BLOGONITY

ISLAMABAD — Taliban leaders in Afghanistan on Wednesday denied President-elect Donald Trump’s assertions that they have received billions of dollars in U.S. financial aid since regaining control of the country.  Hamdullah Fitrat, the deputy Taliban spokesperson, responded to Trump’s claims by asserting that the Kabul administration neither anticipates nor seeks any assistance from the United States.  “In reality, the United States has not provided a single penny to the Islamic Emirate,” Fitrat stated, referring to Afghanistan’s official name under Taliban rule. “Instead, it has confiscated and frozen billions of dollars that rightfully belong to the people of Afghanistan.”   The Taliban’s sharp response followed Trump’s news conference in Florida on Tuesday, when he was asked to comment on the alleged monthly payments of millions of dollars by the Biden administration to the de facto Afghan rulers.  “It’s not even believable. Billions of dollars, not millions — billions. We pay billions of dollars to essentially the Taliban Afghanistan,” Trump stated. “This can’t be allowed to happen.”  Fitrat claimed that the U.S. funds in question were primarily utilized for the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and the relocation and resettlement of their Afghan allies.  “A portion of this money may have also been used under the pretext of ‘humanitarian aid’ by international organizations. … [The] U.S. directed all this money to Afghanistan, primarily for its own interests, and now exploits it as propaganda against the Islamic Emirate,” the Taliban spokesperson alleged.  The controversy surrounding provision of financial aid to the Taliban intensified following a Jan. 2 letter by Congressman Tim Burchett to President-elect Trump, which expressed concern over foreign aid being directed to the de facto Afghan authorities.  “These cash shipments are auctioned off, and after that, they are nearly impossible to track. This is how the Taliban is being funded and plans to fund terrorism around the world,” warned Burchett. “The United States of America should not fund its enemies abroad.”  He cited U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken as having confirmed that non-governmental organizations in Afghanistan had paid nearly $10 million in foreign aid to the Taliban in taxes.  The Taliban swept back to power in August 2021, prompting Washington and the West at large to suspend development aid to the country and effectively isolate the Afghan banking sector, freezing billions of dollars of central bank assets in the United States.  The flow of humanitarian assistance, however, has primarily remained intact … “Taliban refute Trump’s claims on US financial aid to Afghanistan” →

Washington — President-elect Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to call off Friday’s sentencing in his hush money case in New York.  Trump’s lawyers turned to the nation’s highest court Wednesday after New York courts refused to postpone the sentencing by Juan M. Merchan, the judge who presided over Trump’s trial and conviction last May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.  Trump’s attorneys asked for an immediate stay of Friday’s sentencing “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government.”  The Supreme Court asked for a response from New York prosecutors by Thursday.  Merchan has indicated he will not impose jail time, fines or probation.  Trump’s attorneys have pointed to the Supreme Court’s ruling giving him broad immunity from criminal prosecution as they tried to have his New York conviction tossed out.  While that opinion came in a different case, Trump’s lawyers say it means some of the evidence used against him in his hush money trial should have been shielded by presidential immunity. Merchan has disagreed.    …

Sanaa — The U.S. military said Wednesday its forces hit weapons storage facilities used by Yemen’s Houthi rebels to attack American warships and commercial vessels.    The operation involved “multiple precision strikes,” US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement, adding “there were no injuries or damage to US personnel or equipment,”    The statement did not specify the location of the storage facilities.    “The strikes are part of CENTCOM’s effort to degrade Iranian-backed (Houthi) attempts to threaten regional partners and military and merchant vessels in the region,” it said.    The Houthis’ Al-Masirah TV said there were five raids in the northwestern Amran province and two in Sanaa province, where the capital Sanaa is located.    The Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014 from Yemen’s internationally recognized government and control much of the war-torn country’s most populated areas.    For more than a year they have been firing missiles and drones at Israel and at ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, in what they say is a show of solidarity with Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.    The Houthis’ attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have destabilized a vital shipping lane, prompting strikes by the United States and sometimes Britain that began in January 2024.    Most Houthi missiles and drones launched towards Israel have been intercepted, but a missile wounded 16 people in Tel Aviv in December, according to Israel’s military and emergency services.  …

LOS ANGELES — California firefighters battled wind-whipped wildfires that tore across the Los Angeles area, destroying homes, clogging roadways as tens of thousands fled and straining resources as officials prepared for the situation to worsen early Wednesday. The flames from a fire that broke out Tuesday evening near a nature preserve in the inland foothills northeast of LA spread so rapidly that staff at a senior living center had to push dozens of residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a parking lot. The residents waited there in their bedclothes as embers fell around them until ambulances, buses and even construction vans arrived to take them to safety. Another blaze that started hours earlier ripped through the city’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood, a hillside area along the coast dotted with celebrity residences and memorialized by the Beach Boys in their 1960s hit “Surfin’ USA.” In the frantic haste to get to safety, roadways became impassable when scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some toting suitcases. The traffic jam on Palisades Drive prevented emergency vehicles from getting through and bulldozer was brought in to push the abandoned cars to the side and create a path. Video along the Pacific Coast Highway showed widespread destruction of homes and businesses along the famed roadway. Pacific Palisades resident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighborhood was blocked. Ash fell all around them while fires burned on both sides of the road. “We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,” Trainor said. “People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming.” A third wildfire started around 10:30 p.m. local time and quickly prompted evacuations in Sylmar, a San Fernando Valley community that is the northernmost neighborhood in Los Angeles. The causes of all three fires were under investigation. Flames were being pushed by Santa Ana winds topping 97 kph in some places. The winds were expected to increase overnight, producing isolated gusts that could top 160 kph in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven’t seen substantial rain in months. The situation prompted the Los Angeles Fire Department to take the rare step of putting out a plea for off-duty firefighters to help. It was too windy for firefighting aircraft … “Thousands flee, homes destroyed as Los Angeles wildfires burn out of control” →

President-elect Donald Trump did not rule out using military or economic coercion to gain control of the Panama Canal and Greenland during a wide-ranging news conference in Florida on Tuesday. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports his remarks came hours after his son made a surprise trip to Greenland. …

CARACAS, VENEZUELA — Two U.S. citizens have been arrested in Venezuela, part of a group of seven whom President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday branded as “mercenaries” in the latest roundup ahead of the embattled leader’s expected inauguration to a new term later this week. Maduro said the detained U.S. citizens were “very high level” but did not provide further details or evidence of the arrests. “Just today we’ve captured seven foreign mercenaries, including two important mercenaries from the United States,” said Maduro, who is set to take office for a third term on Friday following last July’s contested election that the opposition says it won in a landslide. Maduro said the group of detainees includes two Colombians who he said were captured in unspecified parts of Venezuela, as well as three others who came from the war in Ukraine. Neither the U.S. Department of State nor Colombia’s Foreign Ministry responded immediately to requests for comment. Venezuelan rights groups have warned of a revolving door of prisoners, with fresh detentions coming in even as older prisoners are released, including arrests of foreign nationals. In late 2023, Venezuela’s government released dozens of prisoners including 10 Americans after months of negotiations between Caracas and Washington, while the U.S. released a close ally of Maduro, Colombian businessman Alex Saab. In remarks delivered from the Miraflores presidential palace, Maduro on Tuesday claimed that his government’s security forces have captured what he called 125 foreign mercenaries from 25 different countries who he said had entered the South American nation “to practice terrorism against the Venezuelan people.” The remarks come as opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez is touring the region in a bid to grow his international support. Gonzalez has been declared president-elect by several governments, including the United States. On Monday, outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden said Gonzalez was the “true winner” of the July 28 vote. While the government-aligned electoral authority and Venezuela’s top court have decreed that Maduro won the election, the government has not released ballot-box level results to back up the claim. The opposition, however, has published thousands of scanned copies of voting machine receipts its observers gathered days after the vote, accounting for over 80% of votes cast and showing a lopsided Gonzalez victory. …

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to block a plea agreement for accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants that would spare them the risk of the death penalty.  The Justice Department argued in a brief filed with a federal appeals court in the District of Columbia that the government would be irreparably harmed if the guilty pleas were accepted. It said the government would be denied a chance for a public trial and the opportunity to “seek capital punishment against three men charged with a heinous act of mass murder that caused the death of thousands of people and shocked the nation and the world.”  The military judge at Guantanamo Bay and a military appeals panel rejected Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s effort to throw out the plea agreement, saying he had no power to do so after the senior Pentagon official for Guantanamo approved it in July.  Mohammed was due to enter his guilty plea on Friday and his two co-defendants next week.  The Justice Department brief said the defendants, by contrast, would not be harmed by a short delay, given that the prosecution has been ongoing since 2012 and the plea agreements would likely result in them serving long prison sentences, potentially for the rest of their lives.  “A short delay to allow this Court to weigh the merits of the government’s request in this momentous case will not materially harm the respondents,” the government argued.  …

LOS ANGELES — Firefighters scrambled to corral a fast-moving wildfire in the Los Angeles hillsides dotted with celebrity homes as a fierce windstorm hit Southern California on Tuesday. The blaze could be seen for miles as scores of residents abandoned their cars and fled on foot to safety as roads became blocked.  About 30,000 residents are under evacuation orders and more than 13,000 structures are under threat, said Kristin Crowley, fire chief of the Los Angeles. Fire Department.  California Governor Gavin Newsom said he saw “many structures already destroyed.” Officials did not give an exact number of structures damaged or destroyed in the blaze.  The cause of the fire was not immediately known, and no injuries had been reported, officials said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.  Newsom warned residents across Southern California not to assume they are out of danger, saying the worst of the winds are expected between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday.  Forecasters predicted the windstorm would last for days, producing isolated gusts that could top 160 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour) in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven’t seen substantial rain in months. The National Weather service said it could be the strongest Santa Ana windstorm in more than a decade across Los Angeles and Ventura counties.  Roughly half a million utility customers were at risk of their power being shut off to reduce the risk of the equipment sparking blazes.  In the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in western Los Angeles, a fire swiftly consumed about 5 square kilometers (2 square miles) of land, sending up a dramatic plume of smoke visible across the city. Residents in Venice Beach, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) away, reported seeing the flames. It was one of several blazes across the area.  Sections of Interstate 10 and the scenic Pacific Coast Highway were closed to all non-essential traffic to aid in evacuation efforts. Other roads were blocked. Some residents jumped out of their vehicles to escape the danger and waited to be picked up.  Resident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighborhood was completely blocked. Ash fell all around them while fires burned on both sides of the road.  “We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,” Trainor said. “People were getting out of the cars with … “30,000 ordered to flee Los Angeles-area wildfire; 13,000 structures threatened” →

LOS ANGELES — Peter Yarrow, the singer-songwriter best known as one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary, the folk-music trio whose impassioned harmonies transfixed millions as they lifted their voices in favor of civil rights and against war, has died. He was 86. Yarrow, who also co-wrote the group’s most enduring song, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” died Tuesday in New York, publicist Ken Sunshine said. Yarrow had bladder cancer for the past four years. “Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life. The world knows Peter Yarrow the iconic folk activist, but the human being behind the legend is every bit as generous, creative, passionate, playful, and wise as his lyrics suggest,” his daughter Bethany said in a statement. During an incredible run of success spanning the 1960s, Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers released six Billboard Top 10 singles and two No. 1 albums and won five Grammys. They also brought early exposure to Bob Dylan by turning two of his songs, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” into Billboard Top 10 hits as they helped lead an American renaissance in folk music. They performed “Blowin’ in the Wind” at the 1963 March on Washington at which the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. After an eight-year hiatus to pursue solo careers, the trio reunited in 1978 for a “Survival Sunday,” an anti-nuclear-power concert that Yarrow had organized in Los Angeles. They would remain together until Travers’ death in 2009. Upon her passing, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform both separately and together.   Born May 31, 1938, in New York, Yarrow was raised in an upper-middle-class family he said placed high value on art and scholarship. He took violin lessons as a child, later switching to guitar as he came to embrace the work of such folk music icons as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Upon graduating from Cornell University in 1959, he returned to New York, where he worked as a struggling Greenwich Village musician until connecting with Stookey and Travers. Although his degree was in psychology, he had found his true calling in folk music at Cornell when he worked as a teaching assistant for a class in American folklore his senior year. Soon after returning to New York, he met impresario Albert Grossman, who would go on … “Peter Yarrow of folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary dies at 86” →

NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump tried again Tuesday to delay this week’s sentencing in his hush money case, asking a New York appeals court to intervene as he fights to avoid the finality of his conviction before he returns to the White House.  Trump turned to the Appellate Division of the state’s trial court a day after the trial judge, Judge Juan M. Merchan, rebuffed his bid to indefinitely postpone sentencing and ordered it to go ahead as scheduled on Friday.  Trump is seeking an emergency order that would spare him from being sentenced while he appeals Merchan’s decision last week to uphold the historic verdict. Oral arguments were expected before a single judge later Tuesday, with a decision likely soon thereafter.  A quick decision is necessary “to prevent ongoing violations” of Trump’s constitutional rights “and a threatened disruption” of the presidential transition process, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche wrote in a filing with the Appellate Division.  Trump, less than two weeks from his inauguration, is poised to be the first president to take office convicted of crimes. If his sentencing doesn’t happen before his second term starts Jan. 20, presidential immunity could put it on hold until he leaves office.  Merchan has signaled that he is not likely to punish Trump for his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and will accommodate the transition by allowing him to appear at sentencing by video, rather than in person at a Manhattan courthouse.  Still, the Republican and his lawyers contend that his sentencing should not go forward because the conviction and indictment should be dismissed. They have previously suggested taking the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Merchan last Friday denied Trump’s request to throw out his conviction and dismiss the case because of his impending return to the White House, ruling that Trump’s current status as president-elect does not afford him the same immunity from criminal proceedings as a sitting president.  Merchan wrote that the interests of justice would only be served by “bringing finality to this matter” through sentencing. He said giving Trump what’s known as an unconditional discharge — closing the case without jail time, a fine or probation — “appears to be the most viable solution.”  In his filing Tuesday, Blanche argued that Merchan’s interpretation of presidential immunity was wrong and that it should extend to a president-elect during “the complex, sensitive … “President-elect Donald Trump tries again to get Friday’s hush money sentencing called off” →

WASHINGTON — The United States determined on Tuesday that members of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces and allied militias committed genocide in Sudan and it imposed sanctions on the group’s leader over a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement the RSF and aligned militias had continued to direct attacks against civilians, adding that they had systematically murdered men and boys on an ethnic basis and had deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of sexual violence. The militias have also targeted fleeing civilians and murdered innocent people escaping conflict, Blinken said. “The United States is committed to holding accountable those responsible for these atrocities,” Blinken said. Washington announced sanctions on the leader of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who is also known as Hemedti, barring him from traveling to the United States and freezing any U.S. assets he might hold. “For nearly two years, Hemedti’s RSF has engaged in a brutal armed conflict with the Sudanese Armed Forces for control of Sudan, killing tens of thousands, displacing 12 million Sudanese, and triggering widespread starvation,” the Treasury Department said in a separate statement. Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been locked in conflict for more than 18 months, creating a humanitarian crisis in which U.N. agencies have struggled to deliver relief. The war erupted in April 2023 amid a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule. …

Meta is ending its fact-checking program in the U.S. and replacing it with a “Community Notes” system similar to that on Elon Musk-owned X, the Facebook parent said on Tuesday.   The Community Notes model will allow users on Meta’s social media sites Facebook, Instagram and Threads to call out posts that are potentially misleading and need more context, rather than placing the responsibility on independent fact checking organizations and experts.   “Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact check and how … A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor,” Meta said.   Meta added that its efforts over the years to manage content across its platforms have expanded “to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable.”  The company said it would begin phasing in Community Notes in the United States over the next couple of months and would improve the model over the course of the year.  It will also stop demoting fact-checked content and use a label notifying users there is additional information related to the post, instead of the company’s current method of displaying full-screen warnings that users have to click through before even viewing the post.   …

Los Angeles — President Joe Biden is establishing two new national monuments in California that will honor Native American tribes, the White House confirmed Tuesday, as Biden seeks to conserve at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 through his “America the Beautiful” initiative. Proclamations set to be signed Tuesday will create the Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park and the Sáttítla National Monument in Northern California. The declarations bar drilling and mining and other development on the 624,000-acre (2,400-square-kilometer) Chuckwalla site and roughly 225,000 acres (800 square kilometers) near the Oregon border in Northern California. The new monuments will protect clean water for communities, honor areas of cultural significance to tribal nations and Indigenous peoples, and enhance access to nature, the White House said. Biden, who has two weeks left in office, is set to visit Los Angeles and the Eastern Coachella Valley on Tuesday after meeting Monday with the families of the victims in the New Year’s attack in New Orleans. Biden announced Monday he will ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters, including in California and other West Coast states. The plan is intended to block possible efforts by the incoming Trump administration to expand offshore drilling. The flurry of activity has been in line with the Democratic president’s “America the Beautiful” initiative launched in 2021, aimed at honoring tribal heritage, meeting federal goals to conserve 30% of public lands and waters by 2030 and addressing climate change. The Pit River Tribe has worked to get the federal government to designate the Sáttítla National Monument. The area is a spiritual center for the Pit River and Modoc Tribes and encompasses mountain woodlands and meadows that are home to rare flowers and wildlife. A number of Native American tribes and environmental groups began pushing Biden to designate the Chuckwalla National Monument, named after the large desert lizard, in early 2023. The monument would protect public lands south of Joshua Tree National Park, spanning the Coachella Valley region in the west to near the Colorado River. Advocates say the monument will protect a tribal cultural landscape, ensure access to nature for local residents and preserve military history sites. “The designation of the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla National Monuments in California marks an historic step toward protecting lands of profound cultural, ecological and historical significance for all Americans,” said Carrie … “Biden to announce creation of 2 new national monuments to protect tribal lands in California “ →

WASHINGTON/TOKYO — U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to block Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel cast a shadow over Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Japan on Tuesday for farewell meetings with Washington’s most important ally in Asia. The rejection, announced on Friday, has jolted U.S. efforts to boost ties with Asian allies just as South Korea’s political crisis potentially complicates a revived relationship between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo. The trilateral alliance is a key plank in the countries’ efforts to counter China’s military buildup. Investment into the U.S. could also be chilled, but analysts say any damage to the wider U.S.-Japan relationship will likely be limited given shared security concerns about China. On Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba described Biden’s decision to block the sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel as “perplexing.” Accompanied by White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Blinken met Japan’s Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya in Tokyo and will hold talks later in the day with Ishiba and other senior Japanese officials Numerous trips to Japan over the last four years “is evidence, not just of the importance, but of the centrality the United States attaches to our partnership. President Biden asked me to come on this last trip to underscore that,” Blinken told Iwaya. “We have, between our two countries, a partnership that started out focusing on bilateral issues, that worked on regional issues and that now is genuinely global,” he added. Ahead of his trip, the State Department said that Blinken wanted to build on the momentum of U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral cooperation. In Seoul on Monday, Blinken reaffirmed confidence in South Korea’s handling of its political turmoil as investigators there sought an extension of a warrant to arrest impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol. Allies of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump have also reassured Seoul and Tokyo that he will support continuing to improve ties and advance military, economic and diplomatic cooperation to counter China and North Korea, Reuters reported ahead of Trump’s Nov. 5 re-election. Tension, limited damage from Nippon Steel decision Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel filed a lawsuit on Monday charging that Biden violated the U.S. Constitution by blocking their $14.9 billion merger through what they termed a sham national security review. They called for the U.S. federal court to overturn the decision. Nicholas Szechenyi, a Japan expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Biden’s decision … “Blinken visits Japan as Nippon Steel decision weighs on relations “ →