Trump slams Jan. 6 committee for saying he knows he lost 2020 election
Former President Donald Trump blasted the House Jan. 6 committee Tuesday — but not for calling him a criminal.
A day after the congressional panel recommended charges against him for his role in the Capitol riot, Trump angrily denounced the lawmakers for asserting he knew all along that he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
“This is a total LIE!” Trump wrote on his social media site. “I never thought, for even a moment, that the Presidential Election of 2020 was not Rigged & Stolen, and my conviction became even stronger as time went by.”
Trump has long been hypersensitive about claims he knows he lost the election. He even trashed his daughter Ivanka for telling the committee she believed he lost. Trump falsely claimed the FBI “illegally changed the results” of the vote he lost and trolled special counsel Jack Smith as a partisan Democrat who only wants to prosecute him.
—New York Daily News
More than 3 million Californians got early earthquake warning. 'A really big success'
More than 3 million people were notified by phone early Tuesday of a 6.4 magnitude earthquake that shook Northern California.
Depending on their distance from the quake's epicenter — which was about 7.5 miles southwest of Ferndale — many residents were informed of the coming tremors before the shaking began, according to Robert de Groot, part of the U.S. Geological Survey's ShakeAlert operations team.
About 270,000 users of the MyShake app, which is funded by the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, were notified of the earthquake. Most of the 3 million who were notified through Google are Android users who have the alerts preprogrammed into their phone operating system, de Groot said.
The alerts gave users up to 20 seconds to prepare for the earthquake, de Groot said.
—Los Angeles Times
Settlement agreements in Flint water crisis lawsuits in 'best interest' of kids, judge says
DETROIT — A federal judge has approved settlement agreements between four Flint children and a private engineering company in cases related to the Flint water crisis, likely marking the first time a child has received financial compensation in the man-made disaster.
U.S. District Court Judge Judith Levy in the Eastern District of Michigan issued the written order Tuesday, saying she had determined the settlements were in the best interest of the children, who were all under the age of 6 when a botched water supply switch sent lead-tainted water flowing through Flint's pipes nearly a decade ago.
"The Court has carefully evaluated the settlement agreement," Levy wrote in the motion. "... (The) Unopposed Motion to Approve Infant Plaintiff's Settlement is fair and in the best interests of (the child)."
Attorneys for the kids filed the settlement agreements with the Texas-based engineering firm Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam, or LAN, on Dec. 9. The agreements were filed under seal due to the age of the plaintiffs and will have to be redacted before they are filed publicly on the docket.
—The Detroit News
Taliban ban women from higher education in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban have banned women from university education in Afghanistan until further notice, meaning girls and women can now only attend primary schools.
Girls have been banned from secondary schools since the Taliban took over in August 2021. In a statement published Tuesday, all public and private universities and colleges were ordered to enforce the ban on women's education until further notice.
The statement signed by acting minister Sheikh Neda Mohammad Nadeem was shared by the Ministry of Higher Education and was available to dpa. There was no explanation for the statement.
Since taking power, the militant Islamists have massively restricted civil liberties, despite international criticism. Girls and women are largely excluded from public life and teenage girls have been deprived from attending school beyond Grade 6 since the takeover.
—dpa
