crisis

Fallout from Jensen Huang’s ouster as Nvidia Corp. chief executive officer is reaching deep into Washington, where Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is confronting accusations that his department didn’t do enough to keep the company’s prized artificial intelligence chips out of China’s hands.

As the ultimate overseer of U.S. export control programs, Lutnick is accountable for any policy or enforcement gaps that allowed Nvidia’s AI processors to reach unauthorized Chinese buyers. Internal tension over his role burst into the open on Friday when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blamed him for failing to blacklist a Singapore-based company, Megaspeed, over possible violations.

“Treasury, [the U.S. Trade Representative office] and State — they were in favor of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months, but Commerce has the pen,” Bessent said in an interview with CNBC. “We have all the authorities that we need. They just need to be implemented.”

Lutnick is a controversial figure in President Trump’s orbit. People with ties to the White House, who asked not to be identified describing private conversations, said he’s been marginalized within the administration for a while. At the same time, his exit has been predicted before, and he’s still in the job.

As of Thursday, the Commerce chief retained Trump’s blessing. In a statement, the White House said Trump maintains complete confidence in the secretary and his ability to serve in the position.

Congress is now demanding answers from Lutnick and other Trump administration officials about decisions that may have made it easier for China to obtain Nvidia’s advanced chips as well as the degree to which Silicon Valley leaders like Jensen Huang may have influenced policy.

Pressure on the administration and the tech sector is escalating a week after an election where voters expressed intense frustrations over the impact of the AI boom.

Huang’s abrupt departure was prompted by revelations that he’d had an affair with a woman suspected by U.S. officials of spying for China and that Megaspeed had been under investigation by Commerce for possible export control violations. Megaspeed has denied any wrongdoing, while the former Nvidia chief’s romantic partner, Alice Huang, is now in China.

“I would like for Secretary Lutnick ASAP to come testify before the Senate Banking Committee because we have a lot of bipartisan questions and concerns about what’s happened over the last year,” Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) said in an interview on Fox News.

Late Thursday night, a Commerce Department spokesperson, Kristen Eichamer, said Lutnick had agreed to testify.

Axios reported on Wednesday that Trump had authorized a new crackdown on companies suspected of diverting advanced AI chips to China, but that Lutnick delayed acting on the directive. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) called the report “deeply, deeply disturbing.”

On at least three separate occasions earlier this year — in May, August and earlier this month — Trump approved taking action against suspected diversions of Nvidia chips to China, Axios reported.

This week’s events, Krishnamoorthi said in an interview Wednesday, deserve “tremendous scrutiny not only by obviously Nvidia’s board, but by the intelligence community and the U.S. government as well.”

Further complicating the dynamic are allegations by Democratic lawmakers that Lutnick’s sons, who hold leadership positions at Cantor Fitzgerald, are profiting off policy decisions that he makes. Lutnick, who previously was chief executive of Cantor, divested his stake as legally required before becoming secretary, and elevated his sons to top jobs at the firm.

The Commerce Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Cantor Fitzgerald declined to comment.

One element of the Nvidia imbroglio is a little-known but powerful Commerce Department agency that’s known as the Bureau of Industry and Security and falls under Lutnick’s jurisdiction.

The bureau regulates exports of a wide range of products — including advanced AI chips — and it’s set to face renewed scrutiny as lawmakers threaten investigations of the bureau’s leader, Under Secretary of Commerce Jeffrey Kessler.

The Senate Banking Committee is already planning inquiries into Lutnick and Kessler’s decision-making. The two men “must explain why they have not closed export control loopholes and act today to ensure our advanced technology is not fueling China’s military,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement.

In late summer 2025, Nvidia General Counsel Tim Teter called Kessler to ask whether the Bureau of Industry and Security was involved in the Singapore government’s recent detention of Alice Huang. The bureau was not involved in that action, citing people familiar with the matter.

An Nvidia spokesperson has said that Teter was unaware of the affair at the time he called Kessler about Alice Huang’s detention in Singapore. But in the weeks following the call, Bureau of Industry and Security staffers were muzzled in their ability to investigate the company, including a mandate that they route all requests of Nvidia through Kessler, Bloomberg reported.

Bureau of Industry and Security spokespeople earlier denied any wrongdoing.

“It’s really important to understand what the Commerce Department knew about Megaspeed,” said Ben Buchanan, former White House special advisor for AI during the Biden administration, in an interview. “This is an incident where the enforcement is not good. The decision-making has not been good.”

Diaz and Eastland write for Bloomberg.

California’s sky-high housing costs cast a dark shadow on its sunny disposition, sending some fleeing to more affordable climes.

Yet voters decisively rejected a state ballot measure that promised to make it easier and cheaper to build housing by changing the law often blamed for driving up costs: the California Environmental Quality Act. Proposition 45 even divided pro-housing groups.

So what gives? And where do we go from here?

Proposition 45 would have offered expedited environmental review and put a shot clock on legal challenges for projects defined as essential, including those involving housing, water, transportation and internet access. Supporters said it would cut costly delays, while opponents warned it would weaken environmental protections and public input.

Skeptics pointed out that state lawmakers already changed CEQA last year, exempting the lion’s share of urban infill housing from the law. They argued that means the proposition would have largely benefited low-density development on the outskirts of cities — sometimes labeled “sprawl.”

But supporters say the measure would also boost projects in cities left out of those exemptions. All types of housing, some say, are needed to dig the state out of its shortage.

For housing advocates, where they stood on the measure “ultimately depends on how you feel about exurban development” and whether the state should be making it easier to build it, said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the UC Berkeley Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, who didn’t take a public position on the measure.

Jordan Grimes, legislative director for the Greenbelt Alliance, an environmental nonprofit that opposed the measure, is among those that see it as the wrong type of development.

According to Grimes, it increases greenhouse gas emissions as residents are forced to drive more; gobbles up natural areas and farmland to build; and requires outsize investment from taxpayers in the urban core to pay for the needed infrastructure.

“It’s definitely not climate friendly for sure,” he said. “But sprawl is also a pretty huge economic drag.”

The significant legislative changes enacted last year under Assembly Bill 130 are paying off, he said. He estimated some 18,000 units have since been permitted statewide.

“If you want to build a new apartment building in Los Angeles or Beverly Hills or Palo Alto or San Francisco, you can do that now,” he said, describing it as a “watershed moment” in the state’s urban housing production.

But many who laud the changes believe there’s more that can be done. For instance, infill projects over 20 acres don’t qualify for the CEQA exemption.

“So there’s still these massive projects where you know developers want to be able to do redevelopments of shopping malls and parking structures, but they just can’t,” said Paul Shafer, public policy manager for the nonprofit California Council for Affordable Housing, which backed the measure.

He added that there are certain rural areas that didn’t benefit from last year’s changes because projects there don’t fit the definition of infill housing.

“There’s a lot of hesitation around what greenfill looks like,” he said. “But when we’re in a 2.5-million-unit housing shortage, it really requires more than just that infill development to fill that gap.”

Shifting public opinion

A July poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 73% of likely voters would support Proposition 45. By October, voters were divided, with 50% opposed and 46% in favor, according to another survey by the nonpartisan think tank.

Experts pointed to a number of possibilities for voters’ decisions, including what some characterized as successful but potentially misleading messaging by the opposition and confusion over the complex measure. Others suggested voters rejected it based on its substance, deciding they didn’t want to fast-track some projects it covered.

Supporters raised several million dollars more than opponents, according to state campaign finance data. Yet Jason Elliott, a consultant who helped craft the measure, said proponents were outspent 2 to 1 on paid advertising, “making it hard to compete.”

What’s next

Some want to see state lawmakers take up parts of Proposition 45, including imposing timelines for review and litigation related to CEQA. The measure generally would have meant that environmental impact reports could take no more than 365 business days and lawsuits no more than 270 calendar days.

“Death by delay is a real strategy, particularly for affordable housing,” said Linda Mandolini, chief executive of Eden Housing, which develops and owns affordable housing.

For five years, she said, the nonprofit was embroiled in a series of lawsuits over a 130-unit project it’s developing in the eastern edge of the Bay Area. It’s starting construction this year, but she estimates the delays cost them $29 million.

Shafer, of California Council for Affordable Housing, said shot clocks would offer some certainty that the state’s current development process lacks. Some say it’s hard to secure financing and insurance when you don’t know how long it will take before you can break ground.

But Shafer is not optimistic that the Legislature will prioritize making such changes.

“I don’t think there’s going to be an appetite to see reforms in this area, certainly not as far-reaching as we saw in Prop. 45, for many years to come,” he said.

Not everyone sees the environmental law as the area to target.

UC Berkeley’s Elkind believes the first step to boost housing in already developed areas would be for state lawmakers to allow denser housing in communities where it’s restricted — such as permitting apartments in areas zoned for single-family homes.

“We’re really at that point where we’ve got to start kind of chainsawing through the thicket of local requirements that keep the infill housing we need from getting built,” he said. “And it’s not really about CEQA at this point.”

Climate activist urges world leaders to put people and planet before profit as she arrives at UN climate talks.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has condemned the United Nations climate talks as hypocritical and urged world leaders to put people and planet ahead of profits and power.

Thunberg made the comments on Tuesday as she arrived at the COP31 conference in the Turkish resort city of Antalya.

“It’s a hypocrisy every year that the host countries are given an opportunity to whitewash themselves and we know that these negotiations are filled with lobbyists, paid by the very destructive industries which are benefiting from our extremely violent status quo,” Thunberg said.

“Our political and economic systems that have become incompatible with human nature.”

The talks follow a year of deadly climate-related disasters, including heatwaves and floods, and another energy shock caused by the US-Israel war on Iran.

COP31 co-hosts Turkiye and Australia are promoting renewable energy and rooftop solar installations, but both still rely heavily on fossil fuels, especially coal, to generate electricity. Previous hosts, including Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan, are major oil producers.

Climate change is “threatening everything”, Thunberg said, warning that “everything and everyone we love is at stake”.

“We should act to protect and benefit people rather than constantly sacrificing the global majority and the very planet we are all living on, for a fortunate few to keep making unimaginable profits and maintaining geopolitical power,” she said.

Thunberg rose to prominence in 2018 as a 15-year-old, when she began a solitary “School Strike for Climate” outside the Swedish parliament.

The Antalya summit is the first she has attended since the 2021 talks in Glasgow, Scotland, where she dismissed world leaders’ promises as “blah, blah, blah”.

She has also campaigned for other causes, including the Free Palestine movement, and more recently backed French students protesting for more school resources.

Her arrival in Antalya has created excitement among many of the youth climate activists at COP31 who are demanding more climate finance.

“I hope that Greta’s presence here reminds us of why we started this work in the first place: to push for meaningful change, hold decision-makers accountable, and work towards a better future for all of humanity,” Amber Turner, a 26-year-old fellow with the Alliance of Small Island States, told The Associated Press news agency.

Qiyun Woo, a youth environmentalist from Singapore, said Thunberg’s “powerful” presence “adds to calls from a generation that inherits the consequences of these negotiations”.

COP31 runs in Antalya until November 20.

Next year’s edition, COP32, is scheduled to take place in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, in November 2027.

World leaders and delegates are gathering in Antalya, Turkiye, for COP31, the annual climate summit of the United Nations, which runs from November 9 to 20.

They meet as global emissions continue to climb. The world emitted 54.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2025, 0.7 percent more than the year before and 68.5 percent more than in 1990, according to the latest figures from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide and methane, trap heat in the atmosphere, raising global temperatures and fuelling heatwaves, droughts, floods and other extreme weather conditions.

In this visual explainer, Al Jazeera breaks down which gases are warming the planet, which industries and countries emit the most, and how their emissions have changed over time.

Which gases are warming the planet?

Carbon dioxide (CO2) made up 73.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2025. It is released mainly when fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas are burned, while deforestation removes trees that would otherwise absorb it.

Methane (CH4) accounted for 17.6 percent of emissions that year, followed by nitrous oxide (N2O) at 5.3 percent and fluorinated gases (F-gases) at 3.3 percent.

Global CO2 emissions have risen by 76.3 percent since 1990, according to the JRC.

How is a warming planet affecting the world?

As these gases build up in the atmosphere, they trap more heat. In 2025, the heat stored in the world’s oceans reached its highest level on record, and the rate of ocean warming has increased sharply over the past two decades, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Extreme weather has killed tens of thousands of people and forced millions from their homes in 2026, according to the WMO.

In Europe, heatwaves, droughts and wildfires between May and August caused more than 30,000 excess deaths, and 220,000 people were evacuated in France alone.

On August 26, a glacier collapse and the resulting flash flood in the Himalayas killed more than 1,500 people in Nepal along its border with China, while about 5,600 remain missing, according to the UN.

In June and July, Typhoon Bavi forced three million people to evacuate in China and killed 26 in the Philippines. Weeks later, severe Tropical Storm Maysak killed 171 people and caused more than $3bn in losses in China.

Earlier in the year, floods and windstorms across the western Mediterranean displaced more than 180,000 people in Morocco, while extreme cold and snow in North America killed 174 people.

The map below shows some of the most extreme weather events of 2026.

Where do the world’s emissions come from?

The world’s greenhouse gas emissions have more than doubled since 1970, rising from about 23 billion tonnes to 54.1 billion tonnes in 2025, according to the JRC.

The power industry, which generates electricity, is the largest source, producing nearly 30 percent of global emissions in 2025. Its emissions have roughly quadrupled since 1970, driven by soaring demand for electricity in fast-growing economies such as China and India.

Industry, including manufacturing and mining, is the second-largest source at 21 percent. This covers fuel burned in factories as well as gases released when producing cement, metals and chemicals. Industrial emissions climbed steeply in the 2000s as China’s manufacturing boomed.

Transport, including cars, shipping and aviation, is third at 16 percent.

Together, these three sectors produce about two-thirds of the world’s emissions. The rest comes from agriculture (12 percent), the extraction of coal, oil and gas (11 percent), buildings (6.6 percent) and waste (3.6 percent).

Global emissions have fallen only a handful of times since 1970, including in the early 1980s, after the 2008 financial crisis and during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Each time, they rebounded.

Who are the largest emitters of greenhouse gases?

In 2025, the three largest emitters produced almost half of the world’s greenhouse gases. China emitted almost 16 billion tonnes (29.5 percent), the United States 6.02 billion tonnes (11.1 percent) and India 4.51 billion tonnes (8.3 percent).

The 27 countries of the European Union together accounted for 5.8 percent, followed by Russia (4.8 percent), Indonesia (2.5 percent), Brazil (2.4 percent) and Iran (2.1 percent).

International shipping and aviation, which fall outside any single country’s total, together produced 2.6 percent of global emissions, more than most countries.

It was not always this way. The Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries drove up emissions first in the West, particularly in the United Kingdom and the US, as they built factories and moved to mass manufacturing. Global emissions then rose sharply after World War II and have more than doubled since 1970.

China’s emissions surged in the early 2000s as its economy boomed, and it overtook the US as the world’s largest emitter in the mid-2000s.

But measured over time, the picture changes. Since the mid-18th century, the US has produced 23.5 percent of all CO2 emissions, compared with 15.4 percent from China, according to the Global Carbon Budget.

Which industries drive each country’s emissions?

In China, the power sector is the largest source, producing 42 percent of the country’s almost 16 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases. Industry accounts for 31 percent and fuel production for 9.5 percent.

In September 2025, Chinese President Xi Jinping, for the first time, pledged to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 7 to 10 percent from their peak by 2035.

In the US, transport is the largest source at 29 percent, mostly from cars and trucks. The power sector accounts for 26 percent and industry for 14 percent.

In India, which still relies heavily on coal for electricity, the power sector produces 35 percent of emissions, followed by industry at 24 percent and agriculture at 19 percent.

Explore the table below to see which sectors produce the most greenhouse gas emissions in each country.

Air quality in Indian capital reaches severe levels, posing heightened health risks for more than 30 million residents.

Heavy smog has blanketed New Delhi after firecrackers lit up the Indian capital during Diwali celebrations, worsening the seasonal pollution crisis.

Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, was celebrated across India on Sunday. Despite restrictions on fireworks, New Delhi residents celebrated the festival of lights with firecrackers throughout Sunday evening, releasing smoke and fine particulate matter into the atmosphere.

On Monday morning, the Air Quality Index exceeded 350 in several parts of the capital, categorised as “severe” and posing significant health risks, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended exposure thresholds.

Last month, India’s Supreme Court put in place restrictions to limit Diwali pollution, allowing only approved “green firecrackers” under specified conditions for three-hour windows on Saturday and Sunday. The approved crackers produce fewer emissions but are not pollution-free.

Seasonal pollution

On Wednesday, days before Diwali, toxic air pollution in New Delhi surged to more than 30 times the WHO’s recommended daily limit, data from air monitors showed.

New Delhi, home to 30 million people, persistently ranks among the world’s most polluted capital cities.

The issue is exacerbated during the winter, when cooler temperatures, low wind speeds and stagnant atmospheric conditions prevent pollutants from dispersing.

Vehicles account for 23 percent of New Delhi’s winter pollution, while biomass burning, including farm stubble fires, contributes 20 percent, according to India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

The result is a thick haze that can linger over the capital and surrounding areas for days.

Paraguay is engulfed in political turmoil after a banking scandal put its president and major institutions under scrutiny.

At the centre is Ueno, a fast-growing digital lender, whose collapse has left millions of people unable to access their savings. But the fallout goes beyond the banking sector.

Congress has rejected President Santiago Pena’s resignation and is pressing ahead with impeachment proceedings. He’s accused of negligence and being complicit in an alleged cover-up of the bank’s insolvency.

So, what went wrong? Were regulators compromised by political influence? And who should be held accountable?

Presenter: Dareen Abughaida

Guests:

Daniel Duarte Braga – Journalist and contributing editor to The Paraguay Post

Mariano Machado – Principal Americas analyst at global risk intelligence firm, Verisk Maplecroft

Javier Farje – Historian specialising in Latin American affairs

Political turmoil comes after a digital bank’s failure has left half the population without access to their accounts.

Lawmakers in Paraguay have resumed impeachment proceedings against President Santiago Pena, a day after he resigned amid links to the country’s worst financial crisis in decades.

The Senate convened a rare session on Friday to consider Pena’s political future, opting to move forward with efforts to remove the conservative economist from office.

Politicians formally filed impeachment charges against the president on Thursday, despite his resignation. Pena, who was elected in 2023, has requested a 72-hour extension to prepare his defence before the Senate.

The proceedings follow a vote in Paraguay’s lower house of Congress, where lawmakers overwhelmingly approved impeachment charges against Pena in a 78-0 vote.

The political turmoil surrounding the country’s president follows Paraguay’s central bank’s intervention earlier this week at Ueno Bank, one of the country’s fastest-growing digital lenders, citing breaches of minimum solvency requirements.

Pena previously held a stake in Ueno’s parent company, Grupo Vazquez, until last year, when he claims he sold his shares. Paraguayan lawmakers have accused the president of a conflict of interest and questioned whether authorities failed to act on warnings about the lender’s financial position.

The collapse of Ueno, which held $850m in public funds, has left more than half of Paraguay’s population without access to their accounts, drawing intense scrutiny over the government’s relationship with the bank and financial regulators’ effectiveness.

“My greatest wish is that the return of those funds be guaranteed, that the deposit guarantee fund fulfil its purpose, and that public funds — as well as the resources that belong to all Paraguayans — be protected,” Pena said in a Thursday video address where he apologised for failing to prevent the crisis.

The crisis has also prompted the resignation of Paraguay’s central bank chief, Carlos Carvallo, and arrest warrants for eight Ueno executives, who later turned themselves in.

Paraguay’s attorney general has ordered three criminal investigations into the bank’s collapse, including its regulatory oversight and the placement of public funds in the institution.

If Pena is convicted in an impeachment trial, he would lose the lifetime Senate seat and associated legal protections ordinarily granted to former Paraguayan presidents.

A new report from the think tank founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt quantifies the grim realities of the U.S. defense industrial base’s dependence on China for critical rare earth minerals. It also details which weapons systems might face the most impact if that delicate supply relationship breaks down.

The white paper, exclusively obtained from the Special Competitive Studies Project, uses AI intelligence from the supply chain tech firm Exiger to assess how many unique components, identified by National Item Identification Number, or NIIN, contain critical minerals, such as antimony, gallium, germanium and tungsten.

From an assessment of almost nine million parts and 3,000 U.S. military weapon systems, the company identified more than 28,000 unique components  across 1,400 weapons systems containing just these four rare earths. The isolation of these parts is relevant in particular because of a near-term crisis: the expiration of a suspension on Chinese export controls set to take effect in November. Disruption to weapons fielding plans, as well as operational readiness and sustainment activities, according to the white paper, is very much a possibility. Yet according to Kit Conklin, chief strategy and global affairs officer at Exiger, the crisis is already here. 

In an interview with TWZ, he pointed to Japan, which is facing the prospect of a manufacturing halt after China choked off supply of some rare earths to the tune of more than 80% earlier this year.

“There’s no question that right now it’s a crisis for a lot of companies that are trying to get licenses approved by China and just not getting the licenses,” Conklin said. “So there’s real risk to current production, and when I think about us and scaling, whether it’s the drone industrial base or trying to scale our interceptor capacity to 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 interceptors a year, I mean, these are real choke points that we have that are impacting our ability to deliver these to the warfighter right now.”

Among the weapons systems most at risk for supply chain and manufacturing disruption, according to the data, is the vital Virginia-class submarine, which requires more than 300 critical NIINs containing the four elements, including 190 parts requiring germanium.

Germanium, used in optics, night vision systems, EO/IR equipment and more, is a byproduct of zinc ore. In January, the Pentagon announced an $18 million investment in the country’s only germanium production facility in St. George, Utah to expand refining capacity “sevenfold” to more than 20 metric tons annually by an unspecified deadline.

China controls some 68% of the world’s refined germanium. It has a far greater chokehold on gallium, used in semiconductors and solar cells, and especially advanced radars, controlling up to 99% of production. Each Virginia-class sub requires 50 unique parts containing gallium.

China controls about half the production of antimony, used to harden ammunition and to manufacture optics and electronics; and up to 80% of the supply of tungsten, used in manufacturing tools, warheads and heat-resistant components.

While it doesn’t break down components by weight, the report notes that the rare earth requirements for the Virginia-class sub are also considerable by mass: each sub required 9,200 pounds of the elements, while an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet requires 900 pounds.

The Virginia-class submarine is America’s only in-production fast-attack nuclear-powered sub that has been in service since 2004. Twenty three of these critical vessels are in service today, or roughly half of the total planned program, with the remaining boats yet to be built. It’s notable in the context of the paper because it has multiple points of exposure to supply chain disruption. Another of these exposure points: its 1,700 mission or safety-critical parts requiring casting, forging or extrusion. As the report lays out, supply chain bottlenecks around limited metal casting, forging and extruding capacity are delaying production timelines and putting manufacturing at risk.

China, again, produces about half of the world’s casting output and “is often the sole option for large castings,” the paper found. The analysis shows that more than half, or nearly 8,000, unique supply items containing steel castings have delivery lead times of more than 36 weeks. More than 9,400 items containing extruded aluminum, about 47% of these parts, have lead times that long.

“Virginia-class submarines, already threatened by U.S. reliance on China for critical minerals, are reportedly also three years behind schedule, potentially due in part to the lack of domestic large-scale casting capacity,” the report finds. An analysis of Navy construction timelines published earlier this year does indeed find that 10 of the 12 Virginia subs now under construction face delays of 36-44 months.

Alarmingly, a recent war game simulation found that the U.S. could not replace ships, planes and missiles lost to combat specifically due to casting and forging shortfalls, the report notes. That’s despite a $2 billion Pentagon initiative launched in 2024 aimed at revitalizing this industry.

Beyond submarines, the report shows that aircraft, including some of the nation’s workhorse fighter jets, face outsized production and sustainment risk due to rare-earth elements and casting/forging dependencies.

The B-2 Spirit bomber – the nation’s only nuclear-armed stealth bomber until fielding begins on the B-21 Raider sometime next year – requires 782 parts containing the four rare-earth elements isolated in the report.

The F/A-18 Hornet family of fighters flown by the Navy and Marine Corps, including the Navy’s Growler electronic warfare variant, tops the list for dependency on steel castings, with 3,800 individual parts requiring the process. Following is the KC-135 Stratotanker, with 2,570 parts. All 10 of the systems requiring the most metal castings for production are aircraft, the analysis shows. The legacy Hornet and the KC-135 have been out of production for decades, while the Navy’s Super Hornet will see its production line go cold in 2027. Any ongoing demand for castings for these systems would thus be in spares and repair parts. 

Military aircraft also represent the highest-need category among weapons systems requiring cadmium plating, a process used to make aerospace components corrosion-resistant.  The domestic supplier base has shrunk due to EPA safety limitations established in 2008. All of the top 10 weapons systems requiring the most cadmium-plated parts are aircraft, with the KC-135 topping the list with 2,780 unique components. The C-130 Hercules transport, B-52 Stratofortress bomber and Galaxy C-5 transport all have more than 2,000 parts.

The B-52, which is undergoing a service life extension to take it into the 2050s – past its century mark – may run into modernization delays not only over cadmium-plated and steel-casted components, but also due to overly rigid military specifications, which increase lead time and delays. The white paper cites the bomber’s rib airfoil and fuel vent valve components, which both have lead times of more than 400 days due in part to production being burdened with dozens of mil-spec compliance requirements, which the authors say have not kept pace with today’s commercial practices.

“The requirement for a part to meet so many mil-specs, if not reasonably necessary, may limit the number of possible suppliers of that part, potentially increasing its lead time and bottlenecking production,” they write. “For the B-52, this could inhibit current modernization efforts intended to keep the airplane operational through the 2050s.”

A final risk the paper addresses is workforce shortages and dangers from limited suppliers creating single points of failure. Across defense, the number of small suppliers has decreased by 43% in the last decade, it notes. It cites, as a case study, the February 2025 fire that forced the closure of SPS Technologies in Jenkintown, Penn. – a fastener maker that produced components for more than 1,000 weapons systems and was deemed critical for 90, including the Nimitz-class carrier, the F/A-18 fighter and the M1 Abrams tank. For systems including the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile and the MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, the facility was a single-source supplier.

With operations offline until at least 2028, the supply chain has been “actively disrupted” due to the outage of just one facility, according to the paper.

“This case underscores the risk of single sourcing in the defense industrial base and the need to qualify alternate sources to avoid such significant chokepoints,” the authors write.

The paper hails work that has already begun to invest in domestic critical minerals production and shore up the defense industrial base. But it does hint that these efforts may be too late to avoid a crash if China shuts off or severely reduces exports. The paper notes that, on average, it takes the U.S. 29 years to open a new mine. The U.S. has one established domestic mine: The Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility, just outside of Las Vegas. Initially established in 1952 and reopened in 2018 after a long hiatus, it now produces more than 50,000 tons of rare earth oxides annually. Last year, for the first time in seven decades, a new domestic rare-earth mine opened in Wyoming, stating plans to start producing ores extracted from coal, including gallium and germanium, by 2029. Production is projected to total 456 tons of rare earths per year. The project had been in development for more than a decade before opening. 

Conklin said a July executive order aimed at developing domestic production of rare earths while collecting data on what elements systems required created opportunities for smart policy creation – perhaps in the next National Defense Authorization Act – around holistically attacking the problem. 

“I would love for us to figure out a way to get out of thinking about these supply chain risks system by system. We tend to have disparate requirements to look at the nuclear triad or subs or interceptors,” he said. “I think with the executive order that came out earlier this year, there’s a real opportunity for Congress to legislate on some of these issues beyond just figuring out what the risk [is] for antimony in the sub industrial base, and thinking about it a little bit more holistically.”

One potential solution he proposed: an agency within the executive branch (led, perhaps, by a critical minerals czar) who can coordinate production needs and resourcing and develop the most efficient pathways to secure needed materials.

While no U.S. defense manufacturer has yet publicly cited manufacturing disruptions due to rare earth availability, signs are increasing that the federal government is taking supply concerns seriously. In addition to Project Vault, a $12 billion White House initiative announced in February that would create a strategic stockpile of rare earths akin to existing stockpiles of critical medical supplies and petroleum, the U.S. Army has begun extending long-term leases on military land to companies seeking to build critical mineral processing facilities.

Conklin said he doesn’t anticipate major changes in rare earth exports between now and the end of the year, describing the U.S.-China supply relationship as “in a bit of a détente.” That said, with new policies pending, we could be only days away from new revelations about the extent of the impact of these materials on the defense manufacturing enterprise.

Contact the editor: Tyler@twz.com

A dispute over the politicisation of Poland’s constitutional court is deepening, with no side appearing to back down.

The Polish president has held crisis talks with political leaders as a dispute over the independence of the country’s top constitutional court deepens.

Representatives of nationalist, far-right, and some governing coalition parties attended President Karol Nawrocki’s talks at the presidential palace on Saturday, while Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing centrist party, Civic Coalition, stayed away.

Nawrocki said in a statement that he convened the “urgent” consultations “due to the threat to Poland’s internal security” presented by the sudden suspension on Friday of the Constitutional Tribunal’s chief judge, Bogdan Swieczkowski.

No breakthrough had emerged by Saturday afternoon.

Meanwhile, in a Saturday evening speech addressing the ongoing crisis, Tusk accused conservative nationalist opposition leaders of wanting to “destroy democracy and rule of law”.

“Let’s call things by their name,” he said. “For years in Poland there exist organisations and politicians who wish to destroy democracy and rule of law.”

Followers of the opposition right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) gathered outside the court on Saturday, extending protests that have been running for weeks in support of PiS-friendly judges.

Constitutional crisis

The Constitutional Tribunal is Poland’s top court for deciding constitutional matters. It has been at the centre of a years-long political saga related to the politicisation of Polish courts, which Tusk says began under the right-wing PiS government.

Swieczkowski, whom the PiS appointed during its 2015-2023 government, was accused of using his powers as head of the court to block parliament from electing new judges.

Tusk argued that the court’s judges were not politically neutral and that Swieczkowski’s removal was a “painful” but necessary decision to restore the rule of law in Poland after years of erosion under PiS rule.

The court’s official X account on Friday described the government’s move as a “coup d’etat”.

Nawrocki, himself a right-wing figure, has also blocked nominations to the court under his administration.

A key complaint brought by Tusk and his pro-European party was that the court’s PiS-aligned judges frequently ruled in favour of Polish legislation over EU law.

The European Commission on Saturday urged Nawrocki to accept the nomination of new judges at the centre of the country’s constitutional crisis, the AFP news agency reported.

US Ambassador to Poland Tom Rose called for calm on all sides.

“The last thing Poland needs is a confrontation that spirals into something far worse,” Rose wrote in a post on X.

Four children drowned in bodies of water, while another man died in a car accident caused by the floods.

Heavy rains have been pouring over several Syrian provinces, leaving at least five people dead, including four children, in northern and eastern regions.

The four children all drowned in bodies of water across Raqqa and Deir Az Zor governorates, the Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management said in a statement on Thursday.

A man also died when his car was caught in floodwaters near al-Salmani Bridge in the western Raqqa countryside.

Five others, including two children, remain missing in the storms that have drenched the country.

Bridge collapse

Thursday marked the second day the ministry recorded responses to flooding across the country. It continues to issue situation updates on its X account.

The ministry reported infrastructure damage and disruptions to several bridges in affected areas: Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir Az Zor, Hasakah and Homs.

State news agency SANA said al-Salmani Bridge, west of Tabqa, collapsed in the flooding, shutting the road linking Raqqa to Aleppo.

Emergency teams also reported rescuing 15 civilians whose vehicles were trapped by floodwaters. The ministry said it evacuated approximately 375 families from three camps on the rural outskirts of Raqqa.

This is not the first time the country has faced the threat of heavy rains and the flooding that follows.

UNICEF reported in June that 17,000 people had been adversely affected by flooding so far in the year. At the time, the UN agency said 700 families had been displaced, including around 2,000 children, and that 49 water treatment plants in Deir Az Zor and Raqqa governorates had also gone out of service.

The Pentagon is reportedly aiming for U.S. military installations to be able to continue essential operations for at least 90 days, or roughly three months, without any external support. The installation of new small nuclear reactors and other infrastructure is key to this part of a larger plan called Fortress America. The main intent is to ensure America’s armed forces can remain functional and ready to protect the homeland in the face of any massive disruptions to power grids and other supply chains due to major conflicts or other crises. For years, TWZ has been sounding the alarm about the glaring vulnerabilities of America’s critical civilian energy infrastructure, including to drone swarms and cyberattacks, which could cripple key military capabilities right where they live.

Fox News was first to report on the 90-day base resiliency goal yesterday, citing documents it said it reviewed. This is part of the extremely wide-reaching Fortress America initiative the Pentagon announced last month, which covers everything from improved physical and cyber defenses at facilities to securing reliable access to critical defense industrial resources. The “Fortress” in Fortress America is technically an acronym that stands for Federal Operations for Resilience, Troop Resources, Energy Supply, and Survivability.

“Under FORTRESS [sic], every major military installation in the continental United States would be expected to sustain essential operations independently for at least 90 days, including access to electricity, water, fuel and communications,” according to Fox.

Fox News’ story also includes comments about Fortress America from Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell, but it is unclear if he explicitly confirmed the 90-day target. TWZ has reached out for more information.

Parnell did put particular emphasis on the importance of reducing reliance on civilian power generation as part of the larger Fortress America plan. Previous reports have said that Parnell was key to formulating this initiative. He has also been discussed as a potential frontrunner to become the next Secretary of the Army.

“Power is combat now. Without electricity, you lose communications, water, logistics, assembly lines and just basic military command structures,” Parnell told Fox. “We don’t want to rely on standard civilian municipal infrastructure to run our national defense. We just simply can’t. It’s an intolerable risk.”

It should be pointed out here that some U.S. military bases do have their own power plants now, but this is not something that is far from universal across the board.

Secretary Pete Hegseth made similar comments when he first unveiled the Fortress America initiative during a speech to service members at the U.S. Marine Corps’ base in Quantico, Virginia, in September.

“We are launching Fortress America, a national insurance policy for the American homeland,” Hegseth said at that time. “Every major military installation in America is going to generate its own power, independent of the civilian grid. If an adversary takes down the grid by cyber attack, by sabotage, or by any means, our bases stay lit, our aircraft keep flying, our command centers never go dark.”

Fox News’ report says that “portable nuclear reactors,” as well as “large-scale battery storage and microgrids capable of disconnecting military installations from the civilian electrical grid,” are key elements of the plan to achieve this independence when it comes to generating electricity.

The U.S. military, in cooperation with the Department of Energy, has already been heavily investing in the development and installation of so-called microreactors at bases across the country. In August, the U.S. Army, in partnership with the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), notably cut new deals with five companies as part of a plan to install more than 20 microreactors at bases, starting in 2028. This effort, called the Janus program, is not limited to Army installations.

The video below offers an overview of one of several microreactor designs the U.S. military is currently pursuing.

Introducing Kaleidos, a Portable Microreactor from Radiant

Establishing new microgrids and other supporting energy infrastructure has also been an important focus for the U.S. military in recent years.

Details about how bases are expecting to maintain supplies of water and fuel, as well as communications connectivity, for 90 days or more are, as yet, still not entirely clear. All branches of the U.S. military have already been exploring new and novel options for ensuring the availability of water and fuel in future contingencies, though generally with more of an eye toward tactical operations. Relevant developments, including the possibility of using a process called carbon transformation to turn ambient air into fuel, could easily be applicable in a homeland defense scenario.

Fox News’ story also makes no mention of how sufficient food for personnel at these facilities would be sustained, but that would have to be part of the equation. In his remarks in September, Secretary Hegseth also made clear that making sure supply chains delivering munitions, medicine, and even blood would be unbroken in any future crisis was part of the Fortress America vision. As already mentioned, the initiative also extends much more broadly into matters of physical force protection, cyber defense, and the resilience of America’s defense industrial base.

“For decades, we built the most powerful military in the world,” Hegseth said at Quantico. Then we “regrettably made it dependent on foreign mines for rare earths, on overseas factories for microchips, on foreign supply chains for weapons, and on a civilian power grid to keep the lights on at our bases.”

“We’re bringing our critical supply chains home: the rare earths, the specialty metals, the semiconductors, the propellants, mined in America, refined in America, built in America by American workers,” he added at the time. “We are building long-overdue strategic reserves, deep enough to fight through disruption.”

More specific details about how the Pentagon now intends to pursue these aims have yet to be more fully defined.

“The Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment is directed to stand up the FORTRESS America Program Office within thirty (30) days,” according to a memo dated September 30, which was released after Hegseth’s September speech. “The Program Office shall report directly to the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment who will appoint a member of the Senior Executive Service to lead the day-to-day operations, assisted by a two-star Military Advisor, and shall begin as a lean core cell that scales to full operating capability within months – delivering results in weeks, not years”

There is also a question of how much of the Fortress America initiative will actually be new. As mentioned, just when it comes to increased energy resiliency, including through the installation of new microreactors, this is something that has already been top of mind for the U.S. military for years now. In 2022, the U.S. Army had a publicly stated goal for every one of its bases to have its own microgrid by 2035 as part of a larger plan to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. In 2024, the Department of the Air Force rolled out its own Installation Infrastructure Action Plan (I2AP) that included a target to have new microgrids in place at 16 bases by Fiscal Year 2030. In May, the U.S. Navy announced plans to demonstrate the ability of the supercarrier USS Gerald R. Ford to act as a floating nuclear power plant as part of broader “energy resilience and mission assurance” plans.

The U.S. military has also already been heavily engaged in efforts to secure access to critical resources, especially rare Earth elements in light of China’s continued dominance in that market globally, and otherwise expand America’s domestic defense industrial base. Physical hardening of bases, especially against emerging drone threats, has been more of a heated debate, as TWZ has been following closely for some time now. However, even before Fortress America was unveiled last month, there had been signs that institutional attitudes were shifting.

“The [Fortress America] program aligns basing and infrastructure projects to ensure they are collectively advancing toward greater independence,” the aforementioned September 30 memo itself notes.

There are additional questions to be answered as to how the U.S. military expects to fund its expansive Fortress America ambitions and the schedules for implementing them. This will all be heavily influenced by how much the initiative leverages efforts that were already ongoing. At the same time, concerns about underinvestment in infrastructure modernization, in general, across America’s armed forces, and the worrisome cascading impacts thereof, are hardly new.

There are still key elements of the Fortress America initiative that have yet to be fully proven out. This is particularly visible when it comes to microreactors, which hold the promise of being simpler and safer to build and operate compared to traditional nuclear power plants. Despite significant progress with this technology just in recent years, environmental, proliferation, and other concerns continue to be raised. You can read more about all of this can read more about here.

On top of all this, it should be noted here that the U.S. military and the rest of the U.S. government already have mechanisms in place to ensure the key functions can continue, even in the midst of the gravest of crises, such as a limited nuclear attack. This is known as continuity of government planning, and includes a network of hardened and otherwise resilient facilities designed to support continued military operations and other activities in those ‘doomsday’ scenarios. But these facilities are few in number and are focus on strategic capabilities compared to what the Fortress America plan envisions.

At the same time, the dangers posed to civilian power grids in the United States, in particular, are only growing in scale and scope, both in the physical and cyber domains. Existing domestic U.S. energy infrastructure is aging and has been increasingly strained to meet routine day-to-day demands for decades now.

The potential for uncrewed aerial attacks on power plants and power lines has been real for years. The basic barrier to entry when it comes to weaponized drones, including converted commercial types, is also already low. Drone threats, broadly speaking, are only set to expand as swarming technology and artificial intelligence-driven capabilities continue to proliferate, as you can read more about this in this past TWZ feature. A well-informed enemy could concentrate a small number of resources on highly critical points in the grid to have vastly outsized effects, using drones or any other kinetic means.

The threat of various types of cyberattacks is also no longer limited to blockbuster movies and other popular media. This was made clear all the way back in 2021 with the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, a key American oil pipeline system, and has only become more evident since then, including in the course of the war in Ukraine. U.S. authorities have run major exercises to help prepare for exactly these kinds of threats in the past. These are also capabilities where the barrier to entry has been steadily lowering over the years. Increasingly open access to powerful artificial intelligence agents with the ability to overwhelm networks and software to find critical vulnerabilities faster than humans can react is perhaps the most concerning layer of risk.

If a major conflict with a global competitor like China were to break out, physical and cyberattacks on energy infrastructure would be an extremely attractive avenue to hobble U.S. military forces, including airpower, before they can even leave their bases. The capacity to threaten grids in the United States, at least to certain degrees, has become worryingly within reach of smaller nation-states, as well as non-state actors and even lone wolf attackers, too. Firmly attributing cyberattacks to a nation-state, at all, can be challenging.

There is also a secondary component to all of this for responding to major natural disasters, which are another way U.S. grids can end up being knocked out for extended periods of time. These same circumstances could easily leave military bases, as well as their surrounding communities, without access to fresh water and other supplies. The U.S. military routinely plays a key role in responding to such crises.

“This is not a wait-and-see kind of a thing. We want to move out pretty quickly to get to that energy [resilience]. Those solutions can include investments in microgrids, battery backup storage,” a senior U.S. defense official said last week at a Defense Writers Group roundtable, according to a separate report from Air & Space Forces Magazine. “First and foremost, it’s doing the assessments of the installations to make sure we understand power generation and where we’re going to go with that, and then getting those deployed.”

The Pentagon is certainly making a new push now to make sure that, as Secretary Hegseth put it last month, “America cannot be starved out, shut down, or cut off.” However, there is clearly still work to be done to meet a goal of bases being able to go three months without outside help and the many other aims of the Fortress America plan.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

It’s the worst ski resort nightmare: hillsides of shaggy yellow grass streaked with slush under a leaden sky that’s coughing up sleet. Parts of Europe – places previously accustomed to crisp snow fields and pristine blue skies – are now facing this calamity, something meteorologists might describe as a British winter.

Not everywhere, of course. Only lower altitudes are seeing such disasters. Higher up, normal service continues. I’m in the Swiss resort of Laax, where most of the slopes are at about 2,000 metres, lofty enough to be snow-secure, for now. The halfpipe is busy with dudes in baggy trousers and headphones nonchalantly practising their double corks. On the traditional pistes there are four-year-olds who could probably ski before they could walk. And then – Switzerland has its wacky side – three young men in first-world-war greatcoats on antique wooden skis propel themselves with rough-hewn quarter-staves.

Is all this destined to disappear, perhaps in our children’s lifetimes? To put it in stark, white and black terms: are ski resorts in the same predicament as oil-dependent desert states, watching their one key source of wealth dwindle and disappear?

If so, Laax is not going down without a fight. This unusual Swiss resort, close to the Austrian border, is making a bold attempt to be carbon neutral by 2030, a goal that requires cutting out all oil use, making all energy generation sustainable, and reducing food waste to zero. Stung by climate crisis criticism levelled at the ski industry, this community is now far ahead of most. What I have come to see may turn out to be the future of winter sports.

Down in Laax, I meet Reto Gurtner, 71, CEO of the Flims Laax resort. His father built the first ski lifts back in 1962. “Although there had been summer visitors since the 19th century, Laax was a poor village back then,” says Gurtner.

In the 1970s, something significant changed. Gurtner went to study at UCLA and, under the California sun, discovered skateboarding. Even now the memory makes his eyes light up. “They were inventing new sports and I loved the style: no nationalism or militarism. Skateboards, mountain bikes, snowboards – if you did a good run, everyone applauded. It didn’t matter who you were. There was a freedom about it.”

He came home with a degree in economics, but more importantly perhaps, a snowboard and a mountain bike. “We went up on the glacier and built the first halfpipe with shovels.”

At first, there was a lot of resistance. Local ski outfitters refused to stock snowboards, while in summer, farmers were outraged at the sight of cyclists pelting down mountain tracks. “We made every cyclist wear a bib,” says Gurtner with a chuckle. “Then the farmers thought it was a race and were fine with that.”

Conversation with Gurtner is a wild ride. We cartwheel through Steve Jobs, the German poets and the Wu-Tang Clan, as he describes how his visionary approach evolved into something he calls “greenstyle”, an optimistic and well-designed future.

That vision is found in all the new buildings around the resort, nowhere more so than the ski lift in the neighbouring village of Flims, where I head with local guide Doris Rellstab. “The new gondola system does away with unoccupied ski gondolas going up and down the mountainside,” she says. A complex algorithm allows skiers to choose one of five destinations up the mountain, despatching individual gondolas, which balances energy efficiency with passenger demand. As we are lifted smoothly up over the fir trees, the quiet efficiency of this on-demand system becomes immediately apparent.

Rellstab tells me how things have changed in the half century since she began teaching winter sports. “Yesterday, I taught my first Arab group. They were a lot of fun.”

Our destination is Segnes, high above the treeline at 2,100 metres. Having left the gondola, we don snow shoes and head into a bowl-like snow-filled valley. A couple of miles ahead, the valley ends in a sheer rock face topped by a jagged range of peaks. “That’s the Tschingelhörner,” says Rellstab. “Can you see the line in the rock below the peaks? That was once a geological mystery.”

In 1848, the celebrated geologist Roderick Impey Murchison arrived here with a local expert, Arnold Escher von der Linth. Older rocks were overlaying younger, a puzzle for which there was no explanation. It took more than a century for scientists to solve the problem: the ancient African tectonic plate was riding up over the younger European one. The world was indeed upside down.

In summer, this area is covered in rare Alpine flowers and there’s a mountain hut to stay in. Next to us are the tracks of a snow hare. “Wildlife is doing well here,” says Rellstab. “The wolf and lynx have both returned.”

In fact, climate change appears to be assisting wolves in the Alps. The first Alpine pack was recorded in 1993, and by 2021 there were more than 250, with an annual growth rate of about 25%. Switzerland, once entirely wolf-free, now has about 40 packs. Rellstab shows me a website where sightings are monitored. There are conflicts with farmers and hunters, but the numbers keep growing, an indication that parts of the ecosystem are doing well out of retreating snowlines.

Perhaps more surprising is that lack of snow is not a big worry to the resort. As Gurtner points out: “Laax is not snow-dependent. A halfpipe or a snow freestyle playground doesn’t need a lot, and we make it with hydro power. And we’ve got mountain bikes and amazing hikes.”

Later that day, I am up on the mountain with my skis, wandering around on blue runs. Conditions are a bit icy and I’m playing safe, finding myself on a less frequented route that dips down into the valley. And then I come over a ridge and the snow on either side is gone – only the piste remains, a broad band of white curling down through green pasture dotted with lovely old barns. Cannon snow is more durable, surviving longer when the “real” stuff melts. Most Alpine ski stations are already reliant on it, but unlike many, Laax does not add any chemical or biological additives to the water in its cannons. With sustainable power sources and electric piste-grooming machinery now becoming available, cannon snow is not as environmentally destructive as it may appear.

At the foot of the hill, I reach the village of Falera, neighbour to Laax. There is one old chair lift, clanking and squeaking, and as I approach it comes to a halt. “Sorry,” says the attendant, “we are closed now.”

I wander into the village, all hand-hewn barns with neat log stacks. I can’t see any cars. If Laax is taking the technological solution, its neighbour appears to have chosen a less frenetic and more traditional route to net zero. After 20 minutes, a bus (electric, naturally) appears. As I ride back to Laax, I check the wildlife website that Rellstab recommended. And I get a shock. According to a CCTV report from a few hours earlier, a wolf had walked within a mile of me. Outside my hotel, I jump off the bus. Evening is falling. I wait for a line of silent cars to go by. With electric motors everywhere, the town is hushed. Climate change, I reflect, is nothing if not unpredictable. When the wolves howl, you will hear them.

The trip was provided by Flims Laax and rental equipment by Ecoski . Trains run from Zurich via Chur and the Rhine Gorge to Ilanz, where there’s a bus service to Laax. Inghams offers a seven-night trip to Laax from £1,618pp B&B, including flights

Authorities warn of ‘destructive winds’ and urge residents to shelter as the storm passes the island’s northeast.

Typhoon Champi has struck Taiwan, killing one person and injuring at least 350 others, as authorities warned of “destructive winds” and instructed people to stay indoors.

The storm swept past the island’s northeast on Friday, toppling trees, shutting shops and schools, cutting power to thousands of households, and forcing more than 4,300 people to evacuate from their homes.

Champi is heading towards China and Japan, forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights in the region.

“From tonight through tomorrow morning conditions will be very windy and stormy everywhere,” Central Weather Administration (CWA) forecaster Lin Ping-yu said in a briefing. “Please try to stay indoors.”

Champi was briefly a super typhoon with winds of nearly 300 kilometres per hour (186 miles per hour) but has since weakened. The US Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported maximum winds of 185km/h (115mph).

Worse is still expected to come on Saturday. Champi could drop up to 900mm (35 inches) of rain between Thursday and Saturday, with the northeast hit hardest, the CWA said. More than 400mm fell in Yilan County on Friday.

CWA forecaster Lu Kuo-chen said the typhoon could slow near the island’s northeastern tip, prolonging its impact.

About 8,400 households in Japan’s Okinawa islands were without power on Friday afternoon, according to the Okinawa Electric Power Company. Champi is forecast to hover near Okinawa and then China’s eastern coast before turning northeast towards mainland Japan.

Champi is the latest storm in a Pacific season supercharged by El Nino.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that El Nino, a natural cycle that warms the tropical Pacific, is heading off the charts.

“The current El Nino event could be unprecedented in strength. Literally off the monitoring charts that we have used for the past four decades,” said Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.

It is expected to peak in December, with its impact lasting into 2027 and beyond.

Across Europe, an autumn of anger is taking hold.

In France, student protests over overcrowded classrooms and teacher shortages have grown into a broader public outcry.

In recent weeks, separate protests have also erupted in Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Albania.

The grievances differ, from unaffordable housing and low wages to rising fuel costs, education and political accountability.

But the frustration is increasingly shared: paying more, getting less, and struggling to afford a decent life, even with a job.

Governments face demands for relief while wrestling with high debt, rising borrowing costs and, in several countries, looming elections.

The decision has drawn sharp criticism from left-wing politicians and environmentalists.

The United Kingdom’s government has approved a natural gas project off the coast of Scotland, as the Labour government seeks to balance its climate goals with energy security concerns.

Energy Minister Miatta Fahnbulleh said on Wednesday that the Jackdaw gasfield would begin supplying energy to UK homes by the end of the month and would help to boost the country’s energy security.

The government said the North Sea project would increase UK gas production by about 6 percent at its peak.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the decision will “protect hundreds of jobs and help keep millions of homes warm”, but stressed it would not hinder the government’s targets on renewable energy.

The government also announced a New Energy Wealth Fund, which will invest in renewable and low-carbon energy projects as part of the green transition.

The fund has been established with an initial 2 billion pounds ($2.7bn), with plans to raise additional funds through tax revenues from North Sea oil and gas.

Higher energy prices amid the Russia-Ukraine war and the United States-Israel war on Iran have weighed on households and businesses, dragging on Britain’s economy.

Fahnbulleh told UK radio station LBC that the development of Jackdaw would not bring down household energy bills.

“I think it’s really important that we’re honest about this,” Fahnbulleh said.

“That was not a consideration in the decision because it won’t mean cheaper bills. This was about energy security.”

The announcement has drawn criticism from left-wing politicians and environmental groups.

Zack Polanski, the leader of the opposition Green Party, described the decision as “climate vandalism”.

“Surreal to hear [the] energy secretary try and say this is a ‘pragmatic decision’,” Polanski wrote in a post on X.

“It will do nothing to lower bills. It will do lots for the profits of the oil and gas companies. And will continue us further down the path of floods and wildfires.”

Environmental group Greenpeace said the decision showed “the toxic grip fossil fuel lobbyists still hold over our energy policy”.

“True pragmatism means severing our reliance on expensive oil and gas that leaves British households broke, supercharges extreme weather, and leaves our energy security at the mercy of petrostates,” said Ami McCarthy, head of politics at Greenpeace UK.

New Delhi, India — United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has arrived in India for a two-day visit, during which he is set to tour the Jamnagar refinery complex in Gujarat, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, a major player in global oil markets.

Reliance’s crude refinery in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state is the world’s largest single-site refinery. In many ways, Reliance Industries’ businesses sit at the crossroads of the ongoing global energy crisis.

The conglomerate is central to Washington’s efforts to punish Russian energy buyers, while also trying to contain oil prices amid the war on Iran, on top of rising diesel costs in the US, where a crucial midterm election looms. Reliance has also only recently committed to a major investment in the US, which President Donald Trump’s administration has cited as an example of its successes in luring global capital.

Rubio is skipping the capital, New Delhi, at a time when the US-India bilateral relationship has been rocky, strained by a string of friction points — and an elusive trade deal.

So why is the top US diplomat visiting the world’s largest single-site oil refinery?

Where is Rubio visiting?

After meetings in Mumbai, India’s financial hub in the western state of Maharashtra, Rubio will fly to Jamnagar in neighbouring Gujarat, near the Gulf of Kutch. Jamnagar opens into the Arabian Sea and is home to Reliance Industries’ refining complex, a major hub for crude processing and fuel exports, which processes 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd).

Rubio had visited India earlier this year too, but this trip “is a little more business-focused”, the US ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, told reporters last week. A readout from Rubio’s office noted that he would “meet with business leaders to promote opportunities for commercial investment and economic cooperation”.

“[At Jamnagar] he will meet some of the folks at Reliance,” Gor said.

What’s in Jamnagar?

The world’s largest single-site oil-refining complex has a combined crude-processing capacity of 1.4 million bpd. That is nearly 1.5 percent of global refining capacity, according to the company.

The complex comprises two refineries: the original facility, commissioned in 1999 with a capacity of 660,000bpd, and a second, export-oriented refinery commissioned in 2008, adding 580,000bpd, which operates in a special economic zone.

Jamnagar imports crude from international suppliers and exports refined products to global markets. The refinery can process heavy, sulphur-rich crude that many facilities cannot handle efficiently, converting oil into higher-value products.

Reliance said last month that the complex has processed more than 216 crude grades, claiming to be “perhaps the only refinery to achieve this feat”.

The Jamnagar refinery’s capacity is also driving a sharp revival in imports of Venezuelan crude — taken over by the US earlier this year after abducting then-President Nicolas Maduro — as Washington seeks to reshape global oil trade.

Reliance is expected to account for roughly 350,000bpd to 370,000bpd of the October intake, according to estimates from analytics firm Kpler. “We will talk with Reliance about refining more Venezuelan crude,” Rubio told reporters in brief remarks on Tuesday.

Why is the refinery significant for global energy supplies?

Reliance is a central player in keeping global oil markets stable, as one of the world’s biggest suppliers of refined petroleum products. In September, for instance, six of the seven large cargo ships that docked at European Union ports carrying oil products were bearing Reliance goods.

Reliance’s biggest export is diesel, which Trump has been particularly worried about, with prices reaching historic highs in the US ahead of midterm elections early next month.

Though the data on exports by category is not public, an analysis by the Reuters news agency from trade sources noted that Reliance Industries exported 21.66 million tonnes of refined petroleum products in the first half of 2025 from Jamnagar. Diesel accounted for the largest share at 9.81 million tonnes, followed by petrol at 6.14 million tonnes and jet fuel at 2.06 million tonnes.

Europe accounted for the biggest share of the company’s exports, making up 28 percent of Reliance’s refined products during the period. Buyers include BP, ExxonMobil, Glencore, Vitol and Trafigura.

The Jamnagar refinery also shipped about $143m worth of oil products to the US last month, according to data cited by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a think tank in Finland.

CREA noted in its report that the EU’s ban on importing petroleum products made from Russian crude from January 2026 does not adequately prevent products from refineries in third countries from entering Europe when those refineries also process Russian crude. The Jamnagar refinery is a prime example of that loophole.

Rubio’s visit to the refinery also comes as Trump faces his worst approval ratings amid inflation and rising fuel prices ahead of the midterm election in November. Just about 31 percent of Americans are happy with Trump’s performance – the lowest-ever number in his two terms, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey.

The Trump administration has also reportedly been pushing Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to stop strikes on Russian energy facilities, which have rattled the global fuel markets.

Why the refinery is important for the Russia-Ukraine war

Reliance is also a critical actor in US efforts to influence how much oil Russia sells.

Since the start of Russia’s full-fledged war on Ukraine in February 2022, India has emerged as the second-largest buyer of Russian oil after China. And Reliance is driving that surge in imports. While only 3 percent of its oil was sourced from Russia before 2022, that share rose to 50 percent by 2025.

So when Trump imposed an additional 25 percent tariff on Indian goods in August 2025 to punish New Delhi for the purchase of Russian oil, Reliance was directly affected. It cut back on Russian crude imports significantly in subsequent months, but it still made up a third of the oil processed by Jamnagar’s refinery during the July-September 2026 quarter.

That was under threat when the Trump administration appeared poised to impose a 100 percent tariff on Indian goods because of continued Russian oil imports, under a new law passed last month.

But Trump has since suspended those proposed tariffs, easing concerns for India and Reliance.

Rubio has said India has been diversifying its import mix away from Russian crude, even as it still buys millions of barrels of Russian oil every day. “You’ve got countries like India, for example, that have voluntarily diversified their energy portfolio, but are still getting a substantial amount of energy from Russia because it’s hard to pivot from one day to the next,” Rubio said on Sunday.

“But they’re also an important ally and partner of the United States.”

Is Reliance also investing in the US?

Yes, India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, is investing in the US, primarily through energy-related projects.

It is backing America First Refining’s planned oil refinery at the Port of Brownsville in Texas, also the first major US refinery in about 50 years, announced by Trump in March.

The refinery is expected to cost $3bn to $4bn and process about 60 million barrels of US crude annually. Reliance has signed a 20-year agreement to buy a large share of the facility’s output, with operations expected to start around 2029.

In November 2024, Reliance’s US subsidiary also acquired a 21 percent stake in helium explorer Wavetech Helium for $12m as part of its low-carbon energy strategy.

Last month, Trump announced that India’s Essar Group — an oil major with knee-deep ties to Russia — is planning an $18bn integrated steel investment in the US through its subsidiary, Mesabi Metallics.

Didn’t Trump’s ally just lock horns with Ambani?

Despite Reliance’s investments in the US and Rubio’s upcoming visit to the Jamnagar facility, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who is also a key Trump ally, recently hit out at Ambani.

His Starlink space telecommunications firm has struggled for years to secure a licence to operate in India.

In ⁠a series of X posts recently, Musk accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of stalling Starlink’s entry to ⁠favour market leader Ambani’s telecom firm, Jio. Musk taunted Ambani directly, addressing ‌him as “Prime ‌Minister Ambani” and asking whether he would “consider allowing Starlink to compete”. Starlink, Musk wrote, was being blocked by “oligarchs” protecting their “monopolistic chokehold” on Indians.

In a statement issued on X, Reliance said it has “never feared competition” and has “grown in an India that welcomes investment and innovation, homegrown or international”.