An offshore trust controlling Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich’s vast art collection was amended to make his ex-wife, art collector Dasha Zhukova, its majority beneficiary weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a new investigation by The Guardian found. Over nearly a decade, Abramovich and Zhukova, who separated in 2016 and divorced in 2017, acquired what experts told The Guardian could be one of the world’s most significant collections of modern art — more than 350 pieces, including by Russian, European and American masters, valued at almost $1 billion in 2018. The…
Fucking News Today
Brazil’s Supreme Court has ruled in favour of Indigenous rights in a landmark case that weighed the constitutionality of establishing a time limit for making claims to ancestral territory. Nine of the court’s 11 justices voted to strike down what is called the “marco temporal” or “time frame” argument, a legal policy supported by businesses and farmers seeking to use Indigenous land. The “marco temporal” would have forced Indigenous groups to prove they were on the land in question in 1988, when Brazil’s current constitution was ratified, in order to…
Advertisement Advertisement China suffered a capital outflow of $49 billion last month, the largest since 2015, as the sputtering economy pushes investors toward the exits. Of that amount, $29 billion fled securities investments, according to State Administration of Foreign Exchange data compiled by Bloomberg. Foreign investors dumped a record-high $12 billion in mainland-listed stocks last month while also offloading Chinese bonds. August also saw a $16.8 billion deficit in direct investment, the deepest since 2016. Declines in the capital account were also made more severe by the tourism season, with…
Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Wednesday that if Iran acquired a nuclear weapon, his country would seek to do the same. “If they get one, we have to get one,” the crown prince said in an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier, adding that it would be necessary “for security reasons, and for balancing power in the Middle East, but we don’t want to see that.” Crown Prince Mohammed warned of the dangers of nuclear weapons and said, “We are concerned of any country getting a nuclear…
The presence of 134 snow leopards has been confirmed in Bhutan by the National Snow Leopard Survey 2022-2024, supported by the Bhutan For Life project and WWF-Bhutan. This represents a 39.5% increase from the country’s first survey in 2016, when 96 individuals were counted. Bhutan’s second national survey covered more than 9,000 km sq of snow leopard habitat across the northern alpine landscape of the country with 310 camera trap stations. It found an overall density of 1.34 snow leopards per 100 km sq, which was comparatively higher in the west than in…
The sea-ice surrounding Antarctica is well below any previous recorded winter level, satellite data shows, a worrying new benchmark for a region that once seemed resistant to global warming. “It’s so far outside anything we’ve seen, it’s almost mind-blowing,” says Walter Meier, who monitors sea-ice with the National Snow and Ice Data Center. An unstable Antarctica could have far-reaching consequences, polar experts warn. Antarctica’s huge ice expanse regulates the planet’s temperature, as the white surface reflects the Sun’s energy back into the atmosphere and also cools the water beneath and…
Winter is coming. And for yet another ski resort in France, that means facing up to the reality that there isn’t enough snow to carry on. La Sambuy, a town which runs a family skiing destination near Mont Blanc in the French Alps, has decided to dismantle its ski lifts because global warming has shrunk its ski season to just a few weeks, meaning it’s no longer profitable to keep them open. “Before, we used to have snow practically from the first of December up until the 30th of March,”…
Pakistan currently has an estimated 170 nuclear warheads, which could increase to around 200 by 2025. The estimate comes from American nuclear scientists who used open-source materials, satellite imagery, and other sources to gather data. Top American nuclear scientists have estimated that Pakistan currently possesses roughly 170 nuclear warheads, and this number could potentially increase to approximately 200 by the year 2025, based on the current rate of expansion. As reported by PTI citing the Nuclear Notebook column published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on September 11, “We…
The U.S. plans to increase monthly production of 155 millimeter artillery shells over the coming years to 100,000 in 2025, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer said on Friday. “We’re going to be at 100,000 per month in 2025. We were at 14,000 per month 6 or 8 months ago, we are now at 28,000 a month today,” Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer said at a conference on Friday. Demand for 155mm artillery rounds has soared in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But allies’…
Beijing said Friday it was sanctioning two US defense companies, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, over their roles in supplying arms to Taiwan. The United States Congress, under the Taiwan Relations Act, requires the supply of weapons to the self-governing democracy for its defense. US administrations had done so through sales rather than direct aid, but in August Washington for the first time approved direct US military aid to Taiwan under an assistance program aimed at foreign governments. “Despite China’s firm opposition, the US government is determined to provide weapons to Taiwan……