After India Snubs China, Tibet Tears Apart Beijing's 'Golden Urn' Tradition To Pick Dalai Successor
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Iran, Ukraine and other issues in a 'frank and constructive' phone call. This was their 6th publicly disclosed chat since Trump returned to the White House. The Russian leader emphasised that Moscow will seek to achieve its goals in Ukraine and remove the 'root causes' of the conflict. While discussing the situation around Iran and in the broader Middle East, Putin emphasised the need to resolve all differences 'exclusively by political and diplomatic means,' said Yuri Ushakov, his foreign affairs adviser. Watch for more details.
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BRICS powers align on bold joint statement for Rio summit in show of unity, consensus
This cohesion within BRICS stands in stark contrast to the recent G7 summit in Canada, where Western unity on supporting Ukraine against Russia seemingly collapsed read more FILE - From left, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira attend the Outreach/BRICS Plus format session at the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (Maxim Shemetov, Pool Photo via AP, File) Diplomats from the BRICS countries have reportedly agreed to a common declaration to be tabled at the Rio de Janeiro leaders' summit in a sign of unity and consensus among the diverse group. News agency Reuters reported that the breakthrough came after a similar attempt fell flat in April during the meeting of BRICS foreign ministers. The agreement on a common declaration is a major step, especially as world powers get divided on various global issues and the group becomes more diverse with new members coming in. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD For instance, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates last year joined the five initial members of the BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. To bridge internal divides, BRICS members reportedly agreed to back Brazil and India for permanent seats on a reformed UN Security Council. However, the question of Africa's representation remains unresolved, with no member endorsed to champion the continent's interests. Sources also indicate that BRICS is poised to take a firmer stance on issues of West Asia, moving beyond vague expressions of concern to more precise language in its final communique. On the economic front, the group is expected to continue criticising protectionist trade policies, particularly the US tariffs introduced under President Donald Trump. In April, BRICS ministers condemned 'unjustified unilateral protectionist actions,' a sentiment likely to be reiterated at this week's summit. Stark contrast with G7 This cohesion within BRICS stands in stark contrast to the recent G7 summit in Canada, where Western unity on supporting Ukraine against Russia seemingly collapsed. The G7 meeting in Kananaskis, Alberta, ended on June 17 without a joint statement condemning Russia's war against Ukraine, now over three years old. Efforts to push for peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin have stalled, despite unprecedented sanctions. Notably, Trump, who took office earlier this year, refused to sign a declaration with strong language against Russia's invasion and has neither imposed new sanctions nor committed more than $50 million in additional weapons aid to Ukraine. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Mint
an hour ago
- Mint
The moment the clean-energy boom ran into ‘drill, baby, drill'
Southern Energy Management is bracing for whiplash. The Raleigh-based home-solar-panel installation company grew steadily in recent years, thanks in part to tax credits in former President Joe Biden's landmark 2022 climate law. Now, Chief Executive Will Etheridge says his 190-person company's residential solar sales could plunge in 2026 by as much as half. President Trump's megabill, which he signed into law Friday, ends the subsidies later this year. Etheridge's plans to buy more supplies from factories in North Carolina and elsewhere are on hold. 'Now, I'm not thinking about that at all," he said. 'I'm trying to think about how to save North Carolina jobs." A wave of government spending that swept through the U.S. economy in recent years is about to recede. Biden's climate law threw subsidies behind wind and solar power, electric vehicles and other green projects that federal forecasters said would total nearly $400 billion. Outside analysts projected the ultimate spending would be even greater. Investors jumped into renewables stocks, while local governments and labor unions clamored for new projects. Trump's 'big, beautiful bill" will turn off that spigot as part of a push to extend the tax cuts enacted in his first term. Credits for EVs and home solar panels are slated to end in the coming months. Incentives to develop or produce renewable energy will wind down within years. The legislation, meanwhile, boosts the prospects for fossil-fuel production on public lands, a boon to oil-and-gas drillers that are pumping record supplies and posting bumper profits. Biden's law tried to build a bridge to an economy more oriented around renewable energy, said Tracy Stone-Manning, president of the Wilderness Society, a group that aims to protect public lands. 'What [Trump's] is doing is blowing the bridge up," said Stone-Manning, who was director of the Bureau of Land Management in the Biden administration. The clashing visions have left many developers and workers around the country in a lurch. Clean-energy executives expected regulatory changes under any new administration. Some warn, though, that the swift rollback of much of a previously passed law will create a new level of uncertainty for future investment and raise financing costs down the road. 'You're going to strand a lot of capital, and you're going to put a lot of people out of business by changing the chessboard right in the middle of the game," said Reagan Farr, chief executive of solar developer Silicon Ranch. 'That's something as a country that we've been good about until now." Trump's spending bill—which the Congressional Budget Office expects will cut more than half a trillion dollars in tax incentives over the next decade—isn't as extreme as some renewables advocates feared. A proposed tax on wind and solar projects was stripped by the Senate. Lawmakers also extended through 2027 a phaseout of credits for renewable energy investment and production. That could give some ongoing construction runway to continue. But deals still in negotiation or in the early stages of development could be caught in no-man's-land, said Farr, whose company's projects include several solar arrays in Georgia and Tennessee to power Meta Platforms data centers. 'They're not things that you just throw up in six months and you're done," he said. The policy changes could reduce investment by about $500 billion across electricity and clean fuels production by 2035, according to preliminary estimates by the Princeton University-led REPEAT Project. Renewables proponents fear the upshot will be higher bills for Americans living through a once-in-a-generation surge in power demand tied to the mania over artificial intelligence. Although Trump's campaign pledged to lower Americans' energy costs, some oil-and-gas executives have said privately that they understood his 'drill, baby, drill" rallying cry as an economic organizing principle, rather than a push to bore more wells through shale rock. Analysts say the new legislation will have limited immediate impact on already record-breaking U.S. fossil-fuel production. The new bill would help protect fossil fuels from more competition. Oil drillers last week operated 12% fewer rigs than they did at the start of the year, according to Baker Hughes. Pointing to languishing commodity prices and new tariffs on imported steel, nearly half of the oil-and-gas executives polled by the Dallas Fed in June said they expect to drill fewer wells in 2025 than initially expected. Longer term, however, measures such as expanded federal leases, cheaper royalties and the end of Biden-era tax credits will help shield fossil fuels from more competition. That could be particularly beneficial to producers of natural gas, who are jockeying with renewables developers to fuel the power-hungry AI boom. If 'repealing these subsidies will 'kill' their industry, then maybe it shouldn't exist in the first place," Tom Pyle, president of the pro-oil-and-gas group American Energy Alliance, said in a statement. Already, renewable stocks have been thrashed in recent years by inflationary shock and stubbornly high interest rates. Arduous permitting processes and supply-chain snafus busted project timelines. Costs spiraled. Local officials have feared a pullback in tax credits—and in turn a disappearing customer base for new manufacturers—for the better part of a year. Businesses ended or scaled back an estimated $15.5 billion worth of clean-energy projects in the first five months of the year, according to advocacy group E2. Among those affected were a Georgia battery plant, a Washington-state solar supplier and an offshore-wind-cable factory in Massachusetts. The cancellations spanned projects that promised to create roughly 12,000 jobs. Executives and labor leaders fear turbulence ahead will leave more Americans, including Cierra Pearl, out of work. The 29-year-old Mainer started an apprentice program last year with her local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union and was soon building racks and installing panels on solar arrays. At $23.18 an hour plus overtime, the paychecks were her biggest ever. But Pearl was laid off in early May after developers hit pause. Now, with dimming hope for future projects, she is burning some of her $595 in weekly unemployment benefits on gas to drive to job interviews. 'I've felt hopeless a lot lately," Pearl said. It is not just financial stability that she lost, she added. 'It's dignity." Write to David Uberti at
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First Post
an hour ago
- First Post
BRICS nations voice 'serious concern' over Trump Tariffs as China skips the Summit in Brazil
Emerging nations, which represent about half the world's population and 40 percent of global economic output, have united over 'serious concerns' about US import tariffs read more A photo ceremony before a plenary session of the Brics summit in Kazan, Russia. File Image /Reuters BRICS leaders meeting in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday are expected to decry US President Donald Trump's 'indiscriminate' trade tariffs, saying they are illegal and risk hurting the global economy. Emerging nations, which represent about half the world's population and 40 percent of global economic output, have united over 'serious concerns' about US import tariffs, according to a draft summit statement obtained by AFP on Saturday. Since coming to office in January, Trump has threatened allies and rivals alike with a slew of punitive duties. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD His latest salvo comes in the form of letters informing trading partners of new tariff rates that will soon enter into force. The draft summit declaration does not mention the United States or its president by name, and could yet be amended by leaders gathering for talks Sunday and Monday. But it is a clear political shot directed at Washington from 11 emerging nations, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. 'We voice serious concerns about the rise of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures which distort trade and are inconsistent with WTO (World Trade Organization) rules,' the draft text says. It warns that such measures 'threaten to further reduce global trade' and are 'affecting the prospects for global economic development.' Xi no show Conceived two decades ago as a forum for fast-growing economies, the BRICS have come to be seen as a Chinese-driven counterbalance to Western power. But the summit's political punch will be depleted by the absence of China's Xi Jinping, who is skipping the annual meeting for the first time in his 12 years as president. That absence has prompted fevered speculation in some quarters. 'The simplest explanation may hold the most explanatory power. Xi recently hosted Lula in Beijing,' said Ryan Hass, a former China director at the US National Security Council who is now with the Brookings Institution think tank. The Chinese leader will not be the only notable absentee. War crime-indicted Russian President Vladimir Putin is also opting to stay away, but will participate via video link, according to the Kremlin. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Hass said Putin's non-attendance and the fact that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be a guest of honor in Brazil could also be factors in Xi's absence. 'Xi does not want to appear upstaged by Modi,' who will receive a state lunch, he said. 'I expect Xi's decision to delegate attendance to Premier Li (Qiang) rests amidst these factors.' Still, the Xi no-show is a blow to host President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who wants Brazil to play a bigger role on the world stage. In the year to November 2025, Brazil will have hosted a G20 summit, a BRICS summit, and COP30 international climate talks, all before heading into fiercely contested presidential elections next year, in which he is expected to run. Lula warmly welcomed leaders and dignitaries on Saturday, including China's Premier Li Qiang, as the leftist president hosted a pre-summit business forum in Rio. 'Faced with the resurgence of protectionism, it is up to emerging countries to defend the multilateral trade regime and reform the international financial architecture,' Lula told the event. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian, whose nation is still reeling from a 12-day conflict with Israel, is also skipping the meeting and will be represented by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. A source familiar with the negotiations said Iran had sought a tougher condemnation of Israel and the United States over their recent bombing of Iranian military, nuclear and other sites. But one diplomatic source said the text would give the 'same message' that BRICS delivered last month. Then Iran's allies expressed 'grave concern' about strikes against Iran, but did not explicitly mention Israel or the United States. Artificial intelligence and health will also be on the agenda at the summit. Original members of the bloc Brazil, Russia, India, and China have been joined by South Africa and, more recently, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia.
