(NewsNation) — The Supreme Court is keeping the pandemic-era limits on immigration in place indefinitely, dashing hopes of immigration advocates who had been anticipating their end this week.

In a ruling Tuesday, the Supreme Court extended a temporary stay that Chief Justice John Roberts issued last week.

The limits were put in place under then-President Donald Trump at the beginning of the pandemic. Under the restrictions, officials have expelled asylum-seekers inside the United States 2.5 million times and turned away most people who requested asylum at the border on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The restrictions are often referred to as Title 42 in reference to a 1944 public health law.

Immigration advocates sued to end the use of Title 42. They said the policy goes against American and international obligations to people fleeing to the U.S. to escape persecution. They’ve also argued that the policy is outdated as coronavirus treatments have improved.

The Supreme Court’s decision comes as thousands of migrants have gathered on the Mexican side of the border, filling shelters and worrying advocates who are scrambling to figure out how to care for them

The structure that was meant to be a barrier to the U.S. has, for many migrants, become a finish line.

On the U.S. side of the nation’s southwest border, officials are tasked with processing and transporting new arrivals while the line of hundreds of hopeful entrants forms each day.

The policy’s expiration has been hotly debated and is at the center of a legal battle that began when President Joe Biden’s administration sought to end the Trump-era policy in the spring.

Border officials raised concerns that lifting the policy would lead to an unmanageable increase of border crossings. Some migrants, however, say crossing this way was the last resort that followed failed attempts to enter the U.S. through other avenues.

Eugene, a migrant from Moldova, said Tuesday he was told the border was open. Eugene is 24 and has lived in the U.S. twice on a visa, but was recently denied this time around. Entering the U.S. this way wasn’t his first choice, but it’s the only one he has, he said.

“Last one,” Eugene said. “Last option.”

He’s seeking asylum after expressing support for the LGBT community in his native country, he said.

Having taken an Uber to the drop-off point where NewsNation crossed paths with him Tuesday, Eugene hopes to eventually reach Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

“They said, ‘Get out. Go walk,'” he said.

On Tuesday, Border Patrol agents in some areas said the time spent processing people arriving in the U.S. has kept officials from stopping smugglers operating on U.S. soil.

Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot says his authority is limited since it’s a federal issue.

The administration has said that if Title 42 were lifted, the government would rely on Title 8, which expels migrants who do not show a legal basis to remain in the country.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Russia retaliated on Tuesday against a price cap on its oil imposed by Western countries, while its forces were involved in heavy fighting around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

Moscow will ban oil sales to countries that abide by the price cap that was imposed on Dec. 5, President Vladimir Putin decreed.

The price cap, unseen even in the times of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union, is aimed at crippling Moscow’s military efforts in Ukraine – without upsetting markets by actually blocking Russian supply.

Under the cap, oil traders who want to retain access to Western financing for such crucial aspects of global shipping as insurance must promise not to pay above $60 per barrel for Russian seaborne oil.

That is close to the current price for Russian oil, but far below the prices at which Russia was able to sell it for much of the past year, when windfall energy profits helped Moscow offset the impact of financial sanctions.

The decree from Putin, published on a government portal and the Kremlin website, was presented as a direct response to “actions that are unfriendly and contradictory to international law by the United States and foreign states and international organisations joining them”.

The Kremlin ban would halt crude oil sales to countries participating in the price cap from Feb. 1-July 1, 2023. A separate ban on refined oil products such as gasoline and diesel would take effect on a date to be set by the government. Putin would have authority to overrule the measures in special cases.

Russia is the world’s second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, and any actual disruption to its sales would have far-reaching consequences for global energy supplies.

On the ground in eastern and southern Ukraine, Russian forces again shelled and bombed towns and cities on Tuesday. After a number of dramatic Ukrainian gains in the autumn, the war has entered a slow, grinding phase as bitter winter weather has set in at the front.

The heaviest fighting has been around the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Russia has been trying for months to storm at huge cost in lives, and further north in the cities of Svatove and Kreminna, where Ukraine is trying to break Russian defensive lines.

In Bakhmut, home to 70,000 people before the war and now mostly a bomb-wracked ghost town, Reuters reporters saw fires burning in a large residential building, while debris littered the streets and most buildings had had their windows blown out.

“Our building is destroyed. There was a shop in our building, now it’s not there anymore,” said Oleksandr, 85, adding he was the only remaining resident there.

Nearby, 73-year-old Pilaheia said she had long got used to the “constant explosions”.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in an update: “Russia continues to initiate frequent small-scale assaults in these areas (of Bakhmut and Svatove), although little territory has changed hands.”

In Kherson, abandoned by Russian troops last month, Russian forces shelled the maternity wing of a hospital, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s deputy chief of staff, on Telegram. No one was hurt and the staff and patients had been moved to a shelter, Tymoshenko said.

Reuters was unable to immediately verify the reports.

The Kremlin’s military campaign had set out to subdue Ukraine within days of a February invasion, but its forces were defeated on the outskirts of Kyiv in the spring and forced to flee other areas in the autumn.

Putin has responded by summoning hundreds of thousands of reservists for the first time since World War Two to fight in his “special military operation”.

In the latest setback for Russia’s military, a suspected Ukrainian drone reached the main base for Russia’s long-range strategic bomber fleet, hundreds of kilometres inside Russian air space, on Monday. Moscow said it had shot the drone down but added at least three servicemen were killed.

It was the second time the base had been hit since the start of December, a sign that Russia has yet to plug the gap in its air defences that made the audacious attack possible.

Putin has repeatedly spoken of a desire for peace talks in comments in recent days. But his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov made clear Moscow still has a list of preconditions, including that Ukraine recognise Russia’s conquest by force of around a fifth of Ukrainian territory, which it says it has annexed.

Kyiv says it is winning the war and will never agree to relinquish land.

In a late night address on Tuesday, Zelenskiy said a meeting of the military command had “established the steps to be taken in the near future.”

“We will continue preparing the armed forces and Ukraine’s security for next year. This will be a decisive year. We understand the risks of winter. We understand what needs to be done in the spring,” he said.

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Kosovan Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla on Tuesday said Serbia, under the influence of Russia, was aiming to destabilise Kosovo by supporting the Serb minority in the north who have been blocking roads and protesting for almost three weeks.

Serbs in the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo erected new barricades on Tuesday, hours after Serbia said it had put its army on the highest combat alert following weeks of escalating tensions between Belgrade and Pristina.

“It is precisely Serbia, influenced by Russia, that has raised a state of military readiness and that is ordering the erection of new barricades, in order to justify and protect the criminal groups that terrorize… citizens of Serb ethnicity living in Kosovo,” Svecla said in a statement.

Serbia denies it is trying to destabilise its neighbour and says it just wants to protect its minority there. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday, Serbia would “continue to fight for peace and seek compromise solutions.”

Belgrade had said late on Monday that in light of the latest events in the region and its belief that Kosovo was preparing to attack Serbs and forcefully remove the barricades, it had ordered its army and police to be put on the highest alert.

Since Dec. 10, Serbs in northern Kosovo have erected multiple roadblocks in and around Mitrovica and exchanged fire with police after the arrest of a former Serb policeman for allegedly assaulting serving police officers.

Albanian-majority Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 with the backing of the West, following a 1998-1999 war in which NATO intervened to protect ethnic Albanian citizens.

Kosovo is not a member of the United Nations and five EU states – Spain, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Cyprus – refuse to recognise Kosovo’s statehood.

Russia, Serbia’s historical ally, is blocking Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations.

Around 50,000 Serbs live in the northern part of Kosovo and refuse to recognise the Pristina government or the state. They see Belgrade as their capital.

Kosovo’s government said police had the capacity and readiness to act but were waiting for NATO’s KFOR Kosovo peace-keeping force to respond to their request to remove the barricades.

Vucic said talks with foreign diplomats were ongoing on how to resolve the situation.

In Mitrovica on Tuesday morning trucks were parked to block the road linking the Serb-majority part of the town to the Albanian-majority part.

The Serbs are demanding the release of the arrested officer and have other demands before they will remove the barricades.

Ethnic Serb mayors in northern Kosovan municipalities, along with local judges and some 600 police officers resigned last month in protest over a Kosovo government decision to replace Serbian-issued car license plates with ones issued by Pristina.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led European Union states to devote more energy to improving relations with the six Balkan countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, despite continuing reluctance to enlarge the EU further.

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An Arizona judge on Tuesday rejected Democratic Governor-elect Katie Hobbs’s request to sanction defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake over her failed effort to overturn the state’s election results.

Lake had filed a lawsuit alleging voter fraud and challenging the counting and certification of the November electoral contest in a bid to be declared the winner despite a lack of evidence. The suit was rejected by the Superior Court in Maricopa County on Saturday.

On Monday, Hobbs and Maricopa County deputy attorney asked the court to sanction Lake and her attorneys, alleging that Lake had filed a “groundless” lawsuit for a “frivolous pursuit.”

Sanctions are usually in the form of a financial penalty imposed by a judge for violation of a court rule or misconduct. Hobbs had asked the court to award her over $600,000 to compensate for fees and expenses accrued in defending against Lake’s lawsuit.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson said in Tuesday’s ruling that Lake’s claims in the lawsuit were not groundless.

“The fact that plaintiff (Lake) failed to meet the burden of clear and convincing evidence … does not equate to a finding that her claims were, or were not, groundless and presented in bad faith,” Thomson wrote in the judgment.

The lawsuit had targeted Hobbs, who is currently Arizona’s secretary of state and becomes governor next week, along with top officials in Maricopa County. Lake’s suit claimed “hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots infected the election” in Maricopa, the state’s most populous county.

Lake, a former television news anchor, was one of the most high-profile Republican candidates in the midterm elections to embrace former Republican President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in 2020.

She lost the governor’s race to Hobbs but refused to concede and continued making unconfirmed claims about election improprieties on her Twitter feed.

Lake was one of the most prominent of the Trump-aligned Republican candidates who lost battleground state races in the midterm elections.

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Tesla’s Wireless Charging Platform is $300. The company says shipping will begin in February.

A screenshot of the charging mat from Tesla’s website.

• Tesla announced pre-orders were open for a $300 wireless charging mat. 
• The mat can charge up to three devices simultaneously.
• In 2019, Apple canceled AirPower, its own version of a wireless charging mat.

Tesla has unveiled the Wireless Charging Platform, a $300 mat that can be used to charge up to three devices simultaneously. The mat can provide up to 15W of charging power per Qi-enabled wireless device, like an iPhone, Android, or pair of AirPods.

According to Tesla’s website, pre-orders for the mat are now open, and shipping will begin in February 2023. 

A charging mat could seem like a tangential offering from Tesla, but it’s likely part of the company’s larger product strategy, which in the past has included products as varied as tequila and a phone charger. The design of the mat is inspired by Tesla’s forthcoming Cybertruck, Tesla said. 

Back in 2019, Apple scrapped plans for a similar product called AirPower because Apple said it failed to meet the company’s standards.

Like Tesla’s charging mat, AirPower was designed to charge three products at once— including wearables, which aren’t usually compatible with Qi, an inductive method for wireless charging. Tesla’s Wireless Charging Platform isn’t compatible with the Apple Watch, for instance, the Verge reported.

Apple’s AirPower mat was scrapped in 2019.

Apple

Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, said in a statement to Insider in 2019: “We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward.”

While Apple has delayed the release of products that aren’t up to its standards, a full-on cancellation is a rare occurrence in its history.

At the time, Insider reported that well-connected Apple blogger John Gruber speculated that the device’s multi-coil design was becoming “too hot.” TechCrunch reported that the coils were likely overheating because they were too close to one another and “required very, very cautious power management.”

Tesla’s mat features a whopping 30 Qi charging coils engineered by FreePower, which produced the technology behind another AirPower competitor back in 2020.  

Meanwhile, the closest thing Apple has released to its original vision is the MagSafe charger. It uses magnets to charge phones, from the iPhone 12 and up.

Amazon plastic packaging was reportedly found in dump sites in India after making its way there from North America.

Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

• Amazon delivery packages from North America were found in illegal dump sites and mills in India.
• Plastic waste ends up in dump sites that emit vile odors and can pollute the air, Bloomberg reports.
• These findings come after Amazon made commitments to increase the recyclability of its shipping.

Amazon consumers in the US and Canada may think that their Amazon delivery packaging will find a second life once they recycle it. But a Bloomberg investigation found that many of these plastic shipping envelopes, alongside other consumer packaging, are now ubiquitous at six illegal dump sites in the remote town of Muzaffarnagar, India — thousands of miles away from where they were discarded.

It’s not necessarily the fault of Amazon: Many consumers wrongly assume that packages labeled recyclable or featuring the three-arrow recycle logo are safe for recycling everywhere, but the majority of American recyclers can’t process soft plastics, Bloomberg reported.

As a result, plastic, like the Amazon envelopes, often gets mixed into the paper waste that is shipped to countries with lax enforcement of disposal rules, which is how the plastic can end up polluting someone’s backyard on the other side of the world, per Bloomberg. 

Laurie Smyla, a former recycling coordinator with a degree in environmental science who is based in Sloatsburg, New York, recycled a plastic Amazon envelope that made its way to a three-acre plastic dump site in India just a few hundred feet away from the home of Bobinder Kumar and his family, Bloomberg found. 

“I feel betrayed as a consumer,” Smyla told Bloomberg. “That recycling symbol — it’s all a marketing feel-good message and very deceptive. It should not be harming other people in other parts of the world.”

Kumar said that the site is flooded with Amazon’s blue-and-white shipping envelopes and that the packaging emits a vile odor.

“We can’t escape the smell of the trash, even in our home,” Kumar told Bloomberg. “It’s very terrible to live close to the site, but what can we do?”

Amazon delivery packaging was also found mixed in with materials processed at sugar cane and paper mills in Muzaffarnagar, according to Bloomberg. Burning plastic, like the packaging, releases toxic chemicals like mercury and dioxins into the atmosphere, which can cause harm to humans, agriculture, and animals.

Residents of Muzaffarnagar told Bloomberg that they know when plastic is burnt while they are asleep because they wake up to find sheets of ash covering their terraces and crops. 

Muzaffarnagar’s chief medical officer said that air pollution and the burning of plastic are linked to a 30% uptick in respiratory problems such as asthma and bronchitis among the town’s residents, Bloomberg reported. 

Often times, waste is transferred from wealthy countries to less wealthy ones with the help of brokers who charge a fee to throw away trash or buy the trash at a cheap rate to sell across borders, Bloomberg reported. These brokers have alleged links to criminal gangs and fraudsters.

Bloomberg’s findings come three years after the Indian government lifted its ban on importing plastic waste due to the country’s waste shortage, the India Times reported.

The findings pose a challenge to Amazon’s sustainability commitments to increase the recyclability of its delivery packages and to reduce its waste. Last year, the company generated 709 million pounds of plastic packaging waste, according to a report by international environmental group Oceana, and it used 97,222 metric tons of single-use plastic across Amazon-owned and operated global fulfillment centers, the company said.

In 2021, Amazon announced programs to sell returned items as “used” and for vendors to sell their overstocked inventory in bulk as part of its pledge to prevent millions of its products from entering the landfill.

While Amazon didn’t respond to Insider’s request for comment on its packaging being found in Muzaffarnagar, a company spokesperson told Insider in a statement that it “is committed to minimizing waste and helping our customers recycle their packaging.”

“Since 2015, we have invested in materials, processes, and technologies that have reduced per-shipment packaging weight by 38% and eliminated over 1.5 million tons of packaging material,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also referred Insider to Amazon Second Chance, a guide for customers to understand how to recycle their Amazon packaging. 

Here is the full report from Bloomberg. 

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

• US stocks finished mixed to begin the final week of trading for 2022 as the so-called Santa Claus rally failed to materialize.
• The weakness came despite fresh signs that China is further shedding its zero-COVID policies.
• Tesla stock fell as the EV maker extended the slowdown of its Shanghai factory through January, according to Reuters.

US stocks finished mixed to begin the final week of trading for 2022 as the so-called Santa Claus rally that typically closes out each year failed to materialize.

The weakness came despite fresh signs that China is further shedding its zero-COVID policies. Beijing announced Monday that starting on January 8, inbound travellers will no longer face quarantine requirements. Still, China faces a massive spike in infections.  

Russian President Vladimir Putin banned oil sales to countries participating the West’s price cap, after the Kremlin’s finance minister said it is hurting Moscow’s export revenue. 

Here’s where US indexes stood as the market closed at 4 p.m. on Tuesday: 

• S&P 500: 3,829.25, down 0.4%
• Dow Jones Industrial Average: 33,241.56, up 0.1% (38 points)
• Nasdaq Composite: 10,353.23, down 1.4%

Here’s what else is going on: 

• The S&P 500 is coming off of three consecutive losing weeks, and the index’s 10 biggest losers this year have erased $1.6 trillion in market value.
• FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried bought Robinhood stock using hundreds of millions of dollars from his trading firm Alameda Research.
• FTX customers sent money to a fake electronics retailer with a website full of misspelled words that was key to funding SBF’s Alameda, NBC News reported.
• Elon Musk has lost $132 billion in 2022 after Tesla’s 68% crash, but that still makes him the world’s second richest person.
• Tesla stock fell as the EV maker extended the slowdown of its Shanghai factory through January, Reuters reported.

In commodities, bonds, and crypto: 

• Oil prices were mixed, with West Texas Intermediate essentially flat at $79.55 a barrel. Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose 0.51% to $84.35 a barrel.
• Gold rallied 1% to $1,821.50 per ounce.
• The 10-year yield jumped 10 basis points to 3.849%.
• Bitcoin dipped 0.94% to $16,679.

EV startup Canoo filed a 58-page lawsuit versus some of its former employees and their new company, Harbinger, alleging they stole intellectual property.

Canoo

• Electric vehicle maker Canoo is suing some of its former employees who launched a rival company.
• Canoo claims the employees used Canoo trade secrets and IP for their new startup, Harbinger.
• A Harbinger spokesperson told Insider the lawsuit’s claims are “meritless.”

Electric vehicle upstart Canoo is alleging some of its former executives only joined the firm in order to steal its trade secrets and launch a rival auto company.

In a 58-page lawsuit filed December 22 in the United States Central District Court of California, Canoo alleges several former employees stole intellectual property, violated trade secrets policies, breached employee separation agreements, and more in order to benefit their own, new EV startup, Harbinger. 

Harbinger, a Los Angeles-based EV-maker that launched in September, is led by a team of former Canoo, Faraday Future, and QuantumScape executives. They include CEO John Harris, CTO Phillip Weicker, COO Will Eberts, and VP of structures and chassis Alexi Charbonneau, all of whom are named in the suit. Harbinger is targeting a burgeoning commercial EV market and introduced its plan to go after the medium-duty, Class 4 through 7 segments this fall.

The suit also names Canoo’s former vice president of corporate legal, securities, and global strategy, Michael Fielkow (now Harbinger general counsel, secretary, and head of corporate development), along with several investors. Its 17 claims also include breach of confidentiality and fraud.

In the filing, Canoo claims Harbinger stole its EV technology, coined a “skateboard” — a flat platform underneath the body of an EV that includes its critical components like a battery and other parts — and is using that to develop its business model and form industry partnerships.

“This is a case of corporate espionage by a group of serial grifters who infiltrated Canoo to steal its intellectual property (including its confidential information and trade secrets) and human capital,” the filing states. Those executives “always intended to own and control their own EV company. And they were determined to do so without letting anything get in their way,” it reads.

The filing alleges “Weicker, Charbonneau, and Eberts misappropriated vast amounts of Canoo’s financial resources, business plans, human capital, trade secrets, and other intellectual property, and conspired with Harris (who was employed elsewhere) to form Harbinger using Canoo’s stolen intellectual property.”

A Canoo spokesperson told Insider in a statement Tuesday that, “As this lawsuit demonstrates, we take the protection of our IP seriously.”

“Harbinger and its co-founders have always operated with the utmost integrity and have never engaged in any actions that would give rise to this meritless lawsuit,” a Harbinger spokesperson told Insider in a statement. “While we cannot provide further comment at this time, we are confident in our position and will vigorously defend ourselves against any baseless allegations brought forth by Canoo.”

Canoo is also alleging Harbinger strategically pulled from Canoo’s workforce.  

“This is not a case where a couple of employees left a company to work for a competitor. This is far worse. Using Canoo’s confidential information and trade secrets related to Canoo’s employees, including their skills and training, Harbinger (through Eberts, Weicker, Charbonneau, and Harris) strategically recruited at least 33 of Canoo’s employees to join Harbinger, making up approximately 66% of Harbinger’s total workforce.”

Several former Canoo employees have announced plans to join Harbinger on LinkedIn in recent months.

Harbinger has been making a splash since its launch, announcing business agreements and several big-name hires, including former Tesla manufacturing VP Gilbert Passin as chief production officer.

Canoo started production on its flagship electric van in November. Canoo experienced several months of production challenges and changed its plan to manufacture vehicles multiple times this year. It first planned to produce a range of 3,000 to 6,000 vehicles, but later said it would target 15 vehicles by the end of 2022. The company is also running low on cash, its executives have noted in recent earnings calls.

In recent months, however, Canoo has landed deals with the US Army, NASA, Walmart, and has signed agreements with fleet-leasing provider Zeeba and work-van rental company Kingbee.

Do you have an option or tip to share? Contact this reporter at astjohn@insider.com or on Signal at 313-570-6709.