Oil-rich gulf monarchies are leveraging their wealth to deepen ties with China amid anxiety about the future of their longstanding security partnership with the US. Seven months after President Xi Jinping participated in the first China-Gulf summit in Riyadh, economic exchanges between the world’s second largest economy and nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates...
In the days since the Wagner Group abandoned its march on Moscow on June 24th, speculation has grown about what will become of Russia’s notorious paramilitary company and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Amid reports of President Vladimir Putin poking around Wagner’s assets and troop deployments, and with the status and whereabouts of Mr Prigozhin himself cloaked in mystery, the future...
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gathered local journalists in Riyadh for a rareoff-the-record briefing in December and delivered a stunning message. The country’s allyof decades, the United Arab Emirates, had “stabbed us in the back,” he said.“They will see what I can do,” he told the group, according to people at the meeting.A rift...
Climate change is beginning to have an enormously negative effect on technology. Intense heat waves, wildfires and droughts are becoming increasingly common and supercomputers have now apparently become part of the collateral damage. The California wildfire in 2018, also known as the Camp Fire, is one such incident. Following a savage drought, it burned 620 square...
LONDON, 15th July 2023 – COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber’s company plans to produce oil and gas that when burned for energy will emit more than 11 billion tonnes of CO2 – not far short of China’s annual emissions – a Global Witness analysis of industry production data shows. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC),...
The European Union and 17 countries are set to issue a statement on Friday warning against an increased reliance on carbon capture technology in the fight against climate change, according to reporting from Reuters. “Abatement technologies must not be used to green-light continued fossil fuel expansion,” the statement reads, according to the reporting. Carbon capture and...
There is a battle raging over the heart and soul of the UN Cop conferences, which have taken place every year since 1995. On one side are the climate scientists, policymakers, and representatives of countries most under threat from global heating and of nations that simply “get” the disastrous effects of the climate crisis. On...
According to Google’s news search, the media has run more than 10,000 stories this year about Phillip Schofield, the British television presenter who resigned over an affair with a younger colleague. Google also records a global total of five news stories about a scientific paper published last week, showing that the chances of simultaneous crop losses in...
If you see a sultry blonde environmental activist or a peace-loving NASA scientist on Twitter praising the United Arab Emirates for its climate change policy, look a little closer. A disinformation expert says a network of fake accounts are defending the United Nations’ decision to host this year’s COP28 climate talks in the oil-rich country, and to appoint UAE oil company CEO Sultan...
Until now the fossil fuel industries have not had to account for the full costs to society of their products. Billions of dollars in climate-related expenses have been hidden inside the budgets for disaster recovery, health programs, national security and numerous other accounting sleights of hand that shield the rippling financial impacts of climate change from...