NAIROBI, Kenya — When Ademola Adesina founded a startup to provide solar and battery-based power subscription packages to individuals and businesses in Nigeria in 2015, it was a lot harder to raise money than it is today.

Climate tech was new in Africa, the continent was a fledgling destination for venture capital money, there were fewer funders to approach and less money was available, he said.

It took him a year of “running around and scouring” his networks to raise his first amount — just under $1 million — from VC firms and other sources. “Everything was a learning experience,” he said.

But the ecosystem has since changed, and Adesina’s Rensource Energy has raised about $30 million over the years, mostly from VC firms. 

Funding for climate tech startups in Africa from the private sector is growing, with businesses raising more than $3.4 billion since 2019. But there’s still a long way to go, with the continent requiring $277 billion annually to meet its climate goals for 2030.

Experts say to unlock financing and fill this gap, African countries need to address risks like currency instability that they say reduce investor appetite, while investors need to expand their scope of interest to more climate sectors like flood protection, disaster management and heat management, and to use diverse funding methods.

Still, the investment numbers for the climate tech sector — which includes businesses in renewable energy, carbon removal, land restoration and water and waste management — are compelling: Last year, climate tech startups on the continent raised $1.04 billion, a 9% increase from the previous year and triple what they raised in 2019, according to the funding database Africa: The Big Deal. That was despite a decline in the amount of money raised by all startups in total on the continent last year.

That matters because climate tech requires experimentation, and VC firms that provide money to nascent businesses are playing an essential role by giving climate tech startups risk capital, said Adesina. “In the climate space, a lot of things are uncertain,” he said.

The money raised by climate tech startups last year was more than a third of all funds raised by startups in Africa in 2023, placing climate tech second to fintech, a more mature sector.

Venture capital is typically given to businesses with substantial risk but great long-term growth potential. Startups use it to expand into new markets and to get products and services on the market.

Venture capitalists “can take risks that other people cannot take, because our business model is designed to have failures,” said Brian Odhiambo, a Lagos-based partner at Novastar Ventures, an Africa-focused investor. “Not everything has to succeed. But some will, and those that do will succeed in a massive way.”

That was the case for Adetayo Bamiduro, co-founder of MAX, formerly Metro Africa Xpress, which makes electric two- and three-wheelers and electric vehicle infrastructure in Nigeria and has raised just under $100 million since it was founded in 2015.

Adetayo said venture capitalists “are playing a catalytic role that is extremely essential.”

“We all know that in order to really decarbonize our economies, investments have to be made. And it’s not trivial investment,” he said.

The funds can also bridge the gap between traditional and non-traditional sectors, said Kidus Asfaw, co-founder and CEO of Kubik, a startup that turns difficult-to-recycle plastic waste into durable, low-carbon building material. His company, which operates in Kenya and Ethiopia, has raised around $5.2 million since it was launched in 2021.

He cites waste management and construction as examples of traditional sectors that can connect with startups like his.

“There’s so much innovation in these spaces that can transform them over time,” he said. “VCs are accelerating that pathway to transforming them.”

Besides venture capital, other investments by private equity firms, syndicates, venture builders, grant providers and other financial institutions are actively financing climate initiatives on the continent.

But private sector financing in general lags far behind that of public financing, which includes funds from governments, multilaterals and development finance institutions.

From 2019 to 2020, private sector financing represented only 14% of all of Africa’s climate finance, according to a report by the Climate Policy Initiative, much lower than in regions such as East Asia and Pacific at 39%, and Latin America and the Caribbean at 49%.

The low contribution in Africa is attributed to the investors putting money in areas they’re more familiar with, like renewable energy technology, with less funding coming in for more diverse initiatives, said Sandy Okoth, a capital market specialist for green finance at FSD Africa, one of the commissioners of the CPI study.

“The private sector feels this (renewable energy technology) is a more mature space,” he said. “They understand the funding models.”

Technology for adapting to climate change, on the other hand, is “more complex,” he said.

One startup working in renewable energy is the Johannesburg-based Wetility, which last year secured funding of $48 million — mostly from private equity — to expand its operations.

The startup provides solar panels for homes and businesses and a digital management system that allows users to remotely manage power usage, as it tries to solve the problems of energy access and reliability in southern Africa.

“Private sector financing in African climate is still rather low,” said founder and CEO Vincent Maposa. “But there’s visible growth. And I believe that over the next decade or so, you’ll start to see those shifts.”

Investors are also starting to understand the economic benefits of adapting to climate change and solutions as they have returns on investment, said Hetal Patel, Nairobi-based director of investments at Mercy Corps Ventures, an early-stage VC fund focused on startups building solutions for climate adaptation and financial resilience.

“We’re starting to build a very strong business case for adaptation investors and make sure that private capital flows start coming in,” he said.

Maelis Carraro, managing partner at Catalyst Fund, a Nairobi-based VC fund and accelerator that funds climate adaptation solutions, urged more diverse funding, such as that which blends private and public sector funding. The role of public financing, she said, should be to de-risk the private sector and attract more private sector capital into financing climate initiatives.

“We’re not gonna go far enough with just the public funding,” she said. “We need the private sector and the public sector to work together to unlock more financing. And in particular looking beyond just a few industries where the innovation is writ large.”
…

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of U.S. airpower. But the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence, not a human pilot. And riding in the front seat was Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.

AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning for an AI-enabled fleet of more than 1,000 unmanned warplanes, the first of them operating by 2028.

It was fitting that the dogfight took place at Edwards Air Force Base, a vast desert facility where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound and the military has incubated its most secret aerospace advances. Inside classified simulators and buildings with layers of shielding against surveillance, a new test-pilot generation is training AI agents to fly in war. Kendall traveled here to see AI fly in real time and make a public statement of confidence in its future role in air combat.

“It’s a security risk not to have it. At this point, we have to have it,” Kendall said in an interview with The Associated Press after he landed. The AP and NBC were granted permission to witness the secret flight on the condition that it would not be reported until it was complete because of operational security concerns.

The AI-controlled F-16, called Vista, flew Kendall in lightning-fast maneuvers at more than 800 kph that put pressure on his body at five times the force of gravity. It went nearly nose to nose with a second human-piloted F-16 as both aircraft raced within 305 meters of each other, twisting and looping to try force their opponent into vulnerable positions.

At the end of the hour-long flight, Kendall said he’d seen enough to trust this still-learning AI to decide whether to launch weapons in war.

There’s a lot of opposition to that idea. Arms control experts and humanitarian groups are deeply concerned that AI one day might be able to autonomously drop bombs that kill people without further human consultation, and they are seeking greater restrictions on its use.

“There are widespread and serious concerns about ceding life-and-death decisions to sensors and software,” the International Committee of the Red Cross has warned. Autonomous weapons “are an immediate cause of concern and demand an urgent, international political response.”

Kendall said there will always be human oversight in the system when weapons are used.

The military’s shift to AI-enabled planes is driven by security, cost and strategic capability. If the U.S. and China should end up in conflict, for example, today’s Air Force fleet of expensive, manned fighters will be vulnerable because of gains on both sides in electronic warfare, space and air defense systems. China’s air force is on pace to outnumber the U.S. and it is also amassing a fleet of flying unmanned weapons.

Future war scenarios envision swarms of American unmanned aircraft providing an advance attack on enemy defenses to give the U.S. the ability to penetrate an airspace without high risk to pilot lives. But the shift is also driven by money. The Air Force is still hampered by production delays and cost overruns in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will cost an estimated of $1.7 trillion.

Smaller and cheaper AI-controlled unmanned jets are the way ahead, Kendall said.

Vista’s military operators say no other country in the world has an AI jet like it, where the software first learns on millions of data points in a simulator, then tests its conclusions during actual flights. That real-world performance data is then put back into the simulator where the AI then processes it to learn more.

China has AI, but there’s no indication it has found a way to run tests outside a simulator. And, like a junior officer first learning tactics, some lessons can only be learned in the air, Vista’s test pilots said.

Vista flew its first AI-controlled dogfight in September 2023, and there have only been about two dozen similar flights since. But the programs are learning so quickly from each engagement that some AI versions being tested on Vista are beating human pilots in air-to-air combat.

The pilots at this base are aware that in some respects, they may be training their replacements or shaping a future construct where fewer of them are needed.

But they also say they would not want to be up in the sky against an adversary that has AI-controlled aircraft if the U.S. does not also have its own fleet.

“We have to keep running. And we have to run fast,” Kendall said.
…

omaha, nebraska — Warren Buffett cautioned the tens of thousands of shareholders who packed an arena for his annual meeting that artificial intelligence scams could become “the growth industry of all time.” 

Doubling down on his cautionary words from last year, Buffett told the throngs he recently came face to face with the downside of AI. Someone made a fake video of Buffett, apparently convincing enough that Buffett himself said he could imagine it tricking him into sending money overseas. 

The billionaire investing guru predicted scammers will seize on the technology and may do more harm with it than good. 

“It has enormous potential for good and enormous potential for harm and I just don’t know how that plays out,” he said. 

Earnings 

The day started early Saturday with Berkshire Hathaway announcing a steep drop in earnings as the paper value of its investments plummeted and it pared its Apple holdings. The company reported a $12.7 billion profit, or $8.825 per Class A share, in first the quarter, down 64% from $35.5 billion, or $24,377 per A share a year ago. 

But Buffett encourages investors to pay more attention to the conglomerate’s operating earnings from the companies it owns. Those jumped 39% to $11.222 billion, or $7,796.47 per Class A share, led by insurance companies’ performance. 

None of that got in the way of the fun. 

Throngs flooded the arena to buy up Squishmallow plush toys of Buffett and former Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, who died last fall. The event attracts investors from around the world and is unlike any other company meeting. 

“This is one of the best events in the world to learn about investing. To learn from the gods of the industry,” said Akshay Bhansali, who spent the better part of two days traveling from India to Omaha. 

A notable absence 

Devotees come for tidbits of wisdom from Buffett, who famously dubbed the meeting Woodstock for Capitalists. 

This was the first meeting since Munger died. 

The meeting opened with a video tribute highlighting some of his best-known quotes, including classics like “If people weren’t so often wrong, we wouldn’t be so rich.” The video also featured skits the investors made with Hollywood stars over the years, including a “Desperate Housewives” spoof where one of the women introduced Munger as her boyfriend and another in which actress Jaimie Lee Curtis swooned over him. 

As the video ended, the arena erupted in a prolonged standing ovation honoring Munger, whom Buffett called “the architect of Berkshire Hathaway.” 

Buffett said Munger remained curious about the world up until the end of his life at 99, hosting dinner parties, meeting with people and holding regular Zoom calls. 

For decades, Munger and Buffett functioned as a classic comedy duo, with Buffett offering lengthy setups to Munger’s witty one-liners. 

Together, the pair transformed Berkshire from a floundering textile mill into a massive conglomerate made up of a variety of interests, from insurance companies such as Geico to BNSF railroad to several major utilities and an assortment of other companies. 

Next Gen leaders 

Munger’s absence, however, created space for shareholders to get to know better the two executives who directly oversee Berkshire’s companies: Ajit Jain, who manages the insurance units; and Abel, who handles everything else and has been named Buffett’s successor. The two shared the main stage with Buffett this year. 

The first time Buffett kicked a question to Greg Abel, he mistakenly said “Charlie?” Abel shrugged off the mistake and dove into the challenges utilities face from the increased risk of wildfires and some regulators’ reluctance to let them collect a reasonable profit. 

Morningstar analyst Greggory Warren said he believes Abel spoke up more Saturday and let shareholders see some of the brilliance Berkshire executives talk about. 

A look to the future 

Buffett has made clear that Abel will be Berkshire’s next CEO, but said Saturday that he had changed his opinion on how the company’s investment portfolio should be handled. He had previously said it would fall to two investment managers who handle small chunks of the portfolio now. On Saturday, Buffett endorsed Abel for the gig, as well as overseeing the operating businesses and any acquisitions. 

“He understands businesses extremely well, and if you understand businesses, you understand common stocks,” Buffett said. Ultimately, it will be up to the board to decide, but the billionaire said he might come back and haunt them if they try to do it differently. 

Nevertheless, the best applause line of the day was Buffett’s closing remark: “I not only hope that you come next year but I hope that I come next year.” 
…

Протягом 2023–2024 років пред’явили 115 позовів про визнання недійсними договорів про постачання палива, 70 позовів на 685,8 млн грн вже задоволено
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KASHAN, Iran — The historic Kashan bazaar in central Iran once sat on a major caravan route, its silk carpets known the world over. But for the weavers trying to sell their rugs under its ancient arches, their world has only unraveled since the collapse of Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers and wider tensions with the West.

Rug exports, which exceeded $2 billion two decades ago, have plummeted to less than $50 million in the last year in the Persian calendar that ended in March, according to government customs figures. With fewer tourists coming and difficulties rising in making international transactions, Iranian rugs are going unsold as some weavers work for as little as $4 a day.

“Americans were some of our best customers,” said Ali Faez, the owner of one dusty carpet shop at the bazaar. “Rugs are a luxury product and they were eager to buy it and they used to make very good purchases. Unfortunately, this has been cut — and the connection between the two countries for visitors to come and go has gone away.”

Kashan’s rug-weaving industry has been inscribed in UNESCO’s list of the world’s “intangible cultural heritage.” Many of the weavers are women, with the skills needed for the Farsi weaving style passed down from generation to generation, using materials like vine leaves and the skins of pomegranate fruit and walnuts to make the dyes for their threads. A single rug can take months to make.

For decades, Western tourists and others would pass through Iran, picking up rugs as gifts and to take back home. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the U.S. increased sanctions on Iran’s theocratic government over the U.S. Embassy siege, Tehran’s links to militant attacks and other issues.

But in 2000, the outgoing administration of former President Bill Clinton lifted a ban on the import of Iranian caviar, rugs and pistachios.

“Iran lives in a dangerous neighborhood,” then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said at the time. “We welcome efforts to make it less dangerous.”

By 2010, with concerns rising over Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. again banned Iranian-made Persian rugs. But in 2015, Iran struck a nuclear deal with world powers which greatly reduced and drastically lowered the purity of Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium. The rug trade was allowed once again.

Three years later, in 2018, then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear deal. Since then, Iran began enriching uranium at near-weapons-grade levels and has been blamed for a series of attacks at sea and on land, including an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack targeting Israel last month.

For the carpet weavers, that’s meant their wares were once again banned under U.S. law.

“It started when Trump signed that paper,” Faez told The Associated Press, referring to the renewed sanctions. “He ruined everything.”

Abdullah Bahrami, the head of a national syndicate for handwoven rug producers, also blamed the collapse of the industry on the Trump sanctions. He put the value of exports to the U.S. as high as $80 million annually prior to the sanctions.

“The whole world used to know Iran by its rugs,” Bahrami told the state-run IRNA news agency in March.

Making things worse is what carpet sellers see as a drop in tourists to Kashan as well. High-value American and European tourism in Iran has largely stopped, the daily Shargh newspaper warned last year. Ezzatollah Zarghami, Iran’s minister of tourism, insisted in April that 6 million tourists visited the country over the last 12 months, though that likely includes religious pilgrims as well as Afghans and Iraqis with less spending money.

But even those tourists that do show up face the challenge of Iran’s financial system, where no major international credit card works.

“I had a Chinese customer the other week. He was struggling to somehow make the payment because he loved the rug and didn’t want to let go of it,” Faez said. “We have to pay a lot of commission to those who can transfer money and have bank accounts abroad. Sometimes they cancel their orders because they don’t have enough cash with them.”

The collapse of the rial currency has left many Iranians also unable to purchase the handwoven rugs. Wages in the industry are low, leading to a growing number of Afghan migrants working in workshops around Kashan as well.

Designer Javad Amorzesh, one of just a few of Kashan’s old-school artists, said his orders have fallen from 10 a year to just two. He has laid off staff and now works alone in a cramped space.

“Inflation rose every hour. People were hit repeatedly by inflation,” he said. “I used to have four to five assistants in a big workshop.”

Offering a bitter laugh alone in his workshop, he added, “We’ve been left isolated.”
…

DUESSELDORF, Germany — Herbert Rubinstein was 5 years old when he and his mother were taken from the Jewish ghetto of Chernivtsi and put on a cramped cattle wagon waiting to take them to their deaths. It was 1941, and Romanians collaborating with Germany’s Nazis were rounding up tens of thousands of Jews from his hometown in what is now southwestern Ukraine.

“It was nothing but a miracle that we survived,” Rubinstein told The Associated Press during a recent interview at his apartment in the western German city of Duesseldorf.

The 88-year-old Holocaust survivor is participating in a new digital campaign called #CancelHate. It was launched Thursday by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference.

It features videos of survivors from around the globe reading Holocaust denial posts from different social media platforms. Each post illustrates how denial and distortion can not only rewrite history but perpetuate antisemitic tropes and spread hate.

“I could never have imagined a day when Holocaust survivors would be confronting such a tremendous wave of Holocaust denial and distortion, but sadly, that day is here,” said Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Claims Conference.

“We all saw what unchecked hatred led to — words of hate and antisemitism led to deportations, gas chambers and crematoria,” Schneider added. “Those who read these depraved posts are putting aside their own discomfort and trauma to ensure that current and future generations understand that unchecked hatred has no place in society.”

The Claims Conference’s new digital campaign comes at a time when antisemitic incidents, triggered by Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s ensuing military campaign in Gaza, have increased from Europe to the U.S. and beyond, to levels not seen in decades, according to major Jewish organizations.

Hamas and other militants abducted around 250 people in the attack and killed around 1,200, mostly civilians. They are still believed to be holding around 100 hostages and the remains of some 30 others. The war has ground on with little end in sight: the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, displaced around 80% of the population and pushed hundreds of thousands of people to the brink of famine.

The war has inflamed tensions around the world and triggered pro-Palestinian protests, including at college campuses in the U.S. and elsewhere. Israel and its supporters have branded the protests as antisemitic, while critics of Israel say it uses such allegations to silence opponents.

The launch of the Claims Conference campaign also comes days before Yom HaShoah — Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day — on Monday.

In one of the videos, Rubinstein reads out a hate post — only to juxtapose it with his personal testimony about his family’s suffering during the Holocaust.

“‘We have all been cheated, lied to, and exploited. The Holocaust did not happen the way it is written in our history books,'” he reads and then says: “That is a lie. The Holocaust happened. Unfortunately, way too many members of my family died in the Holocaust.”

Rubinstein then continues to talk about his own persecution as a Jewish child during the Holocaust.

While forced into the ghetto of Cernisvtsi, his family managed to obtain forged Polish identity documents, which were the only reason he and his mother were taken off the cattle train in 1941.

They fled and hid in several eastern European countries until the war ended in 1945. After that, they briefly went back to his hometown, only to find out that his father, who had been forced into the Soviet Red Army during the war, had been killed. They moved on to Amsterdam, where his mother married again, and eventually settled in Duesseldorf.

“I lived through the Holocaust. Six million were murdered. Hate and Holocaust denial have returned to our society today. I am very, very sad about this and I am fighting it with all my might,” Rubinstein says at the end of the video. “Words matter. Our words are our power. Cancel hate. Stop the hate.”

Even at his old age, Rubinstein, who calls himself an optimist, says he will continue fighting antisemitism every single day. And he has a message, especially for the young generation of Jews.

“Don’t panic,” Rubinstein says. “The good will win. You just have to do something about it.”
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«Програма має на меті допомогти українським аграріям підвищити ефективність виробництва, зробити його стійкішим і більш конкурентоспроможним під час війни»
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Йдеться про пропозицію надати Україні пакет на 50 мільярдів доларів за рахунок прибутків від суверенних активів РФ, заморожених переважно в Європі
…

islamabad — Pakistan on Friday witnessed the launch of its first lunar satellite aboard China’s historic mission to retrieve samples from the little explored far side of the moon in a technologically collaborative mission that signals deepening ties between the countries.

China’s largest rocket, a Long March-5, blasted off from the Wencheng Space Launch Center on Hainan Island at 09:27 UTC, ferrying China’s 8-metric-ton Chang’e-6 probe.

If successful, the uncrewed mission will make China the first country to retrieve samples from the moon’s largely unexplored South Pole, also known as the “far side” of the moon that is not visible from Earth.

Chang’e-6 will spend 48 hours digging up 2 kilograms of surface samples before returning to a landing spot in Inner Mongolia.

In 2018, China achieved its first unmanned moon landing on the far side with the Chang’e-4 probe, which did not retrieve samples. India became the first country to land near the moon’s South Pole in August with its Chandrayaan-3.

Chang’e-6 is carrying cargo from Pakistan, Italy, France and the European Space Agency.

According to the Institute of Space Technology (IST) in Islamabad, Pakistan’s lunar cube satellite named ICUBE-Qamar (or ICUBE-Q for short) will be placed into lunar orbit within five days, circling the moon for three to six months, photographing the surface for research purposes.

IST engineers say ICUBE-Q is also designed to “obtain lunar magnetic field data; establish a lunar magnetic field model and lay the foundation for subsequent international cooperation on the moon.”

IST developed the iCUBE-Qamar satellite in collaboration with the country’s space agency SUPARCO and China’s Shanghai University. Qamar, which means moon in Urdu, is the nuclear-armed South Asian nation’s first mission in space.

The iCUBE-Q orbiter has two optical cameras that will gather images of the lunar surface.

‘Milestone’

The mission’s launch from China was carried live on Pakistan state television.

Calling it a “milestone,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said it would help the country build capacity in satellite communications and open new avenues for scientific research, economic development and national security, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Information.

The Pakistan-China friendship, Sharif said, has “gone beyond borders to reach space,” according to the official statement.

Beijing is one of Islamabad’s closest allies. Pakistan is home to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a multibillion-dollar development project that is part of Beijing’s Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative.

Pakistan’s navy in late April launched its first Hangor-class submarine, built jointly with China, with a ceremony in China’s Wuhan province.

According to the Washington-based U.S. Institute of Peace, Beijing is Islamabad’s leading supplier of conventional and strategic weapons platforms. China is also the dominant supplier of Pakistan’s higher-end offensive strike capabilities, the report found.

Some information for this report came from Reuters. 
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Окрім військового аспекту, за словами Брінк, збереження української економіки також вкрай важливе
…

…

WASHINGTON — The nation’s employers pulled back on their hiring in April but still added a decent 175,000 jobs in a sign that persistently high interest rates may be starting to slow the robust U.S. job market. 

Friday’s government report showed that last month’s hiring gain was down sharply from the blockbuster increase of 315,000 in March. And it was well below the 233,000 gain that economists had predicted for April. 

Yet the moderation in the pace of hiring, along with a slowdown last month in wage growth, will likely be welcomed by the Federal Reserve, which has kept interest rates at a two-decade high to fight persistently elevated inflation. Hourly wages rose a less-than-expected 0.2% from March and 3.9% from a year earlier, the smallest annual gain since June 2021. 

The Fed has been delaying any consideration of interest rate cuts until it gains more confidence that inflation is steadily slowing toward its target. Fed rate cuts would, over time, reduce the cost of mortgages, auto loans and other consumer and business borrowing. 

Stock futures jumped Friday after the jobs report was released on hopes that rate cuts might now be more likely sometime in the coming months. 

Even with the April hiring slowdown, last month’s job growth amounted to a solid increase, although it was the lowest monthly job growth since October. With the nation’s households continuing their steady spending, many employers have had to keep hiring to meet their customer demand. 

The unemployment rate ticked up 3.9% — the 27th straight month in which it has remained below 4%, the longest such streak since the 1960s. 

Last month’s hiring was led by health care companies, which added 56,000 jobs. Warehouse and transportation companies added 22,000 and retailers 20,000. 

The state of the economy is weighing on voters’ minds as the November presidential campaign intensifies. Despite the strength of the job market, Americans remain generally exasperated by high prices, and many of them assign blame to President Joe Biden. 

America’s job market has repeatedly proved more robust than almost anyone had predicted. When the Fed began aggressively raising rates two years ago to fight a punishing inflation surge, most economists expected the resulting jump in borrowing costs to cause a recession and drive unemployment to painfully high levels. 

The Fed raised its benchmark rate 11 times from March 2022 to July 2023, taking it to the highest level since 2001. Inflation did steadily cool as it was supposed to — from a year-over-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.5% in March. 

Yet the resilient strength of the job market and the overall economy, fueled by steady consumer spending, has kept inflation persistently above the Fed’s 2% target. 

The job market has been showing other signs of eventually slowing. This week, for example, the government reported that job openings fell in March to 8.5 million, the fewest in more than three years. Still, that is nevertheless a large number of vacancies: Before 2021, monthly job openings had never topped 8 million, a threshold they have now exceeded every month since March 2021. 

On a month-over-month basis, consumer inflation hasn’t declined since October. The 3.5% year-over-year inflation rate for March was still running well above the Fed’s 2% target. 
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До 2026 року «Райффайзен» має скоротити видачу кредитів клієнтам на 65% порівняно з третім кварталом 2023 року, таке ж скорочення має відбутися і в сегменті міжнародних платежів
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Kyiv, Ukraine — Ukraine has an AI-generated spokesperson called Victoria who will make official statements on behalf of its foreign ministry.

The ministry said on Wednesday that it would “for the first time in history” use a digital spokesperson to read its statements, which will still be written by humans.

Dressed in a dark suit, the spokesperson introduced herself as Victoria Shi, a “digital person,” in a presentation posted on social media.

The figure gesticulates with her hands and moves her head as she speaks.

The foreign ministry’s press service told AFP that the statements given by Shi would not be generated by AI but “written and verified by real people.”

“It’s only the visual part that the AI helps us to generate,” it said.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the new spokesperson was a “technological leap that no diplomatic service in the world has yet made.”

The main reason for creating her was “saving time and resources” for diplomats, he said.

Shi’s creators are a team called The Game Changers who have also made virtual reality content related to the war in Ukraine.

The spokesperson’s name is based on the word victory and the Ukrainian for artificial intelligence: shtuchniy intelekt.

Shi’s appearance and voice are modeled on a real person: Rosalie Nombre, a singer and former contestant on Ukraine’s version of The Bachelor reality show.

Nombre was born in the now Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

She has 54,000 followers on her Instagram account, which she uses to discuss stereotypes about mixed-race Ukrainians and those who grew up as Russian speakers.

The ministry said that Nombre took part free of charge.

It stressed that Shi and Nombre “are two different people” and that only the AI figure gives official statements.

To avoid fakes, these will be accompanied by a QR code linking them to text versions on the ministry’s website.

Shi will comment on consular services, currently a controversial topic.

Ukraine last week suspended such services for men of fighting age living abroad, making it necessary for them to return to their country for administrative procedures and potentially face the draft. 
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Bloomberg пише, до РФ що повернулося близько половини тих, хто виїхав після повномасштабного вторгнення до України та оголошення мобілізації
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STAVANGER, Norway — A convicted sex offender is asking the Norwegian Supreme Court to declare social media access is a human right.

The case before the court Thursday involves a man who molested a minor and used the Snapchat messaging app to connect with young boys.

The unnamed offender was sentenced last year to 13 months in prison and banned from using Snapchat for two years.

His lawyers argue that depriving him of his account is unlawful under the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case turns on how vital social media has become for freedom of expression, even though the court must decide the case through laws that predate such sites.

“The case raises important questions about the extent to which the state can restrict access to social media platforms, which are significant tools for exercising the right to freedom of expression and maintaining social connections,” defense lawyer John Christian Elden said.

A November 2023 appeal against the ban failed with the state successfully arguing the ban was “proportionately measured against the fact that the defendant has used Snapchat to exploit children sexually.” The Appeal Court added that he still had the right to use other social media. If the Supreme Court also upholds the decision, the offender could attempt to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

The European convention has been used before to test the limits on Norwegian justice. Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right extremist who murdered 77 people in 2011, lost a court challenge in February that argued being held in isolation while serving his prison sentence amounted to inhumane punishment under the convention.

Signatories to the ECHR agree to abide by 18 articles guaranteeing citizens rights including life, liberty and freedom of expression. Norway was the second country to ratify the convention in 1952, after the United Kingdom.

Snapchat, run by Snap Inc., allows users to send and receive messages that disappear once they are read. Users also can physically locate other users who opt in to location tracking.

Snap prohibits child sexual exploitation on the app but allows accounts to be create anonymously. In an email it said, “when we disable accounts for sexual exploitation and grooming behavior, we also take steps to block the associated device and other accounts connected to the user from creating another Snapchat account.”

Snap disabled 343,865 accounts connected with child sexual exploitation in the second half of 2023. It sanctioned 879 accounts in Norway though it is not clear how many of these were permanently disabled.

The Norwegian court will issue its ruling in the coming weeks.
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WASHINGTON — Hackers who breached UnitedHealth’s tech unit in February potentially stole data from a third of Americans, the largest U.S. health insurer’s CEO told a congressional committee on Wednesday.

Two congressional panels grilled CEO Andrew Witty about the cyberattack on the company’s Change Healthcare unit, which processes around 50% of all medical claims in the U.S.

The breach has caused widespread disruptions in claims processing, impacting patients and providers across the country.

Witty fielded heated questions from House Energy and Commerce Committee members about the company’s failure to prevent the breach and contain its fallout.

Pressed for details on the data compromised, Witty said protected health information and personally identifiable information pertaining to “maybe a third” of Americans was stolen.

“We continue to investigate the amount of data involved here,” he added. “We do think it’s going to be substantial.”

The cybercriminal gang AlphV hacked into Change on Feb. 12 using stolen login credentials on an older server that did not have multifactor authentication, Witty said.

“It was … a platform which had only recently become part of the company was in the process of being upgraded,” Witty said, referring to UnitedHealth’s $13 billion acquisition of Change in 2022.

The platform also did not have the security measures prescribed in a joint alert issued by the FBI and U.S. cyber and health officials in December 2023 to specifically warn about AlphV, or BlackCat, targeting healthcare organizations.

UnitedHealth paid the gang around $22 million in bitcoin as ransom, Witty said, adding that however there was no guarantee that the breached data was secure and could not still be leaked. Another hacking group claiming to be an offshoot of AlphV said last month it had a copy of the data, though the company has not verified that claim.

The Senate Finance Committee probed the outsized influence of UnitedHealth – which has a market capitalization of $445 billion and annual revenue of $372 billion – on American health care. But Witty said the company’s problems were not a threat to the broader economy.

Senator Bill Cassidy said senators on the panel “would have to ask, is the dominant role of United too dominant because it is into everything and messing up United messes up everybody?”

“My point is, the size of United becomes a it’s almost a too big to fail and sure, because if it fails, it’s going to bring down far more than it ordinarily would,” Cassidy said.

Witty said in response, “I don’t believe it is because actually despite our size, for example, we have no hospitals in America, we do not own any drug manufacturers.”

Yet, Change processes medical claims for around 900,000 physicians, 33,000 pharmacies, 5,500 hospitals and 600 laboratories in the U.S.

U.S. military members’ data was also stolen in the hack, Witty revealed, without saying how many of them were impacted.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden called the hack a national security threat.

“I believe the bigger the company, the bigger the responsibility to protect its systems from hackers. UHG was a big target long before it was hacked,” he added.

“UnitedHealth Group has not revealed how many patients’ private medical records were stolen, how many providers went without reimbursement, and how many seniors are unable to pick up their prescriptions as a result of the hack,” said Wyden.

In letters to both congressional committees, the American Hospital Association said an internal survey of its members found that 94% of hospitals reported damage to cash flow, and more than half reported “significant or serious” financial damage due to Change’s inability to process claims.

Similarly, 90% of respondents to an American Medical Association survey of doctors said they continue to lose revenue because of the hack, according to the group’s written testimony to the Senate Finance Committee.
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Washington — A majority of Americans believe that China uses TikTok to shape U.S. public opinion, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted as Washington moves closer to potentially banning the Chinese-owned short-video app.

Some 58% of respondents to the two-day poll, which closed on Tuesday, agreed with a statement that the Chinese government uses TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, to “influence American public opinion.” Some 13% disagreed, and the rest were unsure or didn’t answer the question. Republicans were more likely than Democrats to see China as using the app to affect U.S. opinions.

TikTok says it has spent more than $1.5 billion on data security efforts and would not share data on its 170 million U.S. users with the Chinese government. The company told Congress last year that it does “not promote or remove content at the request of the Chinese government.”

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Joe Biden last week signed legislation giving ByteDance 270 days to divest TikTok’s U.S. assets or face a ban.

TikTok has vowed to challenge the ban as a violation of the protections of free expression enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and TikTok users are expected to again take legal action. A U.S. judge in Montana in November blocked a state ban on TikTok, citing free-speech concerns.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll found 50% of Americans supported banning TikTok, while 32% opposed a ban and the rest were unsure. The poll only surveyed U.S. adults and doesn’t reflect the views of people under age 18, who make up a significant portion of TikTok’s users in the United States. About six in 10 poll respondents aged 40 and older supported a ban, compared with about four in 10 aged 18-39.

The poll showed 46% of Americans agreed with a statement that China is using the app to “spy on everyday Americas,” an allegation Beijing has denied.

The app is ubiquitous in America. Even Biden’s re-election campaign is using it as a tool to win over voters ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election. Biden’s rival, Republican Donald Trump, who has criticized a potential ban and is the majority owner of the company that operates his social media app Truth Social, has not joined.

A majority of Americans, 60%, said it was inappropriate for U.S. political candidates to use TikTok to promote their campaigns.

Biden’s signing of the law sets a Jan. 19 deadline for a sale — one day before his term is set to expire — but he could extend the deadline by three months if he determines that ByteDance is making progress on divesting the app.

The poll, which was conducted online, gathered responses from 1,022 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.
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The average income of people around the world will be cut by one-fifth because of climate change by the middle of the century, according to a new report by Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, published in the journal Nature. Henry Ridgwell has more.
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Експорт у квітні сягнув 3,3 млрд доларів
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Опоненти закону кажуть, що сильно залежать від доходів від реклами, а також висловлюють побоювання черз загрозу свободі слова
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Washington — U.S. consumers appear less optimistic about the jobs market and more worried about future financial conditions, bringing a closely watched confidence metric to its lowest level since July 2022, a survey showed Tuesday.

The consumer confidence index fell to 97.0 in April, said The Conference Board, significantly below the 104.0 reading that analysts anticipated.

This marks the third straight month consumer confidence has worsened, the report said, and comes as President Joe Biden struggles to boost perceptions about the economy as his reelection campaign ramps up.

“Consumers became less positive about the current labor market situation, and more concerned about future business conditions, job availability, and income,” said Dana Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board.

But she added that despite the slip, “optimism about the present situation continues to more than offset concerns about the future.”

The biggest worries surrounded “elevated price levels, especially for food and gas,” said Peterson.

Meanwhile, politics and global conflicts were “distant runners-up,” she added.

While consumers rated current business conditions “positively,” their views of the labor market weakened with more reporting that jobs are hard to get, said The Conference Board.

Consumers also became less upbeat about their families’ financial situations, both currently and in the future.

“Perceptions about the labor market deteriorated even as job growth remains robust, and the unemployment rate is historically low,” noted Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.

“A deteriorating trend in sentiment could persist,” she cautioned.

This risks bogging down spending and growth, given that inflation remains persistent and interest rate cuts are “not imminent,” she said.
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Paris, France — G7 environment ministers committed on Tuesday to ramp up the production and deployment of battery storage technology, an essential component for increasing renewable energy and combating climate change.  

Here is how and why batteries play a vital role in the energy transition:   

Growing demand

Batteries have been central to the rise of electric vehicles (EVs) but are also critical to wind and solar power because of the intermittent nature of these energy sources.  

Surplus electricity must be stored in batteries to stabilize distribution regardless of peaks in demand, or breaks in supply at night or during low winds.   

Battery deployment in the energy sector last year increased more than 130 percent from 2022, according to a report released last week by the International Energy Agency (IEA).    

The main markets are China, the European Union and the United States. 

Following closely are Britain, South Korea, Japan and developing nations in Africa, where solar and storage technology is seen as the gateway to energy access.  

Six-fold goal

To triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030 — a goal set at the UN climate conference in December — the IEA says a six-fold increase in battery storage will be necessary.  

Clean energy is essential to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and to hope to keep the international target of restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.   

The total storage capacity required to achieve this target is an estimated 1,500 gigawatts by 2030.  

Of this, 1,200 GW will need to be supplied by batteries.

Cost challenges

In less than 15 years, the cost of batteries has fallen by 90 percent.  

“The combination of solar PV and batteries is today competitive with new coal plants in India. And just in the next few years, it will be cheaper than new coal in China and gas-fired power in the United States,” IEA chief Fatih Birol said last week.   

“But still the pace is not fast enough to reach our goals in terms of climate change and energy security.”  

Costs will have to come down further, he said, while calling for supply chains to be diversified.   

Most batteries are currently produced by China.   

But some 40 percent of planned battery manufacturing projects are in the United States and Europe, according to the IEA.   

If those projects are realized, they would be nearly sufficient to meet the needs of those countries.

Metal matters

Another thorny issue is the availability of critical metals like lithium and cobalt that are essential to make batteries.  

Experts say the development chemical alternatives could complement the dominant lithium-ion technology.  

“Transition in the technology will reduce the amount of lithium” needed, said Brent Wanner, head of the IEA’s power sector unit, adding, “this includes shifting to sodium-ion batteries.” 

Beyond 2030, high-density solid-state batteries that offer a longer lifespan are expected to become commercially available. 

There are other storage options, although not as widely applicable or available as batteries.

Pumped storage hydropower has long been used in the hydroelectric sector.

The transformation of electricity into hydrogen, which can be stored and transported, is a new technology expected to become more readily available. 

Be flexible

Renewable energy is not entirely reliant on storage and measures can be taken to improve the flexibility of its production to meet demands.   

Industry and governments are gearing up for the transition.   

The European Union’s Energy Regulators Agency called on member states in September to assess their “flexibility potential” based on estimates that renewables will need to double by 2030.   

Such a rise requires greater “flexibility” in grids, meaning energy can be stored and distributed consistently despite fluctuating production and demand.   

The G7 said Tuesday it would not only support more production and use of battery storage, but promote technological advancements in the sector as well as grid infrastructure.

 
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Images of African senior citizens walking a fashion runway created a buzz on social media, with AI-generated pictures challenging traditional depictions of elderly Africans. VOA’s Karina Choudhury has all the looks in this week’s episode of LogOn. Videographer: Samuel Okocha
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