The promise of living in the here and now… (El País)

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In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

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Written in Spanish by José Andrés Rojo

El País

20 JAN 2023

Translation by Germán & Co

The weight of guilt for mistakes made and the helplessness of those who cannot find a job are notes of this era that Saul Bellow already captured in his short novel 'Carpe diem'.

Bad times. There is a war that is disrupting everything, inflation is high, the price of the shopping basket has risen alarmingly. There are many people without jobs, young people without great expectations, sometimes there is no way out of the hole. These complications are usually reduced to a few figures in the newspapers, the ones that show how the economy is doing, the number of new contracts or the number of unemployed, percentages of all kinds. Be that as it may, this dance of numbers does not look inward, little is known of the experience of each of those who are suffering the slaps of life. Let's take a guy in his early 40s, he's lost his job, and every morning he's already shaved at eight o'clock in the morning. He thinks that getting up early might help him in the arduous task of looking for a way out.

A typical day, from the moment he goes down to breakfast until the end of the afternoon, when this man bursts into an endless stream of tears at the funeral of a stranger: this is what Saul Bellow tells in a short story, Carpe diem. Literature is still a good instrument for peering into what is really going on inside people and, as Martin Amis says in his latest book, "novelists are hosts, people who open the door and invite you in". So let's jump right in and see what happened to this Tommy Wilhelm, who as a young man fell out with his family and went to Hollywood to try his luck. It seems he "happened to be stunningly handsome", so someone persuaded him that his future lay in the Mecca of cinema.

It didn't go well. The agent who dragged him in soon dumped him (he would later be accused of pimping, he had a network of hookers who set him up on the phone). And this is what happens. Deceit, crazy dreams, manipulation, cheating, bad decisions. In the end, many end up in a mess, the doors close, and the certainty that it is one's own fault prevails. And that is precisely what the figures do not show: the hell of settling accounts with one's past and good intentions. Tommy Wilhelm, for example, "thought he should, could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the simple, easy things in life". A psychologist he met at the hotel where he lived - a charlatan, according to his father - encouraged him to gamble his money on the stock market. He did. He gave him what he had left and signed a power of attorney for him to invest it in shares and fix his future.

Carpe diem is a short novel from a long time ago and takes place in circumstances that have nothing to do with the present. Saul Bellow simply opens the door and lets us see what is going on inside his protagonist: the desolation of feeling lost, the certainty that over time he has only made mistakes and, above all, the discovery that even those closest to him - his father - disown him as a stinker. Suddenly, someone talks to him about living in the here and now, about taking advantage of opportunities - "with all that money around, you don't want to play the Indian while others take advantage" - and he decides to take the plunge. It's just another story, one of many that shows the helplessness of not finding a job.

News round-up, Thursday, January 19, 2023

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

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Cooperate with ethical thinking -

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Shocking: This is what Chile would be like if climate change continues, according to A.I. (La Tercera)

“For what purpose do we exist, and why are we required? Is artificial intelligence already more advanced than us?”

— Germán & Co

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China Returns to Davos With Clear Message: We’re Open for Business

Emerging from coronavirus lockdown to a world changed by the war in Ukraine, China sought to convey reassurance about its economic health.

NYT by Mark Landler and Keith Bradsher

Jan. 17, 2023

DAVOS, Switzerland — China ventured back on to the global stage Tuesday, sending a delegation to the World Economic Forum to assure foreign investors that after three years in which the pandemic cut off their country from the world, life was back to normal.

But the Chinese faced a wary audience at the annual event, attesting to both the dramatically changed geopolitical landscape after Russia’s war on Ukraine, as well as two data points that highlighted a worrisome shift in China’s own fortunes.

Hours before a senior Chinese official, Liu He, spoke to this elite economic gathering in an Alpine ski resort, the government announced that China’s population shrank in 2022 for the first time in 61 years. A short time earlier, it confirmed that economic growth had slowed to 3 percent, well below the trend of the past decade.

Against that backdrop, Mr. Liu sought to reassure his audience that China was still a good place to do business. “If we work hard enough, we are confident that growth will most likely return to its normal trend, and the Chinese economy will make a significant improvement in 2023,” he said.

Mr. Liu, a well-traveled vice premier who is one of China’s most recognizable faces in the West, insisted that the Covid crisis was “steadying,” seven weeks after the government abruptly abandoned its policy of quarantines and lockdowns. China had passed the peak of infections, he said, and had sufficient hospital beds, doctors and nurses, and medicine to treat the millions who are sick.

He did not mention the 60,000 fatalities linked to the coronavirus since the lockdowns were lifted, a huge spike in the official death toll that China announced three days ago.

Onstage at the World Economic Forum

The annual gathering of world leaders takes place in Davos, Switzerland, from Jan. 16 to 20.

•  China’s Message: China ventured back on to the global stage at the World Economic Forum, sending a delegation to assure foreign investors about its economic health after three years of pandemic isolation.

•  A New Buzzword: So many global troubles have arisen in recent months that the word “polycrisis” is everywhere in Davos — even in the organization’s annual report.

• Going Nuclear: The filmmaker Oliver Stone, who has a history of jabbing the political, business and social elite with controversial projects, received a warm reception in Switzerland for a film promoting nuclear power.

Mr. Liu’s mild words and modest tone were in stark contrast to those of his boss, President Xi Jinping, who came to Davos in 2017 to claim the mantle of global economic leadership in a world shaken up by the election of Donald J. Trump in the United States and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

Since then, the United States and Europe have united to support Ukraine against Russia, leaving the Russians isolated with the Chinese among their few friends. Russia’s revanchist campaign has raised questions among Europeans about whether China might have similar designs on Taiwan, and escalated security concerns among the world’s democracies.

Mr. Liu steered clear of political issues like the war in Ukraine or China’s tensions with the Biden administration. But he did say, “We have to abandon the Cold War mentality,” echoing a frequent Chinese criticism of the United States for attempting to contain China’s influence around the world.

But it is China’s demographics and economic growth that are raising the biggest questions among businesspeople. The decline in population lays bare the country’s falling birthrate, a trend that experts said was exacerbated by the pandemic and will threaten its growth over the long term. The 3 percent growth rate, the second weakest since 1976, reflects the stifling effect of the government’s Covid policy.

“The Chinese are worried, and they should be,” said Evan S. Medeiros, a professor of Asia studies at Georgetown University. “The entire international business community is way more negative about China over the long-term. A lot of people are asking, ‘Have we reached peak China?’”

Professor Medeiros, who served as a China adviser in the Obama administration, said, “For the past 20 years, China has benefited from both geoeconomic gravity and geopolitical momentum, but in the last year it has rapidly lost both.”

The signposts of China’s economic weakness are everywhere: the government announced on Friday that exports fell 9.9 percent in December relative to a year earlier.

“China has an export slowdown, construction is in crisis, and the local governments are running out of money,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University. “China needs the world: to boost its economy, to accompany the return to more normalcy.”

Mr. Liu laid out a familiar set of economic policies, from upholding the rule of law to pursuing “innovation-driven development.” He insisted that China was still attractive to foreign investors, who he said were integral to China’s plan to achieve the government’s goal of “common prosperity.”

“China’s national reality dictates that opening up to the world is a must, not an expediency,” Mr. Liu said. “We must open up wider and make it work better. We oppose unilateralism and protectionism.”

But China’s delegation was a reminder of how the government has sidelined some of its own best-known entrepreneurs as it has reined in powerful technology companies. Jack Ma, a co-founder of the Alibaba Group, used to be one of the biggest celebrities at the World Economic Forum, holding court in a chalet on the outskirts of Davos. Now shunted out of power, Mr. Ma is absent from Davos.

Instead, China sent less well-known executives from Ant Group, an affiliate of the Alibaba Group, as well as officials from China Energy Group and China Petrochemical Group. Unlike other countries, notably India and Saudi Arabia, which plastered buildings in Davos with advertisements for foreign investment, China has been low-key, holding meetings at the posh Belvedere Hotel.

After his speech, Mr. Liu, who has a command of English and holds a graduate degree from Harvard, met privately with business executives. Some expected him to be more candid in that session about the challenges China has faced.

Mr. Liu did not meet top American officials in Davos, though he will meet Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in Zurich on Wednesday. Martin J. Walsh, the labor secretary who is at the conference, said he welcomed China’s return. “China’s in the world economy,” he said. “We need to engage with them.”

Though Mr. Liu, 70, has a significant international profile — having led trade negotiations with the Trump administration — China experts noted that he is not in Mr. Xi’s innermost circle. He is also no longer a member of the Chinese government’s ruling Politburo, though analysts said he retained the trust of Mr. Xi.

When he spoke at Davos in 2018, Mr. Liu’s speech was among the best attended of the conference. This year, however, about a quarter of the hall emptied before Mr. Liu spoke, after having been packed for a speech by Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.

The difference in crowd sizes reflected the reshuffled priorities of the West, now focused on exhibiting unity against Russian aggression.

Ms. von der Leyen, who celebrated that solidarity in her remarks, did not exactly warm up the audience for Mr. Liu. She accused the Chinese government, in its drive to dominate the clean-energy industries of the future, of unfairly subsidizing its companies at the expense of Europe and the United States.

“Climate change needs a global approach,” she said in a chiding tone, “but it needs to be a fair approach.”

Mark Landler reported from Davos, Switzerland and Keith Bradsher from Beijing.

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Sweden pledges to send Archer artillery to Ukraine

Sweden's announcement comes a day before the US convenes a meeting of around 50 countries – including all 30 members of the NATO alliance – in Germany to discuss military aid to Ukraine.

Le Monde with AFP

Published on January 19, 2023

Sweden on Thursday, January 19, pledged to send its Archer artillery system, a modern mobile howitzer requested by Kyiv for months, to Ukraine along with armored vehicles and anti-tank missiles.

Speaking at a press conference, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said his government had agreed on a three-part military support package for Ukraine, including "the first decision on starting deliveries of the artillery system Archer to Ukraine."

Sweden, which has broken with its doctrine of not delivering weapons to a country at war, will also send 50 CV-90 armored vehicles and NLAW portable anti-tank missiles, the government said.

Every morning, a selection of articles from Le Monde In English straight to your inbox

"Military support is decisive," Kristersson said, as "it can change who retakes the initiative this winter" on the front in Ukraine.

The domestically developed Archer artillery system is composed of a fully-automated howitzer mounted on an all-terrain vehicle, which allows the gun to be remotely operated by the crew sitting in the armored cab.

Thursday's decision meant the Swedish Armed Forces would be given the task to "make the preparations to begin delivery of the artillery system Archer to Ukraine."

Defence Minister Pal Jonson said the government had also asked the armed forces to come back with a recommendation on how many of the Archers currently in storage could be sent.

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Why progressives must push for a transformation of the media

The left goes on dancing to the media’s tune

The media insists politicians and campaigners become entertainers to connect with the public. The left has too willingly bought into a game it can’t win. A complete media strategy reset is long overdue.

by Serge Halimi & Pierre Rimbert 

Le Monde Diplomatique

Student activist Louis Boyard got noticed for his combative attitude and became a regular guest on the crowd-pleasing television show Touche pas à mon poste (‘Don’t touch my TV’, a play on Don’t Touch my Buddy, a French antiracist NGO created in 1994 to fight the National Front). His new fame helped him get selected as a candidate for the leftwing La France Insoumise (LFI, Unsubmissive France) and he won a seat in parliament. When Boyard returned as a guest on the show in November, the host, television personality Cyril Hanouna, called him ‘a piece of shit,’ a ‘loser’ and a ‘complete moron’ for daring to criticise Vincent Bolloré, the channel’s billionaire owner. It’s hard to imagine a more telling illustration of the balance of power between politics and the media.

The scandal boosted the show’s ratings and guests in subsequent weeks kept up the attacks on the ungrateful ‘kid’ who, they claimed, had ‘betrayed his friend’. ‘Frankly, [Boyard] showed a lack of respect,’ one guest even dared say. The show had been praised by several LFI leaders keen to reach its large audience of young, working-class viewers. ‘We go wherever we can take our message’, LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon explained after the incident. But at what cost?

The relationship that political organisations, campaign groups and trade unions have with the media, which has a monopoly on how public life is presented, contains an essential contradiction: rarely has the entanglement of the press and money been so pronounced, yet never has the radical left’s critique of the media seemed so opportunistic. Any organisation that challenges the established order knows that the press and power are linked. ‘Journalists must remember they aren’t mere observers, but part of the elite whose role is also to protect the country from chaos,’ warned two academic opponents of social movements (1). Nor are protesters unaware of the unpopularity of those who produce media content. Yet they accept, to varying degrees, the media’s demands, whether it’s to help fill the schedules of 24-hour news channels or appear as regulars on entertainment shows. But is it possible to use the mainstream media without merely dancing to their tune? What compromises are inevitable if you decide to work with the media?

Political theatre

Dealing with the media means first endorsing the idea that the big media companies are society’s distributors of speech: it’s journalists who popularise some movements, ignore others, and select spokespeople. For a fledging movement, the stakes are huge because it’s about breaking through the glass partition to join the public debate. However, the press prioritises organisations that can offer some sort of media performance: coming across as young, funny, punchy or divisive; planning actions where the shock value of the images compensates for the small number of participants — demonstrating naked, dressing up, flinging soup on a painting. The slogans that are part of this political theatre sound more like advertising jingles or newspaper headlines — tongue-in-cheek, offbeat, witty — than slogans that express demands, which bore journalists.

This kind of action sometimes pays off: ACT UP, the association which campaigned to end the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, achieved notable results. More recently, environmental activists’ stunts have highlighted the fight against global warming. But not all protests can be turned into stunts. Quirkier forms of action are generally the work of the educated urban middle class. In 2004 the Parisian press instinctively supported striking academics; Le Monde put them on its front page six times (3-11 March). Two months later, when striking energy sector workers at EDF caused power cuts, a front-page cartoon in the same paper compared them to American torturers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (9 June 2004). In both strikes, however, the aim was to protect a public service.

Students planned symbolic events to attract the media spotlight ... The media helped recruit new members and backers who expected to find there what they saw on television or read in the papers ... They smoked dope, read less, and went for brokeTodd Gitlin

To get media attention, therefore, ordinary employees in ordinary companies have done extraordinary things, such as threaten to blow up their factory, as Cellatex workers did in the Ardennes in 2000 and staff at GMS in the Creuse in 2017; hold company directors hostage; or ransack local government offices. Or storm the Champs-Élysées, as the Gilets Jaunes did in 2018. But the risks differ: academics who protested by lying down on the pavement in white coats just risked catching a cold, while nearly 2,300 Gilets Jaunes were convicted and 400 imprisoned; some suffered life-changing injuries.

The selective nature of media attention can alter a movement’s behaviour: actions with an immediate media payoff are more likely to go ahead, sometimes regardless of whether the presence of cameras helps to achieve long-term political goals. It’s easier to pull off a mention on the TV news than it is to get employers or the government to capitulate. When appearing in the papers becomes an end in itself, an organisation’s strategy is reduced to a series of stunts designed to attract journalists. A French activist’s handbook, Guerilla Kit (La Découverte, 2008), explained that journalists ‘are busy people. You have to make their work easier. The more boxes you can tick in the following list, the likelier your action is to get into the media.’ The list included novelty, drama, conflict, disruption, celebrities, surprise, scandal and controversy.

Not only does media strategy change a movement’s direction, it can also change its composition. Recalling his experience in 1960s America with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), sociologist Todd Gitlin observed that the organisation ‘began to organise symbolic events deliberately to attract the media spotlight ... The media helped recruit into SDS new members and backers who expected to find there what they saw on television or read in the papers ... They smoked dope, they had read less, they went for broke’ (2). Sixty years later, an ‘exclusive investigation’ into the campaign against a new airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes (M6, 29 March 2015) echoed Gitlin’s thoughts. Entitled ‘Environmentalists, extremists or marginals: who are these nimbies who defy the state?’, the report sought out eccentric contributors, including a man who boasted he drank petrol and another who wielded a hatchet...

Obsessed with novelty

The way a journalistic world obsessed with novelty works poses a challenge for those who engage in the media competition: how to keep up the pace long-term? From feminist movements in the 1970s to environmental activists who stage actions in museums, each new campaign, with its own methods and tools, can quickly attract the media spotlight, but become passé just as quickly. In 2011 the celebration of Twitter and Facebook activism sometimes gave the impression that Arab revolts were happening online rather than on the streets; 12 years later, activist use of social media is part of the standard playbook. Dozens of collectives that organised spectacular actions to promote progressive causes have been adored, then neglected, and finally buried by the media.

‘When an editor rings,’ said a representative of the now unfashionable association Agir Ensemble Contre le Chômage (AC!, an organisation which campaigns on behalf of the unemployed), ‘it’s not to ask our opinion on something fundamental, but to find “typical” unemployed people: “We’re looking for someone out of work between such and such an age.” It’s social casting. They aren’t interested in what we do.’ Maurad Rabhi, who was a CGT delegate during the Cellatex dispute in 2000, formed the same view: ‘During the conflict, you’re in the limelight, you represent a cause. And then it’s all gone. When the spotlight’s turned off, you’re back in the shadows, on your own’ (3).

Every time there's a major strike, the reporting's the same. With refuse collectors, it's rubbish piling up in the streets. With postal workers, it's the absence of mail. With railway workers, it's the lack of trains. This shows that these are really useful jobs. That should make it possible for us to discuss the need to pay them properlyPhilippe Poutou.

The inherent risk in competing for media attention is all too obvious: if an organisation’s visibility depends above all on the airtime it gets from the mainstream media, they also have the power to make it invisible. After Olivier Besancenot, then spokesperson for the LCR (the forerunner of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA)), appeared on Philippe Bouvard’s Grosses Têtes comedy show, the organisation’s founder, Alain Krivine, said, ‘Even if Olivier doesn’t like doing it, it’s best not to turn down these programmes, otherwise we’ll disappear.’ Go on a comedy show or disappear: it’s hardly an appealing choice. ‘We’ve gone out of fashion,’ Subcomandante Marcos admitted in 2007, looking back on 13 years of insurrection in Chiapas (Mexico). ‘If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing, except perhaps be less present on the media scene’ (4).

Because getting the media’s attention isn’t enough. Maintaining their goodwill means not crossing the ‘yellow lines’ that journalists set in advance. According to journalists, overstepping them (by, for example, picketing, interrupting exams, cancelling festivals, blocking motorways or occupying buildings) means sacrificing public support. And then journalists will turn on protesters and call them extremists, hostage-takers, populists and wreckers of the economy. Thereafter, the media will focus on a perennial question: ‘Do you condemn violent protests?’

Challenging the law

But almost no social movement would have succeeded, even in a democracy, without at some point challenging the legitimacy of the law — not the trade union struggle, or the US civil rights movement, or the fight to legalise abortion, or the LGBT associations’ fight for equal rights. This fact leaves powerful journalists indifferent; their knowledge of history is often minimal. The social order is a given. The media is not designed to offer dissenters a platform to explain why they want to change the world: its aim is to produce journalist-arbitrated ‘debate’, soundbites to feed the 24-hour news channels or, better still, Twitterstorms.

Since the early 1960s, many movements — often outside France — have been interested in the question of their relationship with the media, without the knowledge of what’s been learnt necessarily being passed on. Speaking of the civil rights struggle in the US, a close friend of Martin Luther King, J Hunter O’Dell, explained, ‘It was disastrous for us to rely primarily upon these corporate forms of mass communication to get our message and analysis out to the public. In the end, it means a new kind of addiction to media rather than being in charge of our own agenda and relying on mass support as our guarantee that ultimately the news-covering apparatus must give recognition to our authority’ (5). Forgetting this conclusion, intentionally or not, gives a few personalities the chance to experience first the thrill of media fame, and then its backlash.

Just as they select protest movements, journalists choose the spokespeople who best fit their preconceptions and most willingly comply with their demands. Participants, obliged to fit the mould, have learned to work with journalists’ ‘constraints’. Former LFI spokesperson Raquel Garrido described her experience: ‘When you get a call at 6pm to come in at 10pm, 11pm or midnight, of course you have to say yes. And when a journalist calls you at midnight to record an interview that will be broadcast on the radio from 5am, you have to drop everything and make yourself available.’

Being ready to drop everything means responding before there has been collective deliberation about what position to take or the conditions for participating in a programme. The media’s schedule differs from that of a democratic organisation: when a journalist calls a trade union spokesperson for a reaction to a news story, the union has rarely had time to meet and agree its stance. However, if the union representative refuses to oblige, to avoid the fallout from an improvised response, he or she knows the journalist will contact a rival union or someone more willing to speak off the cuff. As most members of collectives now have a Twitter account where they mix self-promotion with (more or less informed) commentary on the news, centrifugal forces can destabilise an organisation.

While protest organisations mobilise collective action to win their battles, political journalism personalises collective struggles to tell their stories. Interviewees are asked to divulge aspects of their family life, their tastes and personal experience more often than they are interviewed about their objectives, or the struggles and thinking of the movements they represent.

In 2001 the Confédération Paysanne (agricultural union) spokesman, José Bové, agreed to appear on Michel Drucker’s programme Vivement Dimanche (Roll on Sunday). Following his example, many radical leftwing figures have revealed themselves in magazines or on talk shows, sometimes even donning costumes, which has annoyed many activists. Twenty years ago, an activist asked Besancenot, ‘What are you going to do on stupid TV shows?’ A party representative responded, ‘We must always bear in mind the wide angle, a broad audience ... We mustn’t be afraid of the general public and we mustn’t have a contemptuous attitude towards a whole slew of popular programmes’ (6).

Such a stance assumes that the depoliticisation of the working class has reached a point where politicians need to appear on entertainment shows to establish a rapport with the social groups they hope to appeal to. Accepting this, however, means ignoring the fact that the way these programmes work is based on depoliticising issues and recasting them as interpersonal battles. The media was quick to reframe anti-capitalist LFI MP Louis Boyard’s criticism of billionaire Vincent Bolloré (mentioned earlier) as the ‘Boyard-Hanouna clash’.

‘What people are, not what they do’

This focus on the individual marginalises common causes. Luc Le Vaillant, the journalist responsible for Libération’s ‘Portraits’ section for over 20 years, acknowledges they ‘focus on what people are, not what they do’ (Libération, 13 November 2015). The profile format prioritises individual psychology over collective interests; social forces take a back seat to individual characteristics. The image of a lone man standing up to a column of tanks has become the symbol of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, to the point of airbrushing out the large crowd that took part. Through the press’s lens, a mass movement is transformed into acts of personal bravery.

‘I’m the first to deplore the superficiality this imposes on the message,’ Garrido, the former LFI spokesperson, concedes in her Manuel de Guérilla médiatique (Guerrilla Media Manual, Michel Laffont, 2018). ‘But I’m not the one who makes the rules, and my only options were to opt out or comply.’ Some people do opt out. Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the US had major successes between 2015 and 2020 without following the rules; their subsequent failure had other causes. Jean-Luc Mélenchon has alternated the ‘wide angle, broad audience’ strategy with temporary boycotts of media outlets he considers hostile (France Inter, Libération, Mediapart). At the same time, these three leaders encouraged the independent media, in the hope that they would allow them a degree of autonomy compared with the mainstream press.

But the creation and growth of a market in personalities self-fuelled by social networks and clips of confrontations have not made things easier. To promote their own brand within their organisation and differentiate themselves from competitors, many politicians willingly react to the controversies of the moment as chosen by the media. This decision takes its toll on organisations’ cohesion and their democratic life, especially when access to friendly journalists becomes a weapon for settling internal scores — and risks the media having greater influence on the debates within a party than its own activists.

How can you claim to break the system when you yourself contribute to perpetuating it? This question was posed by the rise of Podemos in Spain. In 2011 the Indignados movement rejected the idea of having a media spokesperson. But three years later, the Podemos party was created from the grassroots movement and a leader emerged: the young, brilliant, telegenic Pablo Iglesias, who hosted an online debate show. ‘We chose Iglesias,’ said the party’s head of international affairs, ‘because he was a guy who spoke very well on TV, who was beginning to create social identification around him’ (7).

Podemos soon saw the limits of this strategy. Iglesias himself admitted, ‘The first months of Podemos were strongly marked by the role I played in the media. Its dependence on me always being in the media was so great that the campaign team took the decision to put my face on ballot papers ... We [now] want the collective to play a leading role, which we think is more reasonable and, above all, more interesting’ (8). But it was already too late: the media, which had loved Iglesias, turned around and cast the strategic conflict between him and another leader, Inigo Ejerón, as a power struggle.

Criteria for media excellence

The media operates in a way that gives journalists excessive power to ‘elect’ a movement’s representatives, who are themselves pre-selected from the pool of those willing to play the media game. The criteria for media excellence differ radically from political excellence. In the former case, what matters is appearing at ease on air, and coming up with striking soundbites that will be picked up by the press and social media. In contrast, activists’ authority is based on experience, expertise, camaraderie, being ready to put yourself on the line etc. While the media rewards the telegenic with fame, platforms and travel — and amplifies their message — it completely overlooks those who keep movements alive through ‘ordinary’ struggles.

Analysing the American protest movement of the 1960s, the sociologist Todd Gitlin made an enlightening comparison between the alienation of workers from what they produce and that of activists from the (media) representation of their political action: ‘Just as people as workers have no voice in what they make, how they make it, or how the product is distributed and used, so do people as producers of meaning have no say in what the media make what they say or do, or in the context within which the media frame their activity. The resulting meanings, now mediated, acquire an eery substance in the real world, standing outside their ostensible makers and confronting them as an alien force’ (9).

Although avoided by the leaders of most political organisations, associations and trade unions, the question of relationships with the media has become increasingly acute within social movements. During the French strikes of spring-summer 2003, teachers and entertainment industry workers initially agreed to play the journalistic game of vox pops, profiles and other staged events. Then, seeing that their goodwill only led to feeding the preconceived image that the media had created for their movement, they targeted media premises, sometimes occupying them and interrupting broadcasts.

In 2018 the Gilets Jaunes did likewise, as the students opposed to the ‘contrat première embauche’ (first employment contract, with reduced rights) had done in 2006. In several universities, organisers had drafted charters regulating relations with the press. And several union general assemblies voted to ban journalists from debates on the grounds that their presence altered participants’ behaviour. Nearly a century earlier, the secretary general of the CGT union, Léon Jouhaux, wondered in La Bataille syndicaliste (The Union Battle) ‘whether we should continue to welcome into our midst people who systematically, with their bias, denigrate our action and disfigure our discussions, or whether we should not instead ruthlessly refuse them entry to our meetings’ (10). Such readiness to challenge the media has remained the exception.

Yet contemporary history provides important examples of political mobilisations that achieved their goal without the mainstream media’s help, and even in spite of it, not least the French referendum against the European Constitution Treaty in 2005. Patient, obstinate activist work won out over journalistic theatrics. Throughout the campaign, hostility to the press even strengthened the mobilisation.

‘The free communication of ideas’

The media has an obligation to ensure ‘the free communication of ideas and opinion’. This guarantee, enshrined in France’s constitution, is not a favour that anyone should beg for by accepting airtime in the dead of night, unreasonable demands and demeaning formats. Nor, above all, on condition that they keep quiet about the media’s ideological role, the monopoly of a handful of oligarchs, and the declining quality of the information they provide.

When political leaders stop fearing the power of the media, we see scenes that are both gratifying and instructive. Asked by BFMTV to react to the endless vox pops on strikers as ‘hostage takers’, Philippe Poutou said last October, ‘Every time there’s a major strike, the reporting’s the same. When it’s refuse collectors, it’s rubbish piling up in the streets. When it’s postal workers, it’s the absence of mail. When it’s railway workers, it’s the lack of trains. This shows that these are really useful jobs. That should make it possible to discuss the need to pay them properly ... If there was a strike by the shareholders of the CAC40 [French stock market], not many people would be bothered. And if BFM commentators went on strike for a fortnight, not many people would be bothered either.’

Gilets Jaunes, unions, parties and associations all have the power to turn things around, to remind the media of its obligations and, if necessary, force it to respect them. They can consider the conditions of their media coverage: which programmes to go on, how much speaking time to demand without being interrupted, which subjects to discuss, which other guests to appear with. This would be an apt counterpart to the endless list of demands the Élysée makes of the broadcasters who give the president a platform on television. Forcing the press to fulfil its mission means radically transforming it rather than cajoling it.

Over 40 years ago, the sociologist and historian Christopher Lasch advised against ‘abstract theorising about the mass media’ and grounding discussion ‘in the concrete historical experience of those who have tried to use mass media for critical, subversive, and revolutionary purposes’, which has largely proved to be ‘self-defeating. Political activists who seek to change society would do better to stick to the patient work of political organising instead of trying to organise a movement “with mirrors” ’ (11). His conclusion is as relevant as ever.

Serge Halimi & Pierre Rimbert

Serge Halimi is president and editorial director of Le Monde diplomatique; Pierre Rimbert is a member of its board of directors.

News round-up, Wednesday, January 18, 2023

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

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Cooperate with ethical thinking -

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Shocking: This is what Chile would be like if climate change continues, according to A.I. (La Tercera)

“For what purpose do we exist, and why are we required? Is artificial intelligence already more advanced than us?”

— Germán & Co

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Elon Musk’s Appetite for Destruction

A wave of lawsuits argue that Tesla’s self-driving software is dangerously overhyped. What can its blind spots teach us about the company’s erratic C.E.O.?

NYT By Christopher Cox

Jan. 17, 2023

Early on, the software had the regrettable habit of hitting police cruisers. No one knew why, though Tesla’s engineers had some good guesses: Stationary objects and flashing lights seemed to trick the A.I. The car would be driving along normally, the computer well in control, and suddenly it would veer to the right or left and — smash — at least 10 times in just over three years.

For a company that depended on an unbounded sense of optimism among investors to maintain its high stock price — Tesla was at one point worth more than Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Ford and General Motors combined — these crashes might seem like a problem. But to Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, they presented an opportunity. Each collision generated data, and with enough data, the company could speed the development of the world’s first truly self-driving car. He believed in this vision so strongly that it led him to make wild predictions: “My guess as to when we would think it is safe for somebody to essentially fall asleep and wake up at their destination: probably toward the end of next year,”

Musk said in 2019. “I would say I am certain of that. That is not a question mark.”

The future of Tesla may rest on whether drivers knew that they were engaged in this data-gathering experiment, and if so, whether their appetite for risk matched Musk’s. I wanted to hear from the victims of some of the more minor accidents, but they tended to fall into two categories, neither of which predisposed them to talk: They either loved Tesla and Musk and didn’t want to say anything negative to the press, or they were suing the company and remaining silent on the advice of counsel. (Umair Ali, whose Tesla steered into a highway barrier in 2017, had a different excuse: “Put me down as declined interview because I don’t want to piss off the richest man in the world.”)

Then I found Dave Key. On May 29, 2018, Key’s 2015 Tesla Model S was driving him home from the dentist in Autopilot mode. It was a route that Key had followed countless times before: a two-lane highway leading up into the hills above Laguna Beach, Calif. But on this trip, while Key was distracted, the car drifted out of its lane and slammed into the back of a parked police S.U.V., spinning the car around and pushing the S.U.V. up onto the sidewalk. No one was hurt.

Key, a 69-year-old former software entrepreneur, took a dispassionate, engineer’s-eye view of his own accident. “The problem with stationary objects — I’m sorry, this sounds stupid — is that they don’t move,” he said. For years, Tesla’s artificial intelligence had trouble separating immobile objects from the background. Rather than feeling frustrated that the computer hadn’t figured out such a seemingly elementary problem, Key took comfort in learning that there was a reason behind the crash: a known software limitation, rather than some kind of black-swan event.

Last fall, I asked Key to visit the scene of the accident with me. He said he would do me one better; he would take me there using Tesla’s new Full Self-Driving mode, which was still in beta. I told Key that I was surprised he was still driving a Tesla, much less paying extra — F.S.D. now costs $15,000 — for new autonomous features. If my car had tried to kill me, I would have switched brands. But in the months and years after his Model S was totaled, he bought three more.

We met for breakfast at a cafe in Laguna Beach, about three miles from the crash site. Key was wearing a black V-neck T-shirt, khaki shorts and sandals: Southern California semiretirement chic. As we walked to our table, he locked the doors of his red 2022 Model S, and the side mirrors folded up like a dog’s ears when it’s being petted.

Key had brought along a four-page memo he drafted for our interview, listing facts about the accident, organized under subheadings like “Tesla Full Self-Driving Technology (Discussion).” He’s the sort of man who walks around with a battery of fully formed opinions on life’s most important subjects — computers, software, exercise, money — and a willingness to share them. He was particularly concerned that I understand that Autopilot and F.S.D. were saving lives: “The data shows that their accident rate while on Beta is far less than other cars,” one bullet point read, in 11-point Calibri. “Slowing down the F.S.D. Beta will result in more accidents and loss of life based on hard statistical data.”

Accidents like his — and even the deadly ones — are unfortunate, he argued, but they couldn’t distract society from the larger goal of widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles. Key drew an analogy to the coronavirus vaccines, which prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths but also caused rare deaths and injuries from adverse reactions. “As a society,” he concluded, “we choose the path to save the most lives.”

We finished breakfast and walked to the car. Key had hoped to show off the newest version of F.S.D., but his system hadn’t updated yet. “Elon said it would be released at the end of the week,” he said. “Well, it’s Sunday.” Musk had been hinting for weeks that the update would be a drastic improvement over F.S.D. 10.13, which had been released over the summer. Because Musk liked to make little jokes out of the names and numbers in his life, the version number would jump to 10.69 with this release. (The four available Tesla models are S, 3, X and Y, presumably because that spells the word “sexy.”)

Key didn’t want to talk about Musk, but the executive’s reputational collapse had become impossible to ignore. He was in the middle of his bizarre, on-again-off-again campaign to take over Twitter, to the dismay of Tesla loyalists. And though he hadn’t yet attacked Anthony Fauci or spread conspiracy theories about Nancy Pelosi’s husband or gone on a journalist-banning spree on the platform, the question was already suggesting itself: How do you explain Elon Musk?

“People are flawed,” Key said cautiously, before repeating a sentiment that Musk often said about himself: If partisans on both sides hated him, he must be doing something right. No matter what trouble Musk got himself into, Key said, he was honest — “truthful to his detriment.”

As we drove, Key compared F.S.D. and the version of Autopilot on his 2015 Tesla. Autopilot, he said, was like fancy cruise control: speed, steering, crash avoidance. Though in his case, he said, “I guess it didn’t do crash avoidance.” He had been far more impressed by F.S.D. It was able to handle just about any situation he threw at it. “My only real complaint is it doesn’t always select the lane that I would.”

After a minute, the car warned Key to keep his hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. “Tesla now is kind of a nanny about that,” he complained. If Autopilot was once dangerously permissive of inattentive drivers — allowing them to nod off behind the wheel, even — that flaw, like the stationary-object bug, had been fixed. “Between the steering wheel and the eye tracking, that’s just a solved problem,” Key said.

Soon we were close to the scene of the crash. Scrub-covered hills with mountain-biking trails lacing through them rose on either side of us. That was what got Key into trouble on the day of the accident. He was looking at a favorite trail and ignoring the road. “I looked up to the left, and the car went off to the right,” he said. “I was in this false sense of security.”

We parked at the spot where he hit the police S.U.V. four years earlier. There was nothing special about the road here: no strange lines, no confusing lane shift, no merge. Just a single lane of traffic running along a row of parked cars. Why the Tesla failed at that moment was a mystery.

Eventually, Key told F.S.D. to take us back to the cafe. As we started our left turn, though, the steering wheel spasmed and the brake pedal juddered. Key muttered a nervous, “OK. … ”

After another moment, the car pulled halfway across the road and stopped. A line of cars was bearing down on our broadside. Key hesitated a second but then quickly took over and completed the turn. “It probably could have then accelerated, but I wasn’t willing to cut it that close,” he said. If he was wrong, of course, there was a good chance that he would have had his second A.I.-caused accident on the same one-mile stretch of road.

Three weeks before Key hit the police S.U.V., Musk wrote an email to Jim Riley, whose son Barrett died after his Tesla crashed while speeding. Musk sent Riley his condolences, and the grieving father wrote back to ask whether Tesla’s software could be updated to allow an owner to set a maximum speed for the car, along with other restrictions on acceleration, access to the radio and the trunk and distance the car could drive from home. Musk, while sympathetic, replied: “If there are a large number of settings, it will be too complex for most people to use. I want to make sure that we get this right. Most good for most number of people.”

It was a stark demonstration of what makes Musk so unusual as a chief executive. First, he reached out directly to someone who was harmed by one of his products — something it’s hard to imagine the head of G.M. or Ford contemplating, if only for legal reasons. (Indeed, this email was entered into evidence after Riley sued Tesla.) And then Musk rebuffed Riley. No vague “I’ll look into it” or “We’ll see what we can do.” Riley receives a hard no.

Like Key, I want to resist Musk’s tendency to make every story about him. Tesla is a big car company with thousands of employees. It existed before Elon Musk. It might exist after Elon Musk. But if you want a parsimonious explanation for the challenges the company faces — in the form of the lawsuits, a crashing stock price and an A.I. that still seems all too capable of catastrophic failure — you should look to its mercurial, brilliant, sophomoric chief executive.

Perhaps there’s no mystery here: Musk is simply a narcissist, and every reckless swerve he makes is meant solely to draw the world’s attention. He seemed to endorse this theory in a tongue-in-cheek way during a recent deposition, when a lawyer asked him, “Do you have some kind of unique ability to identify narcissistic sociopaths?” and he replied, “You mean by looking in the mirror?”

But what looks like self-obsession and poor impulse control might instead be the fruits of a coherent philosophy, one that Musk has detailed on many occasions. It’s there in the email to Riley: the greatest good for the greatest number of people. That dictum, as part of an ad hoc system of utilitarian ethics, can explain all sorts of mystifying decisions that Musk has made, not least his breakneck pursuit of A.I., which in the long term, he believes, will save countless lives.

Unfortunately for Musk, the short term comes first, and his company faces a rough few months. In February, the first lawsuit against Tesla for a crash involving Autopilot will go to trial. Four more will follow in quick succession. Donald Slavik, who will represent plaintiffs in as many as three of those cases, says that a normal car company would have settled by now: “They look at it as a cost of doing business.” Musk has vowed to fight it out in court, no matter the dangers this might present for Tesla. “The dollars can add up,” Slavik said, “especially if there’s any finding of punitive damages.”

The many claims of the pending lawsuits come back to a single theme: Tesla consistently inflated consumer expectations and played down the dangers involved.

Slavik sent me one of the complaints he filed against Tesla, which lists prominent Autopilot crashes from A to Z — in fact, from A to WW. In China, a Tesla slammed into the back of a street sweeper. In Florida, a Tesla hit a tractor-trailer that was stretched across two lanes of a highway. During a downpour in Indiana, a Tesla Model 3 hydroplaned off the road and burst into flames. In the Florida Keys, a Model S drove through an intersection and killed a pedestrian. In New York, a Model Y struck a man who was changing his tire on the shoulder of the Long Island Expressway. In Montana, a Tesla steered unexpectedly into a highway barrier. Then the same thing happened in Dallas and in Mountain View and in San Jose.

The arrival of self-driving vehicles wasn’t meant to be like this. Day in, day out, we scare and maim and kill ourselves in cars. In the United States last year, there were around 11 million road accidents, nearly five million injuries and more than 40,000 deaths. Tesla’s A.I. was meant to put an end to this blood bath. Instead, on average, there is at least one Autopilot-related crash in the United States every day, and Tesla is under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Ever since Autopilot was released in October 2015, Musk has encouraged drivers to think of it as more advanced than it was, stating in January 2016 that it was “probably better” than a human driver. That November, the company released a video of a Tesla navigating the roads of the Bay Area with the disclaimer: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.” Musk also rejected the name “Copilot” in favor of “Autopilot.”

The fine print made clear that the technology was for driver assistance only, but that message received a fraction of the attention of Musk’s announcements. A large number of drivers seemed genuinely confused about Autopilot’s capabilities. (Tesla also declined to disclose that the car in the 2016 video crashed in the company’s parking lot.) Slavik’s legal complaint doesn’t hold back: “Tesla’s conduct was despicable, and so contemptible that it would be looked down upon and despised by ordinary decent people.”

The many claims of the pending lawsuits come back to a single theme: Tesla consistently inflated consumer expectations and played down the dangers involved. The cars didn’t have sufficient driver monitoring because Musk didn’t want drivers to think that the car needed human supervision. (Musk in April 2019: “If you have a system that’s at or below human-level reliability, then driver monitoring makes sense. But if your system is dramatically better, more reliable than a human, then monitoring does not help much.”) Drivers weren’t warned about problems with automatic braking or “uncommanded lane changes.” The company would admit to the technology’s limitations in the user manual but publish viral videos of a Tesla driving a complicated route with no human intervention.

Musk’s ideal customer was someone like Key — willing to accept the blame when something went wrong but possessing almost limitless faith in the next update. In a deposition, an engineer at Tesla made this all but explicit: “We want to let the customer know that, No. 1, you should have confidence in your vehicle: Everything is working just as it should. And, secondly, the reason for your accident or reason for your incident always falls back on you.”

After our failed left turn in Laguna Beach, Key quickly diagnosed the problem. If only the system had upgraded to F.S.D. 10.69, he argued, the car surely would have managed the turn safely. Unfortunately for Musk, not every Tesla owner is like Dave Key. The plaintiffs in the Autopilot lawsuits might agree that the A.I. is improving, but only on the backs of the early adopters and bystanders who might be killed along the way.

Online, there’s a battle between pro-Musk and anti-Musk factions about Autopilot and F.S.D. Reddit has a forum called r/RealTesla that showcases the most embarrassing A.I. screw-ups, along with more generic complaints: squeaky steering wheels, leaky roofs, haywire electronics, noisy cabins, stiff suspensions, wrinkled leather seats, broken door handles. The Musk stans tend to sequester themselves in r/TeslaMotors, where they post Tesla sightings, cheer on the company’s latest factory openings and await the next big announcement from the boss.

I found David Alford on YouTube, where he posted a video called “Tesla Full Self-Driving Running a Red Light.” In it, we see the view through the windshield as Alford’s car approaches an intersection with a left-turn lane that has a dedicated traffic signal. With a few hundred yards remaining, the light shifts from green to red, but the car doesn’t stop. Instead, it rolls into the intersection, where it’s on track to collide with oncoming traffic, until Alford takes over.

In the comments, Tesla fans grow angry with Alford for posting the video, but he pushes back: “How does it help put pressure on Tesla to improve their systems if you are scared to post their faults?” Replying to one comment, he writes that F.S.D. is “unethical in the context they are using it.”

When I called Alford, I was expecting someone suited for r/RealTesla, but he ended up having more of an r/TeslaMotors vibe. He told me that he would be willing to take me to the site of his video and demonstrate the failure, but first I had to make a promise. “The only thing I ask is try not to put me in a bad light toward Tesla,” he said. “I don’t want anybody to think that I hate the company or whatnot, because I’m a very, very big supporter of them.”

Alford lives in Fresno, Calif., and before I went to meet him one day last fall, he told me some exciting news: He had just received the F.S.D. 10.69 update. Our drive would be his first attempt to navigate the intersection from the YouTube video with the new system.

The morning I met him, he was wearing a black T-shirt that showed off his tattoos, black sunglasses and faded black jeans with holes in the knees. Hollywood would typecast him as a white-hat hacker, and indeed he’s a software guy like Key: He is a product engineer for a Bay Area tech company.

His white 2020 Tesla Model 3 had a magnetic bumper sticker he found on Etsy: CAUTION FULL SELF-DRIVING TESTING IN PROGRESS. He said he drives in F.S.D. mode 90 percent of the time, so his car is always acting a bit strange — the sticker helped keep some of the honking from other cars at bay. He seemed to be, like Key, an ideal F.S.D. beta tester: interested in the software, alert to its flaws, dogged in his accumulation of autonomous miles.

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I climbed into the passenger seat, and Alford punched in our first destination: a spot a few blocks away in downtown Fresno. We were lucky it was overcast, he said, because the car behaved well in these conditions. On days when it was sunny out and there was a lot of glare, the car could be “moody.” And when it was foggy, and it was often foggy in Fresno, “it freaks out.”

After a few minutes, we approached a crosswalk just as two parents pulling a child in a wagon began to cross. A screen next to the steering wheel showed that the A.I. had registered the two pedestrians but not the wagon. Alford said he was hovering his foot over the brake, but the car stopped on its own.

After the wagon came a woman in a wheelchair. The car stayed put. Alford told me that the automotive jargon for anyone on the street who is not in a car or a truck is a “V.R.U.,” a vulnerable road user. And it’s true: Pedestrians and cyclists and children in strollers and women in wheelchairs — they are so fragile compared with these giant machines we’ve stuffed into our cities and onto our highways. One wrong move, and a car will crush them.

We turned on to Van Ness Avenue, which cuts through downtown. It had been newly paved, and instead of lines on the street, there were little yellow tabs indicating where the lines would eventually go. The Tesla hated this and dodged worriedly right and left, looking for something to anchor it. There were no other cars around, so Alford let it get that out of its system and eventually find a lane line to follow.

“You build a tolerance to the risks it takes,” he said. “Yes, it’s swerving all over the place, but I know it’s not going to crash into something.” Still, the experience of the beta had changed the way he approached his own work. “It’s actually made me, as a software developer, more hesitant to put my software in the hands of people” before it’s fully ready, he said, “even though it’s not dangerous.”

Seconds later, we drove through an intersection as two V.R.U.s — a man walking a dog — entered the crosswalk. They were a safe distance away, but the dog started to strain against its leash in our direction. Alford and I knew that the pet wasn’t in peril because the leash would stop it. But all the Tesla saw was a dog about to jump in front of us, and it came to an abrupt stop. It was a good outcome, all things considered — no injuries to any life-form — but it was far from a seamless self-driving experience.

Alford nudged the steering wheel just often enough that the car never warned him to pay attention. He didn’t mind the strict driver monitoring: He never tired of studying the car’s behavior, so he was never tempted to tune out. Still, he knew people who abused the system. One driver tied an ankle weight to the steering wheel to “kick back and do whatever” during long road trips. “I know a couple of people with Teslas that have F.S.D. beta,” he said, “and they have it to drink and drive instead of having to call an Uber.”

We left downtown and got on the highway, headed toward an area northeast of the city called Clovis, where the tricky intersection was. Alford pulled up his F.S.D. settings. His default driver mode was Average, but he said he has found that the two other options — Chill and Assertive — aren’t much different: “The car is just really aggressive anyway.” For highway driving, though, he had the car set to something called Mad Max mode, which meant it would overtake any vehicle in front of him if it was going even a few miles per hour slower than his preferred speed.

We exited the highway and quickly came to a knot of cars. Something had gone wrong with the traffic light, which was flashing red, and drivers in all four directions, across eight lanes, had to figure out when to go and when to yield. The choreography here was delicate: There were too many cars to interweave without some allowances being made for mercy and confusion and expediency. Among the humans, there was a good deal of waving others on and attempted eye contact to see whether someone was going to yield or not.

We crept toward the intersection, car by car, until it was our turn. If we were expecting nuance, there was none. Once we had come to a complete stop, the Tesla accelerated quickly, cutting off one car turning across us and veering around another. It was not so much inhuman as the behavior of a human who was determined to be a jerk. “That was bad,” Alford said. “Normally I would disengage once it makes a mistake like that.” He clicked a button to send a snapshot of the incident to Tesla.

Later, at a four-way stop, the car was too cautious. It waited too long, and the other two cars at the intersection drove off before we did. We talked about the old saying about safe driving: “Don’t be nice; be predictable.” For a computer, Tesla’s A.I. was surprisingly erratic. “It’s not nice or predictable,” Alford said.

A few miles down the road, we reached the intersection from the video: a left turn onto East Shepherd Avenue from State Route 168. The traffic light sits right at the point where the city’s newest developments end and open land begins. If we drove straight, we would immediately find ourselves surrounded by sagebrush, on the way up into the Sierra.

To replicate the error that Alford uncovered, we needed to approach the intersection with a red left-turn arrow and a green light to continue straight. On our first pass, the arrow turned green at the last second. On the second pass, though, on an empty road, the timing was right: a red for our turn and green for everyone else.

As we got closer, the car moved into the turning lane and started to slow. “It sees the red,” I said.

“No,” Alford said. “It always slows down a little here before plowing through.” But this time, it kept slowing. Alford couldn’t believe it. “It’s still going to run the light,” he said. But he was wrong: We came to a tidy stop right at the line. Alford was shocked. “They fixed it!” he said. “That one I’ve been giving them an issue about for two years.” We waited patiently until the light turned green, and the Tesla drove smoothly onto Shepherd Avenue. No problem.

It was as clear a demonstration of Musk’s hypothesis as one could hope for. There was a situation that kept stumping the A.I. until, after enough data had been collected by dedicated drivers like Alford, the neural net figured it out. Repeat this risk-reward conversion X number of times, and maybe Tesla will solve self-driving. Maybe even next year.

On the drive back to the center of Fresno, Alford was buoyant, delighted with the possibility that he had changed the Tesla world for the better. I asked him whether the F.S.D. 10.69 release met the hype that preceded it. “To be honest, yeah, I think so,” he said. (He was even more enthusiastic about the version of F.S.D. released in December, which he described as nearly flawless.)

A few minutes later, we reached a rundown part of town. Alford said that in general Tesla’s A.I. does better in higher-income areas, maybe because those areas have more Tesla owners in them. “Are there data biases for higher-income areas because that’s where the Teslas are?” he wondered.

We approached an intersection and tried to make a left — in what turned out to be a repeat of the Laguna Beach scenario. The Tesla started creeping out, trying to get a clearer look at the cars coming from our left. It inched forward, inched forward, until once again we were fully in the lane of traffic. There was nothing stopping the Tesla from accelerating and completing the turn, but instead it just sat there. At the same time, a tricked-out Honda Accord sped toward us, about three seconds away from hitting the driver-side door. Alford quickly took over and punched the accelerator, and we escaped safely. This time, he didn’t say anything.

It was a rough ride home from there. At a standard left turn at a traffic light, the system freaked out and tried to go right. Alford had to take over. And then, as we approached a cloverleaf on-ramp to the highway, the car started to accelerate. To stay on the ramp, we needed to make an arcing right turn; in front of us was a steep drop-off into a construction site with no guard rails. The car showed no sign of turning. We crossed a solid white line, milliseconds away from jumping off the road when, at last, the wheel jerked sharply to the right, and we hugged the road again. This time, F.S.D. had corrected itself, but if it hadn’t, the crash would have surely killed us.

Peter Thiel, Musk’s former business partner at PayPal, once said that if he wrote a book, the chapter about Musk would be called “The Man Who Knew Nothing About Risk.” But that’s a misunderstanding of Musk’s attitude: If you parse his statements, he presents himself as a man who simply embraces astonishing amounts of present-day risk in the rational assumption of future gains.

Musk’s clearest articulation of his philosophy has come, of course, on Twitter. “We should take the set of actions that maximize total public happiness!” he wrote to one user who asked him how to save the planet. In August, he called the writings of William MacAskill, a Scottish utilitarian ethicist, “a close match for my philosophy.” (MacAskill, notably, was also the intellectual muse of Sam Bankman-Fried, though he cut ties with him after the FTX scandal came to light.)

Musk’s embrace of risk has produced true breakthroughs: SpaceX can land reusable rockets on remote-controlled landing pads in the ocean; Starlink is providing internet service to Ukrainians on the front lines; OpenAI creeps ever closer to passing the Turing test. As for Tesla, even Musk’s harshest critics — and I talked to many of them while reporting this article — would pause, unbidden, to give him credit for creating the now-robust market in electric vehicles in the United States and around the world.

And yet, as Robert Lowell wrote, “No rocket goes as far astray as man.” In recent months, as the outrages at Twitter and elsewhere began to multiply, Musk seemed determined to squander much of the good will he had built up over his career. I asked Slavik, the plaintiffs’ attorney, whether the recent shift in public sentiment against Musk made his job in the courtroom any easier. “I think at least there are more people who are skeptical of his judgment at this point than were before,” he said. “If I were on the other side, I’d be worried about it.”

Some of Musk’s most questionable decisions, though, begin to make sense if seen as a result of a blunt utilitarian calculus. Last month, Reuters reported that Neuralink, Musk’s medical-device company, had caused the needless deaths of dozens of laboratory animals through rushed experiments. Internal messages from Musk made it clear that the urgency came from the top. “We are simply not moving fast enough,” he wrote. “It is driving me nuts!” The cost-benefit analysis must have seemed clear to him: Neuralink had the potential to cure paralysis, he believed, which would improve the lives of millions of future humans. The suffering of a smaller number of animals was worth it.

This form of crude long-term-ism, in which the sheer size of future generations gives them added ethical weight, even shows up in Musk’s statements about buying Twitter. He called Twitter a “digital town square” that was responsible for nothing less than preventing a new American civil war. “I didn’t do it to make more money,” he wrote. “I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love.”

Autopilot and F.S.D. represent the culmination of this approach. “The overarching goal of Tesla engineering,” Musk wrote, “is maximize area under user happiness curve.” Unlike with Twitter or even Neuralink, people were dying as a result of his decisions — but no matter. In 2019, in a testy exchange of email with the activist investor and steadfast Tesla critic Aaron Greenspan, Musk bristled at the suggestion that Autopilot was anything other than lifesaving technology. “The data is unequivocal that Autopilot is safer than human driving by a significant margin,” he wrote. “It is unethical and false of you to claim otherwise. In doing so, you are endangering the public.”

I wanted to ask Musk to elaborate on his philosophy of risk, but he didn’t reply to my interview requests. So instead I spoke with Peter Singer, a prominent utilitarian philosopher, to sort through some of the ethical issues involved. Was Musk right when he claimed that anything that delays the development and adoption of autonomous vehicles was inherently unethical?

“I think he has a point,” Singer said, “if he is right about the facts.”

Musk rarely talks about Autopilot or F.S.D. without mentioning how superior it is to a human driver. At a shareholders’ meeting in August, he said that Tesla was “solving a very important part of A.I., and one that can ultimately save millions of lives and prevent tens of millions of serious injuries by driving just an order of magnitude safer than people.” Musk does have data to back this up: Starting in 2018, Tesla has released quarterly safety reports to the public, which show a consistent advantage to using Autopilot. The most recent one, from late 2022, said that Teslas with Autopilot engaged were one-tenth as likely to crash as a regular car.

That is the argument that Tesla has to make to the public and to juries this spring. In the words of the company’s safety report: “While no car can prevent all accidents, we work every day to try to make them much less likely to occur.” Autopilot may cause a crash WW times, but without that technology, we’d be at OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Singer told me that even if Autopilot and human drivers were equally deadly, we should prefer the A.I., provided that the next software update, based on data from crash reports and near misses, would make the system even safer. “That’s a little bit like surgeons doing experimental surgery,” he said. “Probably the first few times they do the surgery, they’re going to lose patients, but the argument for that is they will save more patients in the long run.” It was important, however, Singer added, that the surgeons get the informed consent of the patients.

Does Tesla have the informed consent of its drivers? The answer might be different for different car owners — it would probably be different for Dave Key in 2018 than it is in 2022. But most customers are not aware of how flawed Autopilot is, said Philip Koopman, the author of “How Safe Is Safe Enough? Measuring and Predicting Autonomous Vehicle Safety.” The cars keep making “really crazy, crazy, surprising mistakes,” he said. “Tesla’s practice of using untrained civilians as test drivers for an immature technology is really egregious.”

Koopman also objects to Musk’s supposed facts. One obvious problem with the data the company puts out in its quarterly safety report is that it directly compares Autopilot miles, which are mainly driven on limited-access highways, with all vehicle miles. “You’re using Autopilot on the safe miles,” Koopman said. “So of course it looks great. And then you’re comparing it to not-Autopilot on the hard miles.”

In the third quarter of 2022, Tesla claimed that there was one crash for every 6.26 million miles driven using Autopilot — indeed, almost 10 times better than the U.S. baseline of one crash for every 652,000 miles. Crashes, however, are far more likely on surface streets than on the highway: One study from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation showed that crashes were five times as common on local roads as on turnpikes. When comparing Autopilot numbers to highway numbers, Tesla’s advantage drops significantly.

Tesla’s safety claims look even shakier when you try to control for the age of the car and the age of the driver. Most Tesla owners are middle-aged or older, which eliminates one risky pool of drivers: teenagers. And simply having a new car decreases your chance of an accident significantly. It’s even possible that the number of Teslas in California — with its generally mild, dry weather — has skewed the numbers in its favor. An independent study that tried to correct for some of these biases suggested that Teslas crashed just as often when Autopilot was on as when it was off.

“That’s always been a problem for utilitarians,” Singer told me. “Because it doesn’t have strict moral rules, people might think they can get away with doing the sums in ways that suit their purposes.”

Utilitarian thinking has led individuals to perform acts of breathtaking virtue, but putting this ethical framework in the hands of an industrialist presents certain dangers. True utilitarianism requires a careful balancing of all harms and benefits, in the present and the future, with the patience to do this assessment and the patience to refrain from acting if the amount of suffering and death caused by pushing forward wasn’t clear. Musk is using utilitarianism in a more limited way, arguing that as long as he’s sure something will have a net benefit, he’s permitted to do it right now.

In the past two decades, Musk has somehow maneuvered himself into running multiple companies where he can plausibly claim to be working to preserve the future of humanity. SpaceX can’t just deliver satellites into low orbit; it’s also going to send us to Mars. Tesla can’t just build a solid electric car; it’s going to solve the problem of self-driving. Twitter can’t just be one more place where we gather to argue; it’s one of the props holding up civilization. With the stakes suitably raised, all sorts of questionable behavior begin to look — almost — reasonable.

“True believers,” the novelist Jeanette Winterson wrote, “would rather see governments topple and history rewritten than scuff the cover of their faith.” Musk seems unshakable in his conviction that his approach is right. But for all his urgency, he still might lose the A.I. race.

Right now in San Francisco and Austin, Texas, and coming soon to cities all over the world, you can hail a robotaxi operated by Cruise or Waymo. “If there’s one moment in time where we go from fiction to reality, it’s now,” Sebastian Thrun, who founded Google’s self-driving car team, told me. (“I didn’t say this last year, by the way,” he added.) Thrun was no r/RealTesla lurker; he was on his fifth Tesla, and he said he admired the company: “What Tesla has is really beautiful. They have a fleet of vehicles in the field.” But at this point, Tesla’s competitors are closer to achieving full self-driving than any vehicle equipped with F.S.D.

In recent months, Musk has stopped promising that autonomous Teslas are just around the corner. “I thought the self-driving problem would be hard,” he said, “but it was harder than I thought. It’s not like I thought it’d be easy. I thought it would be very hard. But it was actually way harder than even that.”

On Dec. 29, 2019, the same day a Tesla in Indiana got into a deadly crash with a parked fire truck, an off-duty chauffeur named Kevin George Aziz Riad was driving his gray 2016 Tesla Model S down the Gardena Freeway in suburban Los Angeles. It had been a long drive back from a visit to Orange County, and Riad had Autopilot turned on. Shortly after midnight, the car passed under a giant sign that said END FREEWAY SIGNAL AHEAD in flashing yellow lights.

The Autopilot kept Riad’s Tesla at a steady speed as it approached the stoplight that marked the end of the freeway and the beginning of Artesia Boulevard. According to a witness, the light was red, but the car drove straight through the intersection, striking a Honda Civic. Riad had only minor injuries, but the two people in the Civic, Gilberto Alcazar Lopez and Maria Guadalupe Nieves, died at the scene. Their families said that they were on a first date.

Who was responsible for this accident? State officials have charged Riad with manslaughter and plan to prosecute him as if he were the sole actor behind the two deaths. The victims’ families, meanwhile, have filed civil suits against both Riad and Tesla. Depending on the outcomes of the criminal and civil cases, the Autopilot system could be judged, in effect, legally responsible, not legally responsible or both simultaneously.

Not long ago, I went to see the spot where Riad’s Tesla reportedly ran the red light. I had rented a Tesla for the day, to find out firsthand, finally, what it felt like to drive with Autopilot in control. I drove east on surface streets until I reached a ramp where I could merge onto State Route 91, the Gardena Freeway. It was late at night when Riad crashed. I was taking my ride in the middle of the day.

As soon as I was on the highway, I engaged Autopilot, and the car took over. I had the road mostly to myself. This Tesla was programmed to go 15 percent above the speed limit whenever Autopilot was in use, and the car accelerated quickly to 74 miles per hour, which was Riad’s speed when he crashed. Were his Autopilot speed settings the same?

The car did a good job of staying in its lane, better than any other traffic-aware cruise control I’ve used. I tried taking my hands off the wheel, but the Tesla beeped at me after a few seconds.

As I got closer to the crash site, I passed under the giant END FREEWAY SIGNAL AHEAD sign. The Autopilot drove on blithely. After another 500 feet, the same sign appeared again, flashing urgently. There was only a few hundred feet of divided highway left, and then Route 91 turned into a surface street, right at the intersection with Vermont Avenue.

I hovered my foot over the brake. What was I doing? Seeing if the car truly would just blaze through a red light? Of course it would. I suppose I was trying to imagine how easy it would be to do such a thing. At the end of a long night, on a road empty of cars, with something called Autopilot in control? My guess is that Riad didn’t even notice that he had left the highway.

The car sped under the warning lights, 74 miles an hour. The crash data shows that before the Tesla hit Lopez and Nieves, the brakes hadn’t been used for six minutes.

My Tesla bore down on the intersection. I got closer and closer to the light. No brakes. And then, just before I was about to take over, a pickup truck swung out of the far right lane and cut me off. The Tesla sensed it immediately and braked hard. If only that truck — as undeniable as any giant chunk of hardware can be — had been there in December 2019, Lopez and Nieves would still be alive.

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Ursula von der Leyen's plan to win the green industry battle

Looking to challenge China and the US, the European Commission is outlining an EU industrial policy.

Le Monde by Virginie Malingre (Brussels, Europe bureau)

Published on January 18, 2023

Now that China and the United States have opened hostilities in the battle of green technologies, the European Union (EU) is preparing its response. "We Europeans have a plan," said Ursula von der Leyen in Davos on Tuesday, January 17, which will enable Europe to take point in this race for innovation that will reshape the industry of tomorrow.

In her speech, Ms. von der Leyen denounced "aggressive attempts" to attract European industrial capacities away, particularly those working in clean energy, "to China and elsewhere." She also mentioned the "concerns" raised by the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a $369 billion (342 billion euros) climate investment plan that provides for large-scale aid for companies based in the United States. "We won't hesitate to open investigations if we feel that our procurement of other markets is being distorted by such subsidies," Ms. von der Leyen promised.

The European Commission has been in discussions with Washington, hoping to get the US to modify the IRA, but no one in Brussels nor in the European capitals imagine that this will make a substantial difference. "The reaction of other countries shouldn't be, 'oh my god, you shouldn't be doing that, that's putting us in an unfair position'. Do it, too. Everybody's got to do the same thing to accelerate this process even more," US special envoy for climate change John Kerry said in Davos.

Race for subsidies

Certainly, but the EU is now concerned that its industrialists will surrender to the sirens of Washington or Beijing and abandon Europe. It is true that the EU has a number of weaknesses. First of all, its green industry is very dependent on China, India and the United States. "For rare earths, which are vital for manufacturing key technologies, like wind power generation and hydrogen storage. Europe is today 98% dependent on one country, China," said Ms. von der Leyen. "To produce green electricity in 2050, Europeans will have to spend 450 billion euros per year. This money should not be used to buy non-European products and export our jobs," summarized Thierry Breton, the Commissioner for the Internal Market.

Moreover, the EU is very slow when it comes to authorizing certain state aid measures which strategic projects may depend on. Industrial alliances, for example, generally take two years to establish. Finally, the 27 Member States do not have the same resources, and a subsidy race between them to attract investment would be devastating for the internal market. In fact, it has already begun: over the next 10 years, Germany plans to help its companies make the climate transition with 100 billion euros, the Netherlands with 40 billion and France with 50 billion.

In this context, Ms. von der Leyen wants to send a strong message of support to European companies, and is laying the foundations of a community industrial policy. She has announced legislation for "a net zero emissions industry" in greenhouse gases, which will be inspired by what the Commission has already proposed to double European semiconductor production. The objective is "how to simplify and fast-track the permitting of projects for cleantech production sites" and "to focus investments on strategic projects" and green innovations, which would be eligible for substantial state aid, she explained.

To avoid only rich countries such as Germany benefiting from it, this act will particularly incentivize projects carried out by a number of member states. It could also allow Europeans to align themselves under certain conditions with American or Chinese practices in terms of subsidies.

Legislation on critical raw materials

The Commission is also preparing draft legislation on critical raw materials, which aims to secure the EU's supplies of materials essential to the electrification of industry and green infrastructure. For example, it could set the objective that at least 30% of European demand for refined lithium should come from the EU by 2030. The Commission President also envisages the EU in "a critical raw materials club working with like-minded partners from the United States to Ukraine."

To help countries that do not have the means to massively subsidize their industry and to avoid "fragmenting the Single Market," Ms. von der Leyen continued, "we must also step up EU funding." In fact, the temporary relaxation of the state aid rules, intended to help the EU-27 deal with the consequences of the war in Ukraine, has mainly benefited the rich countries. In 2022, the Commission authorized 672 billion euros of state aid, 53% for Germany (or more than 9% of its GDP) and 24% for Paris. The same is true for the arrangements made during the COVID-19 crisis: between March 2020 and December 2021, Brussels authorized 3,000 billion euros of state aid, 52.8% of which was for Germany, 16.9% for Italy and 10.6% for France.

Faced with the challenge of greening the economy, "Italy and Spain can count on the loans still available from the Next Generation-EU recovery plan," said Mr. Breton. But for small countries, such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia or Slovenia, the EU will have to do something, by giving them access to loans at preferential rates from the European Investment Bank or the Commission, which will be guaranteed by the EU-27.

In the longer term, Ms. von der Leyen mentions establishment of a European sovereignty fund, which is not yet well defined and whose scope could be broader than green industry. "It could take equity in a strategic company" threatened with closure or acquisition by a non-European entity, Mr. Breton explained. It could also support the development of a European player "in sectors where the EU is lagging in terms of sovereignty," a source noted.

Virginie Malingre(Brussels, Europe bureau)

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Former head of the Mexican police on trial for drug trafficking with the “El Chapo” cartel

Genaro Garcia Luna's trial for cocaine trafficking is expected to reveal the relationship between drug traffickers and the Mexican government under President Felipe Calderon.

Le Monde by Anne Vigna (Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) correspondent) and Arnaud Leparmentier (New York (United States) correspondent)

Published on January 17, 2023

Genaro Garcia Luna was the most senior security official in Mexico 15 years ago, in charge of the fight against drug cartels. Now 54, he will appear in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, in a trial starting on Tuesday, January 17, charged with cocaine trafficking. The trial is expected to bring to light the relationship between drug traffickers and the Mexican government under President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), and also the cross-border traffic that supplies the United States from South America via Mexico.

Mr. Garcia Luna's fall came in 2019, during the trial of Joaquin Guzman, known as "El Chapo," boss of the Sinaloa cartel, the largest in Mexico, who was sentenced to life in the United States. A cartel member testified how he had paid suitcases of cash to the former minister of security, leading to his arrest a few months later in Dallas, Texas, in December 2019.

In exchange for the bribes, the cartel received "safe passage for its drug shipments, sensitive law enforcement information about investigations into the cartel, and information about rival drug cartels," the US Department of Justice charged, the day after Mr. Garcia Luna's December 2019 arrest in Dallas. According to the DoJ, "on two occasions, the cartel personally paid bribes to Garcia Luna in briefcases containing between three and five million dollars."

The charge claims that the former police chief, who had settled in Florida in 2012, had "amassed millions of dollars in personal wealth." To prosecute him in the United States, the US prosecutors are using the cross-border drug trafficking charge and accusing him of lying when he applied for naturalization in 2018. "He allegedly lied about his past criminal acts on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel."

Mr. Garcia Luna pleaded not guilty, claiming he was the victim of revenge by cartel members and unfounded accusations. If convicted, he faces between 10 years and life in prison. "Today's arrest demonstrates our resolve to bring to justice those who help cartels inflict devastating harm on the United States and Mexico, regardless of the positions they held while committing their crimes," said Brooklyn federal prosecutor Richard P. Donoghue.

A 'mediocre' police officer who did the 'dirty work"

This is the first time a Mexican politician of such high rank has been brought to justice in the United States. For more than a decade, Mr. Garcia Luna was the main architect of the "war against the cartels" launched by President Felipe Calderon when he came to power in 2006. A policy that would turn Mexico into a huge graveyard.

Mr. Garcia Luna became the face of this war and the closest collaborator of the head of state, obtaining a record budget for the federal police, and in particular for the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), which he had been the head of during the term of President Vincente Fox (2001-2006). He had previously worked in the Mexican intelligence services for a decade.

"This policeman, who has always been very mediocre, reached the highest positions by doing the dirty work. He got his hands dirty for his bosses, climbing the ladder in the administration and in organized crime. According to my investigations, he has been in the criminal world since the 1990s, protecting kidnapping gangs in exchange for juicy payments," investigative journalist Anabel Hernandez, author of several books on the war, said in a phone interview.

A stocky man with a closed face, whose press conferences were almost incomprehensible because of his strong stammer, he enjoyed the unwavering support of the two presidents from the PAN (National Action Party), Mexico's Catholic right wing. He represented Mexico in high-level bilateral security meetings with Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, former FBI Director Robert Mueller and Eric Holder, Attorney General under Barack Obama.

War on all cartels except Sinaloa

As soon as he took over in 2001, the methods of the AFI and the federal police were denounced by both the victims of organized crime and its perpetrators. Mr. Garcia Luna was supposedly waging a war against all the cartels, but it soon became apparent that this did not include the Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, whose influence was growing steadily in the territory. For example, the Zetas – a criminal group formed by former elite soldiers of the Mexican army that rules the state of Tamaulipas on the border with Texas – repeatedly accused Mr. Garcia Luna of protecting their enemies in Sinaloa.

Kidnapped people also tell of media stunts at the time of their release, to the point where the Mexican press referred to the AFI as the "agency of invented films." The minister and his team would often resort to these media tricks to claim credit for the results before the Mexican public. Suspects and innocents are forced to confess their supposed crimes on camera, even though they have been previously arrested and tortured. Those subjected to Mr. Garcia Luna's methods include Frenchwoman Florence Cassez – released in 2013 after the Supreme Court overturned her conviction – and her Mexican companion Israel Vallarta, who has been in prison awaiting trial for kidnapping for 18 years.

The trial of Mr. Garcia Luna should provide arguments for current Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who dissolved the AFI and has repeatedly criticized the corruption under his predecessors. Mexico has de facto approved the New York lawsuit by demanding that Mr. Garcia Luna repay $250 million that he allegedly fraudulently acquired. President López Obrador has repeatedly urged the media to follow the trial closely, as it should reveal the rot within the Mexican state. "It is very important that all of this be known, that it be told, so that it does not happen again," Mr. Lopez Obrador said recently.

Not all trials have the same support in Mexico – the 2020 arrest of General Salvador Cienfuegos caused such an outcry that the United States sent him back. The trial, which is expected to last two months, will include hearings over whether to produce or not produce evidence about the relationship between Mr. Garcia Luna and the highest US officials who supported the war on drugs at the time.

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‘Tax us now’: ultra-rich call on governments to introduce wealth taxes

Disney heiress and actor Mark Ruffalo among ‘patriotic millionaires’ who addressed world’s elite at Davos

The Guardian by Rupert Neate Wealth correspondent

@RupertNeate

Wed 18 Jan 2023 00.01 GMT

More than 200 members of the super-rich elite are calling on governments around the world to “tax us, the ultra rich, now” in order to help billions of people struggling with cost of living crisis.

The group of 205 millionaires and billionaires, including the Disney heiress Abigail Disney and The Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo, on Wednesday called on world leaders and business executives meeting in Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) to urgently introduce wealth taxes to help tackle “extreme inequality”.

“The current lack of action is gravely concerning. A meeting of the ‘global elite’ in Davos to discuss ‘cooperation in a fragmented world’ is pointless if you aren’t challenging the root cause of division,” they said in an open letter published on Wednesday. “Defending democracy and building cooperation requires action to build fairer economies right now – it is not a problem that can be left for our children to fix.

“Now is the time to tackle extreme wealth; now is the time to tax the ultra rich.”

In the letter entitled “the cost of extreme wealth”, the millionaires, from 13 countries, said: “The history of the last five decades is a story of wealth flowing nowhere but upwards. In the last few years, this trend has greatly accelerated …The solution is plain for all to see. You, our global representatives, have to tax us, the ultra rich, and you have to start now.”

The super-rich signatories, who brand themselves as “patriotic millionaires”, warned that inaction could lead to a catastrophe. “There’s only so much stress any society can take, only so many times mothers and fathers will watch their children go hungry while the ultra rich contemplate their growing wealth. The cost of action is much cheaper than the cost of inaction – it’s time to get on with the job.”

It comes as new research shows that almost two-thirds of the new wealth amassed since the start of the pandemic has gone to the richest 1%. The development charity Oxfam found that the best-off had pocketed $26tn (£21tn) in new wealth up to the end of 2021. That represented 63% of the total new wealth, with the rest going to the remaining 99% of people.

Oxfam said for the first time in a quarter of a century the rise in extreme wealth was being accompanied by an increase in extreme poverty, and called for new taxes to be levied on the super-rich.

Oxfam said a tax of up to 5% on the world’s multimillionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7tn a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.

Marlene Engelhorn, a multimillionaire heiress, co-founder of campaign group taxmenow, and a signatory of the letter, said: “The whole world – economists and millionaires alike – can see the solution that is staring us all right in the face: we have to tax the ultra rich. If we care about the safety of democracy, about our communities, and our planet we have to get this done. And yet our decision-makers either don’t have the gumption or don’t feel the need to listen to all of these voices. It begs the question, ‘What, or who, is stopping them?’

News round-up, Tuesday, January 17, 2023

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

“For what purpose do we exist, and why are we required? Is artificial intelligence already more advanced than us?”

— Germán & Co

NYT, CreditCredit...By Shira Inbar

America’s Must-Win Semiconductor War

Jan. 16, 2023

NYT

By Steven Rattner

Mr. Rattner was a counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration. Intent on reversing America’s decline in the world’s production of cutting-edge semiconductors, the federal government has begun what is arguably the government’s largest foray into the private sector since World War II.

That’s just one piece of a larger, more muscular approach to industrial policy. It’s a road filled with hope but also pockmarked with risks. On balance, the record of government trying to improve the functioning of the private sector is poor, and particularly in complex sectors like semiconductors, the challenges are great.

Nonetheless, for the first time in memory, even many free-market conservatives seem to recognize that unfettered capitalism can lead to imperfect results.

Put chips high on that list. American scientists invented transistors, the key component in chips, shortly after World War II, and for decades we dominated the design and production of semiconductors as they quickly became smaller and more powerful.

Then companies in Asia, particularly in Taiwan, entered the industry, and America began to lose to cheaper labor, strong local governmental support and better corporate management. Worse, today the United States does not manufacture any of the highest-performing chips; 92 percent of those are produced by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, 100 miles from mainland China. (The rest are manufactured in South Korea.)

This presents enormous economic and national security risks for the United States and the rest of the world. If China took control of Taiwan and cut off our chip supply, that would be economically devastating, akin to (or worse than) the loss of oil exports from a major Middle Eastern producer.

In that context, we should be heartened that Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which, among other things, will provide $52 billion for investment in facilities, as well as for more research and development.

In part as a result, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s biggest maker of advanced computer chips, has broken ground on a major plant in Phoenix and announced that it will increase its investment there to $40 billion; Intel has announced plans for a $20 billion facility outside Columbus, Ohio; Micron is building a fab (as chip factories are known) complex in Syracuse, N.Y.; GlobalFoundries is expanding in New York and Vermont; and Samsung is considering the construction of 11 facilities in Texas.

That’s all great, but let’s not be blind to the challenges. For one thing, these new facilities are just a tiny first step. The output of the Phoenix facility will amount to only a single-digit percentage of TSMC’s total output. For another, TSMC has historically insisted on producing its most cutting-edge chips in Taiwan, at least partly to ensure that the United States, whose official policy toward Taiwan is one of strategic ambiguity, will nonetheless protect the island against any mainland aggression.

Our ability to truly compete with Asia remains uncertain. In a recent submission to the Commerce Department, TSMC complained that the cost of the Phoenix facility would be much greater than its equivalent in Taiwan (partly because of regulatory requirements), wage costs substantially higher, productivity lower, construction delays more likely and taxes higher.

In a podcast interview, Morris Chang, the 91-year-old founder of TSMC, who was born in China and made his early career in the United States, acknowledged the national security considerations while calling America’s semiconductor efforts “a wasteful and expensive exercise in futility.” He noted that his company has had a smaller facility in Oregon for 25 years and chips produced there cost 50 percent more than those it manufactures in Taiwan.

Europe is marching forward with its own set of chip subsidies, and Asian countries have been providing aid to their semiconductor makers for decades. The result is a financial version of an arms race.

The quest for an industrial policy in America goes back to our earliest days. George Washington wore a suit of American-woven broadcloth to his first inauguration to emphasize the importance of domestic production. Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures advocated tariffs and trade restrictions to encourage domestic industry.

Over the ensuing 230 years, we’ve had both successes (transportation facilities like the Erie Canal and the interstate highways) and failures (pretty much everything we’ve tried to do to retain manufacturing jobs).

Those failures include chips. In 1987, alarmed by Japan’s growing dominance of the semiconductor industry, the federal government created Sematech, a public-private partnership that was intended to restore American prowess in the sector.

According to a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the $1 billion spent by the federal government over a decade succeeded in temporarily — emphasis on “temporarily” — stanching the loss of market share and American jobs but at a yearly cost of about $29,000 per job, roughly the same as the then-average annual wage in the sector, $27,000.

As the head of President Barack Obama’s auto task force, I saw the positives and the risks of industrial policy. Importantly, we did not try to protect old, inefficient factories or to create uncompetitive jobs. We insisted that the companies produce viability plans as a condition of receiving government assistance and left the companies to run their businesses.

So I believe government can pursue an industrial policy — but we need to put substantial guardrails around that effort.

The most successful governmental interventions are often around research and development, such as the funding of the creation of the internet by the Department of Defense and Operation Warp Speed, the emergency program to develop Covid vaccines. In that context, I applaud the inclusion of $11 billion for semiconductor research and development in the CHIPS and Science Act.

In some cases, like semiconductors, government grants may be necessary to accomplish our goals. But whenever feasible, we should favor market-based incentives, like tax credits, in order to lessen the government’s role in picking winners.

Finally, let’s remember that we have other means of promoting our economic interests. As part of its increased spending in Phoenix, TSMC also announced that the facility would be making more advanced chips than previously planned. That reportedly occurred at the behest of Apple, TSMC’s largest customer. When public and private interests align, leveraging the influence of the corporate sector should very much be a part of a wise industrial policy.

With the dangers of overdoing industrial policy evident, President Biden should ask his staff to put together clearer and narrower rules of the road to govern when and how the United States should undertake adventures in industrial policy.

In that regard, a recent speech by Brian Deese, the able director of the National Economic Council, provided a good beginning — though he was a bit overly enthusiastic about the merits of industrial policy and a bit disingenuous about the dangers.

While Mr. Deese contended that the Biden industrial policy was not about picking winners and losers, any policy that includes awarding federal funds to some applicants and not to others is obviously a process of picking winners and losers. That will be the case in the dispensing of $28 billion of direct aid for semiconductor facilities as states, localities and companies jockey to be selected.

This approach to industrial policy — in contrast to approaches like tax incentives that allow the market to pick the winners — would benefit by being removed as much as practicable from politics, much as we have used an independent commission to choose which military bases in the U.S. should close.

And as we did in the auto rescue, subsidies should be, to the maximum extent feasible, as close to commercial terms as possible, potentially including equity participation in the recipient.

I agree that in today’s more globally competitive and insecure world, a more robust industrial policy is called for. I just hope that logic and prudence will prevail in the ongoing debate.

China’s Population Falls, Heralding a Demographic Crisis

Deaths outnumbered births last year for the first time in six decades. Experts see major implications for China, its economy and the world.

NYT By Alexandra Stevenson and Zixu Wang

Published Jan. 16, 2023

HONG KONG — The world’s most populous country has reached a pivotal moment: China’s population has begun to shrink, after a steady, yearslong decline in its birthrate that experts say will be irreversible.

The government said on Tuesday that 9.56 million people were born in China last year, while 10.41 million people died. It was the first time deaths had outnumbered births in China since the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment that led to widespread famine and death in the 1960s.

Chinese officials have tried for years to slow down the arrival of this moment, loosening a one-child policy and offering incentives to encourage families to have children. None of those policies worked. Now, facing a population decline, coupled with a long-running rise in life expectancy, the country is being thrust into a demographic crisis that will have consequences not just for China and its economy but for the world.

Over the last four decades, China emerged as an economic powerhouse and the world’s factory floor. The country’s transformation from widespread poverty to the world’s second largest economy led to an increase in life expectancy that contributed to the current population decline — more people were getting older while fewer babies were being born.

That trend has hastened another worrying event: the day when China will not have enough people of working age to fuel the high-speed growth that made it an engine of the global economy.

“In the long run, we are going to see a China the world has never seen,” said Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine who specializes in China’s demographics. “It will no longer be the young, vibrant, growing population. We will start to appreciate China, in terms of its population, as an old and shrinking population.”

Births were down from 10.6 million in 2021, the sixth straight year that the number had fallen, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. By 2035, 400 million people in China are expected to be over 60, accounting for nearly a third of its population. Labor shortages that will accompany China’s rapidly aging population will also reduce tax revenue and contributions to a pension system that is already under enormous pressure.

Whether or not the government can provide widespread access to elder care, medical services and a stable stream of income later in life will affect a long-held assumption that the Communist Party can provide a better life for its people.

The news of China’s population decline comes at a challenging time for the government in Beijing, which is dealing with the fallout from the sudden reversal last month of its zero-tolerance policy toward Covid.

Understand the Situation in China

The Chinese government cast aside its restrictive “zero Covid” policy, which had set off mass protests that were a rare challenge to Communist Party leadership.

Rapid Spread: Since China abandoned its strict Covid rules, the intensity and magnitude of the country’s outbreak has remained largely a mystery. But a picture is emerging of the virus spreading like wildfire.

Rural Communities: As Lunar New Year approaches, millions are expected to travel home in January. They risk spreading Covid to areas where health care services are woefully underdeveloped.

Digital Finger-Pointing: The Communist Party’s efforts to limit discord over its sudden “zero Covid” pivot are being challenged with increasing rancor on the internet.

Economic Challenges: Years of Covid lockdowns took a brutal toll on Chinese businesses. Now, the rapid spread of the virus after a chaotic reopening has deprived them of workers and customers.

The data on Tuesday showed a small increase in mortality last year, to 10.41 million deaths compared to around 10 million in recent years, raising questions about how a recent Covid surge may have contributed to the numbers.

Last week, officials unexpectedly revised the Covid death figures for the first month after reporting single-digit daily deaths for weeks. But experts have questioned the accuracy of the new figure — 60,000 deaths between Dec. 8 and Jan. 12.

On Tuesday, Kang Yi, the commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics, said the Covid death figures for December had not yet been incorporated into the overall death totals for 2022.

China also on Tuesday released data that showed the depth of its economic challenges. The country’s gross domestic product, the broadest measure of its commercial vitality, grew just 2.9 percent in the last three months of the year after widespread lockdowns and the recent surge in Covid infections. Over the whole year, China’s economy grew only 3 percent, its slowest rate in nearly four decades.

This historical demographic moment was not unexpected. Chinese officials last year conceded that the country was on the verge of a population decline that would likely begin before 2025. But it came sooner than demographers, statisticians and China’s ruling Communist Party had anticipated.

China has followed a trajectory familiar to many developing countries as their economies get richer — fertility rates fall as incomes rise and education levels increase. As the quality of life improves, people live longer.

“It’s the kind of situation that economists dream of,” said Philip O’Keefe, the director of the Aging Asia Research Hub, ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Aging Research.

But the government shortened its timeline to prepare for this moment by moving too slowly to loosen restrictive birth policies. “They could have given themselves a little more time,” said Mr. O’Keefe.

Officials have taken several steps in recent years to try to slow the decline in births. In 2016, they relaxed the one-child policy that had been in place for 35 years, allowing families to have two children. In 2021, they raised the limit to three. Since then, Beijing has offered a range of incentives to couples and small families to encourage them to have children, including cash handouts, tax cuts and even property concessions.

China’s situation is a stark contrast with India, whose total population is poised to exceed China’s later this year, according to a recent estimate from the United Nations. But India’s fertility rate is also declining rapidly.

Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, recently made the country’s demographic challenges a priority, pledging “a national policy system to boost birthrates.” But in reality, experts said, China’s plunging birth figures reveal an irreversible trend.

“The aggregate decline in population and decline in working-age population — both of those are irreversible,” Mr. O’Keefe said. “I don’t think there is a single country that has gone as low as China in terms of fertility rate and then bounced back to the replacement rate.”

Together with Japan and South Korea, China has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, below what demographers call the fertility replacement rate required for a population to grow. That figure would require every couple, on average, to have two children.

So far, the government’s measures have failed to change the underlying fact that many young Chinese people simply do not want children. They often cite the increasingly high cost of raising them, especially with the economy in a precarious state.

Rachel Zhang, a 33-year-old photographer in Beijing, decided before she married her husband that they would not have children. Sometimes, elders in the family nag them about having a baby.

“I am firm about this,” Ms. Zhang said. “I have never had the desire to have children all along.” The rising costs of raising a child and finding an apartment in good school district have hardened her resolve.

Other factors have contributed to such reluctance to have more children, including the burden that many younger adults face in taking care of aging parents and grandparents.

China’s strict “zero Covid” policy — nearly three years of mass testing, quarantines and lockdowns, resulting in some families being separated for long periods of time — may have led even more people to decide against having children.

Luna Zhu, 28, and her husband have parents who are willing to take care of their grandchildren. And she works for a state-owned enterprise that provides a good maternity leave package. But Ms. Zhu, who got married five years ago, is not interested.

“Especially the past three years of the epidemic, I feel that many things are so hard,” Ms. Zhu said.

Li You contributed research and Keith Bradsher contributed reporting.

French nuclear power: 'Accelerate the laws, the rallying cry has been issued'

Philippe Escande

Le Monde Today

The French parliament is looking at two bills, one for nuclear power and the other for wind power, with a view to removing obstacles to the deployment of these energies.

Bureaucracy is a French problem. In a country that concocts a law as soon as a new problem appears, they now have to legislate to combat administrative delays resulting from previous laws. In the field of energy, in order to ensure that society accepts a scary technology (nuclear power), or one which is said to spoil the landscape (wind power), they are piling up legal guarantees, each of which also provides a foothold for opponents of all kinds.

In the case of France's first offshore wind farm near Saint-Nazaire, it took seven years to complete the procedure before the facility was built in just three years. The same goes for nuclear power. So the rallying cry has been issued and, in two weeks, two "acceleration" laws are coming to Parliament. One for renewable energies, the other for nuclear power.

In the nuclear case, however, only a small part of the problem will have been solved, since there are so many other obstacles. The first is construction time. Nuclear reactors have become so complex that it is difficult to build them. The law presented to the Sénat on Tuesday, January 17, is supposed to accelerate the time taken for nuclear reactors to be operational. Thanks to this law, the said new reactors are now expected to start in around 2040. Twenty years for six reactors! As a consequence of this timeframe and sophistication, costs are soaring. The current estimates are €50 billion for these first machines.

European industrial geography

As a result, the cost of the energy produced is now at least twice that of renewable energies. Today, wind farms in the North Sea have capacities 10 to 20 times greater than those of these reactors, even taking into account the intermittency.

According to The Economist, all the projects planned between now and 2050 in this region represent nearly 260 gigawatts of capacity, the equivalent of what is needed to provide power for 200 million Europeans. A development that could disrupt the industrial geography of the continent, similar to what happened in the hydro and coal regions in the 19th century.

Major technological uncertainties remain both for nuclear power (safety, waste, simplicity) and renewable power (storage). It is therefore in the interest of the nuclear industry to accelerate its transformation if it wants to stay in the race.

Davos looks ahead to a fragmented world after pandemic and Ukraine invasion

The World Economic Forum holds its annual session amid signs of a reshaping of the world order and a retreat from globalisation.

Written in Spanish by ANDREA RIZZI (SPECIAL ENVOY)

El País

Davos - 17 JAN 2023

The Davos Forum, the great annual liturgy of the globalised world, is holding its traditional annual meeting in the Alpine town this week under worrying signs. In the immediate term, although the last few months have yielded some encouraging data in terms of inflation and growth, the majority consensus of experts still foresees a gloomy 2023. Deep down, perhaps more importantly, the disintegrating forces that are fragmenting the world seem unstoppable. The great expansionary phase of globalisation of the past three decades is undergoing a radical shift.

There are two major triggers for this trend. First came the pandemic, which profoundly disrupted global supply chains and underlined the importance of maintaining a degree of self-sufficiency in certain strategic commodities. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a major focus of the forum, a huge geopolitical shock that has completely severed ties between the West and Russia and stimulated reflection on whether it is appropriate for liberal democracies to maintain a high degree of dependence on China, another adversary that could one day become an enemy.

Driven by these two shocks, the protectionist race is on, with huge subsidies to prop up domestic industries in strategic sectors such as energy transition or cutting-edge digital technologies. The United States has approved large aid packages for microchips and green technologies (more than 400 billion euros between them); the European Union has done the same for the former (some 40 billion) and is preparing to do the same for the latter (some 350 billion is planned to counteract the US support plan and prevent the flight of energy investments to the transatlantic partner). Other developed countries will undoubtedly follow suit.

Washington is also promoting tough restrictions on exports to China in key areas to develop pioneering technologies, and is looking for other Western countries to follow suit. At the same time, it is encouraging private companies to reshape their supply chains to be less dependent on Chinese manufacturing and more reliant on friendly countries.

Protectionism, restrictions on free trade, segmented reorganisation of production, geopolitical blocs: this, then, is the background scenario being scrutinised by the world's elite gathered this week in the Swiss Alpine resort.

The World Economic Forum resumes with this edition of its traditional winter meeting after the disruption caused by the pandemic and a spring edition held last year. The organisation reports that more than 2,600 delegates will be present, including some 50 heads of state or government - including the leader of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez - more than 100 foreign, finance and trade ministers and more than 600 company presidents - from Nadella of Microsoft to Dimon of JP Morgan - as well as some 20 central bank governors, media executives and leading figures from academia and civil society.

Of course, in addition to the major geostrategic transformation, short-term issues will undoubtedly play a major role in the forum.

On the one hand, the future of the war in Ukraine, with important decisions pending on the delivery of battle tanks and the prospect of a new round of sanctions against Russian oil, in this case refined products.

Economic outlook

On the other, the more immediate economic scenario, with the corresponding decisions that will have to be taken by public authorities - executive or monetary - and private companies. In this area, the outlook has become less catastrophic than most experts expected following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, thanks in part to a particularly mild autumn and early winter in Europe, which has allowed less gas to be spent. Overall, inflation has been easing in many countries, and growth has exceeded expectations. Labour markets remain buoyant. However, the outlook is not clear.

A survey published by the forum on the eve of the start of the programme suggests that two-thirds of the leading economists consulted - public or private - consider a global recession in 2023 to be likely. This is double the figure recorded in the previous survey, conducted in September.

Another survey by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) of 4,400 chief executives in 105 countries found that more than 70 per cent foresee an economic downturn. Even so, most do not plan to reduce staff or salaries.

As for inflation, levels are moderating in many countries, but core inflation remains threatening. There is no guarantee that a return to normalcy will be swift. Meanwhile, the blow to the purchasing power of so many has been severe, as wages almost everywhere have lagged far behind price increases.

This is therefore a new risk factor that can exacerbate inequality, one of the fundamental problems that has marked the era of globalisation. Globalisation has undoubtedly lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in emerging countries, with China at the forefront; but, together with the technological revolution, it has made the position of so many within advanced societies more fragile. This has eroded popular support for the idea of an interconnected, free-trade world, giving rise to political proposals that advocate other kinds of policies.

Oxfam released a report on global inequality on Monday, arguing that "since 2020, the richest 1% have captured nearly two-thirds of the world's new wealth, almost twice as much as the other 99%", and lamenting the dismal efficiency of tax systems that allow elites to pay too little tax.

In the midst of the polycrisis that the world has been facing in recent years, many voices are warning of the neglect of one of the most threatening challenges: climate change. A report on future risks published by the Davos Forum on the eve of the official programme highlights this issue as one of the most problematic.

Extraordinary problems precipitating a new epoch of the world are piling up on the discussion and business tables in Davos. A bitter cold - with expected lows as low as -15 degrees Celsius - will envelop the event, as a sort of physical reminder of the hibernation phase facing the globalisation of which this forum is the flagship.

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Actress and photographer Gina Lollobrigida has died at the age of 95.

Italian cinema mourns one of its greatest stars.

By David Mouriquand  & Agencies  •  Updated: 16/01/2023 - 15:42

Best known to the public for her films in the 1950s, including Christian Jaque’s Fanfan La Tulipe (1952) and the Silver Bear winning Italian film Pane, amore e fantasia (Break, Love and Dreams) (1953), Lollobrigida became an international star and one of the highest-profile European actresses of her generation.

Born on 4 July 1927 in Subiaco (Italy), Lollobrigida was noticed by the film world in a photo-novel in which she posed under the pseudonym Diana Loris, while she was studying at the Beaux-Arts and taking part in beauty contests.

For years, she was cast for her physical assets and status as a sex symbol, leading many to say that she was "the best thing that has happened since the invention of spaghetti" and describing her as "the most beautiful woman in the world."

Her performance in Bread, Love and Dreams led to it becoming a box-office success and she continued to work in the French cinema industry on such films as Les Belles de nuit (Beauties of the Night) (1952) and Le Grand Jeu (1954).

She was then directed by John Huston in Beat the Devil (1953) in which she played the wife of Humphrey Bogart. Roles in Crossed Swords (1954), co-starring Errol Flynn, Beautiful But Dangerous (1955), Carol Reed’s Trapeze (1956), as well as her turn as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, led to more critical acclaim.

Over the next few years, she would star with the likes of Yves Montand (The Law - 1959), Frank Sinatra (Never So Few - 1959) and Yul Brynner (Solomon and Sheba - 1959). She won a Golden Globe Award for her turn in the romantic comedy Come September (1961), in which she had a leading role alongside Rock Hudson.

"I knew right away that Rock Hudson was gay," she told one reporter, "when he did not fall in love with me."

She is also remembered for starring alongside Sean Connery in the thriller Woman of Straw (1964) and with Alec Guinness in Hotel Paradiso (1966).

By the 1970s, her film career had slowed down and in 1973, she stopped filming for good in order to and take up photography. She had a successful second career as a photographic journalist and photographed, among others, Salvador Dalí, Henry Kissinger, Audrey Hepburn and Ella Fitzgerald.

She did, however, make occasional appearances afterwards, notably at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1986 where she was president of the jury.

She came back to the screen in 1995 for a part in the French comedy Les cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma (One Hundred and One Nights) directed by Agnès Varda, alongside Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Catherine Deneuve, Robert De Niro, Jane Birkin and Michel Piccoli.

She was made a Chevalière de la Légion d'honneur and an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by Jack Lang in 1985 for her achievements in photography, and was awarded the Légion d'honneur by François Mitterrand.

Appointed Goodwill Ambassador in 1999 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, she ran in the same year for the European elections as number 2 on the list of Antonio Di Pietro, the former anti-corruption magistrate, without being elected.

Lollobrigida is survived by her son, Milko, and grandson, Dimitri.

Thierry Breton: EU will mobilise 350 billion for its green energy industry.

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In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

The Internal Market Commissioner believes Europe needs a common framework and matching funding for the 27 to respond to the US.

Written in Spanish by SAMUEL SÁNCHEZ

Xavier Vidal-Folch

El País

Barcelona - 16 JAN 2023

Translation by Germán & Co

Europe will invest some 350 billion in the manufacture of industrial products to generate green energy. And to compete successfully against Chinese and US protectionism. This is what the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton (Paris, 1955), believes in an interview with this newspaper during his recent stay in Spain.

Breton is a key player in the formulation of the Commission's imminent proposal on the matter, which is due in January. He recalls that "the internal market is the quintessence of what we do best: pooling a common good, which reaps more benefits than if we were each managing our own little perimeter". And that at the beginning of the pandemic it fizzled out, because some "closed their borders", but "we reopened, we won".

Question. Europe is subject to a US-China pincer. What will be the outcome?

Answer. Europe is strengthened in crises. As the founding fathers said. It works together. It is strengthened together. We saw it in the Great Recession and in the pandemic. Now we have a major energy and industrial crisis, resulting from the war in Ukraine.

P. The first war on our continent after the Balkans, even if this one was less global in scope.

R. That's right. And it affects the way we live, the way we feed ourselves, the way we produce... And the dependency relations that have been established with Russia. We give all our support to Ukraine, with the US and others. We will continue to do so. And then there are the autocracies, Russia. And China, that's why we call it a systemic rival, which does not mean not trading, but defending our values. We know where we stand. And we are a great democracy, 450 million people. And we are moving forward.

P. Yes, but at every opportunity it seems to forget the progress we have made together, without accumulating the solutions applied, and it returns to divisions, to ground zero, to having to relearn that joint action is essential. We spend a lot of time building consensus, making decisions.

R. I understand that point of view. But I must focus on what is my responsibility, the internal market. It is the quintessence of what we do best: pooling a common good, which reaps much better benefits than if we were each managing our own little perimeter. The internal market is a never-ending struggle. There are always forces that in times of crisis look backwards. I have to be here to remind us that we are stronger by pooling our resources than by closing in on ourselves.

Q. What example would you highlight?

R. At the beginning of the covid crisis, the internal market was closed. Some countries closed their borders to keep the masks on their people, and to prevent others from coming in and infecting them. I called the ministers one by one and urged them to reverse this action. There were strong discussions, but we reopened. We agreed to manufacture and distribute the vaccines. We won. Europe was the first continent to vaccinate its citizens and to export vaccines. We learned. Now we have the consequences of the energy crisis, which had started before the Ukrainian war, and the Ukrainian war amplified it enormously.

P. And history repeated itself.

R. It is true that some countries decided to intervene on their own and inject resources to protect their companies. I understand that intention. We have to make it easier for our companies to overcome the shock. Especially when other continents like the US and China inject considerable subsidies especially for new, green technologies: batteries, photovoltaic solar panels, wind power. I understand that governments are saying: we have to do something similar to retain and attract companies. That's why I'm going to see everyone. That is why I am coming to Spain, to Poland, to Belgium, to Denmark... To find an instrument, a general framework that maintains a similar capacity to react for all Member States, whatever their economic, financial, industrial or social situation. Especially in view of the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 14 August, which came into force on 1 January, and which supports strategic clean technologies such as hydrogen and photovoltaics. And which not only subsidises investment, but also the operation of companies [with 369 billion euros]. The response must be coordinated. Without it many of our companies will leave....

Q. ... to the US.

R. Of course, because it is more advantageous than staying here, given the better financial support. This is very dangerous for Europe. We have been discussing it for months, perhaps many months, since September, although it is true that this law is only dated 14 August.

P. You come to Spain, to Poland, to Belgium, but the problem of individual reaction with hundreds of billions of euros is rather in Berlin. Or in Paris.

R. I have already been to Berlin, I met with Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck. And in Paris, before Christmas, with the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron.

P. Give us the good news that they understand that they should not act on their own.

R. Macron has said it clearly in public. He said it to Joe Biden. And at the European Council in December, he stressed that a coordinated response was needed on the general framework and on financing, he was very precise. And the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, insisted. And he asked us - all 27 Member States asked us - the Commission to come back with a proposal. That's why I'm doing this tour of capitals.

P. I see you as less optimistic about Berlin, as if Germany is in its usual diesel mode: slow start and then constant speed.

R. He raises the question of relaxing state aid regulation. And he is very active on "permitting", facilitating and speeding up the procedures for setting up new technology factories. It often takes up to three years before they are opened.

Q. Your conclusion?

R. We are finalising the proposal. On the one hand, the idea of the general regulatory framework is advanced: speeding up authorisations, formalities and procedures for setting up new new technology plants; and speeding up the validation of public aid. We will make a specific Clean Tech Act for the green energy technologies industry, industrial decarbonisation and mobility. Just as we did the Chip Act, to encourage not only the deployment of new technologies but also to accelerate production in Europe. Because without a manufacturing base, our security of supply, our export capacity and our European jobs are at risk. It will be a horizontal rule, so that everyone who wants to can, with the same instruments, get on board in these industries and no one will be left by the wayside. We are working intensively on the financing chapter.

P. It is the one that can most distort the equality of each partner in the same market, due to its different capacity for public support, especially in the North-South line.

R. We are working on this issue to find a solution that works for everyone. For the time being, the financing is provided by the states. Those with the greatest capacity for debt, such as Germany, have announced that they will inject 200 billion. The Netherlands, 40 billion, which is a lot for that country. We are discussing how the figures will be specified. I estimate that in the German case, between 80,000 and 100,000 million will be dedicated to this industry [apart from those destined for families].

P. Much more than others, absolutely and relatively speaking.

R. We are at the moment evaluating and weighing it up. Other countries will be able to use the undrawn part of the Next Generation-EU recovery plan. Especially loans, rather than direct subsidies. This is the case of Spain. Or Italy. These are credits that were foreseen for this plan, it is necessary to verify if they fit well in the new Clean Tech Act. Other countries, such as Belgium, hope to be able to use increased specific support from the European Investment Bank. Others suggest gaining access to additional borrowing capacity, at an equivalent interest rate for all, through a mechanism similar to the SURE fund [for reinsuring unemployment insurance]: not all countries used it, but it was a success for those that did. With the guarantee of each state.

Q. Are you suggesting a variety of financial instruments?

R. Exactly. The idea I'm working on is that there will not be a single, stand-alone mechanism. But a set, a panoply of instruments. On the one hand, they should be able to respond to the different needs of each country. On the other hand, they should enable each and every one of them to provide a similar industrial investment response. It is not a proposal for a new Next-Generation, which would be difficult to accept, but a box of different financial instruments available.

P. Spain proposes that flexibility in State aid should be temporary, until 2026, and that it should be "imperative" to link it to the Nex Generation plan: what do you think?

R. These are structural changes. The US IRA is not a transitional measure; China's policy is long-term. So the framework we put in place cannot be limited to short-term temporary solutions. That is why we believe that a combination of regulatory measures and financial support must be prepared. And we are looking for solutions that work across the European Union, depending on different circumstances. In some Member States, NextGenerationEU can, with the necessary flexibilities, help. But this is not the case for all Member States. Some have already allocated their entire budget and used all possible loans. We need a package of national and EU measures to address the challenge of deindustrialisation linked to energy costs and the race for clean technologies: state aid, the best possible use of existing instruments (RFF, Repower), but also new European instruments to support in the very short term companies facing high energy costs and help them invest in clean technology manufacturing capacities.

P. Does this ensure that we do not turn the internal market into a patchwork of unconnected pieces and unequal players, which would denature the Union?

R. Yes, the idea is to guarantee a common ground for the participation of all, a regulatory level playing field, and the financial capacity for the States to intervene according to their needs, in a roughly similar way according to their specificities.

P. But the relaxation of state aid could stifle the single market.

R. This is a real risk, because some states would have deeper pockets to help their companies, even if they are only temporary exceptions. And they would be likely to distort competition. Only a framework that specifies for which companies, which sector, in what form, in terms of investment or operating subsidies, for how long, etc., will make it possible to respond to this risk, because the rules will be the same for everyone. But if only competition rules are opened up without further requirements, the risk would be higher.

Q. Will we avoid a Frankenstein-like Internal Market?

R. It seems to me that this is the only way to keep Europe competitive on the outside and at the same time harmonious on the inside. This is my fight.

Q. How much in total resources do you estimate?

R. Roughly speaking, and taking into account the American experience, it will be close to 2% of the Community's GDP, or some 300,000 or 350,000 million euros, but only in this specific industry, industrial production for clean energy equipment. These figures are an approximation, an order of magnitude.

Q. Is that all?

P. And then we have another mechanism, REPower-EU, to finance energy infrastructures that contribute to the Green Deal. From electricity grids to interconnections, renewable energy fields, or regasification terminals. It is a parallel device, but a different one. The Clean Tech Act aims to stimulate the industrial manufacture of energy products, such as batteries and photovoltaic panels, which are hardly produced in Europe today. The regulatory framework and financing comparable to that of our competitors will allow us to create an industry for renewable energies that is competitive with the American and Chinese industries.

P. We are starting almost from scratch.

R. Europe produces barely 2% of the world's solar panels. The overwhelming majority is made in China.

P. There is some in Germany.

R. Less and less. The president of one of the companies involved has just confessed to me that if he cannot count on support, he is about to rethink and look for another location for the investments he had planned in our continent. We must avoid this exodus. The Polish Prime Minister rightly commented to me the other day: "we Europeans must export our products, not our jobs" in these sectors of the future. For my part, I would add that these new productions require very select raw materials, rare earths, specific minerals such as nickel or cobalt or manganese. Many of these materials are extracted or processed in China.

P. Also in Ukraine.

R. Yes, but the processing, the lithium refineries, for example, are 90% in China. Chile produces, but has to send it by ship there, and then we import it. We depend on where it is produced. We have to set up factories in Europe and make import agreements with producers, such as Chile, Namibia or Canada, to diversify access to the raw material. We must also set up our own extraction mines. We should not rely entirely on others because we are wary of possible pollution: today there are sufficient technologies for clean production, while respecting the environment and biodiversity. Morally, we should not close our eyes in such a way that only others extract.

P. Europe's subsoil is less rich.

R. We have a lot of minerals in Europe. Lithium, cobalt, zinc. Roughly speaking, we could meet at least 30% of our needs. And now we have to add the recent discovery in Sweden. We are in the process of preparing another regulation, the Raw Materials Act. I will present it in March. We have unanimity in principle from the industry ministers on its various components: safety, research, recycling and circular economy.

P. President Von der Leyen has proposed a sovereign wealth fund for more global industrial investments, how does that fit in with the package we are talking about?

R. It is a longer-term proposal. We are working on it. It will be about sectors that need to be protected. And it will clearly require funding from the Commission. It will be an important element for the mid-term review of the financial perspectives.

Q. What is the status of the Chips Act?

R. The Council has already approved it. It is now in Parliament and then the trialogue between the three institutions begins. I am confident that it will be finished this year.

Q. How slow!

R. Our democracy is like that. Democracies are slower than autocracies. Dictatorships are very summary. But the key is that, as the roadmap is already sketched out, the companies have already proposed many projects. And they are signed.

P. This effect of anticipating the full effect of the regulation is significant; it is also happening in Spain with the projects of the Next Generation plan.

R. Yes, it is. I am at the disposal of all those who want to see me to adapt and to anticipate their projects. I have seen many of them, including Elon Musk from Twitter, Airbnb, all the big platforms; we have started voluntary audit tests...

P. On the new European digital regulation, will Musk obey you in your demand to moderate Twitter content and disinformation?

R. He doesn't have to obey me or not. I am very clear. Europe is the first big economic space and the first digital market in the free world: one and a half times more than the Americans in terms of users. It is normal that the big platforms want to come and take advantage of our market. We don't force them to come, they are welcome, but we tell them: here are our rules. In continental Europe you drive on the right. It's OK to drive or to send cars to us. That's all. They understand very well what the conditions of access to our market are, you have to comply with them and if you don't, there will be a scale of sanctions. It is not personal obedience. It is the law.

P. This is how European standards spread around the world, thanks to the regulatory power of the EU, as the legal scholar Anu Bradford has written in The Brussels effect.

R. Sure, but my responsibility is Europe. I have had that discussion with Musk. He has told me that he understands the approach and that he is comfortable and will comply. And I said that if they want to apply the same rules to their activities outside Europe, no problem.

P. Isn't that good for the EU? It exports rules.

R. In a way the US faces the same challenge, because it suffers from the consequences of excessive deregulation of the digital space, on social networks, on the protection of individuals, which ends up leading to a monopolisation that amounts to rentier-like monopolisation.

News round-up, Monday, January 16, 2023

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“Just as teachers will have to change how they give students exams and essay assignments in light of ChatGPT, governments will have to change how they relate to lobbyists.”

— NYT

“For what purpose do we exist, and why are we required? Is artificial intelligence already more advanced than us?”

— Germán & Co

How ChatGPT Hijacks Democracy

Jan. 15, 202

CreditCredit...By David Szakaly

By Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier

Mr. Sanders is a data scientist. Mr. Schneier is a security technologist.

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter  Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

Launched just weeks ago, ChatGPT is already threatening to upend how we draft everyday communications like emails, college essays and myriad other forms of writing.

Created by the company OpenAI, ChatGPT is a chatbot that can automatically respond to written prompts in a manner that is sometimes eerily close to human.

But for all the consternation over the potential for humans to be replaced by machines in formats like poetry and sitcom scripts, a far greater threat looms: artificial intelligence replacing humans in the democratic processes — not through voting, but through lobbying.

ChatGPT could automatically compose comments submitted in regulatory processes. It could write letters to the editor for publication in local newspapers. It could comment on news articles, blog entries and social media posts millions of times every day. It could mimic the work that the Russian Internet Research Agency did in its attempt to influence our 2016 elections, but without the agency’s reported multimillion-dollar budget and hundreds of employees.

Automatically generated comments aren’t a new problem. For some time, we have struggled with bots, machines that automatically post content. Five years ago, at least a million automatically drafted comments were believed to have been submitted to the Federal Communications Commission regarding proposed regulations on net neutrality. In 2019, a Harvard undergraduate, as a test, used a text-generation program to submit 1,001 comments in response to a government request for public input on a Medicaid issue. Back then, submitting comments was just a game of overwhelming numbers.

Platforms have gotten better at removing “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Facebook, for example, has been removing over a billion fake accounts a year. But such messages are just the beginning. Rather than flooding legislators’ inboxes with supportive emails, or dominating the Capitol switchboard with synthetic voice calls, an A.I. system with the sophistication of ChatGPT but trained on relevant data could selectively target key legislators and influencers to identify the weakest points in the policymaking system and ruthlessly exploit them through direct communication, public relations campaigns, horse trading or other points of leverage.

When we humans do these things, we call it lobbying. Successful agents in this sphere pair precision message writing with smart targeting strategies. Right now, the only thing stopping a ChatGPT-equipped lobbyist from executing something resembling a rhetorical drone warfare campaign is a lack of precision targeting. A.I. could provide techniques for that as well.

A system that can understand political networks, if paired with the textual-generation capabilities of ChatGPT, could identify the member of Congress with the most leverage over a particular policy area — say, corporate taxation or military spending. Like human lobbyists, such a system could target undecided representatives sitting on committees controlling the policy of interest and then focus resources on members of the majority party when a bill moves toward a floor vote.

Once individuals and strategies are identified, an A.I. chatbot like ChatGPT could craft written messages to be used in letters, comments — anywhere text is useful. Human lobbyists could also target those individuals directly. It’s the combination that’s important: Editorial and social media comments only get you so far, and knowing which legislators to target isn’t itself enough.

This ability to understand and target actors within a network would create a tool for A.I. hacking, exploiting vulnerabilities in social, economic and political systems with incredible speed and scope. Legislative systems would be a particular target, because the motive for attacking policymaking systems is so strong, because the data for training such systems is so widely available and because the use of A.I. may be so hard to detect — particularly if it is being used strategically to guide human actors.

The data necessary to train such strategic targeting systems will only grow with time. Open societies generally make their democratic processes a matter of public record, and most legislators are eager — at least, performatively so — to accept and respond to messages that appear to be from their constituents.

Maybe an A.I. system could uncover which members of Congress have significant sway over leadership but still have low enough public profiles that there is only modest competition for their attention. It could then pinpoint the SuperPAC or public interest group with the greatest impact on that legislator’s public positions. Perhaps it could even calibrate the size of donation needed to influence that organization or direct targeted online advertisements carrying a strategic message to its members. For each policy end, the right audience; and for each audience, the right message at the right time.

What makes the threat of A.I.-powered lobbyists greater than the threat already posed by the high-priced lobbying firms on K Street is their potential for acceleration. Human lobbyists rely on decades of experience to find strategic solutions to achieve a policy outcome. That expertise is limited, and therefore expensive.

A.I. could, theoretically, do the same thing much more quickly and cheaply. Speed out of the gate is a huge advantage in an ecosystem in which public opinion and media narratives can become entrenched quickly, as is being nimble enough to shift rapidly in response to chaotic world events.

Moreover, the flexibility of A.I. could help achieve influence across many policies and jurisdictions simultaneously. Imagine an A.I.-assisted lobbying firm that can attempt to place legislation in every single bill moving in the U.S. Congress, or even across all state legislatures. Lobbying firms tend to work within one state only, because there are such complex variations in law, procedure and political structure. With A.I. assistance in navigating these variations, it may become easier to exert power across political boundaries.

Just as teachers will have to change how they give students exams and essay assignments in light of ChatGPT, governments will have to change how they relate to lobbyists.

To be sure, there may also be benefits to this technology in the democracy space; the biggest one is accessibility. Not everyone can afford an experienced lobbyist, but a software interface to an A.I. system could be made available to anyone. If we’re lucky, maybe this kind of strategy-generating A.I. could revitalize the democratization of democracy by giving this kind of lobbying power to the powerless.

However, the biggest and most powerful institutions will likely use any A.I. lobbying techniques most successfully. After all, executing the best lobbying strategy still requires insiders — people who can walk the halls of the legislature — and money. Lobbying isn’t just about giving the right message to the right person at the right time; it’s also about giving money to the right person at the right time. And while an A.I. chatbot can identify who should be on the receiving end of those campaign contributions, humans will, for the foreseeable future, need to supply the cash. So while it’s impossible to predict what a future filled with A.I. lobbyists will look like, it will probably make the already influential and powerful even more so.

German anti-coal protesters accuse police of violence

Organizers said that 35,000 protesters demonstrated on Saturday. Police put the figure at 15,000.

Le Monde with AFP

Published on January 15, 2023

Climate activists on Sunday, January 15, accused police of "pure violence" after clashes during a demonstration at a German village being razed to make way for a coal mine expansion.

In an operation that began on Wednesday, hundreds of police have been removing activists from the doomed hamlet of Luetzerath in western Germany.

The site, which has become a symbol of resistance to fossil fuels, attracted thousands of protesters on Saturday, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Protest organizers reported that dozens had been injured in clashes with police. Indigo Drau, a spokeswoman for the organizers, on Sunday told a press conference the police had gone in with "pure violence." Officers had "unrestrainedly" beaten protesters, often on the head, she said.

Activists on Saturday had accused the police of using "massive batons, pepper spray... water cannons, dogs and horses."

At least 20 activists had been taken to hospital for treatment, said Birte Schramm, a medic with the group. Some of them had been beaten on the head and in the stomach by police, she said. Organizers said that 35,000 protesters demonstrated on Saturday. Police put the figure at 15,000.

A police spokesperson said on Sunday around 70 officers had been injured since Wednesday, many of them in Saturday's clashes.

Criminal proceedings have been launched in around 150 cases, police said, including for resistance against police officers, damage to property and breach of the peace. The situation on the ground was "very calm" on Sunday, the police spokesperson said.

About a dozen activists were still holed up in tree houses and at least two were hiding in an underground tunnel, according to the police.

Luetzerath – deserted for some time by its former inhabitants – is being demolished to make way for the extension of the adjacent open-cast coal mine. The mine, already one of the largest in Europe, is operated by energy firm RWE.

The expansion is going ahead in spite of plans to phase out coal by 2030, with the government blaming the energy crisis caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Le Monde with AFP

Chile: Pardon granted to prisoners of 2019 revolt sparks political crisis

President Gabriel Boric pardoned 12 people convicted in connection with the violence that plagued the demonstrations. This measure was marred by 'errors' and led to the resignation of the Minister of Justice and the head of the cabinet.

By Flora Genoux (Buenos Aires (Argentina) correspondent)

Published on January 16, 2023

It was a campaign promise of President Gabriel Boric (left), who came to power in Chile in March 2022. But, in trying to fulfill it, the government is now facing a major political crisis. The resignation of Minister of Justice Marcela Rios was confirmed on Saturday, January 7, as well as that of the chief of staff Matias Meza-Lopehandia, a close friend of the president.

The resignations come after Mr. Boric's decision on Dec. 30, 2022, to grant presidential pardons to people who had been convicted in connection with the violence that marred the historic 2019 anti-inequality movement. The head of state had made it one of his priorities, motivated by the need to "heal the scars" of the protests, which were violently repressed by the police. According to figures from the Chilean gendarmerie, requested by the Senate and disclosed in January 2022, 211 people were convicted or in pre-trial detention for crimes related to the demonstrations.

But the choice of the individuals pardoned – twelve men in total – immediately sparked controversy. The release of Luis Castillo, 37, was particularly shocking. Beyond his participation in the demonstrations, this man is a repeat offender, convicted several times including for robbery with violence, all of which occurred well before the social revolt, according to revelations of the television channel T13.

On Saturday, January 7, Mr. Boric acknowledged "errors" and "flaws in the execution of [his] decision" without going into detail. The measure does not meet the criteria "set by the president (...) to exclude [from the pardon] people who had a complex criminal record prior to the revolt," admitted Camila Vallejo, government spokeswoman, on Monday, without specifying how many ex-detainees are affected by this error. Nevertheless, the pardon has no legal defect and "it is not possible to revoke it," she stressed.

About thirty deaths

The right was opposed in principle to the concept of pardoning those prosecuted in connection with the protests. "The priority is to be on the side of the victims, not the offenders," said Diego Schalper, deputy and secretary general of Renovacion Nacional (right), who condemned what he called a "huge mistake." The opposition left the "security table," a space for dialogue between the government and the opposition launched in November 2022 to establish strategies to combat insecurity, which according to opinion polls is the number one concern of Chileans.

The unpopular release of some of the social revolt prisoners has become an issue since the presidential campaign at the end of 2021 and even more so since Mr. Boric took office. The ruling left-wing coalition is following in the footsteps of the 2019 movement against inequality, which in particular raised demands for new social rights. Mr. Boric echoed these demands and the corresponding need to write a new constitution. Although the project formulated during a year was amply rejected in a referendum in September 2022, its drafting must now be relaunched.

However, while the social revolt was marred by the outbursts of violent individuals, it also involved the "excessive use of force" by the police, as condemned by the UN. In all, some 30 people lost their lives and over 400 sustained eye injuries. It is in this context that Amnesty International has denounced the "disproportionate use of pre-trial detention."

Initially, the government had set its sights on an amnesty law, which was to be debated in Parliament. But without a majority or political consensus, the project floundered, finally leading to this pardon, which depends only on the will of the president. According to the Cadem institute, 64 percent of those polled were opposed to it.

'Tactical and timing error'

The release of the detainees "was used by the right to undermine the government and get its [candidate for the post of] national prosecutor," according to human rights lawyer Karinna Fernandez. The January 9 appointment of the new head of the prosecutor's office, an autonomous body responsible for conducting investigations, was the subject of arduous negotiations, while the position remained vacant for 100 days. Ms. Fernandez herself was a candidate before withdrawing from the race in November 2022. The head of the prosecutor's office "is an authority that will have an influence on the cases of police violence of the social revolt, he has, for example, the possibility of not following up on the investigations," explained the lawyer.

According to Marco Moreno, a political scientist at the Central University of Chile, the government made "a tactical and timing error. It has governed for its political tribe [the leftmost wing of the coalition] and deprived itself of a start to the year with good news about the work of the security table." As the government approaches its first year in office, "it lacks clarity and direction," argued Mr. Moreno.

When he took office on Wednesday, January 11, the new Minister of Justice, Luis Cordero, said that "since their application in the 1990s until today, grounds [for pardons] have been a source of conflict." The controversy has further undermined the president's image, which had benefited from a very relative improvement at the end of the year. According to the Cadem institute, 70% of those polled disapproved of Mr. Boric's leadership at the beginning of January, representing a peak of negative opinion.

Flora Genoux(Buenos Aires (Argentina) correspondent)

US says Venezuela President Maduro is still illegitimate

The US said Tuesday it would maintain sanctions after the fledgling opposition dissolved its 'interim government.' Joined by most Western and Latin American nations, Washington recognized Juan Guaido as interim president four years ago.

Le Monde with AFP

Published on January 4, 2023

The United States said Tuesday, January 3, it still did not consider Nicolas Maduro to be the legitimate president of Venezuela and would maintain sanctions after the fledgling opposition dissolved its "interim government."

President Joe Biden's administration said that Venezuelan government assets in the United States, notably of the state oil company, would remain legally under the authority of the opposition-led National Assembly, which was elected in 2015 but has been disempowered by Mr. Maduro's leftist government.

"Our approach to Nicolas Maduro is not changing. He is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters. "We continue to recognize what is the only remaining democratically elected institution in Venezuela today, and that's the 2015 National Assembly," Mr. Price said. Mr. Price said that existing sanctions "remain in place" and that the United States was in touch with the National Assembly on whether a new individual, group or committee would oversee government assets.

More than seven million Venezuelans have fled

The United States, under former president Donald Trump, set a goal of toppling Mr. Maduro in 2019 following elections widely seen as fraudulent and as an economic crisis wreaked havoc with shortages of basic necessities. More than seven million Venezuelans have fled their country, most to neighboring countries but with a growing number making the dangerous trek to the United States.

Joined by most Western and Latin American nations at the time, the United States four years ago recognized the National Assembly's Juan Guaido as interim president. Mr. Maduro has remained in power with backing from some segments of the population as well as the military, Russia, China and Cuba. The National Assembly – now largely a symbolic force in Caracas – on Friday voted to dissolve Mr. Guaido's "interim government."

In an interview broadcast Sunday on state television, Mr. Maduro proposed top-level talks with the Biden administration. "Venezuela is ready, totally ready, to take steps towards a process of normalization of diplomatic, consular and political relations with the current administration of the United States and with administrations to come," Maduro said.

'An exercise in political realism'

Despite not recognizing his legitimacy, the Biden administration sent a delegation that met Mr. Maduro in March and in November it gave the green light for US oil giant Chevron to resume operations in Venezuela following a spike in crude prices due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Chevron move came after the Maduro government and opposition reached an agreement in talks in Mexico to let the United Nations administer government funds for a variety of social spending in the country.

In Caracas, National Assembly member Tomas Guanipa, whose opposition party Primero Justicia pushed to end the interim government, told reporters that last week's decision was "an exercise in political realism." "Whether Maduro is illegitimate is not up for discussion; what cannot exist is an alternative government that doesn't exercise its functions and that had been set up to achieve change quickly," said Mr. Guanipa, who served as the interim government's ambassador to Colombia.

Political support for Mr. Guaido had eroded further outside the United States, where fervent anti-communists of Cuban and Venezuelan descent are a potent political force, although generally tilting toward Mr. Trump's Republican Party.

The sharpest shift has been in Colombia, long a vociferous opponent of Mr. Maduro, where President Gustavo Petro has pursued reconciliation since he was elected last year as Colombia's first-ever leftist leader.

The European Union, while not dropping support for Mr. Guaido, since mid-2021 stopped referring to him as interim president after Mr. Maduro pushed aside the National Assembly. A French foreign ministry spokeswoman, asked Tuesday about the end of the interim government, said France "supports the democratic forces of Venezuela who will organize themselves as they so wish."

Le Monde with AFP

Whisper it, but Europe is winning the energy war with Putin

Mild weather, lower consumption and supplies from elsewhere have helped Europe take an advantage.

BY CHARLIE COOPER

JANUARY 13, 2023

Halfway through the first winter of Europe’s energy war with Russia, only one side is winning.

When Vladimir Putin warned in September that Europeans would “freeze” if the West stuck to its energy sanctions against Russia, Moscow’s fossil fuel blackmail appeared to be going exactly to plan.

European wholesale gas prices were north of €200 per megawatt hour, around 10 times higher than they had been for most of 2021. Plans were drawn up to cut gas demand and ensure supplies could move across borders to countries with the worst shortages. Regular rolling blackouts in the EU were a very real prospect.

Putin’s strategy — to make life miserable for the European public by shutting off their gas, forcing them to drop their support for Ukraine — looked a potent one.By Joshua Posaner

Boosting supplies

At great expense, European countries hoovered up global supplies of LNG in mid to late 2022, increasing imports from 83 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2021 to 141 bcm in 2022, according to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. That offset about three-quarters of the 80 bcm that Europe was no longer receiving from Russia’s pipelines. New LNG import infrastructure is springing up across Europe, including in Germany where six floating terminals will be operational by the end of this year.

Much of the LNG already imported — the bulk of it shipped from the U.S. — is now sitting in Europe’s network of underground storage facilities. Mild weather, combined with steep falls in gas consumption driven by higher prices, mean that those storages are still 82 percent full. That's roughly where they were when Putin made his “freeze” threat four months ago.

On January 1, European stocks were around 31 bcm higher than they had been a year earlier, according to Jack Sharples of the Oxford Institute. “That’s put us in a very good position to start the year.”

Moscow, meanwhile, is starting to feel the effects of the West’s energy countermeasures.

One analysis from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air estimated that the EU’s ban on Russian crude oil imports and the G7’s $60 per barrel price cap are together costing Russia €160 million a day.

Despite sanctions and supply cuts, Moscow made €155 billion from oil and gas exports in 2022 — 30 percent higher than the previous year. But with global oil and gas prices falling, in 2023 the Kremlin’s own estimates say that those revenues will be down 23 percent — a figure some experts think is optimistic.

So has Europe already won the energy war?

“The word ‘won’ is too bold. It’s still early winter and there are lots of things that could still go wrong,” said Dieter Helm, professor of economic policy at New College, Oxford and a former energy adviser to the European Commission. “But Europe has done vastly better than most of the commentators expected.”

“For now, things look good,” an EU diplomat agreed. “The Russians only had one weapon in the energy war: gas. It’s a strong weapon, with strong short-term impact. But they’ve used it already." The diplomat said that the EU's "arsenal" was more diverse, including: boosting renewables, getting supplies from elsewhere and taking steps to use less energy. "But we can’t afford to be complacent.”

That is a message echoed across EU capitals.

“It’s Europe 1, Russia 0,” said one EU energy minister — but the contest is far from over. For months now, European leaders have warned that next winter could be more dangerous than this one, with a tight global LNG market and the possibility of a resurgent China, reopening after COVID lockdowns, competing for a limited supply.

Paying a price

Europe’s strong position in January has also come with a cost.

Industrial output has held up reasonably well but energy-intensive sectors are taking a particularly hard hit, with production down by almost 13 percent year-on-year in November, according to ING.

Governments are also on the hook for vast energy bill support payments to consumers and businesses — totaling €705 billion across Europe according to the Bruegel think tank. Such huge sums will weigh on national budgets for years to come.

But on perhaps the key measure — public and political support for Ukraine — Russia has certainly failed in its attempt to break European resolve. Eurobarometer polling conducted in October and November and released this week shows that 73 percent of EU citizens backed the bloc’s support for Kyiv and sanctions against Russia.

There a few signs that views have changed over the course of the winter. Germany’s far right has spear-headed protests against sanctions and Hungary’s government has frequently pushed back against the EU’s stance on Ukraine — but so far such sentiments have remained a minority pursuit in Europe.  

“This is political as well as economic and I think Europeans have shown a remarkable degree of solidarity,” said Helm. “This is a European project, it needs European strategies, and the strength of the European Union has been on great display.”

News round-up, Friday, January 13, 2023

“Exxon scientists predicted there would be global heating of about 0.2C a decade due to the emissions of planet-heating gases from the burning of oil, coal and other fossil fuels. The new analysis, published in Science, finds that Exxon’s science was highly adept and the “projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models”.”

— The Guardian

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US Republicans determined to track down Hunter Biden scandal

An investigation is already targeting the son of US President Joe Biden in a tax evasion case, but it is his business activities in Ukraine and China that fuel most of the theories around him.

By Piotr Smolar (Washington (United States) correspondent)

Published on January 13, 2023

Le Monde

US Congressman Jim Jordan shows an email from Hunter Biden during a press conference on the Biden family business investigation on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, November 17, 2022. EVELYN HOCKSTEIN / REUTERS

Hunter Biden, 52, had his first drink when he was 8 at an election night party celebrating his father. He had lost his mother and sister in a car accident when he was 2, then witnessed his older brother, Beau, die of cancer at age 46. His first marriage fell apart and he struggled then with drug and alcohol addictions.

But beyond his personal misfortunes, Mr. Biden represents a vulnerability for his father, the incumbent President of the United States. The Republicans, who won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives after the midterms elections last November, decided to attack Mr. Biden through his son over his questionable financial activities.

The White House has already stated that it does not intend to cooperate with a future House committee focused on Hunter Biden whereas it has said it would do so in other proposed topics of investigation such as the military withdrawal from Afghanistan or immigration at the Mexican border.

The president wants his son to keep a low profile so that his opponents have no leg to stand on and to reinforce the idea that he is being persecuted. But whether the strategy holds in the longer term is another question.

"This is an investigation into US President Joe Biden and why he lied to the American people about his knowledge of and involvement in his family's business schemes," James Comer, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, told journalists in November to justify the launch of the battle against the Biden family.

Democrats for their part point out the Grand Old Party's lack of interest in another matter that heightens suspicions of conflict of interest on a completely different scale. The matter covers a $2 billion investment by a Saudi fund in a new company, Affinity Partners, created by Jared Kushner, son-in-law and former adviser to Donald Trump, six months after he left the White House. Mr. Kushner had developed a close relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Business activities in Ukraine and China

President Biden's son is already under investigation. Media reported that FBI and IRS agents have gathered strong evidence of tax evasion and a lie about purchasing a handgun in 2018 when Hunter Biden failed to mention his drug use. It was up to the Delaware attorney general to issue a possible indictment.

But the Republicans have a different idea. They claim to be exposing a mafia-type "family". Their conclusions are written down already even though there is no evidence that the president has taken part in any wrongdoing or questionable actions.

This is why Hunter Biden would have been better off never spilling liquid on his computer. In April 2019, he visited a repair store in Wilmington, Delaware, to save his personal files and data but he seemed to forget about going to collect the machine. This was when the drama started before becoming the greatest obsession of the MAGA – Make America Great Again – supporters.

The MacBook, which is now in the hands of the FBI, contained nearly 129,000 emails and a large number of instant messages, as well as photos and videos, mixing mundane, sordid and professional content. Bank documents, hotel bills, family chats and videos of Hunter Biden's parties with crack and prostitutes. The most controversial content, however, was about his business activities in Ukraine and China.

'Poor judgment'

The Washington Post wrote in March last year that Hunter Biden and his uncle James had received $4.8 million in 14 months in 2017 from the Chinese energy group CEFC. The newspaper reported that there was no evidence that Joe Biden was involved or personally benefited from this, although the financial relationship seemed questionable at a time when the US and China were already engaged in a systemic confrontation.

That said, an elected official's son using his name for personal gain is nothing new in Washington DC, the world's lobbying capital.

But another matter triggered the biggest suspicions: The presence of Hunter Biden on the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, between 2014 and 2019, while his father served as vice president for former US president Barack Obama (2008-2016).

At the time, Joe Biden was responsible for monitoring Ukraine now torn apart by war. In an interview with ABC in late 2019, Hunter Biden denied any wrongdoing but he admitted: "In retrospect, look, I think that it was poor judgment on my part," he said, adding the Ukrainian gas sector was a "swamp."

In July 2019, Mr. Trump exerted pressure on Ukraine's then new President, Volodymyr Zelensky, to "look closely" at the role of Joe Biden and his son after Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma, was dismissed. In reality, Mr. Shokin was considered by Washington as an opponent of judicial reform in Ukraine. The first impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump were launched following this intervention in early 2020.

Multiple conspiracy theories

In mid-October 2020, the New York Post, a pro-Trump publication at the time, ran a front-page story on the president's son's emails. The article revealed an email sent to Hunter Biden by Vadym Pozharskyi, a senior executive at Burisma, thanking him for his invitation to Washington and the opportunity to meet his father.

The newspaper reported that, as a member of the company's board, Hunter Biden was then earning $50,000 a month. In April 2015, Joe Biden's campaign team investigated the matter and determined that no such meeting with Mr. Pozharskyi had ever taken place.

With three weeks to go before the presidential election, it was an important moment for the Democrats, even though the confusing details of the scandal were difficult to understand. A few days after the report by the New York Post, about 50 veterans from the security and intelligence services signed an open letter to denounce a possible manipulation coming from Russia.

This was not beyond the realm of reality due to prior Russian involvement, such as the cyberattack against French President Emmanuel Macron's campaign team in 2017 or the attack on the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

Those who signed the letter acknowledged later that they did not know whether the emails were authentic and could not substantiate the rumor of Russian involvement. But they said they were "highly suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role."

Since then, the Hunter Biden controversy has grown out of control. It seems unlikely that any hard truths will emerge given so many fantasies and conspiracy theories have piled up. The responsibilities are shared. The mainstream media was accused of hiding the truth and protecting Joe Biden while tech giants like Facebook and Twitter were believed to censor conservatives' posts.

Elon Musk recently revealed how Twitter was moderated behind the scenes. In doing so, Republicans were quick to denounce conspiracy and expose federal pressure on these companies. US Republican congressman James Comer said he intended to devote first hearings to this issue from early next month.

By trying to prevent the release of information from Hunter Biden's computer at the end of the 2020 presidential campaign for fear of externally orchestrated manipulation, these private companies – who are free to do as they please, but find themselves caught in the act of hypocrisy – have fueled the idea that there was some sort of coalition of elites working against the people to hide the truth.

The reality is more nuanced than that. Fox News political commentator Tucker Carlson – who promoted the racist "Great Replacement" theory of white Americans – released an accusatory documentary called Biden, Inc.

While promoting the film on Fox News, he explained that he became very close with Hunter Biden when he was living in Washington and had asked him for a letter of recommendation for his son Buckley's application to the prestigious Georgetown University in Washington.

Piotr Smolar(Washington (United States) correspondent)

Russia-Ukraine WarRussia Says It Has Taken Soledar as Kyiv Denies the Claim

A Russian victory in Soledar would be a symbolic win but have limited strategic value, analysts say.

Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.

NYT, today news

A Ukrainian soldier pointing toward smoke near Soledar, in the eastern Donetsk region, on Wednesday.Credit...Libkos/Associated Press

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday that its troops had captured the eastern salt-mining town of Soledar, a claim quickly rejected by Ukraine’s military, which said that its soldiers were hanging on.

After a string of setbacks for Russia, capturing Soledar would represent the biggest success for Moscow’s forces in Ukraine in months, though military analysts have cautioned that the small town is of limited strategic value.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday that its troops had “completed” their capture of the town overnight.

But Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for Ukrainian troops fighting in the east, denied that Soledar had been captured.

“This is not true,” Mr. Cherevaty said in remarks to Ukrainian news outlets on Friday afternoon. “The fighting is ongoing.”

Earlier on Friday, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, said that Kyiv’s troops were still “bravely trying to hold the defense” of the town under a “high intensity” Russian offensive.

Over the last several days there have been conflicting reports about who controls Soledar, while losses mount on both sides. This week, the head of the Wagner mercenary group fighting in Ukraine claimed that his fighters had seized control of the town. Ukraine denied the reports, and the Kremlin walked back the assertion at the time.

Weeks of intense fighting have devastated Soledar, which has taken on outsize attention despite its small size and limited strategic value, as Russia sought a win after months of setbacks.

The town lies near Bakhmut, the focal point of the Kremlin’s quest to take control of the entire eastern Donbas region. The battle for Soledar, where hundreds of civilians are trapped in a town that has largely been reduced to rubble, has put into sharp relief Moscow’s costly and grinding offensive in eastern Ukraine.

Taking Soledar would give Moscow’s forces new locations to place artillery and put pressure on Ukrainian supply lines that run toward Bakhmut. But military analysts say that even if Soledar were to fall, it would not necessarily mean that Bakhmut — or the whole of the Donbas — is next.

The Russian claim came after the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in an analysis on Thursday that geolocated footage indicated that Moscow’s forces “likely control most if not all of Soledar.” It called the capture “at best a Russian Pyrrhic tactical victory” after Moscow had committed significant resources, adding that the battle will have contributed to “Russian forces’ degraded combat power and cumulative exhaustion.”

“All available evidence indicates Ukrainian forces no longer maintain an organized defense in Soledar,” the institute said, adding that the fall of the town “is not an operationally significant development and is unlikely to presage an imminent Russian encirclement of Bakhmut.”

The White House’s national security spokesman, John Kirby, echoed those sentiments on Thursday when asked about the status of Soledar, cautioning that it was important to “keep this in perspective.”

“We don’t know how it’s going to go, so I’m not going to predict failure or success here,” he told reporters. “But even if both Bakhmut and Soledar fall to the Russians, it’s not going to make a — it’s not going to have a strategic impact on the war itself.”

He added: “If you look at what’s been happening over the last 10 and a half months, particularly in the Donbas, towns and villages have swapped hands quite frequently.” 

About 559 civilians — including 15 children — are trapped in the town as the brutal battle unfolds, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the local Ukrainian military administration, said on Ukrainian state television on Thursday.

Revealed: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s

Oil company drove some of the leading science of the era only to publicly dismiss global heating

Oliver Milman in New York

Thu 12 Jan 2023

The Guardian

The oil giant Exxon privately “predicted global warming correctly and skilfully” only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business, new research has found.

A trove of internal documents and research papers has previously established that Exxon knew of the dangers of global heating from at least the 1970s, with other oil industry bodies knowing of the risk even earlier, from around the 1950s. They forcefully and successfully mobilized against the science to stymie any action to reduce fossil fuel use.

A new study, however, has made clear that Exxon’s scientists were uncannily accurate in their projections from the 1970s onwards, predicting an upward curve of global temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions that is close to matching what actually occurred as the world heated up at a pace not seen in millions of years.

Exxon scientists predicted there would be global heating of about 0.2C a decade due to the emissions of planet-heating gases from the burning of oil, coal and other fossil fuels. The new analysis, published in Science, finds that Exxon’s science was highly adept and the “projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models”.

Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years

Geoffrey Supran, whose previous research of historical industry documents helped shed light on what Exxon and other oil firms knew, said it was “breathtaking” to see Exxon’s projections line up so closely with what subsequently happened.

“This really does sum up what Exxon knew, years before many of us were born,” said Supran, who led the analysis conducted by researchers from Harvard University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “We now have the smoking gun showing that they accurately predicted warming years before they started attacking the science. These graphs confirm the complicity of what Exxon knew and how they misled.”

The research analyzed more than 100 internal documents and peer-reviewed scientific publications either produced in-house by Exxon scientists and managers, or co-authored by Exxon scientists in independent publications between 1977 and 2014.

Photograph: Supran, et al., 2023, “Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections”

The analysis found that Exxon correctly rejected the idea the world was headed for an imminent ice age, which was a possibility mooted in the 1970s, instead predicting that the planet was facing a “carbon dioxide induced ‘super-interglacial’”. Company scientists also found that global heating was human-influenced and would be detected around the year 2000, and they predicted the “carbon budget” for holding the warming below 2C above pre-industrial times.

Armed with this knowledge, Exxon embarked upon a lengthy campaign to downplay or discredit what its own scientists had confirmed. As recently as 2013, Rex Tillerson, then chief executive of the oil company, said that the climate models were “not competent” and that “there are uncertainties” over the impact of burning fossil fuels.

“What they did was essentially remain silent while doing this work and only when it became strategically necessary to manage the existential threat to their business did they stand up and speak out against the science,” said Supran.

“They could have endorsed their science rather than deny it. It would have been a much harder case to deny it if the king of big oil was actually backing the science rather than attacking it.”

Climate scientists said the new study highlighted an important chapter in the struggle to address the climate crisis. “It is very unfortunate that the company not only did not heed the implied risks from this information, but rather chose to endorse non-scientific ideas instead to delay action, likely in an effort to make more money,” said Natalie Mahowald, a climate scientist at Cornell University.

Mahowald said the delays in action aided by Exxon had “profound implications” because earlier investments in wind and solar could have averted current and future climate disasters. “If we include impacts from air pollution and climate change, their actions likely impacted thousands to millions of people adversely,” she added.

Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University, said the new study was a “detailed, robust analysis” and that Exxon’s misleading public comments about the climate crisis were “especially brazen” given their scientists’ involvement in work with outside researchers in assessing global heating. Shindell said it was hard to conclude that Exxon’s scientists were any better at this than outside scientists, however.

The new work provided “further amplification” of Exxon’s misinformation, said Robert Brulle, an environment policy expert at Brown University who has researched climate disinformation spread by the fossil fuel industry.

“I’m sure that the ongoing efforts to hold Exxon accountable will take note of this study,” Brulle said, a reference to the various lawsuits aimed at getting oil companies to pay for climate damages.

A spokesperson for Exxon said: “This issue has come up several times in recent years and, in each case, our answer is the same: those who talk about how “Exxon Knew” are wrong in their conclusions. In 2019, Judge Barry Ostrager of the NY State Supreme Court listened to all the facts in a related case before him and wrote: “What the evidence at trial revealed is that ExxonMobil executives and employees were uniformly committed to rigorously discharging their duties in the most comprehensive and meticulous manner possible….The testimony of these witnesses demonstrated that ExxonMobil has a culture of disciplined analysis, planning, accounting, and reporting.”

News round-up, Thursday, January 12, 2023

“Young people have an important role to play in the green transition, according to European Commission’s Director-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Joost Korte: “It is not a coincidence that we move from the European Year of Youth to the Year of Skills. The skills of the future generations and in future sectors are essential to anything we want to do to successfully”

— EU

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

Here Are All the Ways Republicans Plan to Investigate Biden

House Republicans are preparing a cascade of investigations, some overlapping, into the Biden administration and its policies. Right-wing lawmakers have said the ultimate goal is to impeach the president.

By Luke Broadwater

NYT

Jan. 11, 2023

WASHINGTON — With Washington in a state of divided government, newly empowered House Republicans are all but certain to be unable to enact their legislative agenda into law. Instead, they have made it clear that their primary mission in the 118th Congress will be investigating the Biden administration, including inquiries they say could lead to the potential impeachment of President Biden and several cabinet members.

Preparing to use their new subpoena power, Republicans have already created three special investigative committees or subcommittees, but they expect to carry out many more inquires under existing committees they now control. Some of the investigations may involve multiple panels, and top Republicans are jockeying for the biggest and most prominent pieces.

While Speaker Kevin McCarthy said last year that he had not yet seen grounds for impeaching Mr. Biden, Republicans have already introduced a host of impeachment articles against the president and members of his cabinet, and some influential members on the right have said they relish the prospect of trying him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Here is a road map of the investigations:

The ‘Weaponization’ of Government

What committee is involved: A special subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, led by Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio.

Substantive policy questions: This remains to be seen. The text of the resolution establishing the subcommittee gives the panel essentially open-ended jurisdiction to scrutinize any issue related to civil liberties or to examine how any agency of the federal government has collected, analyzed and used information about Americans — including “ongoing criminal investigations.” It also gives the subcommittee the authority to obtain classified information typically only provided to the Intelligence Committee, including some of the government’s most protected secrets.

Political agenda: During the 2022 campaign, Republicans promised to use their new power in Congress to scrutinize what they said was a concerted effort by the government to silence and punish conservatives at all levels, from protesters at school board meetings to former President Donald J. Trump. The panel could become a venue for targeting federal workers accused of carrying out a partisan agenda. It could also re-litigate revelations about Mr. Trump’s conduct, including the facts surrounding his effort to overturn the 2020 election or his removal of classified material from the White House, and failure to return it.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, called the new panel the “Select Committee on Insurrection Protection.”

Biden Family Businesses

What committees are involved: The Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is led by Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky, and potentially the new Judiciary subcommittee.

Substantive policy questions: The Oversight Committee says the purpose of its inquiry is to inform legislation to strengthen federal ethics laws and to ensure that financial institutions have the proper internal controls and compliance programs to alert federal agencies of potential money-laundering activity.

Political agenda: Mr. Comer has pledged for months to investigate Mr. Biden’s family and its business connections. His staff has already obtained the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, the president’s son, whose business activities are under federal investigation. Mr. Comer and Mr. Jordan held a news conference on Capitol Hill detailing their plans to take the inquiry’s focus beyond the younger Mr. Biden. “This is an investigation of Joe Biden,” Mr. Comer has said.

Origins of the Covid Pandemic

What committees are involved: A special subcommittee of the Oversight Committee, and the Energy and Commerce Committee, led by Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington.

Substantive policy questions: Lawmakers say they want to explore whether the U.S. government should be funding so-called gain-of-function research, a narrow sliver of scientific inquiry that can involve tinkering with viruses in a way that could make them more dangerous. Such research is at the heart of Republican assertions that the pandemic may have been caused by a laboratory leak — a suggestion disputed by scientists whose research shows the outbreak most likely originated at a live animal market in Wuhan, China.

Political agenda: Republicans including Mr. Comer and Mr. Jordan have asserted, without evidence, that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Mr. Biden’s former medical adviser, covered up a lab leak that they allege may have caused the pandemic. They have said repeatedly that they will investigate Dr. Fauci, who is a political target for Republicans seeking to woo Trump voters. Dr. Fauci has said he has a “completely open mind” about whether the outbreak originated in a lab, but that the preponderance of evidence shows it was a natural occurrence.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.

China Competitiveness

What committee is involved: A new select committee focused on the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese government, led by Representative Mike Gallagher, Republican of Wisconsin.

Substantive policy questions: The committee’s purpose is to investigate the Chinese government’s “economic, technological and security progress, and its competition with the United States.” It will examine many topics, including the economic dependence of the United States on Chinese supply chains, the nation’s security assistance to Taiwan and lobbying efforts by the Chinese government to influence local and state government, as well as academic institutions. The panel will then make recommendations for how the United States can avoid being overtaken by China in those areas.

Political agenda: This committee received bipartisan support and is unlikely to become as politically charged as other Republican-led investigations. Still, some Democrats worried that an intense focus on China could lead to xenophobic rhetoric intensifying anti-Asian sentiment in the United States.

The Withdrawal From Afghanistan

What committees are involved: The Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas; the Armed Services Committee, led by Representative Mike D. Rogers, Republican of Alabama; and the Oversight Committee.

Substantive policy questions: Republicans on Mr. McCaul’s committee have already released an interim report titled “A Strategic Failure: Assessing the Administration’s Afghanistan Withdrawal,” and he plans to continue the investigation, now with subpoena power. It is expected to focus on planning in the run-up to the evacuation, botched efforts to extract Afghan interpreters and contractors who aided the U.S. government, and the consequences of the withdrawal.

Political agenda: Seen as among the House Republicans’ most serious investigations, the inquiry can also be used to undermine faith in the Biden administration’s competency.

Border Enforcement

What committees are involved: The Homeland Security Committee, led by Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee; the Judiciary Committee; and the Oversight Committee.

Substantive policy questions: Investigating the Biden administration’s approach to the border will be a large focus of Republicans’ efforts for the next two years, but it is yet to be determined what policy recommendations they will make. With Congress in a state of divided power, any immigration legislation is unlikely to pass.

Political agenda: The investigations are aimed at countering the record-breaking surges of migration at the southern border that have strained resources as the Biden administration scrambles to address what members of both parties call a crisis.

At the same time, Republicans have sought to use Mr. Biden’s border policies as a political weapon against him and Democrats, blaming them for crime and capitalizing on fears among some in their hard-right base that immigrants of color will dilute their voting power. They have called for the impeachment of the homeland security secretary, Alejandro N. Mayorkas. Mr. McCarthy has said that Mr. Jordan and Mr. Comer would lead an investigation into Mr. Mayorkas to “determine whether to begin an impeachment inquiry.”

Treatment of Jan. 6 Defendants

What committees are involved: Unclear. Most likely the Oversight Committee or the Judiciary Committee and its new subcommittee.

Substantive policy questions: In a closed-door meeting in November, right-wing lawmakers including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia extracted a promise that their leaders would investigate Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, and the Justice Department for the treatment of defendants jailed in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Ms. Greene has released a report on conditions at the D.C. jail, and local officials have acknowledged there are longstanding issues at the facility.

Political agenda: The topic has been a focus for hard-right Republicans in Congress, who have tried to downplay or distort what happened during the deadly assault, saying that the real victims are the ordinary people who entered the Capitol and, they say, are being persecuted for their political beliefs. Many of them want retribution for Democrats’ extensive investigation into the riot, which laid out in a series of public hearings and a voluminous report the extent of Mr. Trump’s plot to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election, with help from allies inside and outside Congress.

But some Republicans would prefer not to focus on the topic, which would inevitably involve rehashing what happened during the assault and their roles in Mr. Trump’s election subversion efforts.

“We’re focused on a lot of investigations,” Mr. Comer told reporters recently, adding, “That wasn’t one of them.”

Mr. Jordan has been vague about whether he would pursue that angle in his investigation. “We’re focused on how political our Justice Department has become,” he said.

Catie Edmondson and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

The fall of Li Hejun, formerly China's richest man

The founder of Hanergy, a thin-film solar panel company, was arrested by the Liaoning police on December 17, 2022, and has not been seen since.

By Frédéric Lemaître (Beijing (China) correspondent)

Published on January 12, 2023

Le Monde

Li Hejun, the former Chinese solar panel king, has disappeared. This entrepreneur, ranked as the richest Chinese in 2014, was arrested by the Liaoning police on December 17, 2022, and has not reappeared since, revealed the magazine Caixin on Wednesday, January 11. Born in 1967, Li Hejun managed at the age of 22 to borrow 50,000 yuan (a little less than €7,000 at the current rate). According to him, his sufficiently wise investments led him to amass a fortune of some 80 million yuan in five years.

In 1994, he set his sights on energy. His company Hanergy found success through investments in hydraulics. But in 2011, he took a new direction. He moved Hanergy into the thin-film solar panel space. Listed in Hong Kong in 2013, the company saw its value increase tenfold in two years. In 2015, Hurun magazine, which publishes the list of China's richest people, placed Mr. Li at the top of its ranking, valuing his fortune at 160 billion yuan.

But in May of the same year, as he explained to his shareholders that he intended to build an empire bigger than Apple, Hanergy's shares collapsed by 47% in a few dozen minutes. The listing was suspended. The company was officially taken off the stock exchange four years later.

Aura of corruption

The reason was that investors and market authorities gradually discovered that Hanergy's solar panels had only one customer: the solar parks operated by the company's subsidiaries. Mr. Li was therefore both the seller and the buyer of its products. More importantly, it turns out that the farms were primarily supplying electricity to Hanergy and almost no one else.

According to the business daily Jemian News, Mr. Li's arrest may be a consequence of the setbacks of one of his main creditors, the Bank of Jinzhou, an institution located in the northeastern province of Liaoning. The bank had officially lent 10 billion yuan to Hanergy, but according to Caixin, was actually much more invested in the company. The Bank of Jinzhou had not been able to present its 2018 balance sheet due to the resignation of its auditors, the company EY.

The bank has since been recapitalized by ICBC, a large state-owned bank, but this operation revealed the fragility of some regional banks and the aura of corruption that surrounds them. According to the Chinese press, more than 63 officials from financial institutions in Liaoning have been arrested since 2020 in anti-corruption investigations.

The US and Japan strengthen their military alliance as tensions rise in Asia

The two nations are revising their joint defense posture as they confront rising threats from North Korea and increasing aggressiveness from China.

Le Monde with AFP

Published on January 12, 2023

The United States said Wednesday, December 11, that attacks in space would invoke its defense treaty with Japan and announced the deployment of a more agile Marine unit in its ally as alarm grows over China.

Weeks after unveiling plans to ramp up defense spending, Japan sent its defense and foreign ministers to Washington for talks on updating the decades-old alliance. They will be followed two days later by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is touring Group of Seven nations to kick off Japan's leadership year of the elite club and earlier Wednesday signed a deal with Britain to increase defense ties.

"We agree that the PRC is the greatest shared strategic challenge that we, our allies and partners face," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a four-way news conference with the Japanese ministers, referring to the People's Republic of China. His counterpart, Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, said that the United States and Japan together have "a vision of a modernized alliance to acquire the posture to win in the new era of strategic competition."

As China makes rapid advances in satellites, Mr. Blinken said that the Washington and Tokyo agreed that attacks "to, from or within space" could invoke Article Five of their mutual defense treaty which considers an attack on one an attack on both.

The talks finalized a plan by the US to send a so-called Marine Littoral Regiment, a more agile unit that can boost defenses both by sea and air, to Okinawa, the southern Japanese island strategically close to Taiwan. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the unit would be in place by 2025 from a reorganization of an existing artillery regiment. "I think this is going to contribute in a major way in our effort to help defend Japan and also promote a free and open Indo-Pacific," Mr. Austin said, using the US turn of phrase for an Asia without Chinese dominance.

Taiwan risks but no 'imminent' invasion

Okinawa, under US control until 1972, is home to more than half of the 50,000 US troops in Japan, whose leaders for decades have spoken of easing the burden on a local population often resentful of the bases. Mr. Hayashi said that the Japanese government would keep working to address the concern of residents.

But Japan's calculus has shifted with the growing assertiveness of China under President Xi Jinping. Mr. Kishida's government said last month that Japan would increase defense spending by 2027 to 2% of GDP, in line with a separate goal by NATO nations, whose security concerns have also spiked due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

China claims Taiwan, a self-governing democracy, as part of its territory and last year carried out exercises seen as a test run for an invasion after a defiant visit to Taipei by Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the US House of Representatives. "I won't second-guess Mr. Xi but what I will tell you that what we are seeing recently is some very provocative behavior on the part of China's forces," Mr. Austin said. "We believe that they endeavor to establish a new normal but whether or not that means that an invasion is imminent, you know, I seriously doubt that."

The Center for Strategic and International Studies recently released findings from wargames to chart out a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and found that Beijing would strike Japanese bases, inflicting heavy losses, although China would ultimately fail to take Taiwan.

Europe’s climate ambitions should be met with socially just and inclusive policies

Rising living costs are the number one concern for Europeans as energy supplies become a priority due to war in Ukraine — the social dimension of the green transition has never been more important.

In November, the European Commission hosted the inaugural European Employment & Social Rights Forum | via the European Commission

BY EUROPEAN COMMISSION

DECEMBER 6, 2022

Brussels, Belgium. As Europe takes more and more concrete steps to make the Green Deal become a reality, over 1,200 participants and 75 speakers came together to discuss the social dimension of the green transition at the inaugural European Employment and Social Rights Forum.

Across two days, President Ursula von der Leyen , European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights Commissioner Nicolas Schmit, former Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the Belgian and Greek governments, policymakers from the European Parliament, the Czech Presidency, as well as academics, citizens and companies came together to discuss how to manage a fair, inclusive and sustainable green transition for all.

The European approach to social rights

The forum was an opportunity to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the European Pillar of Social Rights and its 20 principles, which are grouped around three key topics: equal opportunities; fair working conditions; and social protection and inclusion.

The right policies, as inspired by the European Pillar of Social Rights, can help Europeans overcome the crisis.

In her opening speech, President Ursula von der Leyen showed optimism in the face of economic recession and a difficult winter ahead, highlighting that the right policies, as inspired by the European Pillar of Social Rights, can help Europeans overcome the crisis.

Since the introduction of the Pillar of Social Rights under former president Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission has put forward more than 130 measures to implement the pillar across the EU and deliver a social Europe that is fair, inclusive and full of opportunities. Among the most significant initiatives are the Directive for adequate minimum wages in the EU, the Pact for Skills which provides workers with quality training and lifelong learning through public-private partnerships, and the European Gender Equality Strategy supporting women’s participation in the labor market.

Many speakers underlined that commitments to social rights are and should be complementary to the green transition.

A social contract to achieve green growth

Many speakers underlined that commitments to social rights are and should be complementary to the green transition. Participants agreed that social aspects should be more deeply integrated in environmental, fiscal and economic policies. An “intergenerational approach is necessary for ensuring that young people are part of upcoming EU policies,” according to Romanian MEP and chair of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs in the European Parliament Dragoș Pîslaru.

Speakers at the event also agreed that jobs must be as much about quality as quantity. The chair of the European Commission’s High-Level Group on the future of social protection and of the welfare state in the EU, Anna Diamantoupoulou, underlined that the labor market is undergoing significant changes, and a new charter for social and labor rights will be essential for Europe to keep up.

The labor market is undergoing significant changes, and a new charter for social and labor rights will be essential for Europe to keep up.

The keynote speech from renowned economist Mariana Mazzucato stressed that achieving social goals will take true commitment and investment — on all levels. She highlighted the need for different sectors to work together in order to ensure the green transition is fair.

The need for more energy-efficient buildings was a clear example. Buildings account for 30 percent of the EU’s energy consumption, and many Europeans face soaring energy costs and deteriorating living conditions this winter.

Skills needed for the green transition

As next year has been designated as the European Year of Skills, Commissioner Schmit underlined the importance of lifelong learning and Europe’s role in facilitating it. It is essential for workers and their employers to gain new skills in order to meet the demands of the green transition.

Young people have an important role to play in the green transition, according to European Commission’s Director-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Joost Korte: “It is not a coincidence that we move from the European Year of Youth to the Year of Skills. The skills of the future generations and in future sectors are essential to anything we want to do to successfully

Author(s):

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

News round-up, Wednesday, January 11, 2023

“Strained by the need to finance its war machine, the Russian government said on Tuesday that it had posted a $47 billion budget deficit in 2022, which is the second-highest since the break up of the Soviet Union.

The budget gap reached 3.3 trillion rubles in 2022, or 2.3 percent of the size of the Russian economy, Anton Siluanov, the country’s finance minister, said during a government meeting.”

— NYT

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

Russian Mercenary Force Claims to Capture Town in Eastern Ukraine

NYT

Here’s what we know:

Ukraine denied losing control of Soledar, in the Donbas region. A victory there would be Russia’s first in months, after a string of humiliating losses.

The founder of a Russian mercenary force leading Moscow’s assault on the town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine claimed late Tuesday that his troops had seized control of the town, which Ukrainian defense officials denied.

The claim that Soledar had fallen to soldiers-for-hire working for Wagner Group could not be verified, and Ukraine’s defense ministry said on Twitter just before midnight local time that Russia was still trying to capture the town. At close to 1 a.m. on Wednesday, Robert Magyar, a commander of a Ukrainian air reconnaissance group, said in a statement on Telegram that Ukrainian forces were still holding the town.

“True — it’s hell” he wrote, adding the claims were “psychological pressure and propaganda.”

The assault is part of Russia’s broader push in the area around the city of Bakhmut that Moscow sees as important to achieving its goal of occupying all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. If true, the fall of Soledar, a relatively small municipality, would be Russia’s first significant victory in months, after a string of humiliating losses. Ukraine changed the course of the war with its capture of the Kharkiv region in September and then the city of Kherson in November, successes of far greater magnitude.

Military experts say that although taking Soledar is significant, it does not signal that the city of Bakhmut is about to fall into Russian hands. Ukraine has strongly reinforced its positions in and around Bakhmut, presenting a formidable obstacle to further progress by Moscow.

The entrepreneur who started the Wagner Group, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, maintained in a post on the Telegram messaging app that his troops had control of all of Soledar, though he added that fighting continued.

“A cauldron has been formed in the center of the city, in which urban battles are being fought,” Mr. Prigozhin said.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, said claims that Russia had taken all of Soledar were false, citing another comment from Mr. Prigozhin earlier Tuesday on Telegram: “The Ukrainian army bravely fights for Bakhmut and Soledar. On the western outskirts of Soledar there are heavy bloody battles.”

In his nightly address on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine thanked the troops defending Soledar. “Today, I would like to pay special tribute to the warriors of the 46th separate airmobile brigade for their bravery and steadfastness in the defense of Soledar!” he said.

How a tiny, salt-mining town with a prewar population of 10,000 people became a focus of such a sustained assault by Wagner’s forces has been an open question. In his overnight address on Monday, Mr. Zelensky asked, “What did Russia want to gain there?”

The most critical factor is perhaps what Mr. Prigozhin and his mercenaries fighting there have to gain in terms of reputation. In Bakhmut, the Wagner Group, a private military contracting company that has recruited prisoners into its ranks, has become the main force leading the offensive for Russia, and the fighting has become bloodier.

Before the emergence of the Wagner Group’s claims on Tuesday, Britain’s defense ministry said in its daily intelligence update that Russian forces and the Wagner Group were likely now in control of most of Soledar after intense fighting over the past four days. The capture of the city, which is about six miles north of the city of Bakhmut, was likely to be part of “an effort to envelop Bakhmut from the north, and to disrupt Ukrainian lines of communication,” the update said.

A spokesman for the eastern group of Ukraine’s army, Serhiy Cherevatyi, said on national television on Tuesday that Russian artillery had struck Soledar 86 times over the past day. He described the situation as “very challenging.”

The tactics employed by the Wagner Group have resulted in a high number of casualties. In recent days, reporters for The New York Times embedded with a Ukrainian drone crew on the front line saw the bodies of Russian fighters scattered across open ground in the area around Bakhmut. Images and videos on Ukrainian social media in recent days also appear to have come from these aerial reconnaissance missions and show similar scenes.

A correction was made on 

Jan. 10, 2023

An earlier version of this article misstated the timing of the Russian claim of taking the town of Soledar. It was made on Tuesday, not Thursday.

— Megan Specia, Ivan Nechepurenko and Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Russia posts a $47 billion budget deficit for 2022, its second highest in the post-Soviet era.

Strained by the need to finance its war machine, the Russian government said on Tuesday that it had posted a $47 billion budget deficit in 2022, which is the second-highest since the break up of the Soviet Union.

The budget gap reached 3.3 trillion rubles in 2022, or 2.3 percent of the size of the Russian economy, Anton Siluanov, the country’s finance minister, said during a government meeting.

Russia’s revenues increased by 2.8 trillion rubles in 2022, or $40 billion, but that was not enough to cover rapidly increasing expenditures, which skyrocketed by 6.4 trillion rubles, or $92 billion, officials said.

At the meeting, government officials presented the economic situation as positive, with Mikhail Mishustin, the Russian prime minister, saying that “overall, those indicators aren’t bad.”

Making no specific reference to the war, Mr. Silanov, the finance minister, said: “Despite the geopolitical situation, the restrictions and sanctions, we have fulfilled all our planned goals.”

Still, the posted deficit for 2022 is second only in Russia’s post-Soviet history to the one reported for 2020, the year the coronavirus pandemic unfolded.

In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many experts predicted a catastrophic collapse of the country’s economy from the Western sanctions and other restrictive measures. Yet the Russian economy performed above expectations, buoyed by high commodity prices. And some sanctions, like a cap of $60 per barrel on the price for Russian oil, were introduced later in the year, softening their effect on the economy.

The Russian government has not published a detailed breakdown of its expenditures in 2022, but it is widely assumed that the bulk of the rise can be attributed to increased military spending. The government has financed the deficit by issuing bonds and using money from its rainy-day fund.

A high deficit is likely for this year, too. Russia plans to increase its military spending by a third, and Moscow’s oil revenues are expected to be pressured by the oil price cap, which compels Russian traders to sell crude at a discount.

— Ivan Nechepurenko

India launches deep-sea mining project to develop 'blue economy'

Despite the inherent environment risks, New Delhi has launched the deep-sea mining initiative valued at more than €460 million, with hopes of fulfilling its need for rare minerals.

By Sophie Landrin (New Delhi (India), correspondent)

Published on January 11, 2023

Le Monde

With a 7,517 kilometers long coastline and 1,382 islands, India has potentially priceless deposits of unique minerals in the depths of its waters. Despite the inherent environmental risks, New Delhi is determined to tap into them through its Deep Ocean mission, launched in June 2021. With a budget of more than €460 million over five years, the initiative will develop deep-sea mining technologies and resource exploration, study marine biodiversity, purchase a research vessel for ocean exploration and conduct research on ocean climate change.

The subcontinent joined the group of countries allowed to explore the ocean's depths in 2016, receiving the 25th permit granted by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an autonomous organization within the United Nations Common System. It was awarded a 75,000-square-kilometer site in the central Indian Ocean basin, corresponding to its expanded exclusive economic zone. India will therefore be able to explore its marine resources, including polymetallic sulphides and nodules, gas hydrates and hydrothermal vents.

The government is not hiding its intentions. "The mineral exploration studies will pave the way for commercial exploitation in the near future, once the commercial exploitation code is developed by the International Seabed Authority. This component will contribute to the priority area of the 'blue economy,' namely the exploration and exploitation of minerals and energy of the deep seabed," it said in a statement at the launch of the mission.

Superabundance

The Ministry of Earth Sciences has claimed that by using only 10% of the reserve of these polymetallic nodules available in the region, India will be able to satisfy all its future needs for producing batteries. The figures put forward by the government are staggering: Per preliminary estimates, the country would have 380 million tons of polymetallic nodules, including copper, nickel, cobalt and manganese, worth about $110 billion, within this area.

To explore the depths, the Deep Ocean mission must develop a manned, self-propelled submersible capable of carrying at least three crew members and scientific equipment to a depth of 6,000 meters in the Indian Ocean. It will take four hours to descend and the same amount of time to return to the surface.

India is one of the countries that have severely criticized the French stance of prohibiting all exploitation of the seabed

The vehicle will need to have a range of 12 hours in normal operation and 96 hours in an emergency to ensure crew safety and provide oxygen. The first tests in shallow waters should begin in 2024. India will join the United States, Russia, China, Japan and Australia in the race to the bottom of the ocean.

The design and development of a submersible vehicle, the Matsya 6000 – named after the first avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu – has been entrusted to the Madras (Chennai)-based National Institute of Ocean Technology, a government agency under the Ministry of Earth Sciences that will work in collaboration with the Indian space agency. The project is to be completed by 2026, according to the minister of earth sciences.

Speaking in Parliament on December 21, Minister Jitendra Singh said that the "preliminary design of the vehicle is complete and the various components of the vehicle are being built." In addition, the Indian Maritime University has been tasked with building a low-energy river- sounding drone.

India is one of the countries that have severely criticized the French position of banning all seabed mining and is calling for discussions to ensure responsible and sustainable exploitation of the seabed. The deep-sea mining project is part of its program to develop the "blue economy," a catch-all concept, but one that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hopes will describe one of the engines of economic growth by 2030.

Above all, with its 1.4 billion inhabitants, India has a considerable need for rare metals, electronic products, electric car batteries and more. The government has set itself the goal of having an all-electric car fleet by 2030. In the capital alone, more than 13 million gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles are currently in use. To reduce its dependence on China, New Delhi is banking on its oceans.

Sophie Landrin(New Delhi (India), correspondent)

Bolsonaro's Mob

The Predictable Attack on Brazil's Democracy

Radical followers of Brazil's ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro, stormed the government district of Brasilía on Sunday. It was entirely predictable, and raises serious questions about the country's security forces.

By Jens Glüsing in Rio de Janeiro

09.01.2023

They were scenes reminiscent of the storming of the United States Capitol almost exactly two years ago, a violent and predictable assault on Brazil’s state institutions that was supported by numerous police officers. Since Friday, followers of right-wing radical ex-President Jair Bolsonaro had been gathering in Brasilía, allegedly for a protest in front of the National Congress. Bolsonaro’s hardcore supporters refuse to accept his defeat at the hands of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in late October. For the past several weeks, they have been demanding that the military take over.

On Saturday alone, hundreds of buses full of Bolsonaro supporters from around the country arrived in the capital. The justice minister warned security officials of the impending danger and asked that the Esplanada dos Ministerios, the vast mall leading to the National Congress, and Three Powers Plaza – so named because it is home to the Congress, the presidential office and the country’s highest court – be closed to demonstrators.

But the Civil Police of the Federal District, which is in charge of security in Brasilía, did nothing. Indeed, they even escorted the "demonstrators" in the direction of the seat of government. And those gathered in the crowd had made no secret that they were planning a raid of the kind undertaken by supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021. For days, Bolsonaro supporters had been discussing the storming of the National Congress in WhatsApp groups.

When the Bolsonaro followers then assaulted the building on Sunday, some police officers could be seen laughing and taking photos with their mobile phones. The chief of security for the Federal District, Anderson Torres, who had served as justice minister under Bolsonaro, has since been sacked. He was on his way to Florida, likely to meet with his former boss, who relocated to the U.S. state after losing the election. It is considered possible that Torres had known about the coming assault on the country’s parliament, or even took part in planning it.

The governor of the Federal District, Ibaneis Rocha, also a former Bolsonaro ally, promised that he would mobilize more police officers. By then, though, it was already too late. Some security personnel, armed with pepper spray, tried in vain to hold back the mob.

Thousands of people stormed Three Powers Plaza, with hundreds of them forcing their way into the National Congress building, the presidential palace and the seat of the Supreme Federal Court. They laid waste to offices and plenary halls, posing in the Senate and filming with their mobile phones. Only after about an hour were the police able to drive the vandals out of the presidential palace and the high court with the help of teargas. Thousands of people were still gathered out in front of the National Congress building.

Late Sunday night, the Supreme Federal Court suspended Rocha for 90 days, saying he did too little to prevent the violence.

Brazil’s parliament and highest court are on summer break until the end of the month. Lula was also out of the capital when the raids commenced, visiting victims of severe recent rainfall in the city of Araraquara in the state of São Paulo. His face flushed with anger, Lula addressed the press on Sunday night prior to returning to Brasilía, saying the federal government would intervene in the security apparatus of the Federal District, essentially placing the capital’s security in the hands of the president. "These people are fascists," Lula said of the vandals, promising that all those who participated in or helped plan the raids would be "found and penalized." He accused Bolsonaro of having inspired the storming of Brazil’s democratic institutions. "Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the Republic," he said.

Questions about the Security Forces

Lula only took over the presidency a week ago. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians celebrated his return to power, with Brasilía gripped by a party atmosphere. But that atmosphere has now vanished. The threat to Brazil’s democracy did not come to an end with Lula’s inauguration and is likely to continue hanging over the country for the next several months. The most pressing question is how the country’s security forces and military will respond.

Sunday’s riot has once again demonstrated the degree to which the country’s militarily organized police forces, which are under the control of the state governors, have been infiltrated by Bolsonaro supporters. Lula can really only trust the federal police force, but even there, he must be wary. The military has thus far stayed in the background and there doesn’t appear to be an imminent threat of a military putsch. But that doesn’t mean that the troops will readily obey all orders from the president, who is the commander-in-chief of Brazil’s armed forces.

Lula’s justice minister twice ordered the military to clear the tent camp that Bolsonaro followers established in front of army headquarters in Brasilía after Lula’s election on October 30. That tent camp is where radical Bolsonaro followers prepared the "protests" against Lula’s victory ceremony on Dec. 13, during which numerous buses and cars were set on fire. The radical Bolsonaro acolyte who placed an explosive device on a tanker truck intending to blow it up at the Brasilía airport also claims to have planned his attack here. But the military did nothing.

A week ago, tent-camp occupants threatened DER SPIEGEL correspondent Jens Glüsing when he visited the site. Guards from army headquarters escorted the journalist out, but they told him they could not guarantee his safety.

Bolsonaro's Reaction

The radical Bolsonaro fans are a minority among the ex-president’s supporters. They resemble a religious sect and live in a parallel world – and are incited by radical pastors from Pentecostal churches that support Bolsonaro. Lula’s government is led by "demons," said one camp occupant who called herself "Eva." "We are experiencing the day of the Apocalypse." Whereas many of Bolsonaro’s former political allies have distanced themselves from him in recent weeks, his hardcore supporters remain loyal. And they forgive him for having left the country for Florida. "I would have fled as well," Eva told DER SPIEGEL. After all, she added, Bolsonaro is being persecuted.

Initially on Sunday, Bolsonaro remained silent about the violence in Brasilía. Late last night, though, he turned to Twitter to reject Lula’s contention that he had incited the riots. Peaceful demonstrations, he wrote, are part of democracy, but the storming of government buildings went too far.

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If it is proven that Bolsonaro had incited the mob’s raid on Brazil’s democratic institutions, he could be arrested immediately upon his return to the country. It remains unclear how the U.S. might react to Bolsonaro’s presence on American soil given the suspicions that he may have been behind what amounts to an attempted putsch. Bolsonaro likely feels relatively safe in proximity to Trump in Florida, but U.S. President Joe Biden, one suspects, isn’t pleased about hosting right-wing radicals from Brazil.

On Sunday evening, governments from across Latin America and Europe expressed their solidarity with President Lula and the Brazilian democracy. The gesture of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who met Lula before he was sworn in and was photographed arm-in-arm with the Brazilian president-elect, carries new meaning against the backdrop of Sunday. And it is clear that Lula is dependent on the international support of all democracies.

Belgien och franska Engie sluter avtal om att förlänga livslängden för två kärnkraftsreaktorer (Le Monde)

“Nuclear Power: The Road to a Carbon Free Future - konstateras att 30 länder för närvarande driver kärnkraftverk och att mer än två dussin andra länder tittar på kärnkraft för att tillgodose sina el- och klimatbehov.”

— EnergyCentral

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

Vad är kärnkraft?

Kärnkraft är ett rent och effektivt sätt att koka vatten till ånga, som driver turbiner och producerar elektricitet.

Kärnkraftverk använder lågt anrikat uranbränsle för att producera elektricitet genom en process som kallas fission - delning av uranatomer i en kärnreaktor. Uranbränsle består av små, hårda keramiska pellets som är förpackade i långa, vertikala rör. Buntar av detta bränsle sätts in i reaktorn.

​​​​​​​Reaktorerna Doel 4 och Tihange 3 ska vara i drift i ytterligare tio år från och med 2026. Fram till dess måste landets elförsörjning hanteras.

Av Jean-Pierre Stroobants (Bryssel, Europabyrån)

Publicerad den 10 januari 2023

Le Monde

Belgiens kärnkraftsavveckling, som tillkännagavs för tjugo år sedan och sköts upp flera gånger, kanske aldrig blir verklighet. Ironiskt nog var det Tinne Van der Straeten, landets energiminister, en miljöaktivist, som tillsammans med premiärminister Alexander De Croo förhandlade fram en fortsättning av två kärnkraftsreaktorer med Engie-Electrabel, den enhet som driver Belgiens kärnkraftverk och som är en del av franska Engie.

Måndagen den 9 januari, i slutskedet av månader av häftiga förhandlingar, kom Belgiens regering och Engie överens om att förlänga reaktorerna Doel 4 och Tihange 3, de nyaste i landet, i tio år med början i november 2026.

Engie, som vid upprepade tillfällen har betonat svårigheten, för att inte säga omöjligheten, av en sådan livstidsförlängning, har lite mindre än fyra år på sig att anpassa de två enheterna.

Denna tidsram väckte frågor. Experter påpekade att det fanns en risk för bristande försörjning i landet under vintern 2025-2026, med ett möjligt underskott på cirka 1 000 megawatt. Innan de anpassas kommer de två enheterna att stängas av 2025. Och det kommer förmodligen att bli en annan regering som måste undvika ett eventuellt strömavbrott, eftersom De Croos mandat löper ut i mitten av 2024.

Kostnadsfördelning

"Vi tar vår försörjningstrygghet tillbaka i våra egna händer", sade regeringschefen. De Croo såg sig tvungen att ta upp en energifråga som alla hans föregångare noggrant hade försummat. Under två decennier har Belgiens regeringar godtagit krav från De gröna utan att förbereda alternativ till att lämna kärnkraften.

Den här gången skapade den belgiska regeringen och Engie en gemensam juridisk struktur som kommer att ansvara för förvaltningen av de två reaktorerna. Investeringar, risker och vinster kommer att delas, även om det i detta skede inte var klart om den producerade elen skulle säljas till ett fast pris. Engie kommer att fortsätta att driva anläggningarna, men den belgiska staten kommer att delta i de strategiska besluten.

"Det är ett komplicerat avtal, men det saknar motstycke", sade Van der Straeten, som tvingades överge Groen, det flamländska miljöpartiets doktrin, för att förhandla med den franska koncernen.

Engie inledde förhandlingarna från en stark position. Genom att inledningsvis säga att man vägrade en förlängning kunde man föra fram frågan om kostnadsfördelningen för nedmonteringen av fem andra reaktorer, som ska stängas 2025, samt frågor som rör avfallshantering och använt kärnbränsle.

I utbyte mot ett löfte om att "göra allt som är möjligt" för att återstarta de två enheterna inom den planerade tidsramen fick Engie en summa för kostnaden för detta "nukleära ansvar".

Förkortad tidsram

Avvecklingen ska förbli Engies ansvar, men ekonomiska tak kommer att införas för avfallshanteringen, en annan fråga som försummats av de belgiska myndigheterna. Om taken överskrids - vilket olika specialister anser vara troligt - kommer räkningen att betalas av skattebetalarna. Miljövännerna hoppades till en början att Engie skulle stå för alla kostnader.

De belgiska förhandlarna betonade att den viktigaste aspekten av diskussionen var att få en garanti från Engie om att förlänga livslängden för de två enheterna, medan Engie sade att det kunde ta minst fem år att skaffa fram det nödvändiga bränslet, inleda anbudsförfaranden och lägga fram en säkerhetsdokumentation.

I slutändan kommer det bara att ta mindre än fyra år. I gengäld fick den franska koncernen ett löfte om ett kostnadstak för avfallshanteringen.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) förklarar kärnkraftens viktiga roll i en koldioxidfri framtid

“Om IAEA
IAEA är världens centrum för samarbete på kärnkraftsområdet och strävar efter att främja en säker, trygg och fredlig användning av kärnteknik.”

— IAEA

“Nuclear Power: The Road to a Carbon Free Future - konstateras att 30 länder för närvarande driver kärnkraftverk och att mer än två dussin andra länder tittar på kärnkraft för att tillgodose sina el- och klimatbehov.”

— EnergyCentral

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

Vad är kärnkraft?

Kärnkraft är ett rent och effektivt sätt att koka vatten till ånga, som driver turbiner och producerar elektricitet.

Kärnkraftverk använder lågt anrikat uranbränsle för att producera elektricitet genom en process som kallas fission - delning av uranatomer i en kärnreaktor. Uranbränsle består av små, hårda keramiska pellets som är förpackade i långa, vertikala rör. Buntar av detta bränsle sätts in i reaktorn.

​​​​​​​IAEA förklarar kärnkraftens viktiga roll i en koldioxidfri framtid

NOAM MAYRAZ

Konsultingenjör Future Power, Inc.

Noam Mayraz, PE, är en ledande konsult för kraftverksindustrin.  Mayraz har över fyrtio års erfarenhet av konstruktion, ingenjörsarbete och fälttjänster som projektledare, projektledare för IPP-projekt,...

10 januari 2020

EnergyCentral

IAEA förklarar kärnkraftens viktiga roll i en koldioxidfri framtid, 08 januari 2020

Kärnkraften står för 10 % av den globala elektriciteten, men för att hejda klimatförändringarna kommer världen att behöva mycket större mängder ren och tillförlitlig energi, säger Internationella atomenergiorganet (IAEA) i en kortfilm som det publicerade idag. För att hantera klimatförändringarna måste 80 procent av all el vara koldioxidsnål år 2050.

I videon - Nuclear Power: The Road to a Carbon Free Future - konstateras att 30 länder för närvarande driver kärnkraftverk och att mer än två dussin andra länder tittar på kärnkraft för att tillgodose sina el- och klimatbehov. Ryssland, Indien och Kina leder för närvarande utvecklingen av kärnkraft. Kina har nio reaktorer under uppbyggnad, vilket är det största antalet i hela landet. Länder på andra håll bygger också nya reaktorer, till exempel Finland, och Förenade Arabemiraten och Vitryssland är nära att ta sina första kärnkraftverk i drift, medan Bangladesh och Turkiet nyligen påbörjade byggandet av sina egna kärnkraftverk.

Juha Poikola från TVO kraftbolag i Finland säger i filmen: "Vår största klimathandling i Finland kommer att vara när den nya reaktorn startar i Olkiluoto." Ibrahim Halil Dere från Turkiets energiministerium säger: "Vi anser att kärnkraft är ett oumbärligt alternativ för Turkiet eftersom det är utsläppsfritt, miljövänligt, hållbart och en pålitlig el-källa."

För närvarande är 450 kärnkraftsreaktorer i drift i världen, men för att möta nya behov och utmaningar ser kärnkraftsindustrin framåt mot innovativa lösningar för långsiktig drift av befintliga reaktorer, en snabb utbyggnad av pågående kärnkraftsprogram och införandet av ny reaktorteknik, heter det i filmen. Flera länder utvecklar små modulära reaktorer (SMR) och en har redan byggts i Ryssland, tillägger filmen och hänvisar till det flytande kärnkraftverket Akademik Lomonosov.

http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/IAEA-explains-nuclears-vital-role-in-a-carbon-freeIAEA explains nuclear's vital role in a carbon-free future

News round-up, Tuesday, January 10, 2023

“The World Bank has cast a further shadow over the already worrying expectations for the performance of the global economy in 2023. The World Economic Outlook report released on Tuesday by the institution downgraded its forecast for global economic growth this year from 3% to 1.7% after revising downwards its forecasts for 95% of developed economies and 70% of emerging economies.”

— ABC.es

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

The World Bank warns that the global economy faces two recessions in the same decade for the first time in 80 years.

Downgrades its global growth scenario for 2023 from 3% to 1.7%, but warns that any setback would push the economy into recession.

He downgrades his forecasts for 95% of developed economies and 70% of emerging economies, for which he predicts a bleak future.

US economist and president of the World Bank, David Malpass

The US economist and President of the World Bank, David Malpass ABC

B. P. V.

Madrid

10/01/2023

ABC.es

The World Bank has cast a further shadow over the already worrying expectations for the performance of the global economy in 2023. The World Economic Outlook report released on Tuesday by the institution downgraded its forecast for global economic growth this year from 3% to 1.7% after revising downwards its forecasts for 95% of developed economies and 70% of emerging economies.

Its forecast for the advanced economies has gone from an expected growth of 2.5% a few months ago to a pyrrhic 0.5%, with a forecast of a 0.5% decline for the US economy, stagnation for the euro area, which includes Spain (previously 1.9%) and growth of 4.3% for China (compared with 5.2% previously).

However, the most worrying aspect is not the new forecasts revealed this Tuesday by the World Bank but the expectation that these may deteriorate further throughout 2023. The note released by the World Bank points out that "given fragile economic conditions, any further adverse developments, such as higher-than-expected inflation, abrupt interest rate hikes to contain it, a resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic, or an increase in geopolitical tensions, could push the global economy into recession".

If this scenario were to occur, the phenomenon would take on historic proportions, as the global economy would chain two economic recessions in the same decade, something that has not happened since World War II or, as the World Bank points out, since 80 years ago.

The IMF warns of the risk of global recession and lowers the growth forecast for Spain to 1.3%.

The stagnation of the world economy, which will ease somewhat in 2024 when the institution forecasts growth of 2.7%, will have very negative effects on emerging economies, partly because the high indebtedness of developed economies will concentrate a large part of the available capital, which is more reduced in a context of monetary policy contraction. "Emerging and developing countries face a multi-year period of slow growth driven by heavy debt burdens and weak investment as global capital is absorbed by advanced economies facing extremely high public debt levels and rising interest rates. Weak growth and business investment will exacerbate already devastating setbacks in education, health, poverty and infrastructure and the growing demands of climate change," says World Bank president David Malpass in a statement in the Bank's release.

Biden Lawyers Found Classified Material at His Former Office

The White House said it was cooperating as the Justice Department scrutinizes the matter.

“A small number” of classified documents were discovered in President Biden’s former office at a Washington think tank, the White House said.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

By Peter Baker, Charlie Savage, Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman

Jan. 9, 2023

NYT

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s lawyers discovered “a small number” of classified documents in his former office at a Washington think tank last fall, the White House said on Monday, prompting the Justice Department to scrutinize the situation to determine how to proceed.

The inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter, is a type aimed at helping Attorney General Merrick B. Garland decide whether to appoint a special counsel, like the one investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive documents and failure to return all of them.

The documents found in Mr. Biden’s former office, which date to his time as vice president, were found by his personal lawyers on Nov. 2, when they were packing files at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, according to the White House. Officials did not describe precisely how many documents were involved, what kind of information they included or their level of classification.

The White House said in a statement that the White House Counsel’s Office notified the National Archives and Records Administration on the same day the documents were found “in a locked closet” and that the agency retrieved them the next morning.

Mr. Biden had periodically used an office at the center from mid-2017 until the start of the 2020 presidential campaign, and the lawyers were packing it up in preparations to vacate the space. The discovery was not in response to any prior request from the archives, and there was no indication that Mr. Biden or his team resisted efforts to recover any sensitive documents.

Mr. Garland has assigned John R. Lausch Jr., the U.S. attorney in Chicago who was appointed by Mr. Trump, to look into the matter, according to two people familiar with the decision, confirming a CBS News report. Mr. Lausch has been scrutinizing the situation since November, according to one of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Two people familiar with the matter said that Mr. Lausch has been conducting a so-called initial investigation under a Justice Department regulation that allows an attorney general to appoint a special counsel, a special prosecutor who operates with a measure of day-to-day independence to conduct a particularly sensitive investigation.

Under the regulation, an initial investigation consists of “such factual inquiry or legal research as the attorney general deems appropriate” to “be conducted in order to better inform the decision” about whether a matter warrants the appointment of a special counsel.

The White House statement said that it “is cooperating” with the department but did not explain why Mr. Biden’s team waited more than two months to announce the discovery of the documents, which came a week before the midterm congressional elections when the news would have been an explosive last-minute development.

It also came shortly before Mr. Garland’s Nov. 18 appointment of Jack Smith as a special counsel to take over the criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s failure to return a large number of classified documents that were sent to his Florida residence and club, Mar-a-Lago, when he left office — even after being subpoenaed.

At the time, Mr. Garland cited the fact that Mr. Trump had just announced he was running for president again, and that Mr. Biden had indicated that he is likely to run as well, as justification to transfer control of the investigation to Mr. Smith. (An attorney general retains final say over whether anyone is charged with a crime by a special counsel.)

Mr. Trump jumped on Monday’s disclosure. “When is the FBI going to raid the many houses of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. “These documents were definitely not declassified.”

That appeared to refer to Mr. Trump’s disputed claim that before leaving office he declassified all the documents the F.B.I. found when it searched Mar-a-Lago in August. No credible evidence has emerged to support that claim, and his lawyers have resisted repeating it in court, where there are professional consequences for lying. In any case, the potential charges the F.B.I. cited in its search warrant affidavit do not depend on whether intentionally mishandled documents were classified.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.

But while Mr. Trump tried to suggest a parallel, the circumstances of the Biden discovery as described appeared to be significantly different. Mr. Biden had neither been notified that he had official records nor been asked to return them, the White House said, and his team promptly revealed the discovery to the archives and returned them within a day.

“The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the archives,” Richard A. Sauber, a special White House counsel, wrote in the statement. “Since that discovery, the president’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden administration documents are appropriately in the possession of the archives.”

By contrast, in 2021 the archives repeatedly asked Mr. Trump to turn over large numbers of documents it had determined were missing. He put the agency off for months, then allowed it to retrieve 15 boxes of material in early 2022, including scores of classified documents, but it was later discovered that he kept more.

Eventually, the Justice Department obtained a grand jury subpoena for documents with classification markings remaining in Mr. Trump’s possession, and a lawyer for Mr. Trump turned over several more and told the department there were none left. But an August search by the F.B.I. found 103 more marked as classified — along with thousands of other official records.

The search warrant affidavit that the Justice Department submitted suggested that Mr. Trump was under investigation for obstruction, along with possible violations of the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the willful unauthorized retention of national security documents and failure “to deliver them on demand” to a government official entitled to take custody of them.

Still, whatever the legal questions, as a matter of political reality, the discovery will make the perception of the Justice Department potentially charging Mr. Trump over his handling of the documents more challenging. As a special counsel, Mr. Smith is handling that investigation, along with one into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, under Mr. Garland’s supervision.

Moreover, the discovery will fuel the fires on Capitol Hill, where Republicans who have just taken the House majority were already planning multiple investigations of the Biden administration, including the decision to have the F.B.I. search Mar-a-Lago.

Representative James R. Comer, the Kentucky Republican who is in line to become the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said on Monday that he would investigate the discovery of the classified documents in Mr. Biden’s office, vowing to send letters demanding information within 48 hours.

“How ironic,” Mr. Comer said in an interview. “Now we learn that Joe Biden had documents that are considered classified. I wonder, is the National Archives going to trigger a raid of the White House tonight? Or of the Biden Center?” He added, “So now we’re going to take that information that we requested on the Mar-a-Lago raid, and we’re going to expand it to include the documents that Joe Biden has.”

The top Democrat on the committee, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, downplayed the matter, saying that he had confidence that Mr. Garland had taken appropriate steps to review the circumstances and that Mr. Biden’s lawyers “appear to have taken immediate and proper action” to notify the archives of the documents.

The department’s leadership decided to make the unusual choice of assigning the case outside the jurisdictions involved because Mr. Lausch was a Republican appointee and his work would likelier be seen as impartial, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Mr. Biden had kept Mr. Lausch in office at the request of the two Democratic senators from Illinois, Richard J. Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, because he was investigating Michael J. Madigan, the former speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, during the presidential transition in 2021. In March, a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Madigan, a Democrat, on 22 counts of racketeering and corruption charges.

A former top prosecutor appointed during President Barack Obama’s administration said the attorney general should turn the Biden matter over to a special counsel, just as he did the Trump investigation.

“The circumstances of Biden’s possession of classified documents appear different than Trump’s, but Merrick Garland must appoint a special counsel to investigate,” said John P. Fishwick Jr., who served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017. “Merrick Garland waited too long to let us know he had opened this investigation,” he added. “To keep the confidence of the country, you need to be transparent and timely.”

A department spokesman had no comment on the matter, and would not say whether the national security division, which has spearheaded the investigation into Mr. Trump’s retention of documents at his Florida residence and resort, was also involved.

With Mr. Lausch investigating the handling of classified information in Mr. Biden’s office, and David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, investigating the president’s son, Hunter Biden, both Trump-appointed U.S. attorneys who have remained at the department are now scrutinizing the Biden family.

Luke Broadwater and Katie Benner contributed reporting.

Supporting Ukraine to ensure peace

Editorial

The decision of France, the United States and Germany to deliver light armored combat vehicles to Ukraine reflects a shared commitment but also raises questions about the danger of escalation.

Published on January 10, 2023

Le Monde

In the war imposed on them by Vladimir Putin, one that puts the survival of their country at stake, the Ukrainians need the steadfast and appropriate support of the West. France's January 4 decision to deliver light armored combat vehicles to Ukraine marks a new stage in the assistance provided by democratic countries, as it was followed the next day by the United States and Germany. It is no longer just a matter of supplying Kyiv with defensive weapons, such as troop transport vehicles or artillery equipment, but with the means to support offensives. The French AMX-10 RCs, like the American Bradleys and German Marders, are vehicles armed with guns designed to be used as close to the front line as possible.

This evolution of the equipment delivered does not reflect a desire for escalation, but appears to be in line with the progression of Ukrainian war objectives. It is a question of helping the attacked country not only defend itself and reach a negotiation in the best possible situation, but to recover its entire territory by driving back the Russian army, and subjecting those responsible for crimes to international justice.

Russia's retreat on the ground since the summer of 2022 and Mr. Putin's pullback from red lines that are supposed to trigger retaliation seem to justify this strategy. The same goes for the worrying prospect of a large-scale Russian offensive at the end of winter, made possible by the new mobilization decreed this fall by Moscow. While the front seems to have stabilized, with more than 100,000 dead and wounded on each side according to various estimates, everything is happening as if the combatants were engaged in a race for equipment, training and personnel. The example of the false truce announced by Mr. Putin for Orthodox Christmas only reinforced the Western will to give Ukraine all the means to counter new aggressions.

Danger of escalation

While the almost simultaneous announcement of the French, American and German decisions to deliver light armored vehicles reflects a joint and coordinated commitment at a crucial moment, such a development is not without risk. It raises the question of the danger of escalation and the point at which the current proxy war could degenerate into a direct confrontation between the West and Russia. This threshold has shifted since the conflict began, but it cannot rise indefinitely. The whole point is to help the Ukrainians, without feeding the Russian rhetoric presenting Western democracies as aggressors.

Although the French decision has the benefit of removing any ambiguity about the position of Paris in the conflict, it also raises the question of its political framework and the information provided to our fellow citizens. Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, Parliament has never discussed the French position in depth. It is time to involve the national legislature in decisions that engage the country in a matter that is fundamental to its security. In order to avoid any risk of extended confrontation on European soil, the West has no other choice than to do everything possible to prevent Mr. Putin from succeeding in his invasion.

The rapid end of the significant suffering linked to this war requires unwavering support for Ukraine. Because it needs to be approved over the long term, this difficult balance deserves to be clarified and debated.

News round-up, Monday, January 09, 2023

“Just imagine for a moment that you could save the world with chicken nuggets. All you would have to do is just eat them. Your teeth would sink into real meat, yet no animal would have lost its life for your meal. It will have been grown in the laboratory from a single chicken cell. Imagine that there would suddenly be enough meat from the laboratory to feed everybody in the world. Hunger would be a thing of the past. The land now used to grow corn for animal feed could be repurposed, perhaps even for a forest that could draw CO2 out of our atmosphere. Industrial livestock farming would no longer be needed.”

— Spiegel

---

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UK Government gives go-ahead for nuclear plant development with EDF

Plans for the Sizewell C nuclear plant were approved on Thursday, with French energy giant EDF saying the plant would generate about 7% of the UK's electricity needs.

By Eric Albert (London (United Kingdom) correspondent)

Published on November 18, 2022

After a series of last-minute delays over the last two months in the UK, and the recent political instability in the country, an agreement now appears to have been reached between the British government and EDF to develop a new nuclear power plant.

While delivering the autumn statement on Thursday, November 17, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt announced the official decision to acquire a stake in Sizewell C, an EPR (European Pressurised Reactor, a nuclear reactor) project in the east of England, to be built and managed by the French electricity company.

"The government will proceed with the new nuclear power plant at Sizewell C," said Mr. Hunt. "Subject to final government approvals, the contracts for the initial investment will be signed with relevant parties, including EDF, in the coming weeks." The French utility company said it was "delighted" with the announcement.

Huge construction site

This agreement is not yet a green light for a new EPR to be built. One key element is missing: nearly €25 billion in financing. For now, the project for the plant, in which EDF and the British government will each hold a 50% stake, will be developed.

This will allow them to sideline the Chinese General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), which had been involved in Sizewell C for several years, and to bring in new cash to finance the cost of the development. The British government will contribute £700 million (€800 million) to the project.

EDF is already the operator of the UK's eight active nuclear power stations. It is also building Hinkley Point C in western England, two new EPRs with a total capacity of 3.2 gigawatts, the first of which is set to open in 2026. This huge construction site, on which more than 7,500 people work every day, was launched in 2016 and has been the subject of controversy.

At the time, the British government refused to pay a penny and EDF decided to finance the project with its own funds. However, the cost was prohibitive, and in January 2021, it was revised upwards to the cost of "£22 billion to £23 billion" (at 2015 prices; adjusted for inflation, it is close to £28 billion to £29 billion today). This decision led to the resignation of EDF's financial director, who felt that the risk was too great.

To soften the blow, the French company adopted a two-pronged approach. First, it signed an extraordinary contract with the British government, which guaranteed the sale price of electricity at £92.50 per megawatt-hour (at the time, double the market price) for 35 years. Second, it brought in CGN, which financed one-third of Hinkley Point C. At the same time, CGN took a 20% stake in the Sizewell C development project and was promised the opportunity to build a power plant using its own technology at Bradwell in northern England.

Finding investors

This all sounded brave during the "golden age" of UK-China relations proclaimed by then-Prime Minister David Cameron. Now, due to growing tensions with Beijing, the British government wants nothing to do with CGN. The Bradwell project will not see the light of day, and CGN is being asked to withdraw from Sizewell C.

To this end, the current agreement with EDF is to be signed, probably by the end of November. The British government and EDF will jointly oversee the development project, which alone requires a fairly substantial investment of around £1.5 billion.

All that remains is the trickiest part: finding investors. This time around, EDF does not want to – and cannot – finance the project from its own funds. The energy company has been trying for years to attract large North American pension funds or funds specializing in infrastructure projects which might be interested in an almost guaranteed return over a very long period, while the British government increasing its stake is an important gesture intended to reassure the French electric company. EDF hopes to conclude finance talks and make the final investment decision within 12 to 18 months.

Bolsonaro Supporters Lay Siege to Brazil’s Capital

Backers of former President Jair Bolsonaro ransacked government offices, denouncing what they falsely claim was a rigged election. Hundreds were arrested.

By Jack Nicas and André Spigariol

Jack Nicas reported from Rio de Janeiro and André Spigariol reported from Brasília. They have covered right-wing attacks on Brazil’s election systems since 2021.

Published Jan. 8, 2023Updated Jan. 9, 2023, 1:40 a.m. ET

Thousands of supporters of Brazil’s ousted former president, Jair Bolsonaro, stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices on Sunday to protest what they falsely claim was a stolen election, the violent culmination of years of conspiracy theories advanced by Mr. Bolsonaro and his right-wing allies.

In scenes reminiscent of the Jan. 6 storming of the United States Capitol, protesters in Brasília, Brazil’s capital, draped in the yellow and green of Brazil’s flag surged into the seat of power, setting fires, repurposing barricades as weapons, knocking police officers from horseback and filming their crimes as they committed them.

“We always said we would not give up,” one protester declared as he filmed himself among hundreds of protesters pushing into the Capitol building. “Congress is ours. We are in power.”

For months, protesters had been demanding that the military prevent the newly elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from taking office on Jan. 1. Many on the right in Brazil have become convinced, despite the lack of evidence, that October’s election was rigged.

For years, Mr. Bolsonaro had asserted, without any proof, that Brazil’s election systems were rife with fraud and that the nation’s elites were conspiring to remove him from power.

Mr. Lula said Sunday that those false claims had fueled the attack on the plaza, known as Three Powers Square because of the presence of the three branches of government. Mr. Bolsonaro “triggered this,” he said in an address to the nation. “He spurred attacks on the three powers whenever he could. This is also his responsibility.”

Late Sunday, Mr. Bolsonaro criticized the protests, saying on Twitter that peaceful demonstrations are part of democracy, but that “destruction and invasions of public buildings, like what occurred today,” are not. But he also rejected Mr. Lula’s accusations, saying they were “without proof.”

At his inauguration, Mr. Lula said that uniting Brazil, Latin America’s largest country and one of the world’s biggest democracies, would be a central goal of his administration. The invasion of the capital suggests that the nation’s divisions are more profound than many had imagined, and it saddles the new president with a major challenge just one week into his administration.

After Mr. Lula was inaugurated, protesters put out calls online for others to join them for a massive demonstration on Sunday. It quickly turned violent.

Hundreds of protesters ascended a ramp to the roof of the congressional building in Brasília, the capital, while a smaller group invaded the building from a lower level, according to witnesses and videos of the scene posted on social media. Other groups of protesters splintered off and broke into the presidential offices and the Supreme Court, which are in the same plaza.

The scene was chaotic.

Protesters streamed into the government buildings, which were largely empty on a Sunday, breaking windows, overturning furniture and looting items inside, according to videos they posted online.

The crowds shouted that they were taking their country back, and that they would not be stopped. Outnumbered, the police fired what appeared to be rubber bullets, pepper spray and tear-gas canisters, including from two helicopters overhead.

“Police are cowardly trying to expel the people from Congress, but there is no way, because even more are arriving,” said one protester in a video filmed from inside Congress and showing hundreds of protesters on multiple floors. “No one is taking our country, damn it.”

Eventually Brazilian Army soldiers helped retake control of some buildings.

Mr. Lula, who was not in Brasília during the invasion, issued an emergency decree until Jan. 31 that allows the federal government to take “any measures necessary” to restore order in the capital. “There is no precedent for what these people have done, and for that, these people must be punished,” he said.

The president, who arrived in the capital late in the day to inspect the damage, said that his government would also investigate anyone who may have financed the protests.

Mr. Bolsonaro appeared to be in Florida. He flew to Orlando in the final days of his presidency, in hopes that his absence from the country would help cool off investigations into his activity as president, according to a friend of the president’s who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. He planned to stay in Florida for one to three months, this person said.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.

Mr. Bolsonaro has never unequivocally conceded defeat in the election, leaving it to his aides to handle the transition of power and skipping the inauguration, where he was supposed to pass the presidential sash to Mr. Lula, an important symbol of the transition of power for a country that lived under a 21-year military dictatorship until 1985.

After the election, he said he supported peaceful protests inspired by “feelings of injustice in the electoral process.”

But before departing for Florida, Mr. Bolsonaro suggested to his supporters that they move on. “We live in a democracy or we don’t,” he said in a recorded statement. “No one wants an adventure.”

His calls were ignored.

The next day, thousands of his supporters remained camped outside the Army headquarters in Brasília, with many convinced that the military and Mr. Bolsonaro were about to execute a secret plan to prevent Mr. Lula’s inauguration.

“The army will step in,” Magno Rodrigues, 60, a former mechanic and janitor, said in an interview on Dec. 31, the day before Mr. Lula took office. He had been camped outside the army’s headquarters for nine weeks and said he was prepared to stay “for the rest of my life if I have to.”

One of Mr. Lula’s central challenges as president will be to unify the nation after a bitter election in which some of his supporters framed Mr. Bolsonaro as genocidal and cannibalistic, while Mr. Bolsonaro repeatedly called Mr. Lula a criminal. (Mr. Lula served 19 months in prison on corruption charges that were later thrown out.)

Surveys have shown that a sizable chunk of the population say they believe Mr. Lula stole the election, fueled by false claims that have spread across the internet and a shift among many right-wing voters away from traditional sources of news — problems that have also plagued American politics in recent years.

President Biden, who was visiting the southern U.S. border, called the protests “outrageous,” and Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser, said the United States “condemns any effort to undermine democracy in Brazil.”

“Our support for Brazil’s democratic institutions is unwavering,” Mr. Sullivan wrote on Twitter. “Brazil’s democracy will not be shaken by violence.”

Some far-right provocateurs in the United States however, cheered on the attacks, posting videos of the riots and calling the protesters “patriots” who were trying to uphold the Brazilian Constitution. Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald J. Trump, called the protesters “Brazilian Freedom Fighters” in a social-media post. Mr. Bannon has had close ties with one of Mr. Bolsonaro’s sons.

At first, the rioters had a relatively easy time breaching the buildings. State police officers tried to hold them back, but they were far outnumbered. The demonstrations had been advertised widely on social media for days.

“It was scary, it was insanity,” said Adriana Reis, 30, a cleaner at Congress who witnessed the scene. “They tried hard, with pepper spray, to drive them off, but I don’t think the police could handle them all.” After protesters streamed in, “we ran away to hide,” she said.

Videos from inside Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential offices quickly filled social-media feeds and group chats, showing protesters wearing their national flag and trudging through the halls of power, not exactly sure what to do next.

They sat in the padded chairs of the Chamber of Deputies, rifled through paperwork in the presidential offices and posed with a golden coat of arms that appeared to be ripped from the wall of the Supreme Court’s chambers. Federal officials later distributed images and videos from the presidential offices that showed destroyed computers, art ripped from frames and firearm cases that had been emptied of their guns.

The protesters were ransacking buildings that have been hailed as gems of Modernist architecture. Designed by the celebrated Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in the 1950s, the Supreme Court, for instance, features columns of concrete clad in white marble that echo the fluttering of a sheet in the wind. And Congress is known for being capped with both a dome, under which the Senate is located, and a sort of bowl, under which the House is located.

Outside the presidential offices, they raised the flag of the Brazilian Empire, a period in the 19th century before Brazil became a democracy, and they sang Brazil’s national anthem. Videos of the rampage showed many protesters with phones aloft, filming the scene.

“There is no way to stop the people,” one protester declared as he live-streamed hundreds of protesters charging onto the roof of Congress. “Subscribe to my channel, guys.”

Several news outlets said their journalists were attacked and robbed during the rioting. And Ricardo Stuckert, Mr. Lula’s official photographer, had his passport and more than $95,000 worth of equipment stolen from a room in the presidential offices, according to his wife, Cristina Lino.

By late afternoon, military trucks had arrived.

Armed soldiers entered the presidential offices through a back door to ambush rioters inside. Shortly after, protesters began to stream out of the building, including some escorted by law enforcement officers.

By 9 p.m., more than seven hours after the invasions began, Brazil’s justice minister, Flávio Dino, said the buildings had been cleared. He said officials had arrested at least 200 people. The governor of Brasília said the number of arrests had exceeded 400.

Valdemar Costa Neto, the head of Mr. Bolsonaro’s right-wing Liberal Party, criticized the protesters.

“Today is a sad day for the Brazilian nation,” he said in a statement. “All orderly demonstrations are legitimate. Disorder has never been part of our nation’s principles.”

The Brazilian flag draped around many of the rioters on Sunday includes three words: “Order and progress.”

Reporting was contributed by Ana Ionova, Yan Boechat, Leonardo Coelho, Laís Martins and Gustavo Freitas.

Can Stem Cell Meat Save the Planet?

Eggs, chicken and fish from the laboratory: Singapore is the first country in the world to approve the sale of meat produced from stem cells. Will it be enough to feed the world?

By Maria Stöhr

06.01.2023, 20.56 Uhrken from the laboratory: Is this the future of food?

For our Global Societies project, reporters around the world will be writing about societal problems, sustainability and development in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. The series will include features, analyses, photo essays, videos and podcasts looking behind the curtain of globalization. The project is generously funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Just imagine for a moment that you could save the world with chicken nuggets. All you would have to do is just eat them. Your teeth would sink into real meat, yet no animal would have lost its life for your meal. It will have been grown in the laboratory from a single chicken cell. Imagine that there would suddenly be enough meat from the laboratory to feed everybody in the world. Hunger would be a thing of the past. The land now used to grow corn for animal feed could be repurposed, perhaps even for a forest that could draw CO2 out of our atmosphere. Industrial livestock farming would no longer be needed.

To be sure, solutions that sound so simple should be approached with caution. But there is a place where the utopia described above isn’t as far away as it might sound. Where such laboratory chicken can be tasted and where the nuggets are being served up on real plates. That place is Singapore.

Singapore is the first and, thus far, the only country in the world where meat grown in laboratories can be marketed to and eaten by consumers. The government is hopeful that the country can become home to the technologies behind the food of the future. It is likely, after all, to become an extremely profitable industry, with investors around the world already injecting billions of dollars into the new food sector. Alternative sources of protein, including lab-grown meat, currently make up 2 percent of the global meat market. By 2035, that share is expected to be five times as high. And now that food prices have skyrocketed due to the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, adding to the hunger and environmental crises already afflicting the world, some experts believe that meat grown from stem cells could develop into a technological revolution.

Beyond that, Singapore is also dependent on food imports, with 90 percent coming from abroad. The country has hardly any of its own farmland. The government wants to change the situation by 2030 and is funding startups that might be able to help, such as one that is looking into ways to produce a replacement for eggs, and another that produces intelligent rooftop garden systems where heads of lettuce grow on self-watering, vertical columns. Much of the focus, though, is on stem cell technologies aimed at producing things like milk, fish and meat from stem cells.

In brief, the idea is as follows: Stem cells are taken from animals through a biopsy and are then frozen in liquid nitrogen to preserve them for several years. To produce meat, the cells are multiplied in a bioreactor. The technology isn’t quite yet ready for mass production, but theoretically, a single biopsy would be sufficient to produce hundreds of tons of meat.

The American startup Eat Just, based in Silicon Valley, is currently in the process of opening a laboratory in Singapore. The company’s focus is on producing chicken meat, which it plans to introduce to supermarkets in the coming years. In early November, the company invited a group of test subjects to the fancy Marriott Hotel in the center of Singapore to be served a dish of the future: investors, food technicians, company founders – and me.

The Dinner

During the meal, the lighting is dimmed, and a film is projected onto the wall about the climate crisis, damaged farmland, hungry populations and rising sea levels. The first three courses, all of which are vegan, even have names that recall the challenges our environment is facing: "Forest Floor," "Fields of Corn" and "Flooded Future."

We learn how people have spent millennia breeding fowl, resulting in the chicken as we know it today – one of the most important sources of protein for the global population. There are 23 billion chickens on Earth, and the video recounts how the process of feeding, slaughtering, refrigerating and transporting them requires a huge amount of energy and land, which is helping to fuel the climate crisis. All because people continue to want to eat excessive quantities of meat, even though it’s not necessary.

Finally, the course is brought in for which everyone has been waiting for this evening: chicken nuggets from the laboratory. The waitress serves the plates and presents the dish:

Throughout human history, advancements in food technology have had the power to change the way people live, things like fermenting fruit, baking bread, iodizing salt, controlling fire and domesticating animals. But for a new foodstuff, which may make sense in theory, to actually be accepted in practice, it must be affordable and available in large quantities. And more than anything, it has to taste good.

The Flavor

The knife slices through the breading and then through the meat itself. My first thought: It seems like normal chicken meat and can almost be cut through with a fork. I scratch off a bit of breading to get a better view of the meat itself. Its color is a bit lighter than normal chicken meat, a whitish-gray shade. The first bite: soft, not much resistance, a bit stringy and reminiscent of tofu. It’s a little watery. But it definitely tastes and smells like chicken.

One person at the table comments that there is room for improvement, while another says that if she had the choice, she would opt for a soybean schnitzel over one made from stem cells. They taste better, she says. But I find myself wondering, would people really be able to taste the difference on the street, given the way chicken nuggets are normally eaten – namely quickly, in large quantities and by hand? I give the meat a rating of five out of 10. Everyone at the table agrees that it’s not good enough yet. Innovation must grab your attention. Meat from the laboratory has to be better than the cheap chicken meat used by fast food chains.

But what about the other criteria? Price, availability and authorization? It’s time to head for the lab.

In the Laboratory

Serene Chng puts on a white lab coat. She is a biologist and works for Shiok Meats, a Singapore company that hopes to bring seafood made from stem cells to the market. It’s her job to find the highest quality cells to use as a starting point, those that reproduce the best.

Chng leads the way through the laboratory, where lobster, shrimp and crab stem cells are extracted and then examined. "We learn here what the cells like to eat and how often they must be fed," says Chng, referring to the nutrient solutions, full of carbohydrates, amino acids and minerals, that replace the blood that nourishes cells in living animals. "What you see here is the beginning of a revolution."

She leads the way past microscopes, UV lamps, centrifuges and devices for analyzing metabolism. The technology behind stem cell meat is borrowed from the processes used to produce certain medical drugs and vaccines. The corona vaccine produced by AstraZeneca, for example, is made using a similar process.

Chng’s coworker opens the top of the cryotank, which contains the stem cells. Nitrogen steams out of it. The most potent stem cells are kept inside, cooled to minus 196 degrees Celsius. Just one of the cells can produce as much shrimp meat as you want, says Chng. That process takes place nearby in large, stainless-steel reactors, where the cells reproduce. I had imagined entire lobsters growing in the machines, but that’s not entirely accurate. Only muscle and fat cells are reproduced, growing in a kind of soup that gets thicker and thicker until it reaches the consistency of ground meat. The cell soup is ready after six to eight weeks before being enriched with plant fibers in a process that Shiok Meats prefers not to describe in detail. The result is a kind of meat paste out of which foodstuffs can be produced. In other words, the final product like the chicken nugget, is not 100 percent meat.

Criticism of Lab-Grown Meat

As promising as the technology might sound, criticism of laboratory meat abounds. The primary focus of such criticism is the amount of energy necessary for its production, particularly for the fabrication of large quantities. If a significant share of the global population is to be fed with cultivated meat, huge bioreactors, sophisticated machinery and complex production facilities will be necessary.

I have a few questions of my own. Is lab-grown meat actually meat?

The founder of Shiok Meats, Sandhya Sriram, a stem-cell researcher, says: "Yes. It is 100 percent meat. Just imagine it like vegetables that are grown in a greenhouse instead of in nature. The result is the same, but the route taken isn’t the natural one, but a technological one."

Can vegetarians eat it as well?

Sriram: "Vegetarians who refrain from eating meat out of concern for the well-being of animals and the climate crisis are extremely interested in lab-grown meat. In cruelty-free meat."

Why is there a need for yet another meat alternative? We already have burgers made from soy, mungo beans and chickpeas.

Sriram: "It is naïve to hope that a majority of people will soon switch to vegetarianism. The consumption of meat is rising, as is the global population. Our approach is: Let people eat their meat and fish, but let’s make it sustainable."

If meat produced from stem cells is supposed to solve so many problems, why can’t I find it in the supermarket?

Two terms are consistently used when discussing the problems faced by lab-grown meat: Scaling and price. They are concerns held by stem-cell researcher Sandhya Sriram as well: "We rely on extremely expensive technologies and devices from the pharmaceutical industry, and we are using them to produce food." It will take time before sufficient lab-grown meat can be produced to sate the appetites of billions of people, she says, along with larger, cheaper bioreactors. Progress has been made, she says, but only in tiny steps.

Several years ago, says Sriram, the price of a kilogram of shrimp meat from Shiok Meats was around $10,000. Since then, though, the company has been able to reduce the price to around $50 per kilo. More time is still needed before meat from the bioreactor can come close to competing with meat from industrial livestock farming. But she believes that lab-grown meat products could become competitive within the next decade. And they must then be approved for sale. But such a process could be difficult in the European Union, since individual member states must give their thumbs up, and it is unclear how many of them might decide to protect their domestic meat industries instead.

Singapore is funding alternative food technologies, such as the company Agritisan, which constructs intelligent rooftop gardening systems so that more people can feed themselves.

Founder Alexander Tan shows one of his prototypes. Heads of lettuce grow on these vertical gardens, watered automatically from the inside of the column and powered by a solar cell on the top.

When it comes to the approval of lab-grown meat, Asia could end up taking the lead. Many countries in Asia are far more open to the technology than European countries, says Sandhya Sriram. That could be a function of the greater challenges the continent is facing when it comes to hunger and climate change-related catastrophes. Every year, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issues a "code red for humanity." In 2021, more than a million people in Asia didn’t have sufficient access to food, with farmers struggling with their harvests and fishing boats returning to port with smaller and smaller catches. Forecasts indicate that the region, currently home to 4.7 billion people, will grow by another 600 million people in the next 30 years.

A new technology to combat hunger and which can fill up more stomachs with fewer resources? That is a bit of good news.

Back to dinner at the hotel in Singapore. After the chicken nugget, the chef comes out to the dining room with yet another course he has prepared. It is again lab-grown chicken, but this time it’s "the next generation," he says. Satay skewers with peanut sauce.

Again, the aroma of grilled chicken fills the room. I pull the meat from the wooden skewers, some of it sticking. This time, the texture of the meat is firmer.

Can the world be saved by chicken nuggets or grilled chicken skewers? Will people ever buy foodstuffs produced in a manner similar to a COVID vaccine? I don’t have the answers. I pick up the last of the three satay skewers from the plate and take a bite of the chicken that was produced in a cellular soup inside a stainless-steel vat. It is saturated in marinade and peanut sauce. I’ve certainly eaten worse chicken. Seven out of 10 points.

This piece is part of the Global Societies series. The project runs for three years and is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Lubmin, the German village where the pipeline runs dry (Le Monde)

“Usually, the Baltic Sea is calm. Along the four kilometers of snow-covered beach that form the coastline of Lubmin, in northeast Germany, there’s nothing to suggest the presence of the famous Nord Stream pipelines. However, from this town of 2,100 inhabitants in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in the former GDR, the underwater infrastructure that connects St. Petersburg, Russia, to the European continent has been providing cheap gas to all of Germany since 2012. In September 2022, a mysterious explosion damaged those facilities and buried this partnership, which had already been called into question by the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Since then, the price of gas has almost tripled in the region.”

— Le Monde

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In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

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By  Lucas Minisini

Published on January 7, 2023

FeatureOn the Baltic Sea coast, the village is the endpoint for the Nord Stream pipelines through which Germany can tap into cheap Russian gas. But since the war in Ukraine, the tap has been turned off.

Usually, the Baltic Sea is calm. Along the four kilometers of snow-covered beach that form the coastline of Lubmin, in northeast Germany, there's nothing to suggest the presence of the famous Nord Stream pipelines. However, from this town of 2,100 inhabitants in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in the former GDR, the underwater infrastructure that connects St. Petersburg, Russia, to the European continent has been providing cheap gas to all of Germany since 2012. In September 2022, a mysterious explosion damaged those facilities and buried this partnership, which had already been called into question by the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Since then, the price of gas has almost tripled in the region.

Since the beginning of the war, Lubmin has become famous worldwide. 'Even President Joe Biden knows about us,' said a resident.

In the village battered by icy winds, at the entrance of the only hotel in Lubmin, the Hotel Seebrücke, 74-year-old owner Heidrun Moritz asked the question that most of the residents have been wondering about: "Why not simply reopen Nord Stream?" Wearing a flowery apron, and with her eyes fixed on the sea, she was worried about the winter. The temperatures, already negative on this December 14, are expected to continue to drop, and she doesn't know how long she'll be able to heat her 12 rooms, which she has been renting out non-stop since 1983.

The once bustling restaurant in Lubmin has become a shadow of its former self due to rising prices that have deterred customers from indulging in their favorite ice cream or fish dishes while enjoying Christmas music in the background. The owner, a biology graduate who learned Russian in school, expressed frustration at the stalled construction of the planned extension to the one-story building, which has been in progress for years. As she stands at the counter adorned with numerous owls of varying sizes, Heidrun Moritz deplored the fact that the residents of Lubmin are "all victims of geopolitics."

'Energy capital'

Lubmin has become a symbol of Germany's energy dependence on Russia. The presence of Nord Stream AG in the municipality has brought in an annual income of between €1.5 and €2 million in local taxes, earning it the nickname of the "energy capital" of the country. However, journalists are now unwelcome in the peaceful and well-maintained streets of Lubmin, as many residents have grown tired of the constant questioning about energy and Nord Stream. When contacted by email, Mayor Axel Vogt declined to meet with Le Monde, stating that the villagers of Lubmin would like nothing more than to return to a state of "peace and tranquility." As a politically unaffiliated mayor responsible for the operation of the municipality's port and a strong supporter of local energy policy, Mr. Vogt's perspective on the matter carries significant weight.

Many people have chosen to settle in Lubmin for their retirement, drawn to the comfortable houses on the edge of the forest, or to raise their children in a small town located about 30 kilometers from the university city of Greifswald. Despite being located in a region of Germany with high unemployment rates (around 9%), Lubmin has attracted new residents due to planned housing developments that will accommodate families or workers from across the European Union. The town has also accepted Ukrainian refugees, though this decision was met with hesitation from the town hall and with criticism from residents due to the village's historical ties to Russia. Since the beginning of the war, Lubmin has gained worldwide recognition. "Even Joe Biden, the president of the United States, knows about us," said one resident on an icy street with a touch of pride.

A new controversial project

As the end of 2022 approached, the town of Lubmin remained in the news due to the Neptune, a massive ship owned by TotalEnergies that is stationed offshore. Measuring 283 meters in length and 55 meters in height, the ship is filled with liquefied gas. Its purpose is to launch a methanol port, also known as an "LNG terminal," in Lubmin. The gas, largely exported from Qatar, is cooled to -160°C to maintain its liquid form before being transported to the mainland via small boats suitable for the shallow waters off the coast. Although the recent Qatargate controversy may complicate matters, Germany has plans to build a total of 11 terminals of this type, with the first one having been inaugurated on December 12 along the North Sea coast.

Funded by Stephan Knabe and Ingo Wagner, a tax consultant and real estate entrepreneur from Potsdam near Berlin, the port of Lubmin would provide 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year to thousands of households through their startup, Deutsche ReGas. A significant decrease from the 55 billion cubic meters per year transported by Nord Stream 1 before September. However, according to the Lubmin pastor Katrin Krüger, "no one wants this project." Despite the lack of support, Ms. Krüger wondered if the town truly has any other options. She has observed an increase in "depressed" worshippers at her 50-seat church, which was heated to only 17°C due to rising prices.

Environmental activists in the region are concerned about the potential danger of a gas terminal in Lubmin, which is located near the Rügen and Usedom islands, important fishing and biodiversity reserves. They warned that the constant movement of polluting boats could disrupt the flow of sand and hinder the creation of oxygen in the water, which is generated by currents. Susanna Knotz, a member of BUND, the German federation for the environment and nature conservation, said that "this project would endanger the most important swan molting area in northern Germany, located very close to Lubmin."

The environmental activist stated that, despite repeated requests from various NGOs, Deutsche ReGas has only provided temporary access to documents outlining the environmental impact of the project, rather than making them publicly and indefinitely accessible as required by law. The company cited "security reasons" for this decision, without providing further information. The launch of the gas terminal, which was originally scheduled for December 1, has been postponed for several weeks without any explanation. Deutsche ReGas's communication department has simply referred to a "complicated period" in a brief email.

A long golden age

Thanks to the energy industry, Lubmin has experienced a long golden age. In the late 1960s, a nuclear power plant was built there by the Soviet Union. Advertised as "the largest in the entire GDR," it supplied more than 10% of the electricity consumed in East Germany and employed a little over 8,000 people. A job that paid twice as much as a professor's position in the communist territory, which made everyone "very proud," said Olaf Strauss, 56, who is now a technology and innovation consultant at the University of Neubrandenburg, about 80 kilometers south of Lubmin.

Hired in 1983, the young man became responsible for transferring electricity produced in the east German network, under the strict control of the Stasi, the GDR's intelligence services, whose informants were present in every department. "There was even an office for spies in the building," said the professor with a smile, in a café in Greifswald, a city near Lubmin. At the time, the engineer with a mullet participated in football tournaments with the power plant team, drank beers with his colleagues, and often fell asleep on the beach in Lubmin after his night shift to enjoy the scenery.

The village, where dozens of houses were built in a few years, became one of the "biggest economic centers in the region," with a bright future. But everything stopped in 1990. The reunified Germany refused to continue the Soviet project and began a long process of dismantling the nuclear power plant (which today still employs a little over 800 people). Some of the former employees then applied to work in Western Germany's power plants while others preferred to change careers. Thousands of workers lost their jobs overnight. "But here, the ties with Russia never disappeared," said Mr. Strauss.

A grand opening

On November 8, 2011, the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline was inaugurated with great fanfare. The then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, hailed a "new chapter in the partnership between Russia and the European Union" in front of 450 guests, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, French Prime Minister François Fillon, Matthias Warnig, a former Stasi officer close to Vladimir Putin and CEO of Nord Stream AG, and Gerhard Schröder, the former German Chancellor, who arrived by helicopter.

"The Chancellor opened the gas pipeline herself, in front of the cameras and photographers of the world," said Volker Erckmann, a retired physicist, member of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science and founder of a research institute in Greifswald, who was present that day. After several projects rejected by the inhabitants, including a Danish coal plant and an incineration plant for the waste of the city of Naples, Italy, Lubmin rejoiced in this unique partnership and its seemingly endless financial windfall. "Nobody had imagined that an excessive dependence on Russia could become a problem," the 72-year-old scientist said, over slices of gingerbread and coffee in the living room of his spacious house, a few dozen meters from the sea.

The first doubts

The first doubts arose in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and invaded the Donbas region. The project for a Nord Stream 2 system, launched in 2018, which could double amounts sent to Western Europe, became a source of political tensions between the European Union and the United States, which was firmly opposed to the idea. According to Mr. Erckmann, the inhabitants of Lubmin rejected American doubts, which they considered as "outside interference."

Thanks to a "foundation for the protection of the environment and climate," a state organization that he almost entirely finances, the Russian energy giant Gazprom was able to bypass the economic sanctions planned by the United States to penalize western companies involved in the project. The construction of the new gas pipeline continued. Nord Stream 2 was completed in September 2021, but five months later, Russia invaded Ukraine and the 1,220-kilometer pipeline, which was operational, wasn't put into service in the end. "Everyone was extremely disappointed," said the physicist.

The inhabitants then decided to fight. One week after the sabotage of Nord Stream, in September 2022, which completely stopped the shipment of Russian gas (whose volumes had already been gradually reduced by Gazprom), 1,800 people gathered in Lubmin to demand the opening of the two pipelines. At the demonstration in front of the town hall, near the old railway station, Russian flags were displayed alongside slogans against the restrictions linked to Covid-19 and T-shirts with Nazi symbols, which can be seen in a video by the local media outlet Katapult present at the gathering.

Three Ukrainian refugees were threatened by demonstrators for holding up signs condemning the "murderous" Russian state: "You should leave, you don't want to know what will happen to you if you stay here," warned one of them, according to several journalists on the spot. Far-right political figures, such as the Austrian Martin Sellner, leader of the Identitären Bewegung Österreich movement, close to the American alt-right, crowded in front of the entrance to the Nord Stream power plant, amidst smoke bombs and declarations in favor of Vladimir Putin. The 30-year-old, banned from entering the United Kingdom, demanded the reopening of the facilities, without success.

Today, protests continue, but the Russian gas pipeline has taken a back seat to the now primarily anti-government demands. According to Mr. Erckmann, who has nevertheless decided to enjoy his retirement in this "turbulent" village, Nord Stream has become a source of frustration in the quiet streets of Lubmin. With a sad smile, the 70-year-old concluded: "Here, all projects end up failing..."

Looking for new sources of revenue

Today, the people of Lubmin are a bit lost. Recently, the town council has started building a museum about the history of the village, mainly to tell its long tradition of fishing, the former local livelihood, which is now almost extinct. Since the end of Nord Stream, local businesses are struggling to find new sources of income, potentially more environmentally friendly. "Plans have been drawn up for the construction of a hydrogen power plant," explained Rainer Sauerwein, 77, an environmental activist based on the island of Usedom, about 50 kilometers to the east. To power it, the wind turbines in the nearby village of Wusterhusen could be requisitioned. Several dozen new, more powerful models should also be built on the island of Rügen, opposite Lubmin.

The latest idea, a bio-fuel power plant, which runs on agricultural waste, has just been launched on the site of the old nuclear power plant. But for the German environmentalist, these are just "fantasies" aimed at camouflaging the region's investments in fossil fuels. Only tourism has remained stable in the small seaside resort on the Baltic Sea. A few tens of thousands of people travel to the guesthouses each summer to enjoy the long beach, which is less crowded than those on the neighboring islands. "The big hotel chains have never invested here," said the former scientist. "They were afraid of the energy industry, which is still quite dominant."

On the outskirts of the city, near the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, right next to the marina, it's impossible to talk to employees working for Nord Stream AG. They have all been instructed not to talk to the press. Contrary to expectations, almost no one lost their job. Wearing fluorescent safety vests, several dozen of them are still working in the facilities, mostly to maintain the pipes. Many of the residents hope this is a sign that the pipelines may one day return to service.

Note: if you are interested in this subject, Germán & Co has written a series of essays on this topic.

The Riddle Of Non-Nord Stream Return... | Energy Central

News round-up, Friday, January 06, 2023

“What are the chances of a soft landing?
If the strained U.S. economy is going to unwind rather than unravel, it will need multiple double-edged realities to be favorably resolved.
For instance, many retail industry analysts think the holiday season may have been the last hurrah for the pandemic-era burst in purchases of goods. Some consumers may be sated from recent spending, while others become more selective in their purchases, balking at higher prices.”

— NYT

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

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Even a Soft Landing for the Economy May Be Uneven

Small businesses and lower-income families could feel pinched in the months ahead whether or not a recession is avoided this year.

By Talmon Joseph Smith

Jan. 6, 2023

One of the defining economic stories of the past year was the complex debate over whether the U.S. economy was going into a recession or merely descending, with some altitude sickness, from a peak in growth after pandemic lows.

This year, those questions and contentions are likely to continue. The Federal Reserve has been steeply increasing borrowing costs for consumers and businesses in a bid to curb spending and slow down inflation, with the effects still making their way through the veins of commercial activity and household budgeting. So most banks and large credit agencies expect a recession in 2023.

At the same time, a budding crop of economists and major market investors see a firm chance that the economy will avoid a recession, or scrape by with a brief stall in growth, as cooled consumer spending and the easing of pandemic-era disruptions help inflation gingerly trend toward more tolerable levels — a hopeful outcome widely called a soft landing.

“The possibility of getting a soft landing is greater than the market believes,” said Jason Draho, an economist and the head of Americas asset allocation for UBS Global Wealth Management. “Inflation has now come down faster than some recently expected, and the labor market has held up better than expected.”

What seems most likely is that even if a soft landing is achieved, it will be smoother for some households and businesses and rockier for others.

In late 2020 and early 2021, talk of a “K-shaped recovery” took root, inspired by the early pandemic economy’s split between secure remote workers — whose savings, house prices and portfolios surged — and the millions more navigating hazardous or tenuous in-person jobs or depending on a large-yet-porous unemployment aid system.

In 2023, if there’s a soft landing, it could be K-shaped, too. The downside is likely to be felt most by cash-starved small businesses and by workers no longer buoyed by the savings and labor bargaining power they built up during the pandemic.

In any case, more turbulence lies ahead as fairly low unemployment, high inflation and shaky growth continue to queasily coexist.

Generally healthy corporate balance sheets and consumer credit could be bulwarks against the forces of volatile prices, global instability and the withdrawal of emergency-era federal aid. Chief executives of companies that cater to financially sound middle-class and affluent households remain confident in their outlook. Al Kelly, the chief executive of Visa, the credit card company, said recently that “we are seeing nothing but stability.”

But the Fed’s projections indicate that 1.6 million people could lose jobs by late this year — and that the unemployment rate will rise at a magnitude that in recent history has always been accompanied by a recession.

“There will be some softening in labor market conditions,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said at his most recent news conference, explaining the rationale for the central bank’s recent persistence in raising rates. “And I wish there were a completely painless way to restore price stability. There isn’t. And this is the best we can do.”

Will the bottom 50 percent backslide?

Over the past two years, researchers have frequently noted that, on average, lower-wage workers have reaped the greatest pay gains, with bumps in compensation that often outpaced inflation, especially for those who switched jobs. But those gains are relative and were often upticks from low baselines.

According to the Realtime Inequality tracker, created by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, inflation-adjusted disposable income for the bottom 50 percent of working-age adults grew 4.2 percent from January 2019 to September 2022. Among the top 50 percent, income lagged behind inflation. But that comparison leaves out the context that the average income for the bottom 50 percent in 2022 was $25,500 — roughly a $13 hourly pay rate.

“As we look ahead, I think it is entirely possible that the households and the people we usually worry about at the bottom of the income distribution are going to run into some kind of combination of job loss and softer wage gains, right as whatever savings they had from the pandemic gets depleted,” said Karen Dynan, a former chief economist at the Treasury Department and a professor at Harvard University. “And it’s going to be tough on them.”

Consumer spending accounts for roughly 70 percent of economic activity. The widespread resilience of overall consumption in the past year despite high inflation and sour business sentiment was largely attributed to the savings that households of all kinds accumulated during the pandemic: a $2.3 trillion gumbo of government aid, reduced spending on in-person services, windfalls from mortgage refinancing and cashed-out stock gains.

What’s left of those stockpiles is concentrated among wealthier households.

After spiking during the pandemic, the overall rate of saving among Americans has quickly plunged amid inflation.

The personal saving rate -- a monthly measure of the percentage of after-tax income that households save overall -- has dropped precipitously in recent months. 

Note: The personal saving rate is also referred to as "personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income." Personal saving is defined as overall income minus spending and taxes paid.

Most major U.S. banks have reported that checking balances are above prepandemic levels across all income groups. Yet the cost of living is higher than it was in 2019 throughout the country. And depleted savings among the bottom third of earners could continue to ebb while rent and everyday prices still rise, albeit more slowly.

Most key economic measures are reported in “real” terms, subtracting inflation from changes in individual income (real wage growth) and total output (real gross domestic product, or G.D.P.). If government calculations of inflation continue to abate as quickly as markets expect, inflation-adjusted numbers could become more positive, making the decelerating economy sound healthier.

That wonky dynamic could form a deep tension between resilient-looking official data and the sentiment of consumers who may again find themselves with little financial cushion.

Does small business risk falling behind?

Another potential factor for a K-shaped landing could be the growing pressure on small businesses, which have less wiggle room than bigger companies in managing costs. Small employers are also more likely to be affected by the tightening of credit as lenders become far pickier and pricier than just a year ago.

In a December survey of 3,252 small-business owners by Alignable, a Boston-based small business network with seven million members, 38 percent said they had only one month or less of cash reserves, up 12 percentage points from a year earlier. Many landlords who were lenient about payments at the height of the pandemic have stiffened, asking for back rent in addition to raising current rents.

Unlike many large-scale employers that have locked in cheap long-term funding by selling corporate bonds, small businesses tend to fund their operations and payrolls with a mix of cash on hand, business credit cards and loans from commercial banks. Higher interest rates have made the latter two funding sources far more expensive — spelling trouble for companies that may need a fresh line of credit in the coming months. And incoming cash flows depend on sales remaining strong, a deep uncertainty for most.

A Bank of America survey of small-business owners in November found that “more than half of respondents expect a recession in 2023 and plan to reduce spending accordingly.” For a number of entrepreneurs, decisions to maintain profitability may lead to reductions in staff.

Some businesses wrestling with labor shortages, increased costs and a tapering off in customers have already decided to close.

Susan Dayton, a co-owner of Hamilton Street Cafe in Albany, N.Y., closed her business in the fall once she felt the rising costs of key ingredients and staff turnover were no longer sustainable.

She said the labor shortage for small shops like hers could not be solved by simply offering more pay. “What I have found is that offering people more money just means you’re paying more for the same people,” Ms. Dayton said.

That tension among profitability, staffing and customer growth will be especially stark for smaller businesses. But it exists in corporate America, too. Some industry analysts say company earnings, which ripped higher for two years, could weaken but not plunge, with input costs leveling off, while businesses manage to keep prices elevated even if sales slow.

That could limit the bulk of layoffs to less-valued workers during corporate downsizing and to certain sectors that are sensitive to interest rates, like real estate or tech — creating another potential route for a soft, if unequal, landing.

The biggest challenge to overcome is that the income of one person or business is the spending of another. Those who feel that inflation can be tamed without a collapse in the labor market hope that spending slows just enough to cool off price increases, but not so much that it leads employers to lay off workers — who could pull back further on spending, setting off a vicious circle.

What are the chances of a soft landing?

If the strained U.S. economy is going to unwind rather than unravel, it will need multiple double-edged realities to be favorably resolved.

For instance, many retail industry analysts think the holiday season may have been the last hurrah for the pandemic-era burst in purchases of goods. Some consumers may be sated from recent spending, while others become more selective in their purchases, balking at higher prices.

That could sharply reduce companies’ “pricing power” and slow inflation associated with goods. Service-oriented businesses may be somewhat affected, too. But the same phenomenon could lead to layoffs, as slowdowns in demand reduce staffing needs.

In the coming months, the U.S. economy will be influenced in part by geopolitics in Europe and the coronavirus in China. Volatile shifts in what some researchers call “systemically significant prices,” like those for gas, utilities and food, could materialize. People preparing for a downturn by cutting back on investments or spending could, in turn, create one. And it is not clear how far the Fed will go in raising interest rates.

Then again, those risk factors could end up relatively benign.

“It’s 50-50, but I have to take a side, right? So I take the side of no recession,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “I can make the case on either side of this pretty easily, but I think with a little bit of luck and some tough policymaking, we can make our way through.”

Kevin McCarthy hopes for deal as US House Speaker fight hits day four

Kevin McCarthy's attempt to become House speaker has been frustrated by members of his party

By Kathryn Armstrong & Anthony Zurcher in London and Washington

Le Monde

Members of the US House of Representatives will try for a fourth day to elect a Speaker on Friday in an attempt to end a political impasse.

The frontrunner, Republican Kevin McCarthy, has so far failed to reach the 218 votes required for election.

And there is still no clear sign that any deal will win over enough colleagues to get him over that mark.

There have so far been 11 failed votes - a paralysis of government not seen since the pre-Civil War era.

The reason for him falling short is a right-wing cohort within his own party refusing to vote for him.

Mr McCarthy needs to ease the concerns of enough Republican holdouts - 16 out of 20 - to win him the speakership.

This is nearly always a formality in US politics at the start of a Speaker's two-year term following congressional elections.

For more than a day now, there has been talk of concessions Mr McCarthy could make to win them over. As talks proceed, the outlines of a potential deal have become more clear.

His hope at this point seems to be that if he can convince some of them to back him, there will be sufficient pressure on the others to throw in the towel and give up the fight.

Progress is slow and, as some McCarthy supporters grow restless, a resolution - if it comes - could still be days away.

Mr McCarthy had already offered compromises that would have weakened the Speaker's role in the House. However, these haven't been enough to break the impasse.

The Speaker of the House is the second in line to the presidency, after Vice-President Kamala Harris. They set the agenda in the House, and no legislative business can be conducted there without them.

Without a Speaker, some key functions of the House cannot be conducted - including the swearing in of members, forming committees and the passing of bills.

The so-called "Never Kevins" who are standing in Mr McCarthy's way are sceptical of the California congressman's conservative bona fides, despite his endorsement from former President Donald Trump.

Their votes are crucial because Republicans took over the House in November's midterm elections by only a slender margin of 222 to 212 in the 435-seat chamber.

There haven't been many indications that a deal is imminent, however.

One staunch member of the holdout group, Congressman Matt Gaetz, told reporters on Thursday night that he won't support any deal that "results in Kevin McCarthy becoming speaker".

The last ballot that took place on Thursday before the House was adjourned saw Mr McCarthy earn 200 votes, while 12 Republicans voted for Byron Donalds and seven for Kevin Hern. Mr Gaetz cast a protest ballot for Mr Trump to serve in the role.

Not since 1860, when the United States' union was fraying over the issue of slavery, has the lower chamber of Congress voted so many times to pick a Speaker. Back then it took 44 rounds of ballots.

Meanwhile, the minority Democrats continued to vote in unison for their leader, New York's Hakeem Jeffries, the first black person ever to lead a party in Congress. But it still seems unlikely that he could win over six Republican defectors to become Speaker.

Friday's voting will also take place on the second anniversary of the US Capitol riots, when a mob of Donald Trump supporters tried to stop Congress from certifying the Republican's 2020 election defeat.

The Kraken COVID variant is coming — but not yet

XBB.1.5 might drive higher COVID infections in Europe, but not within the next month, says the ECDC.

The good news is that Europe has some time to prepare for if and when cases go vertical | Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty images

BY CARLO MARTUSCELLI

POLITICO EU

JANUARY 6, 2023

The EU's disease control agency has good news and bad news when it comes to XBB.1.5, the coronavirus sub-variant nicknamed Kraken that is ripping through America and keeping epidemiologists up at night.

The bad news is that XBB.1.5 is spreading quickly, most likely because it has some big advantages over the currently dominant Omicron strains. The good news is that Europe has some time to prepare for if and when cases go vertical.

"There is a possibility that this variant could have an increasing effect on the number of COVID-19 cases in the EU/EEA, but not within the coming month as the variant is currently only present in the EU/EEA at very low levels," writes the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in its recent assessment of XBB.1.5.

On Wednesday, the WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove said that the health agency was concerned with how quickly the sub-variant was replacing other variants in circulation. In the U.S., it went from 4 percent of cases sequenced to 40 percent in a few weeks, according to the White House's COVID-19 Response Coordinator.

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By Johanna Treeck

However, it is not yet known whether it causes more severe infection.

The ECDC writes that the elevated pace of spread is likely due to XBB.1.5's ability to dodge immune system protection granted by previous infections or vaccination. It also has a mutation on its spike protein — the part of the virus that binds to host cells — which might provide some advantage.

For now, the sub-variant is just a blip on the radar in Europe in terms of case numbers, said the ECDC, though it has been detected in Denmark, France, Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Iceland, Belgium, Czech Republic, Portugal, and Ireland. Data coming out of the U.S. suggests XBB.1.5 spreads aggressively, with cases doubling every nine days.

The danger is that an explosion of cases coincides with an already-difficult influenza and respiratory syncytial virus season, straining hospitals. In Belgium, public health authorities declared a flu epidemic due to surging cases, with the peak expected in three or four weeks.

But just because the sub-variant is exploding in the U.S. doesn't necessarily mean that Europe will soon be in the eye of the storm. "[M]ajor differences in variant circulation have been observed between North America and Europe several times during the pandemic," writes the ECDC.

Note: if you are interested in this subject, Germán & Co has written a series of essays on this topic.

The Riddle Of Non-Nord Stream Return... | Energy Central

News round-up, Thursday, January 05, 2023

“After two days of chaos and confusion on the House floor, Republicans have made it abundantly clear who is leading their party: absolutely no one.”

— NYT

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

NEWS ANALYSIS

‘Nobody Is in Charge’: A Ragged G.O.P. Stumbles Through the Wilderness

With no unified agenda or clear leadership, Republicans face the prospect that the anti-establishment fervor that has powered the party in recent years could now devour it.

By Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein

Jan. 5, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

After two days of chaos and confusion on the House floor, Republicans have made it abundantly clear who is leading their party: absolutely no one.

From the halls of Congress to the Ohio Statehouse to the back-room dealings of the Republican National Committee, the party is confronting an identity crisis unseen in decades. With no unified legislative agenda, clear leadership or shared vision for the country, Republicans find themselves mired in intraparty warfare, defined by a fringe element that seems more eager to tear down the House than to rebuild the foundation of a political party that has faced disappointment in the past three national elections.

Even as Donald J. Trump rarely leaves his Florida home in what so far appears to be little more than a Potemkin presidential campaign, Republicans have failed to quell the anti-establishment fervor that accompanied his rise to power. Instead, those tumultuous political forces now threaten to devour the entire party.

Nowhere was that on more vivid display than the House floor, where 20 Republicans on Wednesday stymied their party from taking control for a second day by refusing to support Representative Kevin McCarthy’s bid for speaker.

The uncertainty continued into the evening on Wednesday. After Mr. McCarthy failed on his sixth attempt to win the leadership position, the House — by a two-vote margin — agreed to adjourn until noon Thursday, a result greeted by hoots and hollers by Democrats hoping to extend his misery late into the night.

“Nobody is in charge,” John Fredericks, a syndicated right-wing radio host and former chairman of Mr. Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns in Virginia, said in an interview. “Embrace the chaos. Our movement is embracing the chaos.”

That ideology of destruction defies characterization by traditional political labels like moderate or conservative. Instead, the party has created its own complicated taxonomy of America First, MAGA and anti-Trump — descriptions that are more about political style and personal vendettas than policy disagreements.

This iteration of the Grand Old Party, with its narrow majority in the House empowering conservative dissidents, represents a striking reversal of the classic political maxim that Democrats need to fall in love while Republicans just fall in line.

“The members who began this have little interest in legislating, but are most interested in burning down the existing Republican leadership structure,” said Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who embodies the party’s pre-Trump era. “Their behavior shows the absence of power corrupts just as absolutely as power does.”

Mr. Fredericks, who is typically one of the most aggressive pro-Trump voices in the conservative news media, said that even the former president’s renewed endorsement of Mr. McCarthy on Wednesday would do little to shore up the would-be speaker’s support.

A New Congress Begins

The 118th Congress opened on Jan. 3, with Republicans taking control of the House and Democrats holding the Senate.

• A Divided House: House Republicans began their new majority rule by failing to elect a speaker. The infighting has exposed a big rift in the party.

• George Santos: The new congressman from New York, a Republican who has made false claims about his background, education and finances, brings his saga to Capitol Hill.

• Pelosi Era Ends: Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to become House speaker, leaves a legacy that will be difficult for the new leadership of both parties to reach.

• Elise Stefanik: The New York congresswoman’s climb to MAGA stardom is a case study in the collapse of the old Republican establishment, but her rise may also be a cautionary tale.

Indeed, none of Mr. McCarthy’s opponents reversed course after receiving calls from Mr. Trump encouraging them to do so. Rather, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado took to the floor to urge her “favorite president” to change his view and tell Mr. McCarthy to withdraw his bid.

“The movement has eclipsed its Trump leadership,” Mr. Fredericks said on Wednesday. “We found 20 new leaders.”

That’s a very different definition of a leader from the traditional image of a legislator muscling policy through Congress and reshaping American life. In the new conservative ecosystem, leaders are born of the outrage that drives news coverage on the right and fuels online fund-raising.

The new political dynamics distinguish this class of Republican agitators from the self-styled revolutionaries who took control under former Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1994 or the Tea Party lawmakers who clashed with Speaker John Boehner after the party’s 2010 triumph. Those insurgent movements aspired to change the vision of the party. This group of House lawmakers, their Republican critics say, are focused far more on their personal power.

“There’s been a growing tolerance of people who do not act in good faith who consistently diminish the institution for their personal gain and advancement,” said former Representative Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who was in the House for the first two years of the Trump administration. “This is the most dramatic manifestation of that toxic culture.”

While few voters are likely to be following every twist in the arcane congressional procedure, several Republicans acknowledged that the party’s infighting in the House could saddle it with an enduring perception of dysfunction.

Matt Brooks, the executive director of the powerful Republican Jewish Coalition, called for the “infidels” to pay a “real price” for their opposition, adding, “There are elements of us looking like the Keystone Kops.”

At least a few Republicans worried that the drama could have long-term effects, as the party heads into what increasingly looks like a contentious battle for the 2024 presidential nomination.

“We have to get this speakership settled and we have to go forward if we want to be successful in 2024 as a united party,” Ronna McDaniel, who faces a stiff challenge this month to her leadership of the Republican National Committee, said on Fox News on Tuesday. Pleading for lawmakers to unify behind Mr. McCarthy, she said, “This Republican-on-Republican infighting is only hurting one thing: our party.”

The uproar on the House floor even prompted some Republicans to praise a Democrat who has for years been one of their most reviled figures.

“Nancy Pelosi is the most effective speaker this country has ever had,” said former Representative Billy Long of Missouri, who claims to have coined the phrase “Trump Train” in 2015. “She never missed. She would get her people. She’d get the votes by hook or by crook.”

For their part, Democrats largely declined to comment on the spectacle. They didn’t need to: The images from President Biden’s appearance on Wednesday in Kentucky — where he shook hands with Senator Mitch McConnell in front of a bridge project funded by their bipartisan legislation — cut a sharp contrast with the arguments and pained glances on the House floor.

“It’s a little embarrassing it’s taking so long, and the way they are dealing with one another,” Mr. Biden said of House Republicans on Wednesday as he left the White House. “What I am focused on is getting things done.”

The Republican unrest has trickled down to places like the Ohio Statehouse, where State Representative Jason Stephens, a moderate Republican, joined with Democrats this week to snatch the speakership from State Representative Derek Merrin, who has co-sponsored some of the chamber’s most conservative legislation. The surprising outcome reflected the Republican caucus’s inability to unify behind a single candidate despite holding a two-thirds majority.

The Republican National Committee is also facing questions over Ms. McDaniel’s leadership. Like Mr. McCarthy, she predicted sweeping victories before the November election, and she is now being challenged by Harmeet Dhillon of California, an R.N.C. member who has argued that there must be consequences for the party’s failure to meet expectations.

Both Republican conflicts have split the conservative news media, with Tucker Carlson of Fox News backing the insurgencies while his prime-time colleagues have urged Republicans to coalesce behind Mr. McCarthy.

As in the House, the R.N.C. fight isn’t about conservative bona fides or fund-raising prowess or even fealty to Mr. Trump. Ms. Dhillon’s case against Ms. McDaniel is that the party didn’t perform strongly enough in November — and that if more Republicans had won in competitive House races, Mr. McCarthy would not be beholden to the members who have held hostage his bid to be speaker.

For House Republicans on either side of the speaker’s drama, one big question is how their constituents react. Representative Darin LaHood, a McCarthy supporter who represents a conservative district in central and Northern Illinois, said there was “no support in my district for what these guys are doing.”

Martha Zoller, a conservative talk radio host in northeast Georgia, said she had heard this week from several local party organizations that are upset with Representative Andrew Clyde, the area’s Republican congressman, over his opposition to Mr. McCarthy.

Yet while Ms. Zoller said she was partial to Mr. McCarthy as a House Republican leader, she said she and others in her corner of Georgia would like to see Republicans move on from Ms. McDaniel, whom she blamed for the party’s poor midterm showing.

“She orchestrated a lot of losses,” Ms. Zoller said. “It’s kind of like being a head football coach. When you lose, sometimes you’ve got to take the hit, even when it wasn’t your fault, and you’ve got to move on.”

In Washington, Republicans aligned with Mr. McCarthy found themselves increasingly agitated at a turn of events that had left their party paralyzed.

“I don’t blame the public if they take a negative view,” said Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, who labeled the anti-McCarthy cadre “the Taliban 19” before its numbers grew. “This is dysfunctional, and I hate it myself. I can understand if the public does, too.”

Erdogan asks Putin to declare 'unilateral' Ukraine ceasefire

The Turkish and Russian leaders held a telephone conversation to discuss recent developments in Ukraine.

Le Monde

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pressed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to declare a "unilateral" ceasefire in Ukraine on Thursday, January 5.

"President Erdogan said that calls for peace and negotiations should be supported by a unilateral ceasefire and a vision for a fair solution," the Turkish presidency said following a telephone conversation between Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Putin.

Every morning, a selection of articles from Le Monde In English straight to your inbox

Mr. Erdogan was due to hold a separate conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later on Thursday.

The Turkish leader, who refused to join Western sanctions on Russia, has used his relations with both Moscow and Kyiv to try and mediate an end to the war. Turkey hosted two early rounds of peace talks and helped strike a United Nations-backed agreement restoring Ukrainian grain deliveries across the Black Sea.

Mr. Erdogan has also repeatedly tried to bring Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky to Turkey for a peace summit.

Russia's spiritual leader, Patriarch Kirill, called for a one-day ceasefire in Ukraine on Orthodox Christmas, celebrated this week by both countries.

Putin's Man at the BND?German Intelligence Rocked By Russian Espionage Scandal

Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, has been rocked by an espionage scandal centered around one of its staffers. The man, who is suspected of having spied for Russia, works in a department that provides critical intelligence in the Ukraine war.

By Maik Baumgärtner, Jörg Diehl, Matthias Gebauer, Martin Knobbe, Roman Lehberger, Ann-Katrin Müller, Fidelius Schmid und Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt

Spiegel

04.01.2023

Thomas Haldenwang, the head of Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s domestic intelligence agency, had clear words when he spoke about Russian intelligence services before the federal parliament, the Bundestag, in mid-October. He called Russia an "aggressive actor with dishonest means and motives." Two years earlier, he had already warned of an "alarming brutalization" of its methods. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he said, represented an "aggravation of all previous factors."

To the left of Haldenwang, wearing a blue shirt with a purple tie and rimless glasses, sat Bruno Kahl, the president of the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence service. He seemed relaxed on October 17, likely unaware at that time that his own agency had probably become a victim of that Russian aggression. Or he didn't let on about it.

On December 21, officers of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) arrested Carsten L., the head of a BND unit, in Berlin. German Federal Prosecutor Peter Frank has accused him of providing Russia with classified intelligence information.

Two months after that October session in parliament, Kahl was forced to admit on the Thursday before Christmas Eve that there was "a possible case of treason" within his own ranks. "Restraint and discretion" are "very important in this particular case," Kahl said, adding that any details that become public would benefit Russia.

But what could be more useful to Moscow than a source right at the heart of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, with access to a whole trove of secret documents?

Was the Danger Underestimated?

It appears that the worst espionage case in years may currently be brewing in Germany. And it is hitting the very agency that didn't exactly shine with its foresight in the run-up to the Russian attack on Ukraine, long dismissing warnings from the United States and British intelligence services about the impending war.

The case is weighing heavy on the entire German government, which dithered over arms deliveries to Ukraine, at least in the first months of the invasion. Now it must face questions from its partner services around the world about a Russian mole inside the BND. Did the Germans underestimate the danger?

Berlin remained silent on the issue over the holidays. Only Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) commented, making a desperate attempt to spin the whole affair into a success. He said that an "important blow against Russian espionage" may have been struck.

Sebastian Fiedler, the point man for criminal policy for the parliamentary group of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) in the Bundestag, considers this reaction to be "somewhat exaggerated." Ultimately, the operation against Carsten L. had been a success. "But above all, we now see what Russia is willing and capable of doing – in agencies, the economy and politics."

It's not a short list. Former KGB agent Vladimir Putin has upgraded his intelligence services to become the most important pillar of his power apparatus. They are a key element of his broad offensive  against the West.

Russian intelligence services influence political parties in democracies and elsewhere, interfere in free elections, foment protests in the West with false information, infiltrate the computer networks of Western governments, assassinate dissidents and compromise Western public servants.

Warnings from German Authorities Ignored

But decision-makers in Germany preferred to pretend that the shadow war with Russia was over. They largely ignored warnings from Germany's own security authorities, and they underestimated the ambition for supremacy held by Putin, who has been Russia’s president since late 1999, with one interruption when he served as prime minister due to term limits.

When incidents did occur, such as the murder  of Georgian asylum-seeker Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Kleiner Tiergarten park in Berlin at the behest of the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB, the German government expelled a moderate number of Russian diplomats from the country. They apparently didn’t want to upset the other side too much and were afraid that they would no longer be able to run their own embassy in Moscow properly if the Kremlin expelled just as many diplomats in return.

For years, the counterintelligence departments of the BfV and the Military Counterintelligence Service suffered from chronic staff shortages. Counter-intelligence efforts at the BND – the investigation and infiltration of foreign intelligence services – were discontinued during the tenure of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a friend of Putin’s, in 2002. Even within the security authorities, many viewed the decision as a mistake.

Marc Polymeropoulos, the former head of operations for the CIA in Europe and Eurasia, says his warnings about Russian spies repeatedly "fell on deaf ears" in Germany. "Russia treated Europe like its playground," he says.

Officials with Eastern European intelligence services sometimes express themselves even more sharply: They were long treated by Berlin with arrogance, says one source. The source says the BND dismissed them as not being objective. "Nobody understands Russia as well as we do," was the subtext coming from the ranks of the BND, says the source.

The BND first moved to reestablish its own counterintelligence unit in 2017. German intelligence officers had to start from scratch in many places and undergo the painstaking process of acquiring new sources. Until recently, only around three dozen BND employees worked in this area.

Still, counterintelligence at the BfV domestic intelligence agency has been significantly beefed up. Recently, several Russian informers were caught in the net – though they were rather small fish: a man who passed on property plans of the German Bundestag, a Russian-born doctoral student at the University of Augsburg who had provided information to the foreign intelligence service SWR and a security guard at the British Embassy in Berlin.

Tip from Abroad Led to Suspected Double Agent

But the case of Carsten L., even if BND head Kahl has tried to present it as such, cannot be cited as evidence of increased efforts by the German intelligence services.

Shortly before Christmas, Kahl said the service had learned about the case "in the course of its intelligence work." It sounded as though the agency had discovered the suspected traitor within its ranks on its own. But that’s not what happened.

L.'s undoing was that another Western intelligence service discovered a data set in the Russian apparatus that was clearly attributable to the BND. The data included findings about Russia. It's possible that it also contained information on the BND's methods and sources. The data reportedly included findings from telecommunications surveillance that may have just been photographed from a screen.

It was only after the warning that the BND succeeded in identifying Carsten L. as the suspected mole. The agency spent weeks observing him.

In the process, another person working for the BND also came into the investigators' sights. The federal prosecutor has listed the second person as a defendant in the proceedings. She is also alleged to have opened documents on her work computer that are relevant to the investigation. However, insiders report that it is now considered unlikely that the person in question worked for the Russians. They say it is more likely that Carsten L. had tried to divert suspicion from himself through her.

Prosecutors Suspect Serious Treason

Investigators from the Federal Prosecutor’s Office and the BKA are still working to clarify the full scope of the incident and much remains unclear. Carsten L. hasn't yet commented on the accusations, with his defense attorneys thus far declining to comment.

One thing that remains hazy is a possible motive: nothing is known about any possible financial worries the suspect may have had. The officer from the Bundeswehr armed forces was working for the BND and lived with his wife and children in Bavaria. He had reportedly encountered frustrations in his job, but that's not so unusual.

The federal prosecutor is investigating the BND agent not on suspicion of "intelligence agent activity" but of "aggravated treason." It’s a far more serious accusation.

If that crime is proven, Carsten L. would have created "the risk of serious detriment to the external security of the Federal Republic of Germany" by betraying a state secret and abusing his position of responsibility to do so. That's what Section 94 of the German Criminal Code states. So, this isn't just about a civil servant providing a few official secrets. The defendant could face a prison sentence of five years to life.

The case would be unique in the recent history of the BND. The only other case that has shaken the foreign intelligence service to a similar degree is that of Markus R.

When the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution tracked down the official in 2014, they thought they were on the trail of a traitor working on Moscow’s behalf. He had offered secret documents to the Russian Consulate General in Munich. But it only became clear after his arrest that R. had actually been working for the CIA, the intelligence service of Germany's most important ally. A court sentenced him to eight years in prison.

Carsten L. also had access to a wealth of documents in his function as a unit head in the Technical Intelligence (TA) department. Investigators are still in the dark over how much information he may have supplied to Russian services and over what period of time.

A Life of Its Own

The TA department has been the source of scandals in the past. As the investigative committee on the National Security Agency (NSA) scandal, which was in session until 2017, showed, it had developed a life of its own that neither top authorities nor the Chancellery could control.

As such, former BND President Gerhard Schindler also considers it a mistake that more than 1,000 employees with the TA unit remained in Pullach, Bavaria, at the time the BND moved its headquarters to Berlin. "That, of course, makes administrative supervision difficult," he says.

At the same time, Technical Intelligence has become something of the heart of the intelligence enterprise. Employees comb through internet data streams, intercept emails and tap into phone calls and radio traffic. Around half of the several hundred reports that the BND produces each day come from the TA.

Even if the intelligence service hasn't always been respected by its partners in recent times, the TA had an excellent international reputation. One reason is that the BND still uses an outdated wiretapping method that other intelligence agencies have abandoned, and is thus able to intercept Russian military communications, for example. Since the outbreak of the war, the findings from signals intelligence at Pullach have been among the West's strongest information that they have been able to supply to the Ukrainian armed forces in the war against Russia.

And now it is this unit that has been hit by what is likely to be a dramatic leak. The consequences are hard to foresee.

Intelligence Services Need a Radical Overhaul

"The threats and hostilities against our democracy are currently massive. Illegitimate efforts to assert influence, propaganda and espionage are relevant and acute areas where our security agencies need to be much better, more resilient and sharper," says Konstantin von Notz, a member of the parliament with the Green Party and the chairman of the Parliamentary Oversight Panel for the intelligence services. It's not just the military that Germany needs to radically overhaul, he says, but "also in the area of intelligence services, and that's why we have to underpin that legally as part of the reorganization of the law for these security agencies."

The extent of the Russians' espionage activities in Europe is illustrated by cases from other countries. The Netherlands caught an "illegal" with the military intelligence GRU, who was to be smuggled in as an intern at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. In Norway, investigators uncovered a scientist who had been spying for the Russians. Meanwhile, Sweden caught two GRU operatives who had infiltrated the security agencies there. And DER SPIEGEL and its reporting partners exposed a GRU spy who had been targeting NATO and U.S. naval bases for years.

Note: if you are interested in this subject, Germán & Co has written a series of essays on this topic.

The Riddle Of Non-Nord Stream Return... | Energy Central

News round-up, Wednesday, January 04, 2023

“Everyone is afraid of this winter and tough times,” said Lorand Csurkuj Kalaman, a 42-year-old Roma from the northern Romanian region of Maramureș with five children, who says his monthly bills exceed his monthly income of €550.”

— Politico EU

---

In 2022, we were unstoppable in accelerating the future of energy.

Let's reflect on our some of our best moments:

1. We announced our intent to exit coal by the end of 2025 and increased our ownership of AES Andes from 67% to 98%.

2. Fast Company ranked AES in the top ten of its “Best 100 Workplaces for Innovators” list.

3. We helped restore power to the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Fiona. Like Hawaii, we are also helping Puerto Rico in its energy transition by deploying solar plus storage on the island.

4. We released our IRP for AES Indiana, which serves as a roadmap for the company’s power generation goals. It included renewables, storage, and converting coal facilities to cleaner energy .

5. Together with Air Products, we announced a $4 billion mega-scale green hydrogen production facility in the United States, the largest green hydrogen project in the nation.

Reforestation day…

Since July 2015, Seaboard has been sponsoring a permanent brigade to contribute to the sustained work of recovering the forested area in the Upper Ozama River Basin.

Altice delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fiber networks and mobile…

Cooperate with ethical thinking -

Winter energy emergency ‘a question of life and death’ for Europe’s Roma

Experts fear soaring energy bills may push Roma communities to the brink.

BY VICTOR JACK

POLITICO EU

DECEMBER 21, 2022 12:45 PM CET

Europe's energy price emergency is hitting the Continent's vulnerable people the hardest — and some of the most at-risk are its 12 million Roma.

The EU is scrambling to figure out how to rein in soaring natural gas prices, which has sent power prices spiraling. Those higher bills are a disaster for people already living on the edge.

“Everyone is afraid of this winter and tough times,” said Lorand Csurkuj Kalaman, a 42-year-old Roma from the northern Romanian region of Maramureș with five children, who says his monthly bills exceed his monthly income of €550.

“It affects me very hard,” he said, adding that his family relies on firewood for heating and has received no support from local authorities for heating despite submitting the relevant documents.

In Romania, for example, the 2 million Roma earn 40 percent less than the median salary, according to Alin Banu, the national coordinator at the local Roma NGO Aresel, who adds that average utility bills there are now roughly double what a family receives from the state each month.

Getting enough support from the state this winter will be a crucial lifeline for the country's Roma, for whom this is now “a question of life and death,” he said.

Romania's government said that it “provides support for home heating to all citizens that require it ... regardless of their ethnicity” including up to €418 in aid per individual, and Bucharest has “taken measures to reduce the negative impact of the crisis, such as limiting excessively high prices of firewood.”

Roma face tough times across the region.

In Serbia, where there are roughly 500,000 Roma, local nonprofit Opre Roma Serbia has helped organize regular protests on behalf of a Roma community over perceived inaction by local authorities that's left dozens of families without electricity for seven months.

“A lot of kids are getting cold because of the weather,” said Opre Roma Serbia's Jelena Reljić. “I cannot even imagine how hard it is, how hard it is for them to actually live without electricity.”

Serbia's energy ministry is now signaling it might connect residents to the grid, according to the charity.

Roma families without regular grid connections can sometimes buy electricity illegally from neighbors and can fall into debt by borrowing from loan sharks. All of this means the “tragic scenario” of increased numbers of Roma freezing to death this winter is “quite possible,” Banu said.

Falling through the cracks

In Western Europe, “many communities live in relatively better conditions,” ERRC’s Lee said.

In Britain, about four-fifths of Roma people live in permanent housing rather than traveler sites, but “the general housing situation for the Roma in the U.K. is that they live in the poorer areas … in overcrowded housing situations,” said Mihai Calin Bica, a policy coordinator at the London-based NGO Roma Support Group.

Nicoleta, a 41-year-old Roma single mother and housekeeper who lives in a one-bedroom flat in north London, says she’s more than £400 in debt to her landlord after she used her rent money to pay energy bills. 

Almost half of Europe’s Roma people are classed as “working poor” | José Sena Goulao/EPA-EFE

“I can't even remember the last time I used the oven” thanks to surging energy costs, she said. “I work three, four days per week and I barely survive.”

A November survey by Scottish NGO Romano Lav found that 91.5 percent of Roma people in Glasgow’s Govanhill area were worse off than six months ago, while 86 percent were scared of running out of money for food — even if they recieve £66 off their energy bills as part of Britain’s energy support scheme.

Of the nomadic Roma living in campsites, roughly one-third in southeastern England can't access energy bill support since this requires a direct contract with an electricity provider — and often the local authority is the only contractor at camp sites, according to Abbie Kirkby of the nonprofit Friends, Families and Travellers.

And since 97 percent of these sites have no access to mains gas, people instead rely on gas bottles — and those prices have also surged, she said.

With months of winter ahead, “the crunch is not quite there” yet Kirkby said, adding: “It's going to be very challenging year for gypsy and traveller families.”

Czech industrial model shaken by energy crisis

Heavily dependent on the automotive sector, cheap energy and Germany, the Czech economy will experience one of the biggest slowdowns in Eastern Europe in 2023.

By Marie Charrel

Published on January 4, 2023

Officially, the decision had only been postponed, but it would have come at the right time to brighten up the Czech economic outlook, which is very gloomy for the months to come. On Friday, December 9, the Volkswagen Group announced that due to economic uncertainties, it would not immediately choose the location of its next electric battery gigafactory, planned for Eastern Europe.

The Czech government had been campaigning for months to have the site in Plzen, in the east-central part of the country, over its Hungarian, Slovakian and Polish competitors. "If there's the option of building a battery factory in Europe, where electricity costs €0.15 per kilowatt hour, but it's possible to get it in China or America for €0.02 or €0.03, we are not in a position to say that we will make this choice out of solidarity," said Thomas Schäfer, the group's boss, immediately after the announcement.

For the Czech Republic, the stakes are colossal: "This gigafactory is decisive for the future of our automotive industry and, above all, for its ability to make the shift to electric," said Jiri Dvorak, a specialist on this issue at the Grant Thornton consulting firm in Prague. And, more broadly, it is crucial for the whole country: The automotive industry alone counts for 10% of the gross domestic product (GDP), 8% of jobs and 25% of exports.

Worsened by the energy crisis

Highly dependent on Germany, which takes in a third of its manufacturing, the Czech industrial sector as a whole represents nearly 30% of GDP – the highest level in Europe. "However, it has been particularly badly affected since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic" in early 2020, explained Grzegorz Sielewicz, a regional specialist at French credit insurer Coface. Penalized by the collapse of demand and the German economic slowdown, the industry has, in the meantime, faced shortages of semiconductors. This hindered manufacturing recovery in 2021.

The government was slow to respond and then introduced a cap on gas and electricity prices in November 2022

"Can you imagine, the Volkswagen model I ordered in October 2021 won't arrive until April 2023?" said Mr. Dvorak. Not surprisingly, the energy crisis has made the situation even worse. Before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the country was 52.5% dependent on fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas largely imported from Russia); 40.8% nuclear power, thanks to its two power plants; and only 6.7% renewable energy.

In November, inflation climbed to 17.2%, including 34.3% for gas, electricity and fossil fuels, according to Eurostat. "For our electro-intensive industries, such as glass, metallurgy and chemicals, which are large consumers of gas, the shock is brutal," observed Oldrich Sklenar, a researcher at the Association for International Affairs, an independent research center based in Prague. The government was initially slow to react and then introduced a cap on gas and electricity prices for households and small businesses in November 2022. This was later extended to large companies.

It also plans to build a new nuclear reactor at the Dukovany plant (the American-Canadian Westinghouse, the French EDF and the Korean KHNP have submitted bids) in order to reduce its dependence on hydrocarbons. "But the cap will not be enough to limit the effects of price increases already recorded," warned Nicholas Farr, a country specialist at Capital Economics. "The weight of industry means that the Czech economy will experience the greatest slowdown in Eastern Europe," added Frantisek Taborsky at ING.

'We are at a turning point'

In fact, the European Commission expects growth of only 0.1% in 2023 – lower than in Slovakia (0.5%), Poland (0.7%) and the European average (0.3%). Business activity will be largely pulled down by Germany, which is expected to be in recession in 2023 (-0.6%). This is all while the Czech Republic has not yet recovered its pre-pandemic GDP level. "Beyond the emergency, it's the very economic model of the country that's being called into question," said David Marek, chief economist at Deloitte Consulting in Prague.

"Now industry must shift upmarket, and we also have to diversify into services," David Marek, chief economist at Deloitte Consulting, Prague

"We are at a turning point. Industry will no longer be able to rely on cheap energy, as it has for the past 40 years," added Pavel Sobisek, an economist at UniCredit in Prague. But the country still has a solid foundation and a long industrial tradition. Bohemia was the manufacturing heartland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – Skoda Auto, its flagship car company bought by Volkswagen in 1991, was founded in 1895. And Czechoslovakia was one of Europe's leading industrial powers when it gained independence in 1918.

After the communist period and collectivization of the means of production, the country succeeded in modernizing its factories by turning to the West. "Now industry must shift upmarket, and we also have to diversify into services," said Mr. Marek. Skoda Auto is preparing for this in earnest: "We're going to increase the share of electric vehicles to 70% of production by 2030, with nearly €5.6 billion of investment over the next five years," said the company.

But the country will have to deal with another major obstacle: the dizzying lack of labor. Despite the economic downturn, the unemployment rate was only 2.1% in October, according to Eurostat. "Companies are struggling to recruit for all types of labor, skilled and unskilled, and this is a real obstacle to innovation," concluded Mr. Marek.

G.O.P. Fight Over Speaker Enters Its Second Day

The House is set to reconvene at noon to continue a historic floor fight — the first in a century — prompted by the Republican leader’s failure to secure a majority to become speaker.

By Catie Edmondson

NYT

Jan. 4, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Republicans began their second day in control of the House on Wednesday without a leader and deadlocked about how to move forward, after Representative Kevin McCarthy of California lost three votes for the top job amid a hard-right rebellion that has prompted a historic struggle on the House floor.

Mr. McCarthy’s successive defeats on Tuesday marked the first time in a century that the House has failed to elect a speaker on the first roll call vote, and it was not clear how or when the stalemate would be resolved. After adjourning with no leader, the House was set to reconvene at noon on Wednesday to try to resolve the impasse.

A mutiny waged by ultraconservative lawmakers who for weeks have held fast to their vow to oppose Mr. McCarthy paralyzed the chamber on the first day of Republican rule, delaying the swearing in of hundreds of members of Congress, putting off any legislative work and exposing deep divisions that threatened to make the party’s House majority ungovernable.

Mr. McCarthy has vowed not to back down until he secures the post, raising the prospect of a grueling stretch of votes that could go on for days.

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“I’m staying until we win,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters between the second and third votes on Tuesday. “I know the path.”

House precedent dictates that members continue to vote until someone secures the majority needed to prevail. But until Tuesday, the House had not failed to elect a speaker on the first roll call vote since 1923, when the election stretched for nine ballots.

It was not clear how long it might take for Republicans to resolve their stalemate this time, or what Mr. McCarthy’s strategy, if any, was for coming back from an embarrassing series of defeats. He worked into the night on Tuesday, surrounded by allies, to try to secure votes.

No viable challenger has emerged, but if Mr. McCarthy continues to flounder, Republicans could shift their votes to an alternative, such as his No. 2, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

On Tuesday, right-wing Republicans coalesced behind Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a founding member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, as an alternative to Mr. McCarthy, but Mr. Jordan, a onetime rival who has since allied himself with Mr. McCarthy, pleaded with his colleagues to unite instead behind the California Republican.

But the party has so far refused to do so. The failed votes on Tuesday showed publicly the extent of the opposition Mr. McCarthy faces. With all members of the House present and voting, Mr. McCarthy needs to receive 218 votes to become speaker, leaving little room for Republican defections since the party controls only 222 seats.

He fell short again and again, drawing no more than 203 votes — far below a majority and fewer than the votes received by Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader whose caucus remained united behind him.

News round-up, Tuesday, January 03, 2023

“Absence of Jair Bolsonaro
Lula is back in power. But the day had finished. The Brazilian republic loves symbols and Lula was preparing to address the people. After a brief military review, with a tired face, the new president headed to the Three Powers Plaza. There, 30,000 supporters dressed in bright red faced the Parlatorium, the large marble platform in the Planalto Palace, from which the head of state traditionally delivers his speeches to the nation.”

— Le Monde

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Lula sworn in as reconciliatory president, rising from ashes of Brazilian politics

By  Bruno Meyerfeld (Brasilia, special correspondent)

Published on January 2, 2023

Brazil's new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (4-L) takes his dog "Resistencia" by the leash as he walks up the ramp upon being welcomed by indigenous Brazilian leader and environmentalist Raoni Metuktire, known as Chief Raoni (3-L) and other community representatives at Planalto Palace after his inauguration ceremony at the National Congress, in Brasilia, on January 1, 2023. SERGIO LIMA / AFP

On the first day of 2023, at close to 5 pm, Brazil was shaking with emotion. In the Three Powers Plaza, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 77 years old, was about to become Brazil's president for the third time. He walked up the Planalto presidential palace's long marble ramp, a symbol of Brazilian power. But beside him, there were no officials or generals in front of the tens of thousands of supporters. Holding onto Lula's arm, an Indigenous chief walks by his side: Raoni Metuktire.

The president and the cacique. The steelworker and the Kayapo. The symbolic force of the two together was irresistible. The senior Raoni, at 93 years old, recognizable by his golden feather headdress and his legendary lip plate, physically diminished, was present for this historic moment; the swearing-in of the 39th president of Brazil, seen as a moment of great national reconciliation.

The two men were not alone on the ramp. In addition to the first lady, Rosangela da Silva, the vice president, Geraldo Alckmin, and his wife, Maria Lucia, Lula brought his dog, Resistencia, who was held on a leash. Also by his side was a garbage collector, an influencer with a disability, a teacher, a metal worker, and a 10-year-old Black boy in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. The varied faces of Brazil.

'It's carnival and revolution!'

They are the ones, in the absence of Jair Bolsonaro, who placed the presidential sash around Lula's neck: the culmination of a day of celebration, which saw this extraordinary political figure make an unprecedented comeback. Barely three years ago, the miserable child of the Nordeste, who became a trade unionist and then the president of a golden decade for Brazil (2003-2011), was in prison and condemned to end his days there in shame. Now he is back leading his country.

For Lula's supporters, the party had actually started the night before. On January 1, 2023, at midnight, Jair Bolsonaro was already officially no longer the president of Brazil. In the capital, taken by storm by left-wing supporters, people kissed for the first time of the new year under fireworks fired from Lake Paranoa. Further on, on the Ministries Esplanade, the cleaning teams were busy. Its marble halls were being washed with water.

By the early morning, there were hundreds of thousands of Lula supporters all the way up to Brazil's Monumental Axis, a grandiose avenue of 16 kilometers where the country's institutions are lined up. A gastronomic fair and a large stage were set up on the lawn with concerts scheduled until 4 am. "It's carnival and revolution!" laughed Thalis, a 41-year-old theater actor who was holding a horse costume in his hand.

Lula 'the savior'

It was a hot morning. Firemen refreshed the vast crowd with water jets and sang at the top of their lungs. "It is a cry, an emotion, which springs from the depths of our being," said Donizeti Nogueira, an executive of the Workers' Party (PT) in Tocantins (Nordeste), wearing a red fedora on his head. For those on the left, the celebration is a question of recovering their dignity after a cursed decade, which saw former president Dilma Rousseff impeached, Lula imprisoned and Jair Bolsonaro victorious. There was no holding back: "This is the greatest democratic victory of the 20th, 21st and 22nd centuries!," Donizeti enthused.

Supporters of President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva arrive at the Esplanada dos Ministerios to attend his inauguration ceremony in Brasilia on January 1, 2023. DOUGLAS MAGNO/AFP

Firefighters spray water over supporters of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gathering to attend his inauguration as new president outside the Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia, Brazil, Sunday, January 1, 2023. SILVIA IZQUIERDOI/AP

Two young men pass in jerseys of the Seleçao, the Brazilian national team, which had been adopted as a rallying symbol by Jair Bolsonaro's supporters. "With my husband, we wanted to reclaim these symbols, confiscated by the fascists!" said Ricardo, an engineer in his thirties. On the Esplanade, generations cross paths and pass on the baton. Juliana, 41 years old came with her daughter Anna, 17 years old. With makeup, T-shirt, dyed hair, earrings, and a strawberry sorbet in hand, the two women had covered themselves in red. "It's very important to be here together today," insisted the mother. "Lula, for me too, is the only reference, the savior," added her daughter.

"But we are only dressing like this for today. Tonight, we will go back to the hotel, and we won't come out anymore. We are too afraid of violence...," Juliana added. The threat of an attack hovered over this day. More than 8,000 police and military personnel, as well as drones and snipers, had been deployed to ensure the safety of Lula and his supporters. Some went as far as to offer him a bulletproof vest and an armored car. The new president firmly declined.

Several notable absentees

Shortly after 2:30 pm, Lula emerged from the presidential Rolls-Royce: a 1952 model of the gleaming black Silver Wraith convertible. Escorted by the Presidential Guard Battalion of Brazil on horseback, decked out in red and white uniforms, the procession set off from Brasilia's cathedral in the direction of the Congress. It was there, under its two iconic domes and in front of the assembled members of the legislative and judicial branches, that the inauguration took place.

In the austere Chamber of Deputies amphitheater, decorated with dark metal bars, the whole of Brasilia stood solemnly. Several foreign presidents also made the trip: the "comrades" of the left like the Chilean Gabriel Boric, the Argentine Alberto Fernandez, the Colombian Gustavo Petro and the ex-president of Uruguay, "Pepe" Mujica (to whom Lula reserved a particularly warm embrace). Also in attendance were King Felipe VI of Spain and the German, Angolan and Portuguese heads of state.

The assembly, however, had several notable absentees. Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, who had been approached for a while, did not make the trip in the end. Joe Biden, who had at one time considered sending US Vice President Kamala Harris, finally sent Deb Haaland, the secretary of the interior. Emmanuel Macron was represented by Olivier Becht, the trade minister. A disappointment for those in Lula's camp.

'We bear no spirit of revenge'

Upon arrival, the president-elect greeted his distinguished guests. In order to respect protocol, he was quickly invited to take an oath and sign the act of his inauguration. He swore to "uphold, defend and apply the Constitution, observe the laws, promote the common good of the Brazilian people, support unity, integrity and independence." It was at exactly 3:06 pm that Lula became the 39th president of Brazil.

Brazil's new president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva delivers a speech after swearing in during his inauguration ceremony at the National Congress in Brasilia, on January 1, 2023. MAURO PIMENTEL / AFP

The Federative Republic of Brazil acclaimed its new leader. As if by magic, the republic was reconciled. But Lula does not have only friends in this assembly. Rosa Weber, president of the Federal Supreme Court, voted in 2018 to imprison him. Arthur Lira, president of the Chamber of Deputies, and Augusto Aras, attorney general, were until recently very loyal allies of Jair Bolsonaro.

A shrewd and skillful politician, Lula knows how to be magnanimous. Faced with the establishment that had buried him too soon, he decreed forgiveness and called for unity. "We bear no spirit of revenge against those who tried to enslave the nation to their personal and ideological designs," said the new head of state, adding that "Today, after this terrible challenge we overcame, we must say: democracy forever!"

Absence of Jair Bolsonaro

Lula is back in power. But the day had finished. The Brazilian republic loves symbols and Lula was preparing to address the people. After a brief military review, with a tired face, the new president headed to the Three Powers Plaza. There, 30,000 supporters dressed in bright red faced the Parlatorium, the large marble platform in the Planalto Palace, from which the head of state traditionally delivers his speeches to the nation.

Brazil's new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (center) with Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and their wives, First Lady Rosangela da Silva and Maria Lucia Ribeiro Alckmin, during his inauguration ceremony at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, January 1, 2023. CARL DE SOUZA / AFP

In the noble salon, his closest companions awaited him. PT leaders in suits and ties crossed paths with Favela activists in sneakers and caps; feathered Indigenous chiefs spoke with babalorishás, priests of the Afro-Brazilian religions, in immaculate tunics. Standing straight on her chair in the front row was a woman with a smile on her face. "This story will not end like this (...) We will come back!" Dilma Rousseff had promised in 2016 in this same palace on the day of her impeachment. She was savoring her revenge.

Jair Bolsonaro, on the other hand, had been gone for two days. Gone was the captain of the far right, who headed to Florida for several weeks. The outgoing president refused to participate in the ceremonies and to pass on the traditional sash to his successor. On December 31, 2022, reporters spotted him in the streets of Orlando, eating fried chicken from KFC and taking selfies with a handful of supporters.

The day before, Mr. Bolsonaro had given up the ghost during a final online live broadcast, recorded in the Alvorada Palace library, the residence of the head of state. From this refined place, from where he spread lies and the most delirious rumors for four years, the outgoing president appeared distraught. Trembling, nervous, the outrageous captain curiously called for "tranquility," "respect for one's neighbor," and the "search for peace and harmony."

'This nightmare has ended'

His last words were perplexing, to say the least: "Thank you very much to all of you, I embrace you all, in the struggle, and a good 2023 to all... God bless our Brazil," Mr. Bolsonaro said with a broken voice and an imploring look, both hands placed flat on the table. A long breath and a look at the ceiling followed. "Let's move forward," he concluded.
The man who had smashed through the doors of power with a battering ram finally left Brasilia through the window and on tiptoe.

Back to the Parlatorium. Lula wanted his address to be personal. During the 27 minutes, the president, with a hoarse voice, broke into tears several times. "What the Brazilian people have suffered in recent years is the slow and progressive construction of a genocide," he lamented, referring to an era of shadows, uncertainty and much suffering. But "this nightmare has come to an end," Lula promised, lyrically, calling on his supporters to use "the weapons our opponents fear most: truth, which has defeated lies; hope, which has defeated fear; and love, which has defeated hate."

This January 1st, Lula did not stop at words. Within minutes of taking office, the leftist president immediately made a myriad of decisions that ended the Bolsonarist legacy: an extension of social assistance and fuel tax exemptions; revocation of decrees liberalizing gun ownership and illegal gold mining; lifting of secrecy over administrative acts; the re-establishment of an international fund for the preservation of the Amazon.

Supporters of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gather to attend his inauguration as new president outside the Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia, Brazil, Sunday, January 1, 2023. SILVIA IZQUIERDO/AP

It was a question of moving quickly because the new government has no state of grace. According to the Datafolha Institute, barely one Brazilian in two thinks that the current government will be able to do better than the previous one. At nightfall, a final cocktail party was organized at the Itamaraty, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, decorated with colonnades and a water garden. But Lula only stayed for a short time. The next day, he had to fly to Santos to attend Pelé's funeral. The death of a "king" for the advent of a president.

Space and Astronomy: What to Expect in 2023

By Michael Roston

Jan. 3, 2023

As years in space and astronomy go, 2022 is going to be a tough act to follow.

NASA wowed us with cosmic scenes captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. The DART mission slammed an asteroid into a new orbit. Artemis I set humanity on a course back to the moon. China finished building a new space station in orbit. SpaceX launched and landed 61 rockets in 12 months. And the invasion of Ukraine imperiled Russia’s status as a space power.

It’s a lot to measure up to, but 2023 is bound to have some excitement on the launchpad, the lunar surface and in the sky. Once again, you can get updates on your personal digital calendar by signing up for The New York Times’s Space and Astronomy Calendar. Here are some of the major events you can expect. Not all of them have certain dates yet, but Times journalists will provide additional information as it emerges.

Never miss an eclipse, meteor shower, rocket launch or other event that’s out of this world again with The Times Space and Astronomy Calendar.

New Rockets

NASA got its giant Space Launch System off the ground for the first time in 2022, lighting up the night in Florida with an incredible stream of flame as it carried the Artemis I mission toward the moon. That shifted attention to SpaceX, which is building a next generation rocket, Starship, that is also central to NASA’s crewed Artemis III moon landing attempt.

SpaceX cleared a key environmental review that would allow it to launch an uncrewed orbital test flight from South Texas if it met certain conditions. But the rocket wasn’t ready for flight in 2022. The company has not announced a date for a test this year, but regular ground tests of Starship equipment indicate it is working toward one.

The pathfinder first stage of the Vulcan Centaur, a new rocket by United Launch Alliance that will eventually replace that company’s Atlas V.Credit...United Launch Alliance

Numerous other rockets may take flight for the first time in 2023. The most important, Vulcan Centaur by United Launch Alliance, will eventually replace that company’s Atlas V, a vehicle that has been central to American spaceflight for two decades. The Vulcan relies on the BE-4 engine built by Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos. The same engine will in turn be used in Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, which may have a test flight late this year.

A number of American private companies are expected to test new rockets in 2023, including Relativity and ABL. They could be joined by foreign rocket makers, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries which could test Japan’s H3 rocket in February, and Arianespace, which is working toward a test flight of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket.

New Lunar Landings

We’re guaranteed at least one lunar landing attempt in 2023. A Japanese company, Ispace, launched its M1 mission on a SpaceX rocket in December. It’s taking a slow, fuel-efficient route to the moon and is set to arrive in April, when it will try to deploy a rover built by the United Arab Emirates, a robot built by Japan’s space agency, JAXA, as well as other payloads.

There could be as many as five more lunar landing attempts this year.

NASA has hired a pair of private companies to carry payloads to the lunar surface. Both of them, Intuitive Machines of Houston and Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, faced delays in 2022, but may make the trip in the coming months.

They could be joined by three government space programs’ lunar missions. India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission was delayed last year but could be ready in 2023. A Japanese mission, Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, aims to test the country’s lunar landing technologies. Finally, Russia’s Luna-25 mission was postponed from last September, but Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, may try this year.

New Space Telescopes

Scientists in 2019 at work with the European Space Agency’s Euclid spacecraft, which will study energy and dark matter. Its 2022 launch was postponed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Credit...S. Corvaja/European Space Agency

Scientists in 2019 at work with the European Space Agency’s Euclid spacecraft, which will study energy and dark matter. Its 2022 launch was postponed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Credit...S. Corvaja/European Space Agency

The Webb telescope wowed space enthusiasts and scientists with its views of the cosmos, but we may get new vantages from a variety of orbital observatories.

The most significant may be Xuntian, a Chinese mission setting off later in the year that will be like a more sophisticated version of the Hubble Space Telescope. The spacecraft will survey the universe at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths in an orbit around Earth close to the country’s Tiangong space station.

A Japanese-led mission, XRISM, pronounced chrism, could launch earlier in the year as well. The mission will use X-ray spectroscopy to study clouds of plasma, which could help to explain the universe’s composition. A European space telescope, Euclid, may also launch on a SpaceX rocket after the Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted in the spacecraft losing its seat on a Russian Soyuz rocket. It will study the universe’s dark energy and dark matter.

New Planetary Missions

A new spacecraft will head toward Jupiter this year, aiming to become the first to ever orbit another planet’s moon. The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, or JUICE, will launch from an Ariane 5 rocket as early as April 5 to set off to the Jovian system, arriving in 2031. Once it reaches the gas giant, it will move to conduct 35 flybys of three of the giant world’s moons: Callisto, Europa and Ganymede, all of which are believed to have subsurface oceans. In 2034, JUICE will begin orbiting Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system.

The story behind Pope Benedict XVI’s red shoes

Pope Benedict XVI wearing brilliant red shoes arrives to attend an interreligious gathering at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center on April 17, 2008, in Washington, D.C.

By Katie Yoder

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 1, 2023

When Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013, he stepped down as the bishop of Rome — and out of his famous red leather shoes.

During his reign as pope, Benedict’s red shoes became something of a trademark, inspiring ABC News to call him a “fashionista” and Esquire to name him “accessorizer of the year.” At another point, his loafers sparked controversy after false rumors claimed they were crafted by the high-end Italian fashion house Prada.

Benedict’s choice of shoes stands out because his predecessor and successor — St. John Paul II and Pope Francis — opted for alternatives. But popes have walked in red for centuries.

In photos of Benedict's mortal remains released by the Vatican today, he is dressed in red and gold vestments and ordinary black clerical shoes.

Pope Benedict XVI is greeted by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (R) following his arrival in Australia ahead of World Youth Day 2008 at Richmond RAAF Base on July 13, 2008, in Sydney, Australia. Sergio Dionisio/Getty Images

Far from a fashion statement, in the Catholic faith, red symbolizes martyrdom and the Passion of Christ.

In other words, they signify the pope following in the footsteps of Christ.

Two Italian cobblers are credited with fashioning Benedict’s shoes during his pontificate: Adriano Stefanelli and Antonio Arellano.

Stefanelli, an Italian craftsman, has created shoes for a long list of notable leaders, including St. John Paul II, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush, according to Italy’s ANSA news.

He first delivered shoes to the Vatican when he witnessed John Paul II in pain in 2003, CNA previously reported. He asked himself what he could do, personally, to help. He decided on shoes. 

That tradition continued with Benedict XVI.

The “greatest satisfaction is to see, looking at the photos and images of Benedict XVI, that the shoe is, as they say informally, well ‘used and carried,’ [and] therefore comfortable,” he told L’Osservatore Romano.

Another artisan, Arellano, mended shoes for Benedict back when he was a cardinal. Originally from Trujillo, Peru, Arellano moved to Rome in 1990 to open a shoe repair shop by the Vatican. 

When his friend the cardinal became pope, he was elated.

“Everyone was running through the streets, and I saw Cardinal Ratzinger appear on television,” he previously told CNA. “I was amazed because he was my customer and I was so happy.”

Arellano said he remembered Benedict’s shoe size — 42 — and decided to give the new pope a pair of red shoes during a general audience at the Vatican.

“When we got there to greet him, the pope recognized me, smiled, and said, ‘Here is my shoemaker.’ It was a wonderful moment, because he makes you feel important,” Arellano remembered. “He gave a blessing to me and my family and we said goodbye.”

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Benedict XVI: thinker, preacher, saint? Scholars and former students discuss legacy

That gift resulted in the Vatican requesting another pair of shoes for the pontiff to wear during the beatification of John Paul II. 

“It was awesome, because then I really did feel like I was the Holy Father’s shoemaker,” he said, adding that “it’s one thing to give the pope a present; it’s another for them to call you to specifically make some shoes for him.”

When he retired, the pope emeritus put away his red shoes in favor of leather loafers designed by a Mexican Catholic cobbler, Armando Martin Dueñas. Those three pairs — two burgundy, one brown — came to him as another gift.

Experts question the viability of the future H2Med hydro-product between Barcelona and Marseille (abc.es)

“The execution of the project will turn Spain into the world’s first renewable hydrogen hub by incorporating the first axes of the national backbone network that will connect the green hydrogen production centres with domestic demand and the two international interconnections with France and Portugal”

— abc.es

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They are committed to hydrogen production being close to demand…

Written in Spanish by Javier González Navarro

Translation by Germán & Co

Madrid

abc.es

03/01/2023

The future H2Med hydro-product that will connect Barcelona with Marseille from at least 2030 has been submitted to the call for Projects of Common Interest (PCI) to receive European funding, since its cost is estimated at around 3,000 million euros.

"The execution of the project will turn Spain into the world's first renewable hydrogen hub by incorporating the first axes of the national backbone network that will connect the green hydrogen production centres with domestic demand and the two international interconnections with France and Portugal", the Ministry for Ecological Transition stresses.

Promoted by the governments of Spain, Portugal and France, H2Med includes two cross-border infrastructures, one between Celorico da Beira (Portugal) and Zamora, and another, underwater, between Barcelona and Marseille (France), which are promoted by the respective gas system transporters and managers: Enagás on the Spanish side, REN on the Portuguese side, and GRTgaz and Terega on the French side. The underwater section will be some 400 kilometres long. Both sections will be linked to the backbone that runs from Huelva to Gijón and from there to Catalonia.

This infrastructure, announced with great fanfare by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in an attempt to cover up the failure suffered with the MidCat - the gas pipeline that would cross the Pyrenees and which has been flatly rejected by the French President, Enmanuel Macron -, has the approval of the Spanish gas sector, although some experts question its viability.

Uncertainties

Firstly, because the countries involved have not confirmed a timetable for the project. In addition, major uncertainties have arisen in relation to the purpose, demand, technology, costs, financing and the general need for it, they stress.

The construction of this hydroproduct to transport green hydrogen to France in the long term is based on the assumption that Spain and Portugal will be able to produce enough renewable hydrogen to meet domestic demand and have a surplus for export. Both countries have increased their renewable energy generation, but this may not be enough, according to the Hydrogen Science Coalition.

"If this hydro-product is built, it will be an unnecessary expense paid for by public funds that will not alleviate the current gas crisis and, on the contrary, will further exacerbate costs for energy consumers. The leaders of France, Spain, Portugal and other countries involved must prevent H2Med from becoming another failed project turned into a stranded asset paid for by consumers like MidCat," the experts stress.

Spanish hydrogen backbone

Light blue rhombus storage centres

Image source: Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge / ABC

Source: Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge / ABC

 "Studies have shown that hydrogen-based fuels should be used mainly in sectors such as aviation or industrial processes that cannot be electrified. The use of hydrogen-based fuels instead of direct electrification alternatives requires between two and fourteen times the amount of electricity generation depending on the application and the respective technologies."

Worse than burning gas

The experts also suggest that "transporting hydrogen over long distances is potentially worse for the climate than burning natural gas and therefore it is better to produce hydrogen close to where the demand is. Producing hydrogen locally will help reduce energy dependence and improve security of supply where it is needed most.

David Cebon, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cambridge (UK) and member of the Hydrogen Science Coalition, says, "While it is true that we will need renewable hydrogen to accelerate the energy transition, particularly for sectors that already use 'dirty' hydrogen today, we are just at the beginning of developing a clean hydrogen supply and a clear use case. This means that the quantity and location of future hydrogen demand remains highly uncertain. Linking the justification for new gas infrastructure to future hydrogen use before we are clear on where both demand and supply of hydrogen will come from is irresponsible.

The Hydrogen Science Coalition is an international group of independent academics, scientists and engineers working to bring an evidence-based viewpoint to the hydrogen policy debate.

The cost and funding of the project are not yet clearly defined. H2Med is expensive to build and requires financial backing from buyers to reach the Financial Investment Decision (FID).

New subsea hydrogen transport lines are estimated to cost around USD 7.1 million per kilometre. The length of the H2Med pipeline could vary between 300 and 400 kilometres, so this pipeline could cost approximately 3 billion euros.

Long-term hydrogen buyers

Clean hydrogen industries in Europe and Asia highlighted the three main factors delaying their FIDs at a recent Bloomberg NEF roundtable: the need to find long-term buyers for clean hydrogen, complicated renewable energy licensing rules, and the wait to capture all available financing.

Inés Bouacida, Climate and Energy researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, explains that "it is not yet clear whether the project will go ahead, which will depend on the technical and financial feasibility assessments of the countries involved (MidCat was rejected by French regulators, among other things, as uneconomic)". He adds that "it is not yet clear whether it will be attractive to transport hydrogen between the Iberian Peninsula and France".

The green hydrogen pipeline between Barcelona and Marseille will not be in place until the next decade

He adds that low-carbon hydrogen production "is currently almost non-existent and the consumption channels are still partly to be built, although it seems clear that hydrogen will be used mainly for the decarbonisation of industry. Therefore, production and consumption areas are still in the definition phase, which makes it difficult to plan the infrastructures for the production and consumption of hydrogen.

News round-up, Monday, January 02, 2023

“Dangerous

”In 2021, Russian gas exports to the European Union amounted to 140 billion cubic meters. They fell to 60 billion in 2022, and it is likely that in 2023 there will be no more Russian gas in our systems,” Fatih Birol, the International Energy Agency’s executive director, said at a press conference in Brussels on December, 12.”

— Le Monde

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2022, a fitful year for commodity and energy prices

Russia's invasion of Ukraine caused upheaval and fears of shortages in the energy and commodities sectors. Experts warn of shocks in a volatile market.

Le Monde

By Laurence Girard and Marjorie Cessac

Published on January 2, 2023 at 10h15, updated at 10h51 on January 2, 2023

"The year of gas and grain." The expression is Philippe Chalmin's, a professor with Université Paris-Dauphine, when he was asked to describe 2022, a year that will likely be reminded as a special of its kind in the annals of commodities.

Market tensions were high, with speculative surges resulting in historic prices, followed by sharp declines.

"Through volatility, markets reflect the anxieties of the planet," Mr. Chalmin said, anxieties which, although very real, can be amplified by financial or political entities. In 2021 already, commodity prices were on the rise, propelled by Chinese purchasing and post-pandemic economic recovery which resulted in supply tensions. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia earlier this year further boosted prices.

In the energy sector, gas prices rose strongly as Russian deliveries to Europe were drying up. On the futures markets, they culminated to an average of €100-125 per megawatt-hour (MWh), with peaks of more than €300 per MWh during the summer, compared to €20-30 before the war started.

A slight respite took hold in December in Europe, where below-average temperatures, high gas inventory levels and a shrinking demand caused by imposed frugality allowed prices to fall back to around €85, or pre-February-24 levels. Electricity prices, which had also been soaring throughout the year, were also halved in December alone, returning to below €300 per MWh.

Patrice Geoffron, director of France's Center of Geopolitics of Energy and Raw Materials (CGEMP) said 2022 "unquestionably" marked a turning point. "As in 1973, there will be a before and after. Back then, we switched from oil to nuclear power to produce electricity. This time, we have no more Russian gas and, in all likelihood, we will not go back, unless peace returns, which is now more than hypothetical," he said.

Dangerous

"In 2021, Russian gas exports to the European Union amounted to 140 billion cubic meters. They fell to 60 billion in 2022, and it is likely that in 2023 there will be no more Russian gas in our systems," Fatih Birol, the International Energy Agency's executive director, said at a press conference in Brussels on December, 12.

This would "leave an even bigger hole in the European and world gas supply," he said, adding this would translate into consequences in the coming winters.

Until now, supplies have been partly offset by purchases of liquefied natural gas, notably from the United States and Qatar, but this cannot be sustained in the long run given the impact on climate. In addition, demand is likely to increase if China's activity picks up again.

At a historical high, reached in mid-May, a ton of milling wheat was trading at €438 on Euronext, a dangerous price level for the poorest countries' populations.

Grain was also in the news. The sudden halt of exports from Black Sea ports affected by the war in Ukraine cast a shock. The importance of Ukrainian, and even more so Russian, grain exports was brought to light.

The fear of wheat shortage triggered speculation. At a historical high, reached in mid-May, a ton of milling wheat was trading at €438 on Pan-European stock exchange Euronext, a dangerous price level for the poorest countries' populations, which rely heavily on imports.

An agreement sealed at the end of July between Moscow and Kyiv – under the aegis of Turkey and the United Nations – to secure grain exports from Ukrainian ports cooled the pressure, especially since it was renewed in mid-November for 120 days.

"Thanks to this deal, five million tons of agricultural products are exported from Ukraine each month," Arthur Portier, with agricultural intelligence company Agritel, said. Meanwhile, the world's granaries filled up, with a record harvest in Russia and Australia, and a decent one in Europe. "There is no shortage of wheat today," Mr. Portier said. The same is true for corn, even if production has been lower, and rapeseed.

'In the brains of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping'

Prices retreated as a result. In December, wheat fell below €300 per ton, returning to its end-February level but still up 20% this year. Corn, which had been priced at €377 per ton, fell back to €283 while rapeseed returned to its price of a year ago, above €550 a metric ton, after a peak close to €850.

"Cereal prices are down again, but everything is relative. Levels remain good," Benoît Piétrement, who chairs a large-scale-crop council at FranceAgriMer, a state agency in charge of allocating national as well as EU agricultural subsidies.

Similar curves were behind metal prices, whether it was copper, zinc, aluminum or nickel, all saw valuations decline, after peaking in early March. "Overall, most markets for industrial metals and non-ferrous ores are in surplus," Mr. Chalmin said.

Fears of a recession and questions over China's recent decision to loosen Covid-19 regulations are also on investors' minds. The sharpest correction affected ocean freight as logistical tensions appeared to be easing. "The freight rate for a 40-foot [12-meter] container from China to Europe fell from $10,000 to $3,000," said Mr. Chalmin.

What will happen in 2023? "A balance has been found," Mr. Piétrement said. "The market is walking a tightrope," added Mr. Portier. On the energy front, "we are assured to have to deal with higher, more unstable fossil fuel prices and shortages in Europe," said Mr. Geoffron.

"Even if we were to imagine a swift return to peace, it is obvious that Europeans will aim at reducing reliance on Russia in many areas and source elsewhere to diversify, which will be mechanically more expensive because it will be further away, requiring new infrastructure and new contracts."

Oil prices – which have been hovering around $80-85 since October, after reaching $120 in March – will also be on the radars, especially as an EU embargo on Russian crude has been active on December, 5. In retaliation, Moscow said it was ready to cut production by 5-7% in the coming days.

The decision came as North America was hit by "the blizzard of the century" and China was reopening, fueling a return of bullish trends on oil and other resources. "To make predictions, you'd have to be in the brains of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping," Mr. Chalmin said.

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Russia’s War Could Make It India’s World

The invasion of Ukraine, compounding the effects of the pandemic, has contributed to the ascent of a giant that defies easy alignment. It could be the decisive force in a changing global system.

By Roger Cohen

Dec. 31, 2022

NYT

Seated in the domed, red sandstone government building unveiled by the British Raj less than two decades before India threw off imperial rule, S. Jaishankar, the Indian foreign minister, needs no reminder of how the tides of history sweep away antiquated systems to usher in the new.

Such, he believes, is today’s transformative moment. A “world order which is still very, very deeply Western,” as he put it in an interview, is being hurried out of existence by the impact of the war in Ukraine, to be replaced by a world of “multi-alignment” where countries will choose their own “particular policies and preferences and interests.”

Certainly, that is what India has done since the war in Ukraine began on Feb. 24. It has rejected American and European pressure at the United Nations to condemn the Russian invasion, turned Moscow into its largest oil supplier and dismissed the perceived hypocrisy of the West. Far from apologetic, its tone has been unabashed and its self-interest broadly naked.

“I would still like to see a more rules-based world,” Mr. Jaishankar said. “But when people start pressing you in the name of a rules-based order to give up, to compromise on what are very deep interests, at that stage I’m afraid it’s important to contest that and, if necessary, to call it out.”

In other words, with its almost 1.4 billion inhabitants, soon to overtake China as the world’s most populous country, India has a need for cheap Russian oil to sustain its 7 percent annual growth and lift millions out of poverty. That need is nonnegotiable. India gobbles up all the Russian oil it requires, even some extra for export. For Mr. Jaishankar, time is up on the mind-set that “Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s,” as he put it in June.

The Ukraine war, which has provoked moral outrage in the West over Russian atrocities, has caused a different anger elsewhere, one focused on a skewed and outdated global distribution of power. As Western sanctions against Russia have driven up energy, food and fertilizer costs, causing acute economic difficulties in poorer countries, resentment of the United States and Europe has stirred in Asia and Africa.

Carrying a gas canister in the Old City of Delhi. India gobbles up all the Russian oil it requires, and even some extra for export.

A tangle of electrical wires in Delhi’s Old City. For India’s leadership, the need for cheap Russian oil is nonnegotiable.

A production line at a tea manufacturer near Chennai, southeastern India. The Ukraine war and the pandemic have pushed more corporations to use India to diversify supply chains.

Grinding trench warfare on European soil seems the distant affair of others. Its economic cost feels immediate and palpable.

“Since February, Europe has imported six times the fossil fuel energy from Russia that India has done,” Mr. Jaishankar said. “So if a $60,000-per-capita society feels it needs to look after itself, and I accept that as legitimate, they should not expect a $2,000-per-capita society to take a hit.”

Here comes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India, pursuing its own interests with a new assertiveness, throwing off any sense of inferiority and rejecting unalloyed alignment with the West. But which India will strut the 21st-century global stage, and how will its influence be felt?

The country is at a crossroads, poised between the vibrant plurality of its democracy since independence in 1947 and a turn toward illiberalism under Mr. Modi. His “Hindu Renaissance” has threatened some of the core pillars of India’s democracy: equal treatment of all citizens, the right to dissent, the independence of courts and the media.

Democracy and debate are still vigorous — Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party lost a municipal election in Delhi this month — and the prime minister’s popularity remains strong. For many, India is just too vast and various ever to succumb to some unitary nationalist diktat.

The postwar order had no place for India at the top table. But now, at a moment when Russia’s military aggression under President Vladimir V. Putin has provided a vivid illustration of how a world of strongmen and imperial rivalry would look, India may have the power to tilt the balance toward an order dominated by democratic pluralism or by repressive leaders.

Which way Mr. Modi’s form of nationalism will lean remains to be seen. It has given many Indians a new pride and bolstered the country’s international stature, even as it has weakened the country’s pluralist and secularist model.

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A playground on the outskirts of Chennai. India has almost 1.4 billion inhabitants and will soon overtake China as the world’s most populous country.

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, himself a mixture of East and West through education and upbringing, described the country as “some ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed” without any of those layers being effaced.

He was convinced that a secular India had to accommodate all the diversity that repeated invasion had bequeathed. Not least, that meant conciliation with the country’s large Muslim minority, now about 200 million people.

Today, however, Mr. Nehru is generally reviled by Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist party. There are no Muslims in Mr. Modi’s cabinet. Hindu mob attacks on Muslims have been met with silence by the prime minister.

“Hatred has penetrated into society at a level that is absolutely terrifying,” the acclaimed Indian novelist Arundhati Roy said.

That may be, but for now, Mr. Modi’s India seems to brim with confidence.

The Ukraine war, compounding the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, has fueled the country’s ascent. Together they have pushed corporations to make global supply chains less risky by diversifying toward an open India and away from China’s surveillance state. They have accentuated global economic turbulence from which India is relatively insulated by its huge domestic market.

2022: A rollercoaster ride

Written in Spanish translation by Germán & Co

John Müller

ABC.es

Madrid, 31/12/2022

At first it was the verb: the game was called 'Wordle' and 'The New York Times' paid more than a million dollars for it. It was mainly circulating on Twitter, a social network that would become the talk of the town months after Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy it. But in January, the volcano was already sleeping on La Palma and the euro was twenty years old. Rafael Nadal was enjoying his greatness in Australia and Daniel Ortega was beginning the fourth consecutive term of his dictatorship in Nicaragua. Omicron complicated Covid's exit. Until the ides of February arrived and everything changed.

The Popular Party became the Spanish Tory party, when we did not yet know how low the British Tories could sink with Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Pablo Casado committed political suicide in front of his own creature - Isabel Díaz Ayuso - and gave way to Alberto Núñez Feijóo. That was on 23 February, but on the 24th, the following day, Putin, the man with the extra-long tables, invaded Ukraine and changed our future. There, 2022 became a real rollercoaster, never better said. It took us a while to realise that Putin was not crazy. His justifiers said the war was NATO's fault for trying to camp out in Russia's front yard like Chris Rock was responsible for Will Smith's slap at the Oscar ceremony. Unwittingly, the Russian leader enlarged NATO - Sweden and Finland asked to join - consolidated Ukraine as a national entity and united Europe. Then came the nuclear threat, the food crisis, the prominence of missiles, drones and anti-tank weapons, and the unexpected effectiveness of the Ukrainian resistance.

It was in March that Pedro Sánchez decided to change horses on the Sahara and support Morocco's plan, a Copernican turn in Spanish foreign policy that we learned about because Rabat was kind enough to publish the Spanish president's letter. Feijóo, without opening his mouth, jumped in the polls to Sánchez's beard without anyone being able to explain it properly. In April, the Galician asked for the VAT on food to be lowered. Sanchez heeded him in December.

Summer of fire

The summer scorched the Culebra mountain range and completely dried out Europe, but San Fermín returned to Pamplona. There was another tragedy at the Melilla fence, and the government showered the Moroccan gendarmes with praise. There was tension in Taiwan and a constant display of North Korean missiles. It was the year we deflected a meteorite with a rocket. The US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and reminded us that Roe's baby was born, named Shelley, is 51 years old and has offspring (Roe's granddaughters) despite the fact that they wanted to abort her.

It was the year of the monkey pox, the cryptocurrency crash, the rise and fall of NFTs and the stock market values of digital platforms. Bendodo skated with Spain's 'plurinationality' and the Chileans shook it off by rejecting their 'woke' Constitution. Moreno Bonilla fixed it all with an unexpected absolute majority in Andalusia.

A wretch stabbed Salman Rushdie, on the orders of the ayatollahs, and another fanatic killed Shinzo Abe, the ruler who disguised himself as Mario Bros. And queens and kings died: Elizabeth II, the global grandmother; King Pelé, pop queen Olivia Newton-John and the last Soviet king, Mikhail Gorbachev. We still don't know who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. Iran is walking on the edge of a revolution sparked by a young woman, Mahsa Amini, and Xi renewed his autocratic mandate, but stumbled against the Covid, who has tabled a motion of no confidence in him. Sombrero' Castillo was tempted by a coup in Peru and ended up in jail. ABC interviewed Pope Francis. Oh, and Argentina won the World Cup, Spain won the Eurobasket and Real Madrid won the European Championship again! Today, the greatest threat to economic prosperity is geopolitics and, for freedom, the degradation of our democracies.