A cyclist passes oil silos at the Royal Dutch Shell Pernis refinery in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on Tuesday, April 27, 2021.
Peter Boer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
LONDON – A Dutch court ruled on Wednesday that oil giant Royal Dutch Shell must cut its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2019.
This is a much larger reduction than the company’s current goal of reducing its emissions by 20% by 2030.
The landmark ruling comes at a time when the world’s largest corporate emitters are under immense pressure to set short-, medium- and long-term emissions targets that are compatible with the Paris Agreement. The climate agreement is widely recognized as extremely important to avoid an irreversible climate crisis.
According to Shell’s current climate strategy, the company aims to become a net zero issuing business by 2050. The company has set itself the goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 45% by 2035.
A Shell spokesman said the company “fully expects to appeal today’s disappointing court ruling”.
“We are investing billions of dollars in low-carbon energy, including charging electric vehicles, hydrogen, renewables and biofuels,” the spokesman said via email. “We want to increase the demand for these products and expand our new energy business even faster.”
Shell shares traded 0.2% higher in London. The share price is up nearly 10% since the start of the year, after falling nearly 40% in 2020.
“A turning point in history”
The lawsuit was filed in April 2019 by seven activist groups – including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace – on behalf of 17,200 Dutch citizens. Subpoenas in court alleged Shell’s business model “endangering human rights and lives” by threatening the goals set out in the Paris Agreement.
Under the Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015 and signed by 195 countries, states agreed on a framework to prevent global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius, although the agreement aims to limit global temperature increases by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Roger Cox, an environmental advocate on the case, said in a statement that the ruling marks “a turning point in history” and could have dire consequences for other major polluters.
Meanwhile, Sara Shaw, Friends of Earth’s international program coordinator for Climate Justice and Energy, hoped the ruling would “spark a wave of climate disputes against major polluters, forcing them to stop fossil fuel extraction and burning”.
Mark van Baal, founder of the Dutch group Follow This, told CNBC via email that the judge’s verdict shows that “Big Oil can no longer deny the crucial role it must play in the fight against climate change”.
At Shell’s general meeting last week, shareholders voted overwhelmingly in favor of the company’s energy transition plans. Crucially, however, a growing minority opposed the strategy, insisting that the oil giant had much more to do in the fight against climate change.
Activist investor Follow This said at the time that the outcome would likely mean Shell would have to revise its climate targets yet again.
According to Reuters, the case is the first in which activists have taken a large energy company to court to force it to revise its climate strategy.
SAN FRANCISCO — WhatsApp sued the Indian government on Wednesday to stop what it said were oppressive new internet rules that would require it to make people’s messages “traceable” to outside parties for the first time.
The lawsuit, filed by WhatsApp in the Delhi High Court, seeks to block the enforceability of the rules that were handed down by the government this year. WhatsApp, a service owned by Facebook that sends encrypted messages, claimed in its suit that the rules, which were set to go into effect on Wednesday, were unconstitutional.
Suing India’s government is a highly unusual step by WhatsApp, which has rarely engaged with national governments in court. But the service said that making its messages traceable “would severely undermine the privacy of billions of people who communicate digitally” and effectively impair its security.
“Civil society and technical experts around the world have consistently argued that a requirement to ‘trace’ private messages would break end-to-end encryption and lead to real abuse,” a WhatsApp spokesman said. “WhatsApp is committed to protecting the privacy of people’s personal messages and we will continue to do all we can within the laws of India to do so.”
The lawsuit is part of a broadening battle between the biggest tech companies and governments around the world over which of them has the upper hand. Australia and the European Union have drafted or passed laws to limit the power of Google, Facebook and other companies over online speech, while other countries are trying to rein in the companies’ services to stifle dissent and squash protests. China has recently warned some of its biggest internet companies against engaging in anticompetitive practices.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have worked for several years to corral the power of the tech companies and more strictly police what is said online. In 2019, the government proposed giving itself vast new powers to suppress internet content, igniting a heated battle with the companies.
The rules that WhatsApp is objecting to were proposed in February by Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s law and information technology minister. Under the rules, the government could require tech companies to take down social media posts it deemed unlawful. WhatsApp, Signal and other messaging companies would also be required to create “traceable” databases of all messages sent using the service, while attaching identifiable “fingerprints” to private messages sent between users.
WhatsApp has long maintained that it does not have insight into user data and has said it does not store messages sent between users. That is because the service is end-to-end encrypted, which allows for two or more users to communicate securely and privately without allowing others to access the messages.
More than a billion people rely on WhatsApp to communicate with friends, family and businesses around the world. Many users are in India.
Critics said the new rules were being used to silence government detractors. Last month, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were ordered to take down dozens of social media posts that were critical of Mr. Modi’s government and its response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has ravaged the country. Government officials said the posts should be removed because they could incite panic and could hinder its response to the pandemic.
The social media companies complied with many of the requests by making the posts invisible inside India, though they were still visible to people outside the country. In the past, Twitter and Facebook have reposted some content after determining that it didn’t break the law.
Tensions between tech companies and the Indian government escalated this week when the police descended on the New Delhi offices of Twitter to contest labels affixed to certain tweets from senior members of the government. While Twitter’s offices were empty, the visit symbolized the mounting pressure on social media companies to rein in speech seen as critical of the ruling party.
Facebook and WhatsApp have long maintained working relationships with the authorities in dozens of countries, including India. Typically, WhatsApp has said it will respond to lawful requests for information and has a team that assists law enforcement officials with emergencies involving imminent harm.
Understand the Covid Crisis in India
Only rarely has WhatsApp pushed back. The service has been shut down many times in Brazil after the company resisted requests for user data from the government. And it has skirmished with U.S. officials who have sought to install “back doors” in encrypted messaging services to monitor for criminal activity.
But WhatsApp argued that even if it tried enacting India’s new “traceability” rules, the technology would not work. Such a practice is “ineffective and highly susceptible to abuse,” the company said.
Other technology firms and digital rights groups like Mozilla and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said this week that they supported WhatsApp’s fight against “traceability.”
“The threat that anything someone writes can be traced back to them takes away people’s privacy and would have a chilling effect on what people say even in private settings, violating universally recognized principles of free expression and human rights,” WhatsApp said.
The cryptocurrency space could branch out into three different markets — and people may even stop talking about crypto as a single entity one year on, predicted Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at EY.
Bitcoin and ether have had a wild ride in recent weeks, with billions of dollars wiped off their market value, according to Coinmarketcap.com.
Bitcoin, the largest digital currency by market cap, at one point plunged by 30% to hover near the $30,000 level. It has since bounced back partially to current levels of about $38,090, according to Coin Metrics.
There are currently three “very different” stories going on in the cryptocurrency space, Brody told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Tuesday.
1. ‘Meme coins’
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This segment of cryptocurrencies “could be categorized as investing as entertainment,” Brody said.
“It’s hard for me to predict where they’re going to go, but I don’t see them as having a very big future in the ecosystem,” he added.
2. Bitcoin as ‘digital gold’
The next part of the ecosystem revolves around bitcoin, Brody said. The digital token has often been cited as a potential competitor to gold as a hedge against inflation and safe-haven asset. Still, bitcoin’s price volatility tends to be much higher as compared with gold.
According to Brody, however, bitcoin is “better than gold” in some ways.
“When the price of gold goes up people mine more, but you can’t really do that with bitcoin,” he said.
The cryptocurrency is limited and a maximum of 21 million bitcoins can be “mined” — there are currently more than 18 million already in circulation. New bitcoin is created by computer users who solve complicated mathematical puzzles, and they take up a lot of energy.
“Bitcoin is gonna go up if everybody buys into this idea that you should have some percentage of your … portfolio in bitcoin — that will drive a lot of participation,” Brody said.
Questions remain around bitcoin’s exact place in an investment portfolio, with analysts from Societe Generale saying that it’s still “highly contested.”
3. The Ethereum ecosystem
“The third ecosystem, that could potentially diverge here, is the Ethereum ecosystem,” Brody said, adding that it builds a “whole business ecosystem” around sectors such as decentralized financial services and storage.
It will be “driven by demand for those services and the growth of that ecosystem,” he added.
Billionaire investor Mark Cuban is a firm supporter of Ethereum and has said that “the number of transactions and the diversity of transaction types along with the development efforts in Ethereum dwarf bitcoin.”
Meanwhile, New York University’s Aswath Damodaran told CNBC last week that he sees ether — the cryptocurrency that runs on the Ethereum blockchain — as having “a better shot” at becoming a commodity than bitcoin.
For his part, Brody predicted that “we’ll stop talking, I think, in a year about crypto as a whole — and start talking about the Ethereum ecosystem or the bitcoin value proposition.”
— CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos contributed to this report.
WARSAW — Since his teenage years as a rebellious high school student in Belarus and continuing into his 20s while in exile abroad, Roman Protasevich faced so many threats from the country’s security apparatus — of violent beatings, jail, punishment against family members — that “we all sort of got used to them,” a fellow exiled dissident recalled.
So, despite his being branded a terrorist by Belarus late last year — a capital offense — Mr. Protasevich was not particularly worried when he set off for Greece from Lithuania, where he had been living, earlier this month to attend a conference and take a short vacation with his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega.
But that sense of security was shattered on Sunday when they were snatched by Belarus security officials on the tarmac at Minsk National Airport after a MiG-29 fighter jet was scrambled to intercept his commercial flight home to Lithuania from Greece. Mr. Protasevich, 26, now faces the vengeance of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the 66-year-old Belarusian leader from whom he once received a scholarship for gifted students but has since defied with unflinching zeal.
In a short video released on Monday by the authorities in Belarus, Mr. Protasevich confessed — under duress, his friends say — to taking part in the organization of “mass unrest” last year in Minsk, the Belarus capital. That is the government’s term for weeks of huge street protests after Mr. Lukashenko, in power since 1994, declared a landslide re-election victory in an August election widely dismissed as brazenly rigged.
Stispan Putsila, the fellow dissident who described the atmosphere around Mr. Protasevich and the co-founder of opposition social media channels that Mr. Protasevich used last year to help mobilize street protests, said he had spoken to his friend and colleague before his departure for Greece about the potential risks.
They agreed, he said, that it was best to avoid flying over Belarus, Russia or any other state that cooperated with Mr. Lukashenko, but that flights between two European Union countries, Lithuania and Greece, should be safe.
He added that Mr. Protasevich might not have realized that the Ryanair flight he boarded in Athens on Sunday morning would fly over the western edge of Belarus, a route that opened the way for Mr. Lukashenko to carry out what European leaders condemned as a “state-sponsored hijacking.”
That something was amiss became clear at the airport in Athens, when Mr. Protasevich noticed a man he assumed to be a Belarus security agent trying to take photographs of him and his travel documents at the check-in counter.
Taking fright, however, was not in his character, Mr. Putsila said in an interview at the office of Nexta, the opposition news organization where Mr. Protasevich established himself as one of Mr. Lukashenko’s most effective and unbending critics.
“By his character Roman has always been very resolute,” Mr. Putsila said. “He refused to live in fear.”
Since Mr. Lukashenko took power in Belarus in 1994, however, that has been a very perilous proposition.
Mr. Protasevich has been resisting his country’s tyranny since he was 16, when he first witnessed what he described as the “disgusting” brutality of Mr. Lukashenko’s rule. That began a personal journey that would turn a gifted student at a science high school in Minsk into an avowed enemy of a government that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005 called “the last remaining true dictatorship in the heart of Europe.”
Mr. Protasevich was raised in an outlying district of Minsk in one of the city’s anonymous, concrete high-rises by a father who was a military officer and a mother who taught math at an army academy. He studied at a prestigious high school and won an award in a Russian science contest.
But in the summer after 10th grade, Mr. Protasevich was detained by the police while sitting on a park bench with a friend watching a so-called “clapping protest,” when a flash mob clapped to show opposition to the government, without actually uttering any forbidden statements. Mr. Protasevich was just watching, Natalia Protasevich, his mother, said in an interview.
“For the first time I saw all the dirt that is happening in our country,” he said in a 2011 video posted on YouTube . “Just as an example: Five huge OMON riot police officers beat women. A mother with her child was thrown into a police van. It was disgusting. After that everything changed fundamentally.”
A letter from the security services to his high school followed. He was expelled and home educated for six months, as no other school would take him, his mother said.
The family eventually negotiated a deal with the Ministry of Education. Mr. Protasevich could attend school, though only an ordinary one, not the elite lyceum he had been enrolled in before, but only if his mother resigned from her teaching job at the army academy.
“Imagine being a 16-year-old and being expelled from school,” Ms. Protasevich said. “It was this incident, this injustice, this insult,” that drove him into the political opposition, she said. “That is how he began his activism as a 16-year-old.”
Mr. Protasevich studied journalism at Belarusian State University but again ran into trouble with the authorities. Unable to finish his degree, he worked as a freelance reporter for a variety of opposition-leaning publications. Frequently detained and jailed for short periods, he decided to move to Poland, working for 10 months in Warsaw with Mr. Putsila and others on the Nexta team disseminating videos, leaked documents and news reports critical of Mr. Lukashenko.
Convinced that his work would have more impact if he were inside Belarus, Mr. Protasevich returned in 2019 to Minsk. But the political climate had only darkened there as Mr. Lukashenko geared up for a presidential election in 2020.
In November 2019, the police in Belarus detained a fellow dissident journalist, Vladimir Chudentsov, on what were denounced as trumped up drug charges as he was trying to cross the border into Poland.
Sensing serious trouble ahead, Mr. Protasevich decided to flee. On short notice, carrying only a backpack, according to his mother, he again left for Poland, Belarus’s western neighbor with a large population of exiles who had fled Mr. Lukashenko’s rule.
His parents followed him there last summer to avoid arrest after security agents pressured neighbors to speak with the parents about encouraging their son to return to Belarus, where he faced certain detention.
Mr. Protasevich stayed put in Warsaw, becoming a key opposition figure along with Mr. Putsila at Nexta, posting regular reports on the social media site Telegram. Mr. Putsila described their work as “activist journalism,” but added that Mr. Lukashenko had left no space for traditional journalism by shutting down any outlet inside Belarus that did more than parrot the government line.
Working from an apartment in central Warsaw near the Polish Parliament, Mr. Protasevich moved further away from traditional journalism after the disputed presidential election last August, taking an active role in organizing street protests through Nexta’s account on Telegram.
“He was more interested in organizing street action” than disseminating news, recalled Mr. Putsila, who also goes by the name Stepan Svetlov, an alias. “I would not say he was more radical, but he definitely became more resolute.”
Mr. Protasevich’s work crossed into the realm of political activism, not only reporting on the protests but also planning them. “We’re journalists, but we also have to do something else,” he said in an interview last year. “No one else is left. The opposition leaders are in prison.” Mr. Putsila said that Mr. Protasevich never advocated violence, only peaceful protests.
In September last year, Mr. Protasevich left Poland for neighboring Lithuania to join Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the principal opposition candidate in the August election who had been forced to flee. With Mr. Lukashenko’s other main rivals in detention, Ms. Tikhanovskaya had become the main voice of the Belarus opposition.
In November, prosecutors in Belarus formally charged Mr. Protasevich under a law that bans the organization of protests that violate “social order.” The security services also put him on a list of accused terrorists.
But Mr. Protasevich felt safe in the European Union, and even took to mocking the charges against him in his homeland.
“After the Belarusian government identified me as a terrorist, I received more congratulations than ever in my entire life for a birthday,” he told Nashe Nive, a Belarusian news site.
Mr. Putsila said he was stunned that Mr. Lukashenko would force a commercial airliner to land just to arrest a youthful critic but, with the benefit of hindsight, thinks the operation should not have come as a big surprise. The autocrat, he said, wanted to show that “we will reach you not only in Belarus but wherever you are. He has always tried to terrify.”
A measure of that was that when the plane was forced to land in Minsk on Sunday, Belarus security agents arrested not only Mr. Protasevich but Ms. Sapega, 23. Ms. Sapega, a law student at the European Humanities University in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, appeared to have been arrested over her association. She was not known to be a target in her own right. Her lawyer said Wednesday she would be jailed for at least two months and face a criminal trial.
A young woman who identified herself as Ms. Sapega, who had not been seen in public since her arrest, appeared in a video posted on Twitter on Tuesday by NTV, a state-controlled Russian television channel.
The woman said she had been on the same plane as Mr. Protasevich to Lithuania, where she said she served as an editor for the “Black Book of Belarus,” a Telegram channel that focuses on exposing police brutality and is banned by Belarus as an “extremist” organization. Clearly speaking under duress in Russian, she confessed to publishing the personal information of Interior Ministry officers, a criminal offense in Belarus.
Mr. Putsila noted that Nexta had received so many threatening letters and abusive phone calls that Polish police officers stand permanent guard on the stairwell leading to the office.
“The Lukashenko regime considers Roman one of its main enemies,” he said. “Maybe it is right.”
Another colleague, Ekaterina Yerusalimskaya, told the Tut.by news service that she and Mr. Protasevich once noticed a mysterious man tailing them in Poland, and reported it to the police. Still, Mr. Protasevich remained nonchalant. “He calmed himself by saying nobody would touch us, otherwise it would be an international scandal,” Ms. Yerusalimskaya said.
Mr. Protasevich’s mother said she worried about his safety but, breaking down in tears as she contemplated her son’s fate after his arrest in Minsk, added: “We believe justice will prevail. We believe all this terror will pass. We believe political prisoners will be freed. And we are very proud of our son.”
Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from Moscow.
A young man receives his Covid-19 vaccination in a vaccination clinic. People are receiving the Moderna vaccine in Milford, Pennsylvania.
Preston Ehrler | LightRocket | Getty Images
Moderna said Tuesday that its Covid-19 vaccine was 100% effective in a study in adolescents ages 12 to 17. This makes it the second attempt after Pfizer that has demonstrated a high level of effectiveness in younger age groups.
The company plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration to expand emergency use of its Covid-19 vaccine to teenagers early next month. If approved, it would likely dramatically increase the number of recordings available to middle and high school students before the next school year. Pfizer and German partner BioNTech were approved to use their vaccine for 12 to 15 year olds earlier this month.
“We are encouraged that mRNA-1273 is highly effective in preventing COVID-19 in adolescents,” said Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, in a press release. “We continue to strive to do our part to end the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The two-dose vaccine, given four weeks apart, is already approved for adults.
The phase 2/3 study the company cited on Tuesday included more than 3,700 teenagers. No cases of Covid-19 were observed in participants who received two doses of the vaccine, while four cases were observed in the placebo group, according to the company.
No significant safety concerns have been identified to date, with side effects generally in line with a previous study in adults, the company said. The most common side effects after the second dose were headache, fatigue, muscle pain, and chills, Moderna said.
The new data comes less than three weeks after the company announced in an earnings report that early data showed the shot was 96% effective against Covid in teens ages 12-17. These data were based on those who had received at least one dose of the vaccine.
The company said Tuesday that the shot in the study was 93% effective after one dose. For this it used the definition of Covid-19 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which only requires one symptom and a positive Covid test.
US regulators are expected to approve Moderna’s application for teenage use. The approval process could take about a month, in time for some summer activities and fall Classes if Moderna submits the data by the beginning of June. Pfizer and BioNTech, for example, filed for expanded use of their shot in teenagers on April 9th and were approved by the FDA on May 10th.
Vaccinating children is seen as critical to ending the pandemic. The nation is unlikely to achieve herd immunity – if enough people in a given community have antibodies to a given disease – until children can be vaccinated, health officials and experts say.
According to the government, children make up around 20% of the total US population. According to medical experts, between 70% and 85% of the US population must be vaccinated against Covid to achieve herd immunity, and some adults may refuse to get the shots. Although now more experts say herd immunity becomes less likely as variants spread.
According to health experts, vaccinating children can also accelerate the return of personal learning and enable after-school activities such as sports, arts, and other personal activities after school.
WASHINGTON — The State Department on Monday warned Americans against traveling to Japan as the country experiences an increase in coronavirus cases less than two months before the start of the Tokyo Olympics.
The move has little practical effect, as Japan’s borders have been closed to most nonresident foreigners since the early months of the pandemic. But the warning is another blow for the Olympics, which are facing stiff opposition among the Japanese public over concerns that they could become a superspreader event as athletes and their entourages pour in from around the world.
The Japanese authorities have insisted that they can carry off the Olympics safely. They have made clear that they intend to proceed with the Games regardless of public discontent and a state of emergency currently in place in much of the country.
Likewise, Japanese officials told the local news media that they viewed the American warning as separate from any considerations for the Games. The State Department declaration is unlikely to affect the United States’ decision to send its athletes to the Olympics. Presumably, most if not all have been vaccinated, although the Games’ organizers are not requiring participants to be inoculated.
The United States added Japan to a list of dozens of nations that have received its highest-level travel warning — “do not travel” — after the country’s virus incidence rate rose to a threshold that triggers such a declaration.
Starting in late April, large parts of the country entered a state of emergency as more contagious variants of the virus drove a rapid increase in case numbers, particularly in major cities. Osaka, part of Japan’s second-largest metropolitan area, is struggling to deal with the surge, which has put pressure on its health care system.
The state of emergency — under which residents are encouraged to restrict their movements and some businesses are asked to close early or suspend operations entirely — is scheduled to end on May 31. The Japanese media has reported that officials are likely to extend the declaration as virus case numbers remain elevated.
Although the numbers in Japan are low by the standards of the United States and much of Western Europe — the seven-day average was around 5,100 new cases as of Saturday — many in the country have been frustrated by the government’s response, including its slow vaccine rollout.
Less than 5 percent of residents have received a first shot of a coronavirus vaccine, putting Japan last among major developed nations in its vaccination campaign. Vaccines are not expected to be available to the general public until the end of the summer at the earliest.
The International Olympic Committee has offered to vaccinate many of the athletes and other participants who will be going to Japan. It has also offered inoculations for 20,000 people in Japan connected to the event. In addition, the Japanese organizers of the Games have barred international spectators from attending.
But those moves have not allayed public concerns. About 80 percent of the Japanese public believes that the Olympics, which were delayed by a year because of the pandemic, should be canceled or postponed again, polls show. The approval rating for Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has fallen to the low 30s over his handling of the virus, according to a recent poll by Jiji Press.
Hundreds of thousands of people have signed a petition calling for the Games to be canceled, and protesters have taken to the streets to denounce the event as a threat to public health. In a poll conducted last week, nearly 70 percent of companies said that the Olympics should be stopped or delayed.
Bitcoin is still in double-digit intraday movement after briefly halving its value last week, and Wall Street strategists say this insane run won’t be over anytime soon.
It was a rude awakening for Bitcoin investors who thought they could handle the crypto volatility. The world’s largest digital currency suffered a 30% daily decline last Wednesday, dropping to around $ 30,000 apiece. It wasn’t until mid-April that Bitcoin hit a record high of USD 64,829. The turbulence was dramatic even by crypto standards. The last time Bitcoin saw a drop of this magnitude was in March 2020 at the height of the Covid pandemic. And even then, trading wasn’t that annoying.
According to Coin Metrics, Bitcoin experienced 14 days of failure in May alone. So far this year there have been 39 days of daily fluctuations of 5% or more in either direction based on Bitcoin’s closing prices. There were a total of 42 such days in 2020.
While the digital token quickly rebounded over $ 39,000 in price on Monday, rising 20% in price, heightened regulatory pressures as well as the technical picture point to wilder trading, strategists said.
“The drubbing that cryptocurrencies have received over the past two weeks is just a taste of what’s to come,” Peter Berezin, chief strategist at BCA Research, said in a note. “The crypto markets will continue to face tighter regulation … In the near future, the pain in the crypto markets could weigh on other speculative assets such as technology stocks.”
The recent fluctuations were due to increased government scrutiny in the US and abroad. The Federal Reserve is due to issue a paper shortly setting out its own research into the central bank’s digital currencies space. In the meantime, the Chinese authorities have promised to take action against the mining and trading of cryptocurrency.
Elon Musk, a proponent of the cryptocurrency, also made a sort of 180 on Bitcoin when he announced that the electric automaker had suspended vehicle purchases with the asset, citing environmental concerns about what is known as the computational mining process.
“Bitcoin remains weirdly volatile,” said Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge. “The economic benefits of nothing are shifting so quickly.”
Bitcoin’s 31.1% intraday decline was the cryptocurrency’s fourth-largest decline in history, according to Cornerstone Macro.
Momentum signals remain “problematic”
On the positioning of Bitcoin futures, JPMorgan analysts believe the worst correction is not yet in the rearview mirror.
Momentum traders have scaled back their Bitcoin futures bets after failing to break above $ 60,000, which made sentiment bearish and caused further position settlement, according to the Wall Street firm.
“Despite the rebound in prices to around $ 40,000, the momentum signals, and in particular the longer lookback period as a signal, remain problematic,” said Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, managing director of JPMorgan, in a note. “It is too early to say the end of the recent Bitcoin downtrend.”
Carter Worth, chief market technician at Cornerstone Macro, said there are interested sellers waiting at the $ 42,000 level, and that high overhead offering will make it hard for Bitcoin to reach and exceed that level. In the meantime, buyers who have pulled at their recent lows will sell if the price rises too much, he said.
“It sold on its trend line,” Worth said. “Every step was technical.”
Repetition of the lows of the last week possible
Many believe investors shouldn’t be surprised if Bitcoin is sold again soon to retest last week’s lows.
“A possible re-test or even a modest drop below the lows of last week in the near future is quite possible due to China’s crackdown on digital assets and the regulatory overhang in the US,” said Julian Emanuel, chief strategist for stocks and derivatives at BTIG.
Still, Emanuel believes that further downside volatility would be a buying opportunity. He set his Bitcoin year-end goal at $ 50,000.
– CNBC’s Nate Rattner and Michael Bloom contributed to this story.
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A dog handler checking luggage from the Ryanair plane in Minsk, Belarus, on Sunday.Credit…Onliner.by, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
International outrage mounted on Monday as new details emerged about a brazen operation by the strongman leader of Belarus to divert a Ryanair passenger jet and arrest a dissident Belarusian journalist traveling on board.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken condemned the forced diversion, saying it was a “shocking act” that “endangered the lives of more than 120 passengers, including U.S. citizens.”
He demanded the “immediate release” of the journalist, Roman Protasevich.
“Initial reports suggesting the involvement of the Belarusian security services and the use of Belarusian military aircraft to escort the plane are deeply concerning and require full investigation,” Mr. Blinken said.
Britain ordered that “airlines avoid Belarusian airspace in order to keep passengers safe,” the transportation secretary, Grant Shapps, wrote on Twitter.
Mr. Shapps said that the operating permit for Belavia Belarusian Airlines was being suspended.
Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, an Irish-based low-cost carrier, called theoperation, which was directed by President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, a “state-sponsored hijacking.”
Leaders from the European Union were expected to meet Monday night to discuss possible penalties.
Sofia Sapega, the girlfriend of the arrested journalist, was also detained when the plane landed in Minsk on Sunday after a bogus bomb threat during its flight from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, her university in the Lithuanian capital said.
Ms. Sapega, a Russian citizen, was detained at the Minsk airport along with Mr. Protasevich under “groundless and made-up conditions,” the European Humanities University in Vilnius said in a statement demanding her release.
There was no word Monday morning from the Belarusian authorities on their whereabouts.
Lawyers seeking to help Mr. Protasevich said he was believed to be in a jail in Minsk operated by the Belarussian intelligence service. The Russian Embassy in Minsk said that Belarus had notified it of Ms. Sapega’s detention.
Roman Protasevich at a court hearing in 2017.Credit…Reuters
Five people who boarded in Athens were not on the plane when it finally arrived in Vilnius, the Lithuanian police said on Monday.
Mr. O’Leary said some of the passengers may have been agents of the Belarusian intelligence service, which is still known by its Soviet-era initials.
“We believe there were some K.G.B. agents offloaded at the airport as well,” Mr. O’Leary told Irish radio on Monday.
Mr. O’Leary said Ryanair was in the process of debriefing its crew and that the European Union and NATO were “dealing with” the situation.
The Lithuanian government called for Belarusian airspace to be closed to international flights in response to what it called a hijacking “by military force.”
The Lithuanian police said they had opened a criminal investigation, on suspicion of hijacking and kidnapping. Of 126 passengers who took off from Athens, 121 arrived in Vilnius, the police said. (Officials had earlier said there were about 170 passengers on the plane, and that six had stayed behind in Minsk.)
The Lithuanian police spoke to the pilots after they landed in Vilnius on Sunday evening, Renatas Pozela, the Lithuanian police commissioner general, said in a telephone interview.
Police investigators would be interviewing the passengers this week, he said.
“The pilots were the priority,” Mr. Pozela said. “We wanted to hear their stories. How did they see the situation? What did they do? Were there other planes?”
Mr. Pozela said he was not yet authorized to disclose any findings of the investigation.
An opposition rally to reject the presidential election results and to protest against the inauguration of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko in Minsk, Belarus, in 2020.Credit…Tut.By, via Reuters
The chorus of condemnation and outrage from across the European Union swelled on Monday as leaders began discussing possible penalties they could direct at Belarus for its forcing down of a civilian passenger jet.
However, they are somewhat limited in the actions at their disposal, because there are already E.U. sanctions against Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the brutal and erratic leader of Belarus who has clung to power despite huge protests against his government last year, and dozens of his immediate associates.
In a summit scheduled to take place Monday evening, European leaders are expected to discuss adding aviation-related sanctions.
The options may include designating Belarusian airspace unsafe for E.U. carriers; blocking flights from Belarus from landing in E.U. airports, and sanctions against the national flag carrier, Belavia.
E.U. leaders also called for an investigation into the circumstances of the incident by the International Commercial Aviation Organization.
While the European Union considered its options, Lithuania — the original destination of the Ryanair flight and one of the countries that shares a border with Belarus — has said it is banning flights over Belarus and strongly advising its citizens not to travel there.
Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s minister for foreign affairs, said in a tweet that the government was responding to “unprecedented threats” from Belarus and would push for the European Union to impose further measures.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece, where the flight originated, said it was critical the European Union take specific action, especially in the context of the bloc’s frequent paralysis over foreign-affairs issues including a recent failure to agree on a statement regarding the Middle East conflict.
“Our inability to reach a consensus on recent events in Israel and Gaza — where as a union we failed to present a unified stance — must not be repeated,” Mr. Mitsotakis told the Financial Times. “The forcible grounding of a commercial passenger aircraft in order to illegally detain a political opponent and journalist is utterly reprehensible and an unacceptable act of aggression that cannot be allowed to stand.”
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, also promised action at the leaders’ summit.
“The outrageous and illegal behavior of the regime in Belarus will have consequences,” she said in a tweet Sunday evening, adding that there must be sanctions for those “responsible for the #Ryanair hijacking.”
President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus in April. Rather than try to blunt diplomatic fallout on Monday, he signed new laws cracking down further on dissent.Credit…Pool photo by Sergei Sheleg
Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the strongman ruler of Belarus and the most enduring leader in the former Soviet Union, appeared undeterred by the international outcry that has erupted after his country forced a civilian passenger jet to land and then arrested a dissident journalist who was onboard.
Rather than try to blunt diplomatic fallout on Monday, he signed new laws cracking down further on dissent.
The country placed bans on publishing unauthorized public opinion polls, on the livestreaming of unauthorized protests, and even on posting links to “banned” information.
The Belarusian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, Anatoly Glaz, insisted that what happened to the jet was in strict accordance with aviation rules and said the country was prepared to host international experts “in order to rule out any insinuations.”
Russia, Mr. Lukashenko’s main ally, stood by him.
Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, compared Sunday’s incident to the forced diversion of a plane carrying Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, which made an unscheduled landing in Austria when he was flying home from Moscow in 2013 after other European countries refused it permission to refuel or to use their airspace.
“I’m shocked that the West is calling the incident in Belarusian airspace ‘shocking,’” Ms. Zakharova wrote on Facebook.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, also refused to join the chorus of condemnation in the West.
“The international aviation authorities need to evaluate whether or not this followed or did not follow international norms,” he told reporters. “I cannot comment on anything in this situation.”
Passengers from the diverted flight arriving in Vilnius, Lithuania, its original destination. Credit…Petras Malukas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The tray tables were being raised and the seat backs returned to the upright position as passengers on Ryanair Flight 4978 prepared for the scheduled landing in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. Then, suddenly, the plane made an abrupt U-turn.
There was no explanation given.
It would be roughly 15 minutes before the pilot came over the intercom and announced that the plane would be diverting to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, according to those on board.
For many passengers, it seemed, at first, it was most likely just one of those unexpected delays that can be part of airline travel — perhaps a technical problem, some speculated.
For one passenger, however, the situation was clear. And frightening.
Roman Protasevich, a prominent Belarusian opposition journalist who had been living in exile since 2019, started to panic.
“He panicked because we were about to land in Minsk,” Marius Rutkauskas, who was sitting one row ahead of Mr. Protasevich, told the Lithuanian broadcaster LRT upon arrival in Vilnius. “He said: ‘I know that death penalty awaits me in Belarus.’”
Once in Belarus, Mr. Protasevich’s worries appeared more real than ever. The plane was surrounded by Soviet-looking officials in green uniforms, along with dogs, fire crews and technical workers from the airport.
Saulius Danauskas, a passenger who spoke to Delfi, a news website, after arriving safely in Vilnius, said it quickly became apparent to him that the notion of a bomb threat was all a ruse.
“When we landed people were standing around the plane doing nothing, looking pleased with themselves,” Mr. Danauskas said. “They didn’t let us out for half an hour,” he added. “If there was a bomb on the plane, why would they not let us out?”
Passengers were eventually told to descend in groups of five with their luggage, which was thoroughly checked by security officials.
Mr. Protasevich’s luggage was checked twice, passengers recalled. Then a security officer escorted him to the terminal, where he was arrested.
Most of the rest of the passengers were kept standing in a dark corridor for three hours. Some had to stand with their children. Guarded by security officials, they had no access to food, water or a toilet.
In retrospect, passengers noted how weird it all was.
Mantas, a passenger on the plane, told a Lithuanian news website that the pilot was “visibly nervous” during the landing in Minsk.
Alyona Alymova, one of the passengers, wrote about the experience in a Facebook post, noting that for much of the time there was only “light anxiety.”
“There was no clear understanding of what was going on,” she wrote.
Some passengers learned about the bomb threat only hours later, when they could connect to the internet.
In an Instagram post, one passenger said that they were “treated as prisoners in Minsk.” Hours later, they were allowed in an airport lounge area with a small cafeteria.
“I want to see who will be responsible for this chaos,” she said.
Roman Protasevich is a co-founder of a channel on the social media app Telegram that become a popular conduit for President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s foes to share information and organize demonstrations.Credit…EPA, via Shutterstock
A day after the dissident journalist Roman Protasevich was detained in a plot that most Hollywood producers would have dismissed as improbably dramatic, there has been no word about where he is, how long he could be held, or what will happen to him.
Mr. Protasevich, an exiled opposition figure, was taken into custody on Sunday after the flight he was on was intercepted while traveling from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, by a MIG-29 fighter jet under orders from the strongman president of Belarus, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, and diverted to Minsk.
Mr. Protasevich is a co-founder and a former editor of the NEXTA channel on the social media platform Telegram, which has become a popular conduit for Mr. Lukashenko’s foes to share information and organize demonstrations.
Mr. Protasevich became a dissident as a teenager, drawing scrutiny from law enforcement. He was expelled from a prestigious school for participating in a protest rally in 2011.
He fled the country in 2019, fearing arrest. But he has continued to roil Mr. Lukashenko’s regime while living in exile in Lithuania, to the extent that he was charged in November last year with inciting public disorder and social hatred.
Also in November, the government’s main security agency in Belarus, called the K.G.B.,placed Mr. Protasevich’s name on a list of terrorists. If he is convicted of terrorism, he could face the death penalty.
The charges of inciting public disorder and social hatred carry a punishment of more than 12 years in prison.
Sofia Sapega, a 23-year-old Russian citizen and the girlfriend of Mr. Protasevich, was traveling with him on the flight, and she was also detained, according to a statement from the European Humanities University in Lithuania, where she is a student. The university said she was detained on “groundless” conditions and pleaded for help in securing her release.
An international arrivals board at Vilnius Airport, Lithuania, on Sunday, with the diverted flight at the top.Credit…Andrius Sytas/Reuters
Shortly after Ryanair Flight 4978 crossed in the airspace of Belarus, an alarming message came crackling over the radio.
The pilots were told of “a potential security threat on board.” A possible bomb.
The plane, headed from Athens in Greece to Vilnius in Lithuania, would have to be diverted to Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
And if there was any doubt about the seriousness of the situation, the pilots only needed to look out of their window, where a MIG-29 fighter had suddenly appeared to escort them.
Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the ruler of Belarus who is often referred to as “Europe’s last dictator,” personally ordered the fighter jet to intercept the passenger plane — a fact his office proudly noted in a news release.
According to the statement, Mr. Lukashenko gave an “unequivocal order” to “make the plane do a U-turn and land.”
After the plane was forced to land, Roman Protasevich, a dissident journalist, was arrested. His girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, was also on the flight, and she, too, did not board the plane again.
The country’s interior ministry announced Mr. Protasevich’s arrest in a statement that was later deleted from its official Telegram channel.
After about seven hours on the ground in Minsk, the passenger jet, a Boeing 737-800, took off for Vilnius, landing there safely 35 minutes later.
No bomb was found on board, according to law enforcement authorities in Belarus. The Investigative Committee, Belarus’s top investigative agency, said it had opened a criminal case into a false bomb threat.
“Nothing untoward was found,” Ryanair said in statement.
Wizz Air, a discount carrier based in Hungary, said on Monday it had rerouted a flight from Kyiv, Ukraine, to Tallinn in Estonia to avoid flying in Belarus airspace.Credit…Andrew Boyers/Reuters
Some airlines in Eastern Europe began diverting their planes to avoid Belarus airspace on Monday, a day after that country’s leader sent a fighter jet to force down a Ryanair flight, allowing the authorities to seize an opposition journalist on board.
The shocking move has unleashed a storm of criticism against Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the Belarus president who has clung to power despite huge protests last year. The European Union is considering penalties against the country.
At least two airlines said that they were diverting flights away from Belarus airspace as a precaution, but most carriers seem to be waiting to be told what to do by the European authorities.
Later in the day, Lithuania’s transport commissioner announced that all flights to and from Lithuanian airports must avoid the airspace of neighboring Belarus, Reuters reported. The minister, Marius Skuodis, said the ban would begin Tuesday at 3 a.m. local time.
Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, on Monday condemned the actions of the Belarus authorities, who ordered the plane, flying from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, to land in the Belarus capital of Minsk and then arrested Roman Protasevich, a dissident journalist on board, and his companion.
“This was a case of state-sponsored hijacking, state-sponsored piracy,” Mr. O’Leary told interviewers on Newstalk, an Irish radio broadcaster.
Mr. O’Leary, however, said he was waiting for instructions from European Union authorities in Brussels about whether to steer other flights away from Belarus.
He added that it would be an easy matter for his flights to avoid Belarus. “We don’t fly over Belarus much,” he said. “It would be a very minor adjustment to fly over” Poland instead, he added. Ryanair, a discount airline based in Ireland, describes itself as Europe’s largest airline group.
Some analysts say that the European Union may be reluctant to ban flights over Belarus because such a move would create difficulties for European airlines. Airlines are already avoiding Ukraine, the country’s southern neighbor, because of conflict with Russia, and so putting Belarus air space off limits as well would present serious routing difficulties on flights between Europe to Asia.
“Flying to Asia from Europe without crossing Belarus is likely too costly and challenging,” wrote analysts from Eurasia Group, a research firm, in a note on Monday.
Other airlines, flying shorter routes, are already making changes.
AirBaltic, the Latvian national airline, said that its flights would avoid entering Belarus airspace “until the situation becomes clearer or a decision is issued by the authorities.” The rerouted flights include ones from Riga, the airline’s home base, to Odessa in Ukraine and Tbilisi in Georgia.
Another airline that flies in the area, Wizz Air, said that it would alter the path of a flight from Kyiv in Ukraine to Tallinn in Estonia so as to skirt Belarus.
“We are continuously monitoring and evaluating the situation,” a spokesman for Wizz Air, which is based in Hungary, said.
A computer generated aerial view of Greater Springfield near Brisbane, Australia.
Springfield City Group
If you drive the sunny coast of Australia’s Gold Coast 25 kilometers outside of Brisbane, you’ll find Greater Springfield, a city that’s different by nature.
You may never have heard of it. Not surprising; The city is not yet 30 years old. But that doesn’t hold it back. In a few years, it could be the next Silicon Valley, says developer Springfield City Group (SCG).
“The world has learned a lot from Silicon Valley,” founder Maha Sinnathamby told CNBC. “We said, this is 85 years old. Let’s design the latest version.”
Sinnathamby is the brains behind Greater Springfield, Australia’s only privately built city and its first planned city since the founding of the capital Canberra more than a century ago. The octagonal real estate tycoon, who has had a 50-year career developing residential and commercial buildings across Australia, said his most recent project, as well as his inspiration Silicon Valley, is about creating a modern business hub based on technology, Education and health care.
We are trying to attract the Microsofts and Googles of the world.
Maha Sinnathamby
Founder and Chairman of the Springfield City Group
And now he’s looking for big-name companies to help him reach the next level of his cherished $ 68 billion vision.
“We’re trying to attract the world’s Microsofts and Googles,” said Sinnathamby, noting that the group is currently in talks with a multinational tech company.
An innovation center for the Asia-Pacific region
Developed on 7,000 acres for $ 6.1 million, Greater Springfield – the 10th largest planned community in the world – is already a living, breathing city that has changed dramatically from the 1992 disused Sinnathamby forestry operation.
Sinnathamby is now home to 46,000 residents, 16,500 homes, 11 schools, a national university campus, a hospital and a railway line that connects it to neighboring Brisbane.
However, it will take more companies to make it a true hub of innovation in the Asia-Pacific region and meet its goals of triple its population and create 52,000 new jobs by 2030. To date, the SCG project has created 20,000 direct and indirect jobs, it said.
“We want to charge it with highly respected companies that are highly talented and want a lot of profit,” said Sinnathamby. “We can’t do this massive job alone.”
Greater Springfield is the first privately built city in Australia and the 10th largest planned master parish in the world.
Springfield City Group
The bait, as Sinnathamby puts it, is the city’s green field, which gives companies like Silicon Valley space to experiment. This includes offering dedicated facilities in which large companies and smaller start-ups can innovate. In the meantime, the “Living Lab” offers space to test new technologies related to intelligent working, living, learning and playing.
Engie SA is a company that is currently testing the waters. In 2018, the French utility signed a 50-year strategic alliance to make Greater Springfield Australia the first net-zero energy city.
By 2038, Engie plans for the city to generate more energy than it uses by focusing on five key pillars: urban planning, mobility, buildings, energy and technology. Improving the infrastructure for electric vehicles, prioritizing public transport, building green buildings, introducing solar panels on all available roofs, and maintaining 30% of the area’s land for open green spaces are among the different methods by which this is achieved .
Earlier this month, Sydney-based start-up Lavo chose Greater Springfield as the production center for its “world’s first” 30-year hydrogen battery set, which is designed to power a home for two days on a single charge.
Developing a knowledge workforce
The new business will be located in Greater Springfield’s Knowledge Precinct, the city’s main employment hub, designed to attract knowledge workers with skills related to the core pillars of technology, education and healthcare.
Health City, a 128-acre health district developed with Harvard Medical International, will offer world-class healthcare as well as thousands of medical jobs, Sinnathamby said. In the meantime, the city’s growing education network, which includes two new universities and a focus on indigenous communities, will nurture the new generation of professionals, he said.
I want partners to come who are committed to this vision.
Maha Sinnathamby
Founder and Chairman of the Springfield City Group
“We are working very hard to ensure that this knowledge district is not just a gift for Australia, but perhaps the world as well,” said Sinnathamby.
However, the timing of the project cannot be ignored. The pandemic has caused many people to rethink the attractiveness of key business centers. It is estimated that 53% of US tech and media workers have already left or are planning to leave the rising cost of living in large cities.
However, Sinnathamby is confident that his vision for Australia’s future city will stand – and maybe even provide a blueprint for others. With its focus on emerging industries, Greater Springfield appears to have weathered the pandemic better than some other places, recording an unemployment rate of 3.9% versus the nationwide level of 5.9% in Queensland.
“I’m committed to this as a nation-building project,” said Sinnathamby. “Now I want partners to come who are committed to this vision.”
In Russia – where the state media described the uprising against Lukashenko last year as a Western conspiracy – the arrest of Putin’s supporters met with approval. Margarita Simonyan, editor of the Kremlin-friendly RT TV station, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Lukashenko “played it beautifully”. And Vyacheslav Lysakov, a member of parliament allied with Putin, described the arrest of Protasevich as a “brilliant special operation”.
Belarusian authorities said they ordered the plane to land after receiving information about a bomb threat, even though Vilnius, the plane’s destination, was much closer than Minsk when the jetliner turned. The country’s defense ministry said in another statement that the country’s air defense forces have been placed on alert.
It is known that Mr. Lukashenko and his government use ruse to persecute their political opponents.
Mr Protasevich’s arrest comes months after the largest wave of street protests in Belarusian history failed to depose Mr Lukashenko, who has been the country’s authoritarian leader for more than 26 years.
More than 32,000 protesters were arrested and at least four died during the protests. Hundreds of people were brutally beaten by the police. NEXTA became the leading online outlet coordinating the demonstrations.
With Putin’s support and exceptional violence, Mr Lukashenko managed to crack down on demonstrators successfully, with the country’s security apparatus remaining loyal to him.
Ms. Tikhanovskaya, the main opponent of Mr. Lukashenko during the last presidential election in August, widely viewed as rigged, described the episode with the Ryanair flight as “an operation by the Special Services to hijack an airplane to arrest activist and blogger Roman Protasevich. “
“Not a single person flying over Belarus can be sure of their safety,” she said.
Aviation industry observers predicted a strong response from commercial airlines. “What is unique about this incident is that it was state sponsored,” said Kevin Murphy, an analyst at Morgan Stanley.
