- Trump announces South Korean investment in Alaska natural gas pipeline
- Mexico’s National Guard adopts Chihuahua named Comando for operations
- Right Livelihood Award honours women-led groups combating systemic injustices
- US regulator investigates artificial intelligence companies over rogue agents
- US trade court examines Trump’s tariffs on forced labour imports
- Senate Democrats reject stock trading bill due to voter ID provision
- Eighty-four dogs rescued from poor conditions in Tickhill find new homes
- US military completes withdrawal of all troops from Iraq after 12 years
Hunt for Tube hero who gave blind man his shoes after he lost one through the gap The hunt is on find an ‘absolute hero’
Get you up to speed: Trump unveils South Korean investment in pipeline in Alaska, site of a tight Senate race
President Trump announced plans for South Korea to invest in a natural gas pipeline connecting Alaska’s North Slope to an export terminal in southern Alaska. The project, backed by Senator Dan Sullivan, is set to take three years to build, with liquefied natural gas exports projected to begin two years thereafter, contingent on financing.
The construction of the 807-mile natural gas pipeline is expected to take three years, with exports of liquefied natural gas commencing two years thereafter, contingent on secure financing. South Korea’s government has yet to indicate the timeline for project approval or the total investment amount.
President Trump announced plans for South Korea to invest in Alaskan natural gas exports, emphasising the project’s importance for Republican Senator Dan Sullivan amid his competitive re-election bid. Critics have noted that the timeline for the project relies on securing financing, with potential exports beginning two years after the pipeline’s construction, which is expected to take three years.
What remains unclear — It is not specified how quickly South Korea’s government will approve the natural gas project or the exact amount it plans to invest.
Trump announces South Korean investment in Alaska natural gas pipeline
President Trump announced plans Wednesday for South Korea to invest in exporting natural gas from Alaska, a project long backed by Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, who is in a competitive reelection contest there.
It marks the second time in three days that the president has sought to highlight planned foreign investments in states where Republican Senate candidates are in tight election campaigns. Mr. Trump made a similar Oval Office announcement on Monday for a massive steel plant in Iowa, another state where Republicans are defending a Senate seat.
The project consists of an 807-mile natural gas pipeline connecting Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope to a liquefied natural gas export terminal in southern Alaska. It will eventually reduce energy costs for the state’s residents by providing a reliable and secure supply, the White House said. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said liquefied natural gas could also be exported to Asia.
Officials said during the Oval Office event that building the pipeline will take three years and that exports of liquefied natural gas would begin two years after that — but that was dependent on financing coming through fully.
It was not clear how quickly South Korea’s government would approve the project and how much it planned to spend.
The pipeline is part of a series of projects that Mr. Trump said would get nearly $200 billion in South Korean funds, including a power plant in Texas and eight “large-scale” nuclear power plants. Further details on those investments are not clear.
The investment comes from pledges made as part of a 2025 trade deal with South Korea, which included promises of $350 billion in investments in the United States in exchange for lower U.S. tariffs on South Korean cars, auto parts and other products.
Mr. Trump credited his controversial tariff strategy for making the announcement possible, saying, “Our trade agreement with South Korea, they have to invest hundreds of billions of dollars.”
The president credited Sullivan during the Oval Office event.
“He’s got my ear, and he’s had my ear for a long time on Alaska,” Mr. Trump said. The president added that “all these energy projects are all mine, and I got ’em done working with Dan Sullivan.”
Sullivan said, “the sky is the limit when we get this project done.”
“Mr. President, this one is huge for Alaska,” Sullivan said, adding that he’d been working on it “relentlessly.”
The push to deliver big projects in areas where GOP candidates could use a boost comes as Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have sunk to nearly historic lows ahead of midterm elections. Republicans are also contending with voters’ historical tendency to reject whichever party controls the White House during the midterms.
Even Mr. Trump himself has begun acknowledging that Republicans could face an uphill climb in their push to retain control of both chambers of Congress after November, but suggests it is because his administration hasn’t done enough to promote its accomplishments.
“I’ve done a very bad job of explaining,” the president said during an event in the White House’s East Room, which came before the subsequent announcement on the Alaska investment.
He’s promised to help rectify that by spending much of the next 30 days on the road, campaigning ahead of the midterms — though he is beginning that swing with trips to Texas, Alabama, Ohio and Nebraska, which are all normally solidly red states.
Sullivan, who has been a persistent advocate for the Alaska natural gas project and has encouraged South Korean investment, is a two-term senator facing a competitive challenge from Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola.
Wednesday’s Alaska event came two days after Mr. Trump announced plans for a $15 billion steel plant to be built in Iowa by a Minnesota company owned by an Indian industrial conglomerate.
In Iowa, Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson is in a close U.S. Senate contest with Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek for the seat being vacated by retiring two-term Republican Sen. Joni Ernst. Hinson spoke in the Oval Office during the announcement.
Alaska and Iowa — where Mr. Trump won comfortably each time he has run for president — are among the states where Democrats are targeting Republican-held Senate seats in the 2026 midterm elections, less than five weeks away.
Democrats need to gain a net of four seats in the 100-member Senate to overtake Republicans in the majority.
In:
‘Cheer up, you caught the bad guy,’ says killer Virginia McCullough as she is arrested for murdering her parents
A woman who murdered her parents “in cold blood” before hiding them in makeshift tombs for four years told officers to “cheer up, you caught the bad guy” as she was arrested in her home.
Virginia McCullough, 36, poisoned her father John McCullough, 70, with prescription medication and fatally stabbed her mother Lois McCullough, 71, shortly afterwards in 2019.
She ran up large debts on credit cards in her parents’ names and after their deaths, she continued to spend their pensions until she was finally caught in 2023.
In body-worn video footage released by police, a handcuffed – and eerily calm – McCullough told officers: “I did know that this would kind of come eventually.
“It’s proper that I serve my punishment.”
She said she had slipped something into her father’s drink then put his body under a bed on the ground floor, and put her mother’s body in an upstairs wardrobe.
McCullough, having been arrested on suspicion of double murder, told an officer: “Cheer up, at least you’ve caught the bad guy.”
She added: “I know I don’t seem 100% evil.”
At the police station, she told officers where a kitchen knife was, which she described as a “murder weapon”, and a hammer which she said “will still have blood on it”.
McCullough, of Pump Hill, Chelmsford, Essex, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday with a minimum term of 36 years at Chelmsford Crown Court, after she admitted to their murders between 17 and 20 June 2019 at an earlier hearing at the same court.
Chelmsford Crown Court heard how she hid their bodies in makeshift tombs at the family home in Great Baddow in Essex, then told persistent lies to cover her tracks.
The court heard she cancelled family arrangements and frequently told doctors and relatives her parents were unwell, on holiday or away on lengthy trips.
But concerns over Mr and Mrs McCullough’s welfare were raised in September 2023 by a GP at their registered practice, and Essex County Council’s safeguarding team referred these to police.
The GP had not seen the couple for some time and said Mr McCullough had failed to collect medication and attend scheduled appointments. It was found McCullough had frequently cancelled appointments, using a range of excuses to explain her father’s absence.
Police said a missing persons investigation was initially launched and McCullough lied to officers, claiming her parents were travelling and would be returning in October.
It became a murder investigation, and when officers forced entry to the house in Pump Hill on September 15 2023, McCullough confessed that her parents’ bodies were in the house and that she had killed them.
Nicola Rice, a specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “McCullough callously and viciously killed both of her parents before concealing their bodies in makeshift tombs within their home address.
“She spent the next four years manipulating and lying to family members, medical staff, financial institutions, and the police, spending her parents’ money and accruing large debts in their name.”
She added: “This was a truly disturbing case, which has left behind it a trail of devastation, and I can only hope that the sentence passed today will help those who loved and cared for Lois and John begin to heal.”
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Defense alliance NATO chief Mark Rutte has met US President-elect Donald Trump to discuss global security issues, according to a NATO spokesperson.
The meeting took place in Palm Beach, Florida.
During his first term as US president, 2017-2020, Trump pushed for European NATO countries to spend more on defense and described the alliance’s cost-sharing as unfair to the US.
Rutte took over as NATO chief from Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg in November.
Before taking office in January, Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth for the post of defense secretary, which has raised eyebrows among many allies.
Hegseth, 44, has served as an infantry captain in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has no senior military or government officer experience.
Multiple missiles were fired in an airstrike towards a densely populated part of Lebanon’s capital early on Saturday.
The huge airstrike targeted Beirut’s Basta neighbourhood, and no prior warnings were given by the Israeli military. The largely residential area was struck last month.
At least one violent explosion was heard across the city, Reuters witnesses said, and plumes of smoke could be seen. Scenes of massive destruction at the site were shared online, including a massive crater in the ground.
“Beirut, the capital, woke up to a horrific massacre, as the Israeli enemy’s air force completely destroyed an eight-story residential building with five missiles on Al-Mamoun Street in Basta,” the state-run National News Agency reported.
The health ministry put the initial death toll at four, with 23 wounded. The number is expected to climb in the coming hours as search and rescue efforts continue.
It came after a long day of Israeli airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, which have been non-stop since last week.
The cross-border fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group escalated into a full-blown war in mid-September.
Israel has bombed southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the eastern Beqaa region, and has sent ground troops across the border. Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets deeper into Israel.
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