A key determinant of becoming a global leader in AI is the ability to build an efficient, sustainable and resilient infrastructure that ensures energy is available, reliable and constant. The state of national power grids in China, the EU, and the US remains a significant barrier. China’s creaking grid represents a major constraint to progress and the government is planning to invest more than US$800bn over the next six years. The investment will support Beijing’s Eastern Data, Western Computing initiative, which aims to tap into China’s energy resources in the west and transfer computing power to economic hubs along the coast.

The European power grid is one of the oldest in the world. Moreover, around 40% of the grid is around ten years off its expected lifespan, while over half of the physical grid needs to be repaired or replaced. It remains uncertain whether the estimated US$584bn in European grid investments needed this decade will materialise. In 2024, the EU’s Modernisation Fund handed out almost US$3bn to modernise member states’ energy systems, amongst other activities.

The ageing and fragmented US grid comprises three main regions (Western, Eastern and Texas), which remain inefficient, especially for interconnections between regions. The US Department of Energy (DoE) estimates that power outages cost the US economy US$150bn annually. Modernising the US grid will cost trillions over the coming decades.

Read it all.

Building AI infrastructure is only one part of the story, as sovereign AI capabilities may prove more decisive.

Read the latest analysis by Charlie Edwards: https://t.co/5y4Hb1bd1o pic.twitter.com/HWb7vskEoL

— IISS News (@IISS_org) January 31, 2025

 China’s military is building a massive complex in western Beijing that US intelligence believes will serve as a wartime command centre far larger than the Pentagon, according to current and former American officials.

Satellite images obtained by the Financial Times that are being examined by US intelligence show a roughly 1,500-acre construction site 30km south-west of Beijing with deep holes that military experts assess will house large, hardened bunkers to protect Chinese military leaders during any conflict — including potentially a nuclear war.

Several current and former US officials said the intelligence community was closely monitoring the site, which would be the world’s largest military command centre — and at least 10 times the size of the Pentagon.

Read it all.

SCOOP China builds huge new wartime military command centre in western Beijing – 10 times the size of the Pentagon https://t.co/19nxQg0MqM via @ft

— Demetri (@Dimi) January 30, 2025

In his own inimitable style, President Donald Trump has identified something he dislikes and approached it with a wrecking-ball. Deprived of American funding by an executive order, aid programmes around the world are on the brink of collapse. But for the intervention of a judge at the 11th hour on January 28th, large parts of America’s federal government might have suffered a similar fate.

However, when it comes to another kind of cutting—of rules, rather than spending—Mr Trump is part of a global trend. From Buenos Aires and Delhi to Brussels and London, politicians have pledged to slash the red tape that entangles the economy. Javier Milei has wielded a chainsaw against Argentine regulations. Narendra Modi’s advisers are quietly confronting India’s triplicate-loving babus. Rachel Reeves, Britain’s chancellor, plans to overhaul planning rules and expand London’s Heathrow Airport. Even Vietnam’s Communists have a plan to shrink the bureaucracy.

Done right, the anti-red-tape revolution could usher in greater freedom, faster economic growth, lower prices and new technology. For years excessive rules have choked housebuilding, investment and innovation. But Mr Trump risks giving deregulation a bad name. His impulse to start by demolishing essential functions of government before reinstating the ones he likes is a formula for human misery and economic harm. The question is how to make reform bold enough to count, but coherent enough to succeed.

Read it all.

Around the world, an anti-red-tape revolution is taking hold. Done right, it could kick-start economic growth. In the wrong hands, it risks giving deregulation a bad name https://t.co/pxJS1MAXDP pic.twitter.com/PhAZtAt7Nq

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 30, 2025

Sailing off the south coast of England, the Russian trawler known as the Yantar carried its usual array of hi-tech equipment.

In photographs released by the Ministry of Defence, a large radar dome can be seen behind two masts bristling with antennae.

Officially, these allow the 108 metre-long craft to monitor ocean currents, befitting a vessel the Kremlin maintains is part of its oceanographic research fleet.

But it was the ship’s more nefarious purposes that prompted a rare display of British naval power on Jan 20, when the Yantar was confronted by a British warship, HMS Somerset, and patrol vessel HMS Tyne.

Humdrum though it may appear, the Yantar is known to carry two submersibles that can dive down up to 6,000 metres, allowing their crew to map, monitor and potentially sever the undersea cables that transmit data around the world.

Read it all.

"It's Moscow's usual deep-sea games again"- Huh? Nothing routine about a spy ship lurking near critical infrastructure. This just proves how vulnerable undersea cables really are in modern warfare. #spyship #Russia #UnderseaCables #UKDefense #Geopoliticshttps://t.co/VzwwMSpqVy pic.twitter.com/k0EjAdaAuJ

— Robert Morton (@Robert4787) January 29, 2025

The leaders of more than half of Africa’s nations gathered this week in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s sprawling seaside metropolis, to commit to the biggest burst of spending on electric-power generation in Africa’s history.

The World Bank, African Development Bank and others are pledging at least $35 billion to expand electricity across a continent where more than a half-billion people still don’t have it. About half of the money will go toward solar “minigrids” that serve individual communities. The loans will come at below-market interest rates, a crucial stipulation as global lenders usually charge much higher rates in Africa, citing higher risks.

In an interview, Ajay Banga, the president of the World Bank, cast the initiative in sweeping terms where economic development met societal stability and basic human rights. “Without electricity, we can’t get jobs, health care, skills,” he said. The success of electrification, he said, is “foundational to everything.”

The summit’s promise is to get half of Africa’s 600 million unelectrified people powered up in just six years. That averages out to five million people a month. Mr. Banga said the World Bank, on its own, had not yet even passed the one-million-a-month mark.

Read it all.

Expecting to electrify 300 million Africans by 2030, Mission 300 is meeting in Tanzania’s capital, Dar es Salaam.

They hope to illuminate NASA’s very dim nighttime image of Africa.

Today's econlife blog: https://t.co/M63ERMSlJ3#econlife pic.twitter.com/CqnJyBJZvZ

— econlife.com (@Econlife) January 28, 2025

The market reaction, when it came, was brutal. On January 27th, as investors realised just how good DeepSeek’s “v3” and “R1” models were, they wiped around a trillion dollars off the market capitalisation of America’s listed tech firms. Nvidia, a chipmaker and the chief shovel-seller of the artificial-intelligence (AI) gold rush, saw its value fall by $600bn. Yet even if the Chinese model-maker’s new releases rattled investors in a handful of firms, they should be a cause for optimism for the world at large. DeepSeek shows how competition and innovation will make ai cheaper and therefore more useful.

DeepSeek’s models are practically as good as those made by Google and OpenAI—and have been produced at a fraction of the cost. Barred by American export controls from using cutting-edge chips, the Chinese firm undertook an efficiency drive, even reprogramming the chips it used to train the model to eke out every drop of power. The cost of building an AI model that can stand toe-to-toe with the best has plummeted. Within days, DeepSeek’s chatbot was the most downloaded app on the iPhone.

The contrast with America’s approach could not be starker. Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, has spent years telling investors—and America’s new president—that vast sums of money and computing power are needed to stay at the forefront of AI. Investors have accordingly been betting that a handful of firms stand to reap vast monopoly-like rents. Yet if fast followers such as DeepSeek can eat away at that lead for a fraction of the cost, then those profits are at risk.

Read it all.

"However, the real winners will be consumers. For AI to transform society, it needs to be cheap, ubiquitous and out of the control of any one country or company. DeepSeek’s success suggests that such a world is imaginable."https://t.co/8aZ4eM5PV5 #USChina #Geoeconomics #地経学

— Ken Doi土居 (@kitakazethomas) January 30, 2025

Almost overnight, DeepSeek has upended many of the assumptions inside Silicon Valley about the economics of building AI, as well as the best technical methods for developing the technology and the extent of the US lead over competitors in China. For much of the past two-plus years since ChatGPT kicked off the global AI frenzy, the industry has bet that the path to better AI depends largely on spending heavily on more advanced chips from companies like Nvidia Corp. and increasingly massive data centers to house them.

US President Donald Trump welcomed the development as “good, because you don’t have to spend as much money.” Industry leader Nvidia, whose shares took a huge hit from DeepSeek’s debut, also lauded it as an “excellent AI advancement” in a statement on Monday.

The market fallout was staggering. Hype over DeepSeek’s feat drove a nearly $1 trillion rout in US and European technology stocks on Monday as investors questioned the spending plans of some of America’s biggest companies. The share plunge in AI chipmaker Nvidia alone erased roughly $589 billion in market value, the biggest wipeout in US stock-market history.

Meanwhile, in DC, lawmakers are left to figure out the best route to beat back China’s progress on a technology some see as crucial to its military and economy, given the Biden administration’s chip export curbs were not enough. David Sacks, President Donald Trump’s crypto and AI czar, said DeepSeek shows the global AI race will be very competitive — while blaming the Biden administration for regulation that “hamstrung” AI development.

Further complicating matters, the renewed uncertainty over large AI investments comes just days after Trump championed a $100 billion joint venture from OpenAI, SoftBank Group Corp. and Oracle Corp. to boost US competitiveness by investing in data centers and other physical infrastructure. Now, there are new questions about the rationale for stratospheric AI budgets.

Read it all.

The censorship part here is eerie. Had a physical reaction while reading that.

Bloomberg: DeepSeek Challenges Everyone’s Assumptions About AI Costs https://t.co/8ewlGlxrkD pic.twitter.com/0R1ns25aoM

— Emily Binder (@emilybinder) January 28, 2025

The danger, though, is that at least for some of us, disillusionment can easily give way to cynicism. The cynicism of our moment comes in at least two forms. One is an opportunistic kind of cynicism. This is the kind that determines that no one is really sincere and that the whole world is divided into two simple categories: hucksters and marks. The opportunistic cynic decides, then, to learn how to be a huckster. Anyone who doesn’t is a sucker or a loser, in this view.

That makes things much easier for the opportunistic cynic because, among other things, it gives an immediate intellectual shortcut. One need not actually think about what’s true and what’s false, what’s real and what’s fake, what’s right and what’s wrong. All the opportunistic cynic has to think about is what works. Once the cynic knows who the “friends” and who the “enemies” are, he or she has the template needed to cheer on the right side and to denounce the wrong one.

The other kind of cynicism is instead despairing. If opportunistic cynicism is self-advancing, despairing cynicism is self-protecting. Once I stop expecting actual goodness or sincerity in other people or in institutions, I feel like I can’t be hurt anymore, or at least not hurt as much.

Read it all.

Cynicism protects us from some initial hurt, writes @drmoore.

But in the end, “it filters out not only the genuine danger and fakeness we rightly want to avoid—it filters out everything and everyone.”https://t.co/Rx4z2A8JJc

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) January 23, 2025

President Trump’s landmark executive order designating major drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) marks a watershed moment in America’s approach to national security and strategic competition against China. This reclassification acknowledges an uncomfortable truth: the fentanyl crisis is not merely a law enforcement challenge but a sophisticated form of irregular warfare targeting American society, with cartels serving as proxies in a broader strategic campaign orchestrated by China against U.S. interests.

The devastating impact of this proxy warfare is reflected in stark statistics. According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, were responsible for over 70,000 deaths in 2022. The Drug Enforcement Administration has meticulously documented how Mexican cartels have industrialized fentanyl production using precursor chemicals sourced predominantly from China, creating what amounts to a chemical weapons supply chain targeting American communities. These aren’t merely crime statistics – they represent casualties in an irregular war being waged through proxy forces, with networks stretching from Beijing through Sinaloa and into every major American city.

The Brookings Institution has documented how this crisis disproportionately impacts working-class communities, creating zones of social instability that strain local governments and emergency services – precisely the type of internal disruption that aligns with China’s strategic objectives. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates the economic burden of the opioid crisis exceeds $1 trillion, representing a significant drain on American resources and societal resilience. This continued deficit reduces our ability to reinvest in competition with China, while contributing to the ballooning national debt.

Read it all.

https://t.co/T0XizEzRfs

— Small Wars Journal (@smallwars) January 22, 2025

If there is a single technology America needs to bring about the “thrilling new era of national success” that President Donald Trump promised in his inauguration speech, it is generative artificial intelligence. At the very least, ai will add to the next decade’s productivity gains, fuelling economic growth. At the most, it will power humanity through a transformation comparable to the Industrial Revolution.

Mr Trump’s hosting the next day of the launch of “the largest ai infrastructure project in history” shows he grasps the potential. But so does the rest of the world—and most of all, China. Even as Mr Trump was giving his inaugural oration, a Chinese firm released the latest impressive large language model (LLM). Suddenly, America’s lead over China in ai looks smaller than at any time since ChatGPT became famous.

China’s catch-up is startling because it had been so far behind—and because America had set out to slow it down. Joe Biden’s administration feared that advanced ai could secure the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military supremacy. So America has curtailed exports to China of the best chips for training ai and cut off China’s access to many of the machines needed to make substitutes. Behind its protective wall, Silicon Valley has swaggered. Chinese researchers devour American papers on ai; Americans have rarely returned the compliment.

Read it all.

The success of China’s large language models could turn the economics of AI on its head. America must prepare for a world in which China is breathing down its neck https://t.co/RGElwLsoIN

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 23, 2025

Q1: What is the status of global agrobiodiversity?

A1: Today, biodiversity is being lost faster than at any time on record. Since the turn of the twentieth century, the average abundance of terrestrial native species has declined by at least 20 percent across most ecosystems around the world, while the number of crop varieties grown on farms has fallen by more than 90 percent over the last 100 years. Paradoxically, it is the agrifood system itself that is the primary driver of the ecological disruption and degradation imperiling agrobiodiversity around the world.

The environmental impacts of modern food production are myriad. About half of all habitable land on Earth is used for agriculture, while agricultural practices and other human activities have degraded up to 40 percent of the world’s land. Some industrial agriculture has led to the overexploitation of resources that drives habitat loss, the decline in the number of crop species and erosion of crop genetic diversity, and the introduction of invasive species and pollutants—all of which disrupt fragile ecosystems.

In this context, agriculture faces the opposing challenges of increasing food production to meet the needs of a growing global population, while reducing its ecological footprint to ensure that natural resources required for productive agriculture are sustained. In the absence of policies that safeguard agrobiodiversity, efforts to meet food demands threaten to erode the foundation of food production itself.

Read it all.

Agriculture is increasingly strained by growing food demand, global conflict, and the loss of its most foundational resource, agrobiodiversity. This loss threatens not just food security, but global security writ large.

Learn more from @CSISFoodWater: https://t.co/HVUCReVKDW

— CSIS (@CSIS) January 22, 2025

Humanity is “on the verge” of having AI agents that can complete tasks in the real world, OpenAI product chief Kevin Weil told Axios’ Ina Fried in Davos Tuesday.

Why it matters: Weil’s prediction comes days after Axios reported that a major AI company was close to announcing a breakthrough regarding the creation of Ph.D.-level AI super-agents capable of completing complex tasks.

What he’s saying: “I think 2025 is the year that we go from ChatGPT being this super smart thing that can answer any question you ask to ChatGPT doing things in the real world for you,” Weil told Axios.

• The advanced reasoning skills of new AI models, and improved ability to be multimodal and engage with humans, will be key to this ability, Weil said.
• He predicted that likely as soon as this year, AI agents will be able to do tasks like filling out forms or making restaurant reservations.

Read it all.

OpenAI product chief says

world is "on the verge" of AI agents https://t.co/PwXP5TX9Vp @ivanas26 @axios pic.twitter.com/VgwPqAg1s6

— Spiros Margaris (@SpirosMargaris) January 22, 2025

The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is pushing a heady mix of Prussian imperial nostalgia and a shrewd form of Euroscepticism that catches the mood of post-globalist German voters.

The insurgent Right-wing party of Alice Weidel – a gay, Hayekian, Mandarin-speaking Goldman Sachs alumna, who worked for the Bank of China and wrote a paper on the Chinese pension system – is flying high as elections approach next month, reaching 22pc in the latest INSA poll.

The German media fears that the “shy voter syndrome” may understate the strength of the AfD support. If the final tally reaches the mid-20s, it could leave Germany in much the same state of political paralysis as France, unable to form a stable government on the broken rubble of the old party system.

Foreign investors have persuaded themselves that Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democrat leader, is going to win a landslide on a manifesto of free-market reform, fiscal stimulus and a blitz of investment. Germany is more likely to end up with the immobilism of another grand coalition, unable to rid itself of a social democrat dinosaur wedded to rust bowl industries and the obsolete model of the last century.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Germany’s ‘Dexit’ party is becoming a serious threat to the European project https://t.co/mI9zkP5sH4 via @@YahooNews

— Dan Brosman (@dan_brosman) January 17, 2025

Homeowners in places most exposed to climate disasters are increasingly giving up on paying their insurance premiums, leaving them exposed to financial ruin, according to sweeping new government data.

The numbers show how climate change is eroding the underpinnings of American life by making home insurance costlier and harder to hang on to, even as wildfires, hurricanes and other calamities increasingly threaten what is, for many people, their most valuable asset.

“Homeowners’ insurance is where many Americans are now feeling the financial effect of climate change directly, in their pocketbook,” said Ethan Zindler, climate counselor at the Treasury Department. “Nature doesn’t really care whether people are living in a blue state or a red state or another state, or whether you do or don’t believe in climate change.”

The rising cancellation rates are part of a broader trend captured by the Treasury Department, which analyzed information for 246 million insurance policies issued by 330 insurers nationwide from 2018 through 2022. The result is the most comprehensive look yet at the effect of climate change on the American home insurance market.

Read it all.

More Americans, Risking Ruin, Drop Their Home Insurance https://t.co/kZjPynDbIU

— Heather Croshaw (@HeatherCroshaw) January 17, 2025

As blazes raged across Los Angeles, Berkeley County officials were wrapping up a new plan that could help local residents and leaders deal with wildfires.

They might need it soon.

Berkeley is simultaneously one of the fastest-growing and most fire-susceptible counties in the state — a vulnerability that could grow in the near future as climate change spurs more severe droughts and drier conditions.

“Us folks in the wildland business, we’ve been seeing climate change coming for a long time,” said Andy Johnson, the S.C. Forestry Commission’s fire prevention coordinator for the Coastal Plain.

Read it all.

Berkeley County is one of the fastest-growing areas in SC, and one of the most wildfire-prone https://t.co/5WpzpEkPPv

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) January 13, 2025

Many of the world’s richest economies will need to at least double productivity growth to maintain historical improvements in living standards amid sharp falls in their birth rates.

A McKinsey report investigating the economic impact of declines in birth rates found that the UK, Germany, Japan and the US would all have to see productivity rise at double the pace seen over the past decade to maintain the same growth in living standards witnessed since the 1990s.

The consultancy’s report, published on Wednesday, showed that to match GDP per capita growth between 1997 and 2023, productivity growth in France and Italy would need to triple over the coming three decades. In Spain, it would need to rise fourfold between now and 2050.

The report highlights the stark impact of declining birth rates on the world’s most prosperous economies, leaving them vulnerable to a shrinking proportion of the population of working age.

Read it all.

"Many of the world’s richest economies will need to at least double productivity growth to maintain historical improvements in living standards amid sharp falls in their birth rates."

Falling Birth Rates Raise Prospect of Sharp Decline in Living Standards @FT pic.twitter.com/18gmETDuDS

— James Pethokoukis ️ (@JimPethokoukis) January 15, 2025

According to Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase and king of Wall Street, bankers were elated upon Donald Trump’s election victory. Many chafed under Joe Biden’s presidency, as mergers and bank fees faced additional scrutiny, and new capital-market rules came thick and fast. Now, with the inauguration of Mr Trump imminent, American financiers will discover just how much cause they have for celebration.

The industry will certainly experience an abrupt change in how it is overseen. America’s regulatory agencies will take a permissive approach in banking and beyond, with new priorities when enforcing securities laws. Crypto is about to go truly mainstream. And looser rules could enable the consolidation of America’s banking system, home to a vast number of small and mid-sized lenders. The only danger, from Wall Street’s perspective, is that the Trump team’s MAGA instincts and chaotic approach prevent a deregulatory boom.

Read it all.

My first piece in the new gig. Will Trump unleash Wall Street?

Banks and PE have good reason to be excited. But the sector that has by *far* the most to gain is crypto, which is about to be treated as part of mainstream finance for the first time.https://t.co/QFUDd1YeUc

— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) January 15, 2025

As countries around the world continue to pump planet-warming pollution into the skies, driving global temperatures to record levels, the financial world is racing to fund the emerging field of carbon dioxide removal, seeking both an environmental miracle and a financial windfall.

The technology, which did not exist until a few years ago, is still unproven at scale. Yet, it has a uniquely alluring appeal. Stripping away some of the carbon dioxide that is heating up the world makes intuitive sense. And with a small but growing number of companies willing to pay for it, investors are jockeying to be first movers in what they believe will inevitably be a big industry that is necessary to help fight global warming.

Companies working on ways to pull carbon dioxide from the air have raised more than $5 billion since 2018, according to the investment bank Jefferies. Before that, there were almost no such investments.

“It’s the single greatest opportunity I’ve seen in 20 years of doing venture capital,” said Damien Steel, the chief executive of Canada-based Deep Sky, which has raised more than $50 million to develop carbon dioxide removal projects. “The tailwinds behind the industry are greater than most industries I’ve ever looked at.”

Read it all.

It's a strategy that should be pursued but, it can't have any major impact anytime soon. “We need to obey the first law of holes,” …“When you’re in one, stop digging.”The New Climate Gold Rush: Scrubbing Carbon From the Sky https://t.co/Lwlh8Zfeir

— Prof. Peter Doherty (@ProfPCDoherty) December 23, 2024

Donald Trump is the most powerful Republican politician in a generation, but the president-elect is still no match for the most nihilistic members of his own party. The budget chaos unfolding on Capitol Hill is only a preview of the difficult realities Mr Trump will face when he starts to govern next month.

Members of the expiring 118th Congress—with a Senate narrowly controlled by Democrats and a House narrowly controlled by Republicans—had expected this week to be their last in Washington this year. The main outstanding task was to pass a simple bill, no more than a few pages long, to keep the government funded into 2025 at close to existing levels. The idea was to postpone battles over unresolved policy matters until Mr Trump and the next Congress were in place. Yet nothing is so simple in Washington these days.

Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, knew that a few dozen members of his own Republican caucus would never vote for any budget. Instead he worked with Democrats on a compromise that would keep the government open until March. With Democrats aware of their leverage, the negotiations got away from the speaker, producing the kind of legislative labyrinth that Mr Johnson had vowed to never put up for a vote. In addition to extended funding, its 1,547 pages included disaster aid, support for farmers, and a hotch-potch of other unrelated legislation, from a stadium relocation to restrictions on investments in China. A 3.8% salary increase for lawmakers—the first in 15 years and significantly lower than the 40% that Elon Musk erroneously claimed had been proposed—provoked predictable backlash.

Read it all.

Budgetary chaos is a sign that governing will be harder than Donald Trump might assume https://t.co/8QX33oATck

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 20, 2024

 So just how much have healthcare costs and spending been going up?

The short answer: a lot. National healthcare spending increased 7.5% year over year in 2023 to $4.867 trillion, or $14,570 per person, according to data released Wednesday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 

Total spending on healthcare goods and services, everything from prescription drugs to back surgeries, accounted for 17.6% of gross domestic product, a measure of goods and services produced by the U.S. economy.

The 7.5% rise represented a much faster pace of growth than the 4.6% increase in 2022. It came as pandemic federal funding for the healthcare sector expired and private health insurance enrollment increased. More people with insurance led to increased demand for medical procedures, and spending on hospital care grew at the fastest pace since 1990. Spending on drugs also rose, including for medications to treat diabetes and obesity.  

Read it all.

Why Are Americans Paying So Much More for Healthcare Than They Used To? – U.S. #healthcare spending rose 7.5% to nearly $5 trillion last year https://t.co/P4NGBmEb8g pic.twitter.com/S86iWDSA4g

— Sid Shah (@Sid_Healthcare) December 20, 2024

Diocesan bishops are facing fresh demands for the abolition of their seats in the House of Lords. Parliament is considering new legislation to end the centuries-old presence of hereditary peers, and is questioning the presence of the Lords Spiritual (News, 1 November).

In the Second Reading of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, debated over two sessions last week, Baroness Smith of Basildon, the Leader of the House, said: “The intention is crystal clear: to end the hereditary element of the second Chamber before embarking on further changes.”

On behalf of the Government, she explained how the proposed legislation had been part of the Labour election manifesto this year, and described the proposals to remove the 92 hereditary peers who currently sit as “a reasonable and well-trailed piece of legislation”.

Read it all.

Diocesan bishops are facing fresh demands for the abolition of their seats in the House of Lords. Parliament is considering new legislation to end the centuries-old presence of hereditary peers, and is questioning the presence of the Lords Spiritual https://t.co/RfyHB0jAHO pic.twitter.com/Aa5WU00tEE

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) December 19, 2024

Ukraine is not only the breadbasket of Europe; it is also a mineral superpower, with some of the largest reserves of 117 of the 120 most widely used minerals in the world.

Of the 50 strategic minerals identified by the United States as critical to its economy and national security, many of which are quite rare yet key to certain high-value applications, Ukraine supplies 22.

Ukraine possesses the largest reserves of uranium in Europe; the second-largest reserves of iron ore, titanium and manganese; and the third-largest reserves of shale gas — as well as large deposits of lithium, graphite and rare earth metals, according to a 2022 report by the Canadian geopolitical risk-analysis firm SecDev. These minerals are essential to the production of vital goods ranging from airplanes, cellphones and electric vehicles to steel and nuclear power.

The question for the president-elect is: Does he want Russia and China to get that treasure trove of natural resources? Or does he want to develop them with Ukraine to the benefit of the American people? One of the main reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine (aside from his delusional historical fantasies about how Ukrainians and Russians are “one people”) was to seize these natural resources, which are valued at an estimated $26 trillion, according to SecDev.

Read it all.

Does Trump want Putin to get Ukraine’s $26 trillion in gas and minerals? Kyiv controls vast gas and mineral deposits. Does Trump want those flowing west, or to Russia and China?

Gift link: https://t.co/3feef88yEZ pic.twitter.com/QVIbrZFNyc

— Marc Thiessen (@marcthiessen) December 19, 2024

As Mark Moran was facing another 90-hour week as an investment-banking intern at Credit Suisse in New York, he knew he needed help to survive the rest of the summer. His colleagues gave him a tip: Visit a Wall Street health clinic and tell the staff he had trouble focusing.

Ahead of his first appointment, he filled out a five-minute questionnaire. One of the questions asked if he had trouble staying organized, another, if he procrastinated. He then met with a clinician who said his answers suggested he had attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He left with a prescription for Adderall.

No matter that a family member, a psychologist, didn’t think Moran had ADHD. He found that when he took Adderall, he could keep working for hours, and was able to actually be interested in some of the mundane tasks required of a young investment banker, such as aligning corporate logos on a PowerPoint or formatting cells in Microsoft Excel. 

He also wanted to show his bosses he was a hard worker and eventually secure a lucrative full-time job offer after finishing graduate school.

Read it all.

Many Wall Street bankers use Adderall and Vyvanse as tools to plow through long hours of tedious work amid high-pressure competition. https://t.co/YxyBTdBKzf via @WSJ

— WSJ Health (@WSJhealth) December 16, 2024

Treasury 10-year yields may climb to 6% for the first time in more than two decades as US fiscal woes worsen and Donald Trump’s policies help keep inflation elevated, according to T. Rowe Price.

The benchmark yield may first reach 5% in the first quarter of 2025 before potentially climbing further, Arif Husain, chief investment officer of fixed-income, wrote in a report. Husain is doubling down on calls for higher yields, citing persistent US budget deficits as Trump cuts taxes during his second presidency, as well as potential tariffs and immigration policies that would sustain price pressures.

“Is a 6% 10‑year Treasury yield possible? Why not? But we can consider that when we move through 5%,” wrote Husain, who helps the money manager oversee $187 billion. “The transition period in US politics is an opportunity to position for increasing longer‑term Treasury yields and a steeper yield curve.”

Read it all (registration or subscription).

10-Year Treasury Yield may soar to 6%, warns T. Rowe Price. The last time this happened? 2000.

Probably Fine pic.twitter.com/NF2XJj27uS

— Barchart (@Barchart) December 17, 2024

I have already, on a previous occasion, spoken at some length on the subject of Work and Vocation. What I urged then was a thoroughgoing revolution in our whole attitude to work. I asked that it should be looked upon, not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God. That it should, in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God’s image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing.

It may well seem to you – as it does to some of my acquaintances – that I have a sort of obsession about this business of the right attitude to work. But I do insist upon it, because it seems to me that what becomes of civilization after this war is going to depend enormously on our being able to effect this revolution in our ideas about work. Unless we do change our whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from the appalling squirrel cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning for the last three centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in a social system based upon Envy and Avarice.

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand….

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All that was left of the garage was a heap of charred & smouldering beams. In the driving seat of the burnt-out car were the remains of a body. Listen to our vintage collection of crime and detection stories featuring Lord Peter Wimsey by Dorothy L. Sayers, who died #OTD 1957. pic.twitter.com/JYRS8NdIQJ

— Friends of WHLibrary (@FoWHLNW6) December 17, 2024

Katherine Lee Bates’ poem, “America The Beautiful,” is best known for being set to music and popularly performed at public sporting events in the United States. In it, she celebrates the grandeur of American geography and resources: “And crownthy good with brotherhood / From sea to shining sea.”

Two church parishes in the Anglican Church in North America, located in port cities on opposite coasts, richly blessed with the bounty of natural resources like salmon and lobster, have received unexpected blessings this past year in the form of church buildings and property.

Anglican churches in Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine, 3200 miles apart on each coast of the United States, have both received, in the same year, church buildings and property of significant value! Of course, the physical properties God has blessed these two parishes with are the fruits of God at work
in unexpected ways in their respective communities.

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Rise Church in Portland, Maine is an Anglican church drawn from three congregations: what was formerly the Church of the Holy Spirit, a Sudanese church, and the newer, Rise Church. Watch a short video here: https://t.co/9k86nfr7bW Read more about it here: https://t.co/luttGJvO7L

— ACNA (@The_ACNA) December 12, 2024

Now that Mr Assad has fled to Moscow, the question is where will liberation lead. In a part of the world plagued by ethnic violence and religious strife, many fear the worst. The Arab spring in 2010-12 taught that countries which topple their dictators often end up being fought over or dominated by men who are no less despotic. That is all the more reason to wish and work for something better in Syria.

There is no denying that many forces are conspiring to drag the country into further bloodshed. Syria is a mosaic of peoples and faiths carved out of the Ottoman empire. They have never lived side by side in a stable democracy. The Assads belong to the Alawite minority, which makes up about 10-15% of the population. For decades, they imposed a broadly secular settlement on Syrian society using violence.

Syria’s people have many reasons to seek vengeance. After 13 years of civil war in a country crammed with weapons, some factions will want to settle scores; so will some bad and dangerous men just released from prison. Under the Assads’ henchmen, many of them Alawite and Shia, Sunnis suffered acts of heinous cruelty, including being gassed by chlorine and a nerve agent.

Syria’s new powerbrokers are hardly men of peace. Take the dominant faction in the recent advance. Until 2016 Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. Its founder, Ahmad al-Sharaa, had fought the Americans as a member of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq under the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani. HTS and Mr Sharaa swear they have left those days behind. If, amid the chaos, such groups set out to impose rigid Islamic rule, foreign countries, possibly including the United Arab Emirates, will bankroll other groups to take up arms against them.

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The fall of a tyrant must be celebrated. And while Syria faces great uncertainty, a nation exhausted by war could yet choose the long road towards peace. Here is how https://t.co/RMkRxpiWW8 pic.twitter.com/nWqNYtt8Nx

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 12, 2024

The US bid to lead the world in artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing is facing a critical hurdle: a shortage of development-ready industrial sites.

Nearly two-thirds of the people involved in securing US industrial sites cited their scarcity as the top factor impeding new projects, in a 2024 survey by the Site Selector’s Guild. And 87 per cent of respondents said resource shortages — including a lack of land, labour and utilities — had affected or compromised project timelines.

“It’s absolutely crazy,” says Josh Bays, a principal at Site Selection Group, which helps companies find US locations. “Most of the low-hanging fruit’s been picked over.” 

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US aim to lead on AI threatened by land shortage via @FT
https://t.co/I9nJTyJXnT

— Amb Antonio Garza (@aogarza) December 12, 2024

A sponge made of cotton and squid bone that has absorbed about 99.9% of microplastics in water samples in China could provide an elusive answer to ubiquitous microplastic pollution in water across the globe, a new report suggests.

Just as importantly, the filter’s production appears to be scalable, the University of Wuhan study authors said in the paper, which was peer-reviewed and published in the journal Science Advances. That would address a problem that has stymied the use of previous microplastic filtration systems that were successful in controlled settings, but could not be scaled up.

If it is successfully deployed on a larger scale in forthcoming research, the filter could change the course of one of the world’s most serious public health crises.

“Microplastic remediation in aquatic bodies is essential for the entire ecosystem, but is challenging to achieve with a universal and efficient strategy,” the study’ authors wrote in the paper.

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Cotton-and-squid-bone sponge can soak up 99.9% of microplastics, scientists say | Tom Perkins, The Guardian

Filter performs well in removing plastic pollution from water and Chinese researchers say it appears to be scalable

A sponge made of cotton and squid bone that has… pic.twitter.com/9mgNXypg36

— Owen Gregorian (@OwenGregorian) December 11, 2024

In a glass-walled conference room in San Francisco, Newton Cheng clicked a button on his laptop and launched a thousand copies of an artificial intelligence program, each with specific instructions: Hack into a computer or website to steal data.

“It’s looking at the source code,” Cheng said as he examined one of the copies in action. “It’s trying to figure out, where’s the vulnerability? How can we take advantage of it?” Within minutes, the AI said the hack was successful. 

“Our approach worked perfectly,” it reported back.

Cheng works for Anthropic, one of the biggest AI startups in Silicon Valley, where he’s in charge of cybersecurity testing for what’s called the Frontier Red Team. The hacking attempts—conducted on simulated targets—were among thousands of safety tests, or “evals,” the team ran in October to find out just how good Anthropic’s latest AI model is at doing very dangerous things.

The release of ChatGPT two years ago set off fears that AI could soon be capable of surpassing human intellect—and with that capability comes the potential to cause superhuman harm. Could terrorists use an AI model to learn how to build a bioweapon that kills a million people? Could hackers use it to run millions of simultaneous cyberattacks? Could the AI reprogram and even reproduce itself?

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Meet the "Frontier Red Team" at Anthropic, trying to push their latest AI models to do catastrophic things — in order to stop them before it's too late: https://t.co/HBqGx58Vfd via @WSJ

— Sam Schechner (@samschech) December 11, 2024