Protests by French and other European farmers are threatening a long-expected trade deal between the European Union and South American trading bloc Mercosur, comprising Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. The EU hopes to clinch it next month — but individual EU countries would still need to ratify the agreement. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s return to power also factors into the equation — sparking a bigger debate about whether Europe’s economy should look inward or outward for answers. Lisa Bryant reports from Paris.
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Category: Business
economy and business news
US inflation gauge ticks higher with price pressures still stubborn
Washington — Consumer price increases accelerated last month, the latest sign that inflation’s steady decline over the past two years has stalled.
According to the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, consumer prices rose 2.3% in October from a year earlier, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That is up from just 2.1% in September, though it is still only modestly above the Fed’s 2% target.
Yet excluding the volatile food and energy categories, so-called “core” prices also picked up, climbing 2.8% last month from a year earlier, up from 2.7% in September. Economists closely watch core prices because they typically provide a better read on where inflation is headed.
Inflation has fallen sharply since it peaked at 7% in mid-2022, according to the Fed’s preferred measure. Yet yearly core inflation has been stuck at 2.8% since February. Price increases have remained elevated in services, including apartment rents, restaurant meals, and car and home insurance.
Wednesday’s report also underscored that Americans’ incomes and spending remained healthy, a key reason the economy has kept growing this year despite widespread fears of a slowdown. Incomes grew 0.6% from September to October, faster than economists had expected, while consumer spending rose by a solid 0.4% last month.
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Trump picks vaccine skeptic to lead top US public health department
President-elect Donald Trump says he intends to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy disagrees with much of the scientific community on subjects including vaccines and HIV/AIDS. VOA’s Anita Powell has our story.
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One of India’s largest conglomerates under suspicion following US fraud charges
New Delhi — Nearly two years after one of India’s biggest conglomerates was hit by allegations of wrongdoing by a U.S. investment firm, it is again in the eye of a storm as it faces charges of fraud, which analysts say are far more serious.
The latest allegations by the United States could dampen investor confidence in Asia’s third largest economy at a time when the country is wooing foreign investment. They have also triggered a political storm in India with opposition parties demanding a probe into the allegations against an influential business tycoon whose $135 billion empire — spanning seaports, airports and energy – has a massive imprint on the Indian economy.
An indictment filed in New York last week charged Gautam Adani, the founder of Adani Group, with duping investors by concealing that a huge solar energy project was being facilitated by an alleged $250 million scheme that involved bribing Indian officials to obtain lucrative contracts.
The company in question, Adani Energy Green, is building a massive solar energy plant in the western state of Gujarat and plans to generate enough energy to light up millions of homes.
Adani Group has strongly denied allegations made by U.S. authorities against Gautam Adani and other top officials.
The charges came after the conglomerate endured accusations of engaging in stock market manipulation and fraud. The allegations were made last year by a U.S. investment firm, Hindenburg Research. Indian regulators, who investigated the charges, said they found no wrongdoing.
Analysts say the new indictment in the U.S. poses a far bigger challenge.
“It’s one thing for allegations to come from a short seller firm or from media outlets,” according to Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute in Washington. “But this is a case of the U.S. government coming out with a long and detailed indictment. It’s a whole other order of magnitude.”
Gautam Adani, 62, is a college dropout from a middle-class family who has led a dizzying rise in his conglomerate’s fortunes, especially since he began in the 1990s expanding into infrastructure. He has built power plants, airports, roads and renewable energy projects in India as the country pushes to bridge an infrastructure deficit for its growing economy.
Besides Adani’s huge presence in India, his global ambitions have taken his companies to other countries, including Australia, Indonesia and Israel. After Donald Trump’s recent U.S. presidential election victory, in a post on X, Adani congratulated Trump and announced plans to invest $10 billion in energy and infrastructure projects in the U.S.
The U.S. indictment already is impacting the conglomerate’s push to expand his energy and infrastructure business overseas. A day after the charges became public, Kenya announced it is scrapping airport expansion and electricity deals worth about $2.5 billion with Adani Group.
The indictment also has cast a cloud over planned projects in Sri Lanka, as government officials on Tuesday said the finance and foreign ministries will review infrastructure projects awarded to the Indian conglomerate. Adani has a contract to develop a deep seaport terminal in Colombo.
The controversy will affect the reputation of Adani Group, say analysts.
“Definitely the charges will trigger mistrust in the Adani Group. There will also be an increase in borrowing cost for them, so they will need to work that much harder,” according to Shriram Subramanian, founder of corporate governance advisory firm InGovern Research Services. “But it won’t be debilitating in the long run because they have a good track record in executing projects.”
The U.S. charges will raise questions about business practices and norms in India and could hurt the country’s effort to woo businesses looking to set up factories and facilities in countries outside China.
“In the immediate term, it could give some investors cold feet, as they may not want to risk their reputations investing in a country where Adani’s clout and reach is so expansive across the economy,” according to Kugelman. “This would be especially bad timing for New Delhi, which wants to capitalize on many foreign investors’ desire to relocate production and other business out of China.”
Kugelman pointed out that the setback to the investment climate in India is likely to be temporary because “the key drivers impacting foreign investment in India — multiple growth sectors, large consumer markets, a fast-growing major economy will remain in place.”
The U.S. indictment has also turned the spotlight on accusations made for several years by India’s main opposition Congress Party and by other critics — that the tycoon’s dramatic business expansion has coincided with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule.
Parliament was disrupted for a second day on Wednesday as opposition parties demanded a discussion on the indictment. “He should be in jail and the government is protecting him,” Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi told reporters outside parliament.
At a protest on Monday, Congress Party activists held placards reading, “Modi and Adani are one” and “Modi’s friendship is costing the nation.”
The government has not commented on the charges. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has pointed out that the charges involved bribing officials in four states that were not governed by them, but by opposition parties.
Political analysts say the latest controversy over Adani is not likely to hurt Modi.
“This issue has been raised for a long time, but it has not impacted the prime minister in any way. The opposition has not been able to convince the people about their case,” according to political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. “At the moment, people simply look at it as a case of one group being favored over another by the government, which many people feel is not unusual in India.”
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Australia’s House of Representatives passes bill that would ban young children from social media
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — Australia’s House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill that would ban children younger than 16 years old from social media, leaving it to the Senate to finalize the world-first law.
The major parties backed the bill that would make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to $33 million for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts.
The legislation passed 102 to 13. If the bill becomes law this week, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the age restrictions before the penalties are enforced.
Opposition lawmaker Dan Tehan told Parliament the government had agreed to accept amendments in the Senate that would bolster privacy protections. Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver’s licenses. The platforms also could not demand digital identification through a government system.
“Will it be perfect? No. But is any law perfect? No, it’s not. But if it helps, even if it helps in just the smallest of ways, it will make a huge difference to people’s lives,” Tehan told Parliament.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Senate would debate the bill later Wednesday. The major parties’ support all but guarantees the legislation will pass in the Senate, where no party holds a majority of seats.
Lawmakers who were not aligned with either the government or the opposition were most critical of the legislation during debate on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Criticisms include that the legislation had been rushed through Parliament without adequate scrutiny, would not work, would create privacy risks for users of all ages and would take away parents’ authority to decide what’s best for their children.
Critics also argue the ban would isolate children, deprive them of positive aspects of social media, drive children to the dark web, make children too young for social media reluctant to report harms they encountered and take away incentives for platforms to make online spaces safer.
Independent lawmaker Zoe Daniel said the legislation would “make zero difference to the harms that are inherent to social media.”
“The true object of this legislation is not to make social media safe by design, but to make parents and voters feel like the government is doing something about it,” Daniel told Parliament.
“There is a reason why the government parades this legislation as world-leading, that’s because no other country wants to do it,” she added.
The platforms had asked for the vote on legislation to be delayed until at least June next year when a government-commissioned evaluation of age assurance technologies made its report on how the ban could been enforced.
Melbourne resident Wayne Holdsworth, whose 17-year-old son Mac took his own life last year after falling victim to an online sextortion scam, described the bill as “absolutely essential for the safety of our children.”
“It’s not the only thing that we need to do to protect them because education is the key, but to provide some immediate support for our children and parents to be able to manage this, it’s a great step,” the 65-year-old online safety campaigner told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
“And in my opinion, it’s the greatest time in our country’s history,” he added, referring to the pending legal reform.
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UNAIDS: upholding human rights essential for ending AIDS
HARARE, ZIMBABWE — Ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, the U.N. has released a report saying that upholding human rights is essential for ending the AIDS pandemic.
The report says human rights violations, including discrimination against girls and women, and criminalization of LGBTQ+ people, obstruct efforts to end AIDS.
UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima released a report online called “Take the Rights Path to End AIDS.”
The report says the world can meet the goal of ending AIDS by 2030 if leaders protect the human rights of everyone living with and at risk of HIV.
She said advances in medicine are helping reduce new cases of HIV.
“But big gaps still remain in the protection of rights. When there is impunity for gender-based violence; when people can be arrested for who they are, or who they love; when a visit to health services is dangerous for people because of their gender — the result is that people are blocked from care, this drives the AIDS pandemic,” she said. “Only rights can fix these wrongs. There is an urgent need to enact laws that protect the human rights of everyone.”
Zimbabwe was one of the countries hit hardest by HIV/AIDS until it introduced an AIDS levy in 1999, a 3% tax on income and business profits which is managed by the National AIDS Council.
Dr. Bernard Madzima, the executive officer of the Zimbabwe National AIDS Council, said the country is aiming to end HIV as a public health threat by the end of the decade. He said the country enforces a policy of no discrimination against HIV patients.
“In Zimbabwe there is no one who has been stigmatized whether they are HIV positive or whether they are HIV negative, they will get access. Our approach in HIV intervention is based on it being a public health approach,” he said. “So our interventions are to make sure that HIV is no longer a public health threat by 2030.”
Madzima said the government is also attempting to reach marginalized groups like sex workers, prison inmates and informal miners with care. In the past, Zimbabwean authorities targeted sex workers and organizations such as Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe.
The UNAIDS report noted that police only stopped arresting sex workers for “loitering” in 2015, after Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights successfully argued in court that the police conduct was illegal. The report said the move has resulted in sex workers being able to seek health services.
The report commended Zimbabwe for stopping the criminalization of HIV transmission in 2022, adding that criminalization and stigmatization of marginalized communities obstruct access to life-saving HIV services.
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Google, Meta urge Australia to delay bill on social media ban for children
SYDNEY — Google and Facebook-owner Meta Platforms urged the Australian government on Tuesday to delay a bill that will ban most forms of social media for children under 16, saying more time was needed to assess its potential impact.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left government wants to pass the bill, which represents some of the toughest controls on children’s social media use imposed by any country, into law by the end of the parliamentary year on Thursday.
The bill was introduced in parliament last week and opened for submissions of opinions for only one day.
Google and Meta said in their submissions that the government should wait for the results of an age-verification trial before going ahead.
The age-verification system may include biometrics or government identification to enforce a social media age cut-off.
“In the absence of such results, neither industry nor Australians will understand the nature or scale of age assurance required by the bill, nor the impact of such measures on Australians,” Meta said.
“In its present form, the bill is inconsistent and ineffective.”
The law would force social media platforms, and not parents or children, to take reasonable steps to ensure age-verification protections are in place. Companies could be fined up to $32 million for systemic breaches.
The opposition Liberal party is expected to support the bill though some independent lawmakers have accused the government of rushing through the entire process in around a week.
A Senate committee responsible for communications legislation is scheduled to deliver a report on Tuesday.
Bytedance’s TikTok said the bill lacked clarity and that it had “significant concerns” with the government’s plan to pass the bill without detailed consultation with experts, social media platforms, mental health organizations and young people.
“Where novel policy is put forward, it’s important that legislation is drafted in a thorough and considered way, to ensure it is able to achieve its stated intention. This has not been the case with respect to this Bill,” TikTok said.
Elon Musk’s X raised concerns that the bill will negatively impact the human rights of children and young people, including their rights to freedom of expression and access to information.
The U.S. billionaire, who views himself as a champion of free speech, last week attacked the Australian government saying the bill seemed like a backdoor way to control access to the internet.
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Court agrees with ban on medical marijuana advertising in Mississippi
JACKSON, Mississippi — Medical marijuana businesses in the southern U.S. state of Mississippi don’t have the right to advertise on billboards or other places because marijuana itself remains illegal under federal law, an appeals court says.
The owner of a medical marijuana dispensary argued that the First Amendment protects the right to advertise because Mississippi law permits the sale of cannabis products to people with debilitating medical conditions. The state enacted its law in 2022.
A three-judge panel of 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday rejected the arguments about advertising. They cited the federal Controlled Substances Act, which since 1970 has prohibited the manufacture, distribution, dispensing and possession of marijuana.
The federal law applies in all states, and Mississippi “faces no constitutional obstacle to restricting commercial speech relating to unlawful transactions,” the judges wrote.
The Mississippi attorney general’s office praised the court decision for upholding “Mississippi’s reasonable restrictions on advertising for medical marijuana dispensaries by print, broadcast and other mass communications,” said the office spokesperson, MaryAsa Lee.
Clarence Cocroft II operates Tru Source Medical Cannabis in the northern Mississippi city of Olive Branch. He sued the state in 2023 to challenge its ban on medical marijuana advertising on billboards or in print, broadcast or social media or via mass email or text messaging.
“Upholding this ban makes it incredibly difficult for me to find potential customers and to educate people about Mississippi’s medical marijuana program,” Cocroft said in a statement Monday. “I remain committed to continuing this fight so my business can be treated the same as any other legal business in Mississippi.”
The state allows medical marijuana businesses to have websites or social media accounts that provide information about their retail dispensing locations and a list of products available. It allows them to be listed in phone books or business directories and to display cannabis in company logos. The businesses can also sponsor not-for-profit charity or advocacy events.
Cocroft is represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit libertarian law firm. The firm said Monday that it was considering its next steps in the lawsuit, including possibly asking the entire appeals court to reconsider the case or an appeal to the Supreme Court.
“Mississippi cannot on the one hand create an entire marketplace for the sale of medical marijuana, and on the other hand rely on an unenforced federal law to prohibit buyers and sellers from talking about it,” said Ari Bargil, an Institute for Justice attorney.
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Google to build subsea cable linking Australia’s Darwin to Christmas Island
sydney — Australia’s Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island will be connected by subsea cable to the northern garrison city of Darwin, a project backed by Alphabet’s Google that Australia says will boost its digital resilience.
Christmas Island is 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) west of the Australian mainland, with a small population of 1,250, but strategically located in the Indian Ocean, 350 kilometers (215 miles) from Jakarta.
The cable announcement comes as the Australian and U.S. militaries upgrade airfields in Australia’s north, where a rotating force of U.S. Marines will be joined by Japanese troops next year.
Google’s vice president of global network infrastructure, Brian Quigley, said in a statement the Bosun cable will link Darwin to Christmas Island, while another subsea cable will connect Melbourne on Australia’s east coast to the west coast city of Perth, then on to Christmas Island and Singapore.
Australia is seeking to reduce its exposure to digital disruption by building more subsea cable pathways to Asia to its west, and through the South Pacific to the United States.
“These new cable systems will not only expand and strengthen the resilience of Australia’s own digital connectivity through new and diversified routes but will also complement the Government’s active work with industry and government partners to support secure, resilient and reliable connectivity across the Pacific,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement.
The other partners in the cable project include Australian data center company NextDC, Macquarie-backed telecommunications group Vocus, and SUBCO.
SUBCO previously built an Indian Ocean cable from Perth to Oman, with spurs to the U.S. military base of Diego Garcia, and Cocos Islands, where Australia is upgrading a runway for defense surveillance aircraft.
Although 900 kilometers (560 miles) apart, Christmas Island is seen as an Indian Ocean neighbor of Cocos Islands, which the Australian Defense Force has said is key to its maritime surveillance operations in a region where China is increasing submarine activity.
The new cables will also link to a Pacific Islands network being built by Google and jointly funded by the United States, connecting the U.S. and Australia through hubs in Fiji and French Polynesia.
Vocus said in a statement the two networks will form the world’s largest submarine cable system spanning 42,500 kilometers (26,408 miles) of fiber optic cable running between the U.S. and Asia via Australia.
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Google’s US antitrust trial over online ad empire winds down
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — The U.S. Justice Department told a federal judge that Google illegally dominated online advertising technology in seeking a second antitrust win against the company.
The closing arguments in Alexandria cap a 15-day trial held in September in which prosecutors sought to show Google monopolized markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges, which sit between buyers and sellers.
“Google rigged the rules of the road,” said DOJ lawyer Aaron Teitelbaum, who asked the judge to hold Google accountable for anti-competitive conduct and added that Google is “once, twice, three times a monopolist.”
Another DOJ lawyer, Julia Tarver Wood, compared the case to the Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities and said U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema had to decide whether to adopt the DOJ or Google version of the state of the ad market.
Google lawyer Karen Dunn said the DOJ had not met its legal burden and was asking Brinkema to overrule key precedents. “The law simply does not support what the plaintiffs are arguing in this case,” Dunn said.
She argued the DOJ was ignoring Google’s legitimate business decisions and the robust quality of the online advertising market. The company argues the government had cherry-picked a narrow slice of the online market and did not account for aggressive competition.
Shares of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, were up 1.4% in afternoon trading.
Publishers testified at the trial that they could not switch away from Google, even when it rolled out features they disliked, since there was no other way to access the huge advertising demand within Google’s ad network.
In 2017, News Corp estimated losing at least $9 million in ad revenue that year if it had switched away, one witness said.
If Brinkema finds that Google broke the law, she would consider prosecutors’ request to make Google at least sell off Google Ad Manager, a platform that includes the company’s publisher ad server and its ad exchange.
Google offered to sell the ad exchange this year to end a European Union antitrust investigation, but European publishers rejected the proposal as insufficient, Reuters first reported in September.
Analysts view the ad tech case as a smaller financial risk than the case in which a judge ruled Google maintains an illegal monopoly in online search, and in which prosecutors have argued the company must be forced to sell its Chrome browser.
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Dow hits another record as stocks rise on treasury secretary pick
New York — U.S. stocks rose Monday, with those benefiting the most from lower interest rates and a stronger economy leading the way.
The S&P 500 climbed 0.3% to pull closer to its all-time high set two weeks ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 440 points, or 1%, to its own record set on Friday, while the Nasdaq composite rose 0.3%.
Treasury yields also eased in the bond market amid what some analysts called a “Bessent bounce” after President-elect Donald Trump said he wants Scott Bessent, a hedge fund manager, to be his treasury secretary.
Bessent has argued for reducing the U.S. government’s deficit, which is how much more it spends than it takes in through taxes and other revenue. Such an approach could soothe worries on Wall Street that Trump’s policies may lead to a much bigger deficit, which in turn would put upward pressure on Treasury yields.
After climbing above 4.44% immediately after Trump’s election, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell back to 4.26% Monday, down from 4.41% late Friday. That’s a notable move, and lower yields make it cheaper for all kinds of companies and households to borrow money. They also give a boost to prices for stocks and other investments.
That helped stocks of smaller companies lead the way, and the Russell 2000 index of smaller stocks jumped 1.5%. It finished just shy of its all-time high, which was set three years ago. Smaller companies can feel bigger boosts from lower borrowing costs because of the need for many to borrow to grow.
The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks the market’s expectations for what the Federal Reserve will do with overnight interest rates, also eased sharply.
The Fed began cutting its main interest rate just a couple months ago from a two-decade high, hoping to keep the job market humming after bringing inflation nearly all the way down to its 2% target. But immediately after Trump’s victory, traders had reduced bets for how many cuts the Fed may deliver next year. They were worried Trump’s preference for lower tax rates and higher spending on the border would balloon the national debt.
A report coming on Wednesday could influence how much the Fed may cut rates. Economists expect it to show that an underlying inflation trend the Fed prefers to use accelerated to 2.8% last month from 2.7% in September. Higher inflation would make the Fed more reluctant to cut rates as deeply or as quickly as it would otherwise.
Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle expects that to slow by the end of next year to 2.4%, but he said inflation would be even lower if not for expected tariff increases on imports from China and autos favored by Trump.
In the stock market, Bath & Body Works jumped 16.5% after delivering stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The seller of personal care products and home fragrances also raised its financial forecasts for the full year, even though it still sees a “volatile retail environment” and a shorter holiday shopping season this year.
Much focus has been on how resilient U.S. shoppers can remain, given high prices across the economy and still-high interest rates. Last week, two major retailers sent mixed messages. Target tumbled after giving a dour forecast for the holiday shopping season. It followed Walmart, which gave a much more encouraging outlook.
Another big retailer, Macy’s, said Monday that its sales for the latest quarter were in line with its expectations, but that it would delay the release of its full financial results. It found a single employee had intentionally hidden up to $154 million in delivery expenses, and it needs more time to complete its investigation.
Macy’s stock fell 2.2%.
Among the market’s leaders were several companies related to the housing industry. Monday’s drop in Treasury yields could translate into easier mortgage rates, which could spur activity for housing. Builders FirstSource, a supplier of building materials, rose 5.9%. Homebuilders, D.R. Horton, PulteGroup and Lennar all rose at least 5.6%.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 18.03 points to 5,987.37. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 440.06 to 44,736.57, and the Nasdaq composite gained 51.18 to 19,054.84.
In stock markets abroad, indexes moved modestly across much of Europe after finishing mixed in Asia.
In the crypto market, bitcoin was trading below $95,000 after threatening to hit $100,000 late last week for the first time.
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$300B COP29 climate deal sparks outrage, hope
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — Anger and frustration from developing nations vulnerable to climate impacts are likely to linger following the conclusion of the climate change summit in Azerbaijan, COP29, as nations adopted a $300 billion global finance target to help poorer nations cope with climate change, a deal that many recipient nations slammed as severely insufficient.
Global North countries, often historic emitters responsible for global warming, agreed on Sunday to pledge $300 billion a year until 2035 for their developing counterparts to stave off the direst effects of climate change — less than a quarter of the acknowledged $1.3 trillion needed annually to reduce emissions and build resilience in vulnerable countries.
The $300 billion figure, also, is an increase by $200 billion each year, compared to the agreement in place since 2009, which is expiring.
Spirited disappointment and rage from Global South countries was expressed at the closing plenary, with some national representatives calling adoption of the new funding package “insulting.”
“We are extremely disappointed,” said Indian negotiator Chandni Raina, who called the figure “abysmal.”
Her Cuban counterpart, Pedro Luis Pedroso, described the deal as “environmental colonialism,” pointing out that, when factoring in today’s inflation, the pledged funding is lower than the $100 billion agreed to in 2009. Bolivia’s negotiator called the deal “insulting” to developing nations.
Some Western representatives were more upbeat.
“COP29 will be remembered as a new era of climate finance,” top EU climate negotiator Wopke Hoekstra said, calling the target amount “ambitious” and “achievable.”
Some experts told VOA that the structure and composition of the $300 billion deal was more important than the actual monetary figure. The final deal allows for both public and private sources of funds to be tapped to bolster climate preparation efforts in the developing world.
Negotiators for developing countries expressed concern that private sources of funding could come in the form of more loans, which could lead to challenging debt accumulation by poorer nations, rather than funding in the preferred form of grants.
Global South countries argued for a new target for green finance and have consistently called for such climate finance to come in the form of public grants. The tense and fraught negotiations of the past week dragged on for two extra days and included at least one episode of negotiators from small island nations and some of the poorest nations in the world walking out of a meeting room with wealthy nations in protest. They asserted that their voices and perspectives were not heard.
”This COP has been a disaster for the developing world,” said Mohammed Adow, director of Kenya-based climate and energy research group Power Shift Africa. ”It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries, who claim to take climate change seriously.”
The adopted finance package also stated that a further roadmap is set to be discussed at the next conference – likely COP30, set for Belem, Brazil in late 2025 — on how to reach the trillion-dollar figure.
Independent South African climate consultant Gillian Hamilton called the $300 billion core funding target “insufficient,” particularly for building resilience against climate impacts — also known as climate adaptation.
“Developed nations should have shown more leadership and transparency,” Hamilton told VOA. “The biggest emitters need to rapidly decrease their emissions so that adaptation costs for developing countries don’t increase exponentially.”
Campaigners staged multiple environmental protests each day here during the past week-plus of meetings.
Though negotiators for developing nations repeatedly asked for climate finance in the form of grants instead of loans, in the final deal, developed countries stopped short of guaranteeing that could be done.
Adaptation finance
The deal adopted Sunday acknowledges that funding sources for adaptation finance should be public and transparent.
With 2024 going down as the hottest year in history, the world has experienced a slew of climate disasters, ranging from devastating floods in Nepal and Spain, to Hurricane Helene in the Americas, droughts in the Mediterranean and typhoons in the western Pacific region.
Despite the disasters and renewed calls to finance climate-resilient infrastructure across the Global South to guard against rising sea levels and wildfires, funding has been falling short for years, according to a November report from the U.N. Environment Program.
The so-called adaptation projects include developing more advanced disaster warning systems, reforestation, and building catchment mechanisms to ensure water security in regions most affected by climate change.
At COP29, Germany pledged $62 billion, to the adaptation fund; France highlighted its 2023 pledge of $2.9 billion, in adaptation; the U.S. said it pays $3 billion into it each year. A total of 14 Global North countries including Spain, Sweden, South Korea and Switzerland promised to provide $300 million this year, according to a separate negotiation text in the conference.
Despite pledges in recent years, countries didn’t completely deliver on promises. This year, for example, more than $122 million of pledged financial support to poor nations for adapting to climate risk is still up in the air, even though this assistance has been a stated priority at recent COP meetings.
What to expect in Belem?
Countries will be tasked at the Brazil meeting next November with ironing out the details of a global carbon trade system governed by a centralized U.N. regulatory body. They also will try to find a path for wealthy, developed countries to reach the target of $1.3 trillion to support efforts in the Global South to address the consequences of climate disasters. A major component will be reviewing national climate plans, which are due to be submitted in February. Britain, Brazil and the UAE are among the nations that this past week aimed to get ahead of the February deadline and shared some of the goals in their national climate preparation plans.
Harjeet Singh, global engagement director of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, said it is likely that ‘most’ nations will not meet the February deadline to submit their updated plans to address climate change.
The future participation of Argentina is unclear, after hardline President Javier Milei — who has called climate change a hoax — reportedly told his government delegates here to pack their bags and leave the negotiations on the third day of the summit.
Singh was asked by VOA whether wealthy nations would deliver on their promises to lead the effort toward $300 billion in climate finance support, and he responded that the key lies in their ‘willingness, as the money has always been there.’
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Countries remain divided as fifth UN plastics treaty talks begin
As delegates from 175 countries gathered in Busan, South Korea, on Monday for the fifth round of talks aimed at securing an international treaty to curb plastic pollution, lingering divisions cast doubts on whether a final agreement is in sight.
South Korea is hosting the fifth and ostensibly final U.N. Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) meeting this week, after the previous round of talks in Ottawa in April ended without a path forward on capping plastic production.
Instead, the meeting issued a direction for technical groups to focus on chemicals of concern and other measures after petrochemical-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and China strongly opposed efforts to target plastic production.
The United States raised eyebrows in August when it said it would back plastic production caps in the treaty, putting it in alignment with the EU, Kenya, Peru and other countries in the High Ambition Coalition.
The election of Donald Trump as president, however, has raised questions about that position, as during his first presidency he shunned multilateral agreements and any commitments to slow or stop U.S. oil and petrochemical production.
The U.S. delegation did not answer questions on whether it would reverse its new position to support plastic production caps. But it “supports ensuring that the global instrument addresses plastic products, chemicals used in plastic products, and the supply of primary plastic polymers,” according to a spokesperson for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said she was confident the talks will end with an agreement, pointing to the communique from the Group of 20 nations at a summit last week calling for a legally binding treaty by the end of this year.
“This is a very powerful message,” Andersen told Reuters in Baku, on the sidelines of the UN climate negotiations, before traveling to Busan for the talks. “We know that it is often down to the wire, but if there is a will, I think we will get there.”
For a Pacific island country like Fiji, a global plastics treaty is crucial to protect its fragile ecosystem and public health, said Sivendra Michael, Fiji’s climate minister and chief climate and plastics negotiator.
He told Reuters on the sidelines of the 29th U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP29) this month that despite not producing any plastic, Fiji is bearing the brunt of its downstream pollution.
“Where do these plastics end up? It ends up in our oceans, in our landfill, in our backyards. And the impact of the plastics breaking down into little substances has detrimental effects, not only on the environment, but on us as individuals, on our health,” he said, noting studies that showed most of the fish consumed in the country was polluted with microplastics.
While supporting an international treaty, the petrochemical industry has been vocal in urging governments to avoid setting mandatory plastic production caps, and focus on solutions on reducing plastic waste, like recycling.
“We would see a treaty successful if it would really put … emphasis on ending plastic pollution. Nothing else should be the focus.” said Martin Jung, president for performance materials at chemical producer BASF.
Previous talks have also discussed searching for forms of funding to help developing countries implement the treaty.
At COP29, France, Kenya and Barbados floated setting up a series of global levies on certain sectors that could help ramp up the amount of money that could be made available to developing countries seeking support to aid their clean energy transition and cope with the increasingly severe impacts of climate change.
The proposal included a fee of $60-$70/ton on primary polymer production, which is on average around 5-7% of the polymer price, seen potentially raising an estimated $25 billion-$35 billion per year.
Industry groups have rejected the idea, saying it will raise consumer prices.
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Earth bids farewell to its temporary ‘mini moon’ that is possibly a chunk of our actual moon
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Planet Earth is parting company with an asteroid that’s been tagging along as a “mini moon” for the past two months.
The harmless space rock will peel away on Monday, overcome by the stronger tug of the sun’s gravity. But it will zip closer for a quick visit in January.
NASA will use a radar antenna to observe the 10-meter (33-foot) asteroid then. That should deepen scientists’ understanding of the object known as 2024 PT5, quite possibly a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid.
While not technically a moon — NASA stresses it was never captured by Earth’s gravity and fully in orbit — it’s “an interesting object” worthy of study.
The astrophysicist brothers who identified the asteroid’s “mini moon behavior,” Raul and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of Complutense University of Madrid, have collaborated with telescopes in the Canary Islands for hundreds of observations so far.
Currently more than 3.5 million kilometers (2 million miles) away, the object is too small and faint to see without a powerful telescope. It will pass as close as 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) of Earth in January, maintaining a safe distance before it zooms farther into the solar system while orbiting the sun, not to return until 2055. That’s almost five times farther than the moon.
First spotted in August, the asteroid began its semi jog around Earth in late September, after coming under the grips of Earth’s gravity and following a horseshoe-shaped path. By the time it returns next year, it will be moving too fast — more than double its speed from September — to hang around, said Raul de la Fuente Marcos.
NASA will track the asteroid for more than a week in January using the Goldstone solar system radar antenna in California’s Mojave Desert, part of the Deep Space Network.
Current data suggest that during its 2055 visit, the sun-circling asteroid will once again make a temporary and partial lap around Earth.
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World braces for impact as Trump revisits trade wars
Countries around the world are bracing for economic upheaval as incoming U.S. President Donald Trump threatens massive tariffs, especially on China. The uncertainty has left governments and businesses struggling with how to respond, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from Seoul, South Korea. (Contributors: Paul Ndiho and Supakit Pattaratearanon)
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Development, pollution threaten Papuan women’s mangrove forest in Indonesia
JAYAPURA, Indonesia — On the southeastern coast of the city of Jayapura, Petronela Merauje walked from house to house in her floating village inviting women to join her the next morning in the surrounding mangrove forests.
Merauje and the women of her village, Enggros, practice the tradition of Tonotwiyat, which literally means “working in the forest.” For six generations, women from the 700-strong Papuan population there have worked among the mangroves collecting clams, fishing and gathering firewood.
“The customs and culture of Papuans, especially those of us in Enggros village, is that women are not given space and place to speak in traditional meetings, so the tribal elders provide the mangrove forest as our land,” Merauje said. It’s “a place to find food, a place for women to tell stories, and women are active every day and earn a living every day.”
The forest is a short 13 kilometers away from downtown Jayapura, the capital city of Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost province. It’s been known as the women’s forest since 2016, when Enggros’ leader officially changed its name. Long before that, it had already been a space just for women. But as pollution, development and biodiversity loss shrink the forest and stunt plant and animal life, those in the village fear an important part of their traditions and livelihoods will be lost. Efforts to shield it from devastation have begun but are still relatively small.
Women have their own space — but it’s shrinking
One early morning, Merauje and her 15-year-old daughter took a small motorboat toward the forest. Stepping off on Youtefa Bay, mangrove trees all around, they stood chest-deep in the water with buckets in hand, wiggling their feet in the mud to find bia noor, or soft-shell clams. The women collect these for food, along with other fish.
“The women’s forest is our kitchen,” said Berta Sanyi, another woman from Enggros village.
That morning, another woman joined the group looking for firewood, hauling dry logs onto her boat. And three other women joined on a rowboat.
Women from the next village, Tobati, also have a women’s forest nearby. The two Indigenous villages are only 2 kilometers apart, and they’re culturally similar, with Enggros growing out of Tobati’s population decades ago. In the safety of the forest, women of both villages talk about issues at home with one another and share grievances away from the ears of the rest of the village.
Alfred Drunyi, the leader of Drunyi tribe in Enggros, said that having dedicated spaces for women and men is a big part of the village’s culture. There are tribal fines if a man trespasses and enters the forest, and the amount is based on how guilty the community judges the person to be.
“They should pay it with our main treasure, the traditional beads, maybe with some money. But the fines should be given to the women,” Drunyi said.
But Sanyi, 65, who’s been working in the forest since she was just 17, notes that threats to the space come from elsewhere.
Development on the bay has turned acres of forest into large roads, including a 700-meter bridge into Jayapura that passes through Enggros’ pier. Jayapura’s population has exploded in recent decades, and around 400,000 people live in the city — the largest on the island.
In turn, the forest has shrunk. Nearly six decades ago, the mangrove forest in Youtefa Bay was about 514 hectares. Estimates say it’s now less than half that.
“I am so sad when I see the current situation of the forest,” Sanyi said, “because this is where we live.” She said many residents, including her own children, are turning to work in Jayapura instead of maintaining traditions.
Pollution puts traditions and health at risk
Youtefa Bay, where the sea’s brackish water and five rivers in Papua meet, serves as the gathering bowl for the waste that runs through the rivers as they cross through Jayapura.
Plastic bottles, tarpaulins and pieces of wood are seen stuck between the mangrove roots. The water around the mangrove forest is polluted and dark.
After dozens of years being able to feel the clams on the bay with her feet, Sanyi said she now often has to feel through trash first. And once she removes the trash and gets to the muddy ground where the clams live, there are many fewer than there used to be.
Paula Hamadi, 53, said that she never saw the mangrove forest as bad as it is now. For years, she’s been going to the forest almost every day during the low tide in the morning to search for clams.
“It used to be different,” Hamadi said. “From 8 a.m. to 8:30 in the morning, I could get one can. But now, I only get trash.”
The women used to be able to gather enough clams to sell some at the nearest village, but now their small hauls are reserved for eating with their families.
A study in 2020 found that high concentrations of lead from waste from homes and businesses were found at several points in the bay. Lead can be toxic to humans and aquatic organisms, and the study suggests it has contaminated several species that are often consumed by the people of Youtefa Bay.
Other studies also showed that populations of shellfish and crab in the bay were declining, said John Dominggus Kalor, a lecturer on fisheries and marine sciences at Cenderawasih University.
“The threats related to heavy metal contamination, microplastics, and public health are high,” Kalor said. “In the future, it will have an impact on health.”
Some are trying to save the land
Some of the mangrove areas have been destroyed for development, leading to degradation throughout the forest.
Mangroves can absorb the shocks of extreme weather events, like tsunamis, and provide ecosystems with the needed environment to thrive. They also serve social and cultural functions for the women, whose work is mostly done between the mangroves.
“In the future people will say that there used to be a women’s forest here” that disappeared because of development and pollution, said Kalor.
Various efforts to preserve it have been made, including the residents of Enggros village themselves. Merauje and other women from Enggros are trying to start mangrove tree nurseries and, where possible, plant new mangrove trees in the forest area.
“We plant new trees, replace the dead ones, and we also clean up the trash around Youtefa Bay,” Merauje said. “I do that with my friends to conserve, to maintain this forest.”
Beyond efforts to reforest it, Kalor said there also needs to be guarantees that more of the forest won’t be flattened for development in the future.
There is no regional regulation to protect Youtefa Bay and specifically the women’s forests, but Kalor thinks it would help prevent deforestation in the future.
“That should no longer be done in our bay,” he said.
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Small but mighty efforts are brewing to bring back native forests in India
UDHAGAMANDALAM, India — Scattered groves of native trees, flowers and the occasional prehistoric burial ground are squeezed between hundreds of thousands of tea shrubs in southern India’s Nilgiris region — a gateway to a time before colonization and the commercial growing of tea that reshaped the country’s mountain landscapes.
These sacred groves once blanketed the Western Ghats mountains, but nearly 200 years ago, British colonists installed rows upon rows of tea plantations. The few groves that stand today are either protected by Indigenous communities who preserve them for their faith and traditions, or are being grown and tended back into existence by ecologists who remove tea trees from disused farms and plant seeds native to this biodiverse region. It takes decades, but their efforts are finally starting to see results as forests flourish despite ecological damage and wilder weather caused by climate change.
The teams bringing back the forests — home to more than 600 native plants and 150 animal species found only here — know that they still need to work around their neighbors. Nearly everyone in the region’s more than 700,000-strong population either farms black, green and white tea or works with the almost 3 million tourists who come to escape the searing heat of the Indian plains.
“In this time of climate change, I think ecological restoration and rewilding is extremely important,” said Godwin Vasanth Bosco, a Nilgiris-based naturalist and restoration practitioner. “What we’re trying to do is to help nature restore itself.”
Degraded land and climate change threaten communities
Environmentalists say industrial-scale tea farming has destroyed the soil’s nutrients and led to conflict with animals like elephants and gaur, or Indian bison, that have little forest left to live in.
Estimates say nearly 54,600 hectares of tea have been planted across the mountains, damaging close to 70% of native grasslands and forests.
“There is no biological diversity,” Gokul Halan, a Nilgiris-based water expert, said of the tea farms. “It doesn’t support the local fauna nor is it a food source.”
The forests among the tea farms are recognized by the United Nations as one of the world’s eight “hottest hotspots for biodiversity,” but the areas degraded by excessive pesticide use and other commercial farming methods have been dubbed “green deserts” by environmentalists for their poor soil and inability to support other life.
The Nilgiris region has also had to clear land to facilitate the increasing number of tourists and people from India’s plains who are moving to the region.
Poorer land makes it more vulnerable to landslides and flooding, which are now more common because of human-caused climate change. The neighboring mountainous region of Wayanad suffered devastating landslides that killed nearly 200 people earlier this year, and Halan warns Nilgiris may suffer a similar fate.
Halan also warned the region is susceptible to long droughts and excess heat because of climate change, and that’s already affected some tea harvests.
Restoring forests brings life back to Nilgiris
In a small mountain fold just a few hundred meters below the region’s tallest peak, native trees planted 10 years ago have grown up to 4.5 meters tall. A stream flows amid the young trees that replaced nearly 3 hectares of tea plants.
“This whole place was tea plantations and this stream was not flowing throughout the year,” said Bosco, the ecologist. “Since we began our restoration work, it flows through the year and the trees and bamboo have grown well along the stream.”
The forests are known as Shola-grassland forests or cloud forests because they can capture moisture from high-altitude mist.
Bosco said the plants and trees have an “incredible capacity to provide for life” across the about 809 hectares his organization works to restore. The native trees maintain the microclimate underneath them by providing nutrients to the soil. That helps saplings and small plants grow even during hot, dry summers.
The region is also home to several Indigenous communities, called Adivasi, many of them classified as highly vulnerable with only a few thousand of their people remaining.
Representatives of these Adivasi communities consider themselves the original custodians of the forests and have also restored forests in the region. They say such restoration initiatives are welcome.
“When the British built tea estates, we were kicked out to the fringes of this district, our lands were lost and we lost our traditions because of deforestation,” said Mani Raman, who belongs to the Alu Kurumbar Adivasi community.
“Such restoration work is good. By bringing the forests back, the wildlife and birds will get more food. Animals that have moved out of forests will have a place to live,” he said.
Tea growers still need a livelihood
Tea growers and factory owners say that the region’s entire economy depends on tea and it is relatively less harmful to the local environment compared to rampant development to cater to tourism.
“To convert tea to grasslands and shola forests will have a negative impact on the region’s economy and environment,” said A. Balakrishnan, the owner of a 2-year-old tea factory near the town of Kotagiri in the Nilgiris.
Eighty-year-old I. Bhojan, who’s been a tea grower all his life, agrees. “There is no Nilgiris without tea,” he said.
Bhojan, president of the small farmers and tea growers welfare association for the Nilgiris, estimates that around 600,000 people — 50,000 of them small farmers — depend on tea for their livelihood.
Balakrishnan argued that tea plants are maintained well given their economic benefits compared to native forests.
“If tea was not there, Nilgiris will become a place for tourists only, there’ll be more construction and urbanization,” he said.
Finding common ground
Planting woody trees and shrubs in tea plantations, known as agroforestry, can ease the battle for space between farms and restoration, according to some experts.
Other crops and timber “can make tea plantations a bit more biodiverse compared to what is there currently,” said water expert Halan.
Officials of Tamil Nadu state, of which the Nilgiris district is a part, earmarked $24 million earlier this year to encourage farmers to shift away from chemical-laden fertilizers to help preserve soil health. The state’s forest department officials also announced plans last year to plant nearly 60,000 native trees in the region.
Restoration ecologist Bosco said adding value to smaller tea farming operations by growing special, higher-quality tea on smaller parcels of land can open up more land to reforestation without hurting farmers’ pockets.
He added that if those working to restore the land were paid for that service, that could be another stream of revenue for residents, as well as sourcing new products to sell from the native plants. “For example, we’re trying to come up with products from some of the plants that have medicinal value,” he said.
Raman added that future such work could also learn from Adivasi traditional practices.
“Adivasi people have been protecting forests for so long, wherever we live the forests are protected,” he said. “The state government should be taking such work up at large scale.”
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