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Kiwis are in for an early dose of later this week - with temperatures pushing past 30C in parts of the country. MetService is forecasting highs of 28C, 31C and 29C for Napier, Hastings and Gisborne respectively on Thursday. “That’s well above average for this time of year – but we’re of course knocking on the door of summer,” MetService meteorologist Mmathapelo Makgabutlane said. That warmth will be felt in most regions: Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga and Whangārei are likely to experience highs in the early to mid-20s over the remainder of the week. Further south tomorrow, the mercury is likely to rise as high as 27C in Christchurch – well past its November average of 19C – while Timaru is in for a toasty maximum of 26C. “Those day-time temperatures are certainly on the warm side, but some of the overnight temperatures also don’t dip too low,” Makgabutlane said. Aucklanders were in for balmy lows of 16C and 17C over the next few nights, with high humidity likely to hamper sleep across the city. “But even parts of Southland have minimum temperatures in the mid-teens, which is fairly warm.” Makgabutlane said the heat was coming with a ridge of high pressure meeting a northwesterly air flow – drawing warm, moist air over New Zealand. On Thursday, a frontal system was also forecast to begin bringing rain and wind to the South Island, with the wettest weather expected in the west. But little of that was likely to reach parched northeastern areas like Hawke’s Bay. “If we’re lucky, there may be a little bit of rain from that, but there’s nothing substantial on the cards.” The dry and hot conditions are , months away from the peak of summer. Fire and Emergency New Zealand Hawke’s Bay district manager Glen Varcoe confirmed fire-risk indices were late last week elevated to high across the Ahuriri and Heretaunga districts, including Napier and Hastings and coastal regions north to Wairoa. Last Thursday, police said both fire safety officers and police had been investigating five bush and scrub fires in Northern Hawke’s Bay, in some cases suspected deliberately lit. are likely to be warmer than average through to January, with frequent northwesterly winds leading to more days above 25C. Also raising the odds for hot summer weather was the potential for marine heatwave conditions – already occurring in seas to the east of New Zealand – to expand and intensify.Jury awards $1 million to Denver homeless man beaten, dragged from lobby of luxury apartmentsGame-changing holiday gifts for building fires, printing photos, watching birds and moreFort Lauderdale (US), Nov 24 (AP) Republican senators pushed back on Sunday against criticism from Democrats that Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump's pick to lead US intelligence services, is “compromised” by her comments supportive of Russia and secret meetings, as a congresswoman, with Syria's president, a close ally of the Kremlin and Iran. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, a veteran of combat missions in Iraq, said she had concerns about Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's choice to be director of national intelligence. “I think she's compromised," Duckworth said on CNN's “State of the Union," citing Gabbard's 2017 trip to Syria, where she held talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad. Gabbard was a Democratic House member from Hawaii at the time. “The US intelligence community has identified her as having troubling relationships with America's foes. And so my worry is that she couldn't pass a background check,” Duckworth said. Gabbard, who said last month she is joining the Republican party, has served in the Army National Guard for more than two decades. She was deployed to Iraq and Kuwait and, according to the Hawaii National Guard, received a Combat Medical Badge in 2005 for “participation in combat operations under enemy hostile fire in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom III". Duckworth's comments drew immediate backlash from Republicans. “For her to say ridiculous and outright dangerous words like that is wrong," Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, said on CNN, challenging Duckworth to retract her words. “That's the most dangerous thing she could say — is that a United States lieutenant colonel in the United States Army is compromised and is an asset of Russia.” In recent days, other Democrats have accused Gabbard without evidence of being a “Russian asset”. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, has claimed, without offering details, that Gabbard is in Russian President Vladimir “Putin's pocket”. Mullin and others say the criticism from Democrats is rooted in the fact that Gabbard left their party and has become a Trump ally. Democrats say they worry that Gabbard's selection as national intelligence chief endangers ties with allies and gives Russia a win. Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat just elected to the Senate, said he would not describe Gabbard as a Russian asset, but said she had “very questionable judgment”. “The problem is if our foreign allies don't trust the head of our intelligence agencies, they'll stop sharing information with us,” Schiff said on NBC's “Meet the Press”. Gabbard in 2022 endorsed one of Russia's justifications for invading Ukraine: the existence of dozens of US-funded biolabs working on some of the world's nastiest pathogens. The labs are part of an international effort to control outbreaks and stop bioweapons, but Moscow claimed Ukraine was using them to create deadly bioweapons. Gabbard said she just voiced concerns about protecting the labs. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Missouri, said he thought it was “totally ridiculous” that Gabbard was being cast as a Russian asset for having different political views. “It's insulting. It's a slur, quite frankly. There's no evidence that she's a asset of another country,” he said on NBC. Sen. James Lankford, another Oklahoma Republican, acknowledged having “lots of questions” for Gabbard as the Senate considers her nomination to lead the intelligence services. Lankford said on NBC that he wants to ask Gabbard about her meeting with Assad and some of her past comments about Russia. “We want to know what the purpose was and what the direction for that was. As a member of Congress, we want to get a chance to talk about past comments that she's made and get them into full context,” Lankford said. (AP) PY PY (This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)
Trump confronts liberal panic over Musk: ‘He’s not going to be president’President-elect Donald Trump’s long history of vilifying immigrants is reaching a dark and likely violent escalation as he nominates to key White House cabinet and staff positions a slew of “America First” extremists and white supremacists. One of Trump’s central campaign pledges was to deport at least 12 million people, who he refers to as “illegals.” Trump’s election win drove up the stock prices of private prison corporations, but it has also triggered grassroots mobilization to confront Trump’s cruel plans. “The United States is now an occupied country. ... Nine days from now will be Liberation Day in America,” Trump said at his racist rally at Madison Square Garden (MSG) on Oct. 27. “On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out ... kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.” Except for Trump himself, no one in his circle spews anti-immigrant hate with more zeal than Stephen Miller, Trump’s nominee for Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. At that MSG rally, Miller warmed up the crowd, bellowing, “America is for Americans and Americans only!” Miller was the architect of the anti-immigrant policies during the first Trump administration, like the Muslim ban and family separations. He’s had four years to plot, and has developed a broad plan to deliver mass deportations. Miller detailed his plans last February, speaking at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference: “Seal the border, no illegals in, everyone here goes out. That’s very straightforward (with) a series of interlocking domestic and foreign policies. ... You have ‘Remain in Mexico,’ finish the wall. You have robust prosecutions of illegal aliens. You do interior repatriation flights to Mexico, not back to the north of Mexico. It’s very important. You reimplement Title 42.” “Title 42” refers to a 1944 public health law that allows the president to restrict immigration and deport anyone deemed a health risk. It was deployed by Trump during the COVID pandemic and continued by President Joe Biden into 2023. Miller continued: “The travel ban authority. ... You would bring those back and add new ones. You would establish large-scale staging grounds for removal flights. So you grab illegal immigrants, and then you move them to the staging grounds, and that’s where the planes are waiting for federal law enforcement to then move those illegals home. You deputize the National Guard to carry out immigration enforcement.” “Staging grounds,” not to be confused with concentration camps. Trump’s also named a so-called “Border Czar,” Thomas Homan. Homan was Trump’s acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He’ll be in charge of Trump’s planned mass deportations. In an interview with “60 Minutes’ ” Cecilia Vega, Homan dodged the price tag of mass deportations: Vega: “We have seen one estimate that says it would cost $88 billion to deport a million people a year.” Homan: “I don’t know if that’s accurate or not.” Vega: “Is that what American taxpayers should expect?” Homan: “What price do you put on national security? Is it worth it?” Vega: “Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?” Homan: “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.” Homan was referring to deporting children who were born in the U.S., thus legal U.S. citizens, with their undocumented parents. Trump also nominated South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to be Secretary of Homeland Security. She has scant national security experience, yet several times has deployed the South Dakota National Guard to the U.S./Mexico border in Texas. Trump, who plans to use the U.S. military to mass deport, has nominated Pete Hegseth, a Fox News weekend host and military veteran, to be Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is known to have numerous white supremacist tattoos, including a Christian nationalist Jerusalem cross inspired by the Crusaders. People are organizing across the country in advance of this coming wave of raids, roundups, concentration camps and mass deportations. Alejandra Pablos is a reproductive justice community organizer and storyteller based in Arizona, who successfully fought against her own deportation for a decade. She described her efforts with a rapid response network, “working with people on the ground, trying to inform folks on their rights and what they could do to protect each other.” The ACLU has prepared for a year, and has teams of lawyers ready to fight Trump and his deportation team in court. Trump, Miller and Homan have tried mass deportations before. They were met with massive resistance, in the streets and in the courts. The opposition forced Trump to reverse an executive order, halting the separation of families. The challenge now is for people with the privilege and protections of U.S. citizenship to act in solidarity with the millions of our threatened, undocumented neighbors, and confront Trump’s planned mass deportations with disciplined, sustained mass resistance. Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!” She is the co-author, with Denis Moynihan and David Goodman, of “Democracy Now!: 20 Years Covering the Movements Changing America.”
