We have far-left Democratic politicians who want to bring full blown socialism to the United States. They’re not ashamed of it, some of them even refer to themselves as socialists.
They say capitalism is bad. They say free markets are wrong.
Is $20 a gallon for gas wrong? Because that’s the state of communism in one of the world’s last bastions of the defeated ideology.
🗞️ Cuba increases price of gasoline by over 500% in the midst of the crisis
A liter of regular gas will rise from $0.20 to $1.10, and this is just one of the measures planned for this year, along with hikes to electricity, water and public transithttps://t.co/6RJ2teiih4
In the communist country of Cuba, the regime is going to deliberately raise the price of gasoline to astronomical heights.
Jalopnik reports, “The Cuban government has announced that it will be raising the country’s fuel prices by over 500 percent in February. Pump prices will spike from 25 Cuban pesos to 132 pesos per liter, according to the BBC.”
The story continues:
To use figures more relatable for us Americans, the prices are jumping from $3.94 per gallon to $20.86. The sharp increase paired with the opening of 29 gas stations that will exclusively accept U.S. dollars serve as a government attempt to bolster the country’s struggling economy.
It’s not a complete surprise that Cuba’s communist government is opening dollar-only gas stations. The U.S. dollar is the most widely used currency in international trade, and Cuba’s foreign currency reserve is heavily depleted. The government is hoping to use revenue from these new stations to purchase fuel on the international market.
This is what communism gets you. This is what socialism gets you. Even during the worst days of Bidenflation, our nominally mixed-market economy held gas to (for the most part) less than $5 per gallon.
And that was crushing for middle-class Americans. $20 gas would grind our entire country to a halt.
The radical leftist idea that we should somehow replicate this kind of socialism in the U.S. is something the overwhelming majority of Americans would never stand for in practice.
Cubans have regularly tried to illegally enter America on rafts in shark-infested waters for a reason.
No one in America is trying to do the same to get into Cuba.
There’s a reason for that.
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is a professional writer and editor with over 15 years of experience in conservative media and Republican politics. He has been a special guest on Fox News, Sirius XM, appeared as the guest of various popular personalities, and has had a lifelong interest in right-leaning politics.
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Western warplanes and guided missiles roared through the skies over Yemen in the early hours of Friday in a dramatic response to the worsening crisis engulfing the region, where the U.S. and its allies are facing a direct confrontation with Iranian-backed militants.
The strikes against Houthi fighters are a response to weeks of fighting in the Red Sea, where the group has attempted to attack or hijack dozens of civilian cargo ships and tankers in what it calls retribution for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. Washington launched the massive aerial bombardment of the group’s military stores and drone launch sites in partnership with British forces, and with the support of a growing coalition that includes Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, South Korea and Bahrain.
Tensions between Tehran and the West have boiled over in the weeks since its ally, Hamas, launched its October 7 attack on Israel, while Hezbollah, the military group that controls much of southern Lebanon, has stepped up rocket launches across the border. Along with Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis form part of the Iranian-led ‘Axis of Resistance’ opposed to both the U.S. and Israel.
Now, the prospect of a full-blown conflict in one of the most politically fragile and strategically important parts of the world is spooking security analysts and energy markets alike.
Escalation fears
Houthi leaders responded to the strikes, which saw American and British forces hit more than 60 targets in 16 locations, with characteristic bravado. They warned the U.S. and U.K. will “have to prepare to pay a heavy price and bear all the dire consequences” for what they called a “blatant aggression.”
“We will confront America, kneel it down, and burn its battleships and all its bases and everyone who cooperates with it, no matter what the cost,” threatened Abdulsalam Jahaf, a member of the group’s security council.
However, following the overnight operation, Camille Lons, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said there may now be “a period of calm because it may take Iran some time to replenish the Houthis stocks” before they are able to resume high-intensity attacks on Red Sea shipping. But, she cautioned, their motivation to continue to target shipping will likely be unaltered.
The Western strikes are “unlikely to immediately halt Houthi aggression,” agreed Jonathan Panikoff, a former U.S. national intelligence officer for the Near East. “That will almost certainly mean having to continue to respond to Houthi strikes, and potentially with increasing aggression.”
“The Houthis view themselves as having little to lose, emboldened militarily by Iranian provisions of support and confident the U.S. will not entertain a ground war,” he said.
Iran also upped the ante earlier this week by boarding and commandeering a Greek-operated oil tanker that was loaded with Iraqi crude destined for Turkey, intercepting it as it transited the Strait of Hormuz. The vessel, the St. Nikolas, was previously apprehended for violating sanctions on Iranian oil and its cargo was confiscated and sold off by the U.S. Treasury Department. Its Greek captain and crew of 18 Filipino nationals are now in Iranian custody, with the incident marking a sharp escalation in the threats facing maritime traffic.
Israeli connection
Washington and London are striving to distinguish their bid to deter the Houthis in the Red Sea from the war in Gaza, fearful that merging the two will hand Tehran a propaganda advantage in the Middle East. The Houthis and Iran are keen to accomplish the reverse.
The Houthi leadership claims its attacks on maritime traffic are aimed at pressuring Israel to halt its bombing of the Gaza Strip and it insists it is only targeting commercial vessels linked to Israel or destined to dock at the Israeli port of Eilat, a point contested by Western powers.
“The Houthis claim that their attacks on military and civilian vessels are somehow tied to the ongoing conflict in Gaza — that is completely baseless and illegitimate. The Houthis also claim to be targeting specifically Israeli-owned ships or ships bound for Israel. That is simply not true, they are firing indiscriminately on vessels with global ties,” a senior U.S. official briefing reporters in Washington said Friday.
Wider Near East crisis
The Red Sea isn’t the only hotspot where American and European forces and their allies are facing off against Iran and its partners.
In November, U.S. F-15 fighter jets hit a weapons storage facility in eastern Syria that the Pentagon says was used by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Shia militants it supports in the war-torn country. The response came after dozens of American troops were reportedly injured in attacks in Iraq and Syria linked back to Tehran.
Israel’s war with Hamas has also risked spreading, after a blast killed one of the militant group’s commanders in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, earlier in January. Hezbollah vowed a swift response and tensions have soared along the border between the two countries, with Israeli civilians evacuated from their homes in towns and villages close to the frontier.
All of that contributes to an increasingly volatile environment that has neighboring countries worried, said Christian Koch, director at the Saudi Arabia-based Gulf Research Center.
“There’s a lot at stake at the moment and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and others are extremely worried about further escalation and then being subject to retaliation,” he said. “Now, the danger of regional escalation has been heightened further, which could mean that Iran will get further involved in the conflict, and this is a dangerous spiral downwards.”
While long-planned efforts to normalize ties between the Saudis and Israel collapsed in the wake of the October 7 attack and the subsequent military response, Riyadh has pushed forward with a policy of de-escalation with the Houthis after a decade of violent conflict, and sought an almost unprecedented rapprochement with Iran.
“Saudi Arabia has had one objective, which is to prevent this from escalating into a wider regional war,” said Tobias Borck, an expert on Middle East security at the Royal United Services Institute. “It has attempted over the last few years to bring its intervention in the war in Yemen to a close, including through negotiations with the Houthis and actually from all we know from the outside, [they] are reasonably close to an agreement.”
The Western coalition is therefore a source of anxiety, rather than relief, for Gulf States.
“Saudi Arabia and UAE are staying out of this coalition because mainly they don’t want to have the Houthis attack them as they had been for years and years with cruise missiles,” said retired U.S. General Mark Kimmitt, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. However, American or European boots on the ground are unlikely to be necessary, he added, because “our capabilities these days to find, fix and attack even mobile missile launchers is pretty well refined.”
Far-reaching consequences
At the intersection of Europe and Asia, the Red Sea is a vital thoroughfare for energy and international trade. Maritime traffic through the region has already dropped by 20 percent, Rear Admiral Emmanuel Slaars, the joint commander of French forces in the region, told reporters on Thursday.
According to data published this week by the German IfW Kiel institute, global trade fell by 1.3 percent from November to December, with the Houthi attacks likely to have been a contributing factor.
The volume of containers in the Red Sea also plummeted and is currently almost 70 percent below usual, the institute said. In December, that caused freight costs and transportation time to rise and imports and exports from the EU to be “significantly lower” than in November.
In one indication of the impact on industrial supply chains, U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla said Friday it would shut its factory in Germany for two weeks.
Around 12 percent of the world’s oil and 8 percent of its gas normally flow through the waterway, as well as hundreds of cargo ships. Oil prices climbed more than 2.5 percent following the strikes, fueling market concerns of the impact a wider conflict could have on oil supplies from the region, especially those being shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, linking the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean and the world’s most important oil chokepoint.
The Houthi attacks on the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest waterways, have already caused major shipping companies, including oil giant BP, to halt shipments through the Red Sea, opting for a lengthy detour around the Cape of Good Hope instead.
According to Borck, the impact on energy prices has been limited so far but will depend on what happens next.
“We need to look for two actors’ actions here. One is the Houthis, how they respond, and the other one is, of course, looking at how Iran responds,” he said. While Tehran has the “nuclear option” of closing the Strait of Hormuz altogether, it’s unlikely to do so at this stage.
“I don’t think the Strait of Hormuz is next. I think there would be quite a few steps on the escalation ladder first,” he added.
But Simone Tagliapietra, an energy expert at Brussels’ Bruegel think tank, warned that a growing confrontation with Iran could lead to tougher enforcement of sanctions on its oil exports. The West has turned a blind eye to Tehran’s increasing sales to China in the wake of the war in Ukraine, which has relieved some pressure on global energy markets.
A crackdown, he believes, “could see global oil prices rising substantially, pushing inflation higher and further complicating the efforts of central banks to bring it under control.”
However, Saudi Arabia and the UAE could help compensate for such a move by ramping up their own production — provided they’re willing to risk the ire of Iran.
Gabriel Gavin reported from Yerevan, Armenia. Antonia Zimmermann from Brussels and Jamie Dettmer from Tel-Aviv.
Laura Kayali contributed reporting from Paris.
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Gabriel Gavin, Antonia Zimmermann and Jamie Dettmer
It’s that time of year again: Leaders, business titans, philanthropists and celebs descend on the Swiss ski town of Davos to discuss the fate of the world and do deals/shots with the global elite at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
This year’s theme: “Rebuilding trust.” Prescient, given the dumpster fire the world seems to be turning into lately, both literally (climate change) and figuratively (where to even begin?).
As always, the Davos great and good will be rubbing shoulders with some of the world’s absolute top-drawer dirtbags. While there’s been a distinct dearth of Russian oligarchs in attendance at the WEF since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Donald Trump will be tied up with the Iowa caucus, there are still plenty of would-be autocrats, dictators, thugs, extortionists, misery merchants, spoilers and political pariahs on the Davos guest list.
1. Argentine President Javier Milei
Known as the Donald Trump of Argentina — and also as “The Madman” and “The Wig” — the chainsaw-wielding Javier Milei has it all: a fanatical supporter base, background as a TV shock jock, libertarian anarcho-capitalist policies (except when it comes to abortion), and a … memorable … hairdo.
A long-time Davos devotee (he’s been attending the WEF for years), Milei’s libertarian policies have turned from kooky thought bubbles to concerning reality after he was elected president of South America’s second-largest economy, riding a wave of discontent with the political establishment (sound familiar?). The question now is how far Milei will go in delivering on his campaign promises to hack back public service and state spending, close the Argentine central bank and drop the peso.
If you do get stuck talking to Milei in the congress center or on the slopes, here are some conversation starters …
Rumor has it that Mohammed bin Salman will make his first in-person WEF appearance at this year’s event, accompanied by a giant posse of top Saudi officials.
It’s the ultimate redemption arc for the repressive authoritarian ruler of a country with an appalling human rights record — who, according to United States intelligence, personally ordered the brutal assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Rumor has it that Mohammed bin Salman will make his first in-person WEF appearance at this year’s event | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Perhaps MBS would still be a WEF pariah — consigned to rubbing shoulders with mere B-listers at his own Davos in the desert — if it were not for that other one-time Davos-darling-turned-persona-non-grata: Russian President Vladimir Putin. By launching his invasion of Ukraine, which killed thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of troops, Putin managed to push the West back into MBS’ embrace. Guess it’s all just oil under the bridge now.
Here’s a piece of free advice: Try to avoid being caught getting a signature MBS fist-bump. Unless, of course, you’re the next person on our list …
3. Jared Kushner, founder of Affinity Partners
Jared Kushner is the closest anyone on the mountain is likely to come to Trump, the former — and possibly future — billionaire baron-cum-anti-elitist president of the United States of America.
On the one hand, a chat with The Donald’s son-in-law in the days just after the Iowa caucus would probably be quite a get for the Davos devotee. On other hand … it’s Jared Kushner.
The 43-year-old, who is married to Ivanka Trump and served as a senior adviser to the former president during his time in office, leveraged his stint in the White House to build up a lucrative consulting career, focused mainly on the Middle East.
Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, is largely funded through Gulf countries. That includes a $2 billion investment from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, led by bin Salman — which was, coincidentally, pushed through despite objections by the crown prince’s own advisers.
Kushner struck up a friendship and alliance with MBS during his father-in-law’s term in office, raising major conflict-of-interest suspicions for the Trump administration — especially when the then-U.S. president refused to condemn the Saudi leader in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, despite the CIA concluding he was directly involved.
Running Azerbaijan is something of a family business for the Aliyevs — Ilham assumed power after the death of his father, Heydar Aliyev, an ex-Soviet KGB officer who ruled the country for decades. And the junior Aliyev changed Azerbaijan’s constitution to pave the path to power for the next generation of his family — and appointed his own wife as vice president to boot.
5. Chinese Premier Li Qiang
Li Qiang is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ultra-loyal right-hand man, and will represent his boss and his country at the World Economic Forum this year.
Li’s claim to infamy: imposing a brutal lockdown on the entirety of Shanghai for weeks during the coronavirus pandemic, which trapped its 25 million-plus inhabitants at home while many struggled to get food, tend to their animals or seek medical help — and tanking the city’s economy in the process.
Li’s also the guy selling (and whitewashing) China’s Uyghur policy in the Islamic world. In case you need a refresher, China has detained Uyghurs, who are mostly Muslim, in internment camps in the northwest region of Xinjiang, where there have been allegations of torture, slavery, forced sterilization, sexual abuse and brainwashing. China’s actions have been branded genocide by the U.S. State Department, and as potential crimes against humanity by the United Nations.
Li Qiang will represent his boss and his country at the World Economic Forum this year | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
Nicknamed “the Napoleon of Africa” in a nod to his campaign to seize power in 1994, Paul Kagame has ruled over the land of a thousand hills since. He’s often praised for overseeing what is probably the greatest development success story of modern Africa; he’s also a dictator.
Forced from office in 2018 by mass protests following the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, Fico rose from the political ashes to become Slovakian prime minister for the fourth time late last year. His Smer party ran a Putin-friendly campaign, pledging to end all military support for Ukraine.
Slovakian courts are still working through multiple organized crime cases stemming from the last time Smer was in power, involving oligarchs alleged to have profited from state contracts; former top police brass and senior military intelligence officers; and parliamentarians from all three parties in Fico’s new coalition government.
8. President of Hungary Katalin Novák
Katalin Novák, elected Hungarian president in 2022, must’ve pulled the short straw: she’s been sent to Davos to fly the flag for the EU’s pariah state. Luckily, the 46-year-old is used to being the odd one out at a shindig: She’s both the first woman and the youngest-ever Hungarian president.
It’s her thoughts on the gender pay gap, though, that ought to get attention at the famously male-dominated World Economic Forum: In an infamous video posted back in late 2020, Novák told the sisterhood: “Do not believe that women have to constantly compete with men. Do not believe that every waking moment of our lives must be spent with comparing ourselves to men, and that we should work in at least the same position, for at least the same pay they do.” That’s us told.
9. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet
You may be surprised to see Hun Manet on this list: The new, Western-educated Cambodian prime minister has been touted in some circles as a potential modernizer and reformer.
But Hun Manet is less a breath of fresh air and a lot more continuation of the same stale story. Having inherited his position from his father, the longtime autocrat Hun Sen, Hun Manet has shown no signs of wanting to reform or modernize Cambodia. While some say it’s too early to tell where he’ll land (given his dad’s still on the scene, along with his Communist loyalists), the fact is: Many hallmarks of autocracy are still present in Cambodia. Repression of the opposition? Check. Dodgy “elections”? Check. Widespread graft and clientelism? Check and check.
10. Qatar Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani
How has a small kingdom of 2.6 million inhabitants in the Persian Gulf managed to play a starring role in so many explosive scandals?
Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani is the prime minister of Qatar, a country that’s played a starring role in many explosive scandals | Chris J. Ratcliffe/AFP via Getty Images
You’d think that sort of record would see Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani shunned by the world’s top brass. Nah! Just this month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the Qatari leader and told him the U.S. was “deeply grateful for your ongoing leadership in this effort, for the tireless work which you undertook and that continues, to try to free the remaining hostages.”
See you on the slopes, Mohammed!
11. Polish President Andrzej Duda
When you compare Polish President Andrzej Duda to some of the others on this list, he doesn’t seem to measure up. He’s not a dictator running a violent petro-state, hasn’t invaded any neighbors or even wielded a chainsaw on stage.
But Duda is yesterday’s man. As the last one standing from Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice party that was swept out of office last year, Duda’s holding on for dear life to his own relevance, doing his best to act as a spoiler against the Donald Tusk-led government by wielding his veto powers and harboring convicted lawmakers. All of which is to say: When you catch up with President Duda at Davos, don’t assume he’s speaking for Poland.
12. Amin Nasser, CEO of Aramco
The Saudi Arabian state oil and gas company is Aramco — the world’s biggest energy firm — and Amin Nasser is its boss. If you read Aramco’s press releases, you’d be forgiven for assuming it is also the world’s biggest champion of the green energy transition. Spoiler alert: It’s far from it.
Exhibit A: Aramco is reportedly a top corporate polluter, with environment nongovernmental organization ClientEarth reporting that it accounts for more than 4 percent of the globe’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1965. Exhibit B: Bloomberg reported in 2021 that it understated its carbon footprint by as much as 50 percent.
Nasser, meanwhile, has criticized the idea that climate action should mean countries “either shut down or slow down big time” their fossil fuel production. Say that to Al Gore’s face!
This article has been updated to reflect the fact Shou Zi Chew is no longer going to attend the World Economic Forum.
Dionisios Sturis, Peter Snowdon, Suzanne Lynch and Paul de Villepin contributed reporting.
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron has propelled rising star Gabriel Attal center stage in a high-risk gamble aimed at stopping the far right’s surge ahead of the European election.
In a surprise move on Tuesday, Macron appointed his former education minister and one of France’s most popular politicians as the country’s youngest-ever prime minister in a bid to re-energize his flagging presidency — at the risk of hastening the end of his own reign.
Macron has been under pressure to jump-start his presidency as the far-right National Rally outstrips the centrists in polls ahead of the EU election in June, and in the wake of two brutal fights last year over immigration and pensions.
In contrast to the no-holds-barred election campaign led by 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, the National Rally’s lead candidate, Macron’s presidency has struggled to project any energy and vitality after seven years running France, and talk of a lame-duck presidency has become widespread in political circles.
Despite his short political career, the 34-year-old Attal has earned himself a reputation as an obstinate attack dog or a “word sniper” against the far right, having already crossed swords with Bardella in past election debates, and a deft operator fluent as government spokesperson during the Covid pandemic and as education minister.
“It’s a great media coup,” said a conservative Les Républicains heavyweight, who was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. Macron “is doing it because [Attal] will lead the European election campaign … he was the only one who could hold his own against Bardella,” he said.
Several political insiders told POLITICO the battle of the European election was one of the main reasons Macron chose Attal.
“Gabriel Attal and Jordan Bardella are of the same generation, it’s obvious. Attal has political acumen, knows how to deliver a punchline, with substance, so it’s someone who can face off with the National Rally,” said an aide to Macron. But it’ll be thanks to “his action” that he’ll be able to beat the National Rally, he added.
The nomination of a pugnacious politician with his own ambitions also carries a sizeable risk for the president, who has in the past favored more self-effacing, technocratic figures as his lieutenants. An Attal premiership may accelerate conversations on what comes after Macron as the French president cannot run for a third term.
The meteoric rise of Attal, not unlike Macron himself, is also ruffling feathers among Macron’s heavyweight allies who look askance at the young uber-achiever taking over the reins of government. Macron was “forced to work hard” to get the nomination accepted when it was supposed to be “a slam dunk,” said an ally of the president on Monday.
Macron’s Mini-Me on the campaign
The upcoming European election will be the last time Macron faces off with his nemesis Marine Le Pen before the end of his mandate in four years. A far-right victory would resonate for years and poison the president’s legacy.
The president’s troops have emerged battered after his much-hardened immigration bill was passed with the support of the far-right, an episode that almost splintered his centrist alliance. The immigration battle came on the heels of acrimonious debates last spring over the reform of French pensions which sparked weeks of nationwide protests.
Macron is languishing in poll ratings according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls with only 30 percent approval ratings.
His outgoing Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne was criticized as a technocrat who lacked charisma and political agility, worn out by successive struggles to pass legislation following Macron’s defeat in parliamentary elections last year. She also lost a lot of political capital when she failed to anticipate or prevent a shock defeat in parliament, when the National Assembly rejected the immigration bill without a vote in December.
Attal, on the other hand, is a fresh hand at the helm.
“It’s great news, we’re going to have a government head who is a political operator, and capable of embodying Macron’s pro-European vision,” said Alexandre Holroyd, an MP from Macron’s Renaissance Party.
“To stop the far-right, which is rising not just in France but across Europe, we have to show that political action is efficient,” and talking to the general public is one thing Attal is good at, he added.
Strategically, Attal’s nomination may also help secure the support of center-left voters, as leftwing MEP Raphaël Glucksmann emerges as a competing candidate ahead of the European election. Attal, a former Socialist Party member and the first openly gay prime minister, espouses progressive ideas and has made cyber-bullying and homophobia prominent causes.
What’s really changed?
Macron himself has tasked Attal with the “regeneration” of his government, with “audacity” and “in the spirit of 2017,” his first election year, he wrote on X.
But while Attal is a fresh face, Macron’s margin of maneuver on the domestic front is shrinking, and it’s unlikely the new premiership will be plain sailing. The centrists still lack a majority in parliament, so passing legislation will remain a painful, humiliating process as the government seeks ad hoc alliances with opposition MPs.
Macron is also struggling to find inspiration for his second mandate, and has piled up vague initiatives, such as the “100 days” last year, the “Saint Denis meetings” with opposition leaders, and this month “the meeting with the nation.”
But the nomination does partially resolve an issue that has dogged Macron’s camp for weeks: who will run as Macron’s lead candidate in the European election? The far right has been hitting the campaign trail for weeks and Macron, a notorious procrastinator, has still not chosen a lead candidate for France’s Renew campaign.
With many heavyweights in government reluctant to lead a difficult campaign, the names floated in Paris — Europe Minister Laurence Boone or Renew Group leader Stéphane Séjourné — appeared to lack sufficient clout to stand up to the far-right.
Gabriel Attal carries more than just the European campaign on his shoulders | Pool photo by Ludovic Marin via AFP/Getty Images
With this week’s reshuffle, Renew’s lead candidate in France could play more of a supporting role.
But Attal carries more than just the European campaign on his shoulders. As one of the stars of “Génération Macron,” young politicians who straddle the left-right divide and came to power with the French president, Attal will save or hasten the end of Macronism and its centrist, pro-European political offer.
It’s the “last bullet before the end of his mandate,” said the same conservative heavyweight cited above.
Newswise — Certain populations of mosquitoes are more heat tolerant and better equipped to survive heat waves than others, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.
This is bad news in a world where vector-borne diseases are an increasingly global health concern. Most models that scientists use to estimate vector-borne disease risk currently assume that mosquito heat tolerances do not vary. As a result, these models may underestimate mosquitoes’ ability to spread diseases in a warming world.
Researchers led by Katie M. Westby, a senior scientist at Tyson Research Center, Washington University’s environmental field station, conducted a new study that measured the critical thermal maximum (CTmax), an organism’s upper thermal tolerance limit, of eight populations of the globally invasive tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus. The tiger mosquito is a known vector for many viruses including West Nile, chikungunya and dengue.
“We found significant differences across populations for both adults and larvae, and these differences were more pronounced for adults,” Westby said. The new study is published Jan. 8 in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
Westby’s team sampled mosquitoes from eight different populations spanning four climate zones across the eastern United States, including mosquitoes from locations in New Orleans; St. Augustine, Fla.; Huntsville, Ala.; Stillwater, Okla.; St. Louis; Urbana, Ill.; College Park, Md.; and Allegheny County, Pa.
The scientists collected eggs in the wild and raised larvae from the different geographic locations to adult stages in the lab, tending the mosquito populations separately as they continued to breed and grow. The scientists then used adults and larvae from subsequent generations of these captive-raised mosquitoes in trials to determine CTmax values, ramping up air and water temperatures at a rate of 1 degree Celsius per minute using established research protocols.
The team then tested the relationship between climatic variables measured near each population source and the CTmax of adults and larvae. The scientists found significant differences among the mosquito populations.
The differences did not appear to follow a simple latitudinal or temperature-dependent pattern, but there were some important trends. Mosquito populations from locations with higher precipitation had higher CTmax values. Overall, the results reveal that mean and maximum seasonal temperatures, relative humidity and annual precipitation may all be important climatic factors in determining CTmax.
“Larvae had significantly higher thermal limits than adults, and this likely results from different selection pressures for terrestrial adults and aquatic larvae,” said Benjamin Orlinick, first author of the paper and a former undergraduate research fellow at Tyson Research Center. “It appears that adult Ae. albopictus are experiencing temperatures closer to their CTmax than larvae, possibly explaining why there are more differences among adult populations.”
“The overall trend is for increased heat tolerance with increasing precipitation,” Westby said. “It could be that wetter climates allow mosquitoes to endure hotter temperatures due to decreases in desiccation, as humidity and temperature are known to interact and influence mosquito survival.”
Little is known about how different vector populations, like those of this kind of mosquito, are adapted to their local climate, nor the potential for vectors to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. This study is one of the few to consider the upper limits of survivability in high temperatures — akin to heat waves — as opposed to the limits imposed by cold winters.
“Standing genetic variation in heat tolerance is necessary for organisms to adapt to higher temperatures,” Westby said. “That’s why it was important for us to experimentally determine if this mosquito exhibits variation before we can begin to test how, or if, it will adapt to a warmer world.”
Future research in the lab aims to determine the upper limits that mosquitoes will seek out hosts for blood meals in the field, where they spend the hottest parts of the day when temperatures get above those thresholds, and if they are already adapting to higher temperatures. “Determining this is key to understanding how climate change will impact disease transmission in the real world,” Westby said. “Mosquitoes in the wild experience fluctuating daily temperatures and humidity that we cannot fully replicate in the lab.”
We’ve all seen the T-shirts and knick-knack signs emblazoned with the alliterative slogan “coffee ’till cocktails.” It’s not just a cute saying—it’s a reality for many who bounce back and forth between the stimulating effects of coffee and the sedative effects of alcohol. Though it may feel like these beverages are a lifeline for getting you through the challenges of your day, yo-yoing between caffeine and alcohol can come with some downsides.
Attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels on vessels in the Red Sea have led to transport disruptions for oil and other goods, but international oil shippers may have found a way to deal with the chaos.
The report from the government agency showed surprisingly large weekly increases in gasoline and distillate supplies, contributing to losses for energy futures on Thursday.
But Robert Yawger, executive director for energy futures at Mizuho Securities USA, also highlighted another key figure in the data — a weekly jump in U.S. petroleum exports.
Exports climbed by 1.377 million barrels a day to 5.292 million barrels a day for the week ended Dec. 29, according to the EIA.
“For the first time since Houthi Yemeni rebels started to attack international shipping in the Red Sea, we are seeing a spike in U.S. exports,” said Yawger, in a Thursday afternoon note.
The Red Sea chokepoints are critical for international oil and natural-gas flows, according to the EIA.
U.S. Energy Information Administration
“Apparently, international shippers are worried about being attacked on the open sea, and are getting beat” on the cost of sailing around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa as an alternative to the passage through the Red Sea, he said. Instead, the “safer and cheaper way to procure supply, especially for EU customers, is to sail the boat to the U.S. Gulf Coast and load up on cheap U.S. [oil] barrels.”
BRNH24, +0.45%. On Thursday, the February WTI futures contract settled at $72.19 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while March Brent settled at $77.59 on ICE Futures Europe — a difference of $5.40 a barrel.
That compares with a “cost of carry” for an Amsterdam/Rotterdam/Antwerp refiner of around $4 a barrel, said Yawger. So “forget about the Houthis/Iranian menace in the Red Sea,” he said. “You don’t need a U.S. Navy escort from danger — just a nice, clean two- to- four-week round-trip journey to the U.S.”
“‘Ironically, the chaos in the Middle East is driving international crude-oil customers into the arms of the U.S. shale producers.’”
— Robert Yawger, Mizuho
He expects U.S. petroleum exports to sustain the 5 million plus barrel-per-day level in the coming weeks, with the “geopolitical situation seemingly heating up every day.”
“Ironically, the chaos in the Middle East is driving international crude-oil customers into the arms of the U.S. shale producers,” said Yawger. “There is a very good chance U.S. exports break the all-time record in coming weeks, just in time for refiners to pull back on the run rate.”
Weekly U.S. crude-oil exports reached a record 5.629 million barrels a day in the week ended Feb. 24, 2023, based on EIA data going back to February 1991.
Nothing like a fresh start to your day, week and year. For many, marijuana is increasing part of the making it a great day. Here are some reasons why
Science has proven cannabis has benefits and more research is being done to learn more. For over a thousand years, the plant has been valued as medicine and for its psychoactive properties for religious and recreational use. It has a longer history than pasta, beer and Hallmark movies. From medical help to anxiety relievers, it has a way of making life better. Here are 9 ways cannabis enhances your day.
Increased Energy Levels
While cannabis is usually associated with relaxing, many people use cannabis for energy. Some cannabis strains contain terpenes like limonene and pinene can boost your mood and energize your mind. Look for strains with specific terpenes found in Sativa-type strains to help give you extra boost to conquer your day.
Photo by Kirill Vasikev / EyeEm/Getty Images
Improved Appetite
If you aren’t eating enough food, you won’t have sufficient energy to make it through the day. If you struggle with low or loss of appetite, cannabis could be just the thing for you. Cannabis is highly effective at stimulating appetite, helping you enjoy all your favorite foods on a regular basis.
Ease Aches and Pains
Cannabis has been used to soothe pain for at least 5000 years. Both cannabis and CBD contain gentle pain-relieving properties, but a purposeful dose of either CBD or cannabis can relieve aches and pains.
Improved Social Experiences
Cannabis is the perfect substance to improve your social experiences because it helps you relax, boosts your mood, and makes you laugh. One of the most common ways to enhance your day with cannabis is to enjoy your favorite product with a friend.
Improved Sleep
The best way to enhance your day with cannabis is to get a great night of sleep. Studies show sleep deprivation and stress go hand and hand. Sleep deprivation can impact your endocannabinoid system making you feel more stressed out. And stress can negatively impact your sleep quality. Cannabis products help people sleep better and longer. One of the main reasons people use cannabis for sleep as it helps them fall asleep faster. Many people find products high in CBD, CBN, or THC are highly effective at improving their sleep. You can experiment with different products or cannabinoids (and record your experiences on the Jointly app) to find out which combination works best for you.
A cannabis-infused bath is a great way to combat daily stress. Your body will soak in the cannabinoids while your mind unwinds. As we discussed in cannabis ingestion methods, topical THC products won’t get you high. However, topical cannabinoids may help you relieve mild aches and pains, not to mention help you relax at the end of a stressful day.
Boost Creativity
In small amounts, cannabis can enhance your creativity due to its ability to alter blood flow to the brain. Specifically, cannabis consumption is associated with increased blood flow to the frontal lobes of the brain. The frontal lobes are thought to be the center for creativity and divergent thinking.
8. Improved Work Efficiency
With all the busyness of daily life, an efficient work stream may be one of your top priorities. While you may not associate cannabis with improved work efficiency, many people use cannabis for energy. Additionally, CBD products can help you smash your goals, keeping you energized and focused until everything is complete.
Meditating is a great way to clear our mind so we can be more present in our daily lives and with our loved ones. Meditation is also linked with other positive benefits like promoting concentration and elevating mood. Try meditating while high to supercharge your meditation sessions.
On October 7, Hamas fighters launched a bloody attack against Israel, using paragliders, speedboats and underground tunnels to carry out an offensive that killed almost 1,200 people and saw hundreds more taken back to the Gaza Strip as prisoners.
Almost three months on, Israel’s massive military retaliation is reverberating around the region, with explosions in Lebanon and rebels from Yemen attacking shipping in the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Western countries are pumping military aid into Israel while deploying fleets to protect commercial shipping — risking confrontation with the Iranian navy.
That’s in line with a grim prediction made last year by Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, who said that Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza meant an “expansion of the scope of the war has become inevitable,” and that further escalation across the Middle East should be expected.
What’s happening?
The Israel Defense Forces are still fighting fierce battles for control of the Gaza Strip in what officials say is a mission to destroy Hamas. Troops have already occupied much of the north of the 365-square-kilometer territory, home to around 2.3 million Palestinians, and are now stepping up their assault in the south.
Entire neighborhoods of densely-populated Gaza City have been levelled by intense Israeli shelling, rocket attacks and air strikes, rendering them uninhabitable. Although independent observers have been largely shut out, the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry claims more than 22,300 people have been killed, while the U.N. says 1.9 million people have been displaced.
On a visit to the front lines, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that his country is in the fight for the long haul. “The feeling that we will stop soon is incorrect. Without a clear victory, we will not be able to live in the Middle East,” he said.
As the Gaza ground war intensifies, Hamas and its allies are increasingly looking to take the conflict to a far broader arena in order to put pressure on Israel.
According to Seth Frantzman, a regional analyst with the Jerusalem Post and adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “Iran is certainly making a play here in terms of trying to isolate Israel [and] the U.S. and weaken U.S. influence, also showing that Israel doesn’t have the deterrence capabilities that it may have had in the past or at least thought it had.”
Northern front
On Tuesday a blast ripped through an office in Dahieh, a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut — 130 kilometers from the border with Israel. Hamas confirmed that one of its most senior leaders, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed in the strike.
Government officials in Jerusalem have refused to confirm Israeli forces were behind the killing, while simultaneously presenting it as a “surgical strike against the Hamas leadership” and insisting it was not an attack against Lebanon itself, despite a warning from Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati that the incident risked dragging his country into a wider regional war.
Tensions between Israel and Lebanon have spiked in recent weeks, with fighters loyal to Hezbollah, the Shia Islamist militant group that controls the south of the country, firing hundreds of rockets across the frontier. Along with Hamas, Hezbollah is part of the Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance” that aims to destroy the state of Israel.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Iran’s foreign ministry said the death of al-Arouri, the most senior Hamas official confirmed to have died since October 7, will only embolden resistance against Israel, not only in the Palestinian territories but also in the wider Middle East.
The Israel Defense Forces are still fighting fierce battles for control of the Gaza Strip in what officials say is a mission to destroy Hamas | Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
“We’re talking about the death of a senior Hamas leader, not from Hezbollah or the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards. Is it Iran who’s going to respond? Hezbollah? Hamas with rockets? Or will there be no response, with the various players waiting for the next assassination?” asked Héloïse Fayet, a researcher at the French Institute for International Relations.
In a much-anticipated speech on Wednesday evening, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah condemned the killing but did not announce a military response.
Red Sea boils over
For months now, sailors navigating the narrow Bab-el-Mandeb Strait that links Europe to Asia have faced a growing threat of drone strikes, missile attacks and even hijackings by Iran-backed Houthi militants operating off the coast of Yemen.
The Houthi movement, a Shia militant group supported by Iran in the Yemeni civil war against Saudi Arabia and its local allies, insists it is only targeting shipping with links to Israel in a bid to pressure it to end the war in Gaza. However, the busy trade route from the Suez Canal through the Red Sea has seen dozens of commercial vessels targeted or delayed, forcing Western nations to intervene.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Navy said it had intercepted two anti-ship missiles and sunk three boats carrying Houthi fighters in what it said was a hijacking attempt against the Maersk Hangzhou, a container ship. Danish shipping giant Maersk said Tuesday that it would “pause all transits through the Red Sea until further notice,” following a number of other cargo liners; energy giant BP is also suspending travel through the region.
On Wednesday the Houthis targeted a CMA CGM Tage container ship bound for Israel, according to the group’s military spokesperson Yahya Sarea. “Any U.S. attack will not pass without a response or punishment,” he added.
“The sensible decision is one that the vast majority of shippers I think are now coming to, [which] is to transit through round the Cape of Good Hope,” said Marco Forgione, director general at the Institute of Export & International Trade. “But that in itself is not without heavy impact, it’s up to two weeks additional sailing time, adds over £1 million to the journey, and there are risks, particularly in West Africa, of piracy as well.”
However, John Stawpert, a senior manager at the International Chamber of Shipping, noted that while “there has been disruption” and an “understandable nervousness about transiting these routes … trade is continuing to flow.”
“A major contributory factor to that has been the presence of military assets committed to defending shipping from these attacks,” he said.
The impacts of the disruption, especially price hikes hitting consumers, will be seen “in the next couple of weeks,” according to Forgione. Oil and gas markets also risk taking a hit — the price of benchmark Brent crude rose by 3 percent to $78.22 a barrel on Wednesday. Almost 10 percent of the world’s oil and 7 percent of its gas flows through the Red Sea.
Western response
On Wednesday evening, the U.S., Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom issued an ultimatum calling the Houthi attacks “illegal, unacceptable, and profoundly destabilizing,” but with only vague threats of action.
“We call for the immediate end of these illegal attacks and release of unlawfully detained vessels and crews. The Houthis will bear the responsibility of the consequences should they continue to threaten lives, the global economy, and free flow of commerce in the region’s critical waterways,” the statement said.
The Houthi movement insists it is only targeting shipping with links to Israel in a bid to pressure it to end the war in Gaza | Houthi Movement via Getty Images
Despite the tepid language, the U.S. has already struck back at militants from Iranian-backed groups such as Kataeb Hezbollah in Iraq and Syria after they carried out drone attacks that injured U.S. personnel.
The assumption in London is that airstrikes against the Houthis — if it came to that — would be U.S.-led with the U.K. as a partner. Other nations might also chip in.
Two French officials said Paris is not considering air strikes. The country’s position is to stick to self-defense, and that hasn’t changed, one of them said. French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu confirmed that assessment, saying on Tuesday that “we’re continuing to act in self-defense.”
“Would France, which is so proud of its third way and its position as a balancing power, be prepared to join an American-British coalition?” asked Fayet, the think tank researcher.
Iran looms large
Iran’s efforts to leverage its proxies in a below-the-radar battle against both Israel and the West appear to be well underway, and the conflict has already scuppered a long-awaited security deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“Since 1979, Iran has been conducting asymmetrical proxy terrorism where they try to advance their foreign policy objectives while displacing the consequences, the counterpunches, onto someone else — usually Arabs,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of Washington’s Center on Military and Political Power. “An increasingly effective regional security architecture, of the kind the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are trying to build, is a nightmare for Iran which, like a bully on the playground, wants to keep all the other kids divided and distracted.”
Despite Iran’s fiery rhetoric, it has stopped short of declaring all-out war on its enemies or inflicting massive casualties on Western forces in the region — which experts say reflects the fact it would be outgunned in a conventional conflict.
“Neither Iran nor the U.S. nor Israel is ready for that big war,” said Alex Vatanka, director of the Middle East Institute’s Iran program. “Israel is a nuclear state, Iran is a nuclear threshold state — and the U.S. speaks for itself on this front.”
Israel might be betting on a long fight in Gaza, but Iran is trying to make the conflict a global one, he added. “Nobody wants a war, so both sides have been gambling on the long term, hoping to kill the other guy through a thousand cuts.”
Emilio Casalicchio contributed reporting.
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Gabriel Gavin, Antonia Zimmermann and Laura Kayali
The Russell 2000 Index soared 12% in December, which might reflect investors’ exuberance about the state of the U.S. economy — it appears the Federal Reserve has won its battle against inflation.
But if you are looking to broaden your exposure to the stock market beyond the large-cap S&P 500 SPX,
buying shares of a fund that tracks the Russell 2000 Index RUT
might not be the best way to do it. This is because the Russell 2000 isn’t selective — it is made up of the smallest 2,000 companies by market capitalization in the Russell 3000 Index RUA,
which itself is designed to capture about 98% of the U.S. public equity market.
A better choice might be the S&P Small Cap 600 Index SML
because S&P Global requires companies to show four consecutive quarters of profitability to be initially included in the index, among other criteria.
Below is a screen of analysts’ favorite stocks among the S&P Small Cap 600, along with another for the Russell 2000.
Watch for a “head fake”
Much of the small-cap buying in December might have resulted from covering of short positions by hedge-fund managers. This idea is backed by the timing of trading activity immediately following the Federal Open Market Committee’s announcement on Dec. 13 that it wouldn’t change its interest-rate policy, according to MacroTourist blogger Kevin Muir. The Fed’s economic projections released the same day also indicate three cuts to the federal-funds rate in 2024.
Heading into the end of the year, a fund manager who had shorted small-caps, and then was surprised by the Fed’s interest-rate projections, might have scrambled to buy stocks it had shorted to close-out the positions and hopefully lock in gains, or limit losses.
That buying activity and resulting pop in small-cap prices could set up a typical “head fake” for investors as the new year begins, according to Muir.
The long-term case for quality
Looking at data for companies’ most recently reported fiscal quarters, 58% of the Russell 2000 reported positive earnings per share, according to data provided by FactSet. In other words, hundreds of these companies were losing money. These might include promising companies facing “binary events,” such as make-or-break drug trials in the biotechnology industry.
In comparison, 78% of companies among the S&P Small Cap 600 were profitable, and 93% of the S&P 500 were in the black.
Here are long-term performance figures for exchange-traded funds that track all three indexes:
For the first screen, we began with the S&P Small Cap 600 and narrowed the list to 385 companies covered by at least five analysts polled by FactSet. Then we cut the list to 92 companies with “buy” or equivalent ratings among at least 75% of the covering analysts.
Here are the 20 remaining stocks among the S&P Small Cap 600 with the highest 12-month upside potential indicated by analysts’ consensus price targets:
Any stock screen should only be considered a starting point. You should do your own research to form your own opinion before making any investment. one way to begin is by clicking on the tickers for more about each company.
Moving on to the Russell 2000, when we narrowed this group to stocks covered by at least five analysts polled by FactSet, we were left with 936 companies. Among these, 355 have “buy” or equivalent ratings among at least 75% of the covering analysts.
Among those 355 stocks in the Russell 2000, these 20 have the highest implied upside over the next year, based on consensus price targets:
Everyone is heading back to work and the stacks of projects which have been put off until after the holidays. Lack of sleep, lots of fun activities and a variety of visits from family and friends have drained people. The week between Christmas and New Year’s is known as “dead week“, leaving more things to do the week after.
But it seems we are doing things we work against us. Here are 5 everyday activities draining your energy.
Emotionally taxing TV
TV is one of the things we do to relax and replenish our energies, but the content of what we’re watching has an influence on how we feel. If you’re binging a show and finding yourself emotionally drained, it’s best to keep an eye on these feelings and to moderate how much time you spend with the program, perhaps taking a little break and coming back when you’re ready or watching other types of things that can balance out the emotional scale.
It’s very common to feel messy and disorganized when our live-work space is a mirror of your feelings. Organizing your work desk can be a time-consuming activity, yet it’s one you should pay attention to, since you likely spend a lot of time there and it can be easy to lose control of it. When it comes to your home, try to keep it in control, since the more disordered it is, the more difficult it becomes to get it back under control. A simple activity you can do is to try to make your bed every morning to help make you feel accomplished from the get-go and providing your bedroom with some order.
Breathing patterns
Photo by Le Minh Phuong via Unsplash
Breathing is an unconscious activity, but there are wrong ways of doing it. When you take shallow breaths, you’re likely to feel more stressed due to your brain taking in less oxygen per breath. A helpful mechanism would be to take deep breaths when you’re feeling stressed out, anxious or exhausted. Whether you’re breathing shallowly or not, this activity will make you feel better and will allow you to think more clearly.
Exercise is important for regulating our moods. Too little exercise facilitates a sedentary lifestyle and encourages us to move less, resulting in feeling unmotivated and exhausted. Too much exercise provides the opposite effect; it drains of us of our energy, especially if we’re not supplementing our bodies with the right calories.
Waiting too long between meals
Photo by KoolShooters from Pexels
Food is our biggest source of energy, so if you’re feeling depleted, it might be because of the way you’re feeding yourself. A balanced diet, one with a healthy amount of carbs, is important for having enough energy. If you’re waiting too long between meals and feeling tired in between, add in healthy snacks throughout your day can provide the necessary pick me up.
A surprise surge in American oil and gas production and exports is helping to keep the world stocked, blunting the impact of widening conflict in the Middle East that has crimped key shipping lanes.
When Iranian-backed Houthi militants began launching missiles and drones at ships crossing the Red Sea near Yemen in October, many feared disruption to the vital shipping lane would drive up energy prices. But oil and gas prices this past month have sunk about 5% and 23%, respectively.
A flag outside the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission headquarters in Washington, Feb. 23, 2022.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Regulators around the world from Europe to Asia ramped up efforts to bring about formal laws for digital currencies in 2023 — but it was the U.S. that took some of the harshest legal actions against major players in the industry.
In a year that saw crypto heavyweight Binance ordered to pay more than $4 billion to U.S. authorities and its former CEO’s guilty plea, along with high-profile lawsuits against five crypto companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission, regulators overseas have been equally busy both adopting new legislation — and pushing for more — to rein in the sector’s bad actors.
Here’s the state of play globally for crypto regulation and enforcement in 2023 — and a look at what to expect in 2024.
The U.S. has proven to be one of the most active enforcers of penalties and legal action against crypto companies this year, as authorities looked to counter bad practices in the industry following the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire — including his FTX exchange and sister firm Alameda Research.
“To be clear, in some cases — like FTX — enforcement was necessary,” said Renato Mariotti, a former prosecutor in the U.S. Justice Department’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Section. “But U.S. enforcement actions against market participants that are more focused on compliance are questionable and the result of the U.S. ‘regulation by enforcement’ approach.”
While many regions have passed laws with potentially tough penalties, the U.S. is still the only country that has actively taken action against large-scale crypto companies and projects. Thus far, the U.S. has led that campaign against crypto firms by enforcement and has, by far, been the most punishing of regulators when it comes to penalties and fines.
“Other countries have a comprehensive regulatory framework in place. We don’t,” Mariotti told CNBC. “As a result, issues that should be determined by legislation or regulation are instead litigated.”
Indeed, in the absence of hard-and-fast rules from Capitol Hill, the SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Department of Justice, and Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), have worked in parallel to police the space, in a sort of patch-quilt version of regulation-by-enforcement.
Richard Levin, a partner at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough who has represented clients before the SEC, CFTC, and Congress, tells CNBC that these agencies have been some of the most active enforcers around the world concerning the regulation of digital assets and cryptocurrencies.
“These agencies have provided guidance to the industry on how digital assets and cryptocurrencies must be offered and sold, traded, and held by custodians,” said Levin, who has been involved in the fintech sector for 30 years.
“However, much of their work has involved providing guidance to the industry through enforcement actions,” continued Levin.
Since 2019, Justice’s Market Integrity and Major Frauds Unit has charged cryptocurrency fraud cases involving over $2 billion in intended financial losses to investors worldwide.
In its annual report summing up enforcement actions, the CFTC noted that nearly half of all cases in 2023 involved conduct related to digital asset commodities. Meanwhile, the SEC highlighted that 2023 was notable for its enforcement of “crypto-related misconduct, including fraud schemes, unregistered crypto assets and platforms, and illegal celebrity touting.” Since 2014, the SEC has brought more than 200 actions related to crypto asset and cyber enforcement.
The most stringent cases played out in the first half of the year when the SEC accused Binance and Coinbase of engaging in illegal securities dealing in a pair of lawsuits.
Most notably, the SEC alleges that at least 13 crypto assets available to Coinbase customers — including Solana’s sol, Cardano’s ada, and Protocol Labs’ filecoin — should be considered securities, meaning they’d need to be subject to strict transparency and disclosure requirements.
In Binance’s case, the SEC went a step further. In addition to securities law violations, the company and its co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao were also accused of commingling customer assets with company funds.
Concerning criminal enforcement, Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, has been leading some of Justice’s highest-profile crypto prosecutions, including the monthlong trial of Bankman-Fried, the disgraced FTX founder. In November, a jury found the former FTX chief executive guilty of all seven criminal counts against him following a few hours of deliberation.
But crypto companies have begun to push back, with some threatening to decamp from the U.S. entirely should this dynamic of policing by enforcement continue.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong condemned the SEC’s actions against the exchange and suggested the company may be forced to move its headquarters overseas. Armstrong later walked back the threat of relocating abroad, but Coinbase and other major crypto firms have still begun to invest more heavily in their international operations.
Crypto market participants nevertheless hope that the spate of legal challenges brought to crypto companies in 2023 will bring clarity in the form of new regulations.
“Clearer regulatory frameworks and stance from regulators globally have provided a sense of legitimacy and security, encouraging more widespread participation in the bitcoin market,” Alyse Killeen, managing partner of Stillmark Capital, told CNBC.
The crypto industry saw the most legislative progress on crypto laws in the U.S. this year, with one of the competing digital asset bills making it past multiple House committees for the first time.
Even as U.S. lawmakers take steps toward crypto legislation, there remains no law in the U.S. tailored specifically for the industry. Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough’s Levin tells CNBC it’s unlikely that we’ll see much progress in a presidential election year and with a divided federal government.
He argues that even without rules on crypto from lawmakers, routine complaints that U.S. regulators are not providing guidance to the industry are without merit.
According to Levin, “The SEC, the CFTC and FinCEN routinely provide informal guidance on the regulation of digital assets and cryptocurrencies.”
“The SEC even went so far as to provide a framework for the analysis of digital assets and cryptocurrencies. The SEC also created a fake digital asset (Hosey Coin) that gave advice to the FinTech community on how not to launch a digital asset,” Levin added.
“Some members of the industry forget the SEC is relying on laws that were written when American football players wore leather helmets, and the SEC must apply those laws to the FinTech industry,” he said.
Despite crypto’s recent fading buzz, Killeen of Stillmark Capital doesn’t expect regulators to become fatigued by crypto in 2024. In the same time year that two of crypto’s leading figures were sent to jail, shares of Coinbase — and prices of digital currencies like bitcoin and ether — have rallied sharply.
Since the start of this year, Coinbase’s stock price has surged more than 400%. Bitcoin and ether, meanwhile, have both roughly doubled in price. That’s as investors anticipate that approval for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund by the SEC may be around the corner.
The European Union looks set to apply its Markets in Crypto-Assets legislation, which is aimed at taming the “Wild West” of the crypto industry, in full force starting next year.
The law, initially proposed in 2019 as a response to Meta’s digital currency project Diem, formerly known as Libra, aimed to clean up fraud, money laundering and other illicit financing in the crypto space, and stamp out the sector’s bad actors more broadly.
Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC Pro
It also sought to tackle a perceived threat from so-called stablecoins, or blockchain-based tokens that serve as a representation of government money but are backed by private companies. Stablecoins are effectively digital currencies that are pegged to the value of fiat currencies like the dollar.
While tether and Circle’s USDC aren’t perceived as “systemic” assets capable of disrupting financial stability, a private stablecoin from a massive company like Meta, Visa or Mastercard could pose a bigger threat and potentially undermine sovereign currencies, in several EU central bankers’ eyes.
The U.S.’s dominant role in global finance and its focus on consumer protection plays a crucial role in its leading position in crypto regulation enforcement. However, the landscape is evolving, and other jurisdictions are steadily enhancing their regulatory and enforcement frameworks in crypto.
Braden Perry
Former federal enforcement attorney and current partner at
Part of the EU’s framework for crypto is aimed at tackling threats — particularly that of the euro being undermined — by making it impossible for issuers to mint stablecoins backed by currencies other than the euro, like the U.S. dollar, once they meet the threshold of more than 1 million transactions per day.
Meanwhile, the European Union is moving towards a unified regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies with its Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).
This year, the three main political institutions of the EU-approved MiCA, paving the way for the regulation to become law. MiCA came into force in June 2023, but it’s not expected to apply fully until December 2024.
Companies are already getting ready to take advantage of the new rules, with Coinbase submitting an application for a universal MiCA license in Ireland. If and when it is approved, this would allow Coinbase to “passport” its services into other countries like Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.
Braden Perry, former federal enforcement attorney and current partner at law firm Kennyhertz Perry, said that while the U.S. remains a top enforcer for the crypto industry, its perception as a regulator “may be diminishing,” as other jurisdictions have stepped in with clearer rules.
“This perception stems from the proactive measures taken by U.S. regulatory bodies like the SEC, CFTC, and IRS, especially in addressing fraud and security issues in the crypto market. High-profile legal actions in the U.S. further cement its image as a strict enforcer,” he said.
“However, other regions, including Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, and the European Union, are also developing robust regulatory frameworks,” Perry added. “While these regions may not be as visible in international media for enforcement actions, they possess significant and sometimes stringent regulatory mechanisms.”
But while the broader EU has been racing to implement new crypto laws, individual European countries haven’t been resting on their laurels.
France has been tempting crypto companies and traders alike to its shores with the promise of tax cuts on crypto profits and a smoother registration process for digital asset firms.
Starting from Jan 1, 2024, France’s Financial Markets Authority, or AMF, is set to amend its registration requirements for crypto firms to better align with MiCA, according to an August statement from the regulator.
At the same time, French authorities have kept a skeptical eye on fraudulent activity among various crypto players. In September, French regulators added 22 fraudulent websites — including some that market trading in crypto and crypto-linked derivatives — to a blacklist of unauthorized foreign exchange providers.
In Germany, meanwhile, the financial regulator Bafin has said it wants to accelerate its approach to licensing crypto custody services, as part of a broader effort to instill trust and transparency in the crypto market.
The U.K., a non-member of the EU, passed a law in June that gives regulators the ability to oversee stablecoins. But there are no concrete rules for crypto just yet.
The U.K.’s Treasury department released its response to a consultation on new crypto rules earlier this year, confirming that it plans to bring a range of crypto activities, including crypto custody and lending, within existing laws governing financial services firms in the country.
Earlier this year, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which is recognized for clear fintech and crypto regulations that do not rely heavily on enforcement actions, finalized rules for stablecoins, making it one of the world’s first jurisdictions to do so.
Singapore was notably bruised by the collapse of TerraUSD, a controversial algorithmic stablecoin, in 2022, as well as the fall of Three Arrows Capital, or 3AC. Both Terra Labs, the company behind Terra, and 3AC were headquartered in Singapore.
Singapore’s new framework requires stablecoin issuers to back them with low-risk and highly-liquid assets, which must equal or exceed the value of tokens in circulation at all times, return the par value of the digital currency to holders within five business days of a redemption request, and disclose audit results of reserves to users.
The region has been increasingly warming to crypto assets, despite a broader anti-crypto push from China, which banned bitcoin trading and mining in 2021.
The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, or SFC, launched a registration regime for digital asset businesses earlier this year, with clear regulations for crypto exchanges and funds.
So far, only two firms, OSL Digital and Hash Blockchain, have been handed licenses.
The United Arab Emirates has emerged as a popular base for the fintech sector more broadly, given its lack of personal income tax, flexible visa policies, and competitive incentives for international businesses and workers.
In 2022, in a bid to lead the virtual assets sector in the Middle East and Africa, Dubai — the UAE’s most populous city — launched VARA, or the Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority.
“Dubai and the UAE have created favorable conditions for cryptocurrency businesses, offering specific zones and guidelines for crypto trading,” said Perry.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis notes that regulators in the UAE were early to cryptocurrency, with Dubai leading the charge when it launched a blockchain strategy in 2016.
“Since then, UAE regulators have remained at the forefront of the industry,” according to a Chainalysis report.
Two years later, in 2018, Abu Dhabi Global Market created the world’s first regulatory framework for cryptocurrency to foster innovation while safeguarding consumers.
Earlier this year, the UAE passed further crypto regulations at the federal level to make it easier for regulators like VARA to police the sector and run economic-free zones.
“While most people aren’t huge snake fans, a snake’s regular shedding of its skin can remind us that we all go through times when something, someone, someplace—or a way of being with ourselves—leaves our life. Hard times are always painful, uncomfortable, and vulnerable, yet they also open the door to healing transformation. In what ways is a new layer of you, or a new layer of potential and possibility regarding an area of your life, revealing itself? Focus on the healing new habits, people, opportunities, experiences, attitudes, thought patterns, or resources that are appearing in your world as you navigate this hard time. Just like the snake shedding its skin, hard times have an awkward, in-between-worlds quality to them, but we can often already see evidence of something positive being born in our lives, even if it’s very new and fragile.”
Whether you call it “hands to prayer,” “hands at heart center,” or in this case, the anjali mudra, this divine salute is a gesture of peace, gratitude, and humility. It’s commonly used in greetings and prayer, making it an excellent mudra to thank those watching out for you in life and express gratitude for a teacher or lesson. but it can also be incorporated into your yoga and meditation practice for balance and concentration.
General Electric Co. has saved its best year for its last.
At the beginning of the second quarter, GE’s power and renewable-energy business will be spun off as GE Vernova, while its remaining business will be relaunched as GE Aerospace. That follows the conglomerate’s separation of GE HealthCare Technologies Inc. GEHC, -0.28%
in December 2022.
But rather than mourn the final breakup of the 150-year old company, which was co-founded by Thomas Edison, Wall Street cheered like it never had before.
GE’s stock GE, -0.54%
has rocketed 95.1% in 2023 as of afternoon trading Friday. That would be by far the stock’s best year on record, based on available data going back to 1972, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The next best year was 1982, when it gained 65.4%. In comparison, the S&P 500 index SPX
has rallied 24.2% this year.
As good as the stock’s performance has been leading up to the breakup, most analysts feel like investors still have more to gain. Keep in mind that in many cases, a company’s parts are worth more individually than they are valued as part of a whole.
Wells Fargo’s Matthew Akers has a pre-breakup target of $144 on GE’s stock, which implies about 13% upside from current levels.
“GE combines an attractive business with high aftermarket mix, solid management team with a clean balance sheet, L-T margin upside and built-in catalyst with the Vernova spin in early Q2,” Akers wrote.
J.P. Morgan’s Seth Seifman said he believes the combined equity values of GE Vernova and GE Aerospace, when including the company’s equity stake in GE HealthCare, is about $149 billion. That compares with GE’s current market capitalization of about $139 billion.
Of the 18 analysts surveyed by FactSet who cover GE, 12 are bullish and six are neutral, while there are no bears. And the average price target is $139.23, or about 9% above current levels.
GE’s 2023 marks the culmination of a five-year turnaround for the stock engineered by current Chief Executive Larry Culp, who will remain as CEO of GE Aerospace.
GE’s stock has nearly tripled in the five years that Larry Culp has been CEO, outperforming the S&P 500 by a wide margin.
General Electric Co.
The stock had suffered its worst year ever in 2018, plunging 56.6%, just after it had its fourth-worst year in 2017, when it suffered a 44.8% decline.
Things got so bad for GE that it got booted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA
in June 2018, ending a record 111-year run in the blue-chip barometer.
Culp was named CEO in October 2018. During his tenure, GE’s stock has had only two down years. It fell 3.2% in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the aerospace business, and slumped 11.3% in 2022 as spiking inflation and interest rates fueled fears that a recession was on the horizon.
But since the end of 2018, GE’s stock has climbed 181%, while the S&P 500 has rallied 90% and the Dow has gained 61%.
Oil futures ended slightly lower Friday on the final trading day of 2023, capping crude’s first losing year since 2020 as concerns about the demand outlook outweighed potential supply disruptions and efforts by OPEC and its allies to limit production.
Price action
West Texas Intermediate crude for February delivery CL00, -0.45%
BRNH24, +0.05%,
the global benchmark, fell 11 cents, or 0.1%, to settle at $77.04 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.
Back on Nymex, January gasoline RBF24
rose 0.8% to $2.103 a gallon, while January heating oil HOF24
fell 0.1% to $2.553 a gallon.
February natural gas NGG24, -0.64%
declined 1.7% to finish at $2.514 per million British thermal units.
Market drivers
WTI, the U.S. benchmark, slumped 21.1% in the fourth quarter and suffered a yearly fall of 10.7%. Brent tumbled over 19% in the final three months of the year, posting an annual loss of 10.3%.
Gasoline futures dropped 14.5% in 2023, while heating oil declined 24.1%. Natural gas plunged nearly 44%.
Crude had rallied over the summer as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, together known as OPEC+, maintained production cuts, with Saudi Arabia throwing in a voluntary reduction of 1 million barrels a day beginning in July and Russia moving to curb exports. While production cuts have been rolled over into early 2024, oil peaked in late September as expectations for a significant supply deficit failed to materialize.
Increased production by the U.S., which saw its output hit record levels in 2023, and other non-OPEC producers have also capped the upside for crude, analysts said.
Oil futures jumped in the wake of the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October on fears that a broader conflict could cramp supplies from the Middle East, but crude failed to challenge its September highs and soon eroded its geopolitical-risk premium. Prices bounced somewhat in December as attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on shipping vessels in the Red Sea sparked a round of rerouting, but gains have proven difficult to sustain.
Instead, investors “have started to focus on the risk that there may be excessive supply in oil markets next year, and insufficient demand,” said Marios Hadjikyriacos, senior investment analyst at XM, in a note.
“Even though OPEC+ has taken repeated steps to rein in production and support prices, it is unlikely to pursue the same strategy for much longer, as it would forfeit more market share to U.S. producers who have dialed up their own production to record levels,” he wrote.
Natural-gas prices, meanwhile, have slumped recently on a warmer-than-normal winter, said Lu Ming Pang, senior analyst at Rystad Energy, in a Friday note.
The number of heating-degree days (HDDs), which reflect the extent of heating required, has been below normal so far, with a deviation of 28 fewer HDDs from the normal reported on Dec. 15, the analyst noted. HDDs are forecast to rise through Jan. 5 but remain slightly below normal.
“Gas demand for heating is likely to rise as a result but will still remain below seasonal norms,” Pang said. “A combination of warmer weather, high underground-storage levels, and high domestic gas production is expected to keep U.S. prices suppressed.”
Newswise — Sometimes, the best way to see what you’re made of is facing a challenge. Andrew Broadbent, an accomplished project manager at the at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility located at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, took on such a challenge earlier this year though DOE’s Project Leadership Institute (PLI) and emerged from the yearlong endeavor with his team victorious.
Cultivating Leadership
Every year, PLI selects around 25 experienced project leaders endorsed by DOE national laboratories, program offices, and site offices to participate in their intensive, yearlong leadership development program. This program is designed to cultivate the necessary skills to effectively take on and execute high-risk projects. The cohort is split into five teams that work together over the course of the year to conduct a case study analysis of a recent DOE project. Throughout the program, the cohort travels to different national labs across the country to attend events and participates in self-paced learning during the summer. These modules cover important concepts, like leading innovative teams, that often highlight real-life success stories.
“Everyone on the team has extensive project management experience,” said Broadbent, “so we were all, largely, in the same boat here, and we learned a lot from each other along the way. Each event provided something useful to take away, making it a really valuable program for anyone in the DOE involved with project management.”
As the program concludes, each team creates a final report and presentation capturing the successes and failures of the project, analyzes the lessons to be learned, and submits them for judging. The judges confer on the analysis they found to be the most impactful and present the winning team with a shared plaque that travels to each teammate’s home institution. Broadbent’s contributions ensured that the plaque would make its final stop at Brookhaven later next year.
Transforming cUlture Through inclusiOn (TUTO)
Broadbent’s team, dubbed TUTO, consisted of members from different national laboratories—Jessica Bentley (Sandia National Laboratory), Lisa Ehlers (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), Vincente Guiseppe (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), and Hiro Tanaka (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). Each member strengthened the team with their diverse backgrounds, talents, and project experiences. Broadbent drew plenty of inspiration from the projects he has helped manage. For 16 years at NSLS-II, he has been instrumental in the design, installation, and commissioning of several beamlines that are currently serving users who are performing cutting-edge research, as well as future beamlines that will offer the facility new capabilities.
For their project, the team explored the execution of DOE’s Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) project at Michigan State University (MSU). FRIB’s mission is to produce and research rare isotopes for advancing knowledge in nuclear physics, material science, medicine, defense, and industry. The project was completed in June 2022.
“FRIB is a unique project not only for its one-of-a-kind mission and technological success but also for its leadership. They successfully navigated an unusual funding and regulatory framework to project completion within budget and five months ahead of schedule,” remarked Broadbent.
While they explored the project through PLI’s core concepts, they also sought out the values employed by the FRIB team that made their project so successful. In their analysis, they narrowed it down to four main concepts: curation, fluidity, character, and engagement.
“Curation” was reflected in several aspects of project management, from making a team of diverse people with diverse talents to only selecting processes within the project that are predicted to add value.
“Fluidity” goes hand in hand with curation. As much as one can try to control a project, unexpected changes are bound to happen at any stage. Things that were carefully curated can suddenly take a different shape. Fluidity is about having that expectation and being able to adapt strategically without compromising on core needs, like safety.
“Character” fueled these concepts, as it described how respectful relationships from effective and empathetic leaders fostered trust, good communication, and conflict solutions that allow work to be performed smoothly and safely.
Lastly, there was the concept of “engagement,” teams taking pride and ownership in their work, creating a positive safety culture, sparking community and stakeholder involvement, and promoting inclusivity. All of these concepts link together in such a way that each reinforces the others.
While the presentation covered a lot of ground and sparked some productive discussions, the competition was formidable. There was one more Brookhaven employee in 2023’s cohort: Angelika Drees, collider group leader for the Collider-Accelerator Department. While she was working with another team, she enjoyed comparing and contrasting her experiences with Broadbent as the program concluded and brought back a lot of insight to her current role.
“I have never looked at another DOE project that closely before and I feel like I learned so much just from making comparisons,” recalled Drees. “It made me think about the new Electron-Ion Collider project in a different way. In some sense, there are a lot of similarities; it’s an accelerator and it has complex physics. And though it may not be the same in terms of scale and scope, there were general concepts that translate from one project to the other. Looking at this project so closely taught us a lot.”
The scoring between teams was reported to be closer than it had ever been in the past. Regardless of the outcome, the exercise was valuable to all involved and provided a lot to think about for future projects.
“We really enjoyed doing this,” remarked Broadbent. “Even though writing reports like this tends to be a lot of work, we worked together very well as a team and managed to have fun. It was a very different kind of experience and really made us think. The human side is something everyone can understand, and something everyone can improve upon. That thought came to mind very early on in the project and never went away. Each attribute we uncovered was very human-focused.”
Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.
Electric and natural gas are always on Wisconsin residents’ minds, especially during the winter months.
Like many other things, the cost of electric and natural gas has been rising.
That’s due to a host of factors, with the increases governed by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, an independent regulatory agency. The body sets new rates and approves major construction projects such as power plants, water wells and transmission lines.
The Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Prosperity took note of those increases, which are typically approved only a few at a time, did a little math and posted Dec. 4, 2023 on X, formerly know as Twitter:
“Wisconsin utilities have charged ratepayers more than $1.9 billion of increases since 2019.”
That’s an eye-popping number, especially at a time when there are concerns about the impact of inflation on the pocketbooks of state residents.
Is the math right? No.
A look at increases approved by the Commission
When we reached out to Americans for Prosperity, spokesperson Emilee Taylor told us the initial post – which was deleted after we asked about it – contained an error: The $1.9 billion should actually be $1.5 billion.
When asked for more information about how the group reached the $1.5 billion number, Taylor sent a host of links to various Public Service Commission meeting agendas from the past several years, which show approved increases.
“The Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group used PSC agendas to calculate $1.5 billion in approved rate increases since 2019. In our calculations, we account for both electric and natural gas — operating under the assumption that most Wisconsinites associate the two related as they are sometimes on the same utility bill,” Taylor said in a Dec. 18, 2023 email.
“All items added together—rate cases, fuel cases, and fuel surcharges—for electric and natural gas utilities equals $1.5 billion: $1.3 billion in electric, and $250 million in natural gas.”
When we contacted the commission, communications director Meghan Sovey shared an analysis assembled by employees.
According to that information, since 2019 there have been nearly $959 million in increases authorized for electric retail customers, and about $269 million in increases authorized for natural gas customers.
Those numbers include some recently-authorized increases that won’t go into effect until 2024 and 2025.
Their total: $1.472 billion in increases.
Of course those increases are split across consumers, and no one person or community is footing the bill for that amount. And, a large portion of the increase is being paid by businesses, and not directly by consumers.
Our ruling
Americans for Prosperity claimed “Wisconsin utilities have charged ratepayers more than $1.9 billion of increases since 2019.”
After we asked, the organization said the tweet contained an error, deleted it, then updated the number to $1.5 billion. While AFP did delete the tweet, we are still rating that $1.9 billion claim.
The lower figure was on point, but as is our practice, we rate the original claim – not what groups and individuals do later to make it more accurate.
Newswise — The element carbon is critical to organic chemistry and life as we know it. The physics of its most common isotope, carbon-12, are extremely complex. Many experimental and theoretical investigations have been devoted to determining the energies and underlying structures of the nuclear states of carbon-12. In this work, researchers computed these states from first principles—the most basic components of physics theory. The approach used supercomputers and nuclear lattice simulations to calculate the three-dimensional shape formed by the protons and neutrons comprising the nucleus. The results show that all of the low-lying energy states of carbon-12 have a substructure where the six protons and six neutrons cluster together into alpha particles. Alpha particles are helium-4 nuclei, which contain two protons and two neutrons.
The Impact
One well-known nuclear state of carbon-12 is the Hoyle state. This state has an energy that sits near the energy threshold for three alpha particles or helium nuclei. This energy thereby greatly enhances the production of carbon in helium-burning stars. This helps to explain the presence of carbon in the Universe. The results obtained in this research show that the Hoyle state is composed of a “bent arm” or obtuse triangular arrangement of alpha particles. All the low-lying energy states of carbon-12 have an intrinsic shape composed of three alpha particles forming either an equilateral triangle or an obtuse triangle. The new results give information about the possible geometrical shapes of nuclear states.
Summary
The carbon atom provides the backbone for the complex organic chemistry composing the building blocks of life. The physics of the carbon nucleus in its predominant isotope, carbon-12, are also full of complexity. Researchers from the University of Bonn, Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany, the Gaziantep Islamic Science and Technology University in Turkey, the Graduate School of China Academy of Engineering Physics, Tbilisi State University, and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University calculated the structure of the nuclear states of carbon-12 using the ab initio framework of nuclear lattice effective field theory.
The research found that all the low-lying states of carbon-12 have an intrinsic shape composed of three alpha clusters forming either an equilateral triangle or an obtuse triangle. The states with the equilateral triangle shape also have a dual description in terms of particle-hole excitations in a mean-field picture. The results agree with experimental data and provide the first model-independent density map of the nuclear states of carbon-12. The results help to explain the origins of carbon from the helium and hydrogen that made up the Universe shortly after the Big Bang.
Funding
This research was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (the German Research Foundation), the National Natural Science Foundation of China , the Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship Initiative, the National Security Academic Fund of China, Volkswagen Stiftung, the European Research Council, the Department of Energy, and the Nuclear Computational Low-Energy Initiative SciDAC-4 project, as well as computational resources provided by the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing e.V. and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility.
