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2026 Honda Passport: This Is It Honda's toughest SUV goes on sale early next year with a starting price in the mid-$40,000 range. Honda says the fourth-generation Passport is its "most off-road capable" SUV ever, and after driving a prototype last month, it's hard to disagree—the 2026 Honda Passport is pretty darn tough. Today, Honda is releasing all the details on its more rugged Passport, including the updated powertrain, refreshed trim levels, and neat features like a stowable picnic table. Under the hood is a 3.5-liter V-6 engine making 285 horsepower—5 more than last year. The torque rating remains the same at 262 pound-feet, and a new 10-speed automatic transmission specifically tuned for the Passport replaces the outgoing nine-speed unit. Honda’s torque vectoring i-VTM4 all-wheel-drive system comes standard. The Passport features stronger forged steel suspension arms and sturdy cast-iron knuckles. Honda also re-tuned the MacPherson struts in front and added an all-new rear multilink suspension. It has larger 13.8-inch front brakes, and Honda offers a full-size spare. It can tow up to 5,000 pounds. Honda will offer the Passport in three trims—RTL, TrailSport, and TrailSport Elite—each with unique styling elements. The Passport RTL has a black grille, black trim, matte black rocker trim, silver front and rear skid garnishes, and 18-inch gloss Shark Gray wheels wrapped in 31-inch all-season tires. The TrailSport and TrailSport Elite trims have amber LED daytime running lights, metallic silver skid garnishes, a gloss black grille, gloss black trim, and orange recovery hooks. They wear 18-inch wheels, too, and come wrapped in General Grabber all-terrain tires that Honda co-developed with General Tire specifically for this model. The 2026 Passport has a much more rugged design with a 2.8-inch longer wheelbase, a wider track (1.3 inches front and 1.5 rear), and an increased dash-to-axle ratio with a shorter front overhang. It has more ground clearance and an improved approach angle, and the TrailSport has steel skid plates for added underbody protection. The matte black roof portion at the rear isn’t purely for styling. Honda specifically kept this section paint-free so that people could lean tall equipment against the SUV without worrying about damaging the exterior. Inside, the increased wheelbase equates to 1.3 inches more rear legroom. It also has a 10.2-inch digital driver display and a 12.4-inch infotainment screen that’s 54 percent larger. It has Google Built-In, Android Auto, and Apple CarPlay. It also has 10 cupholders, six big enough for a 32-ounce-wide water bottle. The new design also improves the Passport’s cargo capacity, measuring up to 83.5 cubic feet behind the first row and up to 44.0 cu-ft behind the second. The new Passport also ushers in the return of the stowable four-person picnic table that stores as a clever cargo shelf. Honda decked out the RTL model with leather-trimmed upholstery and a power liftgate. The TrailSport features synthetic leather, orange contrast stitching, and a panoramic sunroof. The TrailSport Elite gets perforated leather seats, ventilated front seats, rear climate controls, rear door shades, and a 12-speaker Bose premium audio system. Honda will offer the passport in eight colors, two of which—Sunset Orange and Ash Green Metallic—are exclusive to the TrailSport. The automaker hasn’t provided the official starting price, only stating that it’ll start in the mid-$40,000 range. The outgoing 2025 Passport starts at $43,795 (the price includes the $1,395 destination charge). Passport buyers will also have an assortment of aftermarket accessories to add to their SUV with Honda’s “broadest line of genuine Honda accessories ever.” It’ll have wheels, rock sliders, scuff plates, MOLLE boards, and more. https://www.motor1.com/news/740758/2026-honda-passport-trailsport-details-specs/

In this 2018 photo, then-President Donald Trump arrives to speak to the media at a press conference on the second day of the 2018 NATO Summit on July 12, 2018 in Brussels, Belgium. Sean Gallup/Getty Images Within minutes of President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement of Fox News host and Army veteran Pete Hegseth as his selection for secretary of Defense, current and former senior military commanders began messaging and calling me with their reactions. “Ridiculous,” said one. “An effing (euphemism inserted) nightmare,” said another. To be clear, these were not partisans, but senior commanders who have served under both Presidents Trump and Joe Biden. Their critiques, as they continued, were not personal. None had anything negative to say about Hegseth. Their central concern is that they see Trump, with this and other senior national security appointments, building out a team to put into action massive and lasting changes to US foreign policy. “There’s no serious experience in the business of running the Pentagon or the national security staff processes, but I’m trying to retain an open mind and hope that fresh ideas could improve things that get pretty stale,” a retired four-star general told me. “That said, the common denominator is clearly loyalty and while some loyalty is essential, slavish fealty is dangerous. Looking at all the announcements to date, we could end up with one mind controlling many hands. And I’ve never believed that one mind, any mind, does that as well as diversity of thought.” In this 2016 photo, Pete Hegseth walks to an elevator for a meeting with Trump at Trump Tower in New York. Evan Vucci/AP The 2024 election - unlike previous ones with differences at the margins - may prove to have an enormous impact not just on US foreign policy but on America’s role in the world. Trump has repeatedly expressed that he’s ready to deliver on his “America First” agenda, ending US entanglements abroad and diminishing or altering treaty relationships he sees as skewed against American interests, each a departure from what used to be a bipartisan worldview. To that point, Hegseth has from his perch at Fox News long been a vocal, public proponent of Trump’s “America First” agenda. Trump, as in domestic politics, has demonstrated a transactional view of US relations abroad - and one that often fails to differentiate based on values or shared history. He’s repeatedly communicated that he sees the US as no better or worse than its adversaries. There is a common thread between Trump’s answer to Bill O’Reilly in 2017 when the then-Fox News host reminded him, “Putin is a killer”, to which Trump answered, “You think we’re so innocent?” and his comment at a rally in Michigan during the last week of the 2024 campaign that “In many cases, our allies are worse than our so-called enemies.” With this view of America’s relationships with allies and adversaries, Trump seems to believe that as president he will be just as able to make mutually beneficial agreements for the US with, say, Russia or China, as with US allies in Europe and Asia – that is, with nations that have fought alongside the US and signed mutual defense treaties. Negotiations with Moscow or Beijing are certainly better than a super-power war, but this approach neglects that those adversaries see it as in their strategic interests to weaken the US and the US-led global order – objectives made clearer as Russia and China increasingly join forces with North Korea and Iran across the globe, from the battlefields of Ukraine to the sharing of nuclear and missile technology, to new agreements such as the mutual defense treaty signed recently between Pyongyang and Moscow. Can Trump make a great deal that would push China and Russia, and North Korea and Iran, to abandon or temper those strategic interests? Theoretically, I suppose that’s possible, though former British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston – who famously said only interests, not allies, are “eternal and perpetual” – would beg to differ. ‘If I were Ukraine, I’d be very worried’ So what would this mean for US foreign policy in the near term? Trump’s former senior advisers told me in my recent book, “The Return of Great Powers” that, with this established worldview, Trump would end aid to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia. “If I were Ukraine, I’d be very worried,” Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton told me, “because if everything is a deal, then what’s another 10% of Ukrainian territory if it brings peace, kind of thing?” Members of the unit Dnipro One of the Joint Assault Brigade of the National Police of Ukraine "Luty" operate a Soviet-era howitzer D-30 on November 9, near Toretsk, Ukraine. Diego Fedele/Getty Images They told me Taiwan should be similarly concerned. While Biden vowed publicly multiple times to defend Taiwan militarily against a Chinese invasion – ending a decades-old US policy of strategic ambiguity toward the self-governing island – none of Trump’s former senior advisers told me they believe Trump would do the same. US defense treaties are similarly on the table. Several of his advisers said he might attempt to exit NATO (as they witnessed him attempt to do briefly in his first term) or, if thwarted by new legislation passed by Congress making such a unilateral withdrawal harder, signal that he, as commander in chief, would not abide by NATO’s Article 5 committing members to defend other members militarily. In their view, his line in February that Russia could “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that don’t pay up was meaningful. “I think NATO would be in real jeopardy,” Bolton told me before the election. “I think he would try to get out.” This raises questions about Trump’s commitment to other alliances around the world, including those in Asia with South Korea and Japan. During his first term, Trump suspended large-scale military exercises with South Korea as a gesture to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, war games that Seoul views as crucial to its military readiness. In October, Trump put a price tag on the continued US deployment on the Korean peninsula: $10 billion. A new nuclear arms race? Military commanders and diplomats in Europe and Asia tell me they fear a particularly dangerous byproduct of Trump’s potential withdrawal from US commitments abroad: Fearing for their own security, nations in Asia and Europe may decide to develop nuclear weapons to replace the security of the US nuclear umbrella. Such a move would in turn lead US adversaries Russia and China (and North Korea and, potentially, Iran if it were to build a bomb) to expand their own arsenals to maintain deterrence. Other countries in each region – from Saudi Arabia to Egypt to India, to name a few – might reasonably do the same. And, so, Trump, who has often expressed his deep and rightful fear of nuclear war, might inadvertently spark a new nuclear arms race. Does this matter to Americans at home? The costs of America’s long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have understandably whittled away public support for military interventions abroad. And the price tag of US military assistance to Ukraine – while a fraction of the US defense budget overall – has been seen as politically untenable to many during an affordability crisis at home. However, Americans would have to be willing to make accommodations to the ambitions of the world’s new and increasingly powerful alliance of autocrats. That would come with costs. National security veterans emphasize that the US-led international order, as dry as the name sounds, provides benefits to Americans they may not realize: respect for the borders of sovereign nations, a legacy of the carnage wrought by World War II and now so deeply challenged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine; free shipping lanes in Asia and Europe; rule of law to enable business deals and international markets for US goods; global air travel; international study abroad programs; relatively cheap imports; mobile phones that work around the world, to name just a few examples. They are things that would fade in a dog-eat-dog world. “This rule set…is one of the fundamental contributing factors to not having a breakout of a great power war,” former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley told me. “It’s not the only reason, but it’s one of the fundamental reasons why there hasn’t been a great power war in eight decades. So if that rule set goes away … then you’ll be doubling your defense budgets because the world will return to Hobbesian nature where it’s going to be only the strong survive and it’s going to be a dog eat-dog-world. And there won’t be any rules.” The art of the deal What used to be the bipartisan approach has proven far from perfect. The US and its allies have not figured out how to win in Ukraine and likely have quietly pushed for some territorial concessions to end the war and pulled back from a commitment for Ukraine to join NATO “In order to have a successful negotiation, you have to somehow address both sets of national security insecurities or anxieties. So, you have to somehow convince the Russians that NATO is not going to invade, Ukraine is not going to be part of NATO, and that they shouldn’t fear invasion from the West, that sort of thing,” Milley told me. What was something of a dirty little secret under Biden – Ukraine may have to cede both territory and compromise on security assurances – is now public as the Trump administration takes shape. US allies will now have to adjust, and many European diplomats told me they were already making preparations to do so before the election. At a minimum, they expect US leadership in Europe to fade, necessitating a more urgent move toward larger military expenditures and a broad military expansion. In Asia, US treaties with South Korea, Japan and Australia may no longer be the same counterweight to China. Both Trump and Democratic rival Kamala Harris would have sought some diplomatic contact with Moscow and Beijing, but Harris would have done so on the basis of the US’ current alliance structure. For Trump, it seems, everything is on the table. It doesn’t mean he’ll definitely make deals. He walked away from Kim Jong Un during his first term when the North Korean leader didn’t give enough ground on his nuclear weapons program. But, again, everything, it appears, is negotiable. I often remind audiences when I discuss my book that we, as a nation, are still congratulating ourselves for standing up to despots during World War II, with a new movie and streaming series seemingly every year. For the past eight decades or so, that view hasn’t just been emotional. By and large, and with exceptions certainly, it has been established US policy, in part as an expression of US values but also as central to the pursuit of US strategic interests. This election presented the country with a choice as to whether it wants to stay that course or take a new direction. Again, the status quo is full of dangers. The direction of competition among the great powers was already frightening. However, current and former US commanders and the leaders of America’s closest allies believe the “America First” approach has its own dangers. It is not, in fact, a new approach. Today’s rhetoric mimics the country’s isolationists pre-World War II. America decided then that retreating behind the ramparts of the home front was impossible. One final note: With the new technologies of today, from expanding nuclear arsenals to cyberattacks to space weapons to drones to AI, and global challenges such as climate change and refugee flows, ignoring the world beyond America’s shores is even less possible than it was in 1939. President-elect Trump’s early personnel moves demonstrate he is ready to test that assumption. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/13/politics/trump-shake-up-foreign-policy-order/index.html

Things Are So Bad at Nissan It's Turning to Mitsubishi for Help It will sell a portion of its stake in Mitsubishi while cutting 9,000 jobs and reducing its global production capacity. Nissan is taking drastic action to save money as sales decline. It plans to cut 9,000 jobs, reduce its production capacity, and sell a portion of its stake in Mitsubishi. Nissan still plans to launch 30 new or updated models, but they might be delayed. Nissan is cutting back as it struggles to profit amid falling demand. The automaker plans to cut 9,000 jobs, reduce its global production capacity by 20 percent, and sell a third of its stake in Mitsubishi to cut costs. The company believes it could save itself $3 billion as it reevaluates the roadmap it presented earlier this year. The automaker still plans to launch the 30 new or updated vehicles it has proposed, but they might arrive later than initially planned as Nissan focuses on its financial health. The 20 percent reduction in its global capacity of five million units annually will better align its output with its sales. Nissan didn't provide a timeline for laying off employees or reducing its production capacity. The automaker said its operating profit plunged 85 percent in the third quarter, with the company earning a net loss of ¥9.3 billion ($60.1 million at today's exchange rate). Global sales were down for the company by 2.8 percent from July to September. While they didn't dip as far in the United States—down 0.2 percent—Nissan piled on the incentives to help dealers sell vehicles, costing the company ¥25.7 billion ($167.7 million). The automaker has taken drastic measures in the last few months to sell cars and align production with demand. It cut output of its best-selling Rogue in September, along with the Frontier, as its dealers dealt with bloated inventories. It's also asked dealers to sell cars at a loss, hurting their profitability. Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida is also taking a 50 percent pay cut as a form of accountability for the company's current struggles. The sale of a portion of its stake in Mitsubishi Motors would put about ¥68.6 billion ($448 million) back into its coffers, though Nissan plans to continue to rely on both of its Alliance partners, Mitsubishi and Renault. The company has many new and refreshed products coming that could help reverse the financial struggles, but it'll be a challenging road ahead. Automakers worldwide are struggling due to increasing competition, stagnating demand, and rising costs. https://www.motor1.com/news/740214/nissan-job-cuts-production/

Five things to know as COP29 kicks off in Azerbaijan BAKU, Azerbaijan — Conversations about money are never easy, and they will be especially difficult at this year’s United Nations climate gathering. Negotiators from around the world are kicking off the two-week, high-level summit in Baku, Azerbaijan today, known as COP29, with one key goal: agree on how much rich countries should pay poorer countries to fight climate change. Talks leading up to the summit have been tense, as nations struggle with the powerful effects of a warming planet and continued reliance on fossil fuels amid geopolitical tensions and cash-strapped budgets. Failure to come to an agreement — a prospect one COP29 negotiator did not rule out due to the sensitive nature of the discussions already marred by a lack of trust — risks fracturing an already tenuous sense of unity among nations and could hamper global efforts for more ambitious emissions-cutting plans. We break down the five key things to know as COP29 gets underway. Show us the money The success of this year’s COP hinges on whether countries can agree on a new financial assistance goal. In 2009, wealthy countries agreed to give $100 billion annually by 2020 to help low- and middle-income countries cut emissions, build green economies and increase resilience to climate change. Rich countries finally achieved that goal in 2022, two years late. The goal is set to expire in 2025, setting the stage for a new target. Expectations are hovering in the trillions of dollars, a huge jump from the previous deal, reflecting both the increasing costs of the energy transition in some regions of the world and the worsening effects of climate change. A major U.N.-backed report last year put climate-finance needs for developing countries, excluding China, at $2.4 trillion a year. Developing nations would need to raise about $1.4 trillion through domestic measures. About $1 trillion — the number analysts are eyeing — would come from international assistance, through a mix of public and private financing. Negotiators could also agree to start lower, in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and gradually increase funding. To put it in perspective: $1 trillion is about a fifth of what the U.S. federal government spent in fiscal year 2024; the world spent $7 trillion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2022. “We’re not wedded to the number of a trillion,” said Rob Moore, associate director at environmental think tank E3G, who previously led international climate finance negotiations for the British government. “What’s really important is that there’s a pathway.” Numbers only tell part of the story Besides the topline climate finance target, experts say it’s crucial to look at how the money gets distributed. In other words, “how much” should not overshadow the “how.” Most of the funds awarded under the expiring goal came in the form of loans, burdening developing countries with debt and potentially limiting their ability to invest in the kinds of climate programs the money is meant to target. Low-income countries paid $59 billion to service their debts in 2022, more than twice the amount they received in climate support, according to an analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development. Unsurprisingly, developing countries want more funding in the form of grants, which experts say could reassure poorer countries they can see their climate ambitions through. A lot of attention has also focused on reforming the World Bank and other development banks so they can allocate more cash toward climate action. Experts will also be watching the Group of 20 (G20) Leaders’ Summit in Brazil, which coincides with the second week of COP29, to see what signals leaders there give on climate finance ambitions. While promises matter, a good monitoring system is needed to track whether rich countries follow through. Experts worry the more nuanced and complex the final finance deal is, the more difficult it will be to scrutinize the actual distribution of funds. Expect this to be another key point underpinning the talks. Some officials involved in COP29 negotiations have also pressed for developing countries to be transparent about how they use the money they receive, a high-level Azerbaijani official recently told Cipher. But poor administrative infrastructure and training in developing countries can make it difficult to achieve an acceptable level of accountability. What about China? With pressure to contribute more money, rich countries want to see the financial burden spread more widely. Enter China. The list of current contributors to the climate finance pot is based on a 1992 U.N. treaty that determined which countries qualify as “developed.” The European Union and the United States argue a lot has changed since then and carbon-intensive emerging economies like China should also pay up. China is not keen on contributing to the collective cash pot, preferring instead to give money on its own. China mobilized about 6% of the total climate funding to developing nations between 2013 and 2022, according to the World Resources Institute. Expect pressure on China to be a crucial backroom negotiating topic in Baku. United States shake-up COP29 is beginning just days after Americans voted in one of the most consequential U.S. elections in history — with major ramifications for climate action. The election of Donald Trump as the next U.S president is likely to loom over the talks. Trump previously pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and during his campaign he vowed to do so again. He also threatened to pull the country out of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which underpins the structure of global climate talks. It would take a year for a withdrawal request from the Paris Agreement to take effect and Trump won’t be sworn in until January. But his victory will reverberate into the dynamics of the COP negotiations and could have ripple effects on other countries’ future ambitions. Reality check While countries work toward a deal on climate finance, remember their promise from last year’s COP in Dubai hasn’t led to much (yet anyway). Amid great fanfare, international leaders made a landmark promise in 2023 to transition the world away from fossil fuels. It was seen as a breakthrough. But even though global clean energy use and investments are surging, only a fraction of that growth is happening in developing countries. And with electricity demand also rising quickly, fossil fuels are expected to remain dominant for years. Global greenhouse gas emissions, the bulk of which are carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, rose by 1.3% in 2023, putting the world on track for 3.1 degrees Celsius of warming before the end of the century, according to a key U.N. report published in October. Carbon dioxide emissions are expected to increase by 0.6% this year. That stark reality is likely to be a factor even when negotiators gather again in Brazil for the next COP, in November 2025. https://www.ciphernews.com/articles/five-things-to-know-as-cop29-kicks-off-in-azerbaijan/