding, “I was hiding nothing.”
Trump’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to forestall a trial. Since his May conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records, they have pulled virtually every legal lever within reach to try to get the conviction overturned, the case dismissed or at least the sentencing postponed.
They have made various arguments to Merchan, New York appeals judges, and federal courts including the Supreme Court. The Trump attorneys have leaned heavily into assertions of presidential immunity from prosecution, and they got a boost in July from a Supreme Court decision that affords former commanders-in-chief considerable immunity.
Trump was a private citizen and presidential candidate when Daniels was paid in 2016. He was president when the reimbursements to Cohen were made and recorded the following year.
On one hand, Trump’s defense argued that immunity should have kept jurors from hearing some evidence, such as testimony about some of his conversations with then-White House communications director Hope Hicks.
And after Trump won this past November’s election, his lawyers argued that the case had to be scrapped to avoid impinging on his upcoming presidency and his transition to the Oval Office.
Merchan, a Democrat, repeatedly postponed the sentencing, initially set for July. But last week, he set Friday’s date, citing a need for “finality.” He wrote that he strove to balance Trump’s need to govern, the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, the respect due a jury verdict and the public’s expectation that “no one is above the law.”
Trump’s lawyers then launched a flurry of last-minute efforts to block the sentencing. Their last hope vanished Thursday night with a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that declined to delay the sentencing.
Meanwhile, the other criminal cases that once loomed over Trump have ended or stalled ahead of trial.
After Trump’s election, special counsel Jack Smith closed out the federal prosecutions over Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. A state-level Georgia election interference case is locked in uncertainty after prosecutor Fani Willis was removed from it.
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Death toll rises to 10 as Los Angeles wildfires ravage city
Authorities in the western U.S. state of California say at least 10 people have been killed in massive wildfires that have ravaged the city of Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles County medical examiner late Thursday announced the new death toll, which doubled from earlier reports. Officials warn that number could increase once the fires have been brought under control and workers can comb through the ruins.
Firefighting operations continued into the night, with water-dropping helicopters taking advantage of a temporary lull in winds.
President Joe Biden told a White House briefing Thursday afternoon that federal resources and additional funding have been made available to California to fight the wildfires that he described as the “worst fires to ever hit Los Angeles.”
The money will be used, the president said, to cover all of the costs for 180 days for temporary shelters, the removal of hazardous materials, first responder salaries and measures to protect life.
Vice President Kamala Harris, a former U.S. senator for California, also spoke at the briefing.
Harris described the situation in California as “apocalyptic” and “something that is going to have an impact for months and years to come.”
The vice president has a home in an evacuation zone, but it was not immediately clear whether her house sustained any damage.
While the death toll from the Los Angeles wildfires stands at five, Southern California officials say that number will likely increase once the fires have been brought under control and workers can comb through the ruins.
Authorities said the wildfires burning in and around the city of Los Angeles have prompted the evacuation of nearly 180,000 people, destroyed thousands of homes, and burned tens of thousands of hectares of land.
“This is absolutely an unprecedented, historic firestorm,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said.
At a news briefing Thursday, Los Angeles city and county officials provided an update on the fires and the efforts to bring them under control.
Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley told reporters the fierce winds that had driven the fires calmed enough to allow firefighters to increase containment and air operations to resume.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said it is fighting five active wildfires in the Los Angeles area: the Palisades, Eaton, Hurst, Lidia and Sunset fires, with the Palisades and Eaton fires being the largest.
The sparking of a sixth fire — the Kenneth Fire, near Woodland Hills — was announced Thursday, and a mandatory evacuation order was in effect for that area, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said in its last report that the fires had burned more than 11,750 hectares of land, an announcement made before the addition of the Kenneth Fire.
Some people are apparently preying on the devastated neighborhoods, and at least 20 people have been arrested in recent days for looting.
“I promise you, you will be held accountable,” Los Angeles Supervisor Kathryn Barger said at a press conference Thursday.
“Shame on those who are preying on our residents during this time of crisis,” Barger said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said the Palisades, Eaton, Hurst and Lidia fires have prompted the evacuation of nearly 180,000 residents, and another 200,000 residents are under evacuation orders.
Fire Chief Crowley called the Palisades Fire alone “one of the most destructive natural disasters in the history of Los Angeles.” Officials said Thursday that more than 5,000 homes and other structures have been lost in Palisades.
A leading national credit rating service echoed that view. In a statement Thursday, Morningstar-DBRS credit service said preliminary estimates show the fires could result in more than $8 billion in property losses.
Citing local fire officials, Morningstar-DBRS said the fires have already destroyed more than 1,100 homes and threaten more than 28,000 structures. The organization, which monitors and evaluates risk, said it expects the wildfires to have an adverse but manageable impact on California property insurers.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Artificial Intelligence is the star at CES tech show
Technology companies, industry executives and entrepreneurs are in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week for CES, the consumer electronics show featuring the latest advancements in artificial intelligence, vehicle technology, robotics and more. Tina Trinh reports from Las Vegas.
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Russia ‘observing’ Greenland situation; Europe cautious on Trump remarks
london — Russia has said it is closely watching the situation with Greenland, following U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s refusal to rule out military or economic measures to take control of the territory from Denmark.
“We are observing this rather dramatic development of the situation, but so far, thank God, [it remains] at the level of statements,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.
“The Arctic zone is a zone of our national and strategic interests. We are present in the Arctic zone, and we will continue to be there,” Peskov added.
The vast territory of Greenland — most of which lies above the Arctic Circle — has been officially part of the Kingdom of Denmark since 1953, although the island has its own government.
National security
Questioned at a news conference in Florida on Tuesday, Trump said the United States needs Greenland for security purposes, and he refused to rule out using economic or military means to achieve that goal.
“People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it. But if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security. That’s for the free world. I’m talking about protecting the free world,” Trump said.
“You have Chinese ships all over the place. You have Russian ships all over the place. We’re not letting that happen,” he added.
Like much of the Arctic, Greenland is rapidly warming. That is changing the geopolitics of the region, said analyst Liana Fix of the Council on Foreign Relations.
“The Arctic is increasingly becoming a zone of a great power competition and rivalry. And the United States is concerned it is losing this game,” Fix said.
“The Arctic becomes much more accessible, both for trading goods but also for critical minerals, especially for rare earth [minerals],” Fix said. “And also it becomes increasingly a militarized zone,” she added, noting that Russia is cooperating with the Chinese coast guard in the region.
Not for sale
Denmark has made it clear that Greenland is not for sale. Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen rejected the suggestion that Trump’s comments presented a foreign policy crisis for his government.
“I see a president who is on his way into the White House, who has a heightened focus on the Arctic, and I can understand that he has that. We also have that from the Danish side, and we also have that within NATO,” Rasmussen said Wednesday.
Denmark faces a dilemma, said analyst Fix.
“It is very clear for Denmark, too, that increased cooperation with the United States both on investments in Greenland but also on military cooperation would be actually in the interest of everyone,” Fix told VOA.
Several European leaders rejected Trump’s comments, although most stopped short of directly criticizing the incoming U.S. president.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said basic Western values were at stake.
“The principle of inviolability of borders applies to every country, regardless of whether it is to the east or west of us,” he said.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot was more direct. “It is out of the question for the European Union to let any nation in the world, whichever it is — and let me say starting with Russia — define its sovereign borders,” he said Wednesday.
Greenland independence
Greenland’s government, meanwhile, is pushing for a referendum on full independence and has said that only the people will decide Greenland’s future.
“Greenland is on its way into a new era and a new year in which Greenland has been at the center of world attention. The Greenlandic people are one people, regardless of where they live. And as people in the times we live in, we must be united in order to be ready for a new future that our country is on its way to,” Prime Minister Mute Egede said during a trip to Copenhagen on Thursday.
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In photos: State funeral for former President Jimmy Carter at National Cathedral
Jimmy Carter, the 39th U.S. President, is being honored with the pageantry of a state funeral in the nation’s capital, The Associated Press reported. He will later be honored a second service and burial in his tiny Georgia hometown that launched a Depression-era farm boy to the world stage.
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