US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev: If the events in Kiev vindicate the US in its strategies for helping other people win elections and take power from anti-democratic regimes, it is certain to try to repeat the exercise elsewhere in the post-Soviet world. The places to watch are Moldova and the authoritarian countries of central Asia. - 2004 The Guardian
China has long been trying to have a bigger say in the pricing of commodities: -When Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (0388.HK), opens new tab splashed $2.2 billion to acquire the London Metal Exchange in 2012, the Asian bourse pledged to support the British trading venue by connecting it with China, the world’s biggest commodity importer. More than a decade later, however, the LME has made little progress on that promise and is instead faced with the risk that Beijing uses a new nickel contract to wrestle key benchmarking power from its control. But replicating LME’s global network of warehouses looks tricky…China’s top role as consumer and producer supports its greater involvement in pricing. - Reuters
MOSCOW, RUSSIA — Russia is urging the BRICS, a trade alliance of nine emerging countries, to establish an inter-bloc grain exchange. The officially declared purpose of the alliance is to facilitate trade between member states, but analysts warn that the new structure will aim to become an analogue of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for the global grain market, with the goal of influencing free pricing. - World Grain
US Imposes Sanctions on Use of Russian Metals on Exchanges: Palladium and titanium, two metals where Russia is a particularly significant supplier, are not included in the restrictions. - Bloomberg
Farming robot kills 200,000 weeds per hour with lasers
Germany's Interior Ministry has issued a “Betätigungsverbot” against me, a ban on any political activity. Not just a ban on visiting Germany but also from participation via Zoom. Here is the speech whose publication caused this ban. Judge for yourselves! - Yanis Varoufakis
Army Special Forces students are learning Ukrainian in new language course: “I just sat down and talked to one of our students the other day who’s going through it. Surprisingly, he’s assimilating pretty well. He said it was a little bit harder than he imagined,” Beaurpere said. “But I think it’s given him that rudimentary skill, where he’s going to probably within the next year have to deploy to the [European Theater of Operations] and very likely work with Ukrainian partners.”
Just as we could have built an economic model that doesn’t hoover up wealth into the bank accounts of the tiny elite, the lessons of the west’s disastrous foreign policy history could have been heeded, and thus its catastrophic backing of Israel’s Gaza assault avoided. Alas, it was not to be. You may have found these last years of turmoil exhausting. Buckle up: the fall of the west has several more acts to come. - The Guardian Owen Jones
Americans intercepting Iran’s missile and drone attacks on Israel was the right thing and I’m glad it did. It just shows how wrong and cruel American policy towards Ukraine is, that Ukraine doesn’t even have enough missiles for Patriots to protect its citizens alone. - Ukrainian Toronto TV host
Facing tightening loan standards, fewer lenders, and higher borrowing costs, commercial real estate buyers could have more difficulty deploying capital for purchases in 2024. Property sales volumes dropped by 59% globally, 63% in the United States, 62% in Europe, and 50% in Asia/Pacific so far through 2023. - Deloitte
The Israeli security Cabinet delegated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister Benny Gantz to make decisions about a response in the aftermath of an Iranian attack. The Israeli broadcasting authority did not disclose the nature of decisions made by the Cabinet, which held a meeting in a fortified area in the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu chaired a meeting of the War Cabinet before the Cabinet meeting, which included a larger number of ministers. “There will be an unprecedented response,” the Maariv newspaper quoted an unnamed official. - AA
In public remarks early on Sunday, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari confirmed that some of Iran's ballistic missiles penetrated the country's defences, and hit the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel. - MEE
Thousands of people in Niger’s capital on Saturday protested for the immediate departure of US soldiers from the north, after the military junta in Niamey said it was withdrawing from a military agreement with Washington. Following a July coup, the West African country said in mid-March that the 2012 cooperation agreement had been “unilaterally imposed” by the United States…Flags from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Russia were visible, but organizers asked demonstrators to refrain from slogans insulting the US or burning its flags. - AN
What we are witnessing is moral suicide. Never before has there been such a colossal squandering of symbolic capital that was thought to be unassailable, which had been built up in the wake of the Shoah. It turns out that the time for symbolic reckoning is coming for everyone, especially for this colonial project which calls itself the West and claims a monopoly on civilisation, yet wages violence in the name of its principles. If indeed they ever floated, its moral credentials are now sunk. It takes the arrogance of the soon-to-be-fallen rulers, who don’t yet know it, to believe that they can pursue this course without cost. Those who remain passive, who participate as accomplices, even acting as deniers of such an enormous crime being committed before their eyes and before the eyes of everyone else – people of this kind can no longer lay claim to anything. The whole world is watching Gaza die, and the whole world is watching the West watching Gaza. And nothing escapes them…History: this is what the West meets in Gaza. If, as there is reason to believe, this is a rendezvous with decline and fall, then the time will come when we will be able to say that the world was upturned in Gaza. - Frederic Lordon
Extremist settler groups descended on Palestinian villages near the cities of Ramallah and Nablus in the occupied West Bank on 13 April to terrorize Palestinian residents for a second day in a row. According to local reports, the settler mobs are present in the villages of Silwad and Turmusayya near Ramallah and in Duma near Nablus. The Israeli pogrom started on Friday when hundreds of settlers set fire to homes and vehicles in the village of Al-Mughayyir. - The Cradle
Germany will provide a one-time payment of $236 (€220) to Holocaust survivors, to help them cope with the impacts of the Hamas-led October 7 attacks in southern Israel. - CNN
"China and Russia will not target any third party, but if hegemonic forces threaten China and Russia, or threaten world peace, China and Russia will stand together and fight to protect their own interests and safeguard world peace together," said Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University. - Global Times