Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for The Washington Post, said on Friday evening that she was resigning after the newspaper’s opinions section rejected a cartoon depicting The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald J. Trump. In a brief statement posted to Substack, Ms. Telnaes — who has worked at The Post since 2008 — called the newspaper’s decision to kill her cartoon a “game changer” that was “dangerous for a free press.” She added: “In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” she wrote. “Until now.” Ms. Telnaes included a draft of her cartoon in her Substack post. In addition to Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, the cartoon depicted Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg; Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of The Los Angeles Times; and Mickey Mouse, the corporate mascot of the Walt Disney Company.
President-elect Donald Trump complained on Friday that American flags would still be lowered to half-staff in honor of the late President Jimmy Carter during Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. President Joe Biden ordered flags lowered to half-staff for 30 days from the day of Carter’s death on Dec. 29, as is custom when a U.S. president dies. Trump, who has announced plans to attend Carter’s memorial service in Washington on Jan. 9, took issue in a Truth Social post on Friday with the flags remaining in the mourning position during his swearing-in ceremony. “The Democrats are all ‘giddy’ about our magnificent American Flag potentially being at ‘half mast’ during my Inauguration,” Trump said, employing a term frequently used for the lowered position when the flag is on a ship. “They think it’s so great, and are so happy about it because, in actuality, they don’t love our Country, they only think about themselves,” Trump said. Trump said that due to Carter’s death last week the American flag would “for the first time ever during an Inauguration of a future President, be at half mast.” - Reuters
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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni flew to Florida to meet with President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday, as the key European leader sought to buttress ties with Trump before his inauguration on Jan. 20. Members of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort welcomed Meloni with applause after an introduction by the president-elect, according to videos shared on social media by reporters and others. Her trip comes days before she is to meet U.S. President Joe Biden during a visit to Rome from Thursday to Jan. 12. Trump defeated Biden in the November election and is preparing to return to the White House. While no details of their meeting have been disclosed, Meloni had planned to talk with Trump about Russia’s war in Ukraine, trade issues, the Middle East and the plight of an Italian journalist detained in Tehran, according to Italian media reports. Meloni’s office declined to comment on the reports. She is seen as a potentially strong partner for Trump given her conservative credentials and the stability of the right-wing coalition she heads in Italy. She has also forged a close relationship with billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, a close Trump ally who spent more than a quarter-billion dollars to help him win the election. “This is very exciting. I’m here with a fantastic woman, the prime minister of Italy,” Trump told the Mar-a-Lago crowd, according to a media pool report. “She’s really taken Europe by storm.” Trump and Meloni then sat down for a screening of a documentary questioning the criminal investigations and legal scrutiny faced by John Eastman, a former Trump lawyer who was central to Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss - Reuters
Venezuelan authorities have offered a reward of $100,000 for information leading to the capture of Gonzalez Urrutia, who insists he beat Maduro at the polls in July and is recognised by the United States as Venezuela’s “president-elect.” Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia is expected to meet ArgentinePresident Javier Milei on Saturday on a regional tour to drum up support ahead of President Nicolas Maduro‘s swearing-in for a third term. The 75-year-old fled to Spain in September after being threatened with arrest by Maduro’s government, but has pledged to return to his country to be sworn in as president on January 10, when Maduro is due to be inaugurated - France 24
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has urged the renewal of ceasefire and sustained humanitarian assistance to help civilians rebuild in Lebanon. “Civilians cannot afford for the ceasefire to lapse, plunging them back into heavy fighting that would bring more death and destruction,” said Mirjana Spoljaric. “Maintaining the ceasefire is essential for families to return home, rebuild their lives, and for humanitarian assistance to reach those in need.” Lebanon faces extensive humanitarian challenges, with widespread destruction exacerbating existing economic and social crises. Thousands remain displaced, struggling with limited access to health care, essential services, and livelihoods. These challenges exist across the region, including catastrophic conditions in Gaza and significant needs in Syria, stretching the ability of humanitarian organizations to respond. “The scale of destruction and the staggering humanitarian needs in Lebanon could have been significantly mitigated if the parties to the conflict had fully adhered to the rules of war,” President Spoljaric said. “International humanitarian law still applies and is unequivocal: civilians must be protected, and their access to humanitarian aid guaranteed.”
Members of Parliament from Canada’s governing Liberal Party will gather next week for a special national caucus meeting for the first time since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told them he would take the holidays to reflect on calls for him to step down as party leader. Multiple Liberal MPs hope it will bring to an end the months of private and public efforts to try to force Trudeau to step down. MPs say they still have no indication of the prime minister’s intentions. One told CBC News they would not be surprised if Trudeau intends to stay on despite efforts to remove him - CBC News
Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer has said he will resign in the coming days after talks on forming a new government failed for a second time. The announcement came after the People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democrats (SPÖ) continued coalition talks a day after the liberal Neos party’s surprise withdrawal from discussions. Neos, alongside Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s conservative Austrian People’s Party and the centre-left Social Democrats have been trying to forge a three-party ruling coalition after the right-wing Freedom Party won national elections in September. - Euronews
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