Opinion

With the UN Climate Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, approaching, it is clear that the world’s widely shared commitment to a just energy transition is falling by the wayside. In the year since governments signed on to the agreement at COP29 to scale up climate finance – with a goal of mobilising $1.3tn annually by 2035 – wealthy countries have been retreating from their financial pledges. Worse, these signs of bad faith are coming just as the costs of climate adaptation and decarbonisation in developing countries are mounting.If the Global North is no longer willing to meet its funding promises, as now seems certain, it can still demonstrate good faith, nonetheless, through another form of solidarity: sharing the knowledge, technology, and intellectual property that underpin the green transition.This is not an issue that can be deferred. The shift to a green economy is already reproducing the same asymmetries that have long defined global trade. Instead of fostering inclusive development, climate policy is increasingly being shaped by protectionist measures and IP regimes that entrench technological monopolies in the Global North. For example, the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism may be billed as a safeguard against carbon leakage; but it also illustrates how climate policy can be used to justify protectionist trade measures.Moreover, China’s recent complaint against India for its electric-vehicle and battery subsidies shows how green industrial policies are increasingly becoming grounds for trade disputes. Together, these developments signal a growing tension between climate goals and World Trade Organisation rules. Could measures to address climate change soon become a new impetus for economic exclusion?At the heart of this issue lies a stark imbalance: larger powers like China, the US, and the EU are producing high-value green technologies, while most developing countries are stuck exporting low-value green commodities – primarily critical minerals. This mirrors the colonial-era division of labour, whereby the Global South supplied raw materials, and the North supplied innovation, monopolised production, and reaped the largest profits.Data from the World Intellectual Property Organisation underscore the depth of this divide. Green patents (relating to renewable energy, energy efficiency, and climate adaptation) are overwhelmingly concentrated in a handful of countries, such as China, the US, Japan, and Germany. Between 2000 and 2024, the top ten economies accounted for nearly 90% of international patent filings in solar and wind technologies. Brazil, despite ranking sixth globally in installed wind capacity, contributed only 0.4% of global wind patents. For solar, its share was a mere 0.19%.This technological concentration is not accidental. It is the result of a global IP regime that privileges monopoly profits over public goods. Efforts to foster more global coordination, including through the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, have failed to address the fundamental problem.Without access to affordable technologies, the Global South cannot fully participate in the climate transition. Worse, the current system risks locking developing countries into a new form of dependency, supplying the minerals for batteries and solar panels but lacking the means to produce them.Climate finance is not sufficient to break this cycle. Instead, technology transfers and reforms to the global IP regime must be at the centre of climate negotiations. While the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris climate agreement do acknowledge this, little progress has been made.Fortunately, there is a precedent for the necessary changes. Back in the 2000s, Brazil played a pivotal role in categorising access to HIV/Aids medicines as a public good, rather than as a commodity governed solely by IP rights. This shift was driven by a combination of legal, political, and civil-society actions that challenged the global pharmaceutical patent regime and put public health first.Brazil’s COP30 presidency can rally the Global South behind a vision of TIP that delivers climate justice through innovation.

For decades, the Turing test was AI researchers’ North Star. Today, it’s been quietly surpassed. With reasoning models and agentic capabilities emerging, and with the pace of AI infrastructure build increasing, we have crossed an inflection point on the journey to superintelligence: the point at which AI exceeds human-level performance at all tasks.Indeed, the most consequential question for our time is not whether AI will surpass us, because in some ways it already has (try beating an AI at general knowledge), in many other ways, it will, and in some ways we will always be unique. The real question, then, is whether we can shape AI to advance human flourishing rather than undermine it. That is the most important challenge of our time.To be sure, everyone is primed by now to roll their eyes at AI hype. I get it. But the stakes could not be higher. Science and technology have always been humanity’s greatest engine of progress. Over the last 250 years, that engine has doubled life expectancy, lifted billions of people out of poverty, and given us antibiotics, electricity, and instant global communication. AI is the next chapter in this story. It represents our best shot at accelerating scientific discovery, economic growth, and human well-being. Whenever you hear about AI, this potential is worth keeping in mind.But harnessing AI’s potential will work out right only if we build AI the right way. The costs of getting it wrong are immense. No one yet has reassuring answers about how we contain or align these systems. We are caught at an odd moment, faced with history’s most powerful technologies and unsure how they can be controlled or whether they will remain beneficial.I think we can cut through the noise and understand it like this: AI, like all technology, can be judged by a simple test. Does it improve human life? Is it clearly working in service of people?As we embark on the next phase of AI, the answer to these questions lies in what I call Humanist Superintelligence (HSI): advanced AI designed to remain controllable, aligned, and firmly in service to humanity. This project is explicitly about avoiding, at all costs, an unbounded entity with total autonomy.Instead, we must focus on domain-specific superintelligence. Rather than simply making a system that can endlessly improve and run away with itself for whatever purpose it might eventually arrive at, the core purpose is to deliver practical real-world benefits to billions of people. It must forever remain unequivocally subordinate to humanity. This is the vision of our Superintelligence Team at Microsoft, where our core mission is to keep humanity secure and firmly in control.Why humanism? Because history has demonstrated the humanist tradition’s enduring power to preserve human dignity. AI built in that spirit can unlock extraordinary benefits while avoiding catastrophic risks. We need a vision of AI that supports humanity, amplifies creativity, and protects our fragile environment – not one that sidelines us.The prize for humanity is enormous: a world of rapid advances in living standards and science, and a time of new art forms, culture, and growth. It is a truly inspiring mission that has motivated me for decades. We should celebrate and accelerate technology as the greatest engine of progress that humanity has ever known. That’s why we need much, much more of it.HSI offers a safer path forward. Remaining grounded in domain-specific breakthroughs with profound societal impact is an example of this. Imagine AI companions that ease the mental load of daily life, enhance productivity, and transform education through adaptive, individualised learning. Imagine medical superintelligence delivering accurate, affordable expert-level diagnostics that could revolutionise global healthcare, capabilities already previewed by our health team at Microsoft AI. And consider the potential for AI-driven advances in clean energy that will enable abundant, low-cost power generation, storage, and carbon removal to meet soaring demand while protecting the planet.With HSI, these are not speculative dreams. They are achievable goals that can benefit people around the world, providing concrete improvements to everyday life.To state the obvious, humans matter more than tech or AI. Superintelligence could be the best invention ever, but only if it sticks to this maxim. That means ensuring accountability and transparency, and a willingness to make safety a top priority. Our goal is not to build a superintelligence at any cost, but to follow a careful path toward one that is contained, value-aligned, and always focused on human well-being.Everybody needs to ask themselves this: What kind of AI do we actually want? The answer will shape the future of civilisation. For me, that answer is Humanist Superintelligence. – Project SyndicateMustafa Suleyman is the CEO of Microsoft AI and the author of The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century’s Greatest Dilemma (Crown, 2023). He previously co-founded Inflection AI and DeepMind.

Democrats head into next year’s elections with a fighting chance to win back the US House of Representatives, after victories that showcase sharply different visions of the party as it seeks to claw back some power in a Washington dominated by Republican President Donald Trump. The most critical win for Democrats’ House hopes came in California on Tuesday, when voters approved a ballot measure to allow state lawmakers to adopt a new congressional map that could net the party as many as five new seats, offsetting a comparable move in Texas to benefit Republicans in a nationwide battle over redistricting.Republicans are eager to seize on New York City’s mayor-elect – democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, a state representative with a sweeping progressive agenda – who Trump and his allies will seek to portray as the face of the Democratic Party in the November 2026 midterm elections that will determine control of the US Congress for the final two years of Trump’s term. But two moderate Democrats elected governor, former Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, were also catapulted onto the national stage after winning their states by sizeable margins, presenting contrasting versions of the party. Tuesday’s highest-profile contests occurred in Democratic-leaning territory that will play little role in the races that will determine control of Congress.“I don’t think we can use tonight as a total painted picture of what the next election cycle’s going to be,” said Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina-based Democratic strategist. “So I think we have to make sure we continue to motivate, educate and galvanise the constituencies that came out tonight to make sure we keep them in the Democratic column.”Republicans hold a 219-213 majority in the House and a 53-47 majority in the Senate. To win the Senate, Democrats would need to defend seats in highly competitive states including Georgia, Michigan and Minnesota while also making inroads in Republican-held states including Florida and North Carolina.But the president’s party historically loses House seats in the midterms. Democrats won the House majority in 2018, Trump’s first midterm election, netting 41 seats that first brought Spanberger and Sherrill into office. They used their power to conduct oversight on Trump’s administration and twice impeached him. “I think it’s vastly more important that moderates won in big states that often elect Republican governors than it is that a far-left candidate won in NYC,” said Matt Bennett, vice-president of Third Way, a Democratic centrist think tank.In the lead-up to 2026, however, Trump has urged state lawmakers in Republican-led legislatures to redraw their congressional maps to maximise House Republicans’ ability to maintain control of the chamber by minimising the number of competitive battleground districts. States typically create new maps each decade to reflect new census data. California’s ballot initiative, Proposition 50, was a direct response to Republican-led Texas’ redrawing of its congressional map to net as many as five more seats for Republicans.“Passing Prop 50 is a big win for (California Governor Gavin) Newsom and Democrats in neutralising Texas, but the partisan fight is far from over,” said Kate Maeder, a California-based political strategist at KMM Strategies. “These five pickup seats, we’re still going to have to fight for them. Not all five can be taken for granted, but we definitely have an advantage now.” The top Democrats in Congress, both from New York, have maintained an arm’s-length distance from Mamdani. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries withheld his support until October 24, the day before early voting began, and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer didn’t endorse Mamdani and declined to tell reporters on Tuesday whether he voted for him.House Republicans’ campaign arm pledged in an October 28 memo to “make Zohran Mamdani famous in battleground races next November,” outlining a strategy to nationalise the most competitive races in the country by tying Democrats to the mayor-elect.On Tuesday, National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Marinella said voters will make House Democrats pay next year for surrendering to a “radical socialist ... and the far-left mob.”Erin Maguire, a Republican political strategist at consulting firm Axiom Strategies, said Mamdani will be a prominent foil for Republicans over the next year. Republicans have similarly elevated former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to try to drag down Democratic candidates in competitive districts.“It won’t work in every district, because not every message works in every district, not every foil works the same in every district,” Maguire said.

At the recent Asean Summit in Kuala Lumpur, European Council President António Costa outlined Europe’s strategic posture. “The European Union,” he said, “is proud to engage with Asean as a reliable partner in today’s shifting geopolitical environment.” His remarks echoed those made four months earlier by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who proposed teaming up with the 12-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). European leaders’ ongoing efforts to seek and strengthen “reliable” partnerships are largely motivated by US President Donald Trump’s attempts to force allies to pay more for American security guarantees and military aid, as well as by his steep and often arbitrary tariffs. Trump himself underscored this strategic imperative the day before Costa’s remarks, when he announced an additional 10% levy on Canadian goods in response to a provincial ad in Ontario quoting former President Ronald Reagan as saying that tariffs “hurt every American worker and consumer.” This instability presents Europe with a unique opportunity to offer an alternative to overreliance on either the United States or China. Seeking to position his country as a counterweight to American assertiveness, Chinese President Xi Jinping has framed his foreign policy as a “clear stand against hegemonism and power politics.” Speaking at the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit in September, Xi – flanked by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and 17 other heads of state – pledged to “practice true multilateralism” and promote a global order based on free and open trade. Yet many leaders remain wary of Xi’s assurances. China’s bilateral offers have grown more conditional, and its bullying of the Philippines and other countries in the South China Sea has become increasingly overt in recent years. At the same time, the country’s economic slowdown has curtailed the extensive overseas financing it once provided and dampened Chinese demand for commodities like iron ore and soybeans from developing and emerging economies. To seize this opportunity, the EU must rethink its geopolitical comparative advantage. While an older generation of European leaders continues to tout the bloc’s social model, shared values, and generous aid programmes, these once-powerful assets have lost much of their appeal – even within Europe itself. Across the continent, younger people feel ill-served by social systems their countries can no longer afford. The postwar “European values” that long served as unifying ideals are now being contested in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and beyond, as centrist parties lose ground to a resurgent far right. Meanwhile, aid and humanitarian budgets are increasingly squeezed by rising defence costs and tighter fiscal policies, leading Europe’s traditional partners to seek something more tangible. Europe’s future influence will hinge less on values and aid, and more on economic opportunity. Unlike China – and increasingly the US – the EU remains a vast and open market, welcoming foreign direct investment. Easy access to the UK, Switzerland, and Norway further strengthens its position. Moreover, Europe’s so-called “periphery” is far more dynamic than many assume. European commentators frequently lament the continent’s sluggish growth, but they tend to overlook the vitality of economies such as Malta, Ireland, Cyprus, Poland, Croatia, Spain, Greece, Slovenia, and Bulgaria, all of which are growing faster than the continental average. The same is true of technology and finance. While the EU is often dismissed as a referee rather than a player in tech and private equity, emerging European startups are beginning to challenge that stereotype. But there is much more to be done. For starters, policymakers must act on former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s report on EU competitiveness, which called for up to €800bn ($922bn) in additional annual investment to meet the bloc’s defence, infrastructure, clean energy, and AI goals. A good start would be to offer Europeans a clear picture of the envisaged destination. Fortunately, the EU has the resources to advance its strategic objectives. It can do so by harnessing its capital-markets union, by nurturing an innovation-friendly ecosystem, and by securing affordable, sustainable energy supplies. It could also make better use of the European Investment Bank, whose substantial capital and mandate remain underused. Importantly, EU leaders must resist the temptation to pursue partnerships through regulation or moralising. Other countries are not attracted by a Europe that imposes rules unilaterally or mimics the heavy-handed tactics of major powers. Instead of threatening carbon tariffs or supply-chain exclusion, the EU should promote co-operative ventures – technology sharing, concessional finance, and joint clean-energy projects – anchored in mutually agreed monitoring and accountability standards. Europe’s defence capabilities have long been constrained by fragmented decision-making, overreliance on Nato, and a balkanised industrial base unable to scale in wartime. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has jolted Europe out of its complacency, uniting the continent, driving up military spending, and accelerating investment in new technologies. Rearmament efforts must focus on innovation and efficiency rather than political patronage. That means reforming procurement systems weighed down by pressures to create jobs for key constituencies. Europe should also prioritise developing its own capabilities over awarding contracts to US firms. Only then can it position itself as a credible security partner. Politically, the EU’s greatest strength lies in its deep-rooted tradition of co-operation through law and institutions. This provides a robust foundation for stable, noncoercive, mutually beneficial partnerships and enhances the bloc’s credibility as a defender of smaller states, both within and beyond its borders. For many midsized countries seeking reliability and consistency, that is precisely what makes Europe appealing. Although it may seem dull, the EU’s legalism is a strategic asset. Where governance in the US can hinge on personality politics, and in China on centralised control, Europe’s rules-based systems provide a degree of stability few others can match. So long as the bloc upholds its commitment to the rule of law, its predictability will remain one of its most powerful competitive advantages. — Project Syndicate • Ngaire Woods is Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.

As global powers scramble for critical minerals, African countries are pushing for new investment to process more of their own raw materials and meet their people’s demands for economic growth and jobs, analysts say.To capitalise on the burgeoning demand, the continent must address power shortages, skills gaps, trade barriers and limited industrial capacity.“This is an unprecedented opportunity for Africa to get on the value-chain bandwagon,” said Hany Besada, senior fellow at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at the London School of Economics and associate professor at the Wits School of Governance.Africa has around 30% of the world’s mineral reserves, including cobalt, lithium and nickel.The International Energy Agency expects lithium demand to grow fivefold by 2040, graphite and nickel demand to double and demand for cobalt and rare earth elements to increase by 50% to 60% by 2040.Africa needs to “build local value chains that integrate mining with refining and manufacturing and innovation, and this goes hand-in-hand with the green transformation of the continent’s economies,” Besada said.For example, Zimbabwe, Africa’s top lithium producer, has been nudging mining companies to process the minerals in the country to help lift its economy.“We are creating new jobs, not only in the mining sector, but in the value addition of our minerals,” Evelyn Ndlovu, minister of environment, climate and wildlife, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We have got a lot of people coming in to invest in Zimbabwe.”China’s Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt said in October it would start producing lithium sulphate during the first quarter of 2026 from its new $400mn plant in Zimbabwe.At the United Nations’ COP30 climate talks in Brazil in November, African countries hope to win support, especially from the Global South, to ensure demand for the minerals fuelling the digital economy and clean energy transition translates into growth, jobs and development.Africa “wants to be a meaningful participant and beneficiary of the green economy,” said Ibrahima Aidara, deputy Africa director at the National Resource Governance Institute.“That means an industrial policy that creates jobs, protects rights and enables countries to climb the value chain and not be trapped at the bottom.”What stands in the wayAidara pointed to the Democratic Republic of Congo, which supplies 70% of the world’s cobalt, as an example of a country where mineral wealth has led to child labour, displacement and armed conflict.Across Africa, barriers to mineral processing — called beneficiation — include a lack of electricity, high tariffs between African countries, infrastructure gaps and cumbersome customs procedures.“Addressing barriers to trade is critical ... If you don’t do that, efforts towards (mineral) beneficiation and industrialisation remain aspirational,” Besada said.Regional co-operation is also key, including initiatives like the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), designed to unify all 1.4bn people in more than 50 nations into a single market.US President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs could give momentum to the AfCFTA, which was officially launched in 2021 but has less than half of member states actively trading under the framework.The African Union’s Green Minerals Strategy, launched this year, and the Lobito Corridor railway, which connects Zambia’s copper belt to Angola’s Atlantic coast, are examples of co-operation that can help make Africa more than a mere supplier.In West Africa, the minerals boom has sparked a resurgence of resource nationalism, with countries, particularly military regimes like the one in bauxite-rich Guinea, imposing conditions on foreign mining companies to force value addition.But Aidara said this approach might not ensure lasting benefits to local communities.“This problem ... is bigger than individual countries. We believe at (the) national level we need ... well-defined and evidence-based strategies to leverage minerals and create more economic and industrialisation opportunities.”Listening to Gen ZThe demand for better use of resources is also coming from Africa’s streets.Over the past year, so-called Gen Z protests from Kenya to Madagascar have seen young Africans express their frustration over everything from corruption to power cuts. Demonstrations in Madagascar led to the fall of the president in October.“Civil society groups and large populations, including the young, hunger for change. With digital proliferation, they see how things have changed in neighbouring countries,” Besada said.Governments, even dictatorial ones, are mindful that this engaged population may no longer accept that only rich elites, whetherthey are foreign or local, benefit from national resources.Growing African middle classes also play a role.“They pay taxes, they have more of an interest in how economies are shaped and run. They have more to lose if things go badly, and governments understand this,” Besada said.At COP30, the drive to ensure the energy transition benefits local populations will be on the agenda.More than 100 civil society groups, including Amnesty International and rights organisations from Brazil to Indonesia, want governments to put transition minerals, and communities affected by mining, at the centre of climate action.They urged the United Nations and governments to work with Indigenous peoples and civil society, among others, to strengthen governance of the sector.“Without a drastic shift, the transition will exacerbate and entrench unjust practices and repeat the exploitative patterns of the past,” the groups said in an open letter. (Reporting by Clar Ni Chonghaile and Kim Harrisberg; editing by Jack Graham and Ayla Jean Yackley.— Thomson Reuters Foundation

Two days after Vietnam’s top leader called on local private companies to help build infrastructure, listed conglomerate Vingroup stepped forward to develop a $70bn nationwide high-speed railway and build the trains to run on it. Communist Party leader To Lam’s request was part of a broader call for a stronger private sector in Resolution 68, a party development blueprint issued in May that some analysts labelled ‘Doi Moi 2.0’ after the 1980s reforms that opened the Southeast Asian nation’s economy.Six months on, views on Resolution 68’s possible impact range from upbeat to worried, but the thrust of the initiative has become clearer: It is less about liberalisation and more about boosting national champions, according to a dozen business advisers and economists.The high-speed railway, Vietnam’s most expensive infrastructure project, has emerged as a test case – and a source of financial stability concerns flagged in rare instances of explicit criticism by the central bank and finance ministry in documents seen by Reuters.Railway plan raises alarmVingroup, whose core business is property, in October set up a subsidiary to produce steel for civil works, after bidding for the railway. Under its proposal, the state would cover land compensation and fund 80% of the project via interest-free loans with decades-long maturities.Vietnam’s central bank warned of Vingroup’s high leverage and lack of rail experience, saying the project needed special state guarantees “to ensure the safety of banking operations”, it wrote in an opinion dated May 19 that was reviewed by Reuters.The finance ministry said the proposed 0% interest rate amounted to a state subsidy that could affect Vietnam’s credit ratings. It also flagged the 30-year repayment schedule — with debt serviced only at maturity — as “very risky”, according to a government document.Three people briefed on the matter said state officials encouraged Vingroup to bid and discussed possible real estate projects along the railway. One said support for Vingroup’s loss-making EV maker VinFast was also discussed.They declined to be named because the conversations were confidential. Two months after the bid, the government announced a ban on fossil-fuel motorbikes in central Hanoi from mid-2026, citing pollution concerns, leading to a plunge in Honda sales and surging demand for VinFast’s electric models.Asked by Reuters, Vingroup said its debt level was “safe by international standards”, it had not discussed with authorities any privileged treatment and was conscious of its responsibility on strategic projects.“Over-reliance on selected business groups to drive growth and funnelling credit through them can exacerbate concentration risks in banks’ loan portfolios,” Willie Tanoto of rating agency Fitch told Reuters, noting the planned reforms might however improve capital allocation if properly supervised.Shortly after Vingroup’s bid, local car assembler Thaco made a similar proposal for the railway.Vietnam’s central bank, finance ministry and government did not respond to requests for comment. The government has not yet named a contractor but a draft resolution seen by Reuters largely confirms the funding strategy proposed by the two Vietnamese conglomerates.Construction on the first line connecting Hanoi with Ho Chi Minh City, more than 1,500km away, is expected to start next year.Party offers preferential policies to private firmsThe Communist-run country aims to make the private sector the key “driving force” of the economy under the state’s “leading role”, according to a party document released in October.To achieve that, it wants more private Vietnamese companies to have a global footprint and is willing to favour their involvement in strategic projects with incentives and “preferential policies”, such as “limited bidding or direct contracting”, according to Resolution 68.Fostering national champions with supportive measures is a clear objective of the new policy, said Nguyen Ba Hung, senior economist at the Asian Development Bank, but added it was important to ensure large conglomerates did not acquire excessive influence.Addressing corruption risks is mentioned only once in the 15-page document – a shift from the sweeping anti-graft campaign unleashed in recent years by late party leader Nguyen Phu Trong, which led to the arrest of multiple senior officials, at times paralysing the administration.Investors remain cautiousHong Sun, honorary chairman of the Korean Business Association in Vietnam, says the country wants “chip-to-ship” corporations, citing South Korean chaebols as models.A senior foreign official, who asked not to be named as he was not allowed to talk to media, likened the strategy to less successful efforts in Southeast Asia where “politically-connected conglomerates operate inefficiently in protected sectors”.Overseas investors have been cautious. Investment pledges fell 5% in the five months after Resolution 68 was issued compared to the same period last year, and foreign cash has continued to exit the stock market despite a rally, with foreign ownership of Vietnamese shares down to around 15% of the total from 16% in May.Many investors express support for the party’s declared intention to boost the private sector, but others worry about transparency and favouritism.Five Vietnam-based business consultants, who asked for anonymity to protect relations with their foreign clients, reported concerns about procurement practices and preferential treatment for large firms. One business executive and two economists echoed those concerns, also requesting anonymity to speak more freely.“Recent policies tend to create a certain level of prioritisation for a few large, well-capitalised domestic investors,” said Thi Nguyen, counsel at Vietnamese legal firm bizconsult, noting that may be only a temporary outcome. — Reuters

Under Brazil’s Amazon rainforest canopy, hundreds of transparent plastic panels hang between tree trunks to starve a hectare of land of half the water it normally receives.Scientists are creating this artificial drought in Querencia municipality close to the southeastern edge of the world’s largest rainforest to better understand the limits of the Amazon’s resistance to extreme dry conditions that are predicted by climate change models.In the experiment, called Seca Limite, or Limit Drought, water is captured by the platforms, then flows through a network of elevated timber gutters before being dumped elsewhere.Like hospital patients, the vital signs of 61 of the trees are measured, including sap and carbon dioxide flow, respiration and temperature, with solar-powered equipment.“It’s like someone was taking measurements of your pulse and breathing every day,” said David Galbraith, a professor of terrestrial ecosystem science at Britain’s Leeds University and one of the lead researchers of Limit Drought, as he walked through the wired forest.The team is also tracking tree trunk size and soil data from 6 metre deep holes, while nets capture falling leaves. An artificial intelligence-powered drone has made a 3D model of the forest since the project began late last year.Across the Amazon, climate change, deforestation and degradation are drying forests, and scientists fear parts of the region are being pushed to a tipping point, after which there is no going back — at least not in human timescales.This corner of the Amazon, considered a transition zone to the nearby Cerrado tropical savannah, is already drier and warmer and sees more intense human activity than other parts.“The forest here is ... on the frontline of climate change”, said Antonio Carlos Lola da Costa, a geosciences professor at Brazil’s Federal University of Para who is co-leading Limit Drought.“There’s the advance of large-scale agriculture, and on the other side (is) the Amazon resisting,” he said at a forest station managed by research institute IPAM Amazonia.Record wildfiresAt November’s United Nations COP30 climate summit in Brazil’s Amazon city of Belem, much of the debate is expected to centre on how to keep the vast rainforest, 60% of which lies in Brazil, within a margin of safety.Scientists fear that this deforestation, arson and biodiversity loss could turn parts of the Amazon into degraded forests or even savannas — grassy areas with fewer trees.A study published in the journal Nature last year concluded that 10-47% of the forest is at risk of degrading into other ecosystems by 2050. Large numbers of rotting and burning trees would dump massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change further.Already, there are signs the Amazon’s resilience is breaking.The rainforest suffered four severe droughts in the 21st century, helping to fuel record wildfires last year.An October report from the World Meteorological Organisation showed 2024 saw the highest spike in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere since modern measurements began.That was likely caused by wildfires and the reduced capacity of drought-ridden forests and warmer oceans to function as carbon sinks amid record global temperatures, it said.Breaking the forestFor the last 3,000 years, Amazon forests rapidly expanded towards the south, until the 1970s, when Brazil’s military regime launched road-building and colonisation programmes, and deforestation rates exploded.“Anyone could get land in Brazil, as long as they burned the forest down and occupied it,” said Ben Hur Marimon Jr, a Mato Grosso State University researcher who is co-leading Limit Drought.Ben Hur and his wife and fellow ecology professor Beatriz Marimon have been measuring forest plots in this frontier of deforestation for three decades.“We started measurements in 1994, and 15 years later, we became scared because so many trees started to die,” said Beatriz, another lead researcher at Limit Drought.Data gathered by the couple was published in a 2020 paper in Nature and showed the southeastern region had the highest tree mortality rate in the Amazon.Drier rainforest?In the Nova Xavantina municipality, the entrance to one of the forest plots the Marimons have measured since the 1990s is marked with a bullet-riddled plaque warning, “Fishing and hunting are prohibited.”Inside, Ben Hur points to a tree more than 30 metres high whose trunk is starting to rot.“That one is over 300 years old, and it won’t last another century. These are the first ones to die,” he said. Nearby, another giant was dead and leafless.One year of extreme drought can make a tree vulnerable to termites or other maladies, increasing the chances it dies in the next drought, Beatriz said.The interplay between worsening drought and human-ignited wildfires is also key, including last year when the expanse of burnt Amazon forests was double the previous record in 40 years of data collected by mapping consortium MapBiomas.But recent research may offer some cause for hope.Another drying experiment in the north Amazon showed a third of biomass was lost in the first 15 years, but that tree death then stabilised as the forest adapted to the new reality — with less canopy cover and shorter trees — but still a forest.Limit Drought’s results may differ as the experiment is being held in the hotter, drier southeast in an area fragmented by soybean fields and cattle pastures.Those activities pose a more immediate threat to the area than global climate change, said Beatriz Marimon.“People are so focused on a climate tipping point that they forget about the human tipping point: the crawler tractor that tears everything down”, she said.“Not in 1,000 years will a tractored forest be the same.”— Thomson Reuters Foundation

National commitments to slash heat-trapping pollution would limit global warming up to 2.5C this century — nowhere near enough to avoid devastating climate impacts despite a sweep of new pledges, the UN has warned.Scientists are in broad agreement that warming above 1.5C relative to pre-industrial times risks catastrophic consequences, and every effort must be made to stick as close as possible to this safer threshold.But the world is set to blow past 1.5C in a matter of years and planet-warming emissions keep rising, hitting a new record high in 2024, according to a report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).The sobering assessment was published just days before world leaders gather in Brazil today and tomorrow ahead of the COP30 climate summit in the rainforest city of Belem.With an overshoot of 1.5C now inevitable, focus has shifted to how quickly temperatures can be returned to less-risky levels.“Our mission is simple, but not easy: make any overshoot as small and as short as possible,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the launch of UNEP’s Emissions Gap report.Big polluters most responsible for the crisis have been urged to pledge faster and deeper emissions cuts to bend the curve back to 1.5C by the end of the century.Instead, the latest round of carbon-cutting targets announced ahead of the UN climate talks “have barely moved the needle”, concluded UNEP’s latest assessment.“Ambition and action are nowhere near the levels needed globally or collectively,” Anne Olhoff, the report’s chief scientific editor, told AFP.The latest assessment projects that the world’s collective commitments to tackle climate change, if enacted in full, would result in 2.3-2.5C of warming by 2100.That poses an unacceptable threat to the survival of nations most at risk by rising seas and extreme weather, and the global failure to rise to this challenge will loom over COP30.Scientists have strong evidence that warming above 1.5C — let alone a degree or more — increases not only the intensity of hurricanes, floods and other disasters, but the likelihood of catastrophic climate tipping points.At 1.4C above pre-industrial times, the Earth is already too warm for most tropical coral reefs to survive, while ice sheets and the Amazon rainforest could suffer severe and lasting changes below 2C, with consequences for the entire planet.Under the Paris Agreement, each round of climate pledges is supposed to be more ambitious than the last to keep long-term warming “well below” 2C and as close as possible to 1.5C.Despite being obligated to do so, only around one-third of countries announced a 2035 emissions reduction target by September 30, UNEP said. This year’s warming projections are 0.3C lower than last year, but Olhoff said little of that reduction was thanks to these latest pledges.Updates to methodology accounted for 0.1C while another 0.1C was attributed to US commitments made under the Biden administration.These gains are unlikely to materialise as President Donald Trump has vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris accord and ditch the climate policies of his predecessor.“If we don’t include the US, then the progress is quite limited,” Olhoff said.The dozens of other climate pledges made by governments in recent months “do not have a large effect on the temperature projections”, she added.“That is a very bleak picture, you can say.”Global emissions grew 2.3 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year, an increase driven by India followed by China, Russia and Indonesia.This rise was quite high in the context of recent years “and comparable to the emissions growth in the 2000s”, the report said.Wealthy and powerful G20 economies accounted for three-quarters of global emissions and of the six largest polluters, the EU wasthe only one to cut greenhouse gases in 2024. As they come under pressure to set new and ever-more ambitious targets, UNEP said most nations were not even on track to meet their earlier 2030 goals.Based on just the current policies in place, Earth is expected to be 2.8C hotter in 2100.COP30 will seek to allay fears that climate action is on the back burner as the United States shuns the process, collective targets are missed and governments prioritise other concerns.“We still need unprecedented cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, in an ever-compressing timeframe, amid a challenging geopolitical context,” wrote UNEP chief Inger Andersen in the report. — AFP

This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Brazil (COP30) comes at a decisive moment, not just for the climate agenda but for international co-operation more broadly. Following last year’s “finance COP” in Baku – where countries agreed to triple the global target for climate finance – this year’s gathering is being framed as the “implementation COP.”After years of negotiations, the time for ambitious commitments has passed. We now need concrete action. That means actually mobilising climate finance, not as an act of charity, but as a strategic investment in global resilience, shared prosperity, and mutual security.Developing countries are not coming to the table empty-handed. We are bringing ambitious climate plans, national commitments, and domestic financing of our own. Bangladesh, for example, draws 75% of its climate finance from its own resources, and allocates 6-7% of its annual budget to climate-related efforts.Many developing countries are also submitting updated Nationally Determined Contributions (the Paris climate agreement’s term for emissions-reduction plans), strengthening their policy frameworks, and pioneering locally driven solutions that can inform global best practices. Thus, Bangladesh recently submitted its “NDC 3.0”, which sets an unconditional emissions-reduction target of 6.39% by 2035 (in the business-as-usual scenario), and a conditional target of 13.92%.But the total investment required to implement our NDC is a staggering $116bn. That is why we have also created the Bangladesh Climate and Development Platform (BCDP), a nationally owned mechanism designed to scale up climate finance and integrate national climate strategies. With strong political support, the BCDP brings together more than ten ministries, marking a significant milestone in coordinated, country-led climate action.As a coastal country, Bangladesh is home to some of the world’s most fragile ecosystems, including the Sundarbans mangrove forest and the world’s largest river delta. These ecosystems provide essential services such as climate regulation, carbon sequestration, and disaster-risk reduction. Protecting them is vital not only for Bangladesh, but for the planet. Doing so, however, requires international support.The same message applies across the Global South. While developing countries are stepping up, their plans require external support. The COP29 commitment to mobilise $300 billion per year in international climate finance, starting next year, must be the baseline. This figure still represents only a small fraction of what is needed, and we still need to ensure that financing is managed with a higher level of accountability. Developed countries must be held to their commitments, so that new funding is truly additional, rather than being repurposed from existing development aid.Another priority concerns the quality of financing, which must be well structured, accessible, and effective. That means clarifying how much each developed country will contribute; how resources will be balanced between mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage; and how delivery will be made predictable and fair.Loans that push developing countries further into debt are not sustainable. A much larger share of finance must come in the form of grants and highly concessional flows. The world cannot build climate resilience on the back of fiscal instability. This was already a recurring theme in Baku, and now COP30 gives us a chance to translate it into a clear policy framework.Climate finance is sound economics, representing opportunity, not just obligation. Studies show that every $1 invested in adaptation can generate more than $10 in long-term benefits. For developed countries, supporting adaptation and resilience abroad helps stabilise supply chains, reduce disaster risks, and prevent future crises that will spill over borders.At the same time, developing countries hold vast, often untapped, potential to drive the global energy transition, safeguard food systems, and power sustainable growth. Bangladesh, for example, is the world’s third-largest rice producer. Helping us achieve resilience against climate shocks is critical for domestic and global food security. We also contribute to global value chains through seafood, textiles, and a dynamic, skilled workforce. With young people comprising 28% of our population, we have the potential to be a key partner in many growth industries of the future.As an investment in our shared future, climate finance requires partnerships that will benefit everyone – economically, socially, and environmentally. But merely increasing our financing targets is not enough. Last year, developing countries engaged in good faith to reach an agreement on climate finance, even though the outcome did not fully reflect our needs. That commitment to dialogue must now be matched by a commitment to clarity and delivery. We need all countries to engage constructively in shaping the structure of climate finance. The question is not just how much, but how it flows, and how it can best be used to drive long-term transformations.Already, Brazil and Azerbaijan are co-leading efforts to build a roadmap to scale climate finance to $1.3tn annually by 2035. But we cannot reach that goal without laying the foundation for it. That means delivering the promised $300 billion per year through mechanisms that are transparent, fair, and effective.With multilateralism in crisis, we must restore faith in the process. Multilateralism has delivered before, and it can do so again. COP30 is where we can prove that the international system is capable of moving from commitment to implementation, and from division to cooperation. We have the tools, and we have the knowledge. What we need now is the will to turn climate finance into a shared engine for growth, security, and a fairer future. — Project SyndicateKEY POINTS• Implementation COP: After years of pledges, COP30 in Brazil focuses on turning commitments into concrete, accountable action — ensuring climate finance flows predictably and fairly• Developing nations lead: Countries like Bangladesh are investing heavily from domestic resources, submitting ambitious emission targets, and pioneering co-ordinated climate platforms such as the BCDP• Shared responsibility: The $300bn annual target must be the baseline — delivered transparently and as grants, not debt — to build a sustainable, equitable global futureSyeda Rizwana Hasan is Adviser for Environment, Forest, and Climate Change of Bangladesh.

BYD is battling to remain dominant in its home market of China amid a prolonged price war and government concerns that cut-throat competition could damage product quality.The Shenzhen-based company spent the last five years racing ahead.In 2024, with the help of government support, aggressive pricing and overseas expansion, the Chinese carmaker surpassed Tesla to become the world’s top seller of electric vehicles.Now, BYD faces a reality check.Its challenges initially came to light when it reported a shock 30% plunge in second-quarter profit, and the EV maker has continued to struggle with stalling sales that even saw it lose its title as China’s best-selling automaker to state-owned SAIC Motor Corp in September.Total revenue in the three months ended September 30 dropped about 3% to 194.98bn yuan, missing analyst estimates for 216bn yuan.Since authorities earlier this year stepped up scrutiny of the bruising price war in China that helped fuel BYD’s rise, the automaker’s sales momentum has stalled.What was expected to be another blockbuster year has instead become the company’s toughest stretch since 2020.Outside of China, BYD is faring well.An aggressive and expensive global push has helped the automaker win fresh customers with its affordable, high-performing EVs.In the UK, for example, sales in September surged by 880% year-on-year, making the country BYD’s largest international market for the first time.However, in China — its biggest market by far — BYD has struggled to attract new buyers. In the three months to the end of September, the company experienced its first year-on-year fall in total sales since 2020.Seasonal weakness played a role, but competitors such as Geely Automobile Holdings, Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology and Xiaomi Corp have also been gaining market share.The slowdown in deliveries has forced BYD to scale back its ambitious targets. Instead of an original goal of 5.5mn cars for 2025, it now expects to sell 4.6mn vehicles, according to Li Yunfei, a senior company executive.The higher prices that BYD can charge abroad is helping to absorb some, but not all, of the pressures to the business.In August, BYD — an acronym for Build Your Dreams — reported its first quarterly decline in profit in more than three years with a 30% slump in net income. In October, the company posted its second consecutive quarterly decline, with net income falling 33% in the three months to the end of September.Since May, BYD has been facing the full force of regulatory intervention in its home market. Chinese officials have cracked down on the domestic price war driven by excessive competition that kicked off in early 2023.One of BYD’s main problems is that a major overhaul of its lineup — featuring models with new technologies and capabilities — won’t hit the market until 2026, putting it at a disadvantage to rivals currently rolling out more appealing vehicles.China now has tens of millions of electric cars on its roads, and sales are rising at a rapid clip.BYD shares neared the lowest in almost nine months on Monday after the automaker posted its second consecutive drop in sales, again falling to No 2 in the Chinese market.October sales fell 12% from a year earlier to 441,706 vehicles, the Shenzhen-based manufacturer said Sunday.Since BYD’s market capitalisation peaked at $175bn in late May, its shares have tumbled on the back of regulatory curbs and the summer sales slowdown.There are other challenges that lie ahead.A number of overseas markets, such as Europe and Mexico, are now seeking to limit the rapid expansion of cheaper Chinese EV imports. That’s already on top of Chinese carmakers being effectively shut out of the US market by high tariffs, as well as restrictions on Chinese-made technology in cars that are due to come into effect in 2027.

When His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani opened the Second World Summit for Social Development in Doha, his words did more than mark a ceremonial beginning. They reframed the global conversation on what development truly means in an age of conflict, inequality, and fractured trust.The Amir’s central argument was unmistakable: social development is inseparable from peace. As he declared, “Social development can never be achieved without peace and stability. The lasting peace - unlike temporary settlements - is the just peace.”By linking the world’s moral imperatives to its political realities, he placed the cause of human dignity at the heart of Qatar’s diplomacy and at the center of the summit’s Doha Political Declaration. From the podium in Doha, the Amir called on nations to translate their lofty commitments into “tangible actions.” His remarks echoed through the assembly not as rhetoric but as a challenge — to turn the language of partnership into mechanisms that deliver education, health care, jobs, and safety for every community. He also reminded the world that solidarity loses meaning when it fails to reach those living under siege or amid war, naming both Palestine and Sudan as tests of our collective conscience.Qatar’s domestic story - its new 2025–2030 strategy, “From care to empowerment” — was presented as a model of inclusive growth rooted in human potential. Yet the broader message was global: social progress cannot exist in isolation; it demands justice, stability, and the courage to act where promises have stalled.As editors, policymakers, and citizens, we would do well to measure our success not by the eloquence of declarations but by the evidence of change. The Amir’s speech reminds us that the path to peace runs through the terrain of opportunity - and that the Doha Declaration must become not just another document, but a living instrument of transformation.

If US Navy Vice-Admiral Richard Correll thought he was going to have an easy confirmation hearing on Thursday to become the commander of America’s nuclear forces, those hopes surely vanished at 9:04pm the night before he was to testify. That was when President Donald Trump shocked the world by announcing on social media that he had asked the US military to “start testing our Nuclear Weapons”, saying the United States could not fall behind Russia and China. “Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years,” Trump said. During a roughly 90-minute hearing on Thursday morning at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Correll faced repeated questions about Trump’s comments from puzzled US lawmakers, embodying the confusion that the Republican president unleashed in Washington and beyond. The top Democrat on the committee, Senator Jack Reed, asked Correll whether a resumption of US nuclear explosive testing would be destabilising, triggering a global nuclear arms race. “If confirmed as the commander of STRATCOM, my role would be to provide military advice on any discussions on the way ahead with respect to testing,” Correll said. The vice-admiral, who Trump nominated in early September to lead the US military’s Strategic Command, or STRATCOM, which focuses on nuclear deterrence and strike capabilities, kept answering questions carefully throughout the hearing. At one point, Senator Angus King, an independent, asked whether Trump’s post could be about testing delivery systems such as missiles rather than explosive testing of nuclear devices. “I don’t have insight into the president’s intent. I agree that could be an interpretation,” Correll said. US moratorium US officials on Thursday did not clarify whether Trump was calling for testing of nuclear weapon delivery systems or ending a 33-year moratorium on explosion tests, which experts said would be disruptive and carry the risk of provoking escalation from rivals, evoking anxious memories of the Cold War. Vice-President J D Vance said testing was part of ensuring the US nuclear arsenal functions properly. The US and other nuclear powers have long stopped detonating actual nuclear warheads and instead use advanced computer simulations to maintain the readiness of their arsenals. “There is no good reason for the United States to resume explosive nuclear testing - it would actually make everyone in the US less safe,” said Tara Drozdenko, director of the global security program at Union of Concerned Scientists. “The US has so much to lose and so little to gain from resuming testing,” she said. Sending a message to Moscow and Beijing Many analysts said that Trump, who often tries to project strength as a negotiation tactic, likely was seeking to send a message to Moscow and Beijing. In his social media post issued ahead of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, the president said he had instructed the Pentagon to start testing “on an equal basis” and added: “That process will start immediately.” Only North Korea has conducted a nuclear test explosion in this century, the last in 2017. Russia, which has tested two new nuclear-powered weapons in recent days, has been accused by Washington of conducting so-called low-yield tests and of lacking transparency in its nuclear program, but has not conducted a full-scale nuclear explosion. Russian President Vladimir Putin had cautioned that if any country tested a nuclear weapon, then Moscow would too, a Kremlin spokesperson said on Thursday. China has repeatedly rebuffed efforts across US administrations to hold talks on nuclear arms. While Beijing is undertaking efforts to dramatically increase its nuclear weapons stockpiles it has expressed little interest in negotiating with Russia and the US, arguing those countries’ nuclear forces are currently considerably larger. “If the goal is to generate leverage to force China to negotiate, I think that’s unlikely to work,” said James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. China hopes the US will abide by its commitment to a moratorium on nuclear testing and obligations under a test ban treaty, Beijing’s foreign ministry said on Thursday. Benefiting US adversaries Breaking the moratorium on US nuclear tests could benefit Washington’s nuclear rivals by allowing them to conduct more tests, said Ploughshares, a foundation focused on reducing nuclear threats. The United States has conducted the majority of all nuclear test explosions and retains data gathered from its 1,030 tests since 1945. STRATCOM, where Correll is the current No 2, had just certified the US military’s nuclear arsenal in January. “A return to testing will benefit US adversaries by allowing them to catch up in nuclear research and weapons development,” Ploughshares said in a statement. A source at the Department of Energy, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said any test would take place deep underground at a Nevada site, which is mandated to be ready to conduct tests within 36 months. At the hearing, Senator Jacky Rosen said her home state of Nevada had suffered from being the site of US nuclear explosive tests from 1951-1992, and vowed to prevent Trump from resuming them: “I’m going to be crystal clear: I will not let this happen. Not on my watch.” — Reuters

Russian forces are advancing inside the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, destroying trapped Ukrainian military formations and repelling Ukrainian efforts to break out of encirclement, the Russian Defence Ministry said yesterday. Ukraine’s top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, who has estimated that Russia has over 100,000 troops fighting in the area, says his forces are pushing hard to try to dislodge Russian forces and are broadly holding their ground. Following are key facts about Pokrovsk, which Russians call by its Soviet-era name of Krasnoarmeysk, and the long battle for its control which began in earnest in mid-2024. Pokrovsk is a road and rail hub in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region with a pre-war population of some 60,000 people. Most people have now fled, all children have been evacuated and few civilians remain amid its pulverised apartment buildings and cratered roads. Ukraine’s only mine producing coking coal - used in its once vast steel industry - is around six miles west of Pokrovsk. Ukrainian steelmaker Metinvest said in January it had suspended mining operations there. The city lies on a key road which has been used by the Ukrainian military to supply other embattled outposts. A technical university in Pokrovsk, the region’s largest and oldest, now stands abandoned, damaged by shelling. Russia wants to take the whole of the Donbas region, which comprises the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Ukraine still controls about 10% of Donbas - an area of about 5,000sq km in western Donetsk. Capturing Pokrovsk, dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk” by Russian media, and Kostiantynivka to its northeast which Russian forces are also trying to envelop, would give Moscow a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk - Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. It would also give Moscow its most important single territorial gain inside Ukraine since it took the ruined city of Avdiivka in early 2024. Russian President Vladimir Putin says Donbas is now legally part of Russia. Kyiv and most Western nations reject Moscow’s seizure of the territory as an illegal land grab. Some Western military analysts, like Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, say that capturing Pokrovsk would hand Russia an important win, especially if it can do it by the end of the year. But though important for operational reasons, Lee says taking Pokrovsk would still leave Russia a lot of work to do when it came to taking control of the rest of Donetsk and the two important fortress cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. Russia has been threatening Pokrovsk for more than a year. Instead of the full frontal assaults it used in earlier battles like the bloody campaign for the similar-sized city of Bakhmut, Russia’s military is using a pincer movement to gradually encircle Pokrovsk and threaten Ukrainian supply lines. Russian forces harry Ukrainian troops by sending in small units and drones to disrupt logistics and sow chaos to their rear before sending in larger reinforcements. Ukraine says Russia’s offensive has seen its forces sustain huge losses. Moscow says it is Ukraine, with its significantly smaller population, that is at risk of running out of men and that its own slower tactics are designed to minimise casualties. An incursion into Russia’s Kursk region by Ukrainian forces last year, which Moscow fought back, slowed the Russian attack on Pokrovsk too. Ukraine has rushed to strengthen positions in the city. “There is fierce fighting in the city and on the approaches to the city... Logistics are difficult. But we must continue to destroy the occupiers,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday. Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff, told Putin on Sunday that Russia had blocked a large number of Ukrainian soldiers in the area. DeepState, a Ukrainian project that maps the front line based on verified open source images, shows Russian forces pushing into the city, though much of it is still in grey, beyond firm control of either side. “The situation in Pokrovsk is on the verge of critical and continues to deteriorate to the point that it may be too late to fix,” DeepState said. Reuters was unable to verify battlefield reports from either side due to reporting restrictions in the war zone. - Reuters

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Once a money-losing backwater, Google Cloud has become one of Alphabet’s fastest-growing businesses, powered by massive bets on AI and years of costly investment in data centres, custom chips, and networking gear.Alphabet’s cloud revenue topped $15 billion in the third quarter, a 34% increase reflecting strong demand for AI infrastructure and services, including Google’s own Gemini model, the company announced Wednesday.Google Cloud is now challenging YouTube as Alphabet’s No. 2 cash generator behind its search ads business.“Google Cloud is one of the most important priorities for Alphabet as a whole and I expect it to play an even more central role as the company moves forward,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told Reuters in an interview earlier in October.Much of the cloud unit’s growth can be attributed to the business bets and diplomatic manoeuvring of its head Thomas Kurian, who joined Google from Oracle in 2018 and grew the unit’s market share from 7% then to 13% in 2025, according to Synergy Research Group, which tracks the cloud industry.When Pichai replaced Google co-founder Larry Page as CEO in 2019, he identified Google Cloud and YouTube as his two big bets to move Alphabet beyond its core business of search advertising.Since then, YouTube has largely delivered, becoming the world’s largest video platform with 1 billion hours watched per day.By contrast, Google Cloud lost billions between 2018 and 2022 due to heavy investments in servers, data centres and chips until it turned its first profit in 2023.Now, with generative AI, Alphabet sees a chance to close the gap with rivals Microsoft and Amazon, which hold 20% and 30% market share respectively.Making Google Cloud a contender has come at a cost: Alphabet has already shocked Wall Street twice during quarterly earnings this year by proclaiming higher-than-expected capital spending due to the need to build more infrastructure to fulfil cloud demand.“This is the moment Google Cloud was waiting for,” Dave McCarthy, who directs coverage of the cloud industry for research firm IDC. “A lot of the future growth at Alphabet is being looked at through its potential.”In exclusive interviews with Reuters, senior Alphabet executives mapped out the gameplan that transformed the also-ran into a growth driver: a cultural shift to a more customer-driven sales approach; changing how it worked with rivals; and a renewed focus on delivering profits.Back when Kurian joined Alphabet, Google Cloud struggled to win enterprise customers, unlike the ads side of the business which was dealing with the biggest companies in the world.“We would go to the ads team asking, ‘Hey, can you help us out with this customer?’ And they would basically be like, ‘Get out of here, kid,’” said Josh Gwyther, a startup founder who worked at Google Cloud from 2016 to 2025.That’s not a problem anymore: Google’s scope of AI offerings have brought it into conversations with large companies that previously only considered Amazon and Microsoft.“The ads business is extremely healthy, but it’s not going to grow at the pace that we are,” said Matt Renner, Google Cloud’s president of global revenue.Nine of the 10 leading AI labs are now customers, Kurian said at an industry conference in September. They include OpenAI, Anthropic and Safe Superintelligence. Details of Google’s deals with were first reported by Reuters earlier this year.To get there, Kurian took a mallet to traditional practices, replacing it with what several employees called an “un-Googley” culture.Kurian, who left a job as one of Larry Ellison’s highest-paid lieutenants at Oracle, brought financial discipline to Google’s “loosely-run, ground-up culture” that encouraged side projects and experimentation, said Chirag Mehta, a tech analyst who worked at Google Cloud from 2017 to 2021.To slash costs, Kurian opened new offices in cheaper locations, such as North Carolina and Poland. He audited Google Cloud’s contracts for internal services and renegotiated those where he deemed his unit was being overcharged by other departments, as was first reported in The Information.He has ordered employees to focus on revenue rather than bookings. Google Cloud also shifted its sales strategy to target customers by sector rather than geography. That helped reduce sales reps being assigned accounts in industries where they lacked specialised knowledge, said Renner.Its focus on generative AI has allowed it to catch up with rivals Microsoft and Amazon from a technical standpoint, according to some analysts.“We believe that the three clouds competitively are on roughly equal footing,” said Goldman Sachs managing director Eric Sheridan. “That’s a very different competitive positioning for Google Cloud now than two or three years ago.”For years, Alphabet had reserved the lion’s share of its own chips, or TPUs, for in-house use only. That changed in 2022, when Kurian successfully lobbied to move the group selling TPUs from Google’s core engineering unit into Google Cloud.That move drastically increased Google Cloud’s allocation of TPUs because the unit could now freely offer the chips rather than having to receive approval from another part of the company, according to two people familiar with the move. At a time when the world was scrambling for compute, Alphabet made the decision to make its chips available to not just its own DeepMind AI unit, but also to its competitors.That decision stoked tensions internally, according to former employees of both units, but it gave Kurian a stronger sales pitch for courting customers.“We are the only hyperscaler with both silicon and models of our own,” he said. “How deep is your technical differentiation when the same stuff that you’re reselling can be bought from somebody else?”Google Cloud quickly leveraged the opportunity to petition Anthropic to test TPUs as a viable alternative to Nvidia’s GPUs, according to a former Google Cloud executive involved in the partnership. By 2024, Anthropic had seen enough to deploy Alphabet’s TPUs at scale.In October, it expanded its deal with Google to use as many as one million TPUs, worth tens of billions of dollars. The startup, which is now valued at $183bn, has also tapped Amazon for chips as it reduces its dependency on Nvidia, which controls about 80% of the AI chip market.“The whole world was sort of on GPUs, OpenAI in particular,” said Dan Rosenthal, who manages Anthropic’s partnerships with Google and Amazon. The need for chips “pushed us to be more flexible,” he said.Other AI developers including Apple and Safe Superintelligence have since adopted Alphabet’s TPUs. Pichai told analysts on an earnings conference call this week that Alphabet is “investing in TPU capacity to meet the tremendous demand we are seeing from customers and partners.”And although Google Cloud launched an enterprise version of its flagship model Gemini in October, Kurian told Reuters he would welcome adding OpenAI’s family of enterprise models to Google Cloud if the ChatGPT maker was interested.The ascent of Google Cloud is shifting the balance of power inside Alphabet. Current and former executives told Reuters Kurian has gained clout at Google’s weekly “leads,” the agenda-setting meetings where division leaders jostle over resources and priorities.“What Thomas has been a powerful voice for is making sure that when we say we’re focusing on the user, that we’re focusing on the enterprise customer too,” Pichai said.It still has a long way to catch up with its rivals and it will be expensive to get there. In July, Pichai hiked Alphabet’s projected capital spending for 2025 by $10bn to $85bn. This week, he raised the projection again to between $91bn and $93bn, adding that 2026 was likely to run an even larger bill.With concerns over an AI bubble growing, Pichai told Reuters that he expects Google Cloud’s business to have “a lot of resilience” against short-term market corrections.“From our standpoint, we’ve been doing the AI thing for a decade now, and we’re going to be doing it a decade from now.”— Reuters

Thirty years after the landmark 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, the global community will gather once again — this time in Doha, for three days from tomorrow (Tuesday, November 4) for the Second World Summit for Social Development (WSSD2). In a world facing growing inequalities, demographic shifts, and rapid technological transformation, the need for a renewed commitment to social progress has never been more urgent.Convening at the level of Heads of State or Government, WSSD2 aims to address the gaps and recommit to the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development and the Programme of Action and its implementation and give momentum towards the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Pre-Summit events will kick off today (Monday, November 3) with Qatar co-hosting the First Leaders’ Meeting of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, with Brazil, and the Doha Solutions Forum for Social Development, with France.Building on the 10 Commitments of the 1995 Summit and the Copenhagen Declaration, the WSSD will accelerate action on poverty eradication, the promotion of full employment and decent work, and social inclusion, ensuring that no one is left behind in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. It aims to address persistent gaps, reaffirm global commitment to social development, and give new momentum to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.In Doha, world leaders will come together to redefine strategies for social progress, strengthen global partnerships, and promote inclusive policies that foster equitable opportunities for all. The goal: to build societies that are more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable. The Summit will serve as a pivotal platform for dialogue, co-operation, and joint solutions, convening governments, international organisations, the UN system, civil society, co-operatives, academia, the private sector, and experts to strengthen international co-operation for inclusive social development.In his welcome message on the conference website, His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani stated that this Summit will assess progress, identify implementation gaps, and reaffirm the collective commitment to advancing social development, ensuring that no one is left behind.“The State of Qatar consistently upholds its commitment to human-centred development, both nationally and globally. Through investments in education, health, social protection, and the promotion of productive employment and decent work for all, we continue to advance social justice and foster inclusion. We have championed the integration of social, economic, and environmental policies, adopting a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach that places people at the centre of our development.“The convening of this Summit in Doha reflects Qatar’s deep belief in multilateralism and global solidarity. As a long-standing partner of the United Nations, the State of Qatar has consistently supported global efforts to promote peace, social justice, and sustainable development. Over the years, we have hosted numerous high-level UN conferences, providing a platform for dialogue and co-operation on some of the most pressing global challenges. These efforts reflect our enduring dedication to the values and objectives of the United Nations and our vision for a world where prosperity is accessible to all.“As we prepare to welcome the world to Doha, we look forward to working closely with Member States, the United Nations, civil society, academia, and the private sector to advance social justice, rebuild trust in institutions, and shape a new course for global social development. The State of Qatar stands ready to contribute to this shared mission and to support a successful and transformative Summit,” His Highness the Amir added in his message.