cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/52852111

COP30 in Belém may well be remembered as the moment that the world accepted the leading role of China in addressing humanity’s most important challenge.

but now the E.U. is beset by internal problems. Its primary industrial economy, Germany, is suffering from Chinese competition, and with the rise of right-wing parties, resistance has emerged to the ambitious climate policies of the European Commission. One symptom of these internal troubles was the E.U.’s embarrassing failure to agree its own mitigation targets before the informal deadline of September 30.

The United States, meanwhile, is trying to force its partner countries to buy more U.S. oil and gas.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/52852111

COP30 in Belém may well be remembered as the moment that the world accepted the leading role of China in addressing humanity’s most important challenge.

but now the E.U. is beset by internal problems. Its primary industrial economy, Germany, is suffering from Chinese competition, and with the rise of right-wing parties, resistance has emerged to the ambitious climate policies of the European Commission. One symptom of these internal troubles was the E.U.’s embarrassing failure to agree its own mitigation targets before the informal deadline of September 30.

The United States, meanwhile, is trying to force its partner countries to buy more U.S. oil and gas.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/38830374

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economist article

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/52851375

Norway has suspended its ethical investing rules to avoid its $2.1 trillion (€1.8 trillion) oil fund being forced to sell out of Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet due to their work for the Israeli government, according to its influential finance minister.

Norway has suspended its ethical investing rules to avoid its $2.1 trillion (€1.8 trillion) oil fund being forced to sell out of Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet due to their work for the Israeli government, according to its influential finance minister.

This paper examines the impact of the UK's decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) in 2016. Using almost a decade of data since the referendum, we combine simulations based on macro data with estimates derived from micro data collected through our Decision Maker Panel survey. These estimates suggest that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, with the impact accumulating gradually over time. We estimate that investment was reduced by between 12% and 18%, employment by 3% to 4% and productivity by 3% to 4%. These large negative impacts reflect a combination of elevated uncertainty, reduced demand, diverted management time, and increased misallocation of resources from a protracted Brexit process. Comparing these with contemporary forecasts – providing a rare macro example to complement the burgeoning micro-literature of social science predictions – shows that these forecasts were accurate over a 5-year horizon, but they underestimated the impact over a decade.

The unusual creature lurks more than two miles (3.2km) deep in a trench in the Southern Ocean.

For The Gambia, the stakes of fishing are high. The river Gambia’s nutrient-rich waters, which empty into the Atlantic, have made the former British colony a prime fishing ground. But that abundance has also turned the country into one of Africa’s hotspots for illegal fishing. For years, NGOs and international agencies have called attention to the problem. But vested interests run deep, and the state has struggled to defend its marine resources against the twin pressures of foreign fleets and local corruption.

“These trawlers are a menace. Incidents happen every single day, yet the foreign vessels are never held accountable”, says Omar Gaye, of the Gambian Artisanal Fishermen’s Association. As a fisher himself, he knows the risks firsthand. He had to file a complaint after a trawler from the Majilac fleet tore through his nets one night, leaving them in shreds.

National shipping records confirm that Majilac Fishing Company, which runs the fleet, is controlled by a mix of Chinese shareholders and Gambian nationals.

...

The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement (SFPA) [in The Gambia] remains in force between the European Union and The Gambia. Under the deal, the EU pays The Gambia €550,000 a year in exchange for access by European vessels to catch-limited quotas of high-value species such as tuna and cod. Half of that sum is supposed to be earmarked by the Gambian authorities for developing the fisheries sector. It is intended to pay for monitoring, policy work, and enforcement against illegal fishing.

In practice, however, several trawlers – including the [Chinese] Majilac 3 and Majilac 7 – along with other Chinese-flagged vessels, continue to operate illegally inside the nine-nautical-mile coastal zone reserved for artisanal canoes. At times, they edge to within just three miles of the shore. Satellite data shows that these same trawlers continue to dock at Hansen Seafood’s facilities to this day.

In response to questions for this investigation, [the Spanish multinational company] Congelados Maravilla reiterated that it stopped purchasing seafood from the [Chinese] Majilac trawlers a year ago. Still, the vessels continue to unload their catches at the company’s dock under earlier agreements. The firm insists that all fish landed at their dock is now bought by other wholesalers, and that not a single octopus or cuttlefish is currently purchased by the Spanish group.

...

The scale of the problem extends far beyond The Gambia’s shores. Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing accounts for one-fifth of global fish catches, according to the Financial Transparency Coalition. Its market value is estimated at between $10 billion and $23.5 billion annually. West Africa alone is believed to represent roughly 40 percent of this total. The result is a loss of more than $9 billion for countries in the region, in addition to shrinking biodiversity and the depletion of a vital source of protein for West Africans.

...

The depletion of West Africa’s fish stocks is pushing the region’s coastal dwellers to seek livelihoods elsewhere. It is fueling migration toward the European Union, most notably the perilous route to the Canary Islands.

...

Taking acetaminophen during pregnancy is not clearly linked to autism or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children, a new review finds.

The topic has been in the headlines since September when Donald Trump warned that acetaminophen use in pregnancy was "associated with a very increased risk of autism" and the president advised pregnant women, "Don't take Tylenol."

At the time, federal officials cited an August 2025 meta-analysis from researchers at Mt. Sinai, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Heath, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and UMass Lowell that found prenatal exposure to acetaminophen may be associated with an increase in rates of neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and ADHD, in children.

Leaked emails show Epstein working on a wire transfer to Ehud Barak's top aide, Yoni Koren, who regularly stayed at his mansion.

From Drop Site News via This RSS Feed.

Tesla’s share of China’s EV market shrank to just 3.2% in October, down sharply from 8.7% the previous month and its lowest in more than three years.

Tesla’s poor performance in the world’s largest auto market follows dismal sales last month in European countries such as Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the Nordics, in the latest sign that it continues to struggle on the continent.

Country is one of world’s most repressive and corrupt, raising concerns over rights abuses of those deported

The United States has sent $7.5m to the government of Equatorial Guinea, one of the world’s most repressive and corrupt regimes, to accept noncitizen deportees from the US to the West African nation, according to a leading congressional Democrat, current and former state department officials and public government data.

The money sent to Equatorial Guinea is the first taken from a fund apportioned by Congress to address international refugee crises – and sometimes to facilitate the resettlement of refugees in the US – that has instead been repurposed under the Trump administration to hasten their deportation.

According to government data, the sum from the Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA) emergency fund was sent directly to the government of Equatorial Guinea, whose president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has been in power for the last 46 years, and who is accused along with his son, Nguema Obiang, the vice-president, of embezzling millions of dollars from the impoverished nation to fuel their lavish lifestyles.

LANDOVER, Md. (AP) — Donald Trump became the first sitting president in nearly a half-century at a regular-season NFL game, attending the Washington Commanders’ 44-22 loss to the visiting Detroit Lions on Sunday.

There were loud boos from some spectators in the stands when Trump was shown on the videoboard late in the first half — standing in a suite with House Speaker Mike Johnson — and again when the president was introduced by the stadium announcer at halftime.

The jeering continued while Trump read an oath for members of the military to recite as part of an on-field enlistment ceremony during the break in the game.

Non-paywalled/archived link

Europe needs to protect key industries from China and avoid becoming dependent on the Asian nation for rare earths and other critical raw materials, according to a French Minister for European affairs Benjamin Haddad..

With Europe under pressure on multiple fronts, including US trade tariffs and Russia’s war on Ukraine, the continent’s leaders should “give themselves the ability to defend their interests,” he said.

...

France has long advocated for a robust stance toward Beijing. During a summit last month, President Emmanuel Macron called on EU counterparts to consider using the bloc’s most powerful trade tool against China if they aren’t able to find a resolution to Beijing’s export controls on critical raw materials.

...

Macron said governments need to weigh using all options available, including the so-called anti-coercion instrument ... The mechanism, which has never been used, was designed primarily as a deterrent, and if needed, to respond to deliberate coercive actions from third countries that use trade measures as a means to pressure the EU or its members.

Those measures could include tariffs, new taxes on tech companies or targeted curbs on investments in the EU. They could also involve limiting access to certain parts of the common market or restricting Chinese firms from bidding for public contracts in Europe.

...

While Trumpian corruption is striking in frequency, scale, and just how routine it is starting to feel, this administration was the logical endpoint of the long-standing tradition of elite impunity. The second Trump administration is a striking monument to governmental misconduct, but the ground was broken long ago, with both parties laying the foundation. For the past half century, corporate and white-collar crime have gone largely unenforced. This was the result of both a widespread shift in views of governance (à la the Reagan Revolution) and a coordinated plan orchestrated to enable private wealth to hijack our democracy, as David Sirota and Jared Jacang Maher documented in their new book “Master Plan,” building on a podcast of the same name.

Trump himself is a byproduct of the wealthy being empowered to violate the law. Seemingly his entire pre-government career was predicated on getting away with gaming bankruptcy law, committing widespread financial fraud, and racial discrimination. Now, in government, he is employing the “blitzscaling” model pioneered by firms like Uber to break the law faster than anyone can keep up with.

The Great Recession was a turning point; the extent of corporate lawbreaking in the financial sector was laid bare. And, famously, hardly anyone ever went to jail. Obama-era regulators, in many ways the acme of our last half-century of the hands-off approach to ruling-class misconduct, earned rebuke and scorn as “the chickenshit club,” afraid to square up against the powerful, if not overtly committed to serve elite interests. Since 2008, it has only become more apparent that the wealthy play by an entirely different set of rules.