Morning Report is The Hill’s a.m. newsletter. Subscribe here. In today’s issue: ▪ Pressure rises to end Iran conflict ▪ US eases Russia oil sanctions ▪ American aircraft crashes in Iraq ▪ Updates on Michigan, Virginia violence The shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will officially reach the one-month mark tonight at midnight, with… Source link
A total of 59 gigawatts of U.S. clean energy projects are facing delays at a time when demand for power from AI data centers is surging, according to a trade group study. Developers are seeing an average delay of 19 months over issues such as long interconnection times, supply constraints and regulatory barriers, the American Clean Power Assn. said in a quarterly market report. The backlog is happening despite the growing need for power on grids that are being taxed by energy-hungry data centers and increased manufacturing. The Trump administration has implemented a slew of policies to slow the build-out of solar and wind projects, including delaying approvals on federal lands. The potential energy generation facing delays is the equivalent of 59 traditional nuclear reactors, enough to power more than 44 million homes simultaneously. “Current policy instability is beginning to impact investor confidence and negatively impact project timelines at a time when demand is surging,” American Clean Power Chief Policy Officer JC Sandberg said in a statement. Despite the hurdles, developers were able to bring …
TAIPEI, Feb 24 (Reuters) – Taiwan’s parliament will discuss late next week the government’s stalled bill on a $40 billion special defence budget, which has been held up by opposition party objections attracting the concern of U.S. lawmakers. Taiwan President Lai Ching-te last year proposed the extra defence spending to counter China, which has ramped up military pressure to force the island to accept its claim of sovereignty. But the opposition, which has a majority in parliament, refused to review the proposal and instead advanced its own, less expensive proposals, which only fund the purchase of some of the U.S. weapons Lai wants. Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of 37 U.S. lawmakers wrote to senior Taiwanese politicians expressing concern about parliament stalling the proposed defence spending. Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, the main opposition Kuomintang and its much smaller ally the Taiwan People’s Party have now agreed to schedule discussion on the government’s proposal on March 6, according to pictures of the agreement posted by lawmakers to social media. Taiwan’s parliament speaker and his …
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Saturday that a recent report of friction between his company and OpenAI was “nonsense.” Huang’s comments came after The Wall Street Journal published a story late Friday claiming that Nvidia was looking to scale back its investment in OpenAI. The two companies announced a plan in September in which Nvidia would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and also build 10 gigawatts of computing infrastructure for the AI company. However, the WSJ said Huang has begun emphasizing that the deal is nonbinding, and that he’s also privately criticized OpenAI’s business strategy and expressed concerns about competitors like Anthropic and Google. The WSJ also reported that the two companies are rethinking their relationship — though that doesn’t mean cutting things off entirely, with recent discussions reportedly focusing on an equity investment of a mere tens of billions of dollars from Nvidia. An OpenAI spokesperson told the WSJ that the companies are “actively working through the details of our partnership,” adding that Nvidia “has underpinned our breakthroughs from the start, powers …
The WNBA and the players’ union will meet Monday in New York for the first time in several weeks to try to move the stalled collective bargaining negotiations forward. Kelsey Plum, who is vice president of the players union, mentioned the meeting to reporters while she was preparing for a game in Philadelphia with the 3-on-3 league Unrivaled. “I think we’ll learn a lot from this meeting. I’m not trying to put it on the meeting, but this is a meeting that I think everyone understands what’s at stake,” Plum said. “The league has their timelines; we as players understand what’s at stake. I always come into anything that I do with a great attitude, and I’m going to see the best in this.” Plum will be joined at the meeting by other members of the executive council, including Nneka Ogwumike and Napheesa Collier, as well as union leadership. The league will have its regular negotiating team, including WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, the labor relations committee and a few other owners, according to a person …
By Maria Martinez and Victoria Waldersee BERLIN, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Ministers from six leading European economies including Germany and France vowed to be the drivers of European progress as they tackled how to advance projects stalled by the EU’s complex decision-making process at a time of geopolitical upheaval. The video conference including finance and economy ministers from Poland, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands followed ridicule from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration over the time it takes the 27-country European Union to make decisions. “As six major economies in Europe, we now want to be the drivers,” German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said after the call. “We are providing momentum; others can join. What matters is strengthening our competitiveness and our defence capability.” The idea of forging ad-hoc coalitions allowing some EU countries to pursue projects without the need for agreement from all 27 has long tempted some members and has already been applied to key projects including the euro currency. But it is gaining new momentum as Europe confronts widening insecurity, sluggish growth and …
When she was sentenced to death by a court in Dhaka last November, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the ousted prime minister of Bangladesh, was typically defiant. From the New Delhi bungalow allotted to her by the government of India, she said she was “very proud” of her “record on human rights and development.” But as Bangladeshis took to the streets to celebrate the verdict, which after all was symbolic, they remembered a very different legacy. Hasina first served as prime minister from 1996 to 2001, then came to power again in 2009. Over the subsequent fifteen years, according to the Bangladeshi human rights organization Ain o Salish Kendra, her security forces carried out two thousand extrajudicial killings. They abducted more than 1,800 people and detained them in a network of secret sites known as Aynaghor, or the House of Mirrors. (A commission investigating these disappearances believes that the real figure may be two to three times greater.) Relying on brute force and a pliant judiciary, Hasina launched an assault on the country’s main opposition parties, the …
The delay now raises the question of whether the EU executive will provisionally apply the agreement while waiting for the court to rule — putting the two institutions on a collision course over democratic accountability. The outcome represents a major defeat for the European Commission and countries backing the deal, which want to deepen ties with the Mercosur countries — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — and see the accord as the perfect opportunity to stand strong against U.S. President Donald Trump’s erratic tariffs. “The more trading partners we have world-wide, the more independent we are. And that is exactly what we need now,” the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a last-minute appeal to lawmakers earlier on Wednesday. Bernd Lange, the chair of the Parliament’s international trade committee, condemned the outcome of the vote. “Absolutely irresponsible. This is an own goal,” Lange posted on X. “Those against #EU #Mercosur should vote against in consent procedure instead of using delaying tactics under the guise of legal review. Very harmful for our economic interests and standing. Team Europe putting …
.jpg?trim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200%3A800&ssl=1 "Sophie Turner says career ‘stalled’ while she was having children: ‘I’ve had to try to rebuild’")
Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Sophie Turner has reflected on the impact having children at a young age has had on her career, saying she has “had to try to rebuild.” The British Game of Thrones star, 29, has two daughters aged five and three with her ex-husband, pop star Joe Jonas. Speaking to The Guardian in a new interview, Turner said she is happy she had her children in her mid-twenties, explaining: “It’s really nice. I’m not worrying about my biological clock and all that sort of stuff.” Turner was 13 years old when she was cast to play Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones, and remained on the hit HBO show from 2011 to 2019. While making the series, she also starred in the leading role of Jean Grey in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse and its 2019 sequel Dark Phoenix. She added that taking time …
The Trump administration on Monday reached an agreement to reevaluate thousands of National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant applications that were stalled or cut because of their perceived connection to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The agreement between the administration, unions and Democratic state attorneys general resolves part of a lawsuit filed against the administration for canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in research funds. A federal judge in Boston previously ruled that the terminations were unlawful… Source link
