'RARE' CANADIAN TAKEOVER BID

7-Eleven owner restructures to fight takeover

Tokyo (AFP) – The owner of 7-Eleven announced a major restructuring on Thursday as it seeks to boost its share price and fend off what would be the biggest foreign takeover of a Japanese firm.

Issued on: 10/10/2024 -

7-Eleven is the world's biggest convenience store chain

 © ANGELA WEISS / AFP

Seven & i Holdings rejected a $40-billion takeover offer last month from Alimentation Couche-Tard (ACT) but the Canadian group has since then reportedly sweetened its offer.

7-Eleven "konbini" are a ubiquitous lifeline for Japan's ageing population and a cherished one-stop shop for everything from rice balls to concert tickets to photocopies.

Second-quarter earnings published on Thursday, however, showed flagging sales with the company cutting its full-year operating profit outlook.

Seven & i announced plans to spin off non-core businesses into a new holding company comprising its supermarket food business, speciality stores and other businesses.

It said it would consider an initial public offering (IPO) of the new unit and bringing in strategic partners "to unlock value for the Company's shareholders and other stakeholders".

Creating the new unit allows Seven & i to focus solely on 7-Eleven -- the world's biggest convenience store chain with more than 85,000 outlets worldwide, a quarter of them in Japan.

An improved share price would also make a takeover attempt by ACT more expensive for the Canadian firm, while also easing pressure from shareholders pressing management to restructure.

7-Eleven began in the United States, but the franchise has been wholly owned by Seven & i since 2005.

Seven & i had said ACT's first proposal of $40 billion "grossly undervalues" its business and could face regulatory hurdles.

The Japanese company said on Wednesday it had received a revised offer but declined to give details.

Bloomberg News and other media outlets reported that ACT had improved its offer by around 20 percent to around seven trillion yen ($47 billion). ACT declined to comment.

Seven & i shares have climbed more than 30 percent since the takeover saga began but are still trading below the reported level of ACT's new offer.

Its shares closed up 4.7 percent on Wednesday, having initially surged nearly 12 percent on news of the new ACT offer. They edged down less than one percent on Thursday.

The new holding company will include 31 businesses, such as supermarket chains Ito-Yokado, York-Benimaru and baby goods shop Akachan Honpo.

Seven & i also said it plans to change its name, tentatively to 7-Eleven Corporation, which will be finalised at a shareholders' meeting.

Couche-Tard, which began with one store in the city of Laval in 1980, now runs nearly 17,000 convenience store outlets worldwide.

In 2021, Couche-Tard dropped a takeover bid worth 16 billion euros ($17 billion today) for French supermarket Carrefour after the French government said it would veto the deal over food security concerns.

It is unclear if Japan's new government under Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba would do the same, but the finance ministry designated Seven & i a "core" industry last month.

© 2024 AFP

British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton, soft-spoken godfather of AI


By AFP
October 8, 2024

Nobel physics laureate Geoffrey Hinton, 76, worries that AI could lead to 'systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control

' - Copyright AFP WALID BERRAZEG

Joseph Boyle

For a brief moment in spring last year, the bird-like features of bespectacled British-born researcher Geoffrey Hinton were poking out from TV screens across the world.

Hinton, a big name in the world of artificial intelligence but largely unknown outside it, was warning that the technology he had helped to create — for which he was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize — could pose an existential threat to humanity.

“What do you think the chances are of AI wiping out humanity,” a reporter from the US network CBS News asked in March last year.

“It’s not inconceivable,” replied Hinton, making a very British understatement.

A few weeks later, he had walked away from his job at Google and was giving interviews to media across the world, quickly becoming the poster-child for AI doomsayers.

– Difficult family life –

Hinton, a 76-year-old soft-spoken career academic, was born in London, raised in Bristol and went to the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh.

He has described his early life as a high pressure existence, trying to live up to the expectations of a family with an illustrious history, littered with storied scientists.

Even his father was a member of the Royal Society.

He told Toronto Life magazine he had struggled with depression his whole life and work was a way of releasing the pressure.

But Hinton has rarely been able to fully escape into his work.

His first wife died from cancer shortly after the couple had adopted their two children in the early 1990s, thrusting him into the role of single parent.

“I cannot imagine how a woman with children can have an academic career,” he told Toronto Life.

“I’m used to being able to spend my time just thinking about ideas… But with small kids, it’s just not on.”

– ‘Utterly correct’ –

After spending time in universities in the United States in the late 1970s and 1980s, Hinton relocated to Toronto in 1987, his base ever since.

Hinton, a self-professed socialist who recalls his family stuffing envelopes for the British Labour Party, had been unwilling to accept funding from the US military, which was the biggest funder for his kind of research.

The Canadian government agreed to back his research, which attempted to replicate the functioning of the human brain by engineering artificial “neural networks”.

Although he spent years on the academic fringes, a research community grew up around him in the Canadian city, and eventually his vision came to dominate the field.

And then Google came knocking.

He took a job with the Silicon Valley juggernaut in 2013 and suddenly became one of the central figures in the emerging industry.

As competition ramped up, many of his students took posts in companies including Meta, Apple and Uber.

Ilya Sutskever, who founded OpenAI, worked in Hinton’s team for years and has described the time as “critical” for his career.

He told Toronto University’s website in 2017 they pursued “ideas that were both highly unappreciated by most scientists, yet turned out to be utterly correct”.

But Sutskever and Hinton have emerged as prominent worriers about the technology — Sutskever was pushed out of OpenAI for raising concerns about their products a year after Hinton exited Google.

And true to form, even during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize — he received the news in a “cheap hotel in California” — Hinton was still talking of regret rather than success.

“In the same circumstances, I would do the same again,” he said.

“But I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control.”

Neural networks, machine learning? Nobel-winning AI science explained


By AFP
October 8, 2024

British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton, known as a 'godfather of AI', and American John Hopfield were given 2024's Nobel Prize for Physics 

- Copyright AFP Jonathan NACKSTRAND

Daniel Lawler and Pierre Celerier

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to two scientists on Tuesday for discoveries that laid the groundwork for the artificial intelligence used by hugely popular tools such as ChatGPT.

British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton, known as a “godfather of AI,” and US physicist John Hopfield were given the prize for “discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks,” the Nobel jury said.

But what are those, and what does this all mean? Here are some answers.

– What are neural networks and machine learning? –

Mark van der Wilk, an expert in machine learning at the University of Oxford, told AFP that an artificial neural network is a mathematical construct “loosely inspired” by the human brain.

Our brains have a network of cells called neurons, which respond to outside stimuli — such as things our eyes have seen or ears have heard — by sending signals to each other.

When we learn things, some connections between neurons get stronger, while others get weaker.

Unlike traditional computing, which works more like reading a recipe, artificial neural networks roughly mimic this process.

The biological neurons are replaced with simple calculations sometimes called “nodes” — and the incoming stimuli they learn from is replaced by training data.

The idea is that this could allow the network to learn over time — hence the term machine learning.

– What did Hopfield discover? –

But before machines would be able to learn, another human trait was necessary: memory.

Ever struggle to remember a word? Consider the goose. You might cycle through similar words — goon, good, ghoul — before striking upon goose.

“If you are given a pattern that’s not exactly the thing that you need to remember, you need to fill in the blanks,” van der Wilk said.

“That’s how you remember a particular memory.”

This was the idea behind the “Hopfield network” — also called “associative memory” — which the physicist developed back in the early 1980s.

Hopfield’s contribution meant that when an artificial neural network is given something that is slightly wrong, it can cycle through previously stored patterns to find the closest match.

This proved a major step forward for AI.

– What about Hinton? –

In 1985, Hinton revealed his own contribution to the field — or at least one of them — called the Boltzmann machine.

Named after 19th century physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, the concept introduced an element of randomness.

This randomness was ultimately why today’s AI-powered image generators can produce endless variations to the same prompt.

Hinton also showed that the more layers a network has, “the more complex its behaviour can be”.

This in turn made it easier to “efficiently learn a desired behaviour,” French machine learning researcher Francis Bach told AFP.

– What is it used for? –

Despite these ideas being in place, many scientists lost interest in the field in the 1990s.

Machine learning required enormously powerful computers capable of handling vast amounts of information. It takes millions of images of dogs for these algorithms to be able to tell a dog from a cat.

So it was not until the 2010s that a wave of breakthroughs “revolutionised everything related to image processing and natural language processing,” Bach said.

From reading medical scans to directing self-driving cars, forecasting the weather to creating deepfakes, the uses of AI are now too numerous to count.

– But is it really physics? –

Hinton had already won the Turing award, which is considered the Nobel for computer science.

But several experts said his was a well-deserved Nobel win in the field of physics, which started science down the road that would lead to AI.

French researcher Damien Querlioz pointed out that these algorithms were originally “inspired by physics, by transposing the concept of energy onto the field of computing”.

Van der Wilk said the first Nobel “for the methodological development of AI” acknowledged the contribution of the physics community, as well as the winners.

And while ChatGPT can sometimes make AI seem genuinely creative, it is important to remember the “machine” part of machine learning.

“There is no magic happening here,” van der Wilk emphasised.

“Ultimately, everything in AI is multiplications and additions.”

Cities that will dominate Europe’s population in 2100: Research

By Dr. Tim Sandle
October 8, 2024
DIGITAL JOURNAL

Tower Bridge, London, UK. Image by Tim Sandle

The European city with the biggest population in 2100 will be London, UK with an expected 17.6 million population. Where else in Europe is set to grow? Russia stands out with three cities making the top 10 list, including Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Krasnodar. At the other end of the scale, Oslo, Norway is currently the smallest city in the ranking with the population of 580,000.

These data have been compiled with the company Deluxe Holiday Homes and shared with Digital Journal. The review consisted of over 100 European cities, with the aim to identify the ones that will be the most populated in 2100. The study analysed the population growth for each city to calculate the expected number of residents at the end of the current century.

The study also includes the cost of living and quality of life index , taken from the reports by Numbeo and World Population Review.

The key findings are:

Cities	Country	Population	Population growth rate	Population in 2100	Cost of Living	Quality of Life
London	United Kingdom	7,556,900	1.12%	17,618,154	$1,413.20	143
Moscow	Russia	10,381,222	0.25%	12,550,511	$650.50	124
Krasnodar	Russia	649,851	1.78%	11,380,787	$500.80	121.25
Dublin	Ireland	1,024,027	1.18%	7,520,154	$1,202.60	149
Oslo	Norway	580,000	1.40%	7,492,097	$1,315.80	183
Stockholm	Sweden	1,515,017	1.25%	6,701,198	$1,125.60	178
Saint Petersburg	Russia	5,028,000	0.37%	6,657,229	$583.30	116
Birmingham	United Kingdom	984,333	0.83%	5,905,431	$1,008.30	168
Bristol	United Kingdom	617,280	0.90%	5,839,996	$1,086.40	172
Nottingham	United Kingdom	729,977	0.88%	5,602,738	$1,066.70	167

London is currently the most expensive city, with the cost of living around $1,413. The capital of England still attracts many new residents each year and the population will see an increase of 10 million people by the end of the century.

Moscow, Russia takes second place in the ranking of the most populated European cities in 2100, with 12.5 million residents. In the present it is the biggest city in the top 10, being home to over 10 million people but the population growth here is much slower at 0.25%. The cost of living is also more affordable here than in London at $650.

Krasnodar, Russia ranks third, with 11.3 million population at the end of the century. Quality of life in the city is a little lower than in Moscow but the city’s population grows 1.78% each year, 7 times faster than in the Russian capital.

Dublin, Ireland earns the fourth spot, increasing its population to 7.5 million people by 2100. Compared to London, it is more affordable and has a higher quality of life, with an index of 149.

Oslo, Norway follows closely in the ranking of the most populated European cities in 2100, with fifth place and the expected population of over 7,495,000. It is currently the smallest city in the ranking, being home to 580,000 residents. Oslo takes care of its residents and has the highest quality of life in the ranking, ahead of Dublin and London.

Stockholm, Sweden is sixth, with the predicted population of 6.7 million. The city provides comfortable conditions for its residents with high quality of life. Stockholm is also more affordable than Oslo, with a cost of living around $1,125.

Saint Petersburg, Russia holds seventh place, where the population will total 6.5 million people in 2100. Another affordable city in the ranking, the cost of living is only $583. Saint Petersburg is currently home to 5 million people but even with a slower growth rate of 0.37% its big population earns the place in the top 10.

In eighth place is Birmingham, United Kingdom, with an expected population of 5.9 million in 2100. The city grows slower than other UK cities in the ranking, with 0.83%, but it is also the most affordable UK city in the ranking, which attracts movers from all across the country.

Bristol, United Kingdom is ninth, increasing the population to 5.8 million people by the end of the century. It is currently a little smaller than Krasnodar but the population grows slower, 0.9% each year. Compared to other cities in the ranking, it has high quality of life and the cost of living is around $1,086.

Nottingham, United Kingdom closes the ranking of the most populated European cities in 2100 with tenth place and a population of 5.6 million. Right now it is bigger than Bristol with over 729,000 residents but the population growth is slower here.

‘Appeals Centre’ to referee EU social media disputes

By AFP
October 8, 2024

An out-of-court dispute settlement body, dubbed Appeals Centre Europe, will hear cases related to Facebook, TikTok and YouTube at first - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Brandon Bell

An independent appeals panel was unveiled Tuesday to decide disputes between social media firms and their users in the European Union over content posted on their platforms.

The out-of-court dispute settlement body, dubbed Appeals Centre Europe and backed by Meta’s own oversight board, will be established in Dublin under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

The act polices illegal content like hate speech and disinformation on the biggest online platforms, and allows for outside entities to establish mechanisms to resolve disputes.

“The body will initially decide cases relating to Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, aiming to include more social media platforms over time,” the board said in a statement.

Meta’s oversight board — often described as a top court for the company’s content moderation decisions — is providing a one-time grant for the centre.

Thomas Hughes, former oversight board chief, will be CEO of the new body and said it should begin accepting cases by the end of the year.

He told AFP it was a “game-changing moment” and confirmed users would be able to appeal to the appeals centre for a wide range of disputes under the DSA.

This could be a decision to take down — or leave up — content a user believes is hate speech, incitement to violence or other categories deemed unacceptable.

The DSA aims to force the largest online companies to tackle illegal content or face fines of up to six percent of their global turnover.

The bloc has already used the DSA to probe Facebook and Instagram for failing to tackle election-related disinformation, and has accused X of breaching the rules with its blue-tick “verified” accounts.

Establishing a dispute resolution mechanism is part of the process to make the law fully operational.

– Empowering Europeans –

Meta established the oversight board in 2020 with a non-retractable trust fund of $130 million.

The panel has the power to overrule the company on content moderation decisions with CEO Mark Zuckerberg promising to abide by their rulings.

Hughes explained that the oversight board’s trust had paid for the new appeals centre, but once established it would take payments from users and the companies.

Users, he said, would pay a nominal fee of five euros ($5.50), which would be refunded if they won the appeal. Companies would pay around 100 euros for each case.

“It puts into the hands of individual users the ability to be able to challenge the decisions that are taken about their own content and what other content they see online as well,” he told AFP.

Last month, Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s digital enforcer, explained to reporters that, at its heart, the DSA was about empowering Europeans to hold big tech to account.

“The DSA is not content moderation,” she said on a visit to the United States.

“It is a system to enable you to actually know what is taken down so that you can complain about it.”

Restoration experts piece together silent Sherlock Holmes mystery

By AFP
October 9, 2024

British Film Institute experts have been painstakingly restoring a 100-year-old Sherlock Holmes film 

- Copyright AFP Philip FONG
Joe JACKSON

Sherlock Holmes fans are being promised a most authentic depiction of the fictional detective, with the restoration of a century-old silent film series chronicling the London sleuth’s adventures.

Audiences will be treated to a first glimpse of the restored works from the early 1920s next week at a London Film Festival screening, accompanied by a newly commissioned live score from Royal Academy of Music performers.

The October 16 premiere of just three of the short films, in what is being called “Silent Sherlock: Three Classic Cases”, will take place in the Victorian-era grandeur of the Alexandra Palace Theatre in north London.

A wider release on DVD and Blu-Ray, and encompassing an international tour, will then follow, with the British Film Institute (BFI) restoration team excited to unveil its years-long efforts.

“They’re the last silent Sherlock-related works to be restored,” explained Bryony Dixon, the BFI curator who led the project.

“The other surviving ones have already been done, so these are the things that audiences have been waiting for patiently,” she told AFP at the film charity’s national archive in Berkhamsted, northwest of the UK capital.

“Sherlock Holmes is always popular, and popular all over the world. As they say: you could just write Sherlock Holmes on a cardboard box and sell it.

“So it’s of interest to people and it’s time that it was seen.”

– ‘Authenticity’ –

Produced in 1921-23 by British film company Stoll Pictures, the 45 episodes of “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” and two feature films that are being restored all feature screen star of the era Eille Norwood.

He was author Arthur Conan Doyle’s favourite on-screen Sherlock.

Conan Doyle’s creation has been adapted for the big and small screen hundreds of times, with Guinness World Records hailing him the most portrayed literary human character in film and television history.

Famous faces to have played Sherlock recently include Robert Downey Jr and Benedict Cumberbatch.

But Stoll’s black-and-white adaptations were made with the author’s approval while he was still penning the stories, setting them apart, according to Dixon.

“People will be interested to see a Sherlock Holmes film version… in an early stage of development for the screen,” she said.

“There is a level of authenticity to this character, vis-a-vis the Conan Doyle creation, that you might not get with later Sherlock Holmes.”

– Time-consuming –

Restoring the more than 20 hours of footage — funded through an initiative of data storage and management firm Iron Mountain — began in 2019 at the BFI’s vast archive.

The repository, on a former farm, houses hundreds of thousands of reels dating back decades that are stacked on lofty rows of shelves in refrigerated vaults.

Particularly old footage on nitrate film — like the Stoll series — are also kept at another, even colder, site in western England but brought to Berkhamsted for restoration.

Conservators in white laboratory coats have spent months meticulously checking and cleaning reels of original negatives and copies.

Some were damaged, requiring painstaking repair.

“Despite all the damage, it is in pretty good condition,” said senior conservator Kirsty Shanks, noting that old reels can arrive decomposed into “powdery, sticky, solid messes”.

Many of the Sherlock nitrate prints were mouldy, oily, brittle and fragile, requiring time-consuming cleaning by hand, she added.

Another challenge has been negatives arriving in sections, rather than complete reels, requiring staff to sequence them.

– ‘Special’ –

Down a corridor lined with vintage movie posters and old film equipment on display, Ben Thompson has spent hundreds of hours in a windowless room, working on the endeavour.

The image quality lead has had to ensure the new digital version replicates the 1920s footage in texture, colour palette and other aspects.

He uses software to match the original filmmakers’ use of colour tinges — primarily blue and amber dyes — to parts of the negatives to help denote night, day and flashbacks.

Thompson also has a hand in repairs, noting the beginning and end of reels have often borne the brunt of past use and require the most intensive rehabilitation.

“It’s the starts and ends where you get into the real manual work,” he explained.

He recounted working for days on a single 10-second opening shot of Sherlock’s Baker Street home neighbourhood. In comparison, some mid-reel scenes required just minutes of repair.

BFI veteran Shanks described the project as the most “challenging” restoration of her career but still a labour of love.

Climate change made deadly Hurricane Helene more intense: study


By AFP
October 9, 2024

A recent study found storms as powerful as Hurricane Helene were used to be expected once every 130 years but now occur closer to once every 53 years on average

Lucie AUBOURG

Hurricane Helene’s torrential rain and powerful winds were made about 10 percent more intense due to climate change, according to a study published Wednesday by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group.

Although a 10 percent increase “might seem relatively small… that small change in the hazard really leads to big change in impacts and damage,” said climate scientist Friederike Otto, who heads the research organization.

The study also found that fossil fuels — the primary cause of climate change — have made hurricanes like Helene 2.5 times more likely to occur.

In other words, storms of Helene’s magnitude were formerly anticipated once every 130 years, but now the probability is closer to once every 53 years, on average.

To conduct the study, researchers focused on three aspects of Hurricane Helene: precipitation, winds and the water temperature of the Gulf of Mexico — a key factor in its formation.

“All aspects of this event were amplified by climate change to different degrees,” Ben Clarke, a co-author of the study and researcher at Imperial College London, told a press conference.

“And we’ll see more of the same as the world continues to warm,” he continued.

The research by WWA, an international group of scientists and meteorologists who study the role of climate change in extreme weather events, comes as the southeastern US state of Florida prepares for the arrival of another major hurricane, Milton, just 10 days after it was hit by Helene.



– Destruction –



Helene made landfall in northwestern Florida on September 26 as a Category 4 hurricane with winds up to 140 mph (225 kph).

The storm then moved north, causing heavy rain and devastating floods in several states, including North Carolina, where it claimed the highest death toll.

The authors of the study emphasized that the risk posed by hurricanes has increased in scope beyond coastal areas.

Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at NGO Climate Central, said Helene “had so much intensity” that it would take time for it to lose strength, but the “storm was moving fast… so it could go farther inland pretty quickly.”

This study utilized three methodologies to examine the three aspects of the storm, and was conducted by researchers from the US, the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands.

To study its rainfall, researchers used an approach based on both observation and climate models, depending on the two regions involved: one for coastal areas like Florida, and another for inland areas like the Appalachian mountains.

In both cases, the study found precipitation had increased by 10 percent because of global warming, which is currently at 1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

To study Helene’s winds, scientists looked at hurricane data dating back as far as 1900.

They determined Helene’s winds were 11 percent stronger, or 13 mph (21 kph), as a result of climate change.

Lastly, the researchers examined the water temperature in the Gulf of Mexico, where Helene formed, finding it was around 2 degrees Celsius above normal.

This record temperature was made 200 to 500 times more likely due to climate change, the study asserts.

Warmer oceans release more water vapor, providing more energy for storms as they form.

“If humans continue to burn fossil fuels, the US will face even more destructive hurricanes,” Clarke warned in a statement.


A US climate scientist sees hurricane Helene’s devastation firsthand


By AFP
October 9, 2024

With at least 230 people killed, Helene is the second deadliest hurricane to hit the continental United States in more than half a century 

Ulysse BELLIER

Carl Schreck spent his career studying tropical storms thousands of miles away from home.

But when Hurricane Helene hit the American climate scientist’s hometown in North Carolina and flooded several of his friends’ homes, the shocking experience made him rethink his research priorities.

“I know how devastating the rainfall in hurricanes can be, but like to actually know people… that are affected by it — it is, it’s really heartbreaking to see,” Schreck told AFP from his home near Ashville, the epicenter of the disaster that ravaged the southeastern United States.

As another major hurricane, Milton, was barrelling toward Florida, a study released Wednesday by the respected World Weather Attribution concluded that Helene’s destructive force was exacerbated by climate change.

Schreck, a scholar at the Institute for Climate Studies at North Carolina State University, and his colleagues had been studying Helene’s formation in the Caribbean for days — until it pummeled Asheville on September 26-27.

Several of Schreck’s friends saw their houses destroyed, while a family he knew died in the flooding.

“It’s been over 100 years since we’ve seen something like this,” said Schreck, whose own house was spared. “So it’s been a very tragic experience for our community.”



– ‘Irony’ –



With at least 230 people killed, Helene is the second deadliest hurricane to hit the continental United States in more than half a century after Katrina, which ravaged the state of Louisiana in 2005, claiming nearly 1,400 lives.

But amid the immense material damage, another misfortune befell the community in Asheville: a major climate data center, which shares the building with Schreck’s facility, lost power in the storm, and its crucial data is currently inaccessible to scientists worldwide.

“That’s one of the real ironies of this event,” said Schreck. “We collect all of the world’s weather and climate data right here in Asheville, going back more than 100 years, and power was cut off to that.”

Emergency workers are having to pump water into the center’s water cooling system from a fire truck to cool down the computers.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which manages the center, says it is working “to minimize the risk of any potential data loss,” but gives no timeline for when the center will resume operations.



– Communicate better? –



As soon as cellphone service was restored in the region following Helene, Schreck and his colleagues got to work.

“There has been a lot of discussion about, like, what does this mean for climate change?” Schreck recalled. “What’s going on with our community? Why was this so severe? How could we have communicated it better?”

Although Helene struck Florida first, it was in the Appalachian mountains more than 500 kilometers from the coast where the vast majority of deaths occurred, mainly due to torrential flooding.

Inland rainfall, “is one of the most dangerous parts of a hurricane that usually doesn’t get enough attention,” he said. “And that’s something that’s… getting worse with climate change.”

“I’ve always been really interested in how hurricanes affect rainfall and flooding,” he added. “So that’s something I’m really gonna be looking at even more going forward.”

Can carbon credits help close coal plants?

By AFP
October 8, 2024

A Manila coal plant could be a model for how developing countries can quit polluting fossil fuel - Copyright AFP JAM STA ROSA

Sara HUSSEIN

A few dozen kilometres from the Philippine capital Manila sits a coal plant that some hope could be a model for how developing countries can quit the polluting fossil fuel.

An alliance led by The Rockefeller Foundation, a philanthropic group, plans to help close the plant 10 years early, avoiding millions of tons of emissions and monetising them as carbon credits.

The idea is “pretty simple”, said Joseph Curtin, managing director of Rockefeller’s power and climate team.

“What if the coal asset owner could, instead of selling this carbon-intensive energy to the grid, they could sell the avoided carbon emissions,” he told AFP.

Carbon credits essentially allow a polluter to “offset” their emissions by paying for “avoided” emissions elsewhere.

They have been issued on everything from electric buses to protected forests, though investigations have found many projects overstating or improperly calculating avoided emissions.

Coal is the largest source of man-made carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.

And while some developed countries have phased it out, it remains a cheap, reliable resource for rapidly developing economies facing growing energy demand.

Countries including Indonesia and South Africa have been offered billions of dollars in financing to shutter coal plants early, but with little success so far.

“There’s not one coal plant, of all the 4,500 in emerging markets and developing countries, that has been shut down and replaced with clean power,” said Curtin.



– Carbon credit problems –



The problem is complex.

Coal employs millions of people directly and indirectly, as well as offering affordable and reliable baseload power.

Government and industry heavyweights are often invested in coal, and in Asia especially plants tend to be young, meaning years of lost income if they close early.

Renewable energy is now often cheaper than coal, but many plants are protected from competition by long-term contracts.

“There simply is no economically viable off-ramp for these asset owners, and that’s why we have zero retirements,” said Curtin.

Enter the Coal to Clean Credit Initiative (CCCI).

It aims to cover both the cost of closing coal plants and converting them to renewable output, including wind and solar, by generating carbon credits.

And it has a test case: the South Luzon Thermal Energy Corporation (SLTEC).

It was scheduled to operate until at least 2040, but under the CCCI it would close a decade earlier, avoiding up to 19 million tons of CO2 emissions, according to Rockefeller.

Coal-fired operations would be replaced with a mix of renewable generation and battery storage, with workers and the local community compensated.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore — which supports the initiative — is keen on credits, and there is private sector interest too, Curtin said.

The idea has faced criticism however, particularly after revelations about problems with other carbon credit projects.

A recurring issue involves “additionality” — proving that emissions would not have been avoided anyway, even without the carbon credit programme.

This has dogged many forest protection schemes, where developers have failed to show that tracts were at real risk of being chopped down.

Elsewhere, trees that were supposed to be protected have been felled even after credits were sold on protecting them.



– ‘Realistic and pragmatic’ –



As renewables become cheaper, critics argue market forces might force coal plant closures even with carbon credits.

“It’s hard to know what are the forces pushing for and against coal phaseout today,” said Gilles Dufrasne from the Carbon Market Watch think tank.

“These forces, economic and political, can change quite significantly over time,” he told AFP.

Credits risk becoming a way to “reward investors who have ploughed their money into a highly polluting and often doomed technology,” Dufrasne warned.

Other analyses caution that countries could “double count” reduced emissions from coal closures — including them in their national calculations, even though they have been sold to offset emissions elsewhere.

Curtin acknowledges the criticisms, and says CCCI’s methodology is designed to address them.

Only coal projects that are solvent, covered by long-term agreements, and connected to the grid are eligible.

Participating companies must have “no new coal” policies, and closures must involve conversion to renewables, with replacement energy output and provisions to support workers and communities.

“We spent a long time developing what we think is a very, very robust and fairly bulletproof methodology,” he said.

It is being reviewed by Verra, a leading credit verifier that has been criticised for oversight failures in the past.

Curtin is sanguine, and says deals for credits priced in the “tens of dollars” could be signed by mid-2025.

“If we want decision makers to have a financially viable off-ramp… we just have to be realistic and pragmatic about that,” he said.

“And if anyone’s got a better idea, please let us know, because we’re looking for new ways of approaching this problem all the time.”

Pacific island nations swamped by global drug trade


By AFP
October 8, 2024

Police said Wednesday they had seized enough cocaine to supply New Zealand for 30 years, after snaring a massive bundle of drugs floating in the Pacific Ocean

 - Copyright New Zealand Defence Force/AFP Handout

Steven TRASK

A surge of drugs is engulfing the paradisal South Pacific, as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials have told AFP.

Pacific islands such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean-trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia.

This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare.

“We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan told AFP.

“We have a massive ocean territory, and we’ve got 176 islands that, by and large, are unprotected.”

Bricks of drugs are unloaded during stops in sleepy Pacific island ports, where they are repacked en route to lucrative markets elsewhere.

“The information coming our way is that illicit substances are coming through in general cargo that is shipped through Tonga,” said McLennan.

“At the moment it’s mostly methamphetamine.”

Methamphetamine use has become so rampant in Tonga — a deeply Christian nation of 105,000 people — that the Global Organized Crime Index likens it to an “epidemic”.

“It’s a problem here,” taxi driver Latimuli Taliauli, 39, told AFP as he waited for a passenger at the tumbledown Talamahu markets in Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa.

“There are some people walking around here that are damaged from the methamphetamine,” he added, pointing out a dishevelled man staggering between rows of vegetables and local handicrafts.



– Drug highway –



Data on drug use, addiction and crime is scarce or non-existent in many of the Pacific’s developing nations.

But courthouse records show a Tongan legal system clogged with drug users and dealers, from builders and mechanics to accountants and teachers.

A teenage thief and a 20-year-old accomplice appeared before court this year for ransacking the Tonga National Museum and stealing dozens of prized artefacts, a sentencing report obtained by AFP shows.

These treasures were traded away for a single gram of methamphetamine, the report showed, a hit worth as little as US$100.

Recent busts hint at the size of the so-called “Pacific drug highway”.

Four tonnes of methamphetamine were seized in Fiji this year, concealed in plastic-wrapped packages labelled “universal tile adhesive”.

It put Fiji — a nation far better known for tourism than trafficking — on par with the “biggest” seizures reported in global methamphetamine hubs like Thailand or Hong Kong.

Cocaine started trickling through Pacific island nations at least 20 years ago, as Latin American cartels looked to feed Australia’s hunger for hard drugs.

Although Australia used only two percent of the world’s cocaine by volume, sky-high prices meant that by 2008 it was already the third most lucrative market in the world, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).



– Spreading poison –



The trans-continental cocaine pipeline has in recent years been flooded with synthetic methamphetamine and the Pacific drug trade now follows two distinct routes.

Smugglers from Latin America and the United States sail through the island chains of Polynesia, en route to Tonga, Fiji and sometimes Samoa.

On the other side of the Pacific rim, drugs cooked in the jungle labs of Southeast Asia flow down through Melanesian states like Palau and Papua New Guinea.

While cash-poor Pacific nations were only ever seen as a transit point for expensive cocaine, locals can more readily afford the cheaper, highly addictive meth.

“From what we have been gathering on the ground, it is not just in urban areas but also in villages and rural areas,” Fijian drug outreach worker Kalesi Volatabu told AFP.

“We are seeing lawlessness across the communities, in schools, and the risks and dangers in rural villages where these poisons are being spread.”

Court documents seen by AFP reference the murky presence of “organised and sophisticated drug cartels” in Fiji, and “international drug trafficking syndicates” in Papua New Guinea.

Jeremy Douglas, chief of staff at the UNODC, told AFP: “The Pacific is being used by Latin American cartels, Asian syndicates and Triads, Australian and New Zealand bikers, and US street gangs.”

Global Initiative, a Geneva-based think tank, singled out Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel as “the most prominent in the arena”.



– In plain sight –



US Treasury sanctions meanwhile list the 14K triad — one of Hong Kong’s largest organised crime groups — as a major threat in Palau.

Alongside drugs, the presence of organised crime has spurred money laundering, prostitution, and illegal casinos.

Sometimes, large drug consignments are attached to buoys and left to ride the ocean currents.

New Zealand’s navy last year found a three-tonne raft of cocaine bound together with cargo netting.

Police said it had been dropped at a “floating transit point”, hiding in plain sight until it could be picked up and sailed to Australia.

“For a long time the Pacific has been a region where not too many outsiders have been engaged,” said Australian National University researcher Sinclair Dinnen.

“It’s relatively new in this part of the world. But it seems to be increasing.”

Mozambique elects new president in tense vote


By AFP
October 8, 2024

Supporters of the ruling Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) attend a rally ahead of Wednesday's elections - Copyright AFP Zinyange Auntony

Gersende RAMBOURG

Mozambique votes for a new president, governors and members of parliament on Wednesday as jihadist violence stalls natural gas projects that could bring a major boost to its morose economy.

One of the poorest countries in the world, the discovery in 2010 of vast offshore gas deposits in the north raised hopes of boosting government revenues.

But projects have been stalled since 2021 by an Islamist insurgency in northernmost Cabo Delgado province linked to the Islamic State.

An estimated 17 million people in the southern African nation have registered to vote in polls scheduled to open from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm (0500 GMT to 1600 GMT). Results are expected around two weeks later.

The ruling socialist Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) is expected to win despite disillusionment with the party, which has held on to power since independence from Portugal half a century ago.

If elected, Frelimo’s relatively unknown candidate, 47-year-old Daniel Chapo will replace 65-year-old President Filipe Nyusi, who steps down after his two terms allowed under the constitution.

Chapo, a provincial governor, will compete with three other presidential candidates including Ossufo Momade, 63, an MP and leader of the main opposition party, Renamo.

Another contender is 50-year-old Venancio Mondlane, who lost a mayoral race in 2023 under Renamo’s banner and claimed widespread electoral fraud.

The charismatic Mondlane, popular among young voters, quit the party in June and joined forces with the smaller Optimistic Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos).

The other main candidate is Lutero Simango, 64, president of the centre-right Mozambique Democratic Movement and an outspoken critic of Frelimo, whose leaders he describes as “thieves dressed in red”, the party’s colour.

– Fears of manipulation –

Analysts have voiced concerns about the integrity of the election process after claims of widespread manipulation in previous votes.

In 2019, opposition parties disputed the results that gave Frelimo 73 percent, denouncing what they said was electoral fraud.

After municipal elections in 2023 were seen as fraudulent, protests erupted in major cities in which police “accidentally” killed several people.

“Nothing is going to change,” said Domingos Do Rosario, a political science lecturer at Maputo’s Eduardo Mondlane University, pointing to weak institutions and rife political bargaining.

The electoral commission “is a joke”, he said. “It manufactures voters,” he added, expressing doubt over the body’s claim to have registered 17 million voters from a largely young population of 33 million.

“The integrity of the electoral process is a serious problem,” said researcher Borges Nhamirre from Pretoria’s Institute for Security Studies.

Frelimo’s decision to pick the relatively inexperienced Chapo as its candidate could be a strategy to influence his choice of appointees to key government positions, Nhamirre added.

– Poverty, violence –

Chapo’s election would mark a generational change: he would be the first Mozambican president born after independence and the first not to have fought in the devastating 1975-1992 war between Frelimo and Renamo.

Addressing one of the major concerns of Mozambique today, Chapo said Frelimo was determined to end the jihadist attacks that have plagued gas-rich Cabo Delgado province since 2017.

“We will continue to work so Mozambique stays a country of peace, including in Cabo Delgado,” he said at Frelimo’s final campaign rally on Sunday.

“We want to continue fighting against terrorism.”

According to the African Development Bank, 74.5 percent of the population of the Indian Ocean country, battered by cyclones and drought, lived in poverty in 2023.

The US economy is solid: Why are voters gloomy?


By AFP
O ctober 8, 2024

Almost half the respondents of a recent New York Times/Siena College poll rated current economic conditions as "poor." - Copyright AFP/File SAUL LOEB

Beiyi SEOW and Julie CHABANAS

Cooling inflation, low unemployment, robust economic growth and… downbeat voters.

Despite indicators showing the US economy is moving in a healthy direction, many Americans remain pessimistic about business and job prospects — a mood that poses a frustrating problem for Vice President Kamala Harris in her neck-and-neck race with Donald Trump for the White House.

Less than a month before November’s presidential election, the US economy added around 100,000 more jobs than expected in September, saw wages grow further and inflation approach striking distance of policymakers’ two percent target.

Yet, almost half the respondents of a New York Times/Siena College poll released Tuesday rated current economic conditions “poor.”

Poll after poll has also found the economy — particularly inflation — to be a top voter concern by far.

While Harris has narrowed Trump’s lead, polls have suggested voters favor the former president on economic issues.

Economists point to a cumulative rise in costs since the pandemic, still-high home prices and uneven job gains in explaining a seeming disconnect between data and voter sentiment.

“At the same time that they’re aware that inflation has slowed, (consumers) remain frustrated by high prices,” said Joanne Hsu of the University of Michigan.

For politicians, “the low-hanging fruit is trying to take aim at prices that people see on a day-to-day basis,” economist Ryan Sweet of Oxford Economics said, referring to food and gas.

“This election cycle just highlights inflation is extremely unpopular,” he added.



– Price shock –



“Over the last few years, consumers have gone through a period of very large price increases,” Sweet told AFP.

“You’d have to go back to the 1970s and 1980s to see the last time that the US economy had inflation that high.”

Inflation climbed to over 14 percent in 1980.

Consumers again saw price increases soar to a painful 9.1 percent in mid-2022.

“For many voters, that’s the first time they experienced (such) inflation,” Sweet said.

While the Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell to 2.5 percent in August, Sweet said “it’s the price level that matters to the consumer” and not inflation numbers.

The CPI for food has risen 26 percent since February 2020 during the pandemic, he noted.

The cost of gas also increased, while that of new and used vehicles are around 20 percent above 2020 levels.



– Less savings –



Trump appears to be tapping into such sentiment.

“Inflation has devastated our economy,” he told reporters last week.

Trump also linked last week’s dockworkers strike to inflation, saying it badly hit workers.

On Sunday, he charged that “inflation will soar” if Harris took office and promised to “make America affordable again.”

“Just seeing prices increase steadily over time weighs on the collective psyche, particularly for low-, mid-income households,” said Sweet.

Voters’ gloominess come despite the Congressional Budget Office finding in May that purchasing power grew across groups as incomes rose quicker than prices between 2019 and 2023.

It may be true that wages are rising faster than inflation in general, Hsu said, “but that’s not necessarily true for an individual person.”

And it’s hard to shake off memories of the pandemic, said Nationwide chief economist Kathy Bostjancic.

“Those years where income fell short, household income, consumers relied more on credit cards or dipped more into their savings,” added Bostjancic.

This means higher credit card bills and more delinquencies, especially among lower-income or younger people, adding to pressures like student loans, she added.

The pre-pandemic savings rate was over seven percent but currently stands at around five percent.



– Uneven hiring –



Overall hiring numbers also mask large variations across industries, said ZipRecruiter chief economist Julia Pollak.

Job growth has been concentrated in a few industries, with basically all jobs added recently going towards sectors that “only account for 48 percent of employment,” she added.

The other half of US workers have seen “unusually slow growth in their industries,” Pollak said, with hiring sluggish outside sectors like government, health care, and leisure and hospitality.

Although workers had 17 months of positive real wage growth, they experienced a longer period of negative growth previously.

“There are many workers who still feel like their wages need to catch up,” she said.