Deep-Sea Mining 101: Everything You Need to Know

Deep-Sea Mining 101: Everything You Need to Know

Quick Key Facts

• The ocean covers more than 70 percent of the surface of the planet.
• The deep sea makes up 90 percent of the total marine environment and is the largest biome on Earth.
• More than 5,000 marine species live in the Pacific Ocean’s Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a focus area of deep-sea mining.
• Several countries — including Canada, France and New Zealand — have called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining.
• Deep-sea mining is not necessary to obtain the critical minerals needed for the renewable energy transition.
• Demand for critical minerals can be reduced by 58 percent by 2050 through the use of new technologies, circular economy strategies and increased recycling.
• 90% of electronic waste is dumped or illegally traded.

6 of the Largest U.S. Banks Leaving Net Zero Alliance Ahead of Trump

6 of the Largest U.S. Banks Leaving Net Zero Alliance Ahead of Trump

Six of the largest banks in the United States have bowed out of the global Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), with the inauguration of Donald Trump predicted to bring political backlash concerning climate action, reported The Guardian.

The latest to withdraw is JP Morgan, which followed Citigroup and Bank of America. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo have also left the United Nations-sponsored NZBA since the beginning of December.

Bank of America and Wells Fargo skyscrapers in Los Angeles, California in 2020. vesperstock / iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus

“JPMC is ending our membership in the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). We will continue to work independently to advance the interests of our Firm, our shareholders and our clients and remain focused on pragmatic solutions to help further low-carbon technologies while advancing energy security. We will also continue to support the banking and investment needs of our clients who are engaged in energy transition and in decarbonizing different sectors of the economy,” a spokesperson for JPMorganChase said in a statement provided to ESG Today.

The defections from NZBA come on the heels of exits from similar groups in the finance industry. In 2023, GOP litigation threats led to a mass exodus from an insurers’ net zero alliance, Bloomberg reported. And an asset managers climate organization disbanded from Vanguard Group — the second-largest money manager in the world — in 2022.

The breakup of worldwide climate associations has forced the regrouping of those in charge. The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) serves as a finance industry net zero umbrella organization, and it ended last year with a message that it was going to distance itself from the other alliances. According to the latest update from GFANZ, it plans to make its advice available to financial firms that have made no commitment to a net zero pact, as well as those that have.

JPMorgan said on Tuesday that it plans to “continue engaging with GFANZ, among others, to advance pragmatic solutions and market conditions that can help further a low-carbon and energy-secure future,” as reported by Bloomberg.

Climate misinformation is exploding — and Canadian politicians are spreading it

Climate misinformation is exploding — and Canadian politicians are spreading it

Like climate change itself, conspiracy theories and misinformation are growing crises. And where they intersect with the environment, the problem seems to spread like wildfire — one that might be caused by laser beams, eco-terrorists or the Canadian government, depending who you ask. 

Year after year, poll after poll has consistently shown a majority of Canadians believe in human-caused climate change. But across the country, Conservative politicians are fomenting weariness and skepticism about climate science to appeal to their bases and undermine their opponents — and it appears to be working. 

The BC Conservative party, which won 44 seats in the recent provincial election, narrowly losing to the embattled NDP, is led by John Rustad — a man who has called global warming due to carbon emissions “a lie” and said climate action was part of an agenda to reduce the world’s population. 

During the election campaign, Rustad acknowledged climate change was “real” but stressed that in his view it was “not a crisis”. His party, which had not held a single seat since 1979, shot from 1.9 per cent of the popular vote in 2020 to 43.3 per cent in 2024, cannibalizing support from the imploded BC United party and winning over scores of voters furious with the status quo.

Rustad’s strong showing came just over a year after a national poll conducted in July 2023, in the midst of Canada’s worst wildfire season on record. It found 58 per cent of British Columbians were convinced human activity was responsible for climate change — a lower share than residents of Ontario, Quebec or the Atlantic region.

New York Interactive Restaurant Guide - RG Richardson

 New York Interactive Restaurant Guide

Our interactive city guides do the searching, no more typing just pick an icon and click and they never go out of date.
12,900 preset searches all you have to do is pick and click.
Search for restaurants, wine, hotels, hostels, pubs, clubs, fast-food, take-out, historical sites and facts all just by clicking on the icon.
Search with Google, Bing, Yahoo, Brave, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest.
Connect to the internet or WiFi at the coffee shop and search for everything you want to know about the city.
Preset search settings get you the results you need and now avoid typing errors and get the results you are looking for.
All guides search in 10 languages including Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Indian, Portuguese and Japanese!
Never out of date! Google App (IOS and Android) for phones, pads, PC and Kindle on Amazon.
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Amazon puts its drone deliveries on hold following two crash incidents

Amazon puts its drone deliveries on hold following two crash incidents

Amazon's drones won't be making any deliveries in the foreseeable future. According to Bloomberg, the company has paused all commercial drone deliveries in Texas and Arizona after a previously undisclosed event in which two of Amazon's MK30 drones had crashed at the Pendleton, Oregon airport it uses for testing. MK30 is the company's next-gen drone model, which is lighter and has a longer range than its predecessor, the MK27. The incidents took place in December, with one of the drones even catching fire after it fell. Amazon reportedly determined that its drones crashed due a software issue that's linked to the light rain drizzling at the time the tests were being conducted. 

The company said, however, that the crashes weren't the "primary reason" why it's putting its drone deliveries on hold. Amazon spokesperson Sam Stephenson told Bloomberg that it's "currently in the process of making software changes to the drone" and that the operational pause is voluntary. After the updates are completed, Amazon still has to secure an approval from the Federal Aviation Administration before it can resume its operations. "Employees at the drone sites, who were told of the action Friday, will continue to be paid during the pause," Stephenson added. 

In addition to the crashes in December, two MK30 drones collided during another test a few months earlier. Stephenson explained that Amazon expects to see incidents like these during testing and that they help the company improve the service's safety. Amazon has been sending out non-medical shipments via drones in Texas since 2022 before adding prescription medication a year later. In 2024, Amazon halted drone deliveries in California, but it also launched the service in Phoenix, Arizona. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/amazon-puts-its-drone-deliveries-on-hold-following-two-crash-incidents-140026835.html?src=rss

• 

Larry Ellison wraps up banner year

 Larry Ellison has banner year as Oracle gains most since dot-com boom

It’s been a good year for Larry Ellison.

Oracle’s co-founder has gained roughly $75 billion in paper wealth as the software company he started in 1979 enjoyed its biggest stock rally since 1999 and the dot-com boom.

While the S&P 500 index has gained 27% in 2024, Oracle shares have shot up 63%, lifting Ellison’s net worth to more than $217 billion, according to Forbes, behind only Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos among the world’s richest people.

At 80, Ellison is a senior citizen in the tech industry, where his fellow billionaire founders are generally decades younger. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose net worth has also ballooned past $200 billion, is half his age.

But Ellison has found the fountain of youth both personally and professionally. After being divorced several times, Ellison was reported this month to be involved with a 33-year-old woman. And at a meeting with analysts in Las Vegas in September, Ellison was as engaged as ever, mentioning offhand that the night before, he and his son were having dinner with his good friend Musk, who’s advising President-elect Donald Trump (then the Republican nominee) while running Tesla and his other ventures.

His big financial boon has come from Oracle, which has maneuvered its way into the artificial intelligence craze with its cloud infrastructure technology and has made its databases more accessible.

ChatGPT creator OpenAI said in June that it will use Oracle’s cloud infrastructure. Earlier this month, Oracle said it had also picked up business from Meta.

Startups, which often opt for market leader Amazon Web Services when picking a cloud, have been engaging Oracle as well. Last year, video generation startup Genmo set up a system to train an AI model with Nvidia graphics processing units, or GPUs, in Oracle’s cloud, CEO Paras Jain said. Genmo now relies on the Oracle cloud to produce videos based on the prompts that users type in on its website.

“Oracle produced a different product than what you can get elsewhere with GPU computing,” Jain said. The company offers “bare metal” computers that can sometimes yield better performance than architectures that employ server virtualization, he said.

In its latest earnings report earlier this month, Oracle came up short of analysts’ estimates and issued a forecast that was also weaker than Wall Street was expecting. The next day, the stock fell 7% in the worst performance of the year, eating into the gains for 2024.

“Justin Trudeau: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”

 “I agree Mark Carney would be a poor choice [to replace Trudeau]. Besides being closely associated with international banking and business interests, in my opinion he comes across as an intellectual who might have difficulty connecting with voters. But Mr. Merner’s conclusion that Christy Clark would be a good bet is (again, my opinion) laughably in error. Her years as premier of B.C. demonstrated to this voter that she was very right-wing, mercurial, egotistical and just plain hard to put up with. I would be concerned she would be more apt to collude with Poilievre than to oppose him. I also disagree that Chrystia Freeland is tarnished by her association with Trudeau. The ‘Minister of Everything’ demonstrated competence at every turn. She also demonstrated admirable loyalty — until she couldn’t. Her departure left no doubts as to her points of disagreement and also displayed her inherent common sense. We know she gets under Trump’s skin, who better to needle him into a fit of apoplexy?”

Sent in by Karla, in response to “Justin Trudeau: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”

Trump engaged in ‘criminal effort’ to overturn 2020 election

 

Special counsel report found Trump engaged in ‘criminal effort’ to overturn 22020 election

By Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch

January 14, 20253:53 AM PST Updated 27 min ago

Special Counsel Jack Smith's signature is seen on a revised indictment in the 2020 election subversion case against Donald Trump after U.S. prosecutors obtained the indictment in Washington, U.S., August 27, 2024. U.S. Department of Justice/Handout via REUTERS/, opens new tab

• Summary
• 
  

• Smith's report details Trump's alleged election obstruction, document retention
• Trump's cases dropped due to DOJ policy against prosecuting sitting presidents
• Courts reject Trump's attempt to block report release before his return to office

WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith concluded that Donald Trump engaged in an "unprecedented criminal effort" to hold on to power after losing the 2020 election, but was thwarted in bringing the case to trial by the president-elect's November election victory, according to a report published on Tuesday.

The report details Smith's decision to bring a four-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of plotting to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden.

It concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency, set for Jan. 20, made that impossible.

Smith, who has faced relentless criticism from Trump, also defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it.

"The claim from Mr. Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable," Smith wrote in a letter detailing his report. After the release, Trump, in a post on his Truth Social site, called Smith a "lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election."

Trump's lawyers, in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland made public by the Justice Department, called the report a "politically-motivated attack" and said releasing it ahead of Trump's return to the White House would harm the presidential transition.

Much of the evidence cited in the report has been previously made public.

But it includes some new details, such as that prosecutors considered charging Trump with inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol under a U.S. law known as the Insurrection Act.

Prosecutors ultimately concluded that such a charge posed legal risks and there was insufficient evidence that Trump intended for the "full scope" of violence during the riot, a failed attempt by a mob of his supporters to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election.

The indictment charged Trump with conspiring to obstruct the election certification, defraud the United States of accurate election results and deprive U.S. voters of their voting rights.

Smith's office determined that charges may have been justified against some co-conspirators accused of helping Trump carry out the plan, but the report said prosecutors reached no final conclusions.

Several of Trump's former lawyers had previously been identified as co-conspirators referenced in the indictment.

A second section of the report details Smith’s case accusing Trump of illegally retaining sensitive national security documents after leaving the White House in 2021.

The Justice Department has committed not to make that portion public while legal proceedings continue against two Trump associates charged in the case.

Smith, who left the Justice Department last week, dropped both cases against Trump after he won last year’s election, citing a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Neither reached a trial.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges. Regularly assailing Smith as "deranged," Trump depicted the cases as politically motivated attempts to damage his campaign and political movement.

Trump and his two former co-defendants in the classified documents case sought to block the release of the report, days before Trump is set to return to office on Jan. 20. Courts rebuffed their demands to prevent its publication altogether.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the documents case, has ordered the Justice Department for now to halt plans to allow certain senior members of Congress to privately review the documents section of the report.

Prosecutors gave a detailed view of their case against Trump in previous court filings. A congressional panel in 2022 published its own 700-page account of Trump’s actions following the 2020 election.

Both investigations concluded that Trump spread false claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 election and pressured state lawmakers not to certify the vote, and ultimately, also sought to use fraudulent groups of electors pledged to vote for Trump, in states actually won by Biden, in a bid to stop Congress from certifying Biden's win.

The effort culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in a failed attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote.

Smith's case faced legal hurdles even before Trump's election win. It was paused for months while Trump pressed his claim that he could not be prosecuted for official actions taken as president.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority largely sided with him, granting former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.

The Rise of Trump’s Thugs? - Thom Hartmann

The Rise of Trump’s Thugs?

Trump has long admired dictators who weaponize civilian gangs to crush dissent. Will his next chapter involve unleashing his own militias to terrorize the American public?

Thom Hartmann Jan 9 One of the most common characteristics of rule by an authoritarian who’s taken over a democracy is his use of unofficial civilian paramilitary groups and militia gangs to terrorize or even kill his political opponents. Back in the day, Hitler had his Brownshirts, Mussolini his Blackshirts. The practice has since become far more widespread — routine, almost — as we can see across multiple formerly democratic nations taken over — by election — during the past three decades: — Putin uses a nationwide biker gang called the Night Wolves, who terrorize and often kill people who speak out against him. He also used the Wagner Group for these purposes against high-profile political and business targets. — In India, Narendra Modi is supported by a rightwing gang known as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which is alleged to even lynch Modhi’s religious critics. — Rodrigo Duterte, in the Philippines, had a group known as The Death Squad who murdered his political opponents, usually claiming they were drug dealers (police killed the actual drug dealers). — Erdoğan’s Turkish goons are called the Ülkü Ocakları, aka the Gray Wolves, who often burst into homes in the middle of the night to beat suspected dissidents and journalists. — In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro had multiple rightwing groups who intimidated and killed people who offended him, the Escritório do Crime or Crime Office being the most notorious. — Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro’s paramilitary rightwing thugs are a group called the Colectivos, famous for assaulting people in broad daylight, kidnappings, and even burning people out of their homes. — In Hungary, Viktor Orbán relies on several civilian vigilante groups to terrorize gays, liberals, immigrants, and Roma people: The Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda), Outlaws' Army (Betyársereg), and the Legio Hungaria. Which raises the question: Does Trump plan to do the same as the rightwing authoritarians he has so often visited, praised, and sought to emulate in other ways? After all, he already considers himself part of the international strongman club: Jair Bolsonaro fled to Mar-a-Lago when he was accused of sedition and Trump just invited him to his inauguration; Bob Woodward says Trump has been having private phone conversations with Putin for at least the past two years (as has, reportedly, Musk); Orbán visited Mar-a-Lago just a few weeks ago; Trump has often praised Modi (calling him a “total killer”); and expressed admiration for Duterte, who he said did “an unbelievable job on the drug problem.” And he already has three major (and dozens of minor) white supremacist militia groups who openly support him: — At Enrique Tarrio’s trial for sedition at the Capitol, the federal prosecutor, Conor Mulroe, was blunt: “The Proud Boys were lined up behind Donald Trump and willing to commit violence on his behalf. … These defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power no matter what the law or the courts had to say about it.” — The Three Percenters have provided security for Trump’s rallies and many members were involved in the 2020 insurrection attempt. — Oath Keepers provided personal security for Roger Stone and Alex Jones on January 6th, as well as for Trump at rallies in Texas, Minnesota, and Washington, DC. Is this why Trump is planning to let so many violent January 6th rightwing gang members out of prison?

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The man who helped roll back abortion rights-Leonard Leo

 https://www.npr.org/2024/11/24/nx-s1-5199049/federalist-society-conservative-supreme-court The man who helped roll back abortion rights now wants to 'crush liberal dominance'.

Leonard Leo may not be a household name, but odds are most people in the country know his signature achievement:

Leo was a key architect of the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court that rolled back the federal right to an abortion.

The conservative activist advised President-elect Donald Trump during his first term on the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The three picks gave conservatives their 6-3 majority on the high court. And all of them voted to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision.

For decades, as a leading figure in the Federalist Society and other conservative legal groups, Leo identified and promoted the careers of lawyers and law clerks who shared his views of the constitution.

The Matt Gaetz Report Is a Reminder That Investigations Actually Matter

 Two damning investigations are a stark reminder of what we stand to lose. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/12/matt-gaetz-ethics-report-clarence-thomas-harlan-crow.html?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=traffic&utm_source=article&utm_content=twitter_share via @slate

New permit needed as of today for Canadians flying to UK, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland

 

New permit needed as of today for Canadians flying across the pond

A digital pre-screening requirement is now in effect for short-term travellers to the U.K.

Gwyneth Egan · CBC News · Posted: Jan 08, 2025 8:39 AM PST | Last Updated: January 8

Without an ETA, travellers could be turned away and sent back to Canada, says Wayne Smith, the director of the Institute for Hospitality and Tourism Research at Toronto Metropolitan University. (Jane Robertson/CBC)

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Starting today, Canadians with short-term travel plans to England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland will need an electronic travel authorization — or an ETA.

Travellers planning to visit the United Kingdom for less than six months will be asked to submit information such as their passport details, dates of travel and modes of transportation, which will be reviewed by authorities.

The digital pre-screening is new for Canadians flying to the U.K., but a similar system has been in place since 2016 for people from several other countries who travel by air to Canada.

It's "kind of like doing a pre-approval for a credit card," said Wayne Smith, the director of the Institute for Hospitality and Tourism Research at Toronto Metropolitan University. 

'It allows all the governments to be more interconnected and talking to one another and sharing information,' says Wayne Smith. (CBC)

The system will run applicants' information through a worldwide database before granting approval, Smith told CBC P.E.I.'s Island Morning. 

"It allows all the governments to be more interconnected and talking to one another and sharing information," he said. 

"It creates a much more secure security blanket for everyone involved." 

A growing trend 

Electronic travel authorizations are becoming more common around the world.

"This will be prevalent globally in a few years," Smith said. 

Twenty-seven countries in the EU are expected to launch a similar system by the end of this year. Smith said he fully expects to see ETAs implemented in the U.S. during Donald Trump's presidency, too.

The new ETA requirement to travel to the U.K. isn't the first of its kind. This country has had a similar requirement for people from several other countries flying into Canada since 2016. (Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

The system is meant to assist with concerns about immigration and refugee status, he said. 

"You could check if someone has, for example, gone to three different countries and claimed refugee status. Or you can check… if they've come and actually been denied visas in other places before, if people have overstayed their visas in other countries," Smith said.

"All those things will now be... caught before the person even leaves their home country."  

'The price of travelling'

The application costs £10, or about $18 Cdn. But there's no guarantee those prices will remain at that level. Since tourists are the ones paying the application fees, Smith said politicians can easily raise the costs. 

"Once they're in the system and they're paying for the system, all of a sudden I could see those things rising quite dramatically," he said. 

"People wouldn't necessarily blink at paying $50 for that — it's the price of travelling." 

Another possibility Smith said wouldn't surprise him is that the fees could take on dynamic pricing, with certain times of the year being more expensive to travel than others. 

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Accessibility is also concern, said Smith. 

"I have a 78-year-old mother that hates technology in every single way, and so something like this would be a real barrier to her travelling," he said. 

"All these things can be very frustrating to a lot of people and make travel inaccessible." 

Smith said travel agents are making a comeback, and helping people submit their ETA applications is another service they could offer. 

A word of advice

Approvals for ETA applications can take as little as 10 minutes, said Smith, but that doesn't mean people should take the risk of waiting for their flight to land before submitting their application.

Without the authorization, travellers could be turned away and sent back to the country they came from, he said. 

"I would highly recommend anyone do this multiple weeks before you go, just like any other visas," Smith said. "Make sure you have everything, that you have copies of things, that you take a screenshot of your approval." 

Once an authorization has been approved, it will last for two years and can be used as many times as desired during that time. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gwyneth Egan