Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Sunday night, a reversal for the president, who repeatedly said he would not use his executive authority to pardon his son or commute his sentence.

“I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” Biden said in his statement.

Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 12 for his conviction on federal gun charges. He also was set to be sentenced on Dec. 16 in a separate criminal case in which he pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges in September.

The president issued a “full and unconditional pardon” for any offenses Hunter Biden has “committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024,” according to the White House statement.

A senior White House official told NBC News, which was the first to report on the pardon decision, that the president decided over the weekend to grant his son a pardon and began to inform his senior aides Sunday.

The president also spoke about his son’s struggles with addiction in his statement Sunday night, saying that his political opponents were trying to “break” him by going after Hunter.

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Biden said in his statement. “There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

In a separate statement, Hunter Biden said he had “admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction — mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport.”

Despite all of this, I have maintained my sobriety for more than five years because of my deep faith and the unwavering love and support of my family and friends,” he added. “In the throes of addiction, I squandered many opportunities and advantages. In recovery we can be given the opportunity to make amends where possible and rebuild our lives if we never take for granted the mercy that we have been afforded. I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for President-elect Donald Trump, said, “The failed witch hunts against President Trump have proven that the Democrat-controlled DOJ and other radical prosecutors are guilty of weaponizing the justice system. That system of justice must be fixed and due process must be restored for all Americans, which is exactly what President Trump will do as he returns to the White House with an overwhelming mandate from the American people.”

Biden, 82, is using his pardon power to ensure Hunter Biden does not spend time in jail as he nears the end of his term in the White House and has no future election to face. In recent months, he has said he would not pardon his son or commute his sentence.

“I will not pardon him,” he said in June after a jury found Hunter Biden guilty on three federal gun charges.

The president has discussed pardoning his son with some of his closest aides at least since Hunter Biden’s conviction in June, said two people with direct knowledge of the discussions about the matter. They said it was decided at the time that he would publicly say he would not pardon his son even though doing so remained on the table.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre recently told reporters that Biden’s position has not changed.

“We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is ‘no,’” she said.

Asked last week whether the president is still committed to not granting clemency for his son, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said: “The president has spoken to this.” Pressed about whether Biden’s position has changed, Bates replied, “I don’t have anything to add what he said already.”

First lady Jill Biden has also said her husband would not pardon their son.

“Joe and I both respect the judicial system, and that’s the bottom line,” she said in an interview in June.

Hunter Biden’s criminal trial in June was the first involving the child of a sitting president.

Pardoning him after that trial would have ignited a political firestorm for his father, who was campaigning for re-election. Republicans have for years attacked Hunter Biden over his foreign business dealings and accused him and the president of corruption. They have also argued that Hunter Biden was getting special treatment by the Justice Department because of his father’s political power.

GOP criticism reached a peak in July 2023 when Hunter Biden pleaded guilty in a deal with federal prosecutors over the tax and gun charges, which collapsed after a judge raised questions about it. That development led Attorney General Merrick Garland a couple weeks later to appoint the U.S. attorney investigating Hunter Biden, David Weiss, as a special counsel.

Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July, but a pardon before last month’s election also could have generated political blowback on the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris after she took his place on the Democratic ticket.

Together, the 12 counts Hunter Biden is convicted of or has pleaded guilty to carry a maximum prison sentence of 42 years. But the maximum sentences typically are not given out for convictions of these crimes. The Justice Department has said, for instance, that while the tax charges carry a maximum sentence of 17 years, sentences are typically less than that.

Asked in an interview in June whether he would rule out a pardon for his son, Biden answered, “Yes.”

Days later, after Hunter Biden was convicted on federal gun charges by a jury in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, the president said in a statement that he would respect the outcome. He then told reporters he would abide by the jury’s decision.

“I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter,” Biden said. “He has overcome an addiction. He’s one of the brightest, most decent men I know, and I am satisfied that I’m not going to do anything. I said I abide by the jury decision. I will do that, and I will not pardon him.”

Joseph Ziegler, an IRS case agent who became a whistleblower in the Hunter Biden tax probe, told NBC News last year that he opened the investigation himself after seeing bank records that suggested Hunter Biden was paying prostitutes and spending lavishly out of a corporate bank account. Ziegler said politics played no role in his decision to open the case.

“I’m a 38-year-old gay man,” he said. “My politics are simple. I am a Democrat.”

Neil Eggleston, who was White House counsel to President Barack Obama, told NBC News on Monday that “if I were his White House counsel, I would encourage him to pardon his son.” He said he has not been contacted or consulted by the White House about any pardon preparations.

“The clemency power has few limitations and certainly would extend to a Hunter Biden pardon,” Eggleston said.

Eggleston’s opinion echoes that of other former Justice Department and White House officials previously involved in presidential pardons who told NBC News that they thought Biden should exercise this power in advance of the incoming Trump administration.

Five adults and two children, including a baby, have been left injured after a driver crashed his vehicle into pedestrians at a Christmas market in the United Kingdom.
The incident, believed to have been an accident, occurred in Chipping Sodbury, near Bristol.

According to reports, the driver appeared to be an elderly man, likely in his 80s.

The BBC reports:

Avon and Somerset Police said a man – believed to be in his 80s – collided with pedestrians at a low-speed while manoeuvring out of a parking space.

A spokesperson said that despite the large emergency response no one is currently described as having either life-threatening or life-changing injuries.

Five ambulances, an air ambulance, and several other resources were dispatched to the market town, which is around 18 miles (29km) north-east of Bristol.

Organizers of the market announced on social media that it will remain open.

🚨#BREAKING: A car drives in to people including children at a Christmas gathering in Chipping Sodbury, UK. pic.twitter.com/PmTOUNlhMA

— World Source News 24/7 (@Worldsource24) December 1, 2024

“We have been advised by the police not to cancel today’s event, so the remainder of the High Street from Hobbs House Bakery down towards Broad Street and Horse Street is still open,” the post said.

“We would ask anyone attending today to please not take photos of the incident, and not speculate on social media as we work the emergency services to help those people who need assistance.”

Witness Esra Ward, who was running a pizza stall, told the BBC, “The car was parked, and suddenly we saw him accelerate coming out of his parking space and hit a couple of people.”

“There was a mum with a baby in a pushchair in front of the car. Apparently at the back he has hit a few more people, a family. They had ambulances and police and fire all here in about five minutes.”

Aday after nominating his son-in-law’s father to be ambassador to France, President-elect Donald Trump has picked his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Massad Boulos, to be his Senior Advisor to the President on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.

“Massad is an accomplished lawyer and a highly respected leader in the business world, with extensive experience on the International scene,” Trump, 78, wrote on Truth Social.

“He has been a longtime proponent of Republican and Conservative values, an asset to my Campaign, and was instrumental in building tremendous new coalitions with the Arab American Community,” he added.

Boulos, who was born in Lebanon, has a net worth estimated in the billions of dollars, according to the New York Post.

He runs Nigeria-based Boulos Enterprises, a company that produces and distributes mechanical equipment and motorcycles.

Tiffany married Michael Boulos in 2022.

New York City is home to more than 58,000 illegal migrants who are either convicted felons or are currently facing criminal charges — and there are about 670,000 of them nationwide — the New York Post reported of new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data.

The Post reported:

Of the 759,218 illegal-border crossers living in the Big Apple the feds were aware of as of Nov. 17, a jaw-dropping 58,626 — 7.7% — were either previously convicted of crimes or had criminal charges pending, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency data.

Out of that 58,626, about two percent — 1,053 — are “suspected or known gang members,” the ICE data revealed.

The numbers are just as staggering across the rest of the country, with 662,586 — or 8.6 percent — of the nearly 7.8 million illegal migrants living on this side of the border having previously been convicted or have charges pending as of July 21.

The total number of suspected or known gang members is “unclear,” the Post reported.

Elon Musk reacted to these figures with a simple, “Wow”:

Wow https://t.co/zFYLXRG8ZZ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 30, 2024

NYC ICE Director Kenneth Genalo told the outlet he is “frustrated” with the city’s sanctuary laws that prevent immigration officials from enforcing deportations, and he hopes that he gets more resources to help his office get the criminals out.

“In New York City, it would take a lifetime to clear the city of the criminals that we have” if the current policies and funding stay the same, Genalo said.

More than 223,000 migrants have made their way to NYC since the spring of 2022, forcing taxpayers to bear the cost of funding shelters that have disproportionately been placed in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

According to a July New York Post report, a whopping 193 government-run migrant shelters are operating in the Big Apple — but none of them are located in the top five zip codes by median income.

As the shelters began to overflow, many migrants are sleeping on the streets, Breitbart News reported.

In August, residents of a Brooklyn neighborhood sounded the alarm about an all-male, 400-bed migrant shelter opening up around the corner from a private Christian grade school.

“No one told us from the city side about the shelter’s coming up,” concerned mother-of-three Irina Edelstein said during an appearance on Fox & Friends First.

Shortly after President-elect Donald Trump handily won the November election, NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) conceded that he is willing to work with the incoming administration on the immigration crisis.

“I am willing to sit down with this administration like I tried to sit down with the previous administration in my 10 trips to Washington to say: we have a problem that is overrunning our cities,” Adams announced at a press conference, according to Politico. “I’m hoping this administration will hear what I’m saying and listen to some of the ideas that I have been pushing for … close to two years now.”

However, Adams clarified that he is “not a supporter of mass deportation,” a move that Trump has repeatedly said he will accomplish once he retakes the presidential office.

The cartel recruiter slipped onto campus disguised as a janitor and then zeroed in on his target: a sophomore chemistry student.

The recruiter explained that the cartel was staffing up for a project, and that he’d heard good things about the young man.

“‘You’re good at what you do,’” the student recalled the recruiter saying. “‘You decide if you’re interested.’”

In their quest to build fentanyl empires, Mexican criminal groups are turning to an unusual talent pool: not hit men or corrupt police officers, but chemistry students studying at Mexican universities.

People who make fentanyl in cartel labs, who are called cooks, told The New York Times that they needed workers with advanced knowledge of chemistry to help make the drug stronger and “get more people hooked,” as one cook put it.

The cartels also have a more ambitious goal: to synthesize the chemical compounds, known as precursors, that are essential to making fentanyl, freeing them from having to import those raw materials from China.

If they succeed, U.S. officials say, it would represent a terrifying new phase in the fentanyl crisis, in which Mexican cartels have more control than ever over one of the deadliest drugs in recent history.

“It would make us the kings of Mexico,” said one chemistry student who has been cooking fentanyl for six months.

The Times interviewed seven fentanyl cooks, three chemistry students, two high-ranking operatives and a high-level recruiter. All of them work for the Sinaloa Cartel, which the U.S. government says is largely responsible for the fentanyl pouring over the southern border.

Those affiliated with the cartel put themselves in danger just by talking to The Times, and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Their accounts matched those of American Embassy officials who track cartel activities, including the role students are playing in cartel operations and how they are producing fentanyl. Times reporters spoke to a chemistry professor, who said the recruitment of his students was common.

The students said they had different jobs within the criminal group. Sometimes, they said, they run experiments to strengthen the drug or to create precursors. Other times, they say, they supervise or work alongside the cooks and assistants who produce fentanyl in bulk.

It’s unclear how widespread the recruitment of students has become, but the pursuit of trained chemists seems to have been influenced in part by the coronavirus pandemic.

A 2020 Mexican intelligence assessment, leaked by a hacker group, found that the Sinaloa Cartel appeared to be recruiting chemistry professors to develop fentanyl precursor chemicals after the pandemic slowed supply chains.

American law enforcement officials also said that many young chemists had been swept up in arrests at Mexican fentanyl labs in recent years. The arrested chemists told the authorities that they had been working on developing precursors and making the drug stronger, according to the officials.

A chemistry professor at a university in Sinaloa State said he knew that some students enrolled in chemistry classes just to become more familiar with skills needed to cook synthetic drugs. The professor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, said he had identified students who fit that profile by their questions and reactions during his lectures.

“Sometimes when I am teaching them synthesis of pharmaceutical drugs, they openly ask me, ‘Hey, professor, when are you teaching us how to synthesize cocaine and other things?’” he said.

Eager to preserve cooperation on migration, the Biden administration avoided publicly urging Mexico to do more to dismantle the cartels. President-elect Donald J. Trump has promised a more aggressive approach, threatening to deploy the U.S. military to battle the criminals, and vowing last month to issue a 25 percent tariff on Mexican goods if the country doesn’t stop the flow of drugs and migrants across the border.

In response to the tariff threat, Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said that “international collaboration” was needed to prevent the shipment of precursors to Mexico from “Asian countries.”

But as the cartels gain greater control of the fentanyl supply chain, U.S. officials say, it will become more difficult for law enforcement in both countries to stop the industrialized production of synthetic opioids in Mexico.

The cartels “know we are now focused on the illicit trafficking of these precursor chemicals around the world,” said Todd Robinson, the State Department’s assistant secretary of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Those efforts are driving the cartels “to try to bring this thing in-house,” Mr. Robinson said. “The practical result of that is their ability to more easily and quickly transfer those drugs to the United States.”

Mass producing fentanyl can be relatively straightforward if cartels are just mixing up imported precursors, experts said, because it’s easy to find instructions for producing the drug using those chemicals.

But trying to synthesize the precursors from scratch is a much more difficult process that requires a broader array of chemical techniques and skills, said James DeFrancesco, a forensic science professor at Loyola University Chicago who worked as a forensic chemist at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for 18 years.

The process is also dangerous. Cooks and students said that even though they wore gas masks and hazmat suits, the risks they face are many: toxic exposure to the lethal drug, accidental explosions, mistakes that enrage their armed and extremely violent bosses.

Yet the work pays more than many legal jobs in chemistry, and that’s often enough of a sell. The second-year student said the recruiter who visited the campus had offered him $800 up front, plus a monthly salary of $800 — twice as much as the average pay for chemists formally employed in Mexico, according to government data.

The 19-year-old, raised in one of the poorest parts of Sinaloa, said he had chosen to study chemistry because his father had cancer and he wanted to help find a cure.

“I want to help people, not kill them,” he said. The idea of making a product that would lead to mass death made him sick — and yet the treatment his father needed was impossible for the family to afford.

He told the recruiter he was interested, and five days later he was picked up by cartel members, blindfolded and driven to a clandestine lab hidden in the mountains, he said.

The Recruiter

Before the Sinaloa Cartel ever approaches a recruit, it scouts out its prospect.

The ideal candidate is someone who has both classroom knowledge and street smarts, a go-getter who won’t blanch at the idea of producing a lethal drug and, above all, someone discreet, said one recruiter in an interview.

In months of searching, he said, he’s found three students who now work for him developing precursors. Many young people just don’t meet his standards.

“Some are lazy, some aren’t bright, some talk too much,” said the recruiter, a lanky middle-aged man with square glasses, who has worked for the cartel for 10 years. He described himself as a fix-it man, focused on improving quality and output in the fentanyl business.

To identify potential candidates, the cartel does a round of outreach with friends, acquaintances and colleagues, the recruiter said, then talks to the targets’ families, their friends, even people they play soccer with — all to learn whether they’d be open to doing this kind of work. If the recruiter finds someone particularly promising, he might offer to cover the student’s tuition cost.

“We are a company; what a company does is invest in their best people,” he said.

When the cartel began mass-producing fentanyl about a decade ago, the recruiter said, it relied on uneducated cooks from the countryside who could easily get their hands on what people in the business call “recipes” for making the drug.

Compared to methamphetamine, a drug that requires more advanced equipment and expertise to manufacture at scale, fentanyl is straightforward to produce if precursor chemicals are available.

“It takes four steps,” said one longtime cook, laying out the process with the simplicity that might be found on the back of a box of cake mix. “You shake it up, mix it, dry it, wash it with acetone.”

But things got more complicated in recent years. China moved to restrict the export of fentanyl precursors, Mexico cracked down on imports of the chemicals and the coronavirus pandemic gummed up supply chains so that those ingredients became harder to find.

The recruiter and all three students interviewed said they hadn’t successfully produced precursors yet.

“We are close, but it’s not easy,” said one former student, a 21-year-old who started working in a lab this year. Baby-faced and bright-eyed, the student had dropped out of school to work for the cartel. “We need to keep doing tests and more tests.”

But the recruiter said the students had been helpful in one key respect: making the fentanyl even more potent.

Student No. 1

About a year ago, a relative approached a first-year chemistry student with a proposal: Wouldn’t she love to make real money as a fentanyl cook?

In an interview, the student said her relative had worked for the Sinaloa Cartel for years and knew exactly what to say to lure the young woman, the eldest of five siblings. Her mother was raising the children alone, cleaning houses 12 hours a day.

The cartel offered the student $1,000 as a signing bonus, the woman said. She was terrified, but she said yes. The lab where she works is about an hour’s flight from Sinaloa’s capital, on the small aircraft the cartel uses to transport cooks to work. Her bosses told her that her job was to manufacture more powerful fentanyl, she said.

The fentanyl coming out of Mexico has often been of low purity, a problem the recruiter attributes to the desperate rush to satisfy Americans’ appetite for the synthetic opioid.

“There was such an explosion of demand that many people just wanted to earn money, and those manufacturers just made whatever without caring about quality,” the recruiter said. But in a competitive market, he said, the cartel can win over more clients with a stronger drug.

The first-year student said she had experimented with all manner of concoctions to increase fentanyl’s potency, including mixing it with animal anesthetics. But none of her attempts at producing fentanyl precursors have worked.

“You’re starting from a blank page,” she said. “How do we create something we didn’t invent?”

Student No. 2

When he first arrived at work, the sophomore chemistry student who had been recruited on campus had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. He said the lab was in the mountains, in the midst of trees and covered by a tarp that had been painted to look like foliage, so it couldn’t be seen from a helicopter.

After three days of work, he said, one of the men in charge told him that he wasn’t there to make fentanyl. He was the newest member of a research and development lab, where everyone was working to figure out how to make precursors from scratch. He said he immediately started worrying about inadvertently causing an explosion.

“They don’t tell you how to do it — they say, ‘These are the products, you’re going to make them with this, it could go wrong, but that’s why you’re studying,’” he said.

The sophomore works with six others, three students from his class in university, and three older men who are not trained chemists. The work is a lot riskier than what he does in school, when he has time to attend.

“Here, if they don’t like what you produce, they can make you disappear,” he said.

A cartel boss recently visited the lab to praise his work, the student said, telling him that if he was able to help produce precursors successfully, the group would give him a house or a car, whatever he wanted.

The sophomore told them what he needed most was money for his dad. He kept his day job a secret from his father.

“When he asks questions, I lie and say I’m working at a company,” the sophomore said. “I think if he knew, he wouldn’t accept the money.”

LeBron James’ media company lost almost $30 million last year. SpringHill, the media company co-founded by basketball star LeBron James, has never made any money.

The company lost $28 million on sales of $104 million last year, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg News. SpringHill lost $17 million in 2022 and is on pace to lose millions more in 2024.

Hollywood production companies that sprouted during the past decade to serve the growing demands of streaming services are struggling as those services cut back on production and scrutinize budgets. This market correction has impacted everyone – from the world’s largest entertainment companies, which have cut staff, to prop houses, real estate developers and the independents like SpringHill.

“The entertainment market shift in 2022/2023 toward profitability brought rising costs, slower buyer decisions, and impacts from industry strikes, prompting us to recalibrate, including writing off underperforming projects to position ourselves for future growth,” SpringHill Chief Executive Officer Maverick Carter said via email, adding that the company is expected to exceed projections this year.

SpringHill recently agreed to a merger with Fulwell 73, the British production outfit behind The Kardashians and the Grammy Awards, a deal that will give the combined company more scale during a challenging business environment. The company, which will have 250 employees, is aiming to be profitable by the end of next year, following a round of staff cuts.

The numbers also highlight the challenges specific to celebrity-backed production companies. These startups were able to raise money at inflated valuations relative to their business fundamentals and have since struggled to live up to the lofty expectations.

James is a trailblazer among athletes. He started a media enterprise while still playing at the highest level, inspiring peers such as Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant to do the same. Carter, James’ longtime friend and business partner, runs the business day to day.

They produced films and TV shows, ran a marketing company, sold apparel and started Uninterrupted, which produces their talk show The Shop. In 2020, James and Carter combined all of their media businesses under SpringHill, named for the apartment complex where James grew up in Akron, Ohio.

SpringHill succeeded where many other celebrity-backed ventures did not. While James is the company’s chairman, most of what they produce doesn’t involve him being in front of the camera. Save for the occasional appearance on The Shop, or a starring role in basketball-themed projects like Space Jam and the Netflix docuseries Starting 5, James is still focused on playing ball. Carter has earned the respect of the business community and sits on the board of concert giant Live Nation.

“We built this business with LeBron, not around him,” Carter said, adding that James “remains deeply engaged in driving the vision and mission he helped shape, focusing more actively on certain passion projects.”

James’ involvement helped the company raise $15 million from Warner Bros. in 2015. In 2020, the pair raised $100 million from investors including Guggenheim Partners and Elisabeth Murdoch. A year later, they added RedBird, Nike and the owners of the Boston Red Sox to their investor group in a deal valuing the business at $725 million. The company had less than $80 million in sales at the time and was losing money.

SpringHill, which grew to 200 employees, raised money at the top of the market for production companies, back when streaming services were adding billions of dollars to their budgets each year to chase new customers. Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine was acquired in a deal that valued the business at about $900 million.

Yet as the market crashed, those lofty valuations started to look excessive. Hello Sunshine has fallen far short of profit forecasts. As part of the deal with Fulwell, SpringHill investors will put a further $40 million into the business.

“The new company has the scale, investors and teams needed to adapt to where this change is heading,” Carter said.

Many celebrities have used their fame to make successful investments in consumer businesses, whether it’s George Clooney with tequila, Selena Gomez with makeup or Rihanna with fashion and makeup. Ryan Reynolds has done it a few times, while James and Carter have been several lucrative investments.

But when it comes to media, the list of successes is short. Kevin Hart just brought in new leadership to revamp his company while Dwayne Johnson is thinking about how to expand his. Producing good movies and TV shows is hard, and having a celebrity producer doesn’t guarantee success.

The finance chief of a major car brand is reportedly set to step down just hours after it was reported that the firm was “on the brink of collapse”.

Insiders have claimed that the collapse of a major partnership has left the company scrabbling for financial backing just to make it through 2025.

It was just this week that the Financial Times reported that Nissan was fighting for its very survival in a desperate search for new investment.

Pressure on the firm’s balance sheet was apparently worsened by the reported collapse of the three-way agreement between Nissan, Mitsubishi and Renault, which had been in place since 1999.

Sources claimed that the French manufacturer was looking to reduce its stake in its Japanese partner.

One company official said: “We have 12 or 14 months to survive.

“This is going to be tough.

“And in the end, we need Japan and the US to be generating cash.”

In the wake of that revelation, Bloomberg is now reporting that Nissan’s Chief Financial Officer, Stephen Ma, is expected to leave the role in the near future.

Ma has been in post since 2019 as part of a brutal management cull following the arrest of former CEO Carlos Ghosn, who later fled Japan amid allegations of false accounting.

Since then, the firm has cut 9,000 jobs worldwide and embarked on a savage cutback regime in an effort to save £2 billion.

It is unclear whether the report means that Ma is set to leave the company altogether or that he will be shuffled into a different role.

New CEO Makoto Uchida, who himself took a 50% pay decrease as part of the cuts, attributed Nissan’s struggles to its failure to sure up its hybrid lineup in contrast to rivals Honda and Toyota.

He said: “This has been a lesson learned and we have not been able to keep up with the times.

“We weren’t able to foresee that hybrid electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids would be so popular.”

However, Honda could be the centrepiece of Nissan’s recovery plan, with the company reportedly seeking increased cooperation with its larger rival.

The two companies could be set to ramp up their partnership, with greater financial backing potentially coming from Honda.

It could also buy a stake in Nissan itself, though those within the smaller company say this remains a “last resort” option.

An alliance between the two could be sufficiently large to face down Toyota as Japan’s largest carmaker.

Belgian sex workers have gained the right to sick days, maternity pay and pension rights under the first law of its kind in the world.

Lawmakers voted in May to give sex workers the same employment protections as any other employee, in an attempt to clamp down on abuse and exploitation.

The law, which went into force on Sunday, ensures that sex workers have employment contracts and legal protection.

It is intended to end a grey zone created in 2022 when sex work was decriminalised in Belgium but without conferring any protections on sex workers, or labour rights such as unemployment benefit or health insurance.

Under the law, sex workers have the right to refuse sexual partners or to perform specific acts and can stop an act at any time. Nor can they be sacked for these refusals.

Employers must be of “good character” with a business residence in Belgium; they must also ensure their premises are equipped with panic buttons, clean linen, showers and condoms.

The protections do not cover home working, or activities such as striptease and pornography.

The Belgian Union of Sex Workers described the law as “a huge step forward, ending legal discrimination against sex workers”.

But it said the rules could “be instrumentalised” to reduce or eliminate sex work. It added: “We already see certain municipalities hiding behind the words ‘safety’ and ‘hygiene’ to promulgate very strict local regulations that make sex work almost impossible on their territory.”

Some feminist organisations have criticised the law. When the bill was published in 2023, the Council of Francophone Women of Belgium said it would be “catastrophic” for young girls and victims of trafficking.

“To assume that prostitution exists and that we must protect workers is to accept this sexist violence and not to fight it,” the head of the organisation told Le Soir.

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to enact “100% tariffs” on BRICS countries that are trying to move away from using the U.S. dollar as their currency.

“The idea that the BRICS Countries are trying to move away from the Dollar while we stand by and watch is OVER. We require a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy,” Trump said in a post to Truth Social.

BRICS, an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, is an economic and geopolitical bloc whose power has grown in recent years, rivaling that of the Group of Seven countries, a coalition of leading industrial nations led by the U.S.

The BRICS coalition has recently grown to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

While the U.S. dollar heavily dominates the international financial system, BRICS has backed the creation of an alternative currency in a movement that could potentially lead to de-dollarization, holding massive implications for the U.S.

Trump said the rival group could “go find another ‘sucker’” on Saturday.

“There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, and any Country that tries should wave goodbye to America,” he said.

The president-elect’s promises to place sweeping tariffs on BRICS countries follows his announcement this week on planned tariffs against Mexico and Canada.

Trump’s plans would put in motion 25% tariffs on the two countries to stop the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants across U.S. borders the day he takes office on Jan. 20. 2025.

Trump said he had a “very productive meeting” with Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau on Saturday during which they appeared to discuss the coming tariffs.

“We discussed many important topics that will require both Countries to work together to address, like the Fentanyl and Drug Crisis that has decimated so many lives as a result of Illegal Immigration, Fair Trade Deals that do not jeopardize American Workers, and the massive Trade Deficit the U.S. has with Canada,” he said in a post to Truth Social.

“I made it very clear that the United States will no longer sit idly by as our Citizens become victims to the scourge of this Drug Epidemic, caused mainly by the Drug Cartels, and Fentanyl pouring in from China. Too much death and hardship! Prime Minister Trudeau has made a commitment to work with us to end this terrible devastation of U.S. Families. We also spoke about many other important topics like Energy, Trade, and the Arctic. All are vital issues that I will be addressing on my first days back in Office, and before,” he continued.

President-elect Donald Trump announced he will nominate Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, Trump said that Chronister — who has served the Tampa, Florida, area for over 32 years — will work with his attorney general selection, Pam Bondi, to help secure the U.S.-Mexico Border.

The DEA administrator is a Senate-confirmed position.

“As DEA Administrator, Chad will work with our great Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to secure the Border, stop the flow of Fentanyl, and other Illegal Drugs, across the Southern Border, and SAVE LIVES,” Trump wrote.

Chronister was appointed to lead the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office by then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott in 2017 and has been twice reelected by voters.

He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in science in criminal justice from St. Leo University and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy’s 260th session.

Chronister is married to Nikki DeBartolo and has two sons.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody took to X on Saturday to congratulate Chronister on the nomination and praise his experience in fighting on the “frontlines” of the opioid crisis.

“Chad has fought on the frontlines of the opioid crisis, and I know his leadership and decades of experience will be invaluable as we work to combat the flow of Mexican fentanyl into our county,” Moody wrote.

China has been supporting Russia’s economy since the start of the Ukraine war by buying its oil while supplying it with everything from microelectronics to washing machines.

Meanwhile, Beijing has been getting its own strategic benefit: a real-world case study in how to circumvent Western sanctions.

An interagency group, set up by China in the months following the full-scale invasion, has studied the impact of sanctions and produced reports regularly for the country’s leadership, according to people familiar with the matter. The goal is to draw lessons about how to mitigate them, particularly in case a conflict over Taiwan prompts the U.S. and its allies to impose similar penalties on China, the people said.

As part of the effort, Chinese officials periodically visit Moscow to meet with the Russian Central Bank, the Finance Ministry and other agencies involved in countering sanctions, the people said.

The Chinese study effort, which hasn’t previously been reported, is emblematic of the new age of economic warfare unleashed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where the lines between economic policy and geopolitical strategy are increasingly blurred. That trend is only likely to be amplified by Donald Trump’s second presidential term, where he plans to turbocharge the use of tariffs as a tool for negotiation and coercion.

Russia’s economy has been surprisingly resilient throughout the Ukraine war, but it has shown fresh signs of cracking under Western pressure recently. In the past week, the Russian ruble plunged to its lowest point since the early days of the conflict after the U.S. imposed new banking sanctions.

Moscow owes much of its economic durability to its oil exports and its cooperation with Beijing, as the leaders of both countries seek to challenge the U.S.-led world order. The group that was established shows how deep that collaboration has been, and that Beijing’s support hasn’t entirely been a one-way street with Moscow as the beneficiary.

“For the Chinese, Russia is really a sandbox on how sanctions work and how to manage them,” said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, who focuses on China-Russia relations. “They know that if there is a Taiwan contingency, the tool kit that will be applied against them will be similar.”

People close to Beijing’s decision-making cautioned that the study group doesn’t mean the country is readying an invasion. Rather, Beijing is preparing for the “extreme scenario” of an armed conflict and its economic repercussions, the people said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the country “has always been committed to conducting normal exchanges and cooperation with all countries in the world, including Russia, on the basis of equality and mutual benefit.”

One area of particular concern for China is its more than $3.3 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, the world’s largest. The moves by the U.S. and its allies to freeze Russian assets abroad following the Ukraine invasion prompted Beijing to more actively look for ways to diversify its stockpile away from dollar-denominated assets, such as U.S. Treasury bonds.

In a sign of heightened top-level attention on sanction risks associated with the reserves, China’s leader Xi Jinping paid a rare visit to China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange in the fall of 2023, the people close to Beijing’s decision-making said. During the visit, Xi raised the question of how to safeguard the reserves, the people said.

The Chinese interagency group on Russian sanctions reports to He Lifeng, China’s vice premier overseeing economic and financial affairs. He, who has a direct line to Xi, has been the chief architect for ringfencing China’s economy from Western sanctions.

Beijing is “very interested in practically everything: from ways of circumventing them to all sorts of positive effects, such as incentives for the development of domestic production,” said a person familiar with China’s outreach to Russia on sanctions.

The Russia-China relationship has blossomed since the invasion. Bilateral trade reached a record $240 billion last year, juiced by Russian oil sales. Around 60% of newly sold cars in Russia are Chinese, according to Russian data provider Autostat.

But the relationship has been lopsided: While China accounts for around a third of Russia’s overall trade, Russia makes up a small part of China’s. Much of Russia’s exports is made up of oil and natural gas that China can get elsewhere.

That means that, if the tables were turned, Moscow wouldn’t be able to provide as much support to China’s economy. That is why Xi has been directing officials to promote trade and deepen economic ties with Russia to achieve a greater “internal driver” for the relationship, according to the people close to Beijing’s decision-making.

While the U.S. has already imposed sanctions on China, including export restrictions on advanced semiconductors and measures against telecommunications giant Huawei, a crisis over Taiwan could lead to an economic war of a different magnitude.

Full-scale financial sanctions by the West would disrupt the country’s financial system, interrupt trade and put $3.7 trillion in Chinese overseas bank assets and reserves at risk, according to a report last year by the Atlantic Council and Rhodium Group think tanks.

Russia reacted to Western sanctions by redirecting commodity flows, injecting massive fiscal stimulus into the economy and evading export controls via neighboring countries. These measures stabilized the Russian economy and enabled Moscow to continue prosecuting its war, even as sanctions have hampered the long-term growth outlook for the country.

One major lesson for China from Russia’s experience has been the importance of preparation, analysts say. Before the war, Russia had sought to diversify its foreign reserves, de-dollarize its economy and build domestic financial plumbing. Even though its success was mixed, those moves helped shield the Russian economy and buy it time to adapt.

Another lesson for China is the value—and limits—of coalitions. The U.S., the U.K., the European Union and other allies worked in unison to expel major Russian banks from the Swift financial network and impose an oil price cap, while Russia countered by strengthening ties with China, Iran and North Korea.

“China learned that the West can get their act together on sanctions when they have to,” said Agathe Demarais, senior policy fellow for geoeconomics at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Meanwhile, Russia has found its own allies.”

At the same time, disagreements in the Western coalition, especially over oil sanctions due to inflation concerns, have hampered their response. And with China having a much larger footprint in the world economy, the global costs of sanctions are expected to be much higher. At least $3 trillion in trade and financial flows—roughly the equivalent of France’s annual gross domestic product—would be at risk of disruption, according to estimates by the Atlantic Council and Rhodium Group.

“One of the lessons from the sanctions on Russia is that once you start imposing them on a large economy there are economic and political ramifications at home,” said Edward Fishman, a former State Department sanctions official and author of the forthcoming book “Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare.”

China, a major manufacturer, also learned from Russia’s experience about the potential pitfalls of being connected to global supply chains.

For years, Russia had tried—and mostly failed—to make its economy self-sufficient. When sanctions hit, Moscow found itself deeply reliant on Western parts it suddenly couldn’t get. That led to shortages and temporary shutdowns of whole industries, such as carmaking. When they later rebooted, Russian carmakers initially made cars without air bags and other safety features because they didn’t have the parts they needed.

“Sanctions can be really disruptive for any production sector that is enmeshed in global supply chains,” Fishman said. “That makes China highly vulnerable.”

How Russia found ways around such restrictions, however, provides yet another lesson for Beijing, even though China’s vastly larger economy would require a far greater evasion effort.

To bypass the oil price cap, for example, Moscow uses a network of tankers not owned by Western countries or insured by Western companies. More than half of Russia’s seaborne oil is now transported with this so-called shadow fleet, analysts say, and the U.S. and its allies have been racing to target vessels with sanctions.

Meanwhile, Russia found a route through ex-Soviet republics to acquire banned Western goods from luxury cars to dual-use goods with military applications such as microchips in what has come to be known as the “Eurasian roundabout.”

San Jose State volleyball player Blaire Fleming probably played the final college volleyball game of the athlete’s career after a Mountain West Tournament final loss to Colorado State Saturday night.

Fleming led the Spartans on a run to the championship match in a senior season overshadowed by lawsuits from a teammate and a national controversy over Fleming being transgender.

Fleming led the team in spikes and prompted four Mountain West rivals to forfeit a total of seven conference games, including a tournament semifinal.

But Colorado State never shied away from playing Fleming or the Spartans.

The Rams played San Jose two times in the regular season, splitting the season series, and then taking the championship match three sets to one.

Colorado State’s Malaya Jones, the Mountain West player of the year, led the game with 26 kills after kneeling during the national anthem before the match.

Jones was also alleged to have conspired with Fleming in a plan to spike a ball in the face of San Jose State teammate Brooke Slusser in a game Oct. 3, according to a lawsuit filed by Slusser and a Title IX complaint.

Slusser was never spiked in the face, and the Mountain West concluded an investigation into the Title IX complaint, saying it did not find sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. Slusser’s attorney has questioned the validity of the investigation.

Fleming, meanwhile, led San Jose State in the game with 17 kills but committed nine errors and hit poorly in the first two sets when the Spartans fell in a two-sets-to-none hole.

San Jose State’s loss will also mean it won’t advance to the NCAA tournament, which would have introduced further controversy with potential matchups against teams outside the conference.

Boise State forfeited its Mountain West Tournament semifinal match against San Jose State, which could have set a precedent for teams in other states with laws that prevent transgender inclusion in women’s sports.

Boise State, Utah State, Wyoming, Nevada and non-conference opponent Southern Utah all forfeited regular-season matches against San Jose State this season amid the controversy.

Meanwhile, Louisiana Tech, which played its season opener against San Jose State Aug. 30, has told Fox News Digital it did not know Fleming was a biological male and suggested the match wouldn’t have happened if the team had known.

The situation became so widely publicized, Fleming’s presence on the team drew criticism from President-elect Trump on the campaign trail during the most recent election cycle.

Trump weighed in on the situation involving Fleming during a town hall event on Fox News Channel’s “The Faulkner Focus” Oct. 17.

Trump referenced Fleming specifically, describing a video in which one of the athlete’s spikes hit another player.

“I saw the slam. It was a slam. I never saw a ball hit so hard, hit the girl in the head,” Trump said. “But other people, even in volleyball, they’ve been permanently, I mean, they’ve been really hurt badly. Women playing men. But you don’t have to do the volleyball. We stop it. We stop it. We absolutely stop it. You can’t have it.”

Trump revealed his intention to ban transgender inclusion in women’s sports if elected. It became a talking point he made sure to reference at every campaign rally from then until Election Day.

He and Republican allies hammered Democrats’ position of protecting transgender inclusion, which grew increasingly unpopular.

A federal judge could have ended Fleming’s career earlier but decided to allow the player to compete in the conference tournament.

Federal Judge Kato Crews of Colorado, appointed by President Biden in January, denied a motion for injunctive relief in a lawsuit by college volleyball players against the conference.

The players were looking to have their forfeits for refusing to play against Fleming and the Spartans rescinded, which would, in turn, shift the standings heading into the tournament. They also wanted Fleming banned from the tournament.

Crews, however, wrote that the plaintiffs’ request for an emergency delay “was not reasonable” and “would risk confusion and upend months of planning and would prejudice, at a minimum, (San Jose State) and other teams participating in the tournament.”

Despite the lawsuits, Slusser and the rest of the San Jose State roster took the court with Fleming for matches all season.

Fleming was second in the conference in kills per set with a .386, still well behind Jones, who led the way at .457.

Fleming had a signature moment in the second-to-last match of the season against first-place Colorado State at home on Senior Day.

Fleming led the game in kills with 24 and total attacks and clinched victory in the fifth set with a match-point service ace.

Right after the play, Fleming was swarmed by teammates in celebration. Even Slusser got involved. This group celebration took place just days after Slusser and other Mountain West players filed a second lawsuit over Fleming’s presence on the team against San Jose State and the conference.

Now, Fleming, Slusser and their other senior teammates will look ahead to their post-volleyball lives.

The Supreme Court on December 4 will hear oral arguments in a case dealing with Tennessee’s law banning irreversible gender transition procedures for children — and it promises to be one of the most significant cases the court has looked at this term.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R.) signed the much-discussed Senate Bill 1 into law on March 22, 2023, which went into effect on July 1, 2023. The bill bans doctors or health care providers from performing so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries or hormonal procedures on minors, including surgery, puberty blockers, and hormones.

The bill followed a September 2022 investigation into Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) by the The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who exposed VUMC’s gender transition procedures for children and shocking attitudes towards gender transitions in general. Walsh and The Daily Wire found that the hospital regarded transgender procedures as a “big money maker” and pressured employees to ignore their “religious beliefs” on transgender issues or face “consequences.”

The Biden administration joined the ACLU and several teenage plaintiffs suing to stop the law, and a Tennessee district court initially blocked it in April 2023. But in September 2023, a sixth circuit court upheld Tennessee’s protections for children.

The Supreme Court took up the case in June 2024, combining the Justice Department and ACLU cases into United States v. Skrmetti, marking the first time that the High Court took up a case of this kind.

“The people of Tennessee, through their elected representatives, took measured action with Senate Bill 1 to protect kids from irreversible, unproven medical procedures,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in an October statement.

“Lawmakers recognized that there is little to no credible evidence to justify the serious risks these procedures present to youth and joined a growing number of European countries in restricting their use on minors with gender-identity issues.”

The ACLU led a variety of left-wing legal groups in suing Tennessee in April 2023 to block the law from going into effect, calling these transgender procedures “medically necessary gender-affirming care for Tennessee’s transgender youth.” That claim is based on activist assertions that young people suffering from gender dysphoria may commit suicide if they do not have access to transgender hormones or surgeries.

Recent research has shown that, contrary to such claims, these procedures actually increase the likelihood that minors will attempt suicide. According to an April study, “gender-affirming surgery is significantly associated with elevated suicide-attempt risks, underlining the necessity for comprehensive post-procedure psychiatric support.”

Yet the ACLU and their allies are suing Tennessee on behalf of a Nashville, Tennessee couple and their 15-year-old son, who identifies as a girl, as well as a doctor from Memphis, Tennessee, Dr. Susan Lacy.

“It was incredibly painful watching my child struggle before we were able to get her the life-saving healthcare she needed. We have a confident, happy daughter now, who is free to be herself and she is thriving,” the ACLU’s client, Samantha Williams, said earlier this year of her trans-identifying son.

“I am so afraid of what this law will mean for her,” she said. “We don’t want to leave Tennessee, but this legislation would force us to either routinely leave our state to get our daughter the medical care she desperately needs or to uproot our entire lives and leave Tennessee altogether. No family should have to make this kind of choice.”

Skrmetti’s office argues that states have governed the practice of medicine within their borders since the United States was founded, pointing out that it is states who license doctors and regulate medical practices, which includes restricting the administration of drugs. The Tennessee lawmakers who passed Senate Bill 1 used that power to stop the use of hormonal and surgical procedures for minor gender transition procedures, Skrmetti’s office said.

More than 20 other states have passed similar laws protecting children, they pointed out.

“The federal government, in its arguments to the Supreme Court, puts its faith in a false and manufactured consensus that ignores the many doctors, States, and countries who have looked at the evidence and determined these treatments are too risky for kids,” Skrmetti added.

“The Constitution does not prevent the States from regulating the practice of medicine where hot-button social issues are concerned. People who disagree with restrictions on irreversible pediatric procedures for gender transition are free to advocate for change through state elections.”

The ACLU’s case will be argued by Chase Strangio, a woman who identifies as a transgender man. The ACLU has advertised that Strangio will be the first openly trans-identifying individual to argue a case before the Supreme Court, describing Strangio as “our nation’s leading legal expert on the rights of transgender people, bar none.”

President Joe Biden is traveling to Angola on Dec. 1, underscoring the U.S. commitment to strengthening ties with the African country amid increasing geopolitical competition with communist China.

According to the White House, the outgoing president’s trip aims to counter Beijing’s growing influence in the continent and lay the foundation for a new U.S. approach to Africa that will endure beyond Biden’s presidency.

The trip was originally scheduled for Oct. 13 but was postponed due to Hurricane Milton.

A senior administration official highlighted that U.S. strategy toward Africa has changed under Biden. The president has put a greater emphasis on investment in the continent rather than relying on traditional development aid, grants, and charity, the official told reporters during a call on Nov. 29.

This is why Biden’s visit is significant and why Angola was chosen, he added.

While there, Biden is expected to highlight his key initiative known as the Lobito Corridor project, which the administration has said is critical for U.S. economic and national security. Launched last year, the rail line investment project will allow the United States to access critical mineral reserves in Africa and expand Africa’s economic opportunities.

The eventual 1,000-mile railway would span three countries, linking Angola’s port city of Lobito to the mineral-rich areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia’s Copperbelt. It’s considered Washington’s major effort to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Africa.

The senior administration official stated that the U.S. investments provide an alternative to Chinese investments, which are often associated with “low standards, child labor, and corruption.”

The infrastructure investment will potentially reduce the time it takes to transport critical minerals from 45 days to about 45 hours, he added.

Biden will be in Angola’s capital, Luanda, from Dec. 2 to Dec. 4. His trip marks the first visit to Africa by a U.S. president in nearly a decade. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama made multiple trips to the continent during their presidencies, while President Donald Trump did not travel there during his first term.

Biden’s trip will also be the first time a sitting U.S. president has visited Angola.

The Biden officials believe that many of its initiatives will continue under the incoming administration.

“U.S.–Africa policy has actually benefited from really strong bipartisan support over the course of multiple administrations. And I think that’s a pretty remarkable tradition,” another senior administration official said during the call.

Biden is expected to deliver a speech in Luanda highlighting his efforts to close Africa’s infrastructure gap, expand economic opportunities, and promote technological and scientific cooperation with the continent.

At the 2022 Africa Leaders’ Summit, the U.S. government pledged to invest $55 billion in Africa and has met 80 percent of the investment commitment since then, according to the White House.

Biden will also hold a bilateral meeting with President João Lourenço of Angola during his visit.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Lourenço stated that, to date, only U.S. oil and gas companies have invested in Angola, an oil rich country. However, he hopes that Biden’s upcoming visit will help diversify U.S. investments into other sectors.

He added that the Angolan government is not concerned that the bilateral relationship between the two countries will be impacted by the incoming Trump administration.

Lourenço attended the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit in 2022 hosted by Biden in Washington. He later visited Biden at the White House in December last year.

In Luanda, Biden is expected to announce new deliverables related to global health security, agribusiness, security cooperation, and preserving Angola’s cultural heritage.

Africa’s Mineral Wealth

According to the White House, Biden’s trip to Angola has a regional focus that extends well beyond the country’s borders.

Africa, with its vast natural resources and a population of 1.5 billion, is poised to emerge as a major economic force in the world in the coming decades. The world’s growing dependence on critical and rare earth minerals makes Africa a significant hub in the global supply chain.

Sub-Saharan Africa holds about 30 percent of the world’s critical mineral reserves, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The DRC alone holds more than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt—an essential mineral used in batteries that power smartphones, computers, and electric vehicles. With untapped mineral deposits worth more than $24 trillion, the conflict-wracked DRC is also considered the richest in the world in terms of natural resources.

Other countries in the region with significant critical mineral reserves include South Africa, Guinea, Zimbabwe, Gabon, Mozambique, and Tanzania.

Many of these minerals—such as copper, cobalt, manganese, and lithium—are the lifeblood of everyday electronics. Beyond consumer goods, they play a critical role in high-precision weapons and other defense technologies, making them vital for national security. Additionally, they are key to accelerating the transition to electric vehicles and alternative energy solutions, aligning with Biden’s ambitious climate agenda.

In recent years, the CCP has made big investments in the continent’s mining and mineral extraction industries, especially in countries including the DRC, Ghana, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zambia.

China owns most of DRC’s large industrial cobalt mines and Chinese corporations own about 80 percent of the DRC’s cobalt output, which is then refined in China and sold to battery manufacturers around the world.

China dominates the critical mineral market by processing and refining raw materials sourced from other countries like the DRC. It largely imports raw minerals and processes them into usable products, which grants the Chinese regime significant control over the supply chain.

“It’s a competition over the future of the world order,” Michael Walsh, senior fellow in the Africa program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.

However, he noted that it is not only the United States and China that are competing for the continent; India, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are all “getting into the game.”

Washington also faces competition from Russia. In recent years, Moscow has deployed thousands of troops from its Africa Corps, formerly the Wagner Group, to several African countries, including Mali, Libya, the Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, and Niger. While increasing its military footprint, Russia also gained access to strategically important access to natural resources in these countries.

The Biden administration’s effort to counter the CCP’s influence in Africa is important in the fight for access to the continent’s strategic minerals, according to experts, who say that while the United States still has a long way to go, recent initiatives are helping close the gap.

“There’s no doubt that the railway to Lobito will eventually take minerals and other natural resources out of Chinese hands,” Candice Moore, a specialist in U.S.–Africa relations at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa, told The Epoch Times in an interview early this year.

“It’ll take them to Africa’s west coast and from there to Western markets instead of to East African ports from where they’ve traditionally been shipped East.”

Biden has said the Lobito Corridor project is “far from just laying tracks.”

“It’s about creating jobs, increasing trade, strengthening the supply chains, boosting connectivity, laying foundations that will strengthen commerce and food security for people across multiple countries,” the president said during the G20 summit in India last year. “This is a game-changing regional investment.”

The infrastructure project is funded by the U.S. government, the African Development Bank, and a consortium led by commodity trader Trafigura.

Through the BRI, China has financed the construction of roads, reservoirs, railways, tech centers, and other infrastructure in Africa worth hundreds of billions of dollars since 2013.

Critics say the BRI has forced Africa into a “debt trap,” with the continent owing China a combined $73 billion.

Nevertheless, 52 of Africa’s 54 countries have BRI agreements with China.

Sean “Diddy” Combs has been sued again, this time for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman and dangling her from a 17th-story apartment balcony.

The lawsuit, filed by Bryana “Bana” Bongolan, alleges that the incident occurred at Combs’ then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura’s home in 2016.

Bongolan is accusing the disgraced rapper of sexual battery and false imprisonment, among other things.

According to the complaint, Bongolan was staying with Ventura, and Combs showed up late one night and began groping her.

When she rejected his advances, Bongolan says Combs dangled her over the balcony’s edge. After he eventually pulled her back up, she claims that he assaulted her and threw her into patio furniture.

“Mr. Combs firmly denies these serious allegations and remains confident they will ultimately be proven baseless,” Combs’ legal team said in a statement to Page Six.

“He has unwavering faith in the facts and in the fairness of the judicial process. In court, the truth will come to light, demonstrating that the claims against Mr. Combs are without merit.”

Bongolan is seeking $10 million in damages.

Combs is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, after being denied bail for the third time on Wednesday.

Prosecutors argued that he poses a significant risk to his victims if he is released.

The music mogul has been charged with sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

Combs’ trial is scheduled to begin on May 5.

Ellen DeGeneres’s new life in the quaint English countryside has gone dramatically wrong – after her dream home was swamped by astonishing flooding just days after she moved in.

The talk show superstar is living in an idyllic multi-million pound farmhouse in the Cotswolds after deciding to emigrate from the US in protest at Donald Trump’s election win.

But rather than enjoying a pastoral retreat, Ellen, 66, and her wife Portia De Rossi, 51, have been left at the mercy of raging floods which have engulfed their new multi-million pound mansion, MailOnline can reveal.

Montecito is under mandatory evacuation. We are on higher ground so they asked us to shelter in place. Please stay safe everyone. pic.twitter.com/7dv5wfNSzG

— The Ellen Show (@EllenDeGeneres) January 9, 2023

Dramatic images show the couple’s 43-acre property in the Cotswolds has become swamped in a torrent of flood water following the devastating impact of Storm Bert.

The couple were left virtually marooned just days after moving into their new home after a tributary of the River Thames which runs beside the property broke its banks.

It came after the area was battered by days of torrential rain and winds of up to 80mph.

Roads surrounding the hideaway have been left impassable after being deluged in five feet of water – leaving locals trapped in their homes.

One stricken resident who lives near the couple said: ‘The flood waters are rising by the hour. This is the worst I have seen it in years.’

The dramatic scenes must seem a far cry from the life the couple left behind in sunny California.

According to US media, Ellen and wife Portia – who donated money to Kamala Harris’s doomed campaign – decided to ‘get the hell out’ after Trump’s election victory, apparently vowing to never go back.

They are said to have ‘fallen in love’ with the picturesque estate set in acres of rolling Cotswold countryside which also includes a helicopter pad and swimming pool.

And it appears they were so keen to make a quick getaway and land their dream property that they were prepared to pay £2.5 million more than the asking price.

Originally built as a farmhouse, it was converted into a modern luxury home more than 15 years ago but still retains its old-world charm, with the outlying barns connected to the main building via glazed passageways.

In total there are six bedrooms, and four bathrooms and council records show the previous owner installed an eco-friendly heat pump to supply heating to the house and pool.

There is also a five bay garage and a separate one bedroom cottage.

Should Ellen and Portia wish for a workout, the house also has a gym and there are games rooms and separate offices.

A source in the Cotswolds said: ‘It really is a beautiful house.

‘It’s so quintessentially English which as Americans they have fallen in love with, although they can forget about any glamorous southern California nightlife and weather.

‘The area itself is very quiet, some might even say boring as there’s not much to do, especially in the colder months but there are lots of celebrities in the area.’

Before the floods came, Ellen and Portia were seen settling into their new surroundings by enjoying a night out at a watering hole of a different kind.

During a raucous night at Jeremy Clarkson’s Cotswolds pub The Farmer’s Dog, the pair were entertained by The Corrs.

Pop stars James Blunt, 50, and Natalie Imbruglia, 49, were also present as they enjoyed a few drinks with friends.

It’s thought Ellen and Portia have invested in a couple of 4×4 vehicles which may prove a lifeline in negotiating waterlogged roads.

Among the only vehicles on the roads in recent days have been tractors and trailers driven by local farmers collecting sheep from low-lying areas and taking them on to higher ground.

According to US magazine People, Ellen is a well-known collector of ‘multi-million dollar homes’ including a $32 million property in Montecito where Harry and Meghan live, which she sold earlier this year.

In 2023 she told one US outlet that she had bought and sold ‘over 50 houses’ including a house in Malibu that once belonged to Brad Pitt.

President-elect Donald Trump has named longtime ally Kashyap “Kash” Patel, who has been a frequent and harsh critic of the FBI, to serve as the bureau’s next director in the new administration.

Patel, 44, is an attorney with experience in national security, intelligence and counterterrorism and helped uncover the bureau’s surveillance of the Trump campaign and first term. He has been a member of Trump’s transition team, advising the administration on other appointments.

Trump announced Patel’s appointment in a Truth Social post on Saturday.

“Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People,” Trump’s statement read. “He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution.”

The current FBI director, Christopher Wray, is currently serving a 10-year appointment which began in 2017. Wray will either need to be fired or resign in order for Patel to take the position.

Patel is widely seen as a staunch Trump loyalist who will implement Trump’s desired reforms within the agency. During the first Trump administration, he served as senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council and later as the chief of staff for acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, from 2020-2021.

Patel has been a fierce critic of bureaucracy and corruption. In 2023, Patel published a book called “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” which delved into “the major players and tactics within the permanent government bureaucracy,” according to the book’s description.

Media outlets have labeled Patel an “extremely controversial pick,” with MSNBC’s Morning Joe calling him the “personification of MAGA rage about the Justice Department and the FBI.”

“I would shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen the next day as a museum of the Deep State,” Patel said in an interview with “The Shawn Ryan Show.”

The attorney started his career as a public defender in Florida’s Miami-Dade County after attending the University of Richmond and earning a law degree from Pace University in New York and a certificate in international law from University College London Faculty of Laws.

In 2014, Patel became a federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice National Security Division, a role in which he led prosecutions against members of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and other terror groups.

Patel has served in several roles in the federal government, including most recently as the chief of staff to the Department of Defense and Deputy Assistant to President Trump during Trump’s first term. Prior to his Pentagon stint, Patel served as deputy director of National
Intelligence and as deputy assistant to the president on the National Security Council.

Before joining the first Trump administration, Patel served as the national security advisor and senior counsel for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), where he
reported to Committee Chair Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. In that role, he helped to oversee the House probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and uncovered unlawful surveillance of the Trump campaign by the FBI and DOJ.

The FBI director position requires Senate confirmation. In an X post on Saturday night, Trump ally Mike Davis called Patel “unquestionably qualified.”

“I served as Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley’s chief counsel for nominations – the job responsible for the confirmation of the FBI director,” Davis wrote. “Kash Patel will win Senate confirmation. He’ll bring much-needed reforms to a broken, corrupt FBI.”

Trump’s statement said that Patel will work with Pam Bondi, the nominee for attorney general, to reform the FBI.

“This FBI will end the growing crime epidemic in America, dismantle the migrant criminal gangs, and stop the evil scourge of human and drug trafficking across the Border,” Trump’s post concluded. “Kash will work under our great Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI.”

The FBI issued a statement following Trump’s announcement.

“Every day, the men and women of the FBI continue to work to protect Americans from a growing array of threats,” read the statement. “Director Wray’s focus remains on the men and women of the FBI, the people we do the work with, and the people we do the work for.”

Trump Defense Secretary Nominee Pete Hegseth’s mother apologized to her son immediately after sending him an emotional email in 2018 accusing him of mistreating his ex-wife in the midst of their difficult divorce, according to an email viewed Saturday by Breitbart News.

In the follow-up email, sent on May 1, 2018, Penelope Hegseth apologized for sending an email the evening before out of emotion and frustration, saying she should know better.

She added that the divorce had been difficult and frustrating for her and that she had felt desperate. She also added that she knew he loved the children he shared with his ex-wife and that he wanted to be in their lives, and that she wanted to support that.

The email had a completely different tone than the one she wrote the evening before, which was published by the New York Times on Friday against her wishes.

In the initial email she sent on April 30, 2018, she berated her son about his treatment of his ex-wife Samantha, the mother of three of her grandchildren, and whom Hegseth was married to from 2010 to 2017. Hegseth’s mother forwarded that email to Samantha, which somehow made it to the Times.

When Hegseth’s mother was told by the Times that they would publish the email, she told them in a phone interview that she had sent her son an immediate follow-up email apologizing for what she had written.

She also told the Times that she had fired off the email “in anger, with emotion” at a time when her son and his now ex-wife were going through a very difficult divorce.

She also defended her son to the Times and disavowed what she had said in her email about his character and treatment of women.

She told the paper, “It is not true. It has never been true,” adding, “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.” She also called publishing the email’s contents “disgusting.”

Nonetheless, LaFraniere ran with the story, even promoting it on her X account and letting readers know that it was a “gift” or free article and not behind a paywall.

LaFraniere — who was part of the Times’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Russia collusion hoax — was personally biased against Hegseth, according to a New York Times source.

The source said, “She said that Pete Hegseth can’t be SECDEF and that she’s going to see to it. I kind of looked at her like she was crazy and wondered how she was going to see to it, but now I guess I don’t have to wonder anymore.”

According to a source close to Hegseth, several media outlets were aware of the original email but had opted not to publish its contents.

The source said she did not send her follow-up email to the Times because she did not trust them, and that she would trust Breitbart News with it instead.

Author and combat veteran Sean Parnell blasted LaFraniere for publishing the email, calling it “despicably low” and “sickening.” He wrote on X:

The New York Times is publishing a 6 year old private email between a mother & her son. This is despicably low on so many levels. Families have issues. All the time. To make those issues public for the sole purpose of tanking a nomination is evil. Period. Pete has children. They will read this. Their friends will read it. It is irresponsible as hell to even publish such a thing. Democrats don’t have to deal with this BS. It’s sickening.

Parnell also slammed LaFraniere for promoting the story on her X account:

She’s so proud of publishing a 6 year old private email between a mother and her son that she’s offering you a way around the NYT paywall.

President Trump is right about scum like this — #EnemyOfThePeople.

She’s so proud of publishing a 6 year old private email between a mother and her son that she’s offering you a way around the NYT paywall.

President Trump is right about scum like this — #EnemyOfThePeople https://t.co/qoeIKrJMTh

— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellUSA) November 30, 2024

“It’s an understatement to say that the media is the #EnemyofthePeople. To exploit the private pain of a family during a very difficult moment is loathsome beyond belief. Especially when small children are involved. The Hegseth family doesn’t deserve these BS attacks,” he added.

Megyn Kelly, podcast host and former Fox News anchor, also derided the Times for publishing the email. She posted on X:

ICYMI @PeteHegseth’s mom sent him a “you are behaving very badly” email during his divorce (she’s a good mom!) and the NYT is ALL IN on it. Next we will hear from his aunt who accused him of being late in sending his thank you cards after Christmas six years ago.

ICYMI @PeteHegseth’s mom sent him a “you are behaving very badly” email during his divorce (she’s a good mom!) and the NYT is ALL IN on it. Next we will hear from his aunt who accused him of being late in sending his thank you cards after Christmas six years ago.

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) November 30, 2024

The Times‘s reporting of the private email comes after what appears to be a concerted smear campaign against Hegseth, a Washington-outsider, in an effort to sink his nomination to lead the government’s largest agency.

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday nominated Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, as the US ambassador to France.

Kushner “is a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests,” Trump said on his Truth Social website, adding that Jared “worked closely with me in the White House.”

The choice is in keeping with Trump’s pattern, so far, of selecting people, often wealthy, who are close to his family or of proven loyalty.

Kushner is a multimillionaire real estate executive and former attorney; his son was a senior adviser during Trump’s first term.

Trump did not mention, however, that the elder Kushner once served jail time — a two-year sentence, most of it served in a federal prison.

Kushner, who is now 70, pleaded guilty in 2004 to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign contributions.

The case, which was prosecuted by then US attorney Chris Christie, included sordid details, to which Kushner admitted: that he had hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, a man cooperating in a campaign finance inquiry, and then videotaped the encounter and sent it to the man’s wife, Kushner’s sister, to dissuade her from testifying against him.

Christie, who worked on Trump’s first presidential transition team and then opposed him in this year’s Republican primary contests, later said Kushner had committed a “loathsome” and “disgusting crime.”

In 2020, Trump issued a pardon to Kushner, whose conviction had resulted in him being disbarred in three states.

Nominees for key ambassadorships are often business associates of a president-elect, or major political donors. But it is rare, if not unprecedented, to name a convicted felon.

The first two men to fill the prestigious Paris post were famed inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin and a future president, Thomas Jefferson.

If confirmed, Kushner would succeed Denise Bauer, a former ambassador to Belgium who was a major Democratic fundraiser and donor.

While Apple may not have ditched completely the woke agenda, this Christmas ad is certainly a step in the right direction.

The ad, which is a trailer for Apple’s AirPods Pro 2, showcase an iPhone app that, when paired with the AirPods, allows them to double has hearing aids.

It begins with a father watching his young daughter unwrap Christmas presents, a touching moment that sparks memories of her childhood.

However, the audio is muffled, reflecting his partial deafness or hearing difficulties.

As the scene unfolds, his wife gently urges to use his AirPods and iPhone to improve his hearing.

After putting them on, his hearing becomes far clearer and his memories of his daughter’s become more vivid.

The ad concludes with tearing up as he looks at his daughter, who is now a young woman, as she sings and plays on her guitar.

Watch:

The ad has attracted praise on social media, particularly among conservatives, who praised its storytelling and its lack of political propaganda.

HOLY SH*T 🚨 I am completely SHOCKED Apple would drop such a non Woke Pro Life Family ad

I’m actually in tears watching it 🙏

FINALLY normalcy pic.twitter.com/uHtfSdCBmD

— Marjorie Taylor Greene Press Release (Parody) (@MTGrepp) November 28, 2024

Culture is shifting. Corporate America is finally waking up. 🙏

— Anna Lulis (@annamlulis) November 28, 2024

Apple just released a wholesome pro-family ad with a White family. Vibe shift. We’re back. pic.twitter.com/tlXqdYQvWY

— Andrew Torba (@BasedTorba) November 29, 2024

Apple just released a beautifully non woke, pro family ad. I’m here for it. pic.twitter.com/jbg4CY0mkx

— Phil Reed (@PhilReed77) November 28, 2024

Apple just released their annual holiday ad and wow…

I’m not crying, I’m just sweating through my eyes pic.twitter.com/eRhYRAAhpL

— Aaron (@aaronp613) November 28, 2024

Such wholesome content is in glaring contrast to the ad recently released by the iconic British car brand Jaguar, which features which a handful of ethnically diverse and seemingly gender-fluid groups of individuals prancing around wearing bizarre pieces of clothing.

The ad also showed off the company’s “funky” new logo, ditching the iconic image of a leaping jaguar that has served it successfully for nearly 90 years.

It was unsurprisingly met with disgust by the public, who pointed out its shocking lack of taste and cultural awareness. The best came response came from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who asked “Do you sell cars?”