percent

The Clippers have traded guard Norman Powell to the Miami Heat and have acquired forward John Collins from the Utah Jazz in a three-team, multi-player deal that also includes a draft pick, according to people with knowledge of the stituation not authorized to speak on the matter.

The Clippers will send a 2027 second-round pick to the Jazz and the Heat will send Kyle Anderson and Kevin Love to the Jazz as part of the deal.

In Collins, the Clippers get some much-needed size for the frontcourt and youth.

Though Collins played just 40 games last season for the Jazz, including 31 starts, he averaged 19.0 points and 8.2 rebounds.

A 6-9, 226-pound power forward, Collins improved his outside shooting, making a career-best 39.9 percent of his three-pointers last season despite dealing with back and ankle injuries.

Over the course of his eight-year career, Collins has averaged 16.0 points, 8.1 rebounds and shot 54.6 percent from the field, 36.3 percent from three-point range and 79.2 percent from the free-throw line, including a career-best 84.8 percent last season.

Collins opted into his player option that pays him $26.5 million next season, his last year of that deal.

Powell was one of the Clippers top performers last season, averaging a career-high 21.8 points per game, second-best on the team. He was in the final year of a contract that was to pay him $20.4 million next season and was seeking an extension.

NATO’s leaders agreed this week to invest 5 percent of their countries’ gross domestic product (GDP) on “core defence requirements as well as defence and security-related spending by 2035”. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte called it a “quantum leap” in spending that would guarantee “freedom and security” for the military alliance’s one billion people. It certainly is historic in terms of military escalation, but will it deliver security – and if so, for whom?

The headline demand for 5 percent GDP spending has been so loud, it’s easy to forget that for a long time, many NATO members considered the previous 2 percent goal either unachievable or unimportant. NATO first committed to its 2 percent GDP goal in 2002, but by 2021, only six of its members had achieved it. Yet three years later, 23 members had met the goal and all 32 are expected to comply by the end of 2025.

This week, NATO has committed to more than doubling its spending to 5 percent of GDP. This will be partly met through creative accounting and reflects a desire to trumpet a big number to satisfy a petulant President Trump. The 5 percent headline includes 1.5 percent spent on military-related infrastructure, which could be broadly defined to include civilian expenditure. Even so, it reflects a huge escalation of military expenditure over the next decade from an already very high level.

Last year, NATO spent $1.5 trillion on the military – more than half of global military spending. If members comply with the core 3.5 percent target by 2030, that would mean a total of $13.4 trillion in military expenditure. It’s an impossible figure to grasp, but if you stacked it in one-dollar bills, you could make almost four piles that reach the moon. It could also be distributed as a one-off cash bonus of $1,674 to every person on the planet.

In reality, the money will be diverted – most of all from social and environmental spending – even though 30 percent of Europeans report difficulty in making ends meet and climate scientists warn that we have two years left to keep temperature increases below the international target of 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who fought for a partial exemption from the 5 percent goal, was the most honest about this costly trade-off: “If we had accepted 5 percent, Spain would have to spend by 2035 an extra 300 billion euros on defence. Where would it come from? From cuts in health and education.”

Social and environmental spending is already on the chopping block. In February, the United Kingdom announced it would reduce its aid budget to 0.3 percent of GDP to pay for military spending increases – a year after it won an election committing to increase foreign aid. Belgium, the Netherlands and France followed suit, announcing aid cuts of 25 to 37 percent. The United States, under Trump, has decimated its overseas aid and climate programmes and reduced healthcare funding while proposing a record $1 trillion expenditure on the Pentagon.

Europe is falling far behind on its own environmental and social goals, with its primary funding vehicle, the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), expiring in 2026. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) concludes that most European NATO members will be unable to meet the 3.5 percent NATO target without cutting budgets, raising taxes or changing fiscal rules.

NATO’s spending spree will not only divert money – it will worsen the climate crisis. As one of the world’s biggest carbon polluters, it is investing in more gas-guzzling jets, tanks and missiles. Military emissions are notoriously hard to track due to limited data, but one report estimates that 3.5 percent of GDP spending would lead to 2,330 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gases by 2030 – roughly the same as the combined annual emissions of Brazil and Japan.

NATO’s justification is that increased investment is needed to confront the threats of “Russia” and “terrorism”. Yet there is no rationale behind the 5 percent target or details on why threats to NATO have so drastically increased. Nor is there self-examination on how NATO’s actions partly set the stage for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia has increased military spending, but it still spends 10 times less than NATO. Nor could it catch up militarily with NATO’s 32-strong alliance, given its economy: $2 trillion in 2024 (nominal GDP), compared with $26 trillion for non-US NATO countries and $29 trillion for the US alone. As for “terrorism”, the idea that NATO’s increased spending could deter it ignores the failures of the “War on Terror”, where NATO interventions in Afghanistan and Libya prompted instability and fighter recruitment.

The security NATO seems most concerned with is that of its arms firms. Long before Trump’s pressure, arms firms have pushed for higher European military spending through lobbying groups like the AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD). They have successfully made military security an overriding European Union objective, winning ever more public money for research and industry support. Now they are reaping the rewards with booming revenues and profits. Before the NATO summit, BlackRock released an investment report celebrating the arms industry as a “dynamic growth industry” and a “mega force” that will drive investment trends in the coming years.

NATO’s idea of security diverts money from social needs, worsens the climate crisis, rewards arms firms profiting from global conflict, and chooses war over diplomacy. Its bellicose stance in The Hague this week makes it one of the greatest threats to global security – even to life on this planet. It is up to the peoples of NATO countries to reject this deadly path and reclaim security based on cooperation, justice and peace.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Artificial intelligence, cloud computing and data centres led to a spike in electricity demand between 2020 and 2023.

The United Nations’ digital agency says that operational carbon emissions for the world’s top tech companies rose an average of 150 percent between 2020 and 2023 as investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and data centres drove up global electricity demand.

Operational emissions for Amazon grew 182 percent in 2023 against 2020 levels, while emissions for Microsoft grew 155 percent, Facebook and Instagram owner Meta grew 145 percent, and Google parent company Alphabet grew 138 percent over the same period, according to the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

The figures include the emissions directly created by the companies’ operations as well as those from purchased energy consumption. They were included in a new report from ITU assessing the greenhouse gas emissions of the world’s top 200 digital companies between 2020 and 2023.

The UN agency linked the sharp uptick to recent breakthroughs in AI and the demand for digital services like cloud computing.

“Advances in digital innovation – especially AI – are driving up energy consumption and global emissions,” said Doreen Bogdan-Martin, who heads the ITU.

While these innovations mark dramatic technological breakthroughs, left unchecked, emissions from top-emitting AI systems could soon hit 102.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, the agency said.

“Currently, there are no standards or legislative requirements for companies to disclose their AI emissions or energy consumption, which makes understanding the impact of AI on company-level energy use less straightforward,” the report said.

“However, data from company reports show an increasing trend in operational emissions for companies with a high level of AI adoption.”

The AI and cloud computing boom has led to a similar spike in electricity demand from data centres, which help power digital services. Electricity consumption by data centres has grown 12 percent year-on-year since 2017, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Data centres alone consumed 415 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity – or 1.5 percent of global power demand. If the demand for data centres continues to grow at this pace, it will hit 945 TWh by 2030, surpassing Japan’s annual electricity consumption, according to the IEA.

Power-hungry digital companies, meanwhile, consumed an estimated 581 TWh of electricity in 2024, or roughly 2.1 percent of global demand, according to the report, although demand was highly concentrated among top firms.

According to data supplied by 164 out of 200 companies in the report, just 10 generated 51.9 percent of their electricity demand in 2023, the report said. They were China Mobile, Amazon, Samsung Electronics, China Telecom, Alphabet, Microsoft, TSMC, China Unicom, SK Hynix and Meta.

Publicly available emissions data for 166 out of the 200 companies revealed that they emitted 297 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year in 2023, the same as the combined emissions of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile.

The UN nuclear watchdog warns Tehran could be close to weapons-grade enriched uranium, as negotiations with the US continue.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog says Iran has increased its stockpile of highly enriched, near weapons-grade uranium by 50 percent in the last three months.

The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Saturday comes as nuclear deal negotiations are under way between the United States and Iran, with Tehran insisting its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.

The IAEA said as of May 17, Iran had amassed 408.6kg (900.8 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60 percent – the only non-nuclear weapon state to do so, according to the UN agency – and had increased its stockpile by almost 50 percent to 133.8kg since its last report in February.

The wide-ranging, confidential report seen by several news agencies said Iran carried out secret nuclear activities with material not declared to the IAEA at three locations that have long been under investigation, calling it a “serious concern” and warning Tehran to change its course.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, however, reaffirmed the country’s longstanding position, saying Tehran deems nuclear weapons “unacceptable”.

“If the issue is nuclear weapons, yes, we too consider this type of weapon unacceptable,” Araghchi, Iran’s lead negotiator in the nuclear talks with the US, said in a televised speech. “We agree with them on this issue.”

‘Both sides building leverage’

But the report, which was requested by the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors in November, will allow for a push by the US, Britain, France and Germany to declare Iran in violation of its non-proliferation obligations.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump said Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon”.

“They don’t want to be blown up. They would rather make a deal,” Trump said, adding: “That would be a great thing that we could have a deal without bombs being dropped all over the Middle East.”

In 2015, Iran reached a deal with the United Kingdom, US, Germany, France, Russia, China and the European Union, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It involved the lifting of some sanctions on Tehran in return for limits on its nuclear development programme.

But in 2018, then US President Trump unilaterally quit the agreement and reimposed harsh sanctions. Tehran then rebuilt its stockpiles of enriched uranium.

In December last year, the IAEA said Iran was rapidly enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, moving closer to the 90 percent threshold needed for weapons-grade material.

Western nations say such intensive enrichment should not be part of a civilian nuclear programme, but Iran insists it is not developing weapons.

Hamed Mousavi, professor of political science at Tehran University, told Al Jazeera the IAEA findings could indicate a possible negotiation tool for Iran during its ongoing nuclear talks with the US.

“I think both sides are trying to build leverage against the other side. From the Iranian perspective, an advancement in the nuclear programme is going to bring them leverage at the negotiation table with the Americans,” he said.

On the other side, he said, the US could threaten more sanctions and may also refer the Iranian case to the UN Security Council for its breach of the 2006 non-proliferation agreement. However, he added that Iran has not made the “political decision” to build a possible bomb.

“Enriching up to 60 percent [of uranium] – from the Iranian perspective – is a sort of leverage against the Americans to lift sanctions,” Mousavi said.

United States President Donald Trump has announced his administration is raising tariffs on steel imports from 25 percent to 50 percent.

Speaking to steelworkers and supporters at a rally outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Trump framed his latest tariff increase as a boon to the domestic manufacturing industry.

“We’re going to bring it from 25 percent to 50 percent, the tariffs on steel into the United States of America, which will even further secure the steel industry in the United States,” Trump told the crowd. “Nobody’s going to get around that.”

How that tariff increase would affect the free-trade deal with Canada and Mexico – or a separate trade deal struck earlier this month with the United Kingdom – remains unclear.

Also left ambiguous was the nature of a deal struck between Nippon Steel, the largest steel producer in Japan, and the domestic company US Steel. Still, Trump played up the partnership between the two companies as a “blockbuster agreement”.

“ There’s never been a $14bn investment in the history of the steel industry in the United States of America,” Trump said of the deal.

A tariff hike on steel

Friday’s rally was a return to the site of many election-season campaign events for Trump and his team.

In 2024, Trump hinged his pitch for re-election on an appeal to working-class voters, including those in the Rust Belt region, a manufacturing hub that has declined in the face of the shifting industry trends and greater overseas competition.

Key swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan are located in the region, and they leaned Republican on election day, helping to propel Trump to a second term as president.

Trump, in turn, has framed his “America First” agenda as a policy platform designed to bolster the domestic manufacturing industry. Tariffs and other protectionist policies have played a prominent part in that agenda.

In March, for instance, Trump announced an initial slate of 25-percent tariffs on steel and aluminium, causing major trading partners like Canada to respond with retaliatory measures.

The following month, he also imposed a blanket 10-percent tariff on nearly all trade partners as well as higher country-specific import taxes. Those were quickly paused amid economic shockwaves and widespread criticism, while the 10-percent tariff remained in place.

Trump has argued that the tariffs are a vital negotiating tool to encourage greater investment in the US economy.

But economists have warned that attempting a “hard reset” of the global economy – through dramatic tax hikes like tariffs – will likely blow back on US consumers, raising prices.

Rachel Ziemba, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said the latest tariff hike on steel also signals that negotiating trade deals with Trump may result in “limited benefits”, given the sudden shifts in his policies.

Further, Friday’s announcement signals that Trump is likely to continue doubling down on tariffs, she said.

“The challenge is that hiking the steel tariffs may be good for steel workers, but it is bad for manufacturing and the energy sector, among others. So overall, it is not great for the US economy and adds uncertainty to the macro outlook,” Ziemba explained.

Trump’s tariff policies have also faced legal challenges in the US, where businesses, interest groups and states have all filed lawsuits to stop the tax hikes on imports.

On Thursday, for instance, a federal court briefly ruled that Trump had illegally exercised emergency powers to impose his sweeping slate of international tariffs, only for an appeals court to temporarily pause that ruling a few hours later.

A deal with Nippon Steel

Before the tariff hike was announced, Friday’s rally in Pittsburgh was expected to focus on Nippon Steel’s proposed acquisition of US Steel, the second largest steel producer in the country.

“We’re here today to celebrate a blockbuster agreement that will ensure this storied American company stays an American company,” Trump said at the outset of his speech.

But the merger between Nippon Steel and US Steel had been controversial, and it was largely opposed by labour unions.

Upon returning to the White House in January, Trump initially said he would block the acquisition, mirroring a similar position taken by his predecessor, former US President Joe Biden.

However, he has since pivoted his stance and backed the deal. Last week, he announced an agreement that he said would grant Nippon only “partial ownership” over US Steel.

Speaking on Friday, Trump said the new deal would include Nippon making a “$14bn commitment to the future” of US Steel, although he did not provide details about how the ownership agreement would play out.

“Oh, you’re gonna be happy,” Trump told the crowd of steelworkers. “There’s a lot of money coming your way.”

The Republican leader also waxed poetic about the history of steel in the US, describing it as the backbone of the country’s economy.

“The city of Pittsburgh used to produce more steel than most entire countries could produce, and it wasn’t even close,” he said, adding: “If you don’t have steel, you don’t have a country.”

For its part, US Steel has not publicly communicated any details of a revamped deal to investors. Nippon, meanwhile, issued a statement approving the proposed “partnership”, but it also has not disclosed terms of the arrangement.

The acquisition has split union workers, although the national United Steelworkers Union has been one of its leading opponents.

In a statement prior to the rally, the union questioned whether the new arrangement makes “any meaningful change” from the initial proposal.

“Nippon has maintained consistently that it would only invest in US Steel’s facilities if it owned the company outright,” the union said in a statement, which noted firmer details had not yet been released.

“We’ve seen nothing in the reporting over the past few days suggesting that Nippon has walked back from this position.”

The rally on Friday comes as Trump has sought to reassure his base of voters following a tumultuous start to his second term.

Critics point out that steel prices have risen in the US by roughly 16 percent since Trump took office, and his Republican Party faces potentially punishing congressional elections in 2026.

Israeli attacks on land, wells and greenhouses are exacerbating the already critical risk of famine in Gaza, the FAO says.

Less than five percent of the Gaza Strip’s cropland is able to be cultivated, according to a new geospatial assessment from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).

The FAO described the situation as “alarming” on Monday, warning that the destruction of agricultural infrastructure amid Israel’s war on Gaza is “further deteriorating food production capacity and exacerbating the risk of famine”.

The joint assessment found that more than 80 percent of Gaza’s total cropland has been damaged, while 77.8 percent of that land is now inaccessible to farmers. Only 688 hectares (1,700 acres), or 4.6 percent of cropland, remains available for cultivation.

The destruction has extended to Gaza’s greenhouses and water sources, with 71.2 percent of greenhouses and 82.8 percent of agricultural wells also damaged.

“This level of destruction is not just a loss of infrastructure – it is a collapse of Gaza’s agrifood system and of lifelines,” said Beth Bechdol, FAO’s deputy director-general.

“What once provided food, income, and stability for hundreds of thousands is now in ruins. With cropland, greenhouses, and wells destroyed, local food production has ground to a halt. Rebuilding will require massive investment –  and a sustained commitment to restore both livelihoods and hope.”

The findings follow the release of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis earlier this month, which warned that Gaza’s entire population is facing a critical risk of famine after 19 months of war, mass displacement, and severe restrictions on humanitarian aid.

While Israel announced last week that it would allow “minimal” aid deliveries into Gaza, humanitarian organisations have warned that the trickle of supplies is failing to reach Gaza’s starving population.

Meanwhile, Israeli air attacks continue to kill dozens of Palestinians every day in Gaza.

On Monday, Israeli forces bombed a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City, sparking a fire and killing at least 36 Palestinians, including several children.

More than 50 people were killed in Israeli attacks across the enclave since dawn, according to health officials.

EU official says a trade deal ‘must be guided by mutual respect, not threats’ after the US president says talks with the bloc are ‘going nowhere’.

The European Union has said it will defend its interests after United States President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 50-percent tariff on all goods from the 27-member bloc.

The EU’s top trade official, Maros Sefcovic, said in a post on X that he spoke on Friday with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the issue.

“The EU is fully engaged, committed to securing a deal that works for both,” he said, adding that the EU Commission remains ready to work in good faith towards an agreement.

“EU-US trade is unmatched and must be guided by mutual respect, not threats. We stand ready to defend our interests.”

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he is “recommending” a huge 50 percent duty on the EU starting on June 1 since talks with them “are going nowhere”.

Speaking later in the Oval Office, the Republican president emphasised that he was not seeking a deal with the EU but might delay the tariffs if more European companies made major investments in the US.

“I’m not looking for a deal,” Trump told the reporters. “We’ve set the deal. It’s at 50 percent.”

European leaders warned the tariffs will hurt both sides.

German economy minister Katherina Reiche said everything must be done “to ensure that the European Commission reaches a negotiated solution with the United States” while French foreign minister Laurent Saint-Martin said the bloc prefers de-escalation but is “ready to respond”.

If implemented, the tariffs would mean that the EU will have higher import taxes on its hundreds of billions worth of exported goods compared with China, which had its tariffs cut earlier this month to allow more negotiations between Washington, DC, and Beijing.

In early April, Trump announced a 20 percent tariff on most EU goods but brought it down to 10 percent until July 8 to allow time for more negotiations.

Trump has complained that existing frameworks are “unfair” to US companies as the European bloc sells more goods to its ally than it buys from it.

Trump on Friday also warned that the US tech giant Apple could also be hit with a 25 percent import tax on all iPhones not manufactured but sold in the US.

His announcements online dealt another blow to stock markets both in the US and in the EU, with the S&P 500 down about 0.8 percent and the pan-European STOXX 600 index falling about 1.2 percent.