PUTIN'S CURSE

Top former Russian commander dies ‘suddenly' day after Putin cancels trip to tank factory: Report

An ex-Russian commander with a Ukraine link died "suddenly" a day after President Vladimir Putin cancelled his visit to tank factory, a report said.

India Today Web Desk
New Delhi, Dec 29, 2022 

By India Today Web Desk: A former commander-in-chief of Russian ground forces with a close link to Ukraine died “suddenly” the day after Vladimir Putin unexpectedly cancelled a trip to the tank enterprise where he worked, reported The Mirror.

Uralvagonzavod plant announced that General Alexei Maslov, 69, passed away on December 25 in a Moscow military hospital.

General Alexei Maslov was commander-in-chief of Russian ground forces between 2004 and 2008 and later served as the country’s chief military representative to Nato in Brussels. Maslov’s death follows the “sudden death” of general director of Admiralty Shipyards in St Petersburg, Alexander Buzakov.

According to Telegram channel Redacted number 6, the FSB security service had formed an “investigative group” into the two deaths, reported The Mirror.

Also Read | Ukraine seeks 'peace summit' with Russia, Kremlin says 'never followed conditions set by others'

The channel reported that Buzakov had been healthy the day before he died, and “nothing had been heard about Maslov's health problems” before he died.



Blast at Russian base after apparent Ukrainian drone penetrates deep

The report said that the Russian president was due to visit the Uralvagonzavod plant in Nizhny Tagil - which has been criticised by the Kremlin for failing to produce sufficient new tanks for the war in Ukraine.

However, the Russian president aborted the Christmas eve trip “at the last minute” with no explanation, according to local reports.

Rogozin - recovering in hospital from an injury in a Ukrainian shell attack last week - praised Maslov as “a very experienced military man, a demanding commander, and a good person,” reported the Mirror.

Second sudden death of top official reported in Russia's military supply chain in less than a week

Top officials charged with arming Russia amid its war in Ukraine have unexpectedly died

By Caitlin McFall | Fox News

Another sudden death of a top official in Russia’s military supply chain has been reported following a series unexplained deaths in the past week.

Alexei Fedorovich Maslov, former commander in chief of Russia’s ground forces turned special representative for the military corporation Uralvagonzavod — which specializes in battle tanks — was reported to have unexpectantly died at a military hospital on Christmas Day at the age of 70.

The company took to Telegram to announce his death and said he "remained faithful" to Russia "until his last day."




An abandoned Russian military tank is seen after Russian Forces withdrew from Balakliia as Russia-Ukraine war continues on September 15, 2022 in Balakliia, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine. (Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

SAUSAGE KING OF RUSSIA DEAD AFTER ALLEGEDLY FALLING OUT OF WINDOW AT INDIAN HOTEL

Maslov was reportedly born in the Kursk region, which neighbors northern Ukraine, and entered the Army before graduating from the Kharkiv Guards Higher Tank Command School in 1974 — nearly two decades before the fall of the Soviet Union, reported Euro Weekly.

By 2008 Maslov became Russia’s chief military representative to NATO.

No explanation surrounding his death has been provided, though he appeared to die in Moscow at the N.N. Burdenko Main Military Clinical Hospital — over 1,000 miles west of the Uralvagonzavod plant where he allegeldy worked in the city of Nizhny Tagil.

Some reports suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin was supposed to visit the tank manufacturing plant on Christmas Eve but unexpectedly canceled his plans, though Fox News Digital could not independently verify this.

Russian President Putin watches the launch of a missile during naval exercises in Russia's Arctic North on board the nuclear missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky. 

RUSSIAN BUSINESSMEN KEEP DYING UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES SINCE PUTIN INVADED UKRAINE: REPORT

Maslov’s death also followed the unexpected passing of 67-year-old Alexander Buzakov on Dec. 24, the General Director of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, Admiralty Shipyards, which produces carriers for Kalibr cruise missiles among others.

According to its website, Admiralty Shipyards has been described as the "foundation" of Russia’s navy and Buzakov reportedly attended the launch of the new submarine, Velikiye Luki, in St. Petersburg on Friday, Dec. 23.

Buzakov championed the submarine as an important step forward for Russia’s naval ability.

"It symbolizes the end of a certain major stage and, of course, promises us many successful final steps in the construction of the vessel and its handover to the Navy," he said according to Naval News.

Russian Navy ships are docked in the Sevastopol bay on March 4, 2014. Russian forces have surrounded Ukrainian military bases across Crimea as the Russian-speaking autonomous region has been thrown into turmoil following the ouster last month of Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovych. (VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP via Getty Images)

The submarine is reportedly a part of a fourth generation non-nuclear fleet that is considered the "most modern" submarine in terms of combat power.

Details around Buzakov’s death also remain unknown.

Buzakov and Maslov’s deaths are just the latest in string of unexpected deaths among Russia’s top ranks, businessmen and dissidents since the war in Ukraine began.

Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Digital covering Politics, U.S. and World news.

LIKE FLORDIA IGUANA'S
Bats plunge to ground in cold, saved by incubators and fluids


Mary Warwick, wildlife director for the Houston Humane Society, holds a Mexican free-tailed bat as it recovers from last week’s freeze on Tuesday in Houston.
(Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle via AP)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

DEC. 28, 2022 11:52 AM PT

HOUSTON —
Hundreds of bats lost their grip and plunged to the pavement underneath a bridge in Houston after going into hypothermic shock during the city’s recent cold snap, according to wildlife rescuers who saved them by administering fluids and keeping them warm in incubators.

The Mexican free-tailed bats that roost at Houston’s Waugh Bridge went into shock when temperatures plunged below freezing last week, the Houston Humane Society said in a Facebook video.

The society’s Texas Wildlife Rehabilitation Center rescued hundreds of bats from beneath the bridge, along with another group of bats elsewhere in the Houston area that also went into hypothermic shock, said center director Mary Warwick. She said some were recuperating in dog kennels in the attic of her home. Nearly 700 of the estimated 1,500 rescued bats are set to be released back into the wild on Wednesday, she said.

The humane society is now working to raise money for facility upgrades that would include a bat room, Warwick added.

“That would really help in these situations where we continue to see these strange weather patterns come through,” she said. “We could really use more space to rehabilitate the bats.”

Turkey eliminates age requirement for retirement, allowing 2 million workers to retire immediately

Previously, the retirement age was set at 58 years for women and at 60 years for men. It was not yet clear how much the new system would cost

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s announcement came during a news conference on the popular policy move, fewer than six months before an election

Reuters
29 Dec, 2022

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Presidential Complex in Ankara, Turkey on Tuesday. Photo: AFP

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan eliminated the retirement age requirement on Wednesday in a move that allows more than 2 million workers to retire immediately, fewer than six months before an election.

The presidential announcement came during a Wednesday news conference on the popular policy move.

Erdogan’s ruling AK Party delivered a hefty increase to the minimum wage last week as part of a campaign to win back support eroded by inflation, a fall in the lira, and a sharp drop in living standards.

Ukraine: Deadly shelling in Kherson, Putin and Erdogan discuss grain corridor and gas hub
12 Dec 2022



Previously, the retirement age was set at 58 years for women and at 60 years for men. It wasn’t yet clear how much the new system would cost, but Erdogan said 2.25 million people were eligible to retire immediately. There are currently 13.9 million pensioners in Turkey.

Labour groups had been protesting the minimum age requirement for several years, asking that instead workers should just be required to complete the mandatory number of work days to retire. The move is seen giving a boost to Erdogan before a critical election due in June.

In two decades in power, Erdogan has overseen a crackdown on dissent and in recent years adopted unorthodox economic policies that helped push the lira down to one tenth of its value against the dollar a decade ago.

VIDEO: Kuwait hit by hailstorm; residents celebrate rare winter weather

• an hour ago

Kuwaitis pose for photos with hail particles along the side of a road after a storm in the Umm Al Haiman district on Wednesda. AFP

Kuwait, one of the hottest countries on Earth, has been hit by a rare hailstorm that delighted children and their parents, with images of the winter white shared widely on social media on Wednesday.

"We have not seen so much hail during the winter season in 15 years," Muhammad Karam, a former director of Kuwait's meteorological department, said.

Pictures and videos of southern roads partially blanketed in hail and ice spread online to celebrate the rare weather event.

 A man and children toss handfuls of hail particles picked up off the side of a road in Umm Al Haiman. AFP

Children donned scarves and raincoats as they scooped up hail in the Umm Al Haiman district, about 50 kilometres south of Kuwait City.

Kuwait's meteorological department said precipitation since Tuesday had reached up to 63 millimetres but that the weather was clearing up.

Karam said he expects the phenomenon to reoccur as climate change disrupts weather patterns.

The Gulf nation endures blistering summer heat, and scientists predict it could become unlivable in future because of climate change.

In 2016, summer temperatures peaked at 54˚C. Parts of Kuwait could get 4.5 degrees Celsius hotter from 2071 to 2100 compared with the historical average, the Environment Public Authority has warned.

Agence France-Presse

Why Marcos’s Philippine Wealth Fund Plan Is Controversial: Q&A

Andreo Calonzo and Ditas Lopez, Bloomberg News

Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Philippines president, at a news conference following the EU-ASEAN Commemorative summit in Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022. The European Union will propose a €10 billion ($10.6 billion) investment package to countries in Southeast Asia as the European bloc seeks to strengthen ties with the region to diversify supply chains and rally support against Russia. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The Philippines is preparing to establish a sovereign wealth fund, a move that’s being pushed by Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the late dictator’s son who became president earlier this year, but is seen as controversial by some observers.

The proposal for the fund faced a backlash soon after Marcos’s allies filed it in Congress. Even the central bank chief, Felipe Medalla, initially expressed reservations, questioning how it would be governed and drawing a comparison to the scandal-tainted Malaysian state investment fund 1MDB.

The bill was revised after a public outcry: the fund will no longer dip into people’s pension savings and the central bank’s reserves. A new version that says it will get money from state-owned banks has won the support of lawmakers and is likely to be passed.

Here’s what you need to know about the proposed fund and its controversies.

What’s the plan?

The wealth fund’s stated objective is to get the most out of government assets by investing in stocks, corporate bonds, commodities, foreign currencies and infrastructure projects, among others. The money generated will then be used for social-welfare projects, paying dividends to contributors and so forth.

The fund will secure capital from two state lenders: 50 billion pesos ($899 million) from Land Bank of the Philippines, and 25 billion pesos from the Development Bank of the Philippines. The central bank will also contribute all its dividends for the first two years of the fund’s operation. Other state-run companies and private-sector financial institutions, including foreign ones, can also chip in. Marcos has said that he hopes a wealth fund will help boost foreign investments in the Philippines.

In subsequent years, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas will put in half its dividends and use the other half to increase its own capital. The fund will also receive annual contributions from gaming revenue, natural resource royalties and proceeds from government asset sales and public borrowing.

A board of directors led by the finance minister will manage the fund, which will be subject to internal and external audits. 

Why now?

This isn’t the first time setting up a sovereign wealth fund has been floated in the Philippines. A similar proposal was filed during the previous administration, but it didn’t advance in the legislature. 

What’s different now is that Marcos and his government are strongly backing the idea. They say it would help boost economic growth and give the government more fiscal leeway. Even Medalla, the central bank governor who initially aired concerns, is now supportive, seeing the revised proposal as a way to attract foreign investors.

What are the concerns?

The biggest worry is the potential for corruption. In Southeast Asia, the goings-on at 1Malaysia Development Berhad are never far from people’s minds. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak began a 12-year prison sentence this year for his involvement in the multibillion-dollar scandal linked to the troubled fund.

The Philippines has many cautionary tales of its own of giving those in power unhampered access to state resources. Marcos Jr.’s own father was ousted by a mass uprising in 1986 after some $10 billion was allegedly siphoned during his two-decade rule.

“This muddled, inconsistent and redundant bill is only setting” the planned wealth fund up for “failure and will only enable cronyism, rent-seeking and corruption,” economic think tank members, university professors and former senior government officials said in a statement.

Still, the Congress proposal mandates that international standards be followed to safeguard the wealth fund, and requires its board to create a risk-management unit.

Another concern is that wealth funds usually invest surplus funds but the Philippines has been running fiscal and trade deficits.

What’s next?

The bill will go to the Senate after it was quickly passed by the House of Representatives, winning approval in just 18 days while other bills take months to go through. Senators aligned with the president form a majority. Marcos has declared the bill urgent, allowing for faster approval. Once endorsed by both houses it will be signed into law by the president.

For some observers, this is far from good news.

“There is no urgency and necessity for the enactment” of this bill, said lawmaker Edcel Lagman, one of the six who rejected the proposal in the 312-member House. “We must bail out our people today from poverty, inflation and the dire prospects of recession, rather than investing in long-term ventures.”

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Iran must face arbitration to settle downing of Flight 752: response group

By Ismail Shakil Reuters
Posted December 28, 2022 


WATCH: $107M decision for Iran plane crash victim’s families 'precedent setting,’ lawyer says – Jan 4, 2022

Canada, Britain, Sweden and Ukraine on Wednesday called on Tehran to settle a dispute over accountability and reparations for the downing of an airliner by Iranian forces nearly three years ago through arbitration under the rules of the 1971 Montreal Convention.

All four countries as well as Iran are signatories of the convention, an international treaty which requires states to prevent and punish offenses against civil aviation. If the countries cannot settle their dispute within six months, Iran can be taken to the International Court of Justice.

Most of the 176 people killed when Iran shot down the Ukrainian jet near Tehran in January 2020 were citizens from those four countries, which created a co-ordination group that seeks to hold Iran to account.

“We … have taken concrete action today to ensure that our efforts to hold Iran to account for the unlawful downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 can progress to the dispute settlement phase,” the countries said in a joint statement.

READ MORE: Iran prepared to hold bilateral talks on downed jet, foreign ministry says

“In particular, we have requested that Iran submits to binding arbitration of the dispute … pursuant to Article 14 of the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation of 1971,” they said.

Direct talks with Iran broke down earlier this year when the co-ordination group said its attempts to resolve the matter through negotiations had been “futile.”

Iran says Revolutionary Guards accidentally shot down the Boeing 737 jet and blamed a misaligned radar and an error by the air defense operator at a time when tensions were high between Tehran and Washington.

At the time, Iran was on edge about possible attacks after it fired missiles at Iraqi bases housing U.S. forces in retaliation for the killing days before of its most powerful military commander, Qassem Soleimani, in a U.S. missile strike at Baghdad airport.

Ottawa has said a special Canadian forensic team charged with examining all available information about the incident found no evidence that the downing of the plane had been premeditated.

 

‘System failure’: US blames Southwest Airlines for meltdown

US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigeig says mass flight cancellations are not merely a ‘weather-driven issue’.

Published On 28 Dec 202228 Dec 2022

The administration of US President Joe Biden has called the meltdown that led to the cancellation of thousands of flights at Southwest Airlines a “system failure”, blaming the company itself for the crisis.

A historic winter storm, dubbed the “blizzard of the century“, had blanketed the country around the holiday weekend, but Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said on Wednesday that the level of cancellations at Southwest cannot be justified by the extreme weather.

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Deadly US storm disrupts Christmas plans, downs power lines

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“We are past the point where they could say this is a weather-driven issue,” Buttigieg said in an interview with ABC News. “Don’t get me wrong, all of this began with that severe storm. We saw winter weather affecting the country and severely disrupting all airlines.”

But he noted that other airlines were able to mostly recover from the storm while Southwest was still struggling.

Southwest has cancelled more than 14,500 flights since Friday, the Reuters news agency reported. On Wednesday, it cancelled 2,500 flights as of early afternoon, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.

“So what this indicates is a system failure, and they need to make sure that these stranded passengers get to where they need to go and that they are provided adequate compensation, not just for the flights itself … but also things like hotels, like ground transportation, like meals because this is the airlines’ responsibility,” Buttigieg said.

On Tuesday, the airline’s CEO, Bob Jordan, apologised to customers and employees for the mass cancellations.

“The tools we use to recover from disruption serve us well 99 percent of the time,” he said in a video message. “But clearly, we need to double down on our already existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what’s happening right now.”

The Department of Transportation (DOT) had said that Buttigieg spoke with Jordan on Tuesday, telling him that he “expects the airline to live up to the commitments it has made to passengers, including providing meal vouchers, refunds, and hotel accommodations for those experiencing significant delays or cancellations that came about as a result of Southwest’s decisions and actions”.

Southwest created a web portal this week to help affected customers request refunds and additional expenses.

In a separate interview with ABC News late on Tuesday, Buttigieg said possible over-scheduling of flights at Southwest may have contributed to the crisis. He also cited “what appears to be a lack of investment in the software systems that make it possible for [the airline] to assign crews and flights to where they need to be”.

But some critics pointed the finger at Buttigieg, a former Democratic presidential candidate and small town mayor, accusing him of shortcomings in his role as the head of the Department of Transportation.

Last year, holiday travel was also disrupted by mass flight cancellations after the outbreak of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, and regular flight delays persisted well into 2022.

“Where’s [Buttigieg]? #SouthwestAirlines,” Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee wrote in a tweet on Wednesday.

Buttigieg responded that he was on Capitol Hill working “getting results for passengers” using his department’s resources and authorities.

Some progressives, who have been calling for stricter regulations on the airline industry, also criticised the secretary of transportation.

“The lack of oversight and accountability from Secretary Buttigieg’s DOT led to Southwest’s cavalier attitude towards consumers,” progressive activist Nina Turner wrote on Twitter. “This isn’t a new issue, people have been calling out the DOT for MONTHS.”

Earlier this year, left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders called on the Biden administration to increase oversight on airlines by imposing fines on them for delayed flights and over-scheduling.

“All over this country, airline passengers are growing increasingly frustrated by the massive increase in flight delays, cancellations, and outrageously high prices they are forced to pay for tickets, checked bags and other fees,” Sanders wrote in a letter to Buttigieg in June.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

Reindeer eyes change color, putting Rudolph’s red nose in the shade, new research says

In winter, light in the northern latitudes is dim and very blue compared to summer light. Reindeer eyes have evolved to be better suited at seeing in this unique environment.

The Conversation
December 27, 2022

By Daniel Merino

Reindeer noses may not glow red, but these creatures of cold climes have evolved the ability to change the color of their eyes to help them thrive in dark, northern winters.

For an episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, Glen Jeffery, a professor of neuroscience at the Institute of Opthamology at UCL (University College London) in the UK, spoke about what makes reindeer eyes truly unique in the animal kingdom. He shared his findings with The World.

Most people have seen the gold, glowing eyes of a cat, a raccoon or some other nocturnal animal staring back at them during a nighttime drive. The part of the eye that produces that golden reflection, as Jeffery explained, “is a mirror that lots of animals have called the tapetum lucidum.” A taptetum helps animals see better in the dark by bouncing light from the back of the eye through the retina a second time. In most mammals, the tapetum is a “standard golden,” as Jeffery described the color, and that color doesn’t change.

Many animals’ eyes shine in the darkness because of a reflective layer called the tapetum lucidum that is usually gold.   Bowlhover/Wikimedia Commons

One day, Jeffery received a box in the mail out of the blue. It contained two jars filled with reindeer eyes from a slaughterhouse in Norway. One jar was labeled summer and one was labeled winter.

“I opened up the summer ones first and I thought, ‘I’m wasting my time here,’” Jeffery said. He saw golden eyes, just what he expected.

“But then we opened up the other eyes, and that was when there was a shock, because the winter eyes were blue,” he said. “I’d never seen anything like that in my life.”

Jeffery and his colleagues spent years studying the biology of reindeer eyes and the environment they are made for — the dim, blue-hued months of the Arctic winter. What they discovered is a marvelous bit of evolution that has given reindeer some of the most interesting eyes on Earth.

Daniel Merino is an associate science editor and co-host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast at The Conversation.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a global nonprofit news organization dedicated to spreading the knowledge of academic experts, under a Creative Commons license.

Barcelona’s children find safety in numbers as they bike to school in herds

 
The World
December 28, 2022 ·

Seven-year-old Pau Barrios and his mother, Berta Barrios, celebrate their first successful bicibus route. Two others reach this same school, in Barcelona, Spain, with some 30 to 40 kids participating on any given day.
Gerry Hadden/The World

On a recent morning just outside of Barcelona, Spain, six kids and their parents, all clad in bright yellow traffic vests, gathered on their bikes in a small square.

For the first leg of their trip to school, about a 45-minute commute, they’re taking a rural road — a long, winding descent with fast-moving cars.

This is the group’s maiden voyage. But all across Spain's Barcelona province, children are getting to school in convoys of bikes dubbed the “bicibus,” or bicycle-bus, organized, often by schools, as an answer to the push for fewer cars on the road.

More than 700 people joined the different routes during the 2020-21 school year, organizers estimate.

As with traditional bus lines, each bicibus route has stops where other cycling students can join along the way. Parents, teachers and other volunteer adults ride, too, to ensure the kids’ safety.

In the year and a half since the grassroots bici-busing began with the backing of the Barcelona City Council, these two-wheeled convoys have appeared all over the city. There are now at least 15 routes and similar bicibuses have popped up in Glasgow, Scotland, and Portland, in the US, according to Reuters.

“I’m doing this because I don’t want to pollute,” said 7-year-old Pau Barrios.

His mom, Berta Barrios, one of the chaperones, said the environmental benefits are only part of the draw of the bicibus.

“We’re here for a lot of reasons,” Berta Barrios said. “First, for safety. Second, for the sense of community it offers. We’re getting together with other families from the neighborhood.”

Before the group set off, a police escort arrived to block the traffic. He wanted the bicyclists all closer together — if they get too spread out, they’re just a bunch of people on bikes. Together, they’re a single unit. More like a bus, and cars respect buses more than bikes.

On this four-lane artery, there are cars and buses aplenty. Volunteer Berta Palau said that sometimes, their police escort is a no-show. When that happens, harried commuters honk at the riders. Let them, she said.

“This is a protest,” she said. “Even if the impact is small. At least we’re no longer a shock to people on the road.”

The Vallvidrera “mountain” bicibus stops for a group selfie on a dirt road high above Barcelona. They were halfway to school on their inaugural run.
Credit:
Gerry Hadden/The World

She said the bicibuses had become part of the urban landscape. Bike lanes, though, are still lacking, she said. But Barcelona is working on it. It now has over 120 miles’ worth. It’s not Berlin, or Copenhagen, but it’s adding more each year.

Eventually, the bicibus enthusiasts say, they’re hoping to get dedicated lanes for the groups, so they won’t need police protection.

To keep up the momentum, the chaperones focus on the fun of the bicibus.

Like Berta Vazquez, a mom, who strapped a big speaker to her bike with bungee cords and blasted “Sympathy for the Devil,” by the Rolling Stones.

“We play music to create a festive atmosphere,” Vazquez said. “We’re free compared to the people crammed together in those cars and buses.”

Exxon Mobil sues to try to block Europe windfall tax.

European subsidiaries of the American oil giant filed a lawsuit with a European Union court seeking to stop the tax, which Exxon Mobil said could cost it billions of dollars.

Exxon Mobil storage tanks in the Netherlands in 2021

.Credit...Peter Dejong/Associated Press

By Melissa Eddy
Dec. 28, 2022

Exxon Mobil has tried to block what it called a “counterproductive” new windfall tax imposed by the European Commission as part of efforts to ease the sting of soaring energy prices across the 27-nation bloc.

The American oil giant’s subsidiaries in Germany and the Netherlands filed a lawsuit in the General Court of the European Union in Luxembourg on Wednesday. The court must now decide whether to take up the case, which claimed that the European Council lacked the authority to impose the tax.

Since the disruption to fossil fuel deliveries to Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, major oil and gas companies have raked in multibillion-dollar profits, while consumers have faced energy prices that have more than doubled.

Exxon said earlier this year that the tax would cost the company $2 billion through 2023. The company reported global profits of $20 billion for this year.

A spokesman for Exxon Mobil, Casey Norton, said that while the company recognized the burden that high energy bills have placed on families and businesses in Europe, it did not agree that a windfall tax would solve the problem.

“This tax will undermine investor confidence, discourage investment, and increase reliance on imported energy and fuel products,” Mr. Norton said. “European industries already face a very real competitiveness crisis, and governments should be supporting the production of reliable and affordable energy.”

The European Council, which is the executive branch of the E.U., passed the tax under a clause that allows it to surpass the bloc’s parliament in emergency situations, which Exxon argues is overreaching the body’s authority. The tax is to take effect Dec. 31.

Individual E.U. member states have enacted their own policies to try to spread the pain of high energy bills.

This month, the German Parliament passed legislation aimed at halting spiraling electricity and gas bills for households and industry by capping the price of gas and electricity based on last year’s levels. The package, which sets limits on bonuses for managers of companies benefiting from the law, is funded by a levy on energy producers’ excess profits. The law, which is expected to raise 100 billion euros, or $106 billion, will take effect in March but function retroactively from January.

Melissa Eddy is a correspondent based in Berlin who covers German politics, social issues and culture. She came to Germany as a Fulbright scholar in 1996, and previously worked for The Associated Press in Frankfurt, Vienna and the Balkans. @meddynyt • Facebook