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☆ War on cow farts is stinky but necessary job
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Karen Kwok | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Yet, governments from New Zealand to Europe are zeroing in on livestock, whose burps and farts help generate 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions each year, United Nations estimates show. An industry backlash against plans to tackle the issue will teach punters to treat burgers as polluting fuel. Cattle is a major contributor to methane emissions from agriculture, which hit 142 metric tons in 2022, triple the amount of those from the oil sector, according to the International Energy Agency. But like fossil fuels ten years ago, this will be the start of a long but necessary battle. French dairy company Danone on Jan. 17 pledged to reduce methane emissions from its fresh milk supply chain by 30% by 2030 from its 2020 level.

☆ War on cow gas is stinky but necessary job in climate-change struggle
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Karen Kwok | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Yet, governments from New Zealand to Europe are zeroing in on livestock, whose burps and farts help generate 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions each year, United Nations estimates show. Cattle is a major contributor to methane emissions from agriculture, which hit 142 metric tons in 2022, triple the amount of those from the oil sector, according to the International Energy Agency. But like fossil fuels ten years ago, this will be the start of a long but necessary battle. CONTEXT NEWSEuropean Union countries agreed on March 16 to try to reduce the number of farms covered by proposed rules to cut pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from livestock. French dairy company Danone on Jan. 17 pledged to reduce methane emissions from its fresh milk supply chain by 30% by 2030 from its 2020 level.

☆ These eight charts show why climate change matters right now
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Catherine Clifford | In Catclifford | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment ReportGlobal warming is caused when greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane trap heat in the atmosphere. Climate change is already having impacts on human life and well-beingZoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards This chart shows the various impacts climate change has on water availability, food production, health and well-being, cities and infrastructure and biodiversity and ecosystems. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment ReportMany of the worst impacts of climate change will come to pass in the lives of the youngest humans. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment ReportThe globe has warmed by 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the IPCC report says. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment ReportA slight change in the average change of the earth's temperature will impact different populations differently.

☆ Wagner founder rejects claim that he is about to pull back from Ukraine, saying the group will fight there 'as long as our country needs us'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Sinéad Baker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The boss of Russia's Wagner Group denied reports he's set to reduce operations in Ukraine. Yevgeny Prigozhin has been feuding with Russia's military and said his troops have been denied ammo. Instead, he plans to focus on Africa, where Wagner has been accused of war crimes, the sources said. As long as our country needs us, we are fighting on the territory of Ukraine"Wagner, a private paramilitary group, has sent tens of thousands of mercenaries and former prisoners to fight in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Wagner has been barred from recruiting more prisoners from Russia, the UK MOD said, predicting that it would struggle with troop numbers going forward.

☆ Saudi is far from the last Western bank bagholder
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( George Hay | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

LONDON, March 21 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Saudi Arabia has joined the Western bank bagholder club. The bank only made its play in November, when client money was already flowing out of Credit Suisse. Saudi National Bank bought 307.6 million Credit Suisse shares for 3.82 Swiss francs ($4.11) per share. The UBS offer of 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.23 billion) values Credit Suisse shares at 0.76 francs each, more than 80% lower than the price paid by the Saudi bank. Saudi National Bank's statement added that the potential impact to its capital adequacy ratio is about 35 basis points, with no impact on profitability.

☆ Russia faces an 'exodus' of troops as prisoners recruited to fight in Ukraine start to be pardoned and return home, says UK intel
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Sinéad Baker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Russia's Wagner mercenary army fighting in Ukraine is about to see an "exodus" of personnel. It's due to release thousands of troops recruited from prisons in exchange for pardons, UK intel said. It will likely face personnel issues as a result, since it's no longer allowed to recruit prisoners. The Wagner Group is a private, pro-Kremlin group that has sent tens of thousands of mercenaries and former prisoners to Ukraine. Evidence from Russia suggests that the Wagner Group is "following through on its promise to free survivors," the MOD said.

☆ A GOP politician tried to use the Iran hostage crisis to help Reagan in the 1980 election. The man who accompanied him wants to come clean to Jimmy Carter: 'History needs to know that this happened'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Hannah Getahun | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

GOP politician Ben Barnes said his mentor worked to influence the 1980 election in favor of Reagan. John Connally asked Middle East leaders to delay the release of Iranian hostages. "History needs to know that this happened," Barnes told The New York Times. "I'll go to my grave believing that it was the purpose of the trip," Barnes told the Times. Barnes told the Times he finally decided to share the details of the trip following the news that Carter admitted himself to hospice care.

☆ Russia is using one of Ukraine's bloodiest battles to decimate the Wagner Group, after its boss started a feud with military leaders, experts say
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Sinéad Baker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The pro-Kremlin mercenary army has aided Russia's military, but its leader has become more critical. And the Wagner Group, which has tens of thousands of mercenaries and former prisoners deployed in Ukraine, is heavily involved in the fighting. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the group's leader, who is also known as Putin's chef, has become highly critical of Russia's military leadership. The think tank added that "Russian military leadership may be trying to expend Wagner forces – and Prigozhin's influence – in Bakhmut." The ISW said that given the high number of Wagner troops there, Russia's leadership might not mind the high death toll.

☆ Half of all Russian prisoners recruited to fight in Ukraine have likely been killed or wounded, says UK intelligence
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Sinéad Baker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Around half of the prisoners Russia recruited for Ukraine have been killed or wounded, per UK intel. The private pro-Kremlin Wagner Group has sent many prisoners to one of the war's bloodiest battles. But the group can no longer recruit from prisons, limiting its ability to reinforce, the UK said. The UK Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update on Monday that "about half of the prisoners Wagner has already deployed in Ukraine have likely become casualties." In February, it was reported that Wagner had stopped recruiting prisoners as growing numbers refused to be enlisted on suicide missions in Ukraine, according to multiple reports.

☆ UK government should focus on younger workers, not just over-50s, employers say
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-12 | by ( David Milliken | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Unlike in most other rich countries, Britain's labour force is still notably smaller than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. But the CIPD pointed to the high number of younger people who were outside the labour market. "It's important that the current focus on addressing the decline of over-50s in employment doesn't obscure the need and opportunity to get more young people into work," CIPD economist Jon Boys said. In January he urged those who had retired early to do more than just play golf. However, many people who have retired early are not under financial pressure to go back to work, while those who are unwell can face long waits for medical treatment.

☆ A new migraine medication is coming this summer — and it promises relief in just 15 minutes
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-11 | by ( Aidan Pollard | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a new nasal spray to treat migraines. The spray will be available in July and is designed to treat migraines in 15 minutes. The drug, which Pfizer acquired when it bought out Biohaven Pharmaceuticals last year for $11.6 billion, will provide an alternative to oral migraine medication, NBC News reported. The drug is not the first nasal medication of its kind, but it's anticipated to work more rapidly — the medication is intended to offer relief within 15 minutes, according to Pfizer. "Among my migraine patients, one of the most important attributes of an acute treatment option is how quickly it works."

☆ 'Our phones are ringing off the hook': Amid a global downturn, the finance world is chasing Middle Eastern money
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Natasha Turak | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The region's 10 largest sovereign wealth funds combined manage nearly $4 trillion, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. The regional investors, especially the sovereign funds but also the families, are now much more sophisticated than before. Follow the capitalAs oil prices made a roaring comeback in the last two years, the Gulf's public wealth funds went on a spending spree. It added that GCC sovereign wealth funds "played an important role in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic and now again in 2022 during times of financial distress." Our phones are ringing off the hook," one manager from a UAE investment fund said, declining to be named due to professional restrictions.

☆ Consumers spend billions on frozen food. Freezer technology needs to get a lot better
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Lori Ann Larocco | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

One of the changes in consumer behavior during the pandemic that is sticking is frozen food purchasing. According to the American Frozen Food Institute, the supermarket frozen food department was one of the biggest generators of sales growth in 2022, with a whopping $72.2 billion spent. All of that food — frozen seafood, processed meat, snacks, and ice cream are just some of the items — has to maintain proper temperature throughout a long cold-chain storage pipeline before reaching the home. But this refrigeration technology, critical to the food supply, is often outdated, especially in an era of advanced semiconducting applications across electronics. The company leases these reusable totes to grocery stores and retailers, which can use them to bifurcate a payload into three independent temperature zones.

☆ Abu Dhabi shakes up wealth funds with top royals chairing
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Yousef Saba | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

DUBAI, March 9 (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi announced a reshuffle at the top of its two biggest sovereign wealth funds on Thursday, appointing senior members of the royal family as chairmen. Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, one of the most powerful members of Abu Dhabi's royal family, was named chair of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), among the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, the government's media office said. ADIA is estimated by Global SWF to manage $993 billion in assets, while the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute puts the figure at $790 billion. The wealth fund's last chairman was the previous UAE president, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who died last year. MORE NEWCOMERSThe UAE president is appointing his brothers as chairmen at state sovereign wealth funds rather than chairing them himself.

☆ In economics, women's voices still struggle to be heard
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Maria Martinez | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

There seems to be a lot to celebrate on International Women's Day in the field of economics. Women head the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the U.S. Treasury and the European Central Bank. "The pervasive underrepresentation of women in economics is systemic and structural," Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the first woman to head the World Trade Organization, told Reuters. "There are no women in the textbooks and most big names in economics are men," said Sandra Kretschmer, economics researcher and member of the Women in Economics Initiative. Women and men tend to have different research interests, said Alisa Weinberger, economics researcher at Goethe.

☆ Argentina makes headway in establishing a cannabis export industry
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

"The industry has incredible potential," said Gabriel Gimenez, director of the ARICCAME cannabis agency created in January this year, last week. Argentina is looking to build its domestic medical cannabis market and generate foreign currency through exports. In Santa Fe province, the medical cannabis research and development center (CIDCam), which has over 200 cannabis plants of various varieties, is expecting a second harvest this month. Pablo Fazio, president of the Argentine Chamber of Cannabis (ARGENCANN) and Pampa Hemp's co-founder, said demand could ignite a new domestic industry for products made from the raw material. The chamber comprises some 200 private firms either directly or indirectly linked to the industrial hemp and medical cannabis business.

☆ House Democrats push back against GOP bill to abolish IRS, impose national sales tax
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Chelsey Cox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

WASHINGTON — Three Democrats in the U.S. House introduced a measure to push back against a controversial Republican tax proposal that would abolish the IRS, eliminate income taxes and impose a national sales tax. House Republicans introduced the Fair Tax Act in January shortly after Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif, was voted in as speaker. The three Democrats introduced a House resolution opposing a national sales tax on working families and, instead, supporting a tax cut to benefit middle-class families. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., who introduced the Fair Tax Act, said it would simplify the tax code. Pettersen said the sales tax would hurt the most those who are unable to save, such as seniors and low-income families.

☆ Gourmet fish bladder races chicken, beef to profitability in Singapore's lab meat push
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Chen Lin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Two years after Singapore greenlighted lab-grown meat for human consumption, mass production has yet to start. The technological, regulatory and scale barriers to entry for cultivated meat are very high compared to plant-based meat, said Didier Toubia, chief executive of Israel's Aleph Farms, which makes cultivated beef steak. "It's too high and it's embarrassing ... We lose money every time someone enjoys our cultivated chicken," Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick said. Hong Kong-based Avant Meats is more bullish than Eat Just, with ambitions to make a premium food, cultivated fish maw. Fish maw is the swim bladder of a fish, a delicacy prized in China that could fetch up to thousands of dollars per kilogram, depending on its grade.

☆ Fed's Barkin says he could see rates at 5.5%-5.75%
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

PALO ALTO, California, March 3 (Reuters) - Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Barkin said on Friday that he could envision a scenario where the central bank pushes the U.S. benchmark policy interest rate to the 5.5%-5.75% range that some in financial markets are now betting it will. Barkin said it's "entirely possible" that inflation cools faster than he expects, which would imply a shallower rate path. "But I think it's entirely possible that it persists, which would require us to do more," he added. By this time next year, Barkin said, he does not expect the Fed to have started any rate cuts. Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Leslie Adler and Alistair BellOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Fed's Barkin says he doesn't see case for a rate pause now
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

PALO ALTO, California, March 3 (Reuters) - Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Barkin said on Friday that he does not understand the case for pausing interest rates now, although delivering rate increases in smaller increments means that if the Fed does end up going too far it won't have gone much too far. Rates are currently restrictive, meaning that they are slowing the economy, but the Fed still needs to "feel" its way to a level of rates that is high enough to bring inflation back down, Barkin said at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Leslie AdlerOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Fed's Barkin calls for deliberate rate hikes to fight 'exhausting' inflation
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Policymakers have forecast "additional rate increases" and have been clear "we don’t anticipate rate cuts this year," he said. Inflation by the Fed's preferred year-over-year gauge was 5.4% in January, an increase from the 5.3% pace in December. The Fed's target is 2% inflation. Barkin said he is not sure that the strength in spending that bolstered inflation is sustainable. That's putting some upward pressure on inflation, he said, as workers ask for more pay.

☆ Black real estate developers get rare access to big capital through Philadelphia program
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Diana Olick | In Dianaolick | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Black Americans represent less than 5% of residential real estate developers, largely because they can't get equal access to capital, according to a recent report by the Urban Land Institute. Institutional capital – real estate investment trusts and private equity in particular – are the dominant players. Philly Rise is designed to recruit, train, support and open up access to capital. That's why he's been working in real estate for 20 years, developing affordable housing first in Delaware and Maryland, and soon in Philadelphia. "Our goal with our participants is not to teach them how to rehab or build brand new houses, but how to build successful real estate businesses," said Webster.

☆ I'm a Black woman who left her job at an architecture firm to go out on her own and I've never been happier
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Marguerite Ward | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Xena Stryker left corporate America several years ago after feeling discriminated against. The company, Xena Design + Marketing Firm, has offices in Atlanta and Beverly Hills, California. At a previous job, I was the only Black woman at an architectural firm with hundreds of designers. I started my own company, Xena Design + Marketing Firm, and life is phenomenal right now. If you're in a similar position as I was previously in corporate America, my advice is: dream big, determine your unique selling point, find a supportive dream team, and get out.

☆ Peter Doig’s Art of Getting Lost
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-25 | by ( Tobias Grey | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

The artist Peter Doig, born in Edinburgh in 1959, has led a peripatetic existence, living and working in Trinidad, Montreal, London and New York. He secured his early reputation in the 1990s with a series of large-scale landscape paintings full of atmospheric foreboding. One of these, “Swamped” (1990), set an auction record for the artist in November 2021, when it was sold at Christie’s New York for $39.9 million. Mr. Doig, 63, can take years to finish one of his distinctive figurative paintings. “Peter Doig,” a show of 12 new paintings and 20 works on paper that opened at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London earlier this month, provided him with just such a challenge.

☆ You can call almond milk 'milk,' but there's a catch, the FDA says
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Alex Bitter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Almond milk and other plant-based drinks can be labeled "milk," the Food and Drug Administration said. But if they do, they should explain the nutritional differences between their plant-based milk and cow's milk, the FDA said. It also recommends that plant-based milk makers include a statement on their label clarifying the differences between their product and cow's milk. "We applaud FDA's recognition that consumers understand the difference between plant-based milk and cow's milk and that shoppers choose to purchase plant-based milk specifically because it is not cow's milk," Madeline Cohen, senior regulatory attorney at the Good Food Institute, which advocates for plant-based brands, said in a statement. The National Milk Producers Federation, which represents the US animal milk industry, said the proposed guidance would allow plant-based companies "to continue inappropriately using dairy terminology."

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