** President-elect Donald Trump has selected Jared Isaacman, entrepreneur, pilot, and all-around space enthusiast, as the next NASA administrator, marking a major shift in the space agency’s leadership.
** A Chinese hacking campaign that has spied on the texts and calls of U.S. citizens by hacking telecommunications companies is significantly larger than previously known to the public, a top White House official said Wednesday. At least eight American telecommunications companies have been compromised.
** In protest against US arms sales to Taiwan, Beijing slapped sanctions on 13 US defence companies and six industry executives, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Thursday.
** General Motors has announced its newest electric vehicle: the 2026 Cadillac Vistiq. The luxury vehicle, which will be available in 2025, boasts efficiency, comfort, and speed, according to Inside EVs.
** A classic car travel ban in California which officials have been mulling over for a while was recently slammed by a California member of the US House of Representatives on the floor. Representative Doug LaMalfa delivered a fiery speech where he declared the State of California can “pry my ’68 Mustang gear shift out of my cold, dead fingers.”
World
** Cuba’s energy grid has collapsed, leaving millions without power, the latest in a series of failures on an island struggling from creaking infrastructure, natural disasters and economic turmoil. The state-run utility company, the Cuban Electric Union, said workers were attempting to get the grid back online but local officials warned residents the difficult process of restoring power to aging Soviet-era power stations could take days.
** The U.K. subsidiaries of Equinor and Shell and combining their offshore oil and gas assets to form a new company that would be the country’s largest North Sea producer, Shell said Dec. 5. The joint venture will produce more than 140,000 boe/d in 2025, Shell said.
** Peru is betting that new trade links with China and local tax breaks can take its booming agribusiness industry to the next level, almost tripling exports over the next decade and a half. Chinese President Xi Jinping was in Peru last month to officially open the $1.3 billion Chancay port.
** China could approve another 100 nuclear reactors over the coming decade, according to an industry lobby group, as the nation turns itself into the world’s biggest operator of atomic power and potentially a major exporter of the technology.
** Russian oil producer Rosneft invested $20 billion in India recently, the Indian government quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin as saying in a statement on Thursday, without giving details.
** Tech giant Panasonic has converted its 50-year-old microwave production facility in Cardiff, Wales, to operate entirely on renewable energy. This project, the company’s first in Europe, integrates solar, hydrogen fuel cells, and battery storage to power the factory sustainably.