https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5624407-trump-ai-data-centers/amp/
The Trump administration’s data center push is spurring concerns about energy prices and environmental impacts.

The administration has embraced data centers, which house the computers and infrastructure used by tech companies, including for artificial intelligence, as well as the AI they power.

White House officials argue it’s important for the U.S. to win the global “AI race” and outcompete rivals including China in the emerging tech space.

Just this week, President Trump announced a new initiative seeking to expand AI’s use in scientific research. The administration is also considering a move to block “onerous” state-level regulations on AI.

Earlier this year, the administration also floated shielding data centers from environmental impact scrutiny and fast-tracking approvals of the centers and associated energy projects as part of its AI framework.

And they are not alone. Many Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed support for the build-out of data centers, though Democrats have been more likely to back some restrictions on the technology.

Experts say that technology and data centers are expected to have massive impacts on the electric grid in the years ahead.

“Utilities are expecting a lot of this load to land around 2030,” said Ben Hertz-Shargel, who leads research about the electric grid at Wood Mackenzie.

“That is the period when the reliability uncertainty will come to a head, and that’s when things will get tighter. So I think it’s that time frame … of three to five years from now that we’re looking at to start seeing the material cost and potentially reliability impacts of AI demand,” Hertz-Shargel said.

Electricity prices are also relatively high at the moment. In September, electricity prices were about 5.1 percent higher than they were a year ago, outpacing general inflation, which was at 3 percent.

US private employers lost 32,000 positions in November, with job creation seemingly locked in a standstill, according to the private payroll processor ADP.

Job creation has essentially been flat in the second half of this year, ADP said, and small businesses in particular appeared to struggle in November.

“Hiring has been choppy of late as employers weather cautious consumers and an uncertain macroeconomic environment,” ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said in a statement. “And while November's slowdown was broad-based, it was led by a pullback among small businesses.”

About 46% of all US employees work for small businesses, according to government data.

Manufacturing and construction dropped positions, as did professional and business services. Pay growth is also slowing as hiring stalls, Richardson said.

"Year-over-year pay for job-stayers rose 4.4%, and that's down from 4.5% in October," Richardson said. "For job-changers, it was even a more notable slide downward: 6.7% in October, but 6.3% in November."

Meanwhile, American workers feel terrible about the job market. Some 69% of consumers expect unemployment to rise in the year ahead, according to the University of Michigan’s survey of consumers.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/adp-private-payrolls-dropped-32000-positions-last-month-in-slowing-job-market-133210474.html

https://apnews.com/article/drunk-raccoon-liquor-store-bandit-virginia-5109feb2ea9ab9bf8954ec3798689fd0
>On Nov 29, a raccoon broke into the Ashland ABC Store in Hanover County, ransacking shelves and helping itself to alcohol.
>A ceiling tile collapse allowed the intruder to enter and knock out CCTV cameras, and Officer Samantha Martin said the raccoon fell through one tile then went on a full-blown rampage, drinking everything.
>Employees discovered smashed bottles, alcohol pooled on the floor and an aisle soaked with broken glass, while store employees found the raccoon passed out in the bathroom between a toilet and a bin.
>After a period of observation, the animal was returned to the wild after Officer Martin secured the raccoon and transported it to the Hanover County Animal Shelter to sober up.
>The shelter's Facebook post quickly went viral, racking up more than 8,000 likes, 827 comments and 4,100 shares by 1.20pm on Dec 3 and drawing national coverage.
pic unrelated

Former Honduran president released from US prison after Trump pardon

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/former-honduran-president-released-us-prison-after-trump-pardon-2025-12-02/

WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump, who has cast himself as a relentless foe of illegal drugs, pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, freeing him from a 45-year sentence for conspiring to import tons of cocaine into the United States.
Trump’s extraordinary move undermines decades of U.S. efforts to combat transnational drug networks, potentially damages Washington’s credibility in Latin America, and signals to corrupt actors that political connections can outweigh criminal accountability.

Trump signed the pardon for Hernandez on Monday night, a White House official said. The Federal Bureau of Prisons released him from prison in Hazelton, West Virginia, on Monday. While some conservatives in the U.S., including Trump ally Roger Stone, had pushed for Hernandez's release, it was not clear what, or who, prompted Trump to issue the surprise pardon.
The U.S. president has cited the dangers of illicit drug flows from Latin America as justification for a series of deadly U.S. attacks on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, and a military buildup near Venezuela. Democrats and legal scholars have criticized the attacks and questioned their legal justification, noting that they have killed at least 80 people.

During the Biden administration, the U.S. Justice Department asserted that Hernandez, who was president from 2014 to 2022, had abused his power by accepting millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers to protect their U.S.-bound cocaine shipments and to fuel his rise in Honduran politics. A Manhattan jury found Hernandez guilty in March 2024.

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/israel/netanyahu-seeks-pardon-corruption-charges-israel-trump-backing-rcna246527

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has submitted a request for a formal pardon amid a yearslong corruption trial, just weeks after President Donald Trump said he should be pardoned.

“Today, my lawyers submitted a request for clemency to the President of the State,” Netanyahu said in a video address posted on X Sunday.

“The continuation of the trial is tearing us apart from within, provoking fierce divisions, intensifying divisions,” he said. “My personal interest was and remains to continue the process until the end, until I am fully acquitted of all charges, but the security and political realities, the national interest, require otherwise.”

Netanyahu is facing charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases. Prosecutors have alleged that he exchanged regulatory favors with media owners in Israel seeking positive press coverage.

He has also been accused of accepting gifts — including cigars and champagne — in exchange for advancing the personal interests of Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and Australian billionaire James Packer. Prosecutors say these were worth hundreds of thousands of shekels. Milchan previously conceded in court that he gave “excessive” gifts to Netanyahu, but neither he nor Packer are facing charges and both have denied wrongdoing.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Monday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the second, follow-up strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in September following a bombshell Washington Post report that claimed he ordered the military to “kill everybody.”

Leavitt told reporters at the White House press briefing that Hegseth authorized Adm. Frank Bradley to carry out the second strike, which reportedly killed two people who were hanging onto the burning vessel after an initial strike.

“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narcoterrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war. With respect to the strikes in question on Sept. 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Adm. Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes,” Leavitt said.

“Adm. Bradley worked well within his authority and the law to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” she continued. “This administration has designated these narcoterrorists as foreign terrorist organizations. The president has the right to take them out if they are threatening the United States of America, if they are bringing illegal narcotics that are killing our citizens at a record rate, which is what they are doing.”

The administration has been peppered with questions in the aftermath of the Post report claiming Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everybody” onboard before an initial strike.

Some Republican and Democratic lawmakers have expressed concern that the order amounted to a war crime.

According to the Post, an initial strike left two survivors, and Bradley ordered a follow-up strike to comply with Hegseth’s orders to leave no survivors.

>https://thehill.com/homenews/5628447-defense-secretary-authorizes-drug-boat-strike/

Nine or 10 months ago, voters “thought the GOP and President Trump were the better ones to handle those two issues,” said Scott Tranter, DDHQ’s director of data science, referring to economy and immigration.

“Now, at best, the voters are mixed, if not negative, on the president [and] the GOP handling those top two issues,” he added.

Still, recent polling has painted an alarming picture for Trump. A Fox News poll released last week found that 38 percent of respondents approved of the way Trump handled the economy, including only a quarter of independent respondents. The poll also found 35 percent of respondents approved of his handling of tariffs, and 34 percent approved of his handling of health care.

The numbers could rebound, of course, and the recent shooting of two National Guard soldiers has put renewed scrutiny on the country’s immigration policies after authorities said the suspect was an Afghan national who had come to the U.S. under a Biden-era resettlement program.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5624360-trump-approval-ratings-fall/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crk7xjpv8gmo
China and Japan's coast guards have given different accounts of a confrontation that occurred near a group of geopolitically sensitive islands in the East China Sea.

China's Coast Guard said on Tuesday that a Japanese fishing vessel had illegally entered the waters of the Diaoyu Islands - which Tokyo calls the Senkaku Islands. China claims them as their territory, despite the islands being administered by Japan.

Japan's Coast Guard, meanwhile, said it intercepted and expelled two Chinese Coast Guard ships as they approached the fishing vessel.

The confrontation comes as diplomatic ties between the two nations spiral, after Japan's leader made controversial comments about Taiwan last month.

While responding to a question in parliament in November, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, known to be a vocal critic of China and its activities in the region, suggested that Tokyo could take military action if Beijing attacked Taiwan.

Beijing views self-governed Taiwan as part of its territory and has not ruled out the use of force to "reunite" with it.

Both sides have since engaged in increasingly hostile rhetoric towards each other, with the widening rift affecting daily life for citizens in both countries.

Taiwan is located about 160km south-west of the Senkaku Islands.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/02/trump-jack-smith-classified-docs-report-00673178?s=09

President Donald Trump argued Tuesday that former special counsel Jack Smith’s final report — chronicling the criminal case against him for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago — should never be made public.

Trump urged U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in a new court filing to extend her 11-month-old order blocking the Justice Department from releasing the full report, which Smith submitted shortly before Trump’s second inauguration.

Anything less, his attorney Kendra Wharton wrote, would “perpetuate Jack Smith’s unlawful criminal investigations and proceedings.”

Trump’s request is a break from the Justice Department’s handling of all special counsel reports in recent decades. Typically, those reports are provided to Congress and made public, even when they have included damaging findings about the incumbent administration. DOJ released another report Smith compiled detailing his findings about Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election shortly before President Joe Biden left office.

LONDON (AP) — Oxford University Press has named “rage bait’’ as its word of the year, capturing the internet zeitgeist of 2025.

The phrase refers to online content that is “deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive,” with the aim of driving traffic to a particular social media account, Oxford said in a statement.

“The person producing it will bask in the millions, quite often, of comments and shares and even likes sometimes,’’ lexicographer Susie Dent told the BBC. This is a result of the algorithms used by social media companies, “because although we love fluffy cats, we’ll appreciate that we tend to engage more with negative content and content that really provokes us.”

>https://apnews.com/article/oxford-word-rage-bait-biohack-aura-farming-205cad01227a75198aaebdea02f6409b