tracks. carolyn manno, thanks so much. happy new year. coming up, we speak with morgan more artie with a look ahead to the massive college football matchups between alabama and michigan, texas and washington. so stick with us for us for that. all right. next hour of cnn this morning starts right now. good morning to you. 7:00 here on the east coast. we ve got, what, 17 more hours until we hit 2024. so happy new year eve to you. we start this morning with a new court filing from special counsel jack smith. he is urging an appeals court to reject former president donald trump s claims of presidential immunity in the 2020 election subversion case. jack smith, quote, says he threatens to license presidents to commit crimes to remain in office. trump s lawyers says unless he is impeached and convicted by the senate. let s go to cnn s zachary cohen. he s got more for us. reporter: perez special counsel is arguing that the former president donald trump is wrong in claimi
about 20 people were injured there. it s not clear if that s a response for what happened in bell gore rod today by the ukrainian attacks, but it certainly looks that way. the attack today from the russian perspective in belgorod was the worst cross-border strike that they ve seen, they say, at least, since the war began. in the middle of the russian city belgorod, the fiery aftermath of a suspected ukrainian rocket attack. russian officials clauming it was a massive assault, using ukrainian and czech-made ammunition, fired from a multibarrelled rocket launcher, some of which they claim to have intercepted. translator: the kyiv regime by carrying out indiscriminate attacks on squares and committing this crime is trying to divert attention from defeats at the front, as well as provoke us to similar actions. reporter: the death toll, including children, climbing through the day. it comes the day after russia launched its biggest air assault on ukraine in almost two years of
there s a live look at the preparations of the biggest party of the year. as we await the ball drop, abu dhabi is less than an hour away from midnight there, and they are getting ready to get the party started early. they re hosting a one-hour elaborate fireworks and drone display. it is set to break four guinness world records. n more than 5,000 drones are set to hover over the festivities. okay. we want to bring that to you live when it happens, but look at the formations there with the drones. really cool stuff. so we will await their festivities in abu dhabi right now. let s go to greece where they re about to ring in the new year. linda lavrapolo is in athens. hi. what are you seeing? well, it s all looking very festive in athens. i have an ice skating rink behind me at this wonderful park. it s a park that connects the athens city center and the athens riviera so the coast is behind me and along with that, a national library and the opera house. as you c
administration expected come out of these meetings? well, two key issues at the forefront, that being the conflict that s unfolding in gaza, but also the release of hostages. as you mentioned there, it s a critical time, as the u.s. looks for israel to move away from its high intensity war, as that death toll grows in gaza. so, rhonda armor will be meeting with secretary of state, antony blinken, and national security adviser, jake sullivan, this afternoon. he is a close confidant of israel s benjamin netanyahu, and he s also a member of the war cabinet and previously israel ambassador to the united states. israel has assured the united states previously that it plans to move towards a lower intensity war, more precise strategy that targets hamas leadership. but there hasn t been a timeline as to when that will happen. u.s. officials have previously said that they would expect those localized operations to happen in january. but again, publicly, we haven t really received a
where three u.s. service members were injure and one critically. joe biden was briefed on the attack, and then a series of options of how the respond. that response we saw early morning local time in iraq when the u.s. carried out three strikes against the kataib hezbollah and affiliated groups of kataib hezbollah which is a proxy group that operates inside of iraq, and the u.s. central command targeted the command targets which is weapons they used to target the u.s. forces. according to central command, a number of the militants of the kataib hezbollah were killed and according to the early assessments the civilians were not affected by the strikes. this is coming in the broader picture of the number of attacks of iraq attacks on u.s. forces in months. the number of those attacks have been about 100 since mid-october as of right now. iraq condemned the u.s. attacks in iraq saying they were hostile acts that infringed on iraq s sovereignty. it is important to point out that