AFP

Donald Trump will announce next week that he is taking another shot at the presidency with a White House run in 2024, his longtime advisor Jason Miller said Friday.

The divisive former president, who will be 78 when the next election is held, has been hinting at another presidential run while campaigning for Republican candidates ahead of this week’s midterm elections, and has said he will make a “very big announcement” on Tuesday.

“President Trump is going to announce on Tuesday that he is running for president,” Miller told former Trump aide Steve Bannon on his popular “War Room” podcast.

“It’s gonna be a very professional, very buttoned-up announcement,” he added.

Miller said Trump told him, “there doesn’t need to be any question, of course I am running.”

Trump’s candidacy will mark his third shot at the presidency, including his loss to Joe Biden in 2020. Afterwards he promoted baseless claims of fraud, including those that led to an unprecedented riot at the US Capitol in Washington.

Trump’s big announcement in Florida comes after a disappointing run for several candidates he backed in the midterms. 

Some of his hand-picked favorites even lost Republican-held seats to Democrats.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats flipped a highly prized US Senate seat with constant attacks on Trump-endorsed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who had never held public office before and lived mostly in New Jersey.

Trump had hoped to ride a Republican “red wave” that would prime him for another presidential run, however the party achieved a much smaller victory than had been predicted.

With 211 seats so far, Republicans appear poised to secure a slim majority in the 435-seat House of Representatives. However, control of the Senate may come down to an early December runoff in the southeastern state of Georgia.

The former president’s major media ally — the powerful media empire of conservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch — even turned on him in the wake of the polls.

Pointing to the party’s disappointing midterms showing, The Wall Street Journal, the flagship of Murdoch’s News Corp, declared in an editorial on Thursday that “Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.” 

The cover of the tabloid New York Post depicted Trump on a precarious wall as “Trumpty Dumpty” who “had a great fall.”

Nevertheless, more than 100 Republican candidates who challenged the 2020 presidential election results won their respective races.

Trump’s early entry into the race would appear designed in part to fend off possible criminal charges over taking top secret documents from the White House, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on January 6 last year.

It may also be intended to undercut his chief potential rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who emerged as one of the biggest winners in Tuesday’s midterms.

Twitter moved on Friday to curb fake accounts that have proliferated since Elon Musk’s takeover, suspending sign-ups for a new paid checkmark system and reinstating a gray “official” badge on some accounts.

The U-turn was the latest of a string of chaotic developments at the social network, which has lurched back and forth on the question of account verification since Musk’s $44 billion buyout late last month.

The @TwitterSupport account tweeted early Friday that a gray checkmark indicating an “official” account was coming back, only days after it was introduced — then almost immediately scrapped.

“To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts,” the profile announced.

The rollout of the label appeared inconsistent: it appeared briefly then disappeared from the network’s own account, @Twitter.

By Friday morning, the firm had also disabled sign-ups for Twitter Blue, the feature touted by free-speech proponent Musk as bringing “power to the people” by offering ordinary users a verified blue tick — until then reserved for prominent accounts — for $8 per month.

An internal memo for Twitter staff, obtained by US media including The Washington Post, confirmed the feature had been temporarily disabled to “help address impersonation issues.”

In introducing the paid blue-check verification system, Musk had warned that Twitter would suspend fake accounts not clearly marked as parody. 

But accounts impersonating public figures and businesses had continued to spread — with NBA star LeBron James and former British prime minister Tony Blair among those targeted. 

US drugmaker Eli Lilly was forced to issue an apology Thursday after a fake account — stamped with a purchased blue tick — tweeted that insulin was to be made available for free.

The fake account was removed, and the company put out a statement of apology.

The turmoil at Twitter has raised concerns about the potential for serious damage, should nefarious actors successfully pose as official representatives of powerful companies or government entities. 

And the disarray — which saw two more top security executives quit on Thursday — drew a rare warning from the Federal Trade Commission which said it was tracking the developments with “deep concern.”

The same day, Musk informed Twitter employees the site was burning through cash dangerously fast, raising the specter of bankruptcy if the situation was not turned around.

The warning came a week after he fired half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees.

A 29-year-old Texas woman has been sentenced to death for killing a pregnant acquaintance in October 2020 to extract and steal the fetus inside her womb.

Taylor Parker’s sentencing was handed down Wednesday in Texas, following several weeks of trial that began in September, according to court documents.

Over months Parker had told her boyfriend and her relatives that she was pregnant. She posted about it on social media and bought a fake silicone belly.

It was all a lie. The truth was that she had had a hysterectomy and could not have a child.

On October 9, 2020, Parker went to the home of Reagan Simmons-Hancock, a 21-year-old acquaintance in the final months of her pregnancy, and stabbed her more than 100 times.

After cutting open her stomach to take her fetus, she departed, leaving the victim’s 3-year-old daughter asleep in another room.

Parker was arrested shortly afterward at the wheel of her car about nine miles (15 kilometers) from the murder. The newborn was on her lap. She told authorities that she had just given birth. The baby was hospitalized but did not survive.

Parker was tried in the small town of New Boston, east of Dallas.

A few weeks before the murder, Parker had started searching for pregnant women in stores and maternity wards, according to police testimony at the trial. 

Shortly before the events, she had watched numerous videos of deliveries and Cesarean sections.

NASA said Friday it plans to attempt its long-delayed uncrewed mission to the Moon as scheduled next Wednesday, after inspections revealed only minor damage from Hurricane Nicole’s passage through Florida.

Jim Free, a senior official at the US space agency, told journalists there was “nothing preventing” a launch on that date, and said that NASA teams had managed to access the launch pad on Thursday.

The launch of the heavy lift rocket, the most powerful ever built by contractors for NASA, is now due to take place at 01:04am local time (0604 GMT) on Wednesday, with a possible launch window of two hours.

The uncrewed mission, dubbed Artemis 1, will bring the United States a step closer to returning astronauts to the Moon five decades after humans last walked on the lunar surface.

The rocket will propel the empty Orion crew capsule to the Moon, without landing on its surface. If the launch takes place as planned, the mission will last 25-and-a-half days before the capsule returns on December 11 with splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

However, the US space agency has “some work to do” before the launch, said Free, such as powering up the vehicle and carrying out some technical tests.

One element on the base of the rocket, which may have been damaged, may need to be replaced.

The highly anticipated launch has already been delayed three times in as many months. 

Free, who is NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development, said two back-up launch dates have been set for November 19 and November 25, if necessary.

Winds from Hurricane Nicole, a category 1 storm, battered the rocket as it stood on its launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center. However, the wind speeds did not surpass the limits the vehicle can withstand, said Free.

However, he conceded that if NASA had known the hurricane was approaching, the SLS rocket would have been left in the vehicle assembly building.

The rocket was returned to the building in September to protect it from Hurricane Ian, but was taken back out to the launch pad just days before Nicole arrived.

Artemis 1 will mark the launch of the flagship Artemis program, which is aimed at taking the first woman and the first person of color to the Moon, by 2025, at the earliest.

NASA wants to establish a lasting human presence on the Moon, including the construction of a space station in orbit around the Moon. This is seen as a step that could lead to the first trip to Mars.

President Joe Biden vowed at UN climate talks on Friday that the United States was on track to slash its carbon emissions, urging all nations to ramp up their own efforts to avert catastrophic global warming.

His speech came at the halfway point of a two-week COP27 conference in Egypt where rich polluters like the US are under pressure to finally provide the funding developing countries have been promised in the battle against climate change.

Biden touted the passage of a massive, $369 billion spending package to green the US economy as an achievement that would “shift the paradigm” for his country and the entire world.

“The climate crisis is about human security, economic security, environmental security, national security and the very life of the planet,” Biden said.

In an hours-long visit to Egypt before heading to Asia for ASEAN and G20 summits, Biden said the United States “will meet” its goal of cutting emissions 50-52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. 

He also announced plans to step up efforts to cut methane emissions — a major contributor to global warming — by plugging fossil fuel leaks and requiring companies to act on leaks reported by credible third parties.

“To permanently bend the emissions curve, every nation needs to step up. At this gathering, we must renew and raise our climate ambitions,” he said.

“The United States has acted, everyone has to act. It’s a duty and responsibility of global leadership,” said Biden, whose administration also announced plans to require federal contractors to reduce their emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

– Howl of protest –

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has sent energy prices soaring, has raised concerns that tackling climate change has dropped down the priority list of many countries.

“Russia’s war only enhances the urgency of the need to transition the world off its dependence on fossil fuels,” Biden said.

His 22-minute speech was briefly interrupted by a small group of demonstrators, who howled and attempted to unfurl a banner protesting fossil fuels before they were removed by UN security.

New research shows just how dauntingly hard it will be to meet the ambitious goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — requiring emissions to be slashed nearly in half by 2030.

The new study — published on Friday in the journal Earth System Science Data — found that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are on track to rise one percent in 2022 to reach an all-time high.

Before his speech, Biden met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the sidelines of COP27, where he raised human rights issues with his host amid concerns over the health of jailed dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah, who is on a months-long hunger strike.

Abdel Fattah’s family later announced that they had requested a presidential pardon for him following calls for his release from a raft of Western governments, including the United States.

– Mixed reviews –

Biden’s visit to COP27 came three days after US midterm elections that have raised questions about what the result could mean for US climate policy.

His climate speech earned mix reviews from COP27 participants.

“President Biden is advancing the boldest climate agenda of any American president by far,” said Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute.

But he said the US was “grossly underperforming” on its commitments in a $100-billion-a-year global climate funding programme to help developing nations transition to renewable energy and build resilience.

Biden has pledged to double the US contribution to $11.4 billion, but Democrats may be running out of time to honour that as control of the House of Representatives appears poised to shift to the Republicans from January in the wake of this week’s vote.

Others pointed out that the United States has previously blocked efforts to establish a “loss and damage” mechanism that would see rich polluters compensate poorer countries for the destruction from climate-induced natural disasters.

Biden did not address the “loss and damage” mechanism idea in his speech, though the United States has allowed it to be on the official COP27 agenda.

“Joe Biden comes to COP27 and makes new promises but his old promises have not even been fulfilled,” said Mohamed Dowd, founder of the Power Shift Africa think tank.

“He is like a salesman selling goods with endless small print.”

bur-lth/klm/kir