More than 50 organisations report sites being restricted or removed, with abortion hotlines blocked and posts showing non-explicit nudity triggering warnings

From Owen Jones, talking to Professor Steve Keen, who correctly forecast the GFC. He reckons the current AI boom will fizzle out within a year, to be followed by an AI bust as AI takes over more and more jobs. He points out that a UBI will be essential, or people will starve to death, and there will be severe civil unrest, a dystopian "Hunger Games" scenario. A new Great Depression, leading to massive economic and social change.

From The Hartmann Report > **Young people are furious. A surveyreleased this week by the Harvard Institute of Politics finds that under-30 Americans are “a generation under profound strain” who’ve lost pretty much any confidence in government or corporate institutions.** > > **By a 57% to 13% margin they told pollsters America is on the wrong track, and only 32% agree that the US is a healthy democracy or even one that’s “somewhat functioning.”** > > **Fully 64% of young American adults say the system is either in trouble or has _completely_ failed. Pollster John Della Volpe summarized the Institute’s findings:** > >> **“Young Americans are sending a clear message: the systems and institutions meant to support them no longer feel stable, fair, or responsive to this generation.”** > > **Which raises the urgent question: How the hell did we get here from the widespread prosperity of the postwar years?** > > **The 1970s were a pivotal decade, and not just because they saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political (and sometimes violent) SDS, which I had joined. Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed.** > > **Prior to that, the nation had hummed along for 40 years on a top income tax bracket of 91% and a corporate income tax that topped out around 50%. Business leaders focused on running their companies, which were growing faster than at any time in the history of America, and avoided participating in politics.** > > **Democrat Franklin Roosevelt and Republican Dwight Eisenhower renewed America with: > — modern, state-of-the-art public labs, schools, and public hospitals across the nation; > — nearly free college, trade school, and research support; > — enforcement of antitrust laws which produced healthy small and family businesses; > — unions protecting a third of America’s workers so fully two-thirds of us had a living wage and benefits on a single salary; > — and an interstate highway system, rail system, and network of new airports paid for with tax dollars that transformed the nation’s commerce.** > > **When we handed America over to Ronald Reagan in 1981 it was a brand, gleaming new country with a prosperous and thriving middle class. Young people saw a lifetime of opportunity ahead of them, and wealthy people were doing well, too.** > > **The seeds of today’s American crisis were planted just ten years earlier, in 1971, when Lewis Powell, then a lawyer for the tobacco industry, wrote his infamous “Powell Memo.” It was a blueprint for the morbidly rich and big corporations to take over the weakened remnants of Nixon’s Republican Party and then seize control of the institutions of America.** > > **Those groups, inspired by Powell, decided to take his advice and infiltrate our universities, create a massive, billion-dollar conservative media infrastructure, pack our courts, integrate themselves into a large religious movement to collect millions of votes, and turn upside-down our tax, labor, abortion, and gun laws.** > > **That effort burst onto the American scene with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan.** > > **By 1982 America was agog at the “new ideas” this newly-invented, billionaire-owned GOP was putting forward. They included radical tax cuts for the rich, pollution deregulation, destroying unions, ending _Roe v. Wade_ , and slashing the support services the New Deal and Great Society once offered citizens (because, Republicans said, feeding, educating, or providing healthcare to people made them “dependent on the government”).** > > **Their sales pitch was effective, so we’ve now had 44 years of Republicans’ so-called Reagan Revolution.** > > **It’s time to simply say out loud — as our young people are** _**yelling**_**at us — that it hasn’t worked. For example:** > > ## **— Republicans told us if we just cut the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from the 74% it was in 1980 down to 37% it would “trickle down” benefits to everybody else because, they said, the “job creators” would be “unleashed” on our economy.** > > **Instead of a more general prosperity, we’ve now ended up with thegreatest wealth and income inequality in the developed world, as over $50 trillion was transferred over those 44 years from the bottom 90% to the top 1%, where it remains to this day. The middle class has gone from over 65% of us to fewer than half of us. Because of 44 years of Reaganomics, it now takes 2 full-time wage earners to sustain the same lifestyle one could in 1980.** > > ## **— Republicans told us if we just deregulated guns and let anybody buy and carry as many as they wanted, wherever they wanted, it would clean up our crime problem and put the fear of God into our politicians.** > > **“An armed society is a polite society” was the bumper sticker back during Reagan’s time, the NRA relentlessly promoting the lie that the Founders and Framers put the Second Amendment into the Constitution so “patriots” could kill corrupt politicians. Five on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court evengot into the act by twisting the law and lying about American history to make guns more widely available.** > > **Instead of a “polite” society or politicians who listened better to their constituents, we ended up with school shootings and a daily rate of gun carnage unmatched anywhere else in the developed world. We regularly terrorize young people with active shooter drills; the number-one cause of death for American children (and only _American_ children) is bullets tearing their bodies apart.** > > ## **— Republicans told us that if we just ended sex education in our schools, purged our libraries of books, and outlawed abortion, we’d return to “the good old days” when, they argued, every child was wanted and every marriage was happy.** > > **Instead of helping young Americans, we’ve ended up with epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and — now that abortion is illegal in state after state — a return to deadly back-alley abortions.** > > ## **— Republicans told us that if we just killed off Civics and History classes in our schools, we’d “liberate” our young people to focus on science and math.** > > **Instead, we’ve raised two generations of Americans who can’t even name the three branches of government, much less understand the meaning of the Constitution’s reference to the “General Welfare.” And forget about trying to explain to them the difference between Hitler’s fascism, Stalin’s communism, and the modern-day governments of Russia, Hungary, and China. Or what Trump and his cronies are up to.** > > ## **— Republicans told us that if we cut state and federal aid to higher education — which in 1980 paid for about 80% of a student’s tuition — so that students would have “skin in the game,” we’d see students take their studies more seriously and produce a new generation of engineers and scientists to prepare us for the 21st century.** > > **Instead of happy students, since we cut that 80% government support down to around 20% (with the 80% now covered by students’ tuition), our nation is groaning under a $2 trillion dollar student debt burden, preventing young people from buying homes, starting businesses, or beginning families.** > > **While students are underwater, the banksters who own Republican politicians are making billions in profits every single week of the year from these bizarrely non-negotiable student loans, the consequence of legally paid-off legislators (because of Clarence Thomas‘s tie-breaking vote in _Citizens United)_.** > > ## **— Republicans told us that if we just stopped enforcing the anti-monopoly and anti-trust laws that had protected small businesses for nearly 100 years, there would be an explosion of innovation and opportunity as companies got bigger and thus “more efficient.”** > > **Instead, we’ve seen every industry in America become so consolidated that competition is dead, inflation-causing price gouging and profiteering reign, and it’s hard to find small family-owned businesses anymore in downtowns, malls, and the suburbs. It’s all giant chains, many being sucked dry by hedge funds or private equity as we enterthe cancer stage of capitalism. Few family or local businesses can compete against such giants and the door to entrepreneurialism is largely closed to Zoomers.** > > ## **— Republicans told us that if we just changed the laws to let corporations pay their senior executives with stock (in addition to cash) they’d be “more invested” in the fate and future of the company and business would generally become healthier.** > > **Stock buybacks used to be called _felony stock manipulation_ , but Reagan legalized the practice in 1983. As a result, every time a corporation initiates a stock buyback program, billions of dollars flow directly into the pockets of the main shareholders and executives while workers, the company, communities, and even the businesses themselves suffer the loss.** > > ## **— Republicans told us that if we just let a handful of individual companies and billionaires buy most of our media, a thousand flowers would grow and we’d have the most diverse media landscape in the world. At first, as the internet was opening in the 90s, they even giddily claimed it was happening.** > > **Now a small handful of billionaires and often-rightwing companies own our major media/internet companies, radio and TV stations, as well as local newspapers across the country. In such a landscape, progressive voices, as young people will tell you, are generally absent.** > > ## **— Republicans told us we should hand all our healthcare decisions not to our doctors but to bureaucratic insurance industry middlemen who would decide which of our doctor’s suggestions they’d approve for payment and which they’d reject. They said this “pre-approval” process would “lower costs and increase choice.”** > > **Instead, in _all_ of the entire developed world — _all_ the 34 OECD countries on 4 continents — there are ~500,000 medical bankruptcies a year…and every single one of them is here in America. And now, as Republicans fight to prevent the renewal of Obamacare subsidies, millions — particularly young people working low-wage jobs — will simply be forced to drop health insurance altogether.** > > ## **— Republicans told us if we just got rid of our unions, then our bosses and the companies that employ them would give us better pay, more benefits, and real job security.** > > **As everybody can see,they lied. And are still lying as hard as they can to prevent America from returning to the levels of unionization (around a third of us) we had before Reagan’s Great Republican Experiment (now only a tenth of us have a union).** > > ## **— Republicans told us if we went with the trade agreement the GHW Bush administration had negotiated — NAFTA — and then signed off on the WTO, that we’d see an explosion of jobs.** > > **Therewas an explosion all right; lots of them, in fact, as over 60,000 American factories were blown up, torn down, or left vacant because their production was moved to China or elsewhere. Over 15 million good-paying union jobs went overseas along with those 60,000 factories.** > > ## **— Republicans t****old us global warming was a hoax: they’re _still_ telling us that, in fact. And therefore, they say, we shouldn’t do anything to interfere with the profits of their wealthy donors in the American fossil fuel industry and the Middle East.** > > **The hoax, it turns out, was the lie that there was no global warming, a lie that the industry spent hundreds of millions over decades to pull off. By purchasing the GOP, they succeeded in delaying action on global warming for at least three decades and maybe as many as five. That lie produced trillions in profits and brought us the climate crisis that is today killing millions and threatens all life on Earth.** > > ## **— And then, of course, there’s thebiggest GOP lie of them all: “Money is the same thing as Free Speech and corporations are persons with rights under the Bill of Rights.” Five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court told us that if we threw out around 1000 anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws at both the state and federal level so politicians and political PACs could take unaccountable billions, even from foreign powers, it would “strengthen and diversify” the range of voices heard in America.** > > **It’s diversified it, for sure. We’re now regularly hearing from racists and open Nazis, many of them elected Republican officials, who would have been driven out of decent society before the Reagan Revolution. American political discourse hasn’t been this filled with conflict and violence since the Civil War, and much of it can be traced straight back to the power and influence ofdark money unleashed by those five billionaire-bought-off Republicans on the Supreme Court.** > > ## **— So now Donald Trump tells our young people that it’s time to make take the next big step — to reject democracy — as the logical outcome of the Reagan Revolution.** > > **He says if we just abandon the rule of law and make him an uncountable emperor for life; punish with prison his political enemies; make women, Blacks, and Hispanics second-class citizens; end immigration for everybody except white South Africans; and forge alliances with dictators around the world, that life in America will become wonderful.** > > **It should shock no one that young people aren’t buying this GOP bullshit.** > > **The bottom line is that we as a nation have now had the** _**full Republican experience**_**. We’ve done pretty much everything they suggested or demanded.** > > **And as a result, young Americans are increasingly disgusted when they hear Republicans sermonizing about deficits (thatthey themselves caused).** > > **Or welfare (that the GOP damaged and then exploited).** > > **Or even whatever these sanctimonious Republicans are calling “faith” these days, be it the death penalty, forcing raped women and pre-teen girls to give birth against thethreat of imprisonment, hiding Trump’s association with Epstein and Maxwell, or burning books.** > > **Or having masked secret police kidnap people, including children, off the streets of our cities and throwing them into god-awful hellhole prisons.** > > **Not to mention Donald Trump’s sinister “revenge” campaign against the Americans he sees as his “enemies,” his eliminating pollution controls that protected our environment in exchange for a billion dollars in fossil fuel industry donations, and giving his billionaire donors another massive tax cut, to be paid for by the same next generation who’re protesting against him.** > > **America’s young people are over it, Republicans, and they’re going to reboot this nation to fulfill its potential and promise.** > > **Anew, progressive America is being birthed from the ashes of the Reagan Revolution and the GOP and its billionaire owners can’t stop it much longer.** The Hartmann Report is required reading, if you want to keep up with the explosion of fascism in America. You can subscribe to it here. * * *

Visitors will have to reveal at the border all social media activity over the past five years

From Reuters > **The European Union agreed on Wednesday to set a legally binding climate target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% from 1990 levels by 2040, and buy foreign carbon credits to cover 5% of the emissions cuts, goals that fell short of its original plan.** > > **Negotiators from EU countries and the European Parliament reached the deal in the early hours of Wednesday, they confirmed in separate statements.** > > **In practice, the target will require an 85% emissions reduction from European industries, and payment to developing countries via carbon credits to cut emissions on Europe's behalf to make up the rest.** > > **The goal goes beyond most other major economies' emissions-cutting pledges, including China's. Still, it fell short of that recommended by the EU's climate science advisers and was weaker than Brussels' original plan for the goal, reflecting disagreement between EU governments over the speed and cost of their green agenda.** > > **"The target delivers on the need for climate action while safeguarding our competitiveness and security," said Danish climate minister Lars Aagaard, who negotiated the deal on behalf of EU governments.** > > **The EU also agreed to consider the option in future to use international carbon credits to meet a further 5% of its 2040 emissions reductions - potentially further softening the domestic efforts required.** > > **The target, which is designed to keep Europe on track for its pledge to have net-zero emissions by 2050, represented a political compromise after months of negotiations.** > > **Countries including Poland, Slovakia and Hungary had opposed deeper CO2 cuts as too strenuous for industries struggling with high energy costs, cheaper Chinese imports and U.S. tariffs.** > > **Other EU members, including the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, cited worsening extreme weather events and the need to catch up with China in manufacturing green technology as reasons to set a high target.** > > **To win over opponents, the EU also agreed to delay the launch of a politically sensitive carbon price for fuel by one year, to 2028.** > > **The Parliament and EU countries must each approve the target for it to become law - usually a formality that waves through pre-agreed deals.** Europe's CO2 emissions peaked in 1990, and have fallen 40% since then. Their emissions have fallen much more in percentage terms than other large countries, and other big polluters (China and India) are still going up. An 85% cut in emissions from 1990 would reduce Europe's emissions to those seen in the year 1900. Imagine if other countries were to do the same! If every country committed to cutting emissions by just 3% a year, global emissions would halve by 2050 (still not zero, for sure, but better than the status quo) and fall by 90% by the year 2100. And such a target is eminently achievable, if we switch electricity generation to renewables, switch our vehicle fleet to EVs, and replace gas and oil heating with heat pumps. --- Source: Our World in Data

The final report of Operation Kenova says the security service had "greater knowledge" of Stakeknife than it had first stated.

Editorial: The White House is aggressively seeking to weaken and dominate the United States’ traditional allies. European leaders must learn to fight back.

A reduction in rainfall may have played a sizable role in the extinction of Homo floresiensis, the archaic human species nicknamed the "hobbit," a new study finds.

Defence agreement kept afloat through sheer political will, despite Pentagon doubts over its ability to ever deliver what it promises

Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to portray the Russian economy as able to support a protracted war in Ukraine.

From The Guardian > **This year is “virtually certain” to end as the second- or third-hottest year on record, EU scientists have found, as climate breakdown continues to push the planet away from the stable conditions in which humanity evolved.** > > **Global temperatures from January to November were on average 1.48C higher than preindustrial levels, according to the Copernicus, the EU’s earth observation programme. It found the anomalies were so far identical to those recorded in 2023, which is the second-hottest year on record after 2024.** > > **World leaders have promised to keep the planet from heating by 1.5C (2.7F) above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. Scientists interpret the temperature target as a 30-year average, leaving a sliver of hope for meeting the goal after a period of overshoot even as individual months and years begin to cross the threshold.** > > **“For November, global temperatures were 1.54C above preindustrial levels,” said Dr Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of Copernicus Climate Change Service. “The three-year average for 2023-2025 is on track to exceed 1.5C for the first time.”** > > **The agency’s monthly bulletin found that last month was the third-warmest November globally, with “notably” warmer temperatures recorded across northern Canada and the Arctic Ocean. The month was marked by a series of dangerous weather events including cyclones and catastrophic floods that swept away lives and homes across south and south-east Asia.** > > **Average temperatures have risen sharply as a result of the blanket of carbon pollution smothering the Earth, which has strengthened weather extremes from heatwaves to heavy rains, but continue to vary from year to year based on natural factors. Warming El Niño conditions boosted global temperatures during 2023 and 2024 but gave way to weakly cooling La Niña conditions in 2025.** > > **Copernicus found 2025 was tied with 2023 as the second-hottest year on record. “These milestones are not abstract,” said Burgess. “They reflect the accelerating pace of climate change, and the only way to mitigate future rising temperatures is to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”** > > **Since the Paris climate agreement in 2015, planet-heating emissions have continued to climb – although the expansion of renewable energy has helped to curb the rise – along with average temperatures and the intensity of weather extremes.** > > **The Copernicus findings echoed analysis from the World Meteorological Organization before the Cop30 summit in Brazil last month. The WMO found 2015 to 2025 would have been the 11 warmest years in an observational record that stretches back to 1850.** --- Source: Copernicus

From green queen > **Precision fermentation has been around for decades, and most of us eat foods that contain ingredients made using the technology on a daily basis. Animal-free dairy makers are now using it to bring you the cheese and milk you love without the environmental cost. > > As the alternative protein industry matures, it is increasingly under attack from food industry lobbies and interest groups. Of late, precision fermentation technology, used to create animal-free dairy foods, has been the target of the Non-GMO Project, a U.S. based non profit organization focused on alerting consumers to the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMO) in food products. In a press release published during National Dairy Month in the U.S., the organization described animal-free dairy made from precision fermentation as unregulated and dangerous. We thought it would be prudent to address the allegations as a matter of separating fact from fiction. > > Let’s start with the most important facts: precision fermentation (PF) is a technology that has been around for 30 years, is entirely safe and is used in dozens (if not hundreds) of products you interact with every day. That cousin of yours that’s Type 1 diabetic? Her insulin is made using PF. The cheese you buy at the grocery store? The enzymes are made using PF. The vitamin supplement you give your teenager for their skin? PF again. That naturally flavored grapefruit soda you love? That’s right, it’s made using PF. > > Here’s the thing. Until Perfect Day and its peers crash landed onto our food scene, most of us had never heard of precision fermentation. Now, this technology that we interact with regularly (though perhaps unknowingly), has been put under the microscope by everyone from chefs to media personalities to lobby groups. When something feels or sounds new, it’s entirely natural to have questions. Particularly when it’s related to the food we eat. > > When it comes to animal-free dairy, precision fermentation refers to a process used to produce bio-identical milk proteins like casein or whey, without the use of animals. It is done by encoding milk protein DNA sequences into microorganisms, like yeast or fungi, and then fermenting them with nutrients and sugar in fermentation tanks, much like those used to brew beer. During the fermentation process, these unique microbes produce proteins, identical to those found in cow’s dairy milk. These proteins are filtered into a pure milk protein isolate that can be used to create our favorite dairy products such as cheese, yogurt and ice cream, without the use of animals. > > The whole point of using precision fermentation is to produce the dairy products we love (think milk, cheese, yogurt) with a fraction of the carbon emissions, land requirements and water usage that the conventional dairy industry requires. This means the hundreds of millions of people who consume dairy products daily can do so without causing global warming.** > > ** > ** > > ## **FACT: Conventional dairy has a global warming problem** > > ** > Let’s be clear, we are at a critical point in the climate change fight. Unless we significantly reduce the outsized climate impact from conventional agriculture, and that includes dairy farming, we will not be able to achieve the Paris Agreement goals. Withhalf of all habitable land already being used for agriculture and 77% of that devoted to raising animals for food, anyone who is serious about creating a sustainable food industry knows that we cannot go on with the status quo. We certainly cannot nourish a growing global population with an agricultural system that already consumes too much land and water resources and drives biodiversity loss, while also emitting a third of global greenhouse gases. If global animal agriculture continues to expand, it will prevent the decarbonization of our agricultural system and perpetuate the increase of methane emissions, a greenhouse gas that is 86 times more powerful at warming the planet on a 20-year scale than carbon dioxide. > > When it comes to conventional dairy production, it’s hard to argue with its environmental cost. Producing just one litre of milk releases 3.15kg of CO2, while one kilo of cheese releases a whopping 23.88kgs of CO2- about the same as burning 10kg of coal! > > On the water front, things are not much better. To get one litre of milk requires 628 litres of water. A kilo of cheese demands an incredible 5,606 liters of water, the highest among all foods. > > Beyond water and emissions, producing conventional dairy foods involves heavy use of antibiotics, a huge amount of arable land and GMO corn/soy animal feed, not to mention that the fields where these are grown are sprayed with pesticides and glyphosate.** > ** > ** > > ## **FACT: You are already consuming precision fermentation foods and products** > > ** > Precision fermentation is safely used to makeinsulin, most vitamins, flavors and countless enzymes found in nearly all commercially produced foods. We’ve all been eating foods produced with the aid of precision fermentation for decades. This is not new. Here’s an overview of common foods and supplements made using PF: > > Enzymes: PF is used to make all sorts of enzymes used in food production, from amlysases to keep bread soft and prevent staleness, pectinases to make fruit juices clear instead of cloudy, transglutaminases to make deli meat products such as salami hold together better. > > Vitamins: Almost all of the common vitamins we use to fortify foods (in powder form) or to supplement our own diets (in pill form) such as B vitamins (B2 and B12 in particular) and vitamins A, C, D, E and K, are made via precision fermentation technology. > > Natural Flavors: Many flavorings and aromas regularly used in food are made via PF such as vanilla flavoring. When you see the term ‘natural flavors’ on an ingredient list? That’s PF too. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (the FDA)’s own definition of “natural flavor/flavoring” includes ingredients made using precision fermentation. > > Medicine: Specifically, insulin for Type 1 Diabetes patients to inject themselves with. Until the 1980s, we used to have to inject diabetes patients with insulin obtained from pigs and cows. > > Cheese (this one is ironic, given the conventional dairy industry’s anti-PF stance): Rennet is a key ingredient in most cheeses. It is composed of the enzyme chymosin, which helps to separate the milk solids (the parts used in cheesemaking) from the liquids. In other words, rennet enables the formation of firm curds and is crucial in helping cheesemakers achieve their desired cheese texture. 80% of rennet used in global cheese produced comes from precision fermentation using microorganisms as host factories (the rest comes from the stomachs of ruminant animals). So chances are, if you have eaten dairy cheese, you have eaten PF-made rennet.** > ## **FACT: Animal-free dairy is regulated by the US FDA** > > ** > Animal-free dairy is a regulated industry. The U.S. FDA oversees and regulates any substance that is intentionally added to food as an additive throughthe GRAS Notification Program. This is also how enzymes, vitamins and flavors are regulated. To date, both Perfect Day and Remilk have followed this process prior to launching products in the U.S. market. > > Animal-free dairy proteins do not fall under the USDA National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, because the final product (animal-free milk protein) does not contain any detectable genetic material. > > While genetic engineering techniques are used in creation of the microorganisms that produce the dairy proteins, they are filtered out at the end of fermentation. The resulting product is a high purity milk protein isolate, which is bio-identical to milk protein from cows.** > ## **FACT: Animal-free dairy has a lower carbon and water footprint than conventional dairy** > > ** > The planetary toll of the conventional industry when we are in the midst of a worsening climate crisis that is threatening our global food security is exactly why we need to rethink how we produce food and support nascent industries like animal-free dairy made from precision fermentation. This will allow consumers to continue enjoying the milk and cheese they crave and love at a lower cost to the planet. > > In the RethinkX report on agriculture, the authors write that “modern alternatives will be up to 100 times more land efficient, 10-25 times more feedstock efficient, 20 times more time efficient, and 10 times more water efficient. They will also produce an order of magnitude less waste.” > > According to a Life Cycle Assessment commissioned by Perfect Day, their technology allows for “a reduction in environmental impact of up to 99% less water use, up to 97% fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and up to 60% less renewable energy use compared to traditional (dairy) production methods.” > > The future of our planet and the ability to feed next generations depends greatly on our ability to bring these new solutions to life. Precision fermentation is part of a broader ecosystem of sustainable food solutions, which include regenerative organic farming, plant-based foods and animal-free dairy. Without them we are at risk of losing the battle against climate change and in the years ahead, we will face unrelenting challenges to affordably feed 10 billion people. > ** > >

For various reasons, I haven't calculated my US cyclical indices for a year or more. But I've finally updated my US data banks and psyched myself up to do the calculations, so, here goes. The chart below shows the year-on-year percentage change in my US coinciding and my US leading indices. They are calculated from many underlying time series and are designed to remove some of the noise caused by the plethora of indicators which move in different directions each month, and that way to give clarity about the direction of the economy. I have plotted my leading index with a 12-month lag. This gives us an implicit forecast of the economy's direction over the next 12 months. Observe how covid screwed up the lags, which is logical, because the covid crash and the recovery from covid were caused by exogenous influences, not by movements in the economy itself. Note how the percentage change in my leading index is falling fast, suggesting that over the next 6-12 months the economy will be weak, or in recession. The chart below compares my US coinciding index with my US diffusion index. A diffusion index measures what percentage of a universe of monitored time series is rising. In this case, the universe is 57 different time series, almost exclusively monthly. When all are rising, the economy is strong. When all are falling, it's in deep recession. It's been smoothed using a 12-month centred moving average to iron out the monthly ebbs and flows. It leads the cycle by about 5 months. The unsmoothed diffusion index ticked up in November, but (a) that's based only on those data which were available, and (b) small blips in diffusion indices can be revised away as more data become available, and (c) it's just one month. However, if this is the low for the diffusion index, it nevertheless indicates that, for at least the next 5 or 6 months, the US economy will be slowing. None of these indices gives pin-point timing or extent of the swings in the business cycle. However, they do give strong rough indications of what's happening. My guess is that the US economy will be weak or even declining until the middle of next year. But as I have said before, this is the first recession in my long professional experience caused by the extreme incompetence of the party and politicians in office, and by damaging policies, rather than by the strong ebbs and flows of the economy, so who knows?

The new US national security strategy codifies a seismic shift in transatlantic relations, say experts

The vast waters in Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre have turned pink, offering a rare spectacle that can be seen from space.

Eyal Zamir said Israel would hold on to current positions, giving it control of more than half of the territory

The latest data from Challenger show that layoffs fell in November, after a spike in October. These data are not seasonally adjusted, and also show large month to month "spikes". So I have fitted a centred 5-month moving average to the data. This moving average (see chart below) points to a big jump in layoffs after Trump's election, an improvement up to July and deterioration since then. I have estimated a provisional seasonally-adjusted version of the Challenger layoff data, and it produces the same pattern. [Why not a _final_ seasonally adjusted series? Because I want to run some statistical tests, to confirm seasonality, and it's late at night, so that will have to wait for tomorrow. Meanwhile .....] If you look at the average of the unadjusted data over the last 12 months, the last time layoffs were this high was during the Covid Crash, and the time before that was during the GFC in 2009! Don't be misled by one month's improvement. The trend is still bad: layoffs are rising, despite the apparent drop in November. --- Note inverted scale for job cuts

--- (Source) From SciTechDaily **** > **A new study led by researchers at the University of Otago, Faculty of Medicine – Christchurch (Ōtautahi), has revealed that the skin’s ability to produce collagen and renew itself is directly influenced by how much vitamin C a person consumes.** > > **According to findings published in the _Journal of Investigative Dermatology_ , the amount of vitamin C present in the skin closely mirrors the level circulating in the blood (plasma). The researchers also found that these levels can rise through greater fruit consumption.** > > **The investigation involved two dozen healthy adults from Aotearoa, (New Zealand) and Germany. Participants who ate two vitamin C-rich SunGold kiwifruit each day showed an increase in plasma vitamin C, which in turn raised the vitamin’s concentration in the skin. This change supported greater skin thickness (collagen production) and encouraged renewal and regeneration in the outer layers of the skin.** > > **Lead author Professor Margreet Vissers from Mātai Hāora (Centre for Redox Biology and Medicine, part of the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine), describes the connection between vitamin C intake and skin thickness as “compelling.”** > > **“We were surprised by the tight correlation between plasma vitamin C levels and those in the skin – this was much more marked than in any other organ we have investigated,” Professor Vissers says.** > > **“We are the first to demonstrate that vitamin C in the blood circulation penetrates all layers of the skin and is associated with improved skin function. I am very proud of my team and excited about what the data is telling us.”** > > ## _Dietary Vitamin C More Effective Than Topical Forms_ > > **Professor Vissers says the study results suggest that beauty really does come from within, supporting your skin function from the inside-out by delivering vitamin C to the skin the way nature designed it – via the bloodstream.** > > **“We know that vitamin C is required for collagen production. This fact has inspired the addition of vitamin C to many skin cream formulations. However, vitamin C is highly water-soluble and poorly absorbed through the outer skin barrier. Our study shows that the skin is extremely good at absorbing vitamin C from the blood circulation. Uptake into the outer epidermal skin layer also seems to be prioritized,” she says.** > > **Funded by New Zealand company Zespri International, along with a University of Otago Research Grant, the study comprised two stages. The first stage established the association between plasma and skin vitamin C levels, using healthy skin tissue from patients undergoing elective surgical procedures at Te Whatu Ora Canterbury (with support from the Otago campus’s He Taonga Tapu – Canterbury Cancer Society Tissue Bank).** > > **The second stage involved a before-and-after, dietary vitamin C intervention study at two sites (in Christchurch and Germany), each with 12 healthy participants.** > > **“All were instructed to consume two Kiwi Gold kiwifruit daily – the equivalent of 250 micrograms of vitamin C – for eight weeks. We then collected skin samples before and after the intervention, with separate analyses allowing us to look at the skin basal layers in Christchurch and the outer dermal skin layer and skin function tests in Germany,” Professor Vissers explains.** > > ### _Advanced Skin Testing Confirms Structural Improvements_ > > **The German participants were recruited and tested by the SGS Institute Fresenius in Hamburg, which had the technical capability to collect the outer dermal skin layer (the blister “roof”). The Institute measured skin sample regeneration – including ultrasound-tested measures of skin thickness, elasticity UV protection, and renewal of epidermal cells – giving a complete picture of skin function.** > > **“The other really substantial finding showed a significant increase in the participants’ skin thickness levels, reflecting collagen production and an upsurge in the regeneration of their epidermal cells, in other words, skin renewal,” Professor Vissers says.** > > **She says SunGoldTM kiwifruit was chosen for the trial due to its proven high vitamin C levels, but it’s anticipated that other foods rich in vitamin C, particularly fresh fruit and vegetables such as citrus, berry fruit, capsicums, and broccoli, would have similar beneficial effects.** > > **“We suggest that increasing your dietary vitamin C intake will result in effective vitamin C uptake into all compartments of the skin,” Professor Vissers says.** > > **“The important thing is to keep your plasma levels optimal, which we know can be easily achieved in a healthy person with a vitamin C intake of around 250mg per day. The body however, does not store the vitamin, so we recommend 5+ [of fruit] a day, every day, with one of those five being a high vitamin C food, as a good habit to cultivate.”** > > **Reference: “Improved Human Skin Vitamin C Levels and Skin Function after Dietary Intake of Kiwifruit: A High-Vitamin-C Food” by Juliet M. Pullar, Stephanie M. Bozonet, Dörte Segger, Astrid von Seebach, Emma Vlasiuk, Helen R. Morrin, John F. Pearson, Jeremy Simcock and Margreet C.M. Vissers, 29 October 2025,_Journal of Investigative Dermatology_. > DOI: 10.1016/j.jid.2025.10.587** They do not discuss whether vitamin C supplementation is as beneficial. The disadvantages of natural vitamin C is that fruit quickly loses its vitamins if it isn't fresh. However, frozen fruit or vegetables are usually snap-frozen immediately after picking so will contain more vitamin C.