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Oil and Gas Industry Anticipates Regulatory Rollbacks Under TrumpNew SEC Framework is Transforming Nigeria’s Crypto Ecosystem, Boosting FDI, Says OkoroThe Kremlin fired a new intermediate-range ballistic missile at Ukraine on Thursday in response to Kyiv's use this week of American and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russia, President Vladimir Putin said. In a televised address to the country, the Russian president warned that U.S. air defense systems would be powerless to stop the new missile, which he said flies at ten times the speed of sound and which he called the Oreshnik — Russian for hazelnut tree. He also said it could be used to attack any Ukrainian ally whose missiles are used to attack Russia. “We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against military facilities of the countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities,” Putin said in his first comments since President Joe Biden gave Ukraine the green light this month to use U.S. ATACMS missiles to strike at limited targets inside Russia. Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh confirmed that Russia’s missile was a new, experimental type of intermediate range missile based on it’s RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile. “This was new type of lethal capability that was deployed on the battlefield, so that was certainly of concern," Singh said, noting that the missile could carry either conventional or nuclear warheads. The U.S. was notified ahead of the launch through nuclear risk reduction channels, she said. The attack on the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro came in response to Kyiv's use of longer-range U.S. and British missiles in strikes Tuesday and Wednesday on southern Russia, Putin said. Those strikes caused a fire at an ammunition depot in Russia's Bryansk region and killed and wounded some security services personnel in the Kursk region, he said. “In the event of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond decisively and in kind,” the Russian president said, adding that Western leaders who are hatching plans to use their forces against Moscow should “seriously think about this.” Putin said the Oreshnik fired Thursday struck a well-known missile factory in Dnipro. He also said Russia would issue advance warnings if it launches more strikes with the Oreshnik against Ukraine to allow civilians to evacuate to safety — something Moscow hasn’t done before previous aerial attacks. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov initially said Russia hadn’t warned the U.S. about the coming launch of the new missile, noting that it wasn't obligated to do so. But he later changed tack and said Moscow did issue a warning 30 minutes before the launch. Putin's announcement came hours after Ukraine claimed that Russia had used an intercontinental ballistic missile in the Dnipro attack, which wounded two people and damaged an industrial facility and rehabilitation center for people with disabilities, according to local officials. But American officials said an initial U.S. assessment indicated the strike was carried out with an intermediate-range ballistic missile. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post that the use of the missile was an "obvious and serious escalation in the scale and brutality of this war, a cynical violation of the UN Charter.” He also said there had been “no strong global reaction” to the use of the missile, which he said could threaten other countries. “Putin is very sensitive to this. He is testing you, dear partners,” Zelenskyy wrote. “If there is no tough response to Russia’s actions, it means they see that such actions are possible.” The attack comes during a week of escalating tensions , as the U.S. eased restrictions on Ukraine's use of American-made longer-range missiles inside Russia and Putin lowered the threshold for launching nuclear weapons. The Ukrainian air force said in a statement that the Dnipro attack was launched from Russia’s Astrakhan region, on the Caspian Sea. “Today, our crazy neighbor once again showed what he really is,” Zelenskyy said hours before Putin's address. “And how afraid he is.” Russia was sending a message by attacking Ukraine with an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of releasing multiple warheads at extremely high speeds, even if they are less accurate than cruise missiles or short-range ballistic missiles, said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. “Why might you use it therefore?” Savill said. "Signaling — signaling to the Ukrainians. We’ve got stuff that outrages you. But really signaling to the West ‘We’re happy to enter into a competition around intermediate range ballistic missiles. P.S.: These could be nuclear tipped. Do you really want to take that risk?’” Military experts say that modern ICBMs and IRBMs are extremely difficult to intercept, although Ukraine has previously claimed to have stopped some other weapons that Russia described as “unstoppable,” including the air-launched Kinzhal hypersonic missile. David Albright, of the Washington-based think tank the Institute for Science and International Security, said he was “skeptical” of Putin’s claim, adding that Russian technology sometimes “falls short.” He suggested Putin was “taunting the West to try to shoot it down ... like a braggart boasting, taunting his enemy.” Earlier this week, the Biden administration authorized Ukraine to use the U.S.-supplied, longer-range missiles to strike deeper inside Russia — a move that drew an angry response from Moscow. Days later, Ukraine fired several of the missiles into Russia, according to the Kremlin. The same day, Putin signed a new doctrine that allows for a potential nuclear response even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power. The doctrine is formulated broadly to avoid a firm commitment to use nuclear weapons. In response, Western countries, including the U.S., said Russia has used irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and behavior throughout the war to intimidate Ukraine and other nations. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday that Russia’s formal lowering of the threshold for nuclear weapons use did not prompt any changes in U.S. doctrine. She pushed back on concerns that the decision to allow Ukraine to use Western missiles to strike deeper inside Russia might escalate the war. ′′They’re the ones who are escalating this,” she said of the Kremlin — in part because of a flood of North Korean troops sent to the region. More than 1,000 days into war , Russia has the upper hand, with its larger army advancing in Donetsk and Ukrainian civilians suffering from relentless drone and missile strikes. Analysts and observers say the loosening of restrictions on Ukraine's use of Western missiles is unlikely to change the the course of the war, but it puts the Russian army in a more vulnerable position and could complicate the logistics that are crucial in warfare. Putin has also warned that the move would mean that Russia and NATO are at war. “It is an important move and it pulls against, undermines the narrative that Putin had been trying to establish that it was fine for Russia to rain down Iranian drones and North Korean missiles on Ukraine but a reckless escalation for Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons at legitimate targets in Russia,” said Peter Ricketts, a former U.K. national security adviser who now sits in the House of Lords. ___ Associated Press writers Jill Lawless and Emma Burrows in London, and Zeke Miller and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report. ___ Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine Hanna Arhirova, Illia Novikov, Aamer Madhani And Tara Copp, The Associated Presslucky 2 numbers today 。

Shares of Monolithic Power Systems ( MPWR 4.79% ) rallied hard today, up 5% as of 3:15 p.m. ET Monolithic was beaten down in November on fears of market share losses in its high-growth artificial intelligence (AI) segment. However, with shares down 35% from their recent highs, Monolithic found one more defender on Wall Street today. Citi initiates with a buy Today, Citigroup initiated coverage on Monolithic with a buy rating, giving the stock a $700 price target. That's 17.6% higher than Monolithic's $595 share price at the end of close yesterday. Monolithic makes highly sophisticated power control chips that go into a range of technology applications. The power and heat burdens on artificial intelligence chips has grown in recent years, making the AI segment the biggest growth driver for Monolithic over the past couple of years. But Monolithic's stock crashed back in November when Edgewater Research wrote it believed Monolithic had lost market share in the all-important Nvidia Blackwell AI server power module, due to performance issues at higher power levels. Edgewater noted the problem appeared to occur at higher-watt levels required of the B200 and GB200 modules, but that Monolithic could maintain share at the lower-power B300A module. But today, Citi apparently thinks that potential risk is already accounted for in the share price drop. The Citi team also believes Monolithic can still maintain 20% revenue growth going forward, as it has on average for the past decade, in spite of the potential market share losses on certain specific AI products. While the company's enterprise data segment, which contains Nvidia-based revenue, recently became the largest and fastest-growing segment, it only made up just under 30% of revenues last quarter. And the specific enterprise data products on which Monolithic may lose share likely made up much less than that number. Therefore, the analysts think Monolithic can grow along with the power-intensive AI and auto markets going forward, in spite of potential share losses on certain products if they even happen. Monolithic defends itself It should be noted that after the Edgewater note, Monolithic issued a press release saying it had no performance issues with its products, and that it was still in Nvidia's next-generation systems. Of course, Monolithic Power could lose market share in Blackwell modules for other reasons, such as the desire for Nvidia to diversify its sources of power controllers. Still, with the need for power solutions increasing across a variety of applications, Monolithic's revenue and profits should still grow in the years ahead. That being said, at 37.5 times next year's earnings estimates , solid growth is already baked into the share price. The question is how much Monolithic can outperform those high expectations, even if they are lower than a month ago.

It came as a surprise that President Joe Biden unconditionally pardoned his son Hunter, a convicted felon, after repeatedly vowing that he would not. For the past few months, each time Biden or his press secretary was asked whether a pardon was in the cards, they both emphatically said no. So much for one of the president's favorite lines, "I give you my word as a Biden." Hunter, who was facing a potential sentence of years in prison for tax evasion and lying on a federal firearms application, is now free to pursue his career as a middling painter of overpriced art. I admit that when I first heard the pardon news, I thought, "Good for you, Joe! Why should you follow the rules when no one on Planet Trump does? Let the people who voted to return a sex-offending, defaming, defrauding felon to the White House get a tiny taste of their own medicine." On second thought, however, it's more complicated than that. How can any of us be outraged at the way Trump and those in his circle seem immune from the consequences of their malign actions if we applaud Biden's pardon of his son for crimes he has either been convicted of or pleaded guilty to? How can we be outraged that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner received $2 billion from the murderous Saudis if we think it's perfectly fine for Hunter Biden to be paid millions of dollars for sitting on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that was under investigation for corruption while his father was vice president and overseeing White House policy on Ukraine? The real outrage is the general lack of accountability for the illegal, unethical or immoral behavior of children born into wealth and privilege whose only "talents" are their ability to exploit their proximity to powerful people. Nepo babies gonna nepo baby. Hunter Biden was charged with lying on a gun purchase form, having claimed on penalty of perjury that he was not using drugs when, as he recounts in his memoir, he was a raging coke and meth addict. He was also charged with evading more than $1 million in taxes, which he has since paid, along with penalties and interest. Was he unfairly singled out? Maybe, but he still broke the law. As President Biden stated in announcing the pardon, "Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions." All true, which is why the government originally offered Hunter a deal that would have allowed him to avoid prison. He was to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time, and to agree to a diversion program that would allow him to avoid prosecution on the charge that he lied when he bought a handgun in 2018. But a federal judge put the plea deal on hold last year, saying she did not want to "rubber stamp" an unorthodox and complex agreement that was reached without her input. Republicans piled on, filing an amicus brief complaining that the deal was too lenient and that the investigation was tainted by political interference from the Biden administration. At that point, with the plea deal in tatters, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to the case. A month later, in September 2023, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opened his sham impeachment investigation of the president, claiming Biden lied about his knowledge of his son's business affairs. The House's eventual report basically found that Hunter used his daddy's name to enrich himself. Yawn. Last summer, after a salacious trial that, as the New York Times put it, "made painfully public Mr. Biden's crack addiction, reckless behavior and ruinous spending," a federal jury found Hunter guilty of three felony counts related to the gun application. In September, Hunter Biden avoided tormenting his family with another trial by pleading guilty to nine federal tax charges. "There has been an effort to break Hunter -- who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution," President Biden's statement said. "In trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me -- and there's no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough." Hunter may have been singled out for prosecution, but Hunter did in fact screw up. And President Biden, who has often said that Americans in the Trump era are engaged in a "battle to save the soul of the nation," has shown that he, too, will warp justice for his own ends. I thought he was better than that. Robin Abcarian Robin Abcarian is an opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times. The views expressed here are the writer's own. -- Ed. (Tribune Content Agency)Donald Trump said he can’t guarantee that his promised tariffs on key U.S. foreign trade partners won’t raise prices for American consumers and he suggested once more that some political rivals and federal officials who pursued legal cases against him should be imprisoned. The president-elect, in a wide-ranging interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday, also touched on monetary policy, immigration, abortion and health care, and U.S. involvement in Ukraine, Israel and elsewhere. Trump often mixed declarative statements with caveats, at one point cautioning “things do change.” A look at some of the issues covered: Trump has threatened broad trade penalties, but said he didn’t believe economists’ predictions that added costs on those imported goods for American companies would lead to higher domestic prices for consumers. He stopped short of a pledge that U.S. households won’t be paying more as they shop. “I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow,” Trump said, seeming to open the door to accepting the reality of how import levies typically work as goods reach the retail market. That’s a different approach from Trump’s typical speeches throughout the 2024 campaign, when he framed his election as a sure way to curb inflation. In the interview, Trump defended tariffs generally, saying that tariffs are “going to make us rich.” He has pledged that, on his first day in office in January, he would impose 25 per cent tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico and Canada unless those countries satisfactorily stop illegal immigration and the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl into the United States. He also has threatened tariffs on China to help force that country to crack down on fentanyl production. “All I want to do is I want to have a level, fast, but fair playing field,” Trump said. He offered conflicting statements on how he would approach the justice system after winning the election despite being convicted of 34 felonies in a New York state court and being indicted in other cases for his handling of national security secrets and efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden. “Honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said of members of Congress who investigated the Capitol riot by his supporters who wanted him to remain in power. The president-elect underscored his contention that he can use the justice system against others, including special prosecutor Jack Smith, who led the case on Trump’s role in the siege on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump confirmed his plan to pardon supporters who were convicted for their roles in the riot, saying he would take that action on his first day in office. As for the idea of revenge driving potential prosecutions, Trump said: “I have the absolute right. I’m the chief law enforcement officer, you do know that. I’m the president. But I’m not interested in that.” At the same time, Trump singled out lawmakers on a special House committee who had investigated the insurrection, citing Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. “Cheney was behind it ... so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee,” Trump said. Asked specifically whether he would direct his administration to pursue cases, he said, “No,” and suggested he did not expect the FBI to quickly undertake investigations into his political enemies. But at another point, Trump said he would leave the matter up to Pam Bondi, his pick as attorney general. “I want her to do what she wants to do,” he said. Such threats, regardless of Trump’s inconsistencies, have been taken seriously enough by many top Democrats that Biden is considering issuing blanket, preemptive pardons to protect key members of his outgoing administration. Trump did seemingly back off his campaign rhetoric calling for Biden to be investigated, saying, “I’m not looking to go back into the past.” Trump repeatedly mentioned his promises to seal the U.S.-Mexico border and deport millions of people who are in the U.S. illegally through a mass deportation program. “I think you have to do it,” he said. He suggested he would try to use executive action to end “birthright” citizenship under which people born in the U.S. are considered citizens — although such protections are spelled out in the Constitution. Asked specifically about the future for people who were brought into the country illegally as children and have been shielded from deportation in recent years, Trump said, “I want to work something out,” indicating he might seek a solution with Congress. But Trump also said he does not “want to be breaking up families” of mixed legal status, “so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.” Long a critic of NATO members for not spending more on their own defence, Trump said he “absolutely” would remain in the alliance “if they pay their bills.” Pressed on whether he would withdraw if he were dissatisfied with allies’ commitments, Trump said he wants the U.S. treated “fairly” on trade and defence. He waffled on a NATO priority of containing Russia and President Vladimir Putin. Trump suggested Ukraine should prepare for less U.S. aid in its defence against Putin’s invasion. “Possibly. Yeah, probably. Sure,” Trump said of reducing Ukraine assistance from Washington. Separately, Trump has called for an immediate cease-fire. Asked about Putin, Trump said initially that he has not talked to the Russian leader since Election Day last month, but then hedged: “I haven’t spoken to him recently.” Trump said when pressed, adding that he did not want to “impede the negotiation.” The president-elect said he has no intention, at least for now, of asking Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to step down before Powell’s term ends in 2028. Trump said during the campaign that presidents should have more say in Fed policy, including interest rates. Trump did not offer any job assurances for FBI Director Christopher Wray, whose term is to end in 2027. Asked about Wray, Trump said: “Well, I mean, it would sort of seem pretty obvious” that if the Senate confirms Kash Patel as Trump’s pick for FBI chief, then “he’s going to be taking somebody’s place, right? Somebody is the man that you’re talking about.” Trump is absolute about Social Security, not so much on abortion and health insurance Trump promised that the government efficiency effort led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will not threaten Social Security. “We’re not touching Social Security, other than we make it more efficient,” he said. He added that “we’re not raising ages or any of that stuff.” He was not so specific about abortion or his long-promised overhaul of the Affordable Care Act. On abortion, Trump continued his inconsistencies and said he would “probably” not move to restrict access to the abortion pills that now account for a majority of pregnancy terminations, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. But pressed on whether he would commit to that position, Trump replied, “Well, I commit. I mean, are — things do — things change. I think they change.” Reprising a line from his Sept. 10 debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump again said he had “concepts” of a plan to substitute for the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which he called “lousy health care.” He added a promise that any Trump version would maintain insurance protections for Americans with preexisting health conditions. He did not explain how such a design would be different from the status quo or how he could deliver on his desire for “better healthcare for less money.” — Barrow reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Jill Colvin and Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here .