Your people back into their homes, you dont escalate to deescalate. And obviously now, with the iranian retaliation, israelis are in their shelters as they go into the new years holiday weekend. Ben . Yeah. I think, you know, since October 7th, the Biden Administration has had a number of goals, one was to provide support to israel as it aims to go after hamas, but then also one of the principle goals of u. S. Diplomacy since October 7th had been avoiding deescalation into lebanon, precisely because i think there was an understanding that lebanon could be kind of the Trip Wire to this broader regional war that essentially, you know, it is one thing if there is a conflict In Gaza, that alone is destabilizing enough and is obviously brought a tremendous Human Toll and has grinded on for a full year. But the concern has always been that if israel launched a Ground Operation and significantly escalated things in lebanon that could draw iran into a conflict in a direct way as were seeing to
supreme court and the gop continuing to infringe on lgbtq rights in this country. there is the hamas attacks on october 7th and israel s indiscriminate retaliation, which have, quote, loyalty s inhumanity to a test. and we have seen a republican primary field that is providing moments of absurdity. and let s face it, a lot of levity. let s get started. we begin tonight with a rare warning about our democracy. it is in dire straits, and that is not according to just one or two, but rather, 13 presidential libraries dating back to herbert hoover, all of which on thursday released a joint statement calling for every commitment to the country s bedrock principles, including the rule of law, and respecting a diversity of beliefs. i can t say this enough. this is an unprecedented move, never before had the presidential libraries engaged so directly in political affairs. while their joint message stopped short of calling out individuals by name, the subject of the warning wa
where a pivotal presidential election is heading to the wire. with more than 91% of ballots counted, neither current president recep tayyip erdogan nor his most fierce rival kemal kilicdaroglu have cleared the threshold to win outright on sunday. the head of turkey s high election board said not long ago that mr erdogan was leading with a9.49%, while kilicdaroglu had 4a.49% of votes. now, if neither can clear 50%, there will be a run off election. our international correspondent orla guerin is in ankara, and has more on what s at stake in this election. people talk excitedly a tense moment in a tight election. here in ankara, voters spotted two people in one polling booth. the police were called in. the ballot box matters in turkey, and the opposition are on the lookout for fraud. this is a pivotal vote which could mean the end of the erdogan era. president erdogan s supporters insist he is going nowhere. this man tells us he will still be president tomorrow because he always
they walked and stood the right beside us. the honour was notjust the fact we were dancing for her but because we were in such close proximity, we werejust dancing, she was watching, she had questions, she was asking about it, she stood there looking at us. did it make you nervous? what effect did have? it made us all more more joyous, not that we were not but you could feel the tempo had increased, nobody was nervous. it was the experience of a lifetime and something we have carried, notjust in the last ten years but something we will share for generations to come in ourfamily. it was a sense ofjoy. to come in ourfamily. did you get a chance to speak to either of the royal couple? yes, we did. the queen did not speak to us, but prince philip did stop and he spoke to a few of us, talking to us about our dresses, how lovely the colours were, how vibrant the colours were, he spoke about our dance and how we knew it and how long we practised. it was just such a humble experience
astonishing of all the races in all of the states that are holding elections tomorrow. it is basically a shoe in for this guy, and that is amazing. so, you ve got that story, and that coverage coming up this hour. we re also gonna get some expert help this hour as well, on the potential impact, potential consequences, of a very unexpected high-profile resignation from a russian diplomat today. today, he not only resigned from the russian government, he put them on blast over putin s invasion of ukraine, and putin s corruption, and what putin has done to russia. one of the consequences of that, in terms of public morale, and the sort of guys of public morale in russia, and potentially, one of the consequences for that guy who resigned today. so, that expert help on that, and we got a bunch of news to get into tonight. but when i start with something that is taking us more than a year to figure out. it was last year, last january, one week after the january 6th attack on the u.