The head of the European Commission said Wednesday that the bloc was too reliant on gas and gas imports with the rise of electricity prices in Europe because of the demand for natural gas.

Ursula von der Leyen said the world was affected by an energy price spike but that there was something specific to the situation in Europe.

"We are too reliant on gas, too dependent on gas imports. It makes us vulnerable. We need to diversify suppliers but crucially, speed up the transition to clean energy," she wrote on Twitter.

She emphasized that Europeans expected a quick response and that the EU’s priority is to give relief to vulnerable families and businesses.

"Under EU rules, Member States can take measures swiftly. This includes state aid, targeted support to consumers and cuts to energy taxes," she said.

Pointing out that the EU Commission will take action to end speculation in energy markets, von der Leyen said the bloc will evaluate the functioning of the electricity market and contact new gas suppliers.

She said the EU also evaluated the possibility of creating strategic gas reserves and purchasing gas jointly and that it accelerated renewable investments.

The recent economic recovery at the global level has increased the demand for natural gas worldwide and prices have risen rapidly as the natural gas supply remained stable.

In Europe, where approximately 20% of electricity production is met from natural gas, the decrease in electricity production in hydroelectric power plants due to drought and the decrease in electricity generation from wind energy, necessarily increased the share of gas in production. Electricity prices in Europe also climbed rapidly due to rising natural gas prices and rising demand.

With the arrival of the winter, natural gas demand and electricity prices in Europe are expected to increase even more. Consumers are also complaining about rising natural gas and electricity prices.

EU states leaders will also discuss the increase in energy prices at the EU Leaders' Summit in Brussels on Oct. 21-22./agencies

Members of the G7, who are well placed to fully decarbonize their electricity supply by 2035, could serve as the first movers in lowering the cost of technologies for other countries while maintaining electricity security, according to a report the International Energy Agency (IEA) released on Wednesday.

​​​​​​​Requested by Britain, which holds the G7 Presidency this year, the Achieving Net Zero Electricity Sectors in G7 Members report builds on the IEA’s Roadmap to Net Zero by 2050 report published in May to identify key milestones, challenges and opportunities for G7 members.

At the G7 summit this June, the leaders of Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US plus the European Union committed to reaching "an overwhelmingly decarbonized" power system in the 2030s and net zero emissions across their economies no later than 2050.

G7 countries currently account for about 40% of the global economy, 36% of global power generation capacity, 30% of global energy demand and 25% of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, the report noted.

The agency said the electricity sector now accounts for one-third of the G7's energy-related emissions, down from a peak of nearly two-fifths in 2007.

Natural gas and renewables were the primary sources of electricity in the G7 in 2020, as each provides about 30% of the total with nuclear and coal nearly 20% each.

Renewables need to provide 60% of the G7's electricity supply by 2030, whereas under the current policies the countries are on track to reach only 48%.

"The G7 has an opportunity to demonstrate that electricity systems with 100% renewables during specific periods of the year and in certain locations can be secure and affordable. At the same time, increased reliance on renewables does require the G7 to lead the way in finding solutions to maintain electricity security, including seasonal storage and more flexible and robust grids," the report said.

According to the IEA's pathway to net zero by 2050, innovation delivers 30% of G7 electricity sector emissions reduction to 2050, requiring international collaboration while creating technology leadership opportunities for G7 countries.

Decarbonizing electricity could create 2.6M jobs in G7 countries

The report underlined that people need to be placed at the center of all clean electricity transitions, and that decarbonizing electricity could create as many as 2.6 million jobs in the G7 over the next decade.

However, as many as 300,000 jobs could be lost at fossil fuel power plants, which could have profound local impact, demanding strong and sustained policy attention to cushion the fallout on individuals and communities.

"G7 members have the financial and technological means to bring electricity sector emissions to net zero in the 2030s and doing so will create numerous spill-over benefits for other countries' clean energy transitions and add momentum to global efforts to reach net zero emissions by 2050," Fatih Birol, the IEA's executive director, was quoted as saying.

"G7 leadership in this crucial endeavour would demonstrate that getting to electricity sectors with net zero emissions is both doable and advantageous, and would also drive new innovations that can benefit businesses and consumers," underlined Birol, a Turkish economist and energy expert.

Peter Altmaier, Germany's federal minister for economic affairs and energy, said the path to climate neutrality could only be achieved together with joint and decisive action.

"Our way towards climate neutrality is ambitious, but necessary. We need to act together with clear, joint and decisive action. The energy sector plays clearly a key role on our way to climate neutrality. Solutions are at hand, such as the exit from coal-fired power generation in Germany and other countries," he said./agencies

Germany on Wednesday reaffirmed the need for a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear row amid the latest Israeli military threats.

Asked about Berlin's reaction to comments by [Israel's] Chief of General Staff Aviv Kohavi who said his country accelerated plans for a potential strike on Iran, Deputy Foreign Ministry spokesman Christofer Burger told media representatives in Berlin, "We have taken note of these statements. They (statements) stand for themselves. We are working on a diplomatic solution."

"Israel" also approved a $1.5 billion budget to be used to prepare its military for a potential strike against Iran’s nuclear program, according to [Israel's] Channel 12 on Monday.

Burger stressed it was "very important" that Tehran swiftly return to the nuclear talks in Vienna.

The EU stepped up diplomatic efforts to get Iran and the US back to the negotiation table.

The last round of negotiations on resuming talks took place in Vienna in June.

The nuclear deal was signed in 2015 by Iran, the US, China, Russia, France, the UK, Germany, and the EU.

Under the agreement, Tehran committed to limiting its nuclear activity to civilian purposes and in return, world powers agreed to drop economic sanctions against Iran.

But the US, under former President Donald Trump, unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran, prompting Tehran to stop complying with the deal./agencies

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Wednesday fined Facebook £50 million ($69 million) for breaching an order during its investigation into the social networking giant’s purchase of Giphy, a GIF platform.

Facebook in June 2020 was ordered by the CMA to continue to compete with Giphy, and not integrate the platform while the investigation was ongoing.

The CMA said that the social networking platform had deliberately failed to comply with its order by significantly limiting the scope of its updates about compliance with the order, despite repeated warnings.

This, the competitions watchdog said, fundamentally undermined its ability to prevent, monitor, and correct any issues.

“Initial enforcement orders are a key part of the UK’s voluntary merger control regime. Companies are not required to seek CMA approval before they complete an acquisition, but if they decide to go ahead with a merger, we can stop the companies from integrating further if we think consumers might be affected and an investigation is needed," said Joel Bamford, senior director of mergers at the CMA.

“We warned Facebook that its refusal to provide us with important information was a breach of the order, but even after losing its appeal in two separate courts, Facebook continued to disregard its legal obligations,” the official added.

Bamford said the fine "should serve as a warning to any company that thinks it is above the law."

In response, Facebook hit out at the competition regulator, saying it disagrees with the "unfair decision." "We strongly disagree with the CMA's unfair decision to punish Facebook for a best effort compliance approach, which the CMA itself ultimately approved,” a spokesperson said. "We will review the CMA's decision and consider our options."

Separately, the CMA said it fined Facebook £500,000 ($690,000) for changing its chief compliance officer on two separate occasions, without seeking consent first.​​​​​​

The development comes amid reports that Facebook plans to rebrand and focus on building the metaverse, the next version of the internet.

Facebook is already under severe criticism over leaks from whistleblower Frances Haugen who accused CEO Mark Zuckerberg of pushing for higher profits while not showing concern about user safety.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, the apps owned by Facebook, stopped working for millions of users worldwide for more than six hours, an outage blamed on “faulty configuration change.”​/agencies

The White House on Wednesday unveiled a plan to vaccinate children between the of ages 5 to 11 against the coronavirus, currently under consideration by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

"Millions of adolescents ages 12-17 have been safely vaccinated, and we know vaccines work," the White House said in a statement.

"Fully vaccinated individuals are 10 times less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 and have a high degree of protection, including against the Delta variant," it added.

President Joe Biden’s administration has procured enough shots to vaccinate the 28 million children ages 5-11 years old with a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine if authorized by the FDA and recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it said.

The administration said it is also launching a partnership with the Children’s Hospital Association to work with more than 100 children’s hospital systems across the US to set up vaccination sites from November through the end of the year.

"Parents know and trust children’s hospitals to be there for their children’s medical needs, and these vaccination efforts will be no different. Pediatricians, pediatric specialists, nurses and team members will administer the vaccine to kids in trusted, family-friendly settings that serve kids every day," the statement said.

Distributions of the vaccines will be made via clinics at doctors’ offices, hospitals, pharmacies, community health centers and school- and community-based sites, it added.

The decision to vaccinate children of ages 5 to 11 comes before the FDA’s advisory committee meeting on Oct. 26 and the CDC’s meeting on Nov. 2-3.

The White House said 189 million Americans, or 2 in 3 eligible individuals, are fully vaccinated./agencies

The price of Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $66,000 on Wednesday, fueled by its first-ever exchange-traded fund (ETF), according to official data.

Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market cap, saw its price climbing to $66,200 level at 9.45 a.m. EDT (1345GMT), the data showed.

The new record came amid the much-anticipated first Bitcoin-linked ETF started trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday with a ticker BITO.

BITO closed Tuesday at $41.94, up 4.85% from its initial price of $40, while it saw a $1-billion trading volume on the first day of trading, bringing in around $570 million of assets on its debut.

The last time Bitcoin broke a record above the key resistance level of $64,000 came on April 14, according to the data.

Between April and July, however, the price of Bitcoin had plummeted by more than 50%, diving to below $30,000 on July 20, to as low as $29,341.

Cryptocurrencies lost more than half of their values during those three months in a major market selloff.

Since July, the Bitcoin-led crypto market has recovered.

The total value of the crypto market stood just above $2.56 trillion, with Bitcoin dominating with a 47.4% share at 9.45 a.m. EDT (1345 GMT) on Wednesday, according to the latest data by digital asset price-tracking website CoinMarketCap./agencies

The National Museum of Slavery in Angola's capital Luanda reflects the history of slavery that gravely damaged the country and disrupted the social fabric in the past.

Although Angola has the third largest economy among Sub-Saharan African countries, the exploitation system and slave trade of Western countries, which inflicted heavy damage on the country in the past, are cited as one of the biggest reasons why at least one-third of its population of approximately 30 million live in poverty.

The National Museum of Slavery in the Morro da Cruz region displays the history of slavery.

According to the records, a British pirate ship – with more than 20 Angolans on board, who were forcibly detained from a Portuguese ship – anchored at Point Comfort, Chesapeake Bay on the east coast of the US in August 1619.

The arrival of these Angolans in Virginia 400 years ago is considered the beginning of the slavery that lasted for more than 200 years in the US.

Although most of the slaves in Africa were taken from Ghana and Senegal, it is known that more than 5 million slaves came from Angola, and a quarter of approximately 400,000 Africans sent to North America were colonized by the Portuguese who dominated the slave trade for decades.

Features recent history of southern African country

The Slavery Museum was built in 1977 by the Culture and Tourism Ministry in order not to forget the slavery that had caused great harm to Angola, which gained its independence in 1975, and ruined the social fabric in the past.

Located on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, the museum neighbors the Mussulo island and Kwanza River, an important trade route where victims of the slave trade lived in the past.

The museum, which was quickly renovated after it was damaged during the civil war, hosts thousands of foreign visitors from Portugal, Germany, Spain, and Russia, especially from the US.

The artifacts depict the scenes where slaves were put on ships to be transported to America. There are shackles that slaves were tied to on ships, iron weights, sculptures featuring the slaves, models of ships from the slave trade period, weapons and materials used in daily life at that time.

The museum also houses cauldrons from the 18th century where Africans, who were forced to convert by their Portuguese "masters", were baptized while they were waiting for their boarding ship.

The museum, which also includes many souvenir shops, can be visited for $1.70./agencies

Governments worldwide plan to produce more than double the quantity of fossil fuels by 2030 than what would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C despite more climate ambitions and net zero commitments, the 2021 Production Gap Report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) along with research institutes finds Wednesday.

First launched in 2019, the report measures the gap between the planned production of coal, oil and gas in governments' plans and the global production levels consistent with meeting the Paris Agreement temperature limits.

Two years later, the 2021 report provided country profiles for 15 major producer countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and US shows that most of these governments continue to provide significant policy support for fossil fuel production with the production gap largely unchanged.

The report was prepared by UNEP, the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and E3G with more than 40 researchers contributing to the analysis and with a review from several universities, think tanks and other research bodies.

- Coal to see largest production growth in stark contrast with coal phase-out plans

The report finds that governments are collectively projecting an increase in global oil and gas production and only a modest decrease in coal production. It forecasts an increase in total fossil fuel production out to at least 2040 taking the governments' plans and projections collectively into consideration.

It further warns that such an increase will create an ever-widening production gap.

'Recent announcements by the world’s largest economies to end international financing of coal are a much-needed step in phasing out fossil fuels. But as this report starkly shows, there is still a long way to go to a clean energy future,' UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

Governments plan to produce 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C and 45% more than consistent with 2°C, the report calculates.

In terms of fuel-based breakdown, production plans and projections would lead to about 240% more coal, 57% more oil and 71% more gas in 2030 than would be consistent with global warming to 1.5°C.

In response, Guterres called on the remaining public financiers as well as private finance, including commercial banks and asset managers to urgently switch their funding from coal to renewables to promote full decarbonization of the power sector and access to renewable energy for all.

- Call for rapid and immediate steps to close fossil fuel production

Although international public finance for the production of fossil fuels from G20 countries and major multilateral development banks has significantly dropped in recent years, new funding provided to fossil fuel activities by countries since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic accounts for more than that channeled to clean energy, reaching over $300 billion.

The report envisages that global gas production will increase the most between 2020 and 2040 based on governmental plans, which if realized would be inconsistent with the Paris Agreement's temperature limits.

Executive Director of UNEP, Inger Andersen, called on governments to take rapid and immediate steps to close fossil fuel production and ensure a just and equitable transition given that 'the devastating impacts of climate change are here for all to see.”

She further cautioned that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing to limit long-term warming to 1.5°C.

Ploy Achakulwisut, a lead author of the report and SEI scientist, similarly stressed that global coal, oil and gas production needs to start declining immediately and steeply to be consistent with the long-term target of limiting the global temperature increase by 1.5°C.

'However, governments continue to plan for and support levels of fossil fuel production that are vastly in excess of what we can safely burn,' she said./agencies

Oil prices dropped on Wednesday over an increase in US crude oil inventories and China's planned intervention to curb record-high coal prices.

International benchmark Brent crude was trading at $84.21 per barrel at 07.54 GMT for a 1.02% decrease after closing Tuesday at $85.08 a barrel.

American benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) traded at $81.61 a barrel at the same time for a 1.01% fall after ending the previous session at $82.44 per barrel.

According to the American Petroleum Institute (API), US oil stocks are forecast to increase by about 3.3 million barrels, well above the market expectation of a 2.2 million-barrel build. The increase indicates that supply is recovering and demand is falling in the world’s largest oil-producing and consuming country.

Investors are now awaiting inventory data from the Energy Information Administration due later on Wednesday.

Moreover, the news flow of the Chinese government's intention to intervene to curb record-high coal prices, as well as ensure coal mines operate at full capacity to ease power shortages, also pressured oil prices.

In China, which generates a substantial share of its electricity production from coal, prices reached record highs due to rising demand and energy supply concerns ahead of the winter season.

Oil prices, in general, remain supported on the back of the global energy crunch, which is making oil a more desirable alternative for power generation before the winter heating season, triggering demand concerns and outstripping supply./agencies

The head of the Kuwait Anti-Doping Agency, Dr Bader Al- Laili, said that the agency is working to complete all the foundational steps and finalize the formation of field teams to start the procedures for detecting doping on athletes in accordance with the rules in force at the World Anti- Doping Agency (WADA). Al-Laili affirmed to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), Sunday, after presiding over the second meeting of the (Anti- Doping) Board of Directors, keenness to coordinate with sports federations and clubs for the success of the agency’s goal of preserving the health of athletes, consolidating the principle of sportsmanship and promoting fair and fair sports competitions.

He added that the agency is open to cooperating with state institutions and civil society organizations and activating its role in this regard, especially by exchanging information and spreading awareness of the need to stay away from prohibited substances, noting that, in implementation of this approach, the meeting agreed to conclude a cooperation protocol between the agency and the Kuwaiti Olympic Committee. He pointed out that the meeting approved the executive regulations for the agency’s work, as well as the financial regulations and the approval of the draft budget (2022/2023), in addition to discussing some matters that would make the goals successful. He affirmed the commitment to implement doping control programs with the highest approved standards and to work on holding awareness and education programs about the danger of doping on the athlete and the sports movement with officials of clubs and sports federations.

For her part, Director General of Anti-Doping Agency Hana Al- Bati said in a similar statement to (KUNA) that they are in the process of developing a clear strategy in everything related to anti-doping, especially in the rehabilitation of medical, technical and administrative cadres that will work through teams to implement antidoping control programs in local and regional championships, and international events that are held on the land of Kuwait. Al-Bati stated that it was agreed with (WADA) to train these cadres and qualify them to carry out their work through training courses that include specialized programs in this regard, whether those who previously worked in the field of anti-doping or the new ones, noting that the first course will be held electronically (remotely) on October 25. She explained that the anti-doping rules have been finalized in accordance with the standards in force in WADA, in preparation for their dissemination in the sports community, stressing the need for clubs, federations and sports committees to follow these rules to protect their players from being prohibited unintentionally daue to a lack of knowledge of these rules.

SOURCE  ARABTIMES