Trump’s protection decide confronted a divided Senate listening to
Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s decide for protection secretary, confronted hours of questioning yesterday throughout his Senate affirmation listening to. A vote to determine whether or not he’ll lead the Pentagon — a division with three million staff and an $849 billion price range — might come as quickly as Monday. Read more.
Republicans largely defended Hegseth. Democrats questioned him about sexual misconduct allegations — Hegseth was accused of rape in 2017 — and his ingesting habits. Additionally they known as him unfit to guide the Pentagon, and grilled Hegseth, a former Fox Information host, on his lengthy historical past of disparaging feedback about ladies within the navy.
A key Republican, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, a veteran and a sexual assault survivor, appeared glad together with his responses to her questions concerning the position of girls within the navy and sexual assault prevention. Ernst, who’s seen as important to Hegseth’s affirmation possibilities, spent a lot of her time specializing in their settlement that the Pentagon needs to be audited.
Quotable: Hegseth described himself as a modified man and a redemption story, and he dismissed the allegations towards him as a “smear marketing campaign.”
“Have you ever overcome private points or are you the goal of a smear marketing campaign?” Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a Democrat, requested. “You may’t be each.”
What’s subsequent: It was unclear whether or not Hegseth left the listening to with the votes he must be confirmed. If all Senate Democrats oppose him, Hegseth must safe the backing of no less than 50 of the 53 Republicans within the chamber.
Associated: A report was launched yesterday that detailed the particular counsel’s investigation into Trump’s try and overturn the 2020 election. Here are four takeaways.
Sturdy winds threatened to unfold new fires in L.A.
Officers urged residents of Los Angeles County to brace themselves for potential energy outages and to be able to flee, as anticipated gusts and dry vegetation might create circumstances for brand spanking new blazes throughout Southern California. No less than 24 folks have been killed, about two dozen others are lacking and hundreds have been displaced. Follow our live coverage.
Firefighters already battled and contained a brand new brush fireplace yesterday, however officers had been anxious it might break away once more in windy circumstances. The most important blaze, the Palisades fireplace, was nonetheless removed from contained. The Eaton fireplace, which has killed a number of folks, was additionally not contained. Track the fires here.
A cultural loss: The scope of valuables destroyed by the blazes is barely starting to take form. One resident misplaced about 30 works by Andy Warhol — and dozens extra by different artists — when his Pacific Palisades home was destroyed. “It’s mud at this level,” he stated.
Looking for a protected haven: Tens of hundreds of evacuees had been scrambling to search out short-term shelter, exacerbating the housing scarcity in one of America’s least affordable cities.
Israel and Hamas seem near a cease-fire deal
Israel and Hamas are “on the brink” of agreeing to a cease-fire in Gaza and to the discharge of the hostages held there, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated yesterday.
Neither Israeli nor Hamas officers have publicly confirmed their place on the proposal. On Monday, a Hamas official stated a deal was doable within the coming days so long as Israel didn’t change its positions, and an Israeli official stated yesterday that Israel was prepared to shut the deal and was ready on Hamas. Mediators, which embrace Qatar, Egypt and the U.S., warned that negotiations might break down at any second, as they’ve so many instances up to now.
The toll in Gaza: Deaths from bombs and different traumatic accidents throughout the first 9 months of the conflict might have been underestimated by greater than 40 p.c, in line with an analysis published in The Lancet.
The Maha Kumbh Mela competition in India begins this week, and it’s anticipated to attract as much as 400 million Hindu pilgrims to the banks of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers in what could be the world’s largest human gathering. The ceremony, which occurs each 12 years and facilities on a sequence of holy baths, has additionally turn out to be an vital political occasion.
That is the primary competition since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s get together took energy. It’s a likelihood for him to promote his right-wing party.
Lives lived: Oliviero Toscani broke promoting boundaries together with his Benetton campaigns that delved into AIDS, and racial and sexual diversity activism. He’s useless at 82.
CONVERSATION STARTERS
Mapping ‘The Lord of the Rings’
Karen Wynn Fonstad, a cartographer, linked so deeply with the world depicted in “The Fellowship of the Ring” that she known as J.R.R. Tolkien’s writer in 1977 to pitch a dream task. A lot to her shock, an editor agreed.
The end result was “The Atlas of Center-earth,” a tome with 172 maps that renders Tolkien’s world in astonishing element, together with the bedrock morphology of the Shire, settlement patterns in Gondor and plate tectonics in Mordor. Poring over her work, you “feel like you can get dirt under your nails exploring a place,” one modern mapmaker stated.
