EnergiesNet: October 1, 2023

Headlines of the most important daily events of the past week.

Worldwide: At least seven dead in nightclub fire in Murcia, southeastern Spain. A suicide bombing shook the center of the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Sunday, a few hours before the opening of the new parliamentary session to validate Sweden’s entry into NATO. The first UN mission in 30 years arrived Sunday in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan said, after almost the entire Armenian population of the territory fled following the victorious Azerbaijani blitzkrieg offensive. Former pro-Russian Prime Minister Robert Fico won the elections in Slovakia. The United States resolves its budget impasse in Congress. Pope appoints 21 new cardinals. San Sebastian Film Festival awarded the Golden Shell to “O corno”, by Spanish director Jaione Camborda. In Spain, Feijóo failed and the countdown begins for Sanchez. Lula operated on his hip without complications. US congressional Republicans begin investigation to try to impeach Biden. Brussels moves towards US agreement on immigration reform pact. Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict escalates with the migration of more than 100,000 refugees to neighboring Armenia after the victorious Azerbaijani military offensive in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) considers complaint by Portuguese youth against 32 countries against climate inaction. Hollywood screenwriters’ strike ends. UN to vote on resolution to authorize deployment of armed forces in Haiti, Brexit amendment discussed.

Europe: British Conservatives cling to the hope of staying in power, meeting at a congress in Manchester in hope to find a formula to avoid a defeat in the next elections. Ten-year-old Taylen Biggs is a fashion of super-influence, Taylen Biggs boasts nearly 1.5 million followers on networks thanks to her interviews with fashion and entertainment celebrities, an activity she “loves,” she declares, under the watchful eye of her father. French winegrowers innovate with disease-resistant grape varieties that don’t need fungicides. The populist Smer-SD party, opposed to aid to Ukraine and critical of the European Union (EU) and NATO, won the legislative elections in Slovakia, according to results released on Sunday. President Slovakia will ask election winner Robert Fico (SD) to try to form a government, making it likely that Fico will become Prime Minister again; he was prime minister in 2006-2010 and again in 2012-2018. Kosovo suffers from deadly clashes between Serbs and Albanians, reconciliation is hindered. Portuguese protest against housing crisis despite positive government measures. 9 southern European countries meeting in Malta demand more EU efforts in the face of migrant push. Eurozone inflation reaches almost two-year low. A hydrogen truck is tested in Berlin, promising clean technology. European countries, such as France, Germany, Poland and Switzerland, recorded the warmest September on record, due to global warming, according to experts. Russia increases its military spending by 70% to continue its so far unsuccessful conquest of Ukraine. The first international summit on critical metals for the energy transition was held last Thursday. A study published this Thursday indicates that due to climate change, Swiss glaciers lost around 10% of their volume in the last two years, as much as in the period 1960-1990. Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine awaiting exchange. Germany tightens border controls with Poland and the Czech Republic. France called last Wednesday for “general mobilization” to eradicate bullying. Residents of flood-hit areas in Greece struggle to rebuild what little remains. Slovakia apprehensive about election rhetoric to LGBTQ community. Mobile medical brigade treats war-traumatized children in Ukraine. Scores of doctors in mobile brigade visit children in rural Ukraine. IEA urges rich countries and China to accelerate carbon neutrality timetable. Dior surprises Paris with a feminist fashion show. At the age of 41, Spanish bullfighting legend El Juli bids farewell to the bullfighting ring this weekend with two bullfights in Madrid’s Las Ventas and Seville’s Maestranza. Avocados, mangoes, bananas, guavas and passion fruit are harvested in Sicily helped by climate change. A 14-year-old student stabbed three teachers and two students at a high school in southern Spain on Thursday, a very rare occurrence in the country. Balmain triumphs with a spectacular fashion show in Paris after suffering the theft of fifty pieces.

Africa-Middle East-Asia: Hundreds of Afghan refugees fall victim to repression in Pakistan. Families of imprisoned Saudi dissidents sentenced to harsh prison terms for crimes of opinion ask Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for clemency. In Lebanon, public education is paralyzed by economic collapse, lack of funds and repeated strikes. In Norway, the transhumance or crossing of reindeer across the country’s fjords, glaciers and mountains to the pastures where they will spend the winter comes to an end. More than 50 people are killed in Pakistan in a suicide attack against a religious procession in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. The Israeli defense industry continues to grow. North Korean workers await opening of the border with China, with no certain prospects. North Korea inscribes its nuclear power status in the constitution. Chinese real estate giant Evergrande says its boss suspected of “illegal” activities. At least 100 dead in Iraq wedding fire. Baghdad materializes real estate projects that have revamped the capital’s image after years of conflict. An Indonesian village resists eviction in the face of a multi-billion dollar factory project financed with Chinese capital. Morocco aims to be a major player in green hydrogen. Morocco aspires to be a major player in green hydrogen. Timbuktu suffers under the jihadists’ blockade of this Malian city. Saudi Arabia sends a delegation to the West Bank in Palestine for the first time in more than 30 years to assure the Palestinians that it will defend their cause even if ties with Israel normalize.

North America: Meta wants to put AI at the service of the largest number of users. “Most of the world’s population will have their first experience of generative artificial intelligence with us,” said Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer.The oil town of Taft, California, USA is anxious about the energy transition. Donald Trump received a warm welcome Friday at the California Republican Party Convention. U.S. students in include in their school bags an antidote that can revive an overdose victim. The UAW auto union in the U.S. extends the strike to 7,000 more workers.Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX founder and hero of the digital currency ecosystem, will face Justice for fraud next week. Washington Zoo pandas to be returned to China, panda bears were gifted to the U.S. by China more than half a century ago. Donald Trump’s economic empire threatened by justice for fraudulent practices. American women forced to undertake painful and expensive trips for abortions, a scenario that has emerged in the United States since the elimination of the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. The film “The Moon Killers”, whose preview was held Wednesday night in New York and which tells of the deaths of Amerindians a hundred years ago in the United States, is a “millennial” and universal story, a “clash of cultures,” filmmaker Martin Scorsese told AFP.In election season, few changes are expected from the US with Cuba after the fall of Senator Menendez. With an election year ahead, analysts expect few changes in US policy towards Cuba. Cuba and Russia are in “contact” over recruitment of Cubans for Ukraine to fight in Russian ranks, says Russian ambassador to the US. Biden vs. Trump in battle for labor vote. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are going for the labor vote and the white popular electorate, as shown by their trips to Michigan, the birthplace of the automobile in the United States and the epicenter of a strike movement in the sector. “US talk-shows return after the end of the Hollywood screenwriters’ strike. Bruce Springsteen postpones his 2023 tour due to an ulcer. Contemporary opera “Dead Man Walking” opens season at New York City Opera. The Antarctic ice floe has never been so reduced at the end of winter, when it registers its maximum surface of the year, since scientific surveys began 44 years ago, the main U.S. observatory announced Monday.

Latin America: Prosecutors raid Guatemala’s electoral court to request the minutes of the electoral process that brought the social democrat Bernardo Arevalo to the presidency. Mexico assured the United States in Washington on Friday that the country is doing everything it can to combat fentanyl. UN Rapporteur denounces that more than 240,000 migrants, including children, were arbitrarily detained in Mexico during the first semester of 2023. In Ecuador, the political antipodes, the leftist Luisa Gonzalez, presidential candidate, and the rightist Veronica Abad, Daniel Noboa’s vice-presidential candidate, appeal to religion, anti-abortion and in favor of traditional family values in the face of the Ecuadorian ballot. Peru, star country of gastronomy, one of the most food insecure countries in South America. The village of San Pablo Las Delicias, in the north of Guatemala, cries because of the lack of rain.Six bodies found on Wednesday in the Mexican state of Zacatecas correspond to young people who had been kidnapped days before in that region of the center-north of the country. Auctioning the house to live, the unexpected ruin of oil retirees in Venezuela. An oil worker, with three decades of work in Venezuela’s largest refinery sells his house to survive and went on hunger strike together with other oil retirees who are demanding the savings withheld by the regime. Migrating to prostitution: the sexual exploitation of Venezuelan women in Trinidad and Tobago. Venezuelan prostitutes wait for clients in Trinidad and Tobago imprisoned in sex work networks. “Triniveni” is the name given to Venezuelan migrants in Trinidad and Tobago, but it is also synonymous with labor exploitation and racism. “They put a price on everything”: organized crime hits Mexicans’ pockets In Mexico, farmers flee their land when organized crime comes to extort them. More than 23,000 indigenous people, workers and students came out to protest in Bogota on Wednesday, heeding a new call by President Gustavo Petro to defend the government in the streets. “Curupira” with AI is the new guardian of the Amazon AI to fight deforestation. When a chainsaw is turned on to fell a tree in a remote part of the Amazon, it will hear it and alert authorities in real time. Poverty increases and reaches 40.1% of Argentines in the first half of 2023. In Venezuela, children prefer to work in the open-pit gold mines of Callao than to go to school, “I prefer to mine gold than to go to school”, the drama of child miners in Venezuela. He can’t read, but he is quick to detect golden traces in the ground.

Source: AFP

EnergiesNet.com 10 01 2023