Headline
Biden Nominates First Black Woman On US Supreme Court
President Joe Biden picked Ketanji Brown Jackson on Friday to be the first Black woman in US history to serve on the nation’s highest court.
“I’m proud to announce that I am nominating Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the Supreme Court,” Biden said. “She is one of our nation’s brightest legal minds and will be an exceptional Justice.”
The president will officially unveil his decision later Friday at an appearance with Jackson, the White House said.
Jackson, 51, was appointed to the federal bench in 2013, and was backed by three Republican senators last year when she was elevated to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, seen as a staging ground for aspiring Supreme Court justices.
With one liberal justice replacing another the announcement will not reshape the ideological make-up of the court — but it is a huge moment for Biden personally and politically.
White House officials hope it will provide a few days of positive news coverage ahead of the president’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.
The pick presents an opportunity for the administration to pivot from a spate of bad news in recent months, with Biden’s domestic agenda stalled amid runaway inflation and plummeting poll numbers.
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The announcement is a chance for Biden to show the Black voters who rescued his floundering 2020 primary campaign that he can deliver for them following the recent defeat of voting rights legislation.
“Ketanji Brown Jackson is an intellectual heavyweight and highly regarded jurist who has dedicated her life and career to the service of others,” said Mondaire Jones, one of the first Black openly gay congressmen.
– Political attacks –
Black Americans are among Biden’s strongest supporters, with two-thirds approving of his job performance, according to a CBS poll released last week.
His popularity among the key demographic however declined over the months following his inauguration and he has not recovered the lost ground.
In his first year in office, Biden nominated 62 women to the federal judiciary, including 24 Black women.
But there are still only a few dozen active Black female judges on the federal bench out of almost 800 total.
The president had promised during his successful 2020 White House run to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court for the first time in US history.
The pledge dismayed some Republicans who thought ruling out candidates of other backgrounds would further politicize the judiciary.
Dismissing the objections, Biden shortlisted a handful of top Black women to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, including southern jurists J. Michelle Childs and Leandra Kruger.
Reflecting Washington’s bitter political divisions, at least two top Republicans depicted his eventual nominee as the darling of what they called the American far left.
Lindsey Graham had argued that it was “about time” a Black woman sat on the bench but the senator went to bat for Childs, who is from his home state of South Carolina.
He complained that Biden’s choice of Jackson meant “the radical left has won President Biden over again.”
– Bumpy ride ahead? –
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell echoed Graham’s objection, saying Jackson was “the favoured choice of far-left dark-money groups that have spent years attacking the legitimacy and structure of the Court itself.”
But neither said outright they would oppose Jackson’s appointment.
Jackson will now go through weeks of hearings and meetings with senators before her nomination comes to the floor, likely in April.
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Republicans cannot block a Supreme Court nomination as long as all 50 Senate Democrats stick together, but the comments by Graham and McConnell signal a bumpier confirmation process than had been expected.
But the party has shown little appetite for a fight, which they fear could backfire, and are trying to keep the focus on kitchen-table issues such as spiralling fuel and food costs.
The announcement also represents another first in US history.
Biden presided over Breyer’s confirmation to the Supreme Court as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1994, and has now named Breyer’s replacement.
Headline
South Korea, Japan Protest China, Russia Aircraft Incursions
South Korea and Japan reacted furiously on Wednesday after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols around the two countries, with both Seoul and Tokyo scrambling jets.
South Korea said it had protested with representatives of China and Russia, while Japan said it had conveyed its “serious concerns” over national security.
According to Tokyo, two Russian Tu-95 nuclear-capable bombers on Tuesday flew from the Sea of Japan to rendezvous with two Chinese H-6 bombers in the East China Sea, then conducted a joint flight around the country.
The incident comes as Japan is locked in a dispute with China over comments Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made about Taiwan.
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The bombers’ joint flights were “clearly intended as a show of force against our nation, Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi wrote on X Wednesday.
Top government spokesman Minoru Kihara said that Tokyo had “conveyed to both China and Russia our serious concerns over our national security through diplomatic channels”.
Seoul said Tuesday the Russian and Chinese warplanes entered its air defence zone and that a complaint had been lodged with the defence attaches of both countries in the South Korean capital.
“Our military will continue to respond actively to the activities of neighbouring countries’ aircraft within the KADIZ in compliance with international law,” said Lee Kwang-suk, director general of the International Policy Bureau at Seoul’s defence ministry, referring to the Korea Air Defence Identification Zone.
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South Korea also said it deployed “fighter jets to take tactical measures in preparation for any contingencies” in response to the Chinese and Russian incursion into the KADIZ.
The planes were spotted before they entered the air defence identification zone, defined as a broader area in which countries police aircraft for security reasons but which does not constitute their airspace.
Japan’s defence ministry also scrambled fighter jets to intercept the warplanes.
Beijing later Tuesday confirmed it had organised drills with Russia’s military according to “annual cooperation plans”.
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Moscow also described it as a routine exercise, saying it lasted eight hours and that some foreign fighter jets followed the Russian and Chinese aircraft.
Since 2019, China and Russia have regularly flown military aircraft into South Korea’s air defence zone without prior notice, citing joint exercises.
In November last year, Seoul scrambled jets as five Chinese and six Russian military planes flew through its air defence zone.
Similar incidents occurred in June and December 2023, and in May and November 2022.
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Meanwhile, Tokyo said Monday it had scrambled jets in response to repeated takeoff and landing exercises involving fighter jets and military helicopters from China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier as it cruised in international waters near Japan.
It also summoned Beijing’s ambassador after military aircraft from the Liaoning locked radar onto Japanese jets, the latest incident in the row ignited by Takaichi’s comments backing Taiwan.
Takaichi suggested last month that Japan would intervene militarily in any Chinese attack on the self-ruled island, which Beijing claims as its own and has not ruled out seizing by force.
AFP
Headline
Thousands Reported To Have Fled DR Congo Fighting As M23 Closes On Key City
Fierce fighting rocked the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday as the Rwanda-backed M23 militia rapidly advanced towards the strategic city of Uvira, with tens of thousands of people fleeing over the nearby border into Burundi, sources said.
The armed group and its Rwandan allies were just a few kilometres (miles) north of Uvira, security and military sources told AFP.
The renewed violence undermined a peace agreement brokered by US President Donald Trump that Kinshasa and Kigali signed less than a week ago, on December 4.
Trump had boasted that the Rwanda-DRC conflict was one of eight he has ended since returning to power in America in January.
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With the new fighting, more than 30,000 people have fled the area around Uvira for Burundi in the space of a week, a UN source and a Burundian administrative source told AFP.
The Burundian source told AFP on condition of anonymity he had recorded more than 8,000 daily arrivals over the past two days, and 30,000 arrivals in one week. A source in the UN refugee agency confirmed the figure.
The Rwanda-backed M23 offensive comes nearly a year after the group seized control of Goma and Bukavu, the two largest cities in eastern DRC, a strategic region rich in natural resources and plagued by conflict for 30 years.
Local people described a state of growing panic as bombardments struck the hills above Uvira, a city of several hundred thousand residents.
“Three bombs have just exploded in the hills. It’s every man for himself,” said one resident reached by telephone.
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“We are all under the beds in Uvira — that’s the reality,” another resident said, while a representative of civil society who would not give their name described fighting on the city’s outskirts.
Fighting was also reported in Runingo, another small locality some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Uvira, as the M23 and the Rwandan army closed in.
Burundi views the prospect of Uvira falling to Rwanda-backed forces as an existential threat, given that it sits across Lake Tanganyika from Burundi’s economic capital Bujumbura.
The city is the main sizeable locality in the area yet to fall to the M23 and its capture would essentially cut off the zone from DRC control.
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Burundi deployed about 10,000 soldiers to eastern DRC in October 2023 as part of a military cooperation agreement, and security sources say reinforcements have since taken that presence to around 18,000 men.
The M23 and Rwandan forces launched their Uvira offensive on December 1.
Rich in natural resources, eastern DRC has been choked by successive conflicts for around three decades.
Violence in the region intensified early this year when M23 fighters seized the key eastern city of Goma in January, followed by Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province, a few weeks later.
– Regional risk –
The peace deal meant to quell the fighting was signed last Thursday in Washington by Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame, with Trump — who called it a “miracle” deal — also putting his signature to it.
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The agreement includes an economic component intended to secure US supplies of critical minerals present in the region, as America seeks to challenge China’s dominance in the sector.
But even on the day of the signing, intense fighting took place in South Kivu, where Uvira is located, which included the bombing of houses and schools.
Witnesses and military sources in Uvira said that Congolese soldiers fleeing the fighting had arrived in the city overnight Monday and shops were looted at dawn.
Several hundred Congolese and Burundian soldiers had already fled to Burundi on Monday, according to military sources, since the M23 fighters embarked on their latest offensive from Kamanyola, some 70 kilometres north of Uvira.
Since the M23’s lightning offensive early this year, the front had largely stabilised over the past nine months.
Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye warned in February there was a danger of the conflict escalating into a broader regional war, a fear echoed by the United Nations.
Headline
‘Santa Claus’ Arrested For Possessing, Distributing Child Sexual Abuse Material
A 64-year-old man from Hamilton Township has been arrested in the United States after investigators linked him to the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material.
The suspect, identified as Mark Paulino, had been working as a “Santa for hire” at holiday events, a role that placed him in repeated contact with children.
Mercer County officials said the investigation began on 4 December when detectives were alerted to suspicious online activity involving the uploading of child pornography from a residence in Hamilton Township. The probe quickly identified Paulino, a retired elementary school teacher, as the person involved.
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Police stated that Paulino had presented himself online as a retired teacher and had recently performed as Santa Claus for photographs and private, corporate, and organisational events. “Because this role involved direct, repeated contact with children, detectives worked around the clock to secure a search warrant,” authorities explained.
The warrant was executed on 5 December, during which police seized multiple items regarded as evidentiary. Paulino was taken into custody without incident and charged with possession and distribution of child sexual abuse materials, as well as endangering the welfare of a child.
Prosecutors have filed a motion to detain him pending trial. The investigation remains ongoing, and authorities have urged members of the public with relevant information to come forward.
