(NEW YORK) — Japanese car giant Nissan Motor Co. said it plans to invest $17.6 billion to accelerate its electrification plans, as the industry as a whole pivots away from gas-powered autos.
Nissan said it will invest 2 trillion Japanese yen over the next five years (just under $17.6 billion) and will launch 23 new electrified models, including 15 new electric vehicles.
The company said it is aiming to have a 50% electrification lineup by 2030 as part of its “Nissan Ambition 2030” initiative, which will put electrification at the center of its long-term strategy.
“The role of companies to address societal needs is increasingly heightened,” Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida said in a statement. “With Nissan Ambition 2030, we will drive the new age of electrification, advance technologies to reduce carbon footprint and pursue new business opportunities.”
“We want to transform Nissan to become a sustainable company that is truly needed by customers and society,” Uchida added.
Nissan wants to launch an electric vehicle with its proprietary all-solid-state batteries by fiscal year 2028 and prepare a pilot plant for EVs in Yokohama, Japan, as early as fiscal year 2024. The company promises that its all-solid-state batteries will significantly reduce charging time and make electric vehicles more efficient and accessible.
Nissan was among the original pioneers of mainstream electric vehicles with its battery-powered Leaf, which first launched in 2010. A growing number of major carmakers, from Ford to General Motors, have similarly announced recent plans to invest heavily in electrification.
“We are proud of our long track record of innovation, and of our role in delivering the EV revolution. With our new ambition, we continue to take the lead in accelerating the natural shift to EVs by creating customer pull through an attractive proposition by driving excitement, enabling adoption and creating a cleaner world,” Nissan COO Ashwani Gupta said in a statement Monday.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden announced a set of actions aimed to cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks and signed an executive order that set a goal of having half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 be zero emissions vehicles.
(WASHINGTON) — Iran returned to negotiations over its nuclear program on Monday — meeting for the first time in over five months, with the country’s new hard-line government now in control.
Its chief negotiator emerged from closed doors bullish, as Tehran demands its concerns about continued U.S. sanctions be addressed first after former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal.
But the U.S. and the deal’s European signatories are warning that after months of stalling, Iran is facing its last opportunity to revive the 2015 deal that placed constraints on its nuclear program in exchange for international sanctions relief.
A top European Union diplomat who is coordinating the indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran expressed some guarded optimism afterward — and much urgency.
“There is clearly a will on all the delegations to listen to the Iranian positions brought by the new team, and there is clearly a will of the Iranian delegation to engage in serious work to bring JCPOA back to life,” said Enrique Mora, the senior EU diplomat, using an acronym for the nuclear deal’s formal name — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
“I feel positive that we can be doing important things for the next weeks to come,” Mora added after delegations from Iran, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany met in Vienna, Austria.
Whether or not the U.S. and its European allies are willing to wait weeks is an open question — especially since Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s new president who is a conservative cleric close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has delayed the resumption of talks since he won election in June.
“These talks are the last opportunity for the Iranians to come to the table and agree the JCPOA,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Monday. “We will look at all options if that doesn’t happen.”
Patience is all but out in Israel, whose defense minister warned Monday that Iran is “dashing towards a nuclear weapon.”
Israeli officials shared intelligence with the U.S. and other allies showing that Iran is nearing a nuclear weapon, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said.
Since Trump’s exit, Iran has increasingly taken steps in violation of the deal, including by enriching more uranium, enriching uranium to higher levels, using more advanced centrifuges and more of them, and enriching uranium metal. The United Nation’s nuclear watchdog — the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA — reported this month that Iran has enriched 39 pounds of uranium to 60%, which is a short technical step from weapons-grade 90%.
Under the nuclear deal, Iran’s enrichment was capped at 3.67% for 15 years.
The State Department declined to comment on reports that Iran may be moving toward 90% enrichment levels, but deputy spokesperson Jalina Porter told reporters that “obviously would be a provocative act, and I’ll just underscore that we’ve made clear that Iran’s continued nuclear escalations are unconstructive and they’re also inconsistent with what’s stated in the goal of returning to a mutual compliance with the JCPOA.”
But ahead of talks resuming, Iran has used sharper language rejecting the idea of “mutual compliance” — increasingly arguing that the U.S. must act first because it was Trump that first exited the deal back in 2018.
“The principle of ‘mutual compliance’ cannot form a proper base for negotiations since it was the U.S. government which unilaterally left the deal,” Iran’s chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, wrote in an editorial Sunday, calling for a “clear and transparent mechanism to ensure that sanctions will be removed” and U.S. “compensation for the violation of the deal, which includes the removal of all post-JCPOA sanctions.”
The Biden administration has said it will not lift sanctions first, and the idea of compensating Iran for U.S. sanctions is politically toxic in Washington.
It’s unclear if those demands are just Iran posturing before sitting down, or if those are red lines. Out of Monday’s meetings, Bagheri claimed a “considerable achievement” by saying the remaining parties to the deal agreed to address U.S. sanctions first. But that doesn’t mean they agreed those sanctions need to be lifted before Iran’s own non-compliance is addressed. The working-level discussions will address U.S. sanctions on Tuesday and Iran’s nuclear program Wednesday, according to Mora.
The State Department has not yet provided a readout from special envoy for Iran Rob Malley’s meetings in Vienna, where the previous six rounds of talks were held as well.
Beyond Mora’s optimism, Russia’s envoy Mikhail Ulyanov said the talks “started quite successfully” and reached agreement on “further immediate steps,” without specifying what they were.
Any optimism has run face first into dire warnings from Israel, whose Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has vocally opposed the restoration of the nuclear deal.
“Iran deserves no rewards, no bargain deals, and no sanctions relief in return for their brutality. I call upon our allies around the world: Do not give in to Iran’s nuclear blackmail,” Bennett said Monday.
Malley told NPR last week the U.S. and Israel don’t agree on the deal, but do agree on the need to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon: “We’re not going to wait and see them get so close,” he said, but the U.S. hopes “that this could be resolved diplomatically, and it should be.”
Amid warnings that Iran could stall by prolonging these talks, Malley added the U.S. will not “sit idly by” if the country moves toward a nuclear bomb.
But the U.S. and European allies have pulled their punches at the IAEA, declining again last week to censure Iran for not just its violations of the deal but its growing obstruction of the IAEA’s work.
Iran has barred inspectors from accessing certain sites, harassed inspectors with invasive security searches and failed to explain still the detected presence of uranium at three undeclared locations, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told the U.N. body last Wednesday.
Grossi visited Tehran last week — his first trip under the Raisi government — but he did not reach a deal to address these issues, he told reporters Wednesday. A previous ad-hoc arrangement with Iran to keep international eyes at its declared nuclear sites is coming apart, he warned. Iran agreed to keep IAEA cameras and other monitoring equipment in place and turn the tapes over to the agency when a deal was reached. That equipment needs servicing to “guarantee continuity of knowledge,” Grossi said, but Iran has blocked IAEA inspectors so far.
“Such a long period of time without us getting access, knowing whether there are operational activities ongoing, is something in itself that would prevent me from continuing to say I have an idea of what’s going on,” he said at a press conference. “We must reach an agreement. We must do it.”
Trivium has announced a pair of new streaming concerts.
The virtual shows are set to premiere December 11 and December 18. The first will celebrate the 10th anniversary of Trivium’s 2011 album In Waves, while the second, dubbed Deadmen & Dragons, will feature songs from the metal outfit’s two new albums, 2020’s What the Dead Men Say and this year’s In the Court of the Dragon.
Both performances will be filmed at Trivium’s new rehearsal space, an inactive airplane hangar fittingly nicknamed “The Hangar.”
If you’re a Yungblud fan in London, you may want to clear your schedule for Tuesday afternoon.
In an Instagram post, the “Fleabag” rocker announces that he’s planning to unveil a “surprise” at Camden Market tomorrow, November 30.
“Meet me at Camden Market 3 pm tomorrow,” Yungblud teases. “I have a surprise.”
Yungblud didn’t reveal any more info about what the surprise may be, but then again, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if he did. Perhaps it has to do with his recently announced Mars project, a short film named after his song of the same name.
For any stateside Yungblud fans, you can catch the U.K. artist in person on his upcoming U.S. tour, kicking off January 2022.
(LONDON) — A British inn and pub officially bid “fond farewell” to 61 guests Monday after a blizzard stranded them for days inside.
Located 270 miles north of London, Tan Hill Inn in Yorkshire, England, had arranged an event for an Oasis tribute band on Friday. Later that night, however, the region was hit hard by a late autumn storm which blocked local roads with heavy snow.
“The last time we had our costumers locked in was four or five years ago, but that was just for one night. This time it was a very different experience with four days,” Nicola Townsend, the pub manager, told ABC News.
The staff and guests came up with spontaneous ideas “to kill the boredom,” Townsend said. They organized a movie event, a quiz night and karaoke.
“Customers started to develop bonds from the second day on by hanging out, making friends and exchanging numbers. And they were so cooperative in running the affairs. Like they felt home indeed,” she said, adding, “Our staff are exhausted, but very happy that our guests had fun. Some of them said they had so much fun that they did not want to go back home when the roads were cleared.”
Now the group has agreed to a reunion next year.
The storm, named “Arwen,” also left thousands in Scotland without power for several nights.
(NEW YORK) — Vaccine makers say they are in the midst of testing their shots’ effectiveness against the newly discovered omicron coronavirus variant, and they remain optimistic that a new variant-specific vaccine could be produced and rolled out quickly if needed.
When asked about the new omicron variant that was first detected in southern Africa, Paul Burton, Moderna’s chief medical officer, told ABC News’ “Good Morning America” on Monday that vaccine manufacturers around the world, including Moderna, “are testing samples from people who have received our vaccines against the strains.”
Burton said that while the company thinks “vaccine effectiveness may come down, based on the mutation seen in this in this virus,” he added that with booster shots of the existing version of the vaccine, “We should be able to get antibody levels up, so that’s a very important initial line of defense.”
Burton said that researchers will know just how effective the vaccines are against this variant “in the next couple of weeks.” If manufacturers need to make an omicron variant-specific vaccine, it should take approximately “two to three months” to test and manufacture it, he said.
Fellow coronavirus vaccine maker Pfizer similarly expressed confidence that it could produce a new vaccine quickly if needed. Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday that he is very optimistic the company will be able to speedily switch production to a new vaccine, if the research merits, without losing any volume.
Johnson & Johnson also said in a statement Monday that it is evaluating its current COVID-19 vaccine against the omicron variant.
“In addition, the company is pursuing an omicron-specific variant vaccine and will progress it as needed,” it said.
Scientists suspect the omicron variant could partially chip away protection from current vaccines due to its mutations, but they are still waiting on testing to learn if, and to what extent, that could be the case.
Vaccine experts have told ABC News that the current COVID-19 vaccines, which rely on genetic technology, could easily be updated to better combat emerging variants. This has not been necessary so far, as the original vaccines have been effective against the dominant variants that have spread in the past, but companies are preparing to tweak vaccines to respond to the omicron variant just in case.
The good news is that these novel vaccines employing genetic technology mean updates can be made to the vaccines easily — unlike vaccines based on older technology, which used a piece of the virus or a killed virus to mimic infection.
The new vaccines, which use the genetic technology, introduces an instruction manual of sorts into your body. This introduction manual tells your cells to start churning out a protein normally found on the outside of the virus, and your body activates an immune response when your body senses that viral protein.
In remarks on Monday, President Joe Biden assured Americans that the omicron variant “is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic.”
“We have the best vaccine in the world. The best medicines, the best scientists, and we’re learning more every single day,” the president said. “And we’ll fight this variant with scientific and knowledgeable actions and speed. Not chaos and confusion.”
Arif Hudaverdi Yaman/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
In addition to being a musician, Bryan Adams is also a noted photographer. On Monday, he unveiled his latest work: the 2022 edition of the legendary Pirelli calendar, which in the past has been shot by such legendary photographers as Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton and Annie Liebovitz. Unfortunately, Bryan had to participate in the event in Milan, Italy virtually, because he’s battling COVID for the second time in a month.
On Instagram, Adams revealed that he’d been hospitalized when he arrived in Italy, and wrote, “I was symptomatic even though I had been vaccinated but I’m on the mend now.”
During the calendar launch event, Bryan said he was “O.K.,” but still had “some of the residual COVID bug.” He added, “I should be O.K. in a couple of days, I hope.”
Bryan previously tested positive for COVID at the end of October, which required him to drop out of a planned tribute to Tina Turner at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
After a fundraiser to name a theater after Dave Chappelle at the Duke Ellington School for the Arts in Washington, D.C. was rescheduled, the controversial comedian is now asking his critics to donate money to the school.
“If you object to my receiving this honor, I urge you to donate to the school, noting your objection. If you are in favor of the theater being named ‘Chappelle,’ I urge you to donate to the school, noting your approval,” he wrote on Instagram.
The high school theater was originally set to be named after alumnus Chappelle on November 23. Following objections about the comedian’s LGBTQ+ comments in his Netflix special, The Closer, the ceremony was moved to April 22, 2022.
Chappelle says he will act according to whichever opinion raises the most donations by the time of the renaming ceremony.
“If by April, those against the ‘Chappelle’ theater exceed the donations of those who are neutral or in favor of the theater named ‘Chappelle,’ I will gladly step aside. If not, I will happily attend the naming ceremony,” he wrote.
In other news, Steve Harvey has added another show to his long resume. The Family Feud host will now head Judge Steve Harvey, an unscripted courtroom comedy series premiering Tuesday, January 4 at 8 p.m. on ABC.
“Viewers tuning into Judge Steve Harvey will watch as I tackle tough and, at times, entertaining issues while also providing much-needed advice and good old-fashioned common sense to the litigants in my court.” Harvey said in a statement.
Finally, The Black Pack: We Three Kings starring Taye Diggs, Ne-Yo and Eric Bellinger airs Monday night at 8 p.m. ET on CW. They will be joined by Tank and Sevyn Streeter for an evening of music, comedy and dance.
Michael K. Williams’ final documentary project, Black Market, will return for its second season January 10 on VICE TV.
The series, which the late actor produced and hosted before his passing in September, follows the “complex underworld” of illegal markets and the people who operate them. A trailer for season two debuted Monday.
“Black Market is a testament to Michael K. Williams’ dedication to criminal justice reform and social justice,” Jesse Angelo, President, Global News and Entertainment, VICE Media Group, says in a statement.
“Michael was a longtime friend of our VICE family and shared our belief in having all voices be heard- especially those in marginalized communities. Michael’s mission was to lift those voices up and we are honored to share this collection of new episodes.”
The new season debuts January 10 at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
Williams, best known for his roles in The Wire, Boardwalk Empire and Lovecraft Country, passed away from an accidental overdose on September 6. He was 54.
Trainhas been a little quiet on social media lately, even though they have a new record coming out shortly.
Taking to Instagram, frontman Pat Monahan explained the social media hiatus. “I had my arm fixed the other day, so I’m kinda [loopy,]” he revealed, but declined to explain further on that. Although, he did hint he’s already on the mend when talking about snowball fights and said he’d “love to be a part of” them.
He also plugged the band’s new holiday movie, Christmas In Tahoe, which premiered Sunday on the Hallmark Channel. Pat stars in and executive produced the flick, which celebrates Train’s first full-length holiday album of the same name that they released in 2015.
Pat signed off by casually reminding fans, “We’ll have a new record for you after the new year,” which is the upcoming Welcome to the Planet that is due out January 28, 2022. So far, no tour has been announced but the singer hinted that may change soon.
The Grammy winner captioned the video announcement, “Hi guys. Miss you all. Hope to see you soon. Happy Hanukkah and thanks for all the love.”
