У 2023 році Україна отримала 10,5 млрд євро макрофінансової допомоги від ЄС
…

«Є група підакцизних товарів, де потрібна детінізація, де наші правоохоронні органи недопрацьовують» – голова парламентського Комітету з питань фінансів, податкової та митної політики
…

Elon Musk has unveiled a new black and white “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he follows through with a major rebranding of the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year.

Musk replaced his own Twitter icon with a white X on a black background and posted a picture on Monday of the design projected on Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

The X started appearing on the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the phone app.

Musk had asked fans for logo ideas and chose one, which he described as minimalist Art Deco, saying it “certainly will be refined.”

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk tweeted Sunday.

The X.com web domain now redirects users to Twitter.com, Musk said.

In response to questions about what tweets would be called when the rebranding is done, Musk said they would be called Xs.

Musk, CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter. The billionaire is also CEO of rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX. And in 1999, he founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal,

He calls his son with the singer Grimes, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols, “X.”

Musk’s Twitter purchase and rebranding are part of his strategy to create what he’s dubbed an ” everything app ” similar to China’s WeChat, which combines video chats, messaging, streaming and payments.

Linda Yaccarino, the longtime NBC Universal executive Musk tapped to be Twitter CEO in May, posted the new logo and weighed in on the change, writing on Twitter that X would be “the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”

Experts, however, predicted the new name will confuse much of Twitter’s audience, which has already been souring on the social media platform following a raft of Musk’s other changes. The site also faces new competition from Threads, the new app by Facebook and Instagram parent Meta that directly targets Twitter users.
…

A ban imposed by India on exports of several categories of rice due to rising domestic prices and fears of a shortfall in the next crop yield could drive up global prices of the grain at a time when food insecurity is already a concern, according to experts. 

India, the world’s largest rice exporter, accounts for 40% of the global rice trade, with its shipments going to about 140 countries.  

Announcing the ban Thursday, the government said that prices in the country had risen by 11.5% over the past year and 3% over the past month.   

In a statement, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs said that it has amended the export policy “in order to ensure adequate availability of non-basmati white rice in the Indian market and to allay the rise in prices in the domestic market.” It said the ban would take effect immediately. 

India’s move came days after Russia backed out of a deal to allow Ukrainian wheat safe passage through the Black Sea, prompting warnings that the action could lead to surging prices.    

“The impact of India’s rice ban is bound to be felt on global prices. This is happening soon after the Black Sea initiative was not renewed. When wheat is undergoing a shock, India banning rice exports creates a further shock in global food grain markets,” Harish Damodaran, agriculture editor at The Indian Express newspaper, told VOA. 

“India used to export about 22.5 million tons. Now about 10 million tons will go out of the international market, so about 40% of our exports will be knocked out. This includes a category whose exports were banned last year,” according to Damodaran.  

India is unlikely to ease the restrictions soon as it grapples with food inflation, according to analysts.  

The increase in food prices is a sensitive issue for the government as the country prepares to hold a series of key state elections later this year and national elections next April. Prices of rice and wheat are of particular concern in a country where cereals are a predominant part of the diet of low-income people. 

India has been tightening farm exports since last year — a ban imposed on wheat exports more than a year ago has not been lifted.  

Analysts say that while India, the world’s second largest rice producer, has sufficient stockpiles of rice for its 1.4 billion people, there are fears that an erratic monsoon season could damage the next paddy crop, which was planted in June and harvested in September.  

Heavy rains in the north of the country in recent weeks triggered floods in key rice growing regions while deficient rains in the south prevented many farmers from planting the crop.   

“We have had severe rains and floods in Punjab and Haryana, and these are the two states that predominantly supply surplus rice to the country,” Devinder Sharma, a farm analyst, told VOA. “The tragedy of southern states is that they don’t have irrigation and therefore they get adversely impacted by a shortfall in rains. So everything could go topsy turvy with the next rice harvest.” 

He also pointed out that there are worries over the “El Nino” effect, which usually causes hot, dry weather and lower rainfall in Asia, where the bulk of the world’s rice crop which needs ample water is grown. That has led to further uncertainty about potential shortages of the crop that is a staple for more than 3 billion people in the world. 

“So the government is right in being very cautious. They don’t want to take any risk,” said Sharma. 

The curbs on rice exports exclude one variety that is mostly exported to Bangladesh and several countries in Africa, which analysts say is a diplomatic move to ensure that the neighboring country with which New Delhi has good ties and African nations — where it is trying to build influence — do not face a significant problem.   

“The rice curbs have been crafted keeping in mind domestic political compulsions and diplomacy,” says Damodaran. 
…

A little-publicized clause in the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act has companies scrambling to recycle electric vehicle batteries in North America, putting the region at the forefront of a global race to undermine China’s dominance of the field.

The IRA includes a clause that automatically qualifies EV battery materials recycled in the U.S. as American-made for subsidies, regardless of their origin. That is important because it qualifies automakers using U.S.-recycled battery materials for EV production incentives.

Reuters interviewed more than a dozen industry officials and experts who say that is kicking off a U.S. factory building boom, encouraging automakers to research more recyclable batteries, and could eventually make it harder for buyers in developing countries to buy old used EVs.

China handles virtually all EV battery recycling in a global market projected to grow from $11 billion in 2022 to $18 billion by 2028, according to research firm EMR. As more EVs are introduced and age out of the vehicle fleet, that business will grow.

The minerals in those batteries – primarily lithium, cobalt and nickel – are worth on average between 1,000 euros ($1,123) to 2,000 euros per car, BMW sustainability chief Thomas Becker told Reuters.

Those materials could be in short supply within a few years as automakers boost EV production, but “can be recycled infinity times and not lose their power,” said Louie Diaz, vice president at Canadian battery recycling firm Li-Cycle, which received a $375 million U.S government loan for a New York plant slated to open later this year. That funding helped bring forward the investment decision for the plant, Diaz said.

JB Straubel, CEO of Redwood Materials, which was awarded a $2 billion U.S. government loan in February to build out a battery material recycling and remanufacturing complex in Nevada, said the IRA treats recycled battery materials as locally “urban mined,” or materials recovered from scrap rather than obtained from mining.

That has encouraged U.S. companies to move faster on recycling efforts than their counterparts in the European Union, which has focused instead on mandates, including minimum amounts of recycled materials in future EV batteries.

Recycling firms Ascend Elements, Li-Cycle and others are planning European plants in the next few years, but access to funding and the made-in-America incentive means several U.S. plants are already being built.

“What it (the IRA) does is change the demand equation for battery materials,” said Mike O’Kronley, CEO of Ascend Elements, which already has one recycling plant open in Georgia and has received nearly $500 million in Energy Department grants under the infrastructure law for a plant in Kentucky slated to open in late 2023. “We need to keep those valuable materials… so we can put them right back into EVs.”

The race is on to build “closed-loop supply chains” where recycled minerals are put into locally produced new batteries, said Christian Marston, chief technology officer at Altilium Metals, which is building a plant in Bulgaria and plans one in the UK by 2026.

“Everybody wants to control their own supply chain and nobody wants to be reliant on the Chinese,” he said.

However, China still leads the race, announcing tougher standards and increased research support for recyclers last month. After passage last year of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, Chinese officials described the legislation as “anti-globalization” and accused the U.S. of “unilateral bullying.”

Rapid growth

Globally, there are at least 80 companies involved in EV recycling, with more than 50 startups attracting at least $2.7 billion, virtally all in the last six years, from corporate investors including automakers, battery makers and mining giants like Glencore, according to PitchBook.com data.

The volume of EV batteries available for recycling should grow over tenfold by 2030, said consultant Circular Energy Storage. Around 11.3 Gigawatt hours (GWh) of batteries reached end of life in 2022, and that should rise to 138 GWh by 2030 – equivalent to roughly 1.5 million EVs – CES said.

Electric vehicle batteries can last for 10 years or more.

Some industry officials anticipate rapid growth means 40% of battery materials used in new EVs could come from recycled stocks by 2040.

There is little existing U.S. recycling capacity today, and virtually none in Europe.

At a facility in Poole in southern England, car breaker Charles Trent Ltd has built two lines where workers deconstruct wrecked or old vehicles to recycle everything. It has built special containers for EV batteries, which are sold for research or used by retrofitters electrifying fossil-fuel cars, partly because there is nowhere to recycle them.

In Europe, EV batteries are currently shredded into “black mass” that is shipped to China for recycling.

‘Lose nothing’

The race is on to squeeze the best price out of that black mass.

“The one who gets the highest yield at the lowest cost … will win this game,” said Bruno Thompson, CEO of Cambridge, England-based startup The Battery Recycling Company, which plans its first plant in 2024.

Dallas, Texas-based Ecobat, which shreds batteries in Europe and the U.S. for recycling elsewhere, has improved its recovery process so around 70% of battery-cell lithium is available for recycling, said chief commercial officer Thea Soule.

Eventually, Soule said, yields should reach levels close to 90% to 100%.

Getting better yields matters because the EU will mandate minimum amounts of recycled lithium, cobalt and nickel in EV batteries within eight years. The EU will also impose tough conditions on recycling outside Europe.

Those conditions will effectively keep recycling local, said Kurt Vandeputte, senior vice president at Belgian materials firm Umicore.

There are also industry concerns about finding old EVs for recycling. Today, anywhere up to 30% of Europe’s old fossil-fuel cars disappear overseas – to new owners in developing countries or for scrap. Some automakers are trying to figure out how to keep tabs on those EVs.

Nissan has turned to leasing EVs in Japan to maintain control of batteries, while Chinese EV maker Nio leases batteries to customers to retain ownership.

Keeping those minerals in Europe would cut off a cheaper source of transportation for developing countries.

BMW’s sustainability chief Becker said the value of battery materials will hopefully make recycling more attractive than selling vehicles abroad, but Europe must focus on ensuring those EV batteries do not slip away.

“We’ve got to make sure we lose nothing,” Becker said.
…