News

Paramount Skydance is reportedly preparing a bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery.

Variety, an entertainment industry trade magazine in the United States, first reported the looming proposal on Tuesday, quoting sources familiar with the talks.

The publication said the company formed an investment consortium with the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi to submit a $71bn bid for Warner Bros Discovery.

The report said Paramount Skydance would contribute about $50bn towards the proposed acquisition with the remainder coming from the wealth funds.

Paramount Skydance has described the involvement of the sovereign wealth funds as “categorically inaccurate”.

Paramount Skydance is now led by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, cofounder of Oracle and a close ally of US President Donald Trump. Warner Bros Discovery previously rejected a bid from the Ellison family, which holds all board voting power at Paramount Skydance.

Neither Paramount nor Warner Bros Discovery responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Under the proposed structure, the wealth funds would take small minority stakes and each would receive “an IP, a movie premiere, a movie shoot”, the report said.

Warner Bros Discovery – home to the DC film universe and television studios, HBO, CNN, TNT and Warner Bros Games – is on the verge of breaking up, crippled by declines in its television business.

The company said in October that it has been considering a range of options, including a planned separation, a deal for the entire company or separate transactions for its Warner Bros or Discovery Global businesses.

Nonbinding, first-round bids are due on Thursday.

Paramount is the only company currently considering a full buyout according to the US news website Axios. Warner Bros Discovery also wants to have a deal by the end of the year, according to Axios’s reporting.

Political pressures

The looming deal is shaped in part by how the Trump administration views coverage by the news outlets owned by Warner Bros Discovery.

Netflix and Comcast are also reportedly exploring bids, but any Comcast-led effort would need regulatory approval.

Trump has also repeatedly attacked Comcast over its TV news coverage, saying the company “should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our country”.

Comcast owns NBC News and its subsidiary Versant Media, the parent company of MS-Now – formerly MSNBC – and CNBC.

CBS, owned by Paramount Skydance, has taken a more conciliatory posture towards the administration, including hiring a Trump nominee as an ombudsman to investigate bias allegations after settling a Trump lawsuit claiming its flagship programme 60 Minutes deceptively edited an interview with 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump.

Paramount Skydance also recently tapped Bari Weiss, a right-leaning opinion journalist with no television background, to lead the CBS broadcast news division.

Any of the deals that are being discussed raise antitrust concerns. But if Paramount Skydance, which already owns CBS, now purchases CNN as part of Warner Bros Discovery, “that would create an added civic risk”, Rodney Benson, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, told Al Jazeera.

“Such a deal would put two leading news outlets under the roof of the same large, multi-industry conglomerate with avowed close relations to the party in power – and that could lead to more conflicts of interest, less independent watchdog reporting and a narrowing of diverse voices and viewpoints in the public sphere,” Benson said.

Warner Bros Discovery remains the parent company of CNN.

On Wall Street, Paramount Skydance shares were up 1.7 percent in midday trading. Warner Bros Discovery was also up 2.8 percent from the market open. Comcast gained 0.5 percent, and Netflix climbed 3.5 percent.

Why is anyone still listening to Megyn Kelly?

No matter how many times the former Fox News personality reinvents herself — friendly NBC daytime talk show, serious Sunday night news magazine anchor, desperate-to-cash-in right-wing podcaster — the old Megyn Kelly sabotages the new one.

The veteran media personality has done it again, this time managing to unite the left and right in disgust against her definition of pedophilia following last week’s dump of more documents from the Epstein files.

Last week on her eponymous SiriusXM show, Kelly said that calling the late, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein a pedophile wasn’t all that accurate because he was “into the barely legal type” of minors, “like 15-year-olds.”

Speaking with NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon, Kelly claimed to know “somebody very, very close to [the Epstein] case who is in a position to know virtually everything,” and “this person has told me from the start, years and years ago, that Jeffrey Epstein, in this person’s view, was not a pedophile.”

Epstein was charged in 2019 with the sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. He denied the charges and pleaded not guilty before killing himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial.

“He liked 15-year-old girls,” continued Kelly on her show. “I realize this is disgusting. I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this, I’m just giving you facts that he wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds.”

Then she gunned it off the side of a cliff, Thelma and Louise-style, but without the heroism or the cool, vintage convertible.

“I don’t know what’s true about him, but we have yet to see anybody come forward and say, ‘I was 8, I was under 10, I was under 14, when I first came within his purview,’” Kelly said. “You can say that’s a distinction without a difference.”

Ungar-Sargon pushed back: “No, it’s not.”

Kelly replied, “I think there is a difference. There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?”

No, we don’t know. Sex with a minor equals pedophilia. Period.

It’s one more instance of Kelly, 55, doing or saying whatever it takes to game the attention economy, no matter how cynical or craven.

Her clumsy attempts to make the news rather than report it didn’t particularly stand out during her 12 years at Fox News simply because she was surrounded by peers who are masters at the art of fabricating outrage for ratings, clicks and follows.

“Santa Claus is white!”

“Antifa is watching!”

“Immigrants are in your pantry, snacking on your dog!”

Kelly made it to the top of news feeds when she departed Fox in 2017. She was among a group of women who spoke out against Roger Ailes, head of the conservative cable news station, accusing him of sexual harassment and assault. Ailes resigned in 2016. Kelly became an outspoken proponent of the #MeToo movement and rode that blue-ish wave out of the conservative media ecosystem and into the mainstream with NBC News.

But by 2019, NBC canceled her talk show, “Megyn Kelly Today” after Kelly questioned if wearing blackface was really racist during a segment on Halloween costumes. She was defending Luann de Lesseps, a cast member of the reality show “The Real Housewives of New York,” who had darkened her skin to dress as Diana Ross. Kelly said that when she was a child, it “was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”

Just as the media ecosystem has changed, so has Kelly. She’s now partnered with Mark Halperin, a former NBC News and MSNBC contributor whose contract was canceled in 2017 amid sexual misconduct allegations. Together, they hope to build her MK media empire, jumping off the popularity of “The Megyn Kelly Show.” It’s one of the nation’s most popular right-leaning podcasts. According to data from media tracker The Righting, the program ranked as the third-largest conservative podcast, behind those hosted by Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson.

Defending a pedophile could prove to be her latest act of self-sabotage. If not, there are still plenty of chances for her to fecklessly ride the political tides, aligning with new victors while alienating whoever still believes she stands for something other than her own brand. But she’s running out of new demographics to appeal to. And the public is running out of patience with her.

From Jack Harris: Just weeks into the offseason, the Dodgers are already thinking 11 months ahead.

Having just finished yet another grueling October campaign, they are bracing for the long road required to get back.

The team’s central focus right now, of course, is on bolstering its roster and supplementing its star-studded core coming out of last week’s annual MLB general managers’ meetings in Las Vegas.

But as they go for a World Series three-peat in 2026, one of their primary challenges will be managing the returning talent — and ensuring the burdensome toll from their previous two title treks doesn’t become a roadblock in their pursuit of another ring.

Taking such a long view has become an annual practice for the Dodgers. Their collection of star talent and organizational depth means they are almost always in position to make the playoffs. It has afforded them leeway to manage players’ regular-season workloads and recovery from injuries with an eye toward having them at full strength come the fall.

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Yoshinobu Yamamoto introduces his rescue dog to Dodgers fans

LAKERS

From Broderick Turner: LeBron James said his lungs felt like those of a “newborn baby” and his voice was “already gone” after his first Lakers practice Monday as he moved a step closer toward making his season debut after being sidelined by sciatica.

The Lakers listed James as questionable for Tuesday night against the Utah Jazz at Crypto.com Arena, and he sounded as if he was close to playing in his NBA-record 23rd season.

“We got a long time,” said James as he wiped sweat from his face while speaking to reporters. “I mean, we’ve been taking literally one minute, one hour, one step at a time throughout this whole process. So, see how I feel this afternoon, see how I feel tonight. When I wake up in the morning. … We’ll probably have [a] shootaround [Tuesday]. So, just gotta see how the body responds over the next 24 hours-plus.”

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CLIPPERS

Tyrese Maxey scored 39 points, Paul George had nine points and seven rebounds in his season debut, and the Philadelphia 76ers rallied for a 110-108 victory over the short-handed Clippers on Monday night.

Quentin Grimes added 19 points and Andre Drummond had 14 points and 18 rebounds while filling in for Joel Embiid.

James Harden scored 28 points for the Clippers, who have lost eight of nine. Harden became the 11th player to eclipse 28,000 career points with a first-quarter layup.

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Clippers box score

NBA standings

RAMS

From Gary Klein: Rams safety Quentin Lake will be sidelined for an undetermined amount of time because of an elbow injury suffered during the Rams’ victory over the Seattle Seahawks, coach Sean McVay said Monday.

McVay said the Rams were awaiting results from an MRI exam and a consultation with team physician Dr. Neal ElAttrache before deciding how long Lake might be out, whether he will be placed on injured reserve or if it is a season-ending injury that would require surgery.

“Not great for our captain and leader,” McVay said during a videoconference with reporters. “Bummed out for him.”

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KINGS

Alex Ovechkin scored his 903rd career NHL goal and the Washington Capitals beat the Kings 2-1 on Monday night.

Matt Roy also scored for the Capitals, who ended a two-game losing skid to gain some traction in the standings.

Anze Kopitar scored for the Kings, who had won four straight. It was just their second regulation road loss of the season.

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Kings summary

NHL standings

DUCKS

Olen Zellweger scored 1:50 into overtime after Troy Terry tied it with 4.1 seconds left in regulation, and the Ducks dramatically ended their skid at three games with a 3-2 victory over the Utah Mammoth on Monday night at Honda Center.

Terry forced overtime when he tapped in a rebound after Chris Kreider deflected Cutter Gauthier’s shot off the post with an extra attacker on the ice for the Ducks.

An unchecked Zellweger then scored his second goal of the season with ease after a ragged overtime rush left him all alone at Karel Vejmelka’s post.

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Ducks summary

NHL standings

2026 WORLD CUP

From Anthony Solorzano: FIFA and the White House announced on Monday a system that will speed up the visa process for ticket holders who hope to attend 2026 World Cup matches in the U.S.

FIFA’s Priority Appointment Scheduling System — or “FIFA PASS” — will help those with World Cup tickets get a prioritized visa interview.

“America welcomes the World,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in a statement. “We have always said that this will be the greatest and most inclusive FIFA World Cup in history — and the FIFA pass service is a very concrete example of that.”

FIFA is encouraging fans who are traveling for soccer’s biggest event to immediately apply for interview appointments for visas on its website.

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THIS DAY IN SPORTS HISTORY

1962 — Bill Wade of the Chicago Bears passes for 466 yards and two touchdowns to edge the Dallas Cowboys 34-33.

1970 — Joe Frazier knocks out Bob Foster in the second round to retain the world heavyweight title in Detroit.

1974 — Charley Johnson of the Denver Broncos passes for 445 yards and two touchdowns in a 42-34 loss against the Kansas City Chiefs.

1978 — Vanderbilt’s Frank Mordica rushes for 321 yards and five touchdowns in a 41-27 victory over Air Force. Mordica scores on runs of 48, 30, 6, 70 and 77 yards.

1990 — Monica Seles captures the first five-set women’s match since 1901, defeating Gabriela Sabatini 6-4, 5-7, 3-6, 6-4, 6-2 in the final of the Virginia Slims Championships.

1995 — Iowa State’s Troy Davis becomes the fifth player in NCAA Division I-A to rush for 2,000 yards, reaching that plateau in a 45-31 loss to Missouri.

1995 — Alex Van Dyke sets an NCAA record for most receiving yards in a season, catching 13 passes for 314 yards as Nevada beats San Jose State 45-28. Van Dyke raises his total to 1,874 yards, surpassing the record of 1,779 set in 1965 by Howard Twilley of Tulsa.

2000 — Indiana’s Antwaan Randle El becomes the second player in NCAA Division I-A history to rush for 200 points and pass for 200 points in a career in a 41-13 loss to Purdue.

2003 — American soccer phenom Freddy Adu, 14, signs a six-year deal with MLS.

2006 — Top-ranked Ohio State beats No. 2 Michigan 42-39 in Columbus in the regular-season finale. The Big Ten rivals had the top two spots in The AP football poll since Oct. 15.

2007 — Jimmie Johnson becomes the first driver to win consecutive Nextel Cup championships since Jeff Gordon in 1997 and ’98, wrapping up the title by finishing a trouble-free seventh in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

2007 — Top-ranked Roger Federer wins his fourth Masters Cup title in five years, overwhelming No. 6 David Ferrer 6-2, 6-3, 6-2.

2012 — Matt Schaub has a career-high five touchdown passes, completes a franchise-record 43 passes and finishes with 527 yards passing, second most in NFL history, to lead the Houston Texans to a 43-37 overtime win over Jacksonville. Norm Van Brocklin holds the record with 554 for the Rams in 1951.

2014 — The NFL suspends Adrian Peterson without pay for at least the rest of the season. The league informs the Minnesota Vikings running back he would not be considered for reinstatement before April 15 for violating the NFL personal conduct policy.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Nov. 18 (UPI) — Two more defendants have been sentenced for their roles in a $16 million California hospice scam that billed Medicare for medical services that never were provided.

The U.S. District Court for Central California on Monday sentenced Juan Carlos Esparza, 33, of Valley Village, to 57 months in prison and ordered him to pay $1.83 million in restitution, according to the Justice Department.

The court on Monday also sentenced Susanna Harutyunyan, 39, of Winnetka, to 15 months in prison and to pay $2.82 million in restitution

Their sentences are in addition to that of Karpis Srapyan, 35, of Winnetka, who was sentenced to 57 months in prison and to pay $3.2 million in restitution in October.

Mihran Panosyan, 47, of Winnetka, in September also was sentenced to 57 months and was ordered to pay $4.7 million in restitution.

The court in May also sentenced Petro Fichidzhyan, 44, of Granada Hills, to 12 years in prison and ordered him to pay $17.13 million in restitution.

Their scheme ran from July 2019 until January 2023 as the five defendants “operated four sham hospices” that billed Medicare for unnecessary medical procedures that never were provided, according to the DOJ.

Esparza owned the House of Angels Hospice and, with the help of Fichidzhyan and Srapyan, “concealed the scheme by using foreign nationals’ names and personally identifiable information to act as straw owners for the hospices and to open bank accounts, submit information to Medicare and to sign property leases,” the DOJ said Tuesday in a news release.

The defendants also obtained cell phones in the names of foreign nationals and controlled them to further the scheme that netted $16 in payments from Medicare.

The DOJ said they conspired with Harutyunyan, Panosyan and others to launder the proceeds by maintaining fraudulent identification documents, bank documents, checkbooks, credit cards, debit cards and other records associated with the sham hospices in the names of the “purported foreign workers.”

After defrauding Medicare, the defendants transferred the money among different accounts and assets, including bank accounts in the names of shell companies, to launder the proceeds and conceal the scheme, according to the DOJ.

Esparza in July pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud and transactional money laundering.

That same month, Harutyunyan also pleaded guilty to transactional money laundering, and Srapyan pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and transactional money laundering.

Panosyan in June pleaded guilty to concealment money laundering, and Fichidzhyan in February pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud, aggravated identity theft and concealment money laundering.

The federal court in May also ordered forfeiture of two homes the defendants bought with the fraudulent proceeds, and the federal government seized $2.92 million from associated bank accounts.

The majority on a federal court in El Paso, Texas, found that the new map used race to redraw congressional districts.

A panel of federal judges has ruled that Texas’s newly redrawn congressional districts cannot be used in next year’s 2026 midterm elections, striking a blow to Republican efforts to tilt races in their favour.

On Tuesday, a two-to-one majority at the US District Court for western Texas blocked the map, on the basis that there was “substantial evidence” to show “that Texas racially gerrymandered” the districts.

Partisan gerrymandering has generally been considered legal under court precedent, but dividing congressional maps along racial lines is considered a violation of the US Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics,” the court’s majority wrote in the opening of its 160-page opinion.

The ruling marked a major setback to efforts to redraw congressional districts ahead of the critically important midterms, which decide the composition of the US Congress.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs in that election. With Republicans holding a narrow 219-seat majority, analysts speculate that control of the chamber could potentially switch parties.

Texas, a Republican stronghold, had kicked off a nationwide race to redesign congressional districts in favour of one party or the other.

In June, news reports emerged that the administration of President Donald Trump had reached out to state officials to redraw the red state’s map, in order to gain five additional House seats for Republicans.

Despite hesitations and a walkout by state Democrats, the Texas legislature passed a new, gerrymandered map in August.

That inspired other right-leaning states, notably North Carolina and Missouri, to similarly redraw their districts. North Carolina and Missouri each passed a map that would gain Republicans one additional House seat.

Texas’s actions also sparked a Democratic backlash. California Governor Gavin Newsom spearheaded a ballot campaign in his heavily blue state to pass a proposition in November that would suspend an independent districting commission and instead pass a partisan map, skewed in favour of Democrats.

Voters passed the ballot initiative overwhelmingly in November, teeing up Democrats to gain five extra seats in California next year.

The state redistricting battle has sparked myriad legal challenges, including the one decided in Texas on Tuesday.

In that case, civil rights groups accused the Texas government of attempting to dilute the power of Black and Hispanic voters.

Judges David Guaderrama, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Jeffrey V Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority decision in favour of the plaintiffs.

A third judge — Jerry Smith, appointed under Ronald Reagan — dissented from their decision.

Writing for the majority, Brown said that Trump official Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, made the “legally incorrect assertion” that four congressional districts in the state were “unconstitutional” because they had non-white majorities.

The letter Dhillon sent containing that assertion helped prompt the Texas redistricting fight, Brown argued.

The judge also pointed to statements Texas Governor Greg Abbott made, seeming to reference the racial composition of the districts. If the new map’s aims were purely partisan and not racial, Brown indicated that it was curious no majority-white districts were targeted.

Tuesday’s ruling restores the 2021 map of Texas congressional districts. Currently, the state is represented by 25 Republicans and 12 Democrats in the US House.

Already, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has pledged to appeal the ruling before the US Supreme Court.

“The radical left is once again trying to undermine the will of the people. The Big Beautiful Map was entirely legal and passed for partisan purposes to better represent the political affiliations of Texas,” Paxton wrote in a statement posted to social media.

He expressed optimism about his odds before the conservative-leaning Supreme Court. “I fully expect the Court to uphold Texas’s sovereign right to engage in partisan redistricting.”

California’s new congressional map likewise faces a legal challenge, with the Trump administration suing alongside state Republicans.

The US House of Representatives voted 427 to 1 to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which if enacted will require the Department of Justice to release documents related to sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein. It still needs to pass the Senate and be signed by President Trump into law.

During a White House visit, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman promised to invest almost a trillion dollars in new partnerships with the US, including in technology and AI.

The dip comes amid doubts about future US interest rate cuts and a risk-averse mood in broader markets.

Bitcoin fell below $90,000 for the first time in seven months in the latest sign that investor appetite for risk is drying up across financial markets.

The cryptocurrency began to rebound as United States markets opened on Tuesday. However, Monday’s steep drop in the risk-sensitive asset had already wiped out all of its gains for the year.

It is now nearly 30 percent below its peak of $126,000 in October.

It was down 0.5 percent at $91,338.47 during European trading hours, after slipping as low as $89,286.75.

About $1.2 trillion has been wiped off the total market value of all cryptocurrencies in the past six weeks, according to market tracker CoinGecko.

Market participants said that a combination of doubts around future interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve and the risk-averse mood in broader markets, which have wobbled after a long rally, was dragging down crypto.

“The cascading selloff is amplified by listed companies and institutions exiting their positions after piling in during the rally, compounding contagion risks across the market,” said Joshua Chu, co-chair of the Hong Kong Web3 Association.

“When support thins and macro uncertainty rises, confidence can erode with remarkable speed.”

Speculators who had put money into crypto in the hopes of supportive US regulation have started to pull back, causing steady outflows from exchange traded funds (ETFs) and similar instruments in recent weeks, said Joseph Edwards at Enigma Securities.

“The sell pressure here isn’t extraordinary, but it’s coming at a relative weak point on the buy side … a lot of retail buyers were stung during the flash crash last month,” he said, referring to an October crash in which there were $19bn in liquidations across leveraged positions.

Crypto stockpilers such as Strategy, miners such Riot Platforms and Mara Holdings, and exchange Coinbase have all slid with the souring mood.

‘Underwater’

There has been a boom in public crypto treasury companies this year, with small companies in unrelated sectors becoming crypto proxies by announcing plans to buy and hold cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets.

But Standard Chartered has estimated that a drop below $90,000 for Bitcoin could leave half of these companies’ Bitcoin holdings “underwater” – a term that typically refers to assets worth less than what was paid for them.

Listed companies collectively hold 4 percent of all the Bitcoin in circulation, and 3.1 percent of the ether, Standard Chartered said.

The cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) has also been under pressure for months, and has lost nearly 40 percent of its value from an August peak above $4,955.

“All in all, sentiment is pretty low in crypto and has been since the leverage wipeout of October,” said Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer at Astronaut Capital.

The announcement underscores AI industry’s insatiable appetite for computing power as companies race to build systems that can rival or surpass human intelligence.

Microsoft and Nvidia plan to invest in Anthropic under a new tie-up that includes a $30bn commitment by the Claude maker to use Microsoft’s cloud services, the latest high-profile deal binding together major players in the AI industry.

Nvidia will commit up to $10bn to Anthropic and Microsoft up to $5bn, the companies said on Tuesday, without sharing more details.

A person familiar with the matter said both the companies have committed to investing in Anthropic’s next funding round.

The announcement underscores the AI industry’s insatiable appetite for computing power as companies race to build systems that can rival or surpass human intelligence. It also ties major OpenAI-backer Microsoft, as well as key AI chip supplier Nvidia, closer to one of the ChatGPT maker’s biggest rivals.

“We’re increasingly going to be customers of each other. We will use Anthropic models, they will use our infrastructure and we’ll go to market together,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a video. He added that OpenAI “remains a critical partner”.

The move comes weeks after OpenAI unveiled a sweeping restructuring that moved it further away from its non-profit roots, giving it greater operational and financial freedom.

The startup has since then announced a $38bn deal to buy cloud services from Amazon.com as it reduces reliance on Microsoft. Its CEO, Sam Altman, has said OpenAI is committed to spending $1.4 trillion to develop 30 gigawatts of computing resources – enough to roughly power 25 million US homes.

Still, three years after ChatGPT’s debut, investors are increasingly uneasy that the AI boom has outrun fundamentals. Some business leaders have noted that circular deals – in which one partner props up another’s revenue – add to the bubble risk.

“The main feature of the partnership is to reduce the AI economy’s reliance on OpenAI,” D A Davidson analyst Gil Luria said of Tuesday’s announcement.

“Microsoft has decided not to rely on one frontier model company. Nvidia was also somewhat dependent on OpenAI’s success and is now helping generating broader demand.

AI industry consolidating

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI staff, Anthropic was recently valued at $183bn and has become a major rival to the ChatGPT maker, driven by the strong adoption of its services by enterprise customers.

The Reuters news agency reported last month that Anthropic was projecting to more than double and potentially nearly triple its annualised revenue run rate to around $26bn next year. It has more than 300,000 business and enterprise customers.

As part of Tuesday’s move, Anthropic will work with Nvidia on chips and models to improve performance and commit up to 1 gigawatt of compute using Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin hardware. Industry executives estimate that one gigawatt of AI computing can cost between $20bn and $25bn.

Microsoft will also give Azure AI Foundry customers access to the latest Claude models, making Claude the only frontier model offered across all three major cloud providers.

“These investments reflect how the AI industry is consolidating around a few key players,” eMarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said.

Despite the looming deal, Microsoft shares are down 3.2 percent in midday trading. Nvidia is also trading 1.9 percent lower than at the market open, and Amazon has fallen 4 percent. Tech stocks remain under pressure after a cloud services outage earlier on Tuesday. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is publicly traded.

Brazil’s proposal

The issue is set to come to a head next week, as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) holds its 20th meeting.

Heightened restrictions on brazilwood are scheduled to be raised for a vote at the conference.

Since 1998, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has classified the tree as endangered.

But a proposal authored by the Brazilian government would increase CITES protections for brazilwood, placing it in the highest tier for trade restrictions.

CITES regulates the international trade of endangered species, and it classifies animals and plants in three appendices.

The third is the least restrictive: If a species is endangered in a given country, then export permits are required from that country.

The Appendix II has tighter standards: Export permits are required from wherever the species is extracted. Most endangered species, including brazilwood, fall into this category.

But Brazil hopes to bump brazilwood up to appendix one, a category for species faced with extinction.

Trade of plants and animals in that appendix is largely banned, except for non-commercial use. But even in that case, both import and export licences are required.

In its proposal, Brazil argues the upgraded restrictions are necessary to fight the plant’s extinction.

Only about 10,000 adult brazilwood trees remain. The population has shrunk by 84 percent over the last three generations, and illegal logging has played a dominant role in that decline, according to the proposal.

“Selective extraction of Brazilwood is still active, both inside and outside protected areas,” the proposal explains.

“In all cases recently detected, the destination of these woods is the bow-making industry for musical instruments.”

It adds that “520 years of intense exploitation” have led to the “complete elimination of the species in several regions”.

One operation launched by Brazilian police in October 2018 resulted in 45 companies and bowmakers being fined.

Nearly 292,000 bows and blanks — the unfinished blocks of wood destined to become bows — were seized.

Another investigation, between 2021 and 2022, led police to conclude that an estimated $46m in profits had come from the illegal brazilwood trade.

“The majority of bows and bow blanks sold by Brazilian companies over the past 25 years probably originated from illegal sources,” Brazil wrote in its proposal.

In that first Test of 2010 we conceded a first-innings deficit of 211 runs. 35,000 Australians were stamping their feet in the vast concrete stadium baying for English blood in a procession toward another Australian win.

Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss and Jonathan Trott famously pushed back against the noise to amass 517-1 in our second innings. The Test was drawn, but it felt like we had won.

You could feel the rhetoric towards us change. The people who had taken great joy in telling us we were going to be annihilated were slowly starting to say how they respected the way we had fought back and that they loved seeing the competition.

Planning is important, but so is living in the moment. Too many times England teams have gone to Australia with pre-conceived ideas about the conditions they are going to face.

Being able to read the conditions and adapt is crucial. At the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 2010, David Saker, the England bowling coach, had absolute conviction bowling first was the way to win the Test.

We bowled Australia out for 98 and won by an innings. Being bold with decision-making will serve England well.

Finally, luck is also a huge part of being successful in Australia.

In 2010 Australia didn’t have a set spinner, there were question marks around the great Ricky Ponting coming towards the end of his career and uncertainty about the seam bowlers.

Australia picked a 17-man squad for the first Test, more players than we had for the entire three-month tour to the country. Catching Australia in a period of transition can be critical.

On this occasion, injuries to Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood have given England an opportunity to face an Australia team with the cracks maybe just starting to show for the first time since 2010.

There are many challenges that come with playing in an away Ashes series, on and off the field.

The stars may just be aligning for England to have a real crack at winning in Australia for the first time in 15 years.

Follow the build-up, analysis, and live text commentary of the game as Spain and Turkiye vie for top spot in Group E.

An MQ-20 Avenger drone flew a mock mission at the direction of a pilot in an F-22 Raptor during a demonstration earlier this year, General Atomics has disclosed. The company says this is part of a larger effort to lay the groundwork for crewed-uncrewed teaming between F-22s and Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones. General Atomics and Anduril are currently developing CCA designs for the U.S. Air Force, and that service expects the Raptor to be the first airborne controller for whichever types it decides to buy in the future.

General Atomics made its announcement about the MQ-20/F-22 teaming demonstration today, around the opening of the biennial Dubai Airshow, at which TWZ is in attendance. The actual event, which the company internally funded, took place back in October in the skies over the U.S. Air Force’s sprawling Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR). Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for the F-22, and L3Harris also took part.

“We recently teamed Avenger with a badass fighter jet for a true airborne, crewed-uncrewed internal demo, where the human pilot commanded the autonomous Avenger from the cockpit for a hypothetical mission,” C. Mark Brinkley, a spokesperson for General Atomics, told TWZ. The “MQ-20 Avenger continues to serve as an autonomy accelerator, routinely flying in a CCA configuration, pushing the envelope.”

“The [crewed-uncrewed teaming demonstration] effort integrated L3Harris’ BANSHEE Advanced Tactical Datalinks with its Pantera software-defined radios (SDRs) via Lockheed Martin’s open radio architectures, all integrated and shared from an F-22 Raptor,” according to a General Atomics press release. “Two L3Harris Software‑Defined Radios (SDRs) supported the demonstration. The first SDR was installed into the General Atomics MQ‑20 Avenger, and the second was integrated in the Lockheed Martin F‑22 Raptor.”

“Through the Pilot Vehicle Interface (PVI) tablet and the F‑22’s GRACE module, the system provided end‑to‑end communications, enabling the F‑22 command and control of the MQ‑20 in flight,” the release adds. “The collaborative demonstration showcased non-proprietary, U.S. government-owned communications capabilities and the ability to fly, transition, and re-fly flight hardware that is core to the Open Mission Systems and skills based unmanned autonomy ecosystem.”

The “GRACE” mentioned here refers to the Government Reference Architecture Compute Environment. This is a previously announced open-architecture systems module for the F-22 that is designed to make it easier to integrate new software packages onto the aircraft, including ones to support the airborne drone controller role.

The explicit mention of a tablet-based in-cockpit control interface is also worth highlighting. General Atomics and Lockheed Martin have both been working for years now on control systems to allow crewed aircraft to direct drones in flight, with tablet-like devices being the typical user interface. However, both companies have themselves raised questions to varying degrees about the long-term viability of that arrangement, especially for pilots in single-seat fighters, who already have substantial workloads during real-world missions.

“We started with [the Air Force’s] Air Combat Command with tablets … There was this idea that they wanted to have this discreet control,” Michael Atwood, vice president of Advanced Programs for General Atomics, said during an appearance on The Merge podcast last year. “I got to fly in one of these jets with a tablet. And it was really hard to fly the airplane, let alone the weapon system of my primary airplane, and spatially and temporally think about this other thing.”

“There’s a lot of opinions amongst the Air Force about the right way to go [about controlling drones from other aircraft],” John Clark, then-head of Lockheed Martin’s famed Skunk Works advanced projects division, had also told TWZ and others at Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) main annual conference in September 2024. “The universal thought, though, is that this [a tablet or other touch-based interface] may be the fastest way to begin experimentation. It may not be the end state.”

These are the kind of questions that demonstrations like the one General Atomics conducted in October over the NTTR could help answer. As TWZ regularly notes, there is still much to be worked out when it comes to how future CCA fleets are structured, as well as how they are deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated, let alone employed tactically.

“General Atomics is in a pretty unique situation here, given that we already have operational uncrewed jets to use for experimentation,” Brinkley, the General Atomics spokesperson, told TWZ. “The MQ-20 Avenger, tricked out with mature mission autonomy software, is a perfect CCA surrogate and allows us to move fast and move first.”

It’s important to stress here that Avenger drones have been heavily utilized as testbeds for advanced autonomy and other developments related to CCA-type uncrewed aircraft for years now. The jet-powered drones have some low observable (stealthy) features, as well as an internal payload bay. Much of this work has been in cooperation with the U.S. Navy, as well as the U.S. Air Force. How much crewed-uncrewed teaming testing involving the F-22 and the MQ-20, or other surrogates, may have already been done in the classified realm is unknown.

“We’re leaning forward, because we already know where this is headed,” Brinkley added. “We don’t want to wait for the CCA fleet to be fielded to begin leaning in on F-22 teaming. We already know the F-22 will play a critical role in crewed-uncrewed teaming operations, and General Atomics is in a unique position to get started now.”

As mentioned, the F-22 is slated to be the U.S. Air Force’s first airborne CCA controller, something the service revealed this past summer in its 2026 Fiscal Year budget request. This was further confirmed in an unclassified Air Force report to Congress in October, which otherwise outlined a highly aspirational 10-year plan for the service’s fighter fleets that puts significant emphasis on CCAs.

“F-22 remains the threshold platform for CCA but integration with F-16, F-35A, F-15E, and F-15EX is an emerging consideration,” according to that report. “Ultimately, CCA will be paired with [the sixth-generation] F-47 to meet highly contested mission demands.”

“America’s adversaries are countering US air power with greater mass and a challenging air defense laydown that limits the United States’ ability to project combat power in traditional ways,” the report adds. “CCAs allow for risk-tolerant aircraft at a lower price point and serve as a force multiplier.”

The fighter force structure report also says that details about exactly how many CCAs the Air Force currently plans to buy and across what timeline are currently classified. Air Force officials have said in the past that between 100 and 150 drones will be ordered under the CCA program’s first phase, or Increment 1, with hundreds more expected through future incremental development cycles. Whether the service plans to down-select to a single type or buy multiple designs for the first tranche remains unclear. As mentioned, General Atomics and Anduril are currently developing drones for Increment 1, which are now designated the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, respectively. General Atomics announced that the YFQ-42A had made its first flight in August. The YFQ-44A took to the skies for the first time last month. The goal is for operational Increment 1 CCAs to begin entering service around the end of the decade.

CCA drone developments are not limited to the U.S. Air Force, either. The U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy have their own CCA efforts ongoing. All three services are directly collaborating on common control architectures and other elements. General Atomics is also one of several companies now developing conceptual CCA designs for the Navy. The company is now actively pursuing foreign sales of drones in this general category, leveraging its Gambit family of highly modular designs, as well. Other companies in the United States and elsewhere globally are eyeing steadily growing opportunities in this market space, too.

“There are companies all over the world making big promises while they figure all of this out for the first time. How to build an airplane, how to incorporate autonomy, how to team that with manned aircraft,” General Atomics spokesperson Brinkley told us. “We’ve been putting our own money into uncrewed jets for 17 years. This [the MQ-20/F-22 demonstration] is just one more milestone in a long history of leaning forward. We’re not out here saying ‘I think I can, I think I can.’ We know we can.”

With the F-22 set to be the Air Force’s first airborne CCA controller, work to continue proving out the Raptor’s crewed-uncrewed teaming capabilities will be especially important.

Update, 1:45 PM EST:

Lockheed Martin has now provided its own remarks regarding the MQ-20/F-22 teaming demonstration.

“Lockheed Martin Skunk Works led and orchestrated this crewed-uncrewed teaming flight test with GA-ASI [General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc.] and L3Harris. This demonstration involved an F-22 Raptor, an MQ-20, and Skunk Works’ flexible and hardware-agnostic pilot vehicle interface to showcase capabilities critical to the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft family of systems,” the company told TWZ. “Lockheed Martin’s phased approach to building, testing, and improving teaming capabilities is at the forefront of innovation, developing the future of air combat today.”

“This effort represents Skunk Works bringing its diverse and unique expertise to the table to lead the way, demonstrating the future of air combat, where single-seat aircraft command and control drones with simple and intuitive interfaces in the cockpit,” O.J. Sanchez, Lockheed Martin Vice President and General Manager of Skunk Works, also said in a statement to TWZ.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse sharply criticised President Donald Trump for previously attempting to block a House vote on the release of files related to Epstein. Trump on Sunday dropped his opposition and the measure now is expected to overwhelmingly pass.

President Donald Trump is set to welcome Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia at the White House, emphasizing the rehabilitation of the crown prince’s global standing after the controversial assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, and the strengthening of U.S.-Saudi relations. This visit marks bin Salman’s first return to the White House in over seven years, and he will experience a grand ceremonial reception orchestrated by Trump. The discussions are anticipated to enhance security cooperation, promote civil nuclear collaboration, and explore substantial business opportunities, including issues around a $600 billion investment commitment made during Trump’s earlier visit to Saudi Arabia.

However, despite these discussions, major advancements in Saudi Arabia’s normalization of relations with Israel are not expected. This meeting highlights the critical partnership between the U.S., the world’s largest economy, and Saudi Arabia, the leading oil producer, a relationship that has become a focal point for Trump during his presidency, particularly as the international outrage related to Khashoggi’s murder has diminished over time. While U.S. intelligence indicates that bin Salman sanctioned Khashoggi’s assassination, he has publicly distanced himself from the act, accepting accountability only in his capacity as leader.

The agenda includes strategic talks at the White House, a lunch in the Cabinet Room, and a formal black-tie dinner. Notably, Trump has indicated plans to approve the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, a significant policy adjustment that would be the first U.S. sale of these aircraft to the nation, potentially shifting the military dynamics in the region. Alongside military discussions, Saudi Arabia seeks new security guarantees, with expectations of an executive order from Trump forming a defense pact similar to that offered to Qatar, but less comprehensive than a NATO-style treaty.

Experts express that Trump is keen to forge a diversified partnership that secures Saudi Arabia’s alignment away from China’s influence, thereby deepening cooperation across security, finance, and technology sectors. Additionally, Trump is likely to push for Saudi involvement in the Abraham Accords to normalize relations with Israel, a notion the Saudis are hesitant to embrace without clear advancements towards Palestinian statehood amid current regional conflicts.

The overarching goal for Trump regards solidifying a broader Middle East peace arrangement through Saudi participation in the Accords, which represent a crucial geopolitical pivot. While pressure on bin Salman regarding normalization with Israel is expected, analysts believe that a U.S.-Saudi security agreement could still be established independently of significant progress on this front. Overall, the visit aims to reaffirm the longstanding U.S.-Saudi alliance while navigating the complex regional context.

With information from Reuters

Vote on release of Justice Department files on late sex offender is expected to pass in the Republican-controlled House.

When US President Donald Trump declared that South Africa “should not even be” in the G20 and then took to Truth Social on November 7 to announce that no American official would attend this year’s summit in Johannesburg on account of a so-called “genocide” of white farmers in the country, I was not surprised. His outburst was not an exception but the latest expression of a long Western tradition of disciplining African sovereignty. Western leaders have long tried to shut down African agency through mischaracterisations, from branding Congolese nationalist Patrice Lumumba a “Soviet puppet” to calling anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela a “terrorist”, and Trump’s assault on South Africa falls squarely into that pattern.

As Africa pushes for a stronger voice in global governance, the Trump administration has intensified efforts to isolate Pretoria. South Africa’s growing diplomatic assertiveness, from BRICS expansion to climate finance negotiations, has challenged conservative assumptions that global leadership belongs exclusively to the West.

On February 7, Trump signed an executive order halting US aid to South Africa. He alleged that the government’s land expropriation policy discriminates against white farmers and amounts to uncompensated confiscation. Nothing could be further from the truth. South African law permits expropriation only through due process and compensation, with limited exceptions set out in the Constitution. Trump’s claims ignore this legal reality, revealing a deliberate preference for distortion over fact.

Soon after, the administration amplified its rollout of a refugee admissions policy that privileged Afrikaners, citing once again discredited claims of government persecution. What is clear is that Washington has deliberately heightened tensions with Pretoria, searching for any pretext to cast South Africa as an adversary. This selective compassion, extended only to white South Africans, exposes a racialised hierarchy of concern that has long shaped conservative engagement with the continent.

Yet, for months, South African officials have firmly rejected these claims, pointing to judicial rulings, official statistics, and constitutional safeguards that show no evidence of systematic persecution, let alone a “genocide” of white farmers. Indeed, as independent experts repeatedly confirmed, there is no credible evidence whatsoever to support the claim that white farmers in South Africa are being systematically targeted as part of a campaign of genocide. Their rebuttals highlight a basic imbalance: Pretoria is operating through verifiable data and institutional process, while Washington relies on exaggeration and ideological grievance.

At the same time, as host of this year’s G20 Summit, Pretoria is using the platform to champion a more cooperative and equitable global order. For South Africa, chairing the G20 is not only symbolic, but strategic, an attempt to expand the influence of countries long excluded from shaping the rules of global governance.

Trump’s G20 boycott embodies a transnational crusade shaped by Christian righteousness. Trump’s rhetoric reduces South Africa to a moral backdrop for American authority rather than recognising it as a sovereign partner with legitimate aspirations. The boycott also mirrors a wider effort to discredit multilateral institutions that dilute American exceptionalism.

This stance is rooted in a long evangelical-imperial tradition, one that fused theology with empire and cast Western dominance as divinely sanctioned. The belief that Africa required Western moral rescue emerged in the nineteenth century, when European missionaries declared it a Christian duty to civilise and redeem the continent. The wording has changed, but the logic endures, recasting African political agency as a civilisational error rather than a legitimate expression of sovereignty. This moralised paternalism did not disappear with decolonisation. It simply adapted, resurfacing whenever African nations assert themselves on the world stage.

American evangelical and conservative Christian networks wield significant influence inside the Republican Party. Their political and media ecosystem, featuring Fox News and the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), routinely frames multilateral institutions, global aid, and international law as subordinate to American sovereignty and Christian civilisation. These networks shape not only rhetoric but policy, turning fringe narratives into foreign policy priorities.

They also amplify unproven claims of Christian persecution abroad, particularly in countries such as Nigeria and Ethiopia, to legitimise American political and military interference. Trump’s fixation with South Africa follows the same script: a fabricated crisis crafted to thrill, galvanise, and reassure a conservative Christian base. South Africa becomes another stage for this performance.

In this distorted narrative, South Africa is not a constitutional democracy acting through strong, independent courts and institutions. Instead, Africa’s most developed country is stripped of its standing and portrayed as a flawed civilisation in need of Western correction. For conservative Christian nationalists, African decision-making is not autonomous agency but a supervised privilege granted only when African decisions align with Western priorities.

By casting South Africa as illegitimate in the G20, invoking false claims of genocide and land seizures, and penalising Pretoria’s ICJ case with aid cuts, Trump asserts that only the West can define global legitimacy and moral authority, a worldview anchored in Christian-nationalist authority. Trump’s crusade is punishment, not principle, and it seeks to deter African autonomy itself.

On many occasions, I have walked the streets of Alexandra, a Johannesburg township shaped by apartheid’s spatial design, where inequality remains brutally vivid. Alexandra squeezes more than one million residents into barely 800 hectares (about 2,000 acres). A significant portion of its informal housing sits on the floodplain of the Jukskei River, where settlements crowd narrow pathways and fragile infrastructure. Here, the consequences of structural inequality are unmistakable, yet they vanish entirely within Trump’s constructed crisis.

These communities sit only a few kilometres from Sandton, a spacious, leafy, and affluent suburb that is home to some of the country’s most expensive properties. The vast and entrenched gulf between these adjacent lands is essentially a living symbol of the profound inequality Trump is willing to overlook and legitimise as a global norm, built on selective moral outrage and racialised indifference.

In Alexandra, the struggle for dignity, equality, and inclusion is not a religious American fantasy, but a practical quest for the rights that apartheid and wider global injustice sought to deny. Their struggle mirrors the wider global fight against structures that concentrate wealth and power in a few hands. They, too, deserve better.

This is the human condition Trump’s pseudo-morality refuses to acknowledge. This is why South Africa’s global leadership matters.

Earlier this year, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa commissioned a landmark G20 Global Inequality Report, chaired by Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. It found that the world’s richest 1 percent have captured more than 40 percent of new wealth since 2000 and that more than 80 percent of humanity now lives in conditions the World Bank classifies as high inequality.

The Johannesburg G20 Summit seeks to reform multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, to confront a global financial system that sidelines developing countries and perpetuates economic injustice. While South Africa turns to recognised multilateral tools such as the ICJ and G20 reform, the US has moved in the opposite direction.

Under Trump, Washington has sanctioned the International Criminal Court, abandoned key UN bodies, and rejected scrutiny from UN human rights experts, reflecting a Christian-nationalist doctrine that treats American power as inherently absolute and answerable to no one.

South Africa offers an alternative vision rooted in global cooperation, shared responsibility, equality, and adherence to international law, a vision that unsettles those invested in unilateral power. The US recasts decolonisation as sin, African equality as disruption, and American dominance as divinely ordained. Trump’s attacks reveal how deeply this worldview still shapes American foreign policy.

Yet the world has moved beyond colonial binaries. African self-determination can no longer be framed as immoral. Human rights are universal, and dignity belongs to us all.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

The attacks in March killed thousands, many from the Alawite religious minority.

Syria has launched the trial of the first of hundreds of suspects for their role in deadly clashes earlier this year that killed hundreds in the country’s coastal provinces.

Syrian state media reported on Tuesday that 14 people were brought before Aleppo’s Palace of Justice following a months-long, government-led investigation.

Hundreds of people from the Alawite religious minority, to which ousted President Bashar al-Assad belonged, were killed in the massacres in March.

The violence erupted after attacks on the new government’s security forces by armed groups aligned with the deposed autocrat. Counterattacks soon spiralled out of control to target civilians in the coastal regions that host the Alawite population.

Seven of the defendants in the court on Tuesday were al-Assad loyalists, while the other seven were members of the new government’s security forces.

Charges against the suspects could include sedition, inciting civil war, attacking security forces, murder, looting and leading armed gangs, according to state media.

The seven accused from government forces are being prosecuted for “premeditated murder”.

The public and the international community have put pressure on the country’s new rulers to commit to judicial reform.

“The court is sovereign and independent,” said Judge Zakaria Bakkar as the trial opened.

The proceedings are important for President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of forces that formerly had links to al-Qaeda, who since coming to power in December has scrambled to step out from diplomatic isolation. He is working to convince the United States to drop more of its crippling sanctions against Syria and to boost trade to rebuild the war-torn country.

However, despite initial reports by the state media that charges could quickly be brought against the defendants, the judge adjourned the session and rescheduled the next hearing for December.

The National Commission of Inquiry said in July that it had verified serious violations leading to the deaths of at least 1,426 people, most of them civilians, and identified 298 suspects.

It claimed 238 members of the security forces and army had been killed in attacks attributed to al-Assad’s supporters. The authorities then sent reinforcements to the region, with the commission estimating their number at 200,000 fighters.

The commission said there was no evidence that Syria’s new military leaders had ordered attacks on the Alawite community.

A United Nations probe, however, found that violence targeting civilians by government-aligned factions had been “widespread and systematic.”

A UN commission said that during the violence, homes in Alawite-majority areas were raided and civilians were asked “whether they were Sunni or Alawite.”

It said: ”Alawite men and boys were then taken away to be executed.”