Trump's Controversial Pick for Malaysia Envoy to Get Anwar's ‘Due Consideration'
Anwar has faced pressure to reject the nominee, Nick Adams, an Australian-American commentator and a self-described 'alpha male' Trump supporter. Critics within the Muslim-majority country have labeled him Islamophobic, citing his social media posts supporting Israel, and pointed to his enthusiasm for racy restaurant chain Hooters as out of sync with its cultural norms.
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Trump Asks Senate Leader to Cancel Summer Recess to Confirm His ‘Incredible Nominees'
President Donald Trump said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) should cancel the Senate's summer break and long weekends in order to confirm Trump's nominees, which include some controversial picks, more quickly in a Truth Social post Saturday. 'Hopefully the very talented John Thune, fresh off our many victories over the past two weeks and, indeed, 6 months, will cancel August recess (and long weekends!), in order to get my incredible nominees confirmed,' Trump wrote. 'We need them badly!!!' The Senate is expected to go on recess from Aug. 4 to Sept. 1. It is one of 14 breaks or long weekends on the 2025 calendar. Their most recent break was June 30 to July 4, and then there is another break toward the end of September. Even when the Senate is in session, lawmakers are generally only in their Capitol Hill offices a few days a week, with ample time to travel back home. Senators are scheduled to vote on six nominations on Monday, including Bradley Hansell for under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, and John Hurley for under secretary for terrorism and financial crimes. The Senate is also slated for a major vote on a funding bill. The Senate could soon vote on Emil Bove, a controversial nominee to become a judge on a federal appeals court. He served as one of Trump's personal lawyers before taking a role at the Justice Department. A whistleblower said in June that Bove told lawyers at the Justice Department they 'would need to consider telling the courts 'fuck you' and ignore any such court order' that would block Trump from sending immigrants to prison in El Salvador. A Senate Judiciary Committee advanced his nomination earlier this week, prompting Democrats to walk out. 'I have respect for you Mr. Chairman, but this is outrageous, this is unacceptable, this is wrong,' said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). 'This is an abuse of power. It is an undermining of the wellbeing and the integrity of this Senate.' More than 75 former judges asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Bove's nomination. 'Mr. Bove's egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power, and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him for this position,' the group wrote. Another controversial nominee is former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who is up for the role of U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C. Trump's first choice for the position was Republican lawyer Ed Martin, but he dropped the bid amid opposition. The Senate Judiciary Committee also voted to advance Pirro's nomination. Brian Christine, Trump's nominee for assistant health and human services secretary, is an Alabama urologist who said the issue of teen pregnancy should be left to 'the purview of the parents.' He also said that 'society works best when men and women are fulfilling their roles, when they are doing what they're supposed to do, raising children and propagating the species.' Dozens of people in Malaysia protested the possibility of 'alpha male' influencer Nick Adams becoming U.S. ambassador to the country over his posts criticizing Islam and supporting the Israeli military. Another nomination drawing controversy is that of law professor Jennifer Mascott, Trump's nominee for a federal appeals court seat in Delaware, who is not licensed to practice law in the state. More from Rolling Stone Tulsi Gabbard Helps Boost Trump's Russia Crusade, Calling for Prosecution of Obama Officials Democrats Are Preparing a Deliberately Incomplete 2024 Election Autopsy These Right-Wingers Won't Shut Up About Epstein, No Matter What Trump Says Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Yahoo
11 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘Important': Albo's China jaunt defended
A senior Labor minister has hit back at the opposition for criticising Anthony Albanese's lengthy state visit to China, saying the relationship with Australia's biggest trading partner had 'broken down' on the Coalition's watch. The Prime Minister spent much of the last week touting Australia's tourism, trade and research offerings in Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu as part of a five-day business and diplomatic blitz. But the Opposition has argued the trip did not produce any tangible outcomes, despite several agreements being signed. Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said on Sunday she found the 'criticism quite extraordinary considering that since we came to government we have removed some $20 billion of trade impediments with China'. China imposed trade restrictions during a trade war with the Morrison-Coalition government. 'We now have in everything from wine to lobster, not to mention the fact that China is our single biggest trading partner,' Ms Rowland told Sky News. 'Our resources sector relies on that relationship.' She noted that Mr Albanese's visit was 'at the invitation … of China'. 'He went with a significant business delegation,' Ms Rowland. 'This is about creating jobs and extra trade opportunities for Australia, and it's important that we maintain this vital relationship.' The business community, represented by the Business Council of Australia (BCA), has praised the trip. The BCA was central to many of Mr Albanese's engagements in China, including high-level talks with Chinese officials and business leaders. With Mr Albanese meeting with Xi Jinping while a face-to-face with Donald Trump elusive, Ms Rowland was asked how she thought the China trip would go down in Washington. 'Our relationship with China is obviously important, as is our relationship with the United States,' she said. 'But here, there are different purposes. 'We will engage in the national interest wherever we can with China. 'We will always act in the national interest, and often we will disagree. 'But this is important from the perspective of our trade and of stabilising that relationship, which, quite frankly, had broken down under successive Liberal governments. 'And it's important that we have a government now that's acting in our national interest, in the interest of jobs and trade and certainty.' Ms Rowland, who sits on the National Security Committee, also downplayed concerns around the Trump administration's demand to hike Australian defence spending and its commitment to AUKUS – a $360bn submarine pact with the US and UK underpinning Canberra's defence strategy for the first half of the 21st century. While Mr Albanese was in China, the man leading the US review of AUKUS hinted Australia would need to guarantee support for the US if a conflict broke out in the Indo-Pacific over Taiwan. It came after the Financial Times reported Mr Colby asked Australia and Japan what they would do to defend the democratically self-governed island from China. Ms Rowland said she was 'not going to engage in hypotheticals' but that the Albanese government did 'not support a unilateral change' on Taiwan. 'What I will note, in going to a related issue about defence spending, that we recognise the US has called for this of a number of its allies,' she said. 'But again, I would point out that we are spending some $10bn over the forwards and nearly $60bn over the next decade on defence spending. 'We will act always in the national interest, and we will ensure that our capabilities are up to scratch.' She refused to comment on National Security deliberations on the US' AUKUS review, but said that 'there is nothing unusual about a new administration having a review of these relationships'. 'But again, we view AUKUS as fundamental to our relationship with the United States, and we are confident in its execution,' Ms Rowland said.
Yahoo
11 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Jensen Huang, AI visionary in a leather jacket
Unknown to the general public just three years ago, Jensen Huang is now one of the most powerful entrepreneurs in the world as head of chip giant Nvidia. The unassuming 62-year-old draws stadium crowds of more than 10,000 people as his company's products push the boundaries of artificial intelligence. Chips designed by Nvidia, known as graphics cards or GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), are essential in developing the generative artificial intelligence powering technology like ChatGPT. Big tech's insatiable appetite for Nvidia's GPUs, which sell for tens of thousands of dollars each, has catapulted the California chipmaker beyond $4 trillion in market valuation, the first company ever to surpass that mark. Nvidia's meteoric rise has boosted Huang's personal fortune to $150 billion -- making him one of the world's richest people -- thanks to the roughly 3.5 percent stake he holds in the company he founded three decades ago with two friends in a Silicon Valley diner. In a clear demonstration of his clout, he recently convinced President Donald Trump to lift restrictions on certain GPU exports to China, despite the fact that China is locked in a battle with the United States for AI supremacy. "That was brilliantly done," said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a governance professor at Yale University. Huang was able to explain to Trump that "having the world using a US tech platform as the core protocol is definitely in the interest of this country" and won't help the Chinese military, Sonnenfeld said. - Early life - Born in Taipei in 1963, Jensen Huang (originally named Jen-Hsun) embodies the American success story. At nine years old, he was sent away with his brother to boarding school in small-town Kentucky. His uncle recommended the school to his Taiwanese parents believing it to be a prestigious institution, when it was actually a school for troubled youth. Too young to be a student, Huang boarded there but attended a nearby public school alongside the children of tobacco farmers. With his poor English, he was bullied and forced to clean toilets -- a two-year ordeal that transformed him. "We worked really hard, we studied really hard, and the kids were really tough," he recounted in an interview with US broadcaster NPR. But "the ending of the story is I loved the time I was there," Huang said. - Leather jacket and tattoo - Brought home by his parents, who had by then settled in the northwestern US state of Oregon, he graduated from university at just 20 and joined AMD, then LSI Logic, to design chips -- his passion. But he wanted to go further and founded Nvidia in 1993 to "solve problems that normal computers can't," using semiconductors powerful enough to handle 3D graphics, as he explained on the "No Priors" podcast. Nvidia created the first GPU in 1999, riding the intersection of video games, data centers, cloud computing, and now, generative AI. Always dressed in a black T-shirt and leather jacket, Huang sports a Nvidia logo tattoo and has a taste for sports cars. But it's his relentless optimism, low-key personality and lack of political alignment that sets him apart from the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Unlike them, Huang was notably absent from Trump's inauguration ceremony. "He backpedals his own aura and has the star be the technology rather than himself," observed Sonnenfeld, who believes Huang may be "the most respected of all today's tech titans." One former high-ranking Nvidia employee described him to AFP as "the most driven person" he'd ever met. - Street food - On visits to his native Taiwan, Huang is treated like a megastar, with fans crowding him for autographs and selfies as journalists follow him to the barber shop and his favorite night market. "He has created the phenomena because of his personal charm," noted Wayne Lin of Witology Market Trend Research Institute. "A person like him must be very busy and his schedule should be full every day meeting big bosses. But he remembers to eat street food when he comes to Taiwan," he said, calling Huang "unusually friendly." Nvidia is a tight ship and takes great care to project a drama-free image of Huang. But the former high-ranking employee painted a more nuanced picture, describing a "very paradoxical" individual who is fiercely protective of his employees but also capable, within Nvidia's executive circle, of "ripping people to shreds" over major mistakes or poor choices. tu-amj/arp/ksb/acb Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
