Czech president pardons soldiers prosecuted in death of Afghan soldier
FILE PHOTO: Czech President Petr Pavel, arrives for a meeting with international investors in IA at the Elysee Palace as part of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit in Paris, France, February 10, 2025. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
an hour ago
- The Star
Rio Tinto confident lithium will retain its battery metal crown
Lithium's low price may be its best defence in fighting off challenges from other materials. — Reuters IT'S a tough time to be a lithium producer as the light metal sinks under the weight of excess supply. Lithium hydroxide prices have collapsed by 90% from their 2022 peak and show no signs of recovery. Multiple producers are now operating at zero or negative margins, according to consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Even giants like Albemarle, the world's largest producer of the battery metal, have been cutting costs and deferring new projects to weather the supply storm. Rio Tinto, however, is undaunted. The global mining house remains 'consistent in its belief in the long-term outlook for lithium'. The company is putting its money where its mouth is, snapping up US-based producer Arcadium for US$6.7bil and partnering with Chilean state entities on two projects. It's a big call, given the current despondency in the market, but Rio believes demand will be strong enough both to absorb the current excess and pull the market into deficit around the turn of the decade. It's a bet that lithium will remain the dominant battery metal in a fast-changing landscape. The weakness in the lithium price results from too much new supply hitting the market at the same time. Global lithium production grew by over 35% year-on-year in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). New mines are still ramping up and Chinese players show little appetite for cutting production. The supply tsunami, however, masks the strength of lithium demand. The IEA estimates global usage grew by 30% last year, the increase being equivalent to the size of the entire global market in 2018. The electric vehicle (EV) sector, the biggest user of lithium-ion batteries, is in robust health. Sales of new energy vehicles rose by 25% last year and were up by 29% in the first quarter of this year, according to consultancy Rho Motion. Lithium use in energy storage systems is growing even faster as global power systems pivot towards cleaner but intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind. Rio Tinto said it expects demand to grow at a compound annual rate of over 10% through 2040. The main threat to that scenario would be a shift in battery chemistry as manufacturers compete to produce ever cheaper, more efficient batteries. There has already been a big shift away from more expensive battery metals such as cobalt and nickel but to date lithium has maintained its status as the dominant ingredient in the chemistry mix. The amount of nickel and cobalt deployed in new energy vehicles was up by just 12% and 2% year-on-year respectively in March, according to Adamas Intelligence. But lithium deployment was up by 30%, matching the overall EV sales growth rate. The battery materials battle, however, is far from over. Chinese giant CATL has been pioneering the development of sodium-ion batteries. The latest iteration, Naxtra, will almost match in efficiency the lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries that are displacing nickel-manganese-cobalt or NCM chemistries. CATL's billionaire founder Robin Zeng sees sodium-ion batteries potentially replacing up to half the market for LFP batteries. The IEA is less sure, noting that sodium-ion batteries are most competitive in a high lithium price environment, which the current one is certainly not. Lithium's low price may be its best defence in fighting off challenges from other materials. Furthemore, it is also causing battery prices to fall, making new energy vehicles cheaper. Average battery pack prices fell by 20% to a record low of US$115 per kilowatt-hour in 2024, the largest annual drop since 2017, according to the IEA. — Reuters Andy Home is a columnist for Reuters. The views expressed here are the writer's own.
The Star
an hour ago
- The Star
North Korea's Kim vows 'unconditional support' for Russia's war in Ukraine
Military members salute during a military demonstration involving tank units, guided by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (not pictured), in North Korea, March 13, 2024 in this picture released on March 14, 2024, by the Korean Central News Agency. - KCNA via Reuters SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to "unconditionally support" Russia in its war in Ukraine and said he expected Moscow to emerge victorious, Pyongyang's state media said Thursday (June 5). North Korea has become one of Moscow's main allies during its more than three-year Ukraine offensive, sending thousands of troops and container-loads of weapons to help the Kremlin oust Ukrainian forces from Russia's Kursk border region. Meeting top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday, Kim said that Pyongyang would "unconditionally support the stand of Russia and its foreign policies in all the crucial international political issues including the Ukrainian issue", the Korean Central News Agency reported. Kim "expressed expectation and conviction that Russia would, as ever, surely win victory in the sacred cause of justice", KCNA said. The two sides agreed to "continue to dynamically expand" relations, the state news agency reported. Russia and North Korea signed a sweeping military deal last year, including a mutual defence clause, during a rare visit by Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the nuclear-armed North. Shoigu hailed the deal as "fully meeting the interests of both countries" during a visit in March. Around 600 North Korean soldiers have been killed and thousands more wounded fighting for Russia, according to South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun, citing the country's intelligence service. North Korea in April confirmed for the first time that it had deployed troops to Russia to support Moscow's war in Ukraine - and admitted that its troops had been killed in combat. South Korea has also accused the nuclear-armed North of sending significant volumes of weapons, including missiles, to help Russia's war effort. The visit was Shoigu's second to Pyongyang in less than three months. A multilateral sanctions monitoring group including South Korea, the United States, Japan and eight other countries last week condemned ties between Russia and North Korea as "unlawful". According to the group, Russian-flagged cargo vessels delivered as many as "nine million rounds of mixed artillery and multiple rocket launcher ammunition" from North Korea to Russia last year. In return, "Russia is believed to have provided North Korea with air defence equipment and anti-aircraft missiles", it said. The meeting between Kim and Shoigu in Pyongyang came the same day the North's arch-enemy South Korea swore in new president Lee Jae-myung. In a speech upon taking office Wednesday, Lee vowed to reach out to the North - a marked departure from his hawkish predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol, under whom relations plummeted to their worst level in years. Lee said Seoul would "deter North Korean nuclear and military provocations while opening communication channels and pursuing dialogue and cooperation to build peace on the Korean Peninsula". KCNA reported on Lee's inauguration in a two-line report on Thursday but did not respond to his overtures for talks. It also issued a commentary Thursday slamming French President Emmanuel Macron over "imprudent" comments on Pyongyang's ties with Moscow, calling them "shocking claptrap". The commentary by analyst Choe Ju Hyun took aim at comments by the French leader during the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Macron suggested that the NATO defence alliance could become involved in Asia if China did not do more to press North Korea to stop sending forces to help Russia's war in Ukraine. "It is a mistake if Macron thinks that he can cloak NATO's aggressive and wicked intention to put dirty military shoes on the Asia-Pacific region by taking issue with the DPRK-Russia cooperative relations," the commentary said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. - AFP
The Star
an hour ago
- The Star
China issues bounty for hackers it says are linked to Taiwan
BEIJING: The public security bureau in the Chinese city of Guangzhou has put up an undisclosed bounty for more than 20 people it suspects carried out cyber attacks in China, the official news agency Xinhua said on Thursday (June 5), stepping up accusations against Taipei. The authorities said the hackers were linked to the Taiwan government and named one of them as Ning Enwei. There was no information on the size of the bounty in Chinese state media. Chinese authorities accused Taiwan of organising, planning and premeditating attacks on key sectors such as military, aerospace, government departments, energy and transportation, maritime affairs, science and technology research firms in China as well as in special administration regions Hong Kong and Macau, Xinhua said. Xinhua, citing a cybersecurity report, said the Taiwan "information, communication and digital army" has cooperated with US anti-Chinese forces to conduct public opinion and cognitive warfare against China, secretly instigate revolution and attempt to disrupt public order in China. Taiwan's government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A senior Taiwan security official told Reuters that the Chinese allegations were invented, saying Beijing was trying to shift the focus from Czech and European scrutiny over alleged Chinese hacking activities there. "They fabricated a false narrative to shift the focus. It's a very typical behaviour by the Chinese Communist Party," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter. "No amount of storytelling can change the fact that Beijing is not only a regional trouble maker, but also a common international threat to the online world." China also said Taiwan had longstanding cooperation with the US National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies for the United States' "Asia-Pacific Strategy", calling it Taiwan's attempt to gain independence through relying on the United States. "The US intelligence department has long provided personnel training and technical equipment support for Taiwan's 'information, communication and digital army', and many police stations have sent 'hunting' teams to Taiwan, to launch a cyber attacks on China," according to a social media post by an account linked to Chinese state television. Last week authorities in Guangzhou, the capital of the southern Guangdong province, attributed a cyberattack on an unnamed technology company to the Taiwan government, saying Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party supported the "overseas hacker organisation" responsible. The accusation prompted Taiwan to blame China for peddling false information, saying it was China who was carrying out hacking against the island. China views Taiwan as its own territory. Taiwan's democratically elected government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims. Chinese courts and legal bodies have no jurisdiction in separately governed Taiwan, whose government has repeatedly complained about Beijing's "long armed jurisdiction" efforts. - Reuters
