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• Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pushed back against international calls to wrap up the country’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip, stating that the current phase of the operation against the Hamas militant group will “take time.”
• The United States vetoed a United Nations resolution last week, backed by almost all other Security Council members and dozens of other nations, demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. Supporters called it a terrible day and warned of more civilian deaths and destruction as the war goes into its third month.
• The Supreme Court indicates that it will decide quickly on whether to agree to a request made by Special Counsel Jack Smith only hours earlier; Smith asked the high court to take up and rule quickly on whether former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted on charges he plotted to overturn the 2020 election results.
• Democrats blast a scheduled vote to begin an impeachment inquiry on President Joe Biden. The Republican-led House Rules Committee is scheduled to meet Tuesday to take up the issue. Democratic advocates including Congressman Eric Swalwell of California decried the impeachment move as a political stunt, an effort to hurt Biden at the polls in the upcoming election, and a move to pave the way for political payback in a second Trump presidency.
• Texas Supreme Court rules against Katie Cox, a woman seeking abortion in the state for health reasons; Cox says she has left Texas to seek the abortion elsewhere.
• Lawyers for two Georgia election workers are asking jurors in a federal case to make Rudy Giuliani pay the women tens of millions of dollars in damages for false accusations he made against them that led to threats and racist harassment.
• The California Department of Water Resources last week released the final environmental impact report for the controversial Bay Delta Tunnel, taking the state one step closer to building a conveyance that would funnel fresh water flows from the Sacramento River under the Delta at the rate of 6000 cubic feet per second. Bay Delta advocates reacted harshly to the action.
• Ahead of an important court hearing, a prisoner rights advocacy group held an online rally to decry the sexual abuses being committed by prison officers at the federal women’s prison in Dublin, California.

(Photo: United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv, Israel on November 30, 2023 / Chuck Kennedy, U.S. Department of State, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

The post Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pushed back against international calls to wrap up the country’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip – December 11, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

This post was originally published on KPFA – The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays.