Columnists

US approval of 'lab-grown chicken' could be game-changer for efforts to halt decline of nature – Philip Lymbery

Meat grown from stem cells promises to emit fewer greenhouse gases than traditional agriculture

By Philip Lymbery

THE SCOTSMAN

Published 30th Jun 2023,

Food history has been made in America this month with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) authorising the sale of cultivated chicken – meat grown from stem cells in a bioreactor. For the first time ever, American diners will be able to tuck into chicken produced without harming a single bird.

It’s produced from stem cells harmlessly drawn from donor animals, then raised in a soup of nutrients in a bioreactor. Compared to conventional meat, meat from stem cells promises to need much less land and emit far fewer greenhouse gases. In 2020, Singapore became the first country in the world to give the go-ahead to what is often described by the media as “lab-grown” meat

However, approval for the commercial production and sale of meat from stem cells by the USDA is likely to send much greater reverberations around the world, setting the stage for similar approvals elsewhere. On hearing the news, Maarten Bosch, chief executive of the Netherlands-based Mosa Meats, an early pioneer of the technology, said: “With regulators in Asia and North America signalling that cultivating meat is a safe alternative to slaughtering animals, policymakers worldwide will be jumping into action so as not to miss out on the huge economic and environmental opportunity presented by cellular agriculture.”

Race to market

Regulatory approval in the US means that two California companies, Upside Foods and Good Meat, will be able to offer lab-grown meat to the nation’s restaurant tables and eventually, supermarket shelves. Good Meat has already started producing its first batch of cultivated chicken which will be sold to celebrated restaurateur and humanitarian chef, José Andrés, who runs 30 restaurants across the country.

During an opportunity to speak to Good Meat’s co-founder and chief executive, Josh Tetrick, I asked him about his motivation and attitude toward competition, given that more than 100 companies are now clamouring in this field. “We have an urgency, and every single second we delay is creating more pain and more degradation and taking us further from who we are [as a species]… If you told me right now that some other company will solve this problem in the next handful of years, that more human beings will eat meat that didn’t require killing an animal and it had nothing to do with us, sign me up – I’ll just go on vacation in the mountains!” he told me.

Game-changer

Scientists have worked out how to produce chicken meat without the need to grow the animal (Picture: Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)

'Oh, God...': Biden on whether Trump would have tipped off Putin about coup plan

ByHT News Desk

Jun 30, 2023 

Former US President Donald Trump is a longtime admirer of Russian 

President Vladimir Putin.

US President Joe Biden on Thursday claimed that his administration knew about the impending rebellion against Russian President Vladimir Putin “ahead of time”. In what Fox News called a ‘softball interview' with MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, Biden briefly talked about the last week's revolt against Putin by his former aide and mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and a dramatic U-turn within 24 hours.

US President Joe Biden.(AFP)

When asked about what the US knew about the Russian revolt, Biden responded, “We knew things ahead of time,” but said he couldn't say what.

Wallace followed up, “Did you worry that Trump might have tipped him off, had he still been president?” She was apparently asking whether Trump would have warned Russian President Vladimir Putin of the mercenary leader's plans for the rebellion against Russia's military leaders.

“Oh, God,” Biden said. "I don't know. I don't think about that very often."

As president, former US President Donald Trump developed friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Thursday, Trump said the Russian President has been "somewhat weakened" by an aborted mutiny and that now is the time for the United States to try to broker a negotiated peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine.

"You could say that he's (Putin) still there, he's still strong, but he certainly has been I would say somewhat weakened at least in the minds of a lot of people," Trump told Reuters in a telephone interview.

If Putin were no longer in power, however, "you don't know what the alternative is. It could be better, but it could be far worse," he said.

Putin witnessed one of the biggest challenges as Russian premier after the Wagner Group chief launched a mutiny against the top leadership. Prigozhin claimed that the armed mutiny was to save his group after being ordered to place it under the command of the defence ministry, which he has cast as ineffectual in the war in Ukraine.

Congress doubles down on explosive claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

BY MARIK VON RENNENKAMPFF, 

OPINION CONTRIBUTOR 

THE HILL

- 06/27/23

Asked June 26 about allegations of secret UFO retrieval and reverse-engineering programs, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) made several stunning statements.

In an exclusive interview, Rubio told NewsNation Washington correspondent Joe Khalil that multiple individuals with “very high clearances and high positions within our government” “have come forward to share” “first-hand” UFO-related claims “beyond the realm of what [the Senate Intelligence Committee] has ever dealt with.”

Rubio’s comments provide context for a bipartisan provision adopted unanimously by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which would immediately halt funding for any secret government or contractor efforts to retrieve and reverse-engineer craft of “non-earth” or “exotic” origin.

This extraordinary language added to the Senate version of the Intelligence authorization bill mirrors and adds significant credibility to a whistleblower’s recent, stunning allegations that a clandestine, decades-long effort to recover, analyze and exploit objects of “non-human” origin has been operating illegally without congressional oversight.

Additionally, the bill instructs individuals with knowledge of such activities to disclose all relevant information and grants legal immunity if the information is reported appropriately within a defined timeframe. Moreover, nearly 20 pages of the legislation appear to directly address recent events by enhancing a raft of legal protections for whistleblowers while also permitting such individuals to contact Congress directly.

Researcher and congressional expert Douglas Johnson first reported on and analyzed the remarkable bill language, which, if it passes the House, could become law this calendar year.

Beyond the Senate Intelligence Committee, the powerful investigative body that oversees the nation’s intelligence agencies found the aforementioned whistleblower’s allegations — that secret UFO-related programs are illegally withheld from Congress — to be “credible and urgent.”

Moreover, according to two reports, multiple military, intelligence and contractor officials corroborated claims that the U.S. government or private companies possess multiple craft of possible “non-human” origin.

Importantly, this intelligence bill is not the first instance of Congress addressing the possible existence of surreptitious UFO retrieval and reverse engineering programs.

The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden last December, established robust whistleblower protections for individuals with knowledge of secret UFO programs engaged in “material retrieval, material analysis, reverse engineering [and] research and development.”

But the Senate Intelligence Committee’s legislation goes significantly further than previous laws. If enacted as drafted, the legislation would immediately halt funding for any secret, unreported programs that engage in “analyzing” retrieved UFOs “for the purpose of determining properties, material composition, method of manufacture, origin, characteristics, usage and application, performance, operational modalities, or reverse engineering of such craft or component technology.”


At the same time, the legislation would cease funding for any personnel engaged in “capturing, recovering, and securing [UFOs] or pieces and components of such craft.”

Funding would also be cut for “the development of propulsion technology, or aerospace craft that uses propulsion technology, systems, or subsystems, that is based on or derived from or inspired by inspection, analysis, or reverse engineering of recovered [UFOs] or materials.”

Perhaps more importantly, the bill language prohibits legal prosecution of individuals with knowledge of surreptitious retrieval and reverse engineering of “non-human” craft. To avoid legal jeopardy, such individuals would have two months after passage of the legislation to inform the director of the Pentagon’s new UFO analysis office of the existence of relevant UFO-related information.

These individuals would then have six months to turn over “all such material and information,” as well as “a comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic [UFO] material.”

Importantly, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s legislation contains a “sense of Congress” provision. Such resolutions typically convey a particular message from either the House or the Senate or, as in this case, from Congress as a whole.

The “sense of Congress” is that any illegally hidden craft of “non-earth” or “exotic” origin must be brought out of the shadows for broader scientific and industrial analysis. In particular, the goal of the legislation is to “avoid technology stovepipes” — a reference to the non-sharing of information due to excessive secrecy and compartmentalization — and to integrate any recovered “exotic technology” into the nation’s broader “industrial base.”

The “sense of Congress” provision aligns closely with concerns expressed by multiple officials that extraordinary secrecy prevents the robust scientific analysis required to make sense of the advanced, “non-human” craft allegedly retrieved in recent decades.

Of note, there are indications that at least one law enforcement entity is engaged in a sweeping investigation of the U.S. government’s handling of UFOs.

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are one of the few pathways through which private citizens can obtain government information on UFOs. Official documents and other data released under FOIA are frequently redacted to prevent the release of classified information. Importantly, each redaction must be grounded in a legal justification for why the relevant information is withheld.

Recently, the U.S. government denied in full five FOIA requests encompassing a broad range of UFO-related topics. In a striking departure from previous practice, the government denied the requests on the grounds that release of the information may interfere with “enforcement proceedings” and “law enforcement investigations or prosecutions.”US-India relations: A test case for the Sullivan DoctrineDon’t take away critical surgery options from breast cancer patients

The application of such novel justifications for withholding government UFO information is circumstantial evidence that a law enforcement entity, such as the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, is engaged in a broad, and possibly criminal, investigation of the U.S. government’s involvement with UFOs.

After all, what government oversight body, explicitly charged with preventing unlawful activities, would fail to initiate a sweeping investigation of extraordinary and seemingly credible allegations of illegality?


Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense.

Why a Harvard professor thinks he may have found fragments of an alien spacecraft at the bottom of the Pacific


A daring deep sea search has found tiny pieces of a mysterious meteor that crashed to Earth in 2014. The ‘alien hunter of Harvard’ tells Bevan Hurley the discovery may be evidence of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization visiting Earth




Harvard professor Avi Loeb with a piece of magnetic debris dredged from the Pacific Ocean
(Avi Loeb / Medium)

After spending years studying the night skies for signs of extraterrestrial life, Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb believes he has found proof of their existence at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Professor Loeb has just completed a $1.5m expedition searching for signs of a mysterious meteor dubbed IM1 that crashed off the coast of Papua New Guinea in 2014 and is believed to have come from interstellar space.

The 61-year-old told The Independent he oversaw a team of deep-sea explorers who found 50 tiny spherules, or molten droplets, using a magnetic sled that was dropped from the expedition vessel the Silver Star 2km underneath the surface of the ocean.

He believes the tiny objects, about half a millimetre in size, are most likely made from a steel-titanium alloy that is much stronger than the iron found in regular meteors.

Further testing was now required, but Prof Loeb believes they either have interstellar origins, or have been made by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.

Prof Loeb chaired Harvard’s astronomy department from 2011 to 2020 and now leads the university’s Galileo Project, which is establishing open-sourced observatories across the world to search for signs of UFOs and interstellar objects.

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He has long courted controversy for his trenchant belief that aliens have visited Earth.

In his bestselling 2021 book Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, Prof Loeb argued that ‘Oumuamua — a pancake-shaped space rock about the size of a football field which was visible to scientists for 11 days in 2017 — could only have been an interstellar technology built by aliens.

A tiny spherule, recovered from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, could be a fragment from an alien spacecraft, Harvard Professor Avi Loeb says
(Courtesy of Avi Loeb)

His ideas have set him at odds with much of the scientific community. But the unapologetic scientist dubbed the “alien hunter of Harvard” tells The Independent that his naysayers are “arrogant” to dismiss his findings.

The objects will now be taken back to Harvard for testing to confirm their make-up. But for Prof Loeb, the “miracle” discovery is further vindication that his unorthodox methods are bearing fruit.

‘An outlier’

His quest began in 2019, when IM1 caught the attention of his research team as they combed NASA’s open-source catalogue of meteors for irregular space rock detected around the Earth.


IM1 stood out for its high velocity — it travelled faster than 95 per cent of nearby stars — and the fact it had exploded much lower in the Earth’s atmosphere than most meteors.

“The object was tougher than all (272) other space rocks recorded in the same NASA catalogue, it was an outlier of material strength,” Prof Loeb told The Independent.


He and his Harvard colleague Amir Siraj calculated with 99.999 per cent confidence that IM1 had travelled to Earth from another star.

The pair initially had their paper rejected for publication in an academic journal, and were stymied from gaining access to key classified US Government data about IM1.

Then in April last year, the US Space Force wrote to NASA to say that the chief scientist of the US Space Operations Command had confirmed IM1’s velocity was “sufficiently accurate” to indicate it had come from interstellar space.

Using a combination of Department of Defense data and seismology readings, Prof Loeb was able to calculate a rough area where debris from IM1 had fallen.

From there, he was able to pinpoint the meteor’s most likely path as it exploded and shed its payload.

With $1.5m in funding from US entrepreneur Charles Hoskinson, the founder of blockchain company Cardano, Prof Loeb assembled what he describes as the best team of ocean explorers in the world.

This included Rob McCallum, the founder of EYOS Expeditions and a former OceanGate Expeditions consultant who had tried to raise the alarm about the doomed Titan submersible with its CEO Stockton Rush in 2018.

In mid-June, Prof Loeb set out from his home in Connecticut bound for Papua New Guinea.

Days earlier, former US Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch went public with claims that a Department of Defense UFO Task Force was withholding information about a secretive UFO retrieval program and is in possession of “non-human” spacecraft.

“It’s easier to seek extraterrestrial facts on the Pacific Ocean floor than get them from the government,” Prof Loeb wrote in an expedition journal on Medium at the time.

He noted that opinion among the general public towards the possibility of alien life was shifting.

An ‘interstellar expedition’

On 14 June, the Silver Star expedition vessel set out for the meteor’s estimated landing zone in the Pacific Ocean about 84km north of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.

“There are about 850 spoken languages in Papua, the most linguistically diverse place on Earth,” Prof Loeb wrote on Medium. “Yet, if the expedition recovers a gadget with an extraterrestrial inscription, we will add a new language to this site.”

After reaching the site, the crew dropped a one-metre wide magnetic sled into the ocean that was towed behind the ship with a long cable.

The crew began by collecting control samples of volcanic ash from the ocean floor outside of IM1’s estimated path.

About one week into the expedition, a breakthrough came when the sled picked up the first “spherical metallic marbles”.

The spherules are formed as meteors and asteroids explode, and have been found at impact sites across the globe. The “tiny metallic pearls” were so small they were difficult to pick up with tweezers, Prof Loeb said.

Loeb and the research team on the Silver Star examine ‘spherules’ recovered from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean
(Courtesy of Avi Loeb)

Writing on Medium, Prof Loeb said at first the material looked like shards of corroded iron.

But when examined under fluorescent X-Ray, the research team determined they were most likely a steel and titanium alloy, also known as S5 or shock-resisting steel. The strength of S5 steel is well above that of iron meteorites, Prof Loeb wrote.

Under a microscope, they looked “beautiful”, Prof Loeb told The Independent. “One of them looked like Earth, many of them look like gold,” he said.

“My daughter asked if she can have one for a necklace. And I said that they were too small to thread through,” he said.

The objects will be taken to the Harvard College Observatory, where a team of researchers will analyse them for comparisons to other meteorite debris.

Rather than finding a needle in a haystack, Prof Loeb is convinced his “interstellar expedition” found tiny specks of an alien life form in the middle of the ocean.

A team of researchers towed a magnetic sled along the floor of the Pacific Ocean 2km underneath the surface
(Courtesy of Avi Loeb)

On their final day at sea, having collected 50 spherules from the first recognised interstellar meteor, Prof Loeb and the team cracked open bottles of champagne on the deck of the Silver Star.

“There is this new opportunity of looking for interstellar debris at the bottom of the ocean,” Prof Loeb told The Independent.

“And the ocean is sort of like a museum. If it fell in the Sahara Desert, it would have been covered with sand by now. Those tiny droplets fell on the ocean floor, waited for nine and a half years, until our magnet attracted them. This entire story is just amazing.”

For a researcher who has has written more than 1,000 theoretical research papers, finding tiny objects at the bottom of the ocean had been an exhilarating experience.

“The past two weeks were the most exciting weeks in my scientific career,” he told The Independent.

Prof Loeb’s next book, Interstellar, is scheduled for publication in August 2023.

DESANTISLAND

DeSantis signs bill allowing new roads to be built with mining waste linked to cancer

BY OLAFIMIHAN OSHIN - 06/29/23 



HB 1191 adds phosphogypsum to a list of “recyclable materials” that can be used for the construction of roads. The list also includes ground rubber from car tires, ash residue from coal combustion byproducts, recycled mixed-plastic, glass and construction steel.

Phosphogypsum, a waste product from manufacturing fertilizer, emits radon — a radioactive gas, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The material also contains radioactive elements such as uranium, thorium and radium.

Radon is second to smoking as a leading cause of lung cancer. The gas has been linked to 21,000 lung cancer deaths every year in the U.S, according to the EPA.

The agency previously confirmed to CBS News that the mining waste — leftover material from phosphate rock — is potentially cancer-causing. The material is stored in gypstack systems in an effort to prevent it from coming in contact with people and the environment.

The bill also noted that the state’s Department of Transportation will have to conduct a study to “evaluate the suitability” of its use, adding that it “may consider any prior or ongoing studies of phosphogypsum’s road suitability in the fulfillment of this duty,” according to CBS News.

The department’s study must be completed by April 1, 2024.Sriracha prices soar amid ongoing supply shortage linked to droughtsCDC to start tracking cases of bacteria tied to infant formula shortage

Phosphate mining has been an ongoing problem in the state in recent decades. In 2021, a breach at Piney Point, a former phosphate mining facility in Manatee County, resulted in 215 million gallons of water with environmentally toxic levels of nutrients ending up in the Tampa Bay area with a 10-day span.

In a statement, Florida and Caribbean director and attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity Elise Bennett said the bill is “reckless handout to the fertilizer industry.”

“Gov. DeSantis is paving the way to a toxic legacy generations of Floridians will have to grapple with,” Bennett told CBS News. “This opens the door for dangerous radioactive waste to be dumped in roadways across the state, under the guise of a so-called feasibility study that won’t address serious health and safety concerns.”

Sriracha prices soar amid ongoing supply shortage linked to droughts

BY JULIA MUELLER - 06/29/23 

Sriracha chili sauce is produced at the Huy Fong Foods factory in Irwindale, Calif.

 (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)

Bottles of Huy Fong Sriracha are going for as much as $70 on some sites amid a shortage of the popular hot sauce linked to ongoing droughts.

A single 28-ounce bottle is being listed by one eBay seller for nearly $70, while a two-pack of 17-ounce bottles is going on Amazon for around $100 or more from some merchants.

Other brands’ iterations of the sauce on the sites are notably less expensive, but prices for Huy Fong’s authentic version are being driven up by the an ongoing shortage of the chilis used to make the condiment.

The company announced a “a shortage of chili pepper inventory” back in 2020, and said last year that weather conditions were affecting quality and sparking an even “more severe” shortage.Father of Parkland shooting victim knocks ex-school officer for ‘celebrating’ not guilty verdictKen Buck to students: Look to ‘role models who didn’t need affirmative action’

The company is based in Irwindale, Calif., and reportedly supplied by chili pepper farms in California, New Mexico and Mexico, areas that have faced drought in recent years.

CBS News reported Thursday that a Huy Fong spokesperson said the company has recently resumed limited production, but is still facing “a shortage of raw material” and has “no estimations of when supply will increase.”

The Hill has reached out to Huy Fong for comment.

Lab study misrepresented in posts that claim garlic works better than Covid vaccines




Kate TAN, 

AFP Australia 

Thursday 29 June 2023 

Social media posts -- including one from a former Australian lawmaker -- misleadingly claim a study commissioned by a garlic producer has shown the popular spice works better against Covid-19 than vaccines. But the institute that conducted the study has clarified its findings "do not show medical treatment application" for garlic as the research had only been done in a laboratory. In contrast, vaccines have passed stringent human clinical trials and remain "most effective" in reducing severe coronavirus illness and deaths, scientists say.

"How stupid must the world feel today having wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on useless (vaccine emoji) and destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth with panicked lockdowns when it's now discovered that garlic kills Covid," Craig Kelly, a known vaccine sceptic and former member of parliament, tweeted on May 31.

Kelly was reportedly removed from Facebook in 2021 for repeatedly peddling pandemic misinformation.

His tweet, which has been retweeted more than 4,000 times, shared an article headlined, "Australian garlic kills COVID-19, says Doherty Institute", referring to an Australia-based medical research centre.

Screenshot of the misleading post, captured on June 22, 2023

Similar posts circulated on Instagram and Telegram, including a group with more than 20,000 subscribers which said: "They injected half the world, leading to untold deaths and injuries, and could've just used garlic."

Misinformation around Covid vaccine safety surged during the pandemic, despite health authorities highlighting billions of people around the world have been safely jabbed against the disease.
Laboratory study

Following news reports about the research, the Doherty Institute issued a statement to clarify the study did not find that garlic could kill Covid-19 in humans (archived link).

It said the research involved "in-vitro testing" -- meaning outside a living organism -- on garlic extracts and the results "do not show medical treatment application".

"Stringent clinical trials would need to be conducted to determine if these findings translate from test tubes to humans."

The institute also said it frequently evaluates the antiviral properties of certain products under paid contracts with commercial entities, and that the garlic study was commissioned by Australian Garlic Producers.

Many news outlets that reported on the findings of the study, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Nine News and Seven News, did not mention that the research was in-vitro.

The Australian Financial Review article that Craig Kelly shared in his tweet updated its report to cite an epidemiologist clarifying the results of the study.

"We won't know if this product helps with COVID-19 or influenza until we run clinical trials in real people, rather than petri dishes in a lab," the article quotes Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz from the University of Wollongong as saying.

Furthermore, health experts said there was no evidence to support claims that garlic can kill Covid-19.

Duane Mellor, a senior teaching fellow at Britain's Aston Medical School, said there was "little clinical trial evidence to suggest that either eating garlic or taking a garlic supplement has any clinical effects on either Covid or influenza in humans."

But Covid-19 vaccines "have been shown to reduce risk of infection during clinical trials," he told AFP on June 19.

Sylvie Briand, the World Health Organization's director of global infectious hazard preparedness, said in October 2020 while there were health benefits to eating garlic, there was no evidence it could cure Covid-19 (archived link).

Australia's medical regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration recommends Covid-19 vaccines as "the most effective way to reduce deaths and severe illness from infection" (archived link).

Health agencies across the world -- for example in the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom -- have shared a similar message citing real-world data gathered from their respective inoculation campaigns (archived links here, here and here).

Kate TAN

‘Someone is seriously…’: Netizens slam Virgin Galactic's ‘space flight’ which happened after Titan submersible mishap

ByAdarsh Kumar Gupta

Jun 30, 2023 

Though the passengers landed safely, Richard Branson and his company drew the ire of netizens as it happened days after Titan submersible mishap.

Space trips and deep sea explorations are two very risky adventures which put human lives at stake. After the recent Titan submersible tragedy, many people developed cold feet when it comes to such adventures. But British billionaire and businessman Richard Branson seemed unperturbed. Less than a week after the Titan incident, Branson's Virgin Galactic has flown paying customers to space on Thursday.

Virgin Galactic's ‘space flight’ , Titan submersible(Virgin Galactic via AP/File)

Though the passengers successfully undertook the trip and landed safely, Branson and his company drew the ire of netizens for it happening days after Titan submersible mishap, an adventure trip to explore the Titanic wreck, which claimed five lives.

After the date of the space flight was shared in a post by Pubity, an entertainment-media account on Instagram, several users roasted Virgin Galactic drawing parallels with the Titan submersible tragedy.

"Not after that submarine, thanks," commented one user.

"It doesn’t sound like the best marketing time for this after the Titanic submarine," quipped another user.

"Someone is seriously trying to decrease that 1% population," commented a third user.

"On this week’s episode of “Expensive Ways to Die”," wrote a fourth person.

"Today’s headlines: 10 billionaires now missing in a 100 million dollar spacecraft while on tour of the moon," predicted a fifth user.

"Thank goodness I’m too broke for death !," wrote another.

"Watch as we humans expertly learn *nothing* about the dangers of designer tourism," commented another person.

Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic successfully completed the adventure mission through VSS Unity craft which carried six people on board, including researchers from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy.

Virgin Galactic is now planning its next space mission, Galactic 02, for August, and hopes to make monthly space trips after that. In November 2014, one crew member had died during a test flight of Virgin Galactic's prototype craft.

UK

The real SIR Keir Starmer: Part II

BY AILBHE REA AND AGNES CHAMBRE

POLITICO UK

JUNE 30, 2023 

 

In the second half of a two-part profile, hosts Ailbhe Rea and Aggie Chambre take a closer look at the man hoping to become Britain’s next prime minister.

This week they take listeners through Starmer’s political career so far, from entering parliament as a political novice in 2015, through the difficult days of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, to his own successful leadership bid and beyond.

They hear from Starmer’s closest political advisers: Ben Nunn, his former head of communications; Chris Ward, formerly his deputy chief of staff; and key ally Jenny Chapman, who casts new light on the infamous pledges Starmer made — and subsequently broke — during the 2020 Labour leadership contest.

They also hear from Corbyn’s head of policy, Andrew Fisher, for a very different take on Starmer’s rise to power. Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting explains what angers the Labour leader around the shadow Cabinet table.  And the podcast travels to Starmer’s current neighbourhood in north London, visiting both his favorite pub and an infamous kitchen table. 

First-of-its-kind CBS News investigation exposes impact of wage theft on workers across America

Anglo-French deal could create Europe’s biggest lithium producer

By Michelle Toh, CNN
Published Thu June 29, 2023

Hong KongCNN —

A French minerals company is buying a British startup in a tie-up that could produce enough lithium carbonate to power 500,000 electric vehicles a year.

Imerys, a Paris-based industrial supplier, announced Thursday it had acquired 80% of British Lithium, a small private company that’s found a way to extract lithium from the ground in Cornwall, in the southwest of England.

The companies will form a joint venture to develop a mine that they estimate will ultimately churn out enough lithium to produce 20,000 tons of lithium carbonate a year, which could be used in batteries for half a million electric cars, Imerys said in a statement.

That rate of production is expected to be reached “by the end of the decade, meeting roughly two-thirds of Britain’s estimated battery demand by 2030,” the firm said.

That year is important as Britain is set to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles in 2030, forcing manufacturers to switch to electric vehicles. A ban on hybrids is slated to start from 2035.

The UK car industry hasn't been this weak since 1956. And it's losing the EV race

The combination of the new facility and an existing one in France “would make Imerys the largest integrated lithium producer in Europe, representing more than 20% of the announced European lithium output by 2030,” the company said.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But the project is expected to cost more than 660 million euros ($720.5 million) in investment, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The move is timely for another reason: Next year, tougher “rules of origin” requirements for businesses will take effect under a post-Brexit trade deal.

They will require that 45% of the value of electric vehicles traded between Britain and the European Union are sourced from one of the two regions in order to avoid costly tariffs.

Last month, Stellantis, which owns brands such as Peugeot and Fiat, warned that UK car factories — and thousands of jobs — were at risk if the government did not renegotiate terms of the Brexit trade agreement.

Britain's last tin mine could reopen as tech companies chase ethical metals

The new mine could also help alleviate fears about the future of auto manufacturing in Britain, exacerbated by the collapse of homegrown battery startup Britishvolt. Industry experts have said there is an urgent need to attract more battery manufacturers to the country.

Once the new facility is up and running, it will likely also provide a big economic boost to Cornwall, the coastal English county that was a global mining center until the late 19th century.

In recent years, local officials have pushed to revive old mining sites that shuttered in the face of global competition. The area remains rich in natural resources, including tin, which is crucial for the making of electronics.

The deposit of lithium being developed there is set to be the largest in the country, according to Imerys.