India is buying more and more cheap Russian oil and refining it into fuel for Europe and the US.

India shipped about 89,000 barrels a day of gasoline and diesel to New York last month, the most in nearly four years. 

Daily low-sulfur diesel flows to Europe were at 172,000 barrels in January, the most since October 2021.

When Russian crude is processed into fuels the refined products can be delivered to the EU because they’re not deemed to be of Russian origin.

Oil’s New Map: How India Turns Russia Crude Into the West’s Fuel (yahoo.com)

Gallup International asked people in 57 countries whether they would prefer to live in another country or stay where they are. 

More than one-third (36%) said they would like to emigrate. People want a better life.

 Younger generations — including those in Europe — are more and more mobile.

 Poor urban populations in many parts of the world — especially in the so-called developing world — are desperate to leave for a better place.  People from low-income countries want to migrate to a place where the standard of living is higher. 

To wish to migrate to a country that offers better possibilities, better conditions, more options for recognition and even better chances to earn more money is quite understandable and normal.

 Many people in the EU say they would migrate, just because they can. In this case, however, migration is mostly from one EU country to another. Mobility in the EU is dynamic. It is also one of the freedoms and rights of being an EU citizen.

International poll shows one in three would emigrate – DW – 02/04/2023

 The following imaginary conversation originally appeared in the October 1937 issue of The United Automobile Worker:

The government cannot achieve the air quality improvements advised by medical experts, so has set its targets lower for the next 10 years, Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary has admitted as she unveiled a new environmental plan. Coffey also confirmed that there would be no major new funding for achieving the targets in the 262-page Environmental Improvement Plan

Doug Parr, UK policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: “If this is a roadmap, it’s a roadmap to the cliff edge. This Conservative government promised the most ambitious environmental plan of any country on earth. Instead, here’s yet more paperwork containing a threadbare patchwork of policies that fail to tackle many of the real threats to our natural world. This won’t do.”

Air pollution experts pointed to research by King’s College London and Imperial College London that has shown the government could achieve the more stringent targets, which are supported by the public in polls, if it took stronger action on the sources of pollution, which include diesel cars and wood-burning.

Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of charity Asthma + Lung UK, said: “Air pollution is a public health emergency which causes 36,000 premature deaths in the UK every year. The government has ignored our calls to bring forward its compliance date, and instead said it will make our air cleaner by 2040. This falls far short of what’s needed – it means that for another 17 years, children will be forced to live, learn and play in toxic levels of air pollution, and a new generation will be condemned to breathe air so dirty it can stunt their lung growth, cause lung conditions like cancer, and trigger existing conditions including asthma.”

Richard Benwell, chief executive of the conservation group Wildlife and Countryside Link, said, “Too many people live in polluted, nature-deprived neighbourhoods, at great cost to mental and physical health,” he said. “Billions of pounds could be saved for the NHS if everyone lived in a healthy environment, and millions of lives could be brightened.”

Thérèse Coffey admits UK can’t achieve air pollution target advised by experts | Pollution | The Guardian

 In Haiti, at least half its children, 2.6 million, are expected to need immediate lifesaving assistance in 2023, UNICEF warns.

In the last two years, the number of Haitian children in need of humanitarian aid has increased by half a million as an upsurge in armed violence, a resurgence of cholera, combined with food insecurity and skyrocketing inflation have restricted access to essential health, nutrition, water and hygiene, and education services for millions of children and their families.

1 in 2 children depend on humanitarian aid to survive this year – Haiti | ReliefWeb

The regular dividends that investors receive from owning shares in UK-listed companies soared by 16.5% in 2022, far outstripping wage growth in either the private or public sector.

Including the value of one-off dividends, which companies make from time to time to reward investors above and beyond their regular annual payouts, the total value was still up, albeit by a more modest 8% to £94.3bn.

Investors’ returns from underlying dividends – excluding volatile one-off payouts – reached £84.8bn during the year, partly owing to a £3.8bn boost from the weakness of the pound, which inflated the figures for dividends paid in dollars. 

The rise in share income was particularly steep for those who invest in banks and oil companies, which were boosted by the high oil and gas prices that have contributed to the cost of living crisis.

Link Group said “resurgent” banking dividends were the most significant driver, accounting for a quarter of the rise. Soaring energy prices, which have saddled households with sky-high bills, pushed oil payouts higher by a fifth. Oil companies also implemented share buybacks, which can strengthen the share price as another way of rewarding investors, with Shell alone repurchasing £16bn of its own stock.

 Living costs are rising faster than salaries, although not faster than dividends. 

Dividends from UK-listed firms up 16.5% in 2022, far outstripping pay rises | Investments | The Guardian

 Seaweed farming could constitute 10% of human diets by 2050 it could reduce the amount of land needed for food by 110m hectares (272m acres) – an area twice the size of France. In parts of Asia, seaweed already makes up 2% of diets.

About 650m hectares (1,606m acres) was identified as plausible for seaweed farming, with the largest areas in Indonesia and Australia.

“Cultivating seaweeds for food, feed and fuel within even a fraction of the 650m hectares of suitable ocean could have profound benefits to land use, emissions reduction, water and fertiliser use,” the authors wrote.

Scott Spillias, a researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia who led the study published in Nature Sustainability, said: “People around the world are looking at the ocean as this big ‘untapped’ resource and asking if we should be using more of it.” He said. “If we grow seaweed, the best thing to do is for people to eat it rather than feed it to livestock, but that’s going to need some big cultural shifts.”

The cultivation and use of red Asparagopsis seaweed as a cattle feed supplement that has been shown to result in drastically lower methane emissions from cows. The study suggested cuts to methane emissions from using Asparagopsis could save 2.6bn tonnes of CO2-equivalent a year by 2050 – about the same as the current greenhouse gas footprint of India.

Food, feed and fuel: global seaweed industry could reduce land needed for farming by 110m hectares, study finds | Food | The Guardian

Shell’s figures will be suitably eye-watering: adjusted annual profits are expected to come in around $83bn (£67bn) against $55bn a year ago, including around $19bn in the final quarter of the year, against $16.3bn in the same period of 2021.

The firm’s prized dividend has been lifted by 15%. Shell is spending $18.5bn buying back its own shares this year, a statistic that has only increased the calls for the firm to allocate more of its cash pile towards renewable energy and less to rewarding shareholders. This year’s capital investment is expected to come in at between $23bn and $27bn, but renewables will make up a relatively small proportion of this.

“Let’s not forget that these companies are richer because the rest of us are poorer,” said Alice Harrison of campaign group Global Witness. “Brits should be asking themselves whose side their government is on – those of us living in cold, draughty homes or an industry that’s riding the wave of the energy crisis and returning billions to its shareholders?…”

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson says, “Oil companies don’t help themselves when they take the decision to continue to buy back billions of dollars in their own shares, rather than increase the amount of investment in renewable sources of energy.”

Shell and BP face tough job of keeping customers and investors happy as profits roll in | Oil and gas companies | The Guardian

  Sales of U.S. military equipment to foreign governments rose 49% to $205.6 billion in the latest fiscal year.

Sales approved in the year included $13.9 billion worth of F-15ID fighter jets to Indonesia, $6.9 billion worth of Multi-Mission Surface Combatant ships to Greece, and $6 billion worth of M1A2 Abrams tanks to Poland.

There are two major ways foreign governments purchase arms from U.S. companies: direct commercial sales negotiated between a government and a company, and foreign military sales in which a foreign government typically contacts a Defense Department official at the U.S. embassy in its capital.

The direct military sales by U.S. companies rose 48.6% to $153.7 billion in fiscal 2022 from $103 billion in fiscal 2021, while sales arranged through the U.S. government rose 49.1% to $51.9 billion in 2022 from $34.8 billion the prior year.

U.S. arms exports up 49% in fiscal 2022 | Reuters (archive.is)

  Housing Secretary Michael Gove has admitted he believes the system of regulation was “faulty and ambiguous” and not policed properly by the government and it contributed to the Grenfell fire tragedy