Russia claims to occupy two more villages in Ukraine

 Russia claims to occupy two more villages in Ukraine

 Published: 22 December 2024, 21:14

Russia claims to have captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine Photo: Reuters

Russia claims to occupy two villages in eastern Ukraine.  Through this, the Russian military occupied more territory in Ukraine in the war that lasted for almost three years.

 On Sunday, the Russian Ministry of Defense said on the social media channel Telegram that its troops had "liberated" the villages of Lozova and Krasnoye (known as Sontsivka in Ukraine) in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine.

 The village of Krasnoye is located near the important city of Khurakhov.  Russian troops have surrounded almost the entire city.  Moscow wants to occupy the entire Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.  It will be a big advantage for them if they can capture Khurakhov earlier.

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  attacked a Russian city 1000 kilometers away

 Russia has stepped up efforts in recent months to make progress on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine.  They want to occupy as much of the territory of Ukraine as possible before Donald Trump takes over the presidency of the United States in January.

 Newly elected US President Trump has promised a quick end to the war in Ukraine.  However, he did not outline any clear conditions for a ceasefire or a peace treaty.

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Trump is not yet in power, but the way the world economy is going on around him

Trump is not yet in power, but the way the world economy is going on around him

 Donald Trump will be sworn in as the President of the United States on January 20.  Although there is still about a month left for his second term, the entire world economy has already started racing to adapt to the 'Trump policy'.  The policies he has already announced to protect business in his country are already beginning to have an impact in various countries.

 A minister in Canada resigned this week and the fall of the country's government seems imminent.  The US central bank has said it will cut interest rates fewer times than it had planned. 

Cryptocurrencies have reached a boom.  And the countries which spend their days in fear of imposing additional duties on export products in the United States, they have started to think of alternatives.

 From Ottawa to Frankfurt and Tokyo, central banks are busy with year-end meetings to decide the monetary policy of the Trump era.  Meanwhile, the US central bank Federal Reserve cut interest rates as expected on Wednesday.  But uncertainty about what will happen when Donald Trump takes office as the 47th president in the new year only grows.

Federal Reserve officials have not only backed away from plans to cut interest rates to curb lingering inflation, but are now thinking about going one step further.  Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said some at the bank were wondering how Trump's planned tariffs, tax cuts and immigration controls would affect their policies.

 On the bright side, US central bank officials think growth will be stronger next year than expected, Reuters reported.  But they also think that inflation will increase as well.  As a result, Jerome Powell said to be "cautious" about further cuts in interest rates.  But because of that, the share price has started to fall again.

 Jerome Powell also asked the market to keep an eye on interest rate cuts.  As a result, the Fed is expected to cut interest rates only once in 2025.

 Japan kept its ultra-low policy interest rate on Thursday among Asian countries.  The Bank of Japan has considered Trump's policies in this regard.  It is believed that Trump's policies on Japan's export-dependent economy could pose a threat.  A statement from the Bank of Japan said, "There is great uncertainty regarding the economic and price situation in Japan."

A Reuters poll of Japanese businesspeople last week found that nearly three-quarters of participants thought Trump's policies would have a negative impact on their business operations.  The Bank of Japan has probably taken this into account.  Japan is the only country in the developed world that is still taking contractionary measures.

 The US Fed recently cut interest rates.  Earlier, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Canada cut interest rates.  Both central banks were expected to cut interest rates several times in 2025 as economic activity in Europe and Canada weakened.

 However, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde is not saying anything clearly about whether she will cut interest rates again.  But he stressed the risk of slowing growth.  He is more concerned about the trade tensions that will arise especially during the Trump era.

disaster

 Donald Trump may still be on the fringes of Fed thinking, but the Republican was at the very center of what happened in Ottawa.  Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned after falling out with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over how to deal with potential tariffs on Canadian exports by the next administration of the neighboring United States.

 Trump said last month that he would impose 25 percent tariffs on goods from the two countries if Canada and Mexico do not take steps to limit the entry of immigrants and the painkiller fentanyl into the United States.  Chrystia Freeland thinks the threat of new US tariffs could be a big threat to her country.

 On the other hand, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has poured water on the excitement that is going on with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.  Trump wants a strategic reserve of bitcoins to be created.  But Powell says they have no legal authority to build bitcoin reserves.  He added that the Fed has no plans to change the law to build such reserves.

 "This is something that Congress can work on," Jerome Powell said.  But we are not thinking about changing the law at the Fed.''

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Trump lashes out at judge

Trump lashes out at judge who refused to dismiss business fraud conviction – as it happened

judge on Monday ruled that Donald Trump’s conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal should stand, rejecting the president-elect’s argument that it should be dismissed because of the US supreme court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity, a court filing showed.

Manhattan judge Juan Merchan’s decision eliminates one potential off-ramp from the case ahead of Trump’s return to office next month. His lawyers have raised other arguments for dismissal, however.

In a 41-page decision Merchan said Trump’s “decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch”.

Trump’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors have said there should be some accommodation for his upcoming presidency, but they insist the conviction should stand.

Trump allies float extreme ideas, including Trump third term, at gala

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A jury convicted Trump in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 hush money payment to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. The payment was for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she has said she had a decade earlier with Trump, who denies it.

It was the first time a US president – former or sitting – had been convicted of or charged with a criminal offense.

The allegations involved a scheme to hide the payout to Daniels during the final days of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to keep her from publicizing – and keep voters from hearing – her claim of a sexual encounter. He says nothing sexual happened between them.

Trump pleaded not guilty and called the case an attempt by Bragg, a Democrat, to harm his 2024 campaign.

A month after the verdict, the supreme court ruled that ex-presidents can’t be prosecuted for official acts – things they did in the course of running the country – and that prosecutors cannot cite those actions to bolster a case centered on purely personal, unofficial conduct.

Trump’s lawyers then cited the supreme court opinion to argue that the hush money jury got some improper evidence, such as Trump’s presidential financial disclosure form, testimony from some White House aides and social media posts made while he was in office.

In his ruling, Merchan denied the bulk of Trump’s claims that some of prosecutors’ evidence related to official acts and implicated immunity protections.

The judge said that even if he found that some evidence related to official conduct, he’d still find that prosecutors’ decision to use “these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch”.

Even if prosecutors had erroneously introduced evidence that could be challenged under an immunity claim, Merchan continued, “such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt”.

Prosecutors had said the evidence in question was only “a sliver” of their case.

Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, called Merchan’s decision a “direct violation of the supreme court’s decision on immunity, and other longstanding jurisprudence”.

“This lawless case should have never been brought, and the constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed,” Cheung said in a statement.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment.

Trump takes office 20 January 2025.

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NY judge upholds Trump hush money conviction despite Supreme Court's immunity ruling

A New York judge Monday upheld President-elect Donald Trump’s felony conviction for falsifying records to cover up a “hush money” sex scandal, rejecting his claim that a sweeping recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity had nullified his Manhattan criminal case.

For now, the ruling by Judge Juan Merchan keeps in place Trump’s criminal conviction, though the former and future president, through a spokesman, immediately vowed to fight it.

If Merchan’s ruling is upheld, Trump will make history on January 20, 2025, as the first criminal felon to occupy the White House and serve as president. The judge's decision shoots down only one of several efforts by Trump to wipe clean his record of the criminal felonies before he returns to the White House on Jan. 20.  

Separately, Trump has asked Judge Juan Merchan to dismiss the entire New York criminal case as a result of his November election victory. Merchan didn't rule on that argument Monday.

In his ruling, Merchan sided with prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office who said that while the U.S. Supreme Court granted presidents wide latitude in having immunity for presidential actions, the activities for which Trump was convicted were unofficial – not official – conduct.

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Harris debates her future: A run for California governor that would take 2028 off the table

 Harris debates her future: A run for California governor that would take 2028 off the table

 

Top aides and people close to Kamala Harris have divided over whether she should head home to run for California governor in 2026 — and it all comes down to whether they believe she could win the Democratic nomination for president in an expected competitive primary in 2028.

Some believe a repeat run, after quickly improving her reputation and raising more than $1 billion over her surprise 100-day race, should be hers for the taking. Others worry that in a longer campaign, against some of the other major Democratic contenders who already sat out 2024 in deference first to Joe Biden and then to her, Harris might fizzle out and follow her loss to Donald Trump with the humiliation of being rejected by her own party.

The governor’s race, meanwhile, looks like a lay-up: Harris was elected statewide three times and served 10 years combined as state attorney general and US senator, and when asked by CNN, several major candidates made clear either directly or through aides that they would likely step aside if she got in.

In CNN’s conversation with over a dozen current and former Harris advisers and other top California Democratic players, the only consensus around the vice president is that she likely can’t do both, since that would essentially require launching a presidential campaign soon after being sworn in as governor.

Getting into the governor’s race, top Harris advisers believe, would require making her intentions clear at the latest by the summer of 2025. That means Harris will need to decide very soon after Trump’s inauguration if she will quickly give up on her dream of being president – which she feels got short shrift from the circumstances of this year – and instead go for a job that, while one of the most powerful in American politics, would clearly be a fallback.

Harris would have to think of running for governor as “more of a capstone than a stepping stone,” said one person who has advised her in the past. “If you’re thinking of running for president in 2028, the worst thing you can do is run for governor in 2026.”

Another person close to Harris told CNN that the gamble of skipping the governor’s race is worth the potential payoff.

“Running for governor would be a step down, and it would interfere with her ability to run for president again,” the person said. “I don’t know if she’s going to run for president again, but a shot at running for president again is worth giving up running for governor.”

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Trump picks Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes to lead intelligence board

 Trump picks Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes to lead intelligence board

WASHINGTON - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday named ally Devin Nunes, a former U.S. lawmaker who now runs Trump's Truth Social social media platform, to serve as chairman of President's Intelligence Advisory Board.

Nunes, a longtime Trump defender who led the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee during part of Trump's first White House term, will remain Truth Social CEO while serving on the advisory panel, Trump said in a post on the platform.

As committee chair, Nunes alleged that the FBI had conspired against Trump during its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections in which Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

"Devin will draw on his experience as former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his key role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, to provide me with independent assessments of the effectiveness and propriety of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s activities," Trump wrote.

The President's Intelligence Advisory Board is a White House panel that offers the president independent assessments of intelligence agencies' effectiveness and planning.

Trump on Saturday also named IBM executive and former U.S. Department of Homeland Security official Troy Edgar to serve as the department's deputy secretary, and businessman Bill White to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Belgium.

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Trump Considers DeSantis for Defense Secretary as His Support for Hegseth Falters

President-elect Donald J. Trump is weighing his options, even as Pete Hegseth meets with senators to muster support. Accusations of past misconduct have threatened his nomination from the start.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s support for Pete Hegseth, whom he announced as his nominee for defense secretary shortly after Election Day, is wobbling after a crush of controversy over a rape allegation and a 2018 email from Mr. Hegseth’s mother accusing him of a pattern of abuse toward women.

How Mr. Hegseth fares through a series of tests on Wednesday will be critical for his chances. He is set to continue his meetings with key senators, including Joni Ernst of Iowa, a combat veteran who has spoken about being sexually assaulted herself, and his mother is expected to sit for an interview on Fox News. He is also set to start defending himself on television.

Mr. Trump has made clear to people close to him that he believes Mr. Hegseth should have been more forthcoming about the problems he would face getting confirmed, according to two people with knowledge of his thinking.

The combination of events could determine whether he hangs on as the expected nominee. Mr. Trump is openly discussing other people for the job, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom he defeated in the Republican presidential primaries and with whom he has had a contentious relationship. Mr. Trump likes the story of bringing on someone he dominated publicly, and he talked about it with Mr. DeSantis on Tuesday at a service honoring three Florida sheriff’s deputies who were killed in a car crash.

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