AFP

Donald Trump will address a gathering of senior Republican Party figures this weekend, including potential rivals for the White House, in his first speech since announcing a plan to run in 2024.

The former US president was a late addition to the guest list for the annual leadership meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, which began Friday.

Trump, dialing in by video on Saturday, will join a slate of top GOP speakers, including some who are thought to be mulling a bid for the party’s presidential nomination, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former vice president Mike Pence and ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo.

It will be his first public address since the hour-long announcement at his Mar-a-Lago home that he wanted his old job back.

That speech came a week after the Republican Party’s disappointing showing in the midterm elections, which senior party figures have blamed on the property tycoon and his grievance-laden denials of his own election defeat.

The high-profile candidates he endorsed did worse than mainstream Republicans in the poll, including his pick for Pennsylvania senator, leaving the upper chamber in the hands of the Democratic Party.

In the run-up to the poll, pundits and party leaders predicted a “red wave” that would sweep President Joe Biden’s party from the leadership of both houses.

Instead, the Republican Party only managed to eke out a slim majority in the House of Representatives.

After a celebratory dinner on Friday, Pompeo took the microphone to urge Republicans forward.

While he did not mention his old boss by name, he made none-too-subtle digs about the need to be doers, rather than complainers.

“As we present the conservative case, as we make the argument… we do so with joy, and a smile,” he said.

“We don’t simply rail against the machine… we don’t simply go on Fox News or send tweets, we actually do the hard work.”

Trump, who has denied he is to blame for the Republican’s poor electoral performance, has already begun his customary bomb-throwing about potential presidential rivals, dubbing DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious” and saying Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s name “sounds Chinese.”

Saturday’s appearance will also come after the US Justice Department named an independent prosecutor to oversee criminal investigations into Trump, including into his stashing of top secret documents and his involvement in the mob attack on the US Capitol in January 2021.

The gathering, which also features Israel’s prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, runs until Sunday.

On the third day after lifting off from Florida bound for the Moon, the Orion spacecraft is “exceeding performance expectations,” NASA officials said on Friday. 

The spacecraft is to take astronauts to the Moon in the coming years — the first to set foot on its surface since the last Apollo mission in 1972. 

This first test flight, without a crew on board, aims to ensure that the vehicle is safe.

“Today we met to review the Orion spacecraft performance… it is exceeding performance expectations,” said Mike Sarafin, head of the Artemis 1 mission. 

The spacecraft’s four solar panels, about 13 feet (four meters) long, deployed correctly and are providing more energy than expected, said Jim Geffre, the Orion manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. 

It is from that control center in Texas that the spacecraft is being piloted. 

Orion is already some 200,000 miles (320,000 kilometers) from Earth and preparing to perform the first of four main thrusts scheduled during the mission using its engines. 

This maneuver, which will take place early Monday morning, will bring the spacecraft as close as 80 miles (130 kilometers) from the lunar surface, in order to take advantage of the Moon’s gravitational force. 

Since this will take place on the far side of the Moon, NASA is expected to lose contact with the spacecraft for approximately 35 minutes.

“We will be passing over some of the Apollo landing sites,” said  flight director Jeff Radigan, although they will be in darkness. Footage of the flyover will be released by NASA.

Four days later, a second thrust from the engines will place Orion in a distant orbit around the Moon. 

The ship will go up to 40,000 miles beyond the Moon, a record for a habitable capsule. 

It will then begin the journey back to Earth, with a landing in the Pacific Ocean scheduled for December 11, after just over 25 days of flight. 

The success of this mission will determine the future of the Artemis 2 mission, which will take astronauts around the Moon without landing, then Artemis 3, which will finally mark the return of humans to the lunar surface. 

Those missions are scheduled to take place in 2024 and 2025, respectively. 

Sarafin also said Friday that 10 scientific micro-satellites had been deployed when the rocket took off, but that half of them were experiencing technical or communication problems. 

Those experiments, carried out separately by independent teams, will have no impact on the main mission, however.

The US Justice Department on Friday named a former war crimes investigator as a special counsel to oversee criminal probes into Donald Trump, three days after the former president announced a new White House run in 2024.

Trump — who claims to be the target of a “witch hunt” — slammed the dramatic move as “unfair” and “the worst politicization of justice in our country.”

The White House strongly denied any political interference, but the unprecedented special counsel investigation of a former president — and current presidential candidate — sets the stage for a drawn-out legal battle.

At a press conference, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of Jack Smith, until recently a chief prosecutor in The Hague charged with probing Kosovo war crimes, to take over the two ongoing federal probes into Trump.

One is focused on the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

The other is an investigation into a cache of classified government documents seized in an FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida in August.

Garland said naming a special counsel was in the public interest because both the Republican Trump and his Democratic successor Joe Biden have stated their intention to run in 2024, although only Trump has officially declared for now.

“Appointing a special counsel at this time is the right thing to do,” Garland said. “The extraordinary circumstances presented here demand it.”

At the White House, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden had no advance notice of Garland’s plans to name a special counsel.

– ‘So unfair’ –

Trump claimed in an interview with Fox News Digital that he was being targeted by the Biden administration to prevent him winning back the presidency.

“This is a disgrace and only happening because I am leading in every poll in both parties,” he said. “It is not acceptable. It is so unfair. It is so political.”

“This will not be a fair investigation,” Trump told guests later at his Mar-a-Lago home.

“The horrendous abuse of power is the latest in a long series of witch hunts,” he said, to applause.

In a statement, Smith, who previously headed the Justice Department’s Public Integrity section, said the “pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch.”

“I will exercise independent judgement and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate,” he said.

Trump’s entry into the White House race on Tuesday makes indicting him a much more delicate matter.

The appointment of an independent prosecutor to oversee the twin investigations could serve to help insulate Garland, a Biden appointee, from charges that the probe is politically motivated.

The special counsel will determine whether the former president should face any charges but the attorney general will have the ultimate say on whether charges should be filed.

Even if charged, the 76-year-old Trump can still run for president — nothing in US law bars a person charged with or convicted of a crime from doing so.

While in office, Trump was investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller over obstruction of justice and possible 2016 election collusion with Russia, but no charges were brought against him.

– Other legal woes –

In addition to the federal investigations, Trump faces other legal woes.

New York state’s attorney general Letitia James has filed a civil suit against Trump and three of his children, accusing them of business fraud.

And Trump is being investigated for pressuring officials in the southern swing state of Georgia to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory — including a now-infamous taped phone call in which he asked the secretary of state to “find” enough votes to reverse the result.

Trump’s unusually early announcement that he was running for president in 2024 was seen by some analysts in Washington as an attempt to stave off potential criminal charges.

Trump was impeached by the Democratic-majority House of Representatives in 2019 for seeking political dirt on Biden from Ukraine, and again after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, but was acquitted by the Senate both times.

Divers swim near brightly colored fish and a stingray as they ride warm currents to the seafloor off Florida’s coast, where an underwater burial site for ocean lovers doubles as a marine sanctuary brimming with aquatic life.

With its graceful concrete arches, columns, plaques and other monuments and artwork covered in sea anemones, coral and algae, the Neptune Memorial Reef has transformed a non-descript patch into an elegant columbarium that is an example of a growing worldwide trend.

Construction of the unlikely burial site began in 2007 in shallow waters some five kilometers (three miles) east of Miami. The initial plan was to install an artificial reef that would serve as a refuge for aquatic fauna of the area.

However the ashes of famed international chef Julia Child had been interred in the reef three years earlier, and it began evolving into an underwater mausoleum of sorts.

In search of funding for its project, the company creators landed on an idea: market the prospect of an environmentally friendly, undersea final resting place.

With communities around the world seeking greener burial options than traditional cemeteries, underwater memorial gardens have surged in popularity.

Similar projects are operating or in the planning stages in several locations worldwide, including off the coasts of the US states of Florida, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

The process at Neptune involves mixing the ashes of the dead in with the concrete of the columns, statues or other monument structures.

Fifteen years on, the remains of some 1,500 people are interred in the underwater memorial, with another 1,500 having reserved spots for when they die.

Prices range from $7,995 to $29,995, depending on the location and support chosen.

At about 12 meters (40 feet) deep, divers swim between columns, under arches and past statues of lions, starfish, turtles and other marine animals.

On this sunny afternoon some are fixing copper tombstones where several sets of ashes have been placed. One diver checks the coordinates and upon reaching an indicated location, glues the plaque to a concrete beam using epoxy resin.

“Our tagline is creating life after life,” Neptune Memorial Reef operations manager Jim Hustler tells AFP after a dive, stressing the environmental aspect of the project.

“We wanted to build a reef that was sustainable, would help replace the reefs that are dying all over the world.”

His goal at least in part is being met. More than 190 coral colonies have been installed at Neptune over the space of an acre (0.4 hectares), which is home to 56 species of fish, as well as crabs and other crustaceans, sea urchins and sponges.

“Every texture, shape, profile and depth is all designed to encourage animals to come,” explains Hustler, who notes that his project has only just begun.

His company has permission to build on some 16 acres which, once completed, will contain a sprawling series of reefs serving as the final resting place for the ashes of more than 250,000 people.