Crypto News: Europe’s mortal threat

If water is life, then Europeans are under mortal threat.

That was the message in a nutshell transmitted today by the European Commission's scientific advisers at the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Drought conditions not seen in some places since the Renaissance are becoming the continent's new normal, with perilous knock-on effects for food security and supply chains in the European Union, the world's third-biggest economy. Water levels on European rivers have been shrinking now for six years, with farmland drying up and Alpine glaciers in retreat.

Taken together, they're creating climate feedback loops. Hotter temperatures mean more glacial melting and evaporation; less rainfall and Alpine runoff reduce river flows; dried-out water basins and shriveled vegetation create fuel for wildfire.

While heat and drought are also afflicting regions from Asia to East Africa, Europe is a climate change front-runner, warming at twice the rate as other inhabited continents, according to Copernicus. Last year was 1.4C (2.5F) warmer than normal and right on the cusp of the 1.5C temperature-increase limit that scientists have set to keep life more-or-less normal this century.

Monthly average river discharge anomalies for August 2022. Bloomberg

The European Union is looking to the skies for guidance to solve its climate conundrum, pouring billions of euros into new Earth observation space missions. The Copernicus program uses measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world for its monthly and seasonal forecasts. It's already the world's biggest provider of climate data.

But while better predictions might help farmers choose to plant drought-resistant crop varieties, or engineers plan better irrigation, they don't blunt the economic pain of climate change when it happens.

Like an unwelcome guest who refuses to leave, global warming has settled in to Europe and is here to stay. This is what adapting to a hotter Earth looks like. — Jonathan Tirone

An exposed riverbed due to low waters caused by drought on the Rhine. Photographer: Peter Boer/Bloomberg

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Micromanager-in-chief is how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is known, and for good reason. From the cost of credit to the way produce is sold, the president and his inner circle control almost every aspect of the $900 billion economy. Now, after two decades in power, he faces the test of his political life in May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections.

The ballots come as the nation faces a cost-of-living crisis and struggles to recover from catastrophic twin earthquakes that triggered public anger over the government's response.

After drawing criticism for saying Europe shouldn't rush to help Taiwan in the event of conflict with China, French President Emmanuel Macron is encountering turbulence over his drive to win Beijing's help for talks between Russia and Ukraine.

Ukraine is looking for investors brave enough to buy government-run enterprises from utilities to a fertilizer producer at distressed prices.
Follow our rolling coverage of the war in Ukraine here.

Britain has an inflation problem that's making decisions more difficult for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Bank of England. The seventh month of double-digit price growth indicates that the worst cost-of-living squeeze in more than a generation is continuing in the year before Sunak is likely to call the next election.

Donald Trump ally Jim Jordan, the head of the US House Judiciary Committee, will get a chance to grill a former prosecutor about the criminal case against the ex-president. A judge that Trump appointed rejected arguments by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who tried to prevent the inquiry of Mark Pomerantz, the author of a book with details of the investigation.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy proposed a bill that would raise the US debt limit by $1.5 tillion for about a year and cut federal spending, ahead of a planned House vote on the Republican proposal next week.

A vow to reclaim Thailand's "lost decade" under military-backed rule has propelled the Move Forward Party ahead in opinion polls before May 14 elections as it pledges sweeping reforms to revitalize Southeast Asia's second-largest economy. Party leader Pita Limjaroenrat, a 42-year-old alumnus of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is promising to drive economic activity beyond the capital Bangkok, dismantle monopolies and reduce the influence of the armed forces in politics to end a cycle of coups.

Old divisions in Northern Ireland are being laid bare, with the Democratic Unionist Party's refusal to rejoin a power-sharing government that lies at the heart of a peace accord and is seen as a model for conflict resolution around the world. The political standoff follows celebrations where US presidents past and present flew in to join British, Irish and local leaders to mark 25 years of peace since the region's violent "Troubles."

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Japan, Germany and other nations are struggling to evacuate their citizens from Sudan as fighting between the army and a paramilitary group continues.
Cocaine, migration and Venezuela will be high on the agenda when US President Joe Biden hosts Colombian leader Gustavo Petro today at the White House.
The prospect of a fired Fox News producer's secret recordings being played during a trial helped push the network to settle a defamation suit for $787.5 million over its broadcasting false 2020 election-fraud claims, sources say.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made an important decision during his visit with Xi Jinping last week: He'll accelerate plans to move Latin America's largest economy closer to China, and he doesn't care if it upsets the US.
Italian officials hinted in private talks with Taiwan that they may be willing to pull out of a controversial pact with China as they look to secure help with semiconductors, sources say.

And finally ... Russia is maintaining a campaign of cyberattacks and disinformation against Moldova that started on the eve of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Officials describe it is as a deliberate attempt to undermine a government friendly to the West in a country abutting the war zone. "They want to scare the population to infuse a constant sense of panic, of fear," Internal Affairs Minister Ana Revenco said.