Important Takeaways:
- Beginning Tuesday afternoon, the windstorm will affect Los Angeles and Ventura counties and peak in the early hours of Wednesday, when gusts could reach 80 mph (129 kph), the National Weather Service said Monday. Isolated gusts could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills.
- The weather service warned of downed trees and knocked over big rigs, trailers, and motorhomes. Powerful offshore gusts will also bring dangerous conditions off the coasts of Orange County and LA, including Catalina Island, and potential delays and turbulence could arise at local airports.
- Public safety power shutoffs are being considered for nearly 300,000 customers across the region, according to Southern California Edison’s website.
- Beginning Tuesday afternoon, the windstorm will affect Los Angeles and Ventura counties and peak in the early hours of Wednesday, when gusts could reach 80 mph (129 kph), the National Weather Service said Monday. Isolated gusts could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills.
- The weather service warned of downed trees and knocked over big rigs, trailers, and motorhomes. Powerful offshore gusts will also bring dangerous conditions off the coasts of Orange County and LA, including Catalina Island, and potential delays and turbulence could arise at local airports.
- Public safety power shutoffs are being considered for nearly 300,000 customers across the region, according to Southern California Edison’s website.
- Recent dry winds, including the notorious Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, where there’s been very little rain so far this season.
- Southern California hasn’t seen more than 0.1 inches (0.25 centimeters) of rain since early May. Much of the region has fallen into moderate drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, up north, there have been multiple drenching storms.
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Important Takeaways:
- A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1 that killed at least 96 people in western China near Nepal on Tuesday was one of the country’s deadliest in recent years.
- Earthquakes in China happen most frequently on the Tibetan Plateau or its fringes. The seismically active area is where the India and Eurasia plates clash and cause uplifts that can be strong enough to change the heights of Himalayan peaks.
- In May 2008, a 7.9 earthquake in Sichuan province in the southwest killed nearly 90,000 people. The collapse of schools and other buildings led to a yearslong effort to rebuild using more quake-resistant materials.
- Here’s a list of major recent earthquakes:
- — May 2008: A magnitude 7.9 earthquake leaves nearly 90,000 people dead or missing and presumed dead in Sichuan province.
- — April 2010: A magnitude 7.1 earthquake kills 2,698 people in Qinghai province.
- — April 2013: A magnitude 7.0 earthquake kills 196 people in Sichuan.
- — July 2013: A magnitude 6.6 earthquake kills 95 people in Gansu province.
- — Aug. 2014: A magnitude 6.1 earthquake kills 617 people in Yunnan province.
- — Sept. 2022: A magnitude 6.8 earthquake kills 93 people in Sichuan.
- — Dec. 2023: A magnitude 6.2 earthquake kills at least 126 people in Gansu and Qinghai provinces.
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Important Takeaways:
- Vice President Kamala Harris gaveled in Monday’s joint session of Congress as she presided over the certification of Donald Trump’s victory…
- The 40 electoral votes announced by Texas officially gave him the White House just before 1 p.m. ET, joined by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and loud applause.
- When Harris first announced Trump as the next president starting Jan. 20, applause paused her pre-written remarks and forced her to continue after gaveling for attention, certifying her own election loss to Trump.
- “The votes for president of the United States are as follows: Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 312 votes,” Harris said.
- “Kamala D. Harris,”… “has received 226 votes,”
- The official count “shall be deemed a sufficient declaration,” she concluded, for Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance to take their oaths of office Jan. 20
- Harris ended it with the words, “The chair declares this joint session dissolved.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Trudeau, who became Liberal leader in 2013 and prime minister in the fall of 2015, announced his long-awaited decision outside his official residence, Rideau Cottage, on Monday morning.
- Trudeau also said he asked Gov. Gen. Mary Simon to prorogue Parliament until March 24, and she granted the request.
- His decision will set off a competitive leadership race to replace him and find a contender to take on the Liberals’ key rival, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, in the next federal election.
- Trudeau has been under mounting pressure to resign amid sinking public opinion polling, including from his own caucus.
- At least two dozen individual MPs and several regional caucuses — including Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Ontario — have called for him to step down since before the holiday break.
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Important Takeaways:
- A giant earthquake appears to have hit El Salvador, after an emergency alert reported a tremor with the magnitude of 6.2 was detected 30 miles off the South Americas country’s coast.
- The country’s environment ministry took to X to report a strong 6.3 magnitude earthquake that struck the country today. Footage shared on social media revealed the alarming impact of the naturally occurring phenomena, which shook houses in many areas but didn’t cause a tsunami. According to outlet Volcano Discovery, the “very strong magnitude 6.2 earthquake” occurred in the North Pacific Ocean at 11.18am local time (GMT -6).
- The publication said the quake had a shallow depth of 50 km (31 miles), with people over a large region feeling the shake.
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Important Takeaways:
- First, President-elect Donald Trump tweaked Canada’s far-left Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about becoming governor of the 51st state of the United States of America. Then he said that the Panama Canal should once again come under American control. Make that the 52nd state. And now, are you ready for a 53rd state? Last month, Trump renewed a call he made during his first term: that the United States should buy Greenland from Denmark. Could the man possibly be serious?
- [Trump’s] question to Trudeau was pointed, and remains unanswered: “So your country can’t survive unless it’s ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100 billion?”
- Trump explained that the Panama Canal “was given to Panama and to the people of Panama, but it has provisions, you gotta treat us fairly and they haven’t treated us fairly.”
- “If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly, and without question.”
- Regarding Greenland, it’s once again the same story. Harvard International Review noted in an August 2024 article:
- “While Greenland remains closely linked to Scandinavia as an autonomous region of Denmark, global powers such as the United States, China, and Russia are racing to extend military and economic influence in the region as it becomes more habitable.”
- There’s the bottom line: if the United States doesn’t control the Panama Canal and Greenland, China or Russia likely will, and the consequences could be severe both for the American economy and for national security.
- Trump is playing the great power game at a time when the left wants nothing more than for America to stand down and let China be the world’s great power. It’s yet another reason why leftists hate him so passionately.
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Important Takeaways:
- Sixty-three million Americans are under blizzard warnings as the country braces for the coldest storm since 2011, which is set to bring travel chaos and deadly whiteouts.
- The National Weather Service has warned that Storm Blair will bring freezing conditions to 30 central and eastern states from Colorado to Massachusetts.
- Kansas City International Airport has already announced that no major airlines will be operating today after the region was deluged with snow and arctic wind chills.
- A state of emergency has also been declared in Kentucky, Virginia, Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri, where the current bone-chilling climes are a rarity.
- Wind chills of -20F and even colder have hit Kansas, where the average low temperature for January is 21F, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
- In Kentucky, temperatures are set to plummet to 2F, down from an average low of 26F, and in Virginia, where average lows are usually around 28F, the mercury is set to drop down to 13F.
- A whopping 72 percent of flights out of Kansas City International had been canceled by 10am Sunday, where ‘rapid ice accumulation’ forced officials to close the airfield.
- Meanwhile, icy weather has already sparked collisions on the roads, including in Kansas, according to state highway patrol trooper Ben Gardner.
- Weather experts have warned against traveling ‘unless necessary’ in states where blizzard warnings are in effect.
- The National Weather Service said travel ‘could be very difficult to impossible’, with snow whipped up by high winds creating a whiteout in the worst-hit areas.
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Important Takeaways:
- IDF is continuing to find weapons depots, Hamas terrorists, and tunnels. Hamas’ military abilities cannot be defeated as quickly as critics of the IDF strategy would like to believe.
- The Israeli military announced it had carried out airstrikes against over 100 targets, including Hamas terrorists and rocket launching sites.
- For over a year, Israel has staged a massive military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Its stated goals are to remove Hamas as a governing power in the territory and release all the hostages.
- Thousands of Israelis rallied on Saturday evening to protest the government and pressure it to reach a deal with Hamas.
- …The IDF also continued to operate in the north of the territory.
- “The area consists of structures overlooking Israeli territory and serves as a central terror hub containing anti-tank firing positions, booby traps, shafts, numerous explosives, and launch sites for targeting Israeli territory,” read a statement by the army.
- In addition, the army continues to control the Philadephi and Netzarim corridors in southern and central Gaza, respectively, aimed at blocking Hamas from being able to re-arm and re-position itself.
- …according to Shamir, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University
- “Hamas had over twenty years to accumulate a massive amount of firepower, dispersing it in many areas, including in its widespread underground tunnel network,” Shamir told The Media Line. “Combined with other terrorist organizations, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), it had approximately 30,000 fighters. This could take two to three years to get rid of.”
- “There is an estimated 40% of the tunnels still remaining, hundreds of kilometers of tunnels the Israeli intelligence was not aware of,” said Yoni Ben Menachem, an expert of Middle Eastern affairs from Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told The Media Line. “There are still very long tunnels that Israel has yet to have located, some of them with hostages inside. This requires a very big operation and a massive amount of explosives that Israel currently does not possess.”
- Hamas stunned Israel on October 7th, 2023, when it attacked the south of the country in a rampage that killed approximately 1200 Israelis and wounded thousands more. It also took approximately 250 people hostage, 100 still in captivity.
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Important Takeaways:
- President Joe Biden has banned all future offshore oil and gas drilling in a last-ditch effort to stop Donald Trump from keeping his promise to expand offshoring drilling.
- It’s a blatant move to try and sabotage the incoming Trump administration as the MAGA die hard has pledged to reverse Biden’s climate change policies when he takes office in 14 days.
- Trump campaigned on a ‘drill baby, drill’ slogan and has pledged to throw out all of Biden’s green energy policies on Day One.
- In an effort to get ahead of Trump, Biden declared he is using his authority under the 70-year-old Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to block all future oil and natural gas leasing in most U.S. coastal waters.
- The ban would stop offshoring drilling in all federal waters off the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the northern Bering Sea in Alaska.
- Biden’s order will not affect large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico, where most U.S. offshore drilling occurs, but it would protect coastlines along California, Florida and other states from future drilling.
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Important Takeaways:
- Branches make gains in Africa, Middle East, and reach out to U.S. sympathizers
- Behind the ISIS-inspired assault in New Orleans on New Year’s Day is a disturbing reality: Military officials and national security insiders fear a perfect storm is forming around the world that could lead to more deadly terrorist attacks in the U.S.
- Even before U.S. Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar killed 14 New Year’s revelers by driving a vehicle into a crowd on Bourbon Street, a growing consensus in foreign policy circles acknowledged that conditions were ripe for an Islamic State resurgence abroad and a new pool of recruits in the U.S., Europe and Asia willing to carry out acts of violence.
- The more territory the group controls and the safer its leaders feel from attack, the easier it is to coordinate recruiting efforts online, teach would-be terrorists how to build bombs or map out jihadi missions around the globe.
- U.S. and international officials warn that weak central governments are ill-equipped to stop it.
- In Afghanistan, the Islamic State’s local affiliate organization, ISIS-K, has dramatically expanded its reach since U.S. troops withdrew in August 2021.
- The most immediate threat to the U.S. seems to emanate from Syria, where a surprise rebel offensive overthrew the government of longtime dictator Bashar Assad last month. The U.S. quietly increased the number of troops in Syria from 900 to about 2,000 during the regime’s collapse and carried out strikes against ISIS fighters who set up shop in areas once controlled by Mr. Assad’s forces and their Russian allies.
- With an untested rebel force now governing in Damascus, the door may be open for neighboring Turkey to pursue Kurdish rebels who have been key U.S. partners for the past decade in the war against ISIS.
- “We’re going to see a lot more Islamic State and copycat attacks,” said former Defense Department official Michael Rubin, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “The Islamic State is on the rebound, and tens of thousands of its militants might soon go free if Turkey or their proxies overwhelm the camp where Kurds keep them under guard in northeastern Syria
- “If ISIS goes free in Syria, don’t expect them to remain there,” Mr. Rubin told The Washington Times.
- “It would just be a matter of time until they began crossing the southern border or, for that matter, the northern border with Canada.”
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