Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa is to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday for unprecedented talks just days after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist.Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad late last year, will be the first Syrian leader to visit the White House since the country’s independence in 1946.Formerly affiliated with Al-Qaeda, Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was itself only delisted as a terrorist group by Washington in July.Since taking power, Syria’s new leaders have sought to break from their violent past and present a more moderate image to ordinary Syrians and foreign powers.Sharaa’s White House visit is “a hugely symbolic moment for the country’s new leader, who thus marks another step in his astonishing transformation from militant leader to global statesman,” said Michael Hanna, US program director at the International Crisis Group.The interim president met Trump for the first time in Saudi Arabia during the US leader’s regional tour in May.After his arrival in Washington, Sharaa over the weekend met with IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva over possible aid for the war-wrecked country, and with representatives from Syrian organizations.Washington’s envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, said earlier this month that Sharaa may on Monday sign an agreement to join the international US-led alliance against the Islamic State (IS) group.The United States plans to establish a military base near Damascus “to coordinate humanitarian aid and observe developments between Syria and Israel,” a diplomatic source in Syria told AFP.The State Department’s decision Friday to remove Sharaa from the blacklist was widely expected.State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said Sharaa’s government had been meeting US demands on working to find missing Americans and on eliminating any remaining chemical weapons.”These actions are being taken in recognition of the progress demonstrated by the Syrian leadership after the departure of Bashar al-Assad and more than 50 years of repression under the Assad regime,” Pigott said.On Saturday, the Syrian interior ministry announced that it had carried out 61 raids and made 71 arrests in a “proactive campaign to neutralize the threat” of IS, according to the official SANA news agency.It said the raids targeted locations where IS sleeper cells remain, including Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa and Damascus.Sharaa’s Washington trip comes after he visited the United Nations in September — his first time on US soil — where the ex-jihadist became the first Syrian president in decades to address the UN General Assembly in New York.Last week Washington led a vote by the Security Council to remove UN sanctions against him.Sharaa is expected to seek US funds for Syria, which faces significant challenges in rebuilding after 13 years of civil war.In October, the World Bank put a “conservative best estimate” of the cost of rebuilding Syria at $216 billion. mam-at-burs/bgs/iv

In the race for AI dominance, American tech giants have the money and the chips, but their ambitions have hit a new obstacle: electric power.”The biggest issue we are now having is not a compute glut, but it’s the power and…the ability to get the builds done fast enough close to power,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged on a recent podcast with OpenAI chief Sam Altman.”So if you can’t do that, you may actually have a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can’t plug in,” Nadella added. Echoing the 1990s dotcom frenzy to build internet infrastructure, today’s tech giants are spending unprecedented sums to construct the silicon backbone of the revolution in artificial intelligence.Google, Microsoft, AWS (Amazon), and Meta (Facebook) are drawing on their massive cash reserves to spend roughly $400 billion in 2025 and even more in 2026 — backed for now by enthusiastic investors.All this cash has helped alleviate one initial bottleneck: acquiring the millions of chips needed for the computing power race, and the tech giants are accelerating their in-house processor production as they seek to chase global leader Nvidia.These will go into the racks that fill the massive data centers — which also consume enormous amounts of water for cooling.Building the massive information warehouses takes an average of two years in the United States; bringing new high-voltage power lines into service takes five to 10 years.- Energy wall -The “hyperscalers,” as major tech companies are called in Silicon Valley, saw the energy wall coming.A year ago, Virginia’s main utility provider, Dominion Energy, already had a data-center order book of 40 gigawatts — equivalent to the output of 40 nuclear reactors.The capacity it must deploy in Virginia, the world’s largest cloud computing hub, has since risen to 47 gigawatts, the company announced recently.Already blamed for inflating household electricity bills, data centers in the United Statescould account for 7 percent to 12 percent of national consumption by 2030, up from 4 percent today, according to various studies.But some experts say the projections could be overblown.”Both the utilities and the tech companies have an incentive to embrace the rapid growth forecast for electricity use,” Jonathan Koomey, a renowned expert from UC Berkeley, warned in September.As with the late 1990s internet bubble, “many data centers that are talked about and proposed and in some cases even announced will never get built.”- Emergency coal -If the projected growth does materialize, it could create a 45-gigawatt shortage by 2028 — equivalent to the consumption of 33 million American households, according to Morgan Stanley.Several US utilities have already delayed the closure of coal plants, despite coal being the most climate-polluting energy source.And natural gas, which powers 40 percent of data centers worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency, is experiencing renewed favor because it can be deployed quickly.In the US state of Georgia, where data centers are multiplying, one utility has requested authorization to install 10 gigawatts of gas-powered generators.Some providers, as well as Elon Musk’s startup xAI, have rushed to purchase used turbines from abroad to build capability quickly. Even recycling aircraft turbines, an old niche solution, is gaining traction.”The real existential threat right now is not a degree of climate change. It’s the fact that we could lose the AI arms race if we don’t have enough power,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum argued in October.- Nuclear, solar, and space? -Tech giants are quietly downplaying their climate commitments. Google, for example, promised net-zero carbon emissions by 2030 but removed that pledge from its website in June.Instead, companies are promoting long-term projects.Amazon is championing a nuclear revival through Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), an as-yet experimental technology that would be easier to build than conventional reactors.Google plans to restart a reactor in Iowa in 2029. And the Trump administration announced in late October an $80 billion investment to begin construction on ten conventional reactors by 2030.Hyperscalers are also investing heavily in solar power and battery storage, particularly in California and Texas.The Texas grid operator plans to add approximately 100 gigawatts of capacity by 2030 from these technologies alone.Finally, both Elon Musk, through his Starlink program, and Google have proposed putting chips in orbit in space, powered by solar energy. Google plans to conduct tests in 2027.

US senators reached a bipartisan deal Sunday that would resume federal funding and end a shutdown which has stretched to a record 40 days and forced many government operations to grind to a halt.The deal between Democratic and Republican senators — just the first step to halting the shutdown — came as authorities warned US air travel could soon “slow to a trickle” as thousands more flights were cancelled or delayed over the weekend.Outlets including CNN and Fox News reported lawmakers had reached a stopgap agreement to fund the government through January after wrangling over health care subsidies, food benefits and President Donald Trump’s firings of federal employees.As news of the breakthrough emerged, Trump told reporters when he arrived at the White House after a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida: “It looks like we’re getting very close to the shutdown ending.”The Republican-led Senate swiftly held a procedural vote Sunday aimed at moving the legislative measure forward, and the vote appeared to have support from enough Democrats to advance.Once it clears the Senate, it would need to pass the House of Representatives, also in Republican control, and then head to Trump’s desk for his signature — a process that could take days.Earlier Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that if the shutdown continued, the number of flights being snarled or cut would multiply while Americans gear up to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday later this month.By Sunday evening, the number of cancellations of flights within the United States and to and from the US had surpassed 2,700, with nearly 10,000 delays, according to data from tracking platform FlightAware.Airports that were particularly hard hit included the three New York City area airports, Chicago’s O’Hare, and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.Newark’s Liberty International Airport — a major northeastern US hub — was among the worst-hit. At New York’s LaGuardia Airport more than half of all outbound flights were delayed.- Splits over health care -Without a deal, Duffy warned that many Americans planning to travel for the November 27 Thanksgiving holiday would “not going to be able to get on an airplane, because there are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up.”It could take days for flight schedules to recover after the shutdown is finally ended, and federal funding — including salaries — starts to flow again.Sunday marked the third day of flight reductions at airports nationwide, after the Trump administration ordered reductions to ease strain on air traffic controllers working without pay.According to lawmakers, the bill would restore funding for the SNAP food stamp program which helps more than 42 million lower-income Americans pay for groceries.It would also reverse Trump’s firings of thousands of federal workers over the past month, and assure a vote on extending health care subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this year.”This deal guarantees a vote to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which Republicans weren’t willing to do,” Senate Democrat Tim Kaine said in a statement.The bill — a so-called continuing resolution (CR) to keep government funded at pre-shutdown levels — “will protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay” as required by law, he added.But many Senate Democrats are opposed to the deal, including the chamber’s top Democrat Chuck Schumer, who expressed anger that it offers a vote for extending the health care subsidies instead of extending them directly.”I can not in good faith support this CR that fails to address the health care crisis,” Schumer told the chamber, adding: “This fight will and must continue.”

Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced Sunday to postpone the anticipated launch of its New Glenn rocket due to unfavorable weather conditions.Rain and a ground system issue caused delays that were followed by cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving managers with the only option of pushing back the rocket’s planned second mission.The launch had been due to proceed amid intensifying competition between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.To relieve airspace congestion during the US federal government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket lift-offs starting Monday.But after scrubbing the launch Blue Origin said late Sunday that, in coordination with the FAA, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as Wednesday within the window of 2:50pm to 4:17pm (1950-2117 GMT).When it eventually launches, the 322-foot (98-meter) New Glenn rocket has the task of sending US space agency NASA’s ESCAPADE twin spacecraft to Mars, a bid to study the Red Planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.Blue Origin’s launch is to also serve as a key test of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the company if successful.New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a success, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed tests.But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during descent.In its second effort Blue Origin will try once more to recover the booster stage. Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has managed that feat.- Progress indicator -The competing companies of billionaires Musk and Bezos are locked in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as NASA opened up bids for its planned Moon mission — and with complaints emerging that SpaceX was “behind.”George Nield — a senior aerospace executive whose work promotes the commercial space industry, and who has flown with Blue Origin in the past — told AFP the stakes of New Glenn’s eventual launch are high.How it plays out will be an indicator of “how well they’re doing and how much progress they’ve made,” he said.US President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House has seen the administration pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon amid a race with China.Mason Peck, an aeronautics professor at Cornell University and former NASA chief technologist, said increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to launch.””More launches means more ideas in space,” Peck said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”