Timeframe: November 5th – November 11th, 2021
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Contributors:
Mansib Khan, Musarrat Sarwar Chowdhury, Sabyasachi Karamker, and Farhan Uddin Ahmed.
1. Economics & Business
Tesla Erases $199 Billion as investors brace for possible Musk stock sale
Tesla Inc. saw its valuation drop by about $199 billion, heading for the biggest two-day slide in 14 months, as the surge in shares lost momentum amid a host of negative news. After Elon Musk’s weekend Twitter poll asking if he should sell 10% of his stake in Tesla, followed by reports of his brother Kimbal selling some shares just before the poll, the drumbeat of negative headlines reached a crescendo. There was also a Business Insider report on Michael Burry, the investor made famous by “The Big Short” movie, saying Musk may want to sell stocks to cover his personal debts. After closing down 4.8% on Monday, the shares fell as much as 12% on Tuesday. Despite the recent decline, Tesla is still up 46% this year and has maintained a market value of over $1 trillion, a key level it reached in late October.
Source: Bloomberg
2. Politics
COP26: Cautious welcome for unexpected US-China climate agreement
Activists and politicians have cautiously welcomed an unexpected US-China declaration that vowed to boost climate cooperation. The EU and UN described the move as encouraging and an important step, but Greenpeace said both countries needed to show more commitment.
The US and China are the world’s two biggest CO2 emitters. They said they would work together to achieve the 1.5C temperature goal set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Scientists say that limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C will help humanity avoid the worst climate impacts. This is compared with pre-industrial temperatures.
The announcement by the two global rivals was made on Wednesday at the ongoing COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are now expected to hold a virtual meeting as early as next week.
Source: BBC
Merkel appeals to Putin to intervene in Belarus border crisis
Angela Merkel has asked Vladimir Putin to intervene in the crisis on the Belarus-Poland border in an appeal to Minsk’s key foreign sponsor as the EU prepared a new set of sanctions against Belarus. The call comes after the Polish PM said Russia was behind the flow of people from the Middle East to EU borders.
In a phone call on a crisis that has escalated dramatically since Monday, when 1,000 people mainly from Iraqi Kurdistan arrived on the border, the German chancellor told Putin that the “use of migrants by the Belarusian regime was inhuman and unacceptable and asked [Putin] to influence the regime in Minsk”, according to the chancellor’s spokesperson, Steffen Seibert, who described the situation as “state-sanctioned human trafficking”.
Source: The Guardian
3. Science & Technology
Window to the Universe: NASA plans to launch the James Webb Telescope to look at the solar system and beyond
“Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another,” said Plato. And the James Webb telescope will do just that! Its 6.5-meter mirror will unfurl next year, promising to unravel far more than the aging Hubble Telescope ever did. While the nineties and early oughts’ observations relied on the Hubble in Space and the Arecibo in Chile, the new-fangled space binoculars will have to go through a challenging series of missions to lift up, maneuver, and complete the unpacking process.
Source: NASA
4. Environment
COP26: World headed for 2.4C warming despite climate summit – report
Despite pledges made at the climate summit COP26, the world is still nowhere near its goals on limiting global temperature rise, a new report from a leading climate research group shows. It calculates that the world is heading for 2.4C of warming, far more than the 1.5C limit nations committed to. COP26 “has a massive credibility, action and commitment gap”, according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT). The findings suggest the agreements made at COP26 amount to “dangerous” false hope, according to two of the people behind the report, and “the stark reality is that we are far from solving the climate problem.”
Source: Forbes
5. Miscellaneous
Shein: The secretive ultra-fast fashion unicorn that broke the internet
Among the world’s most valuable startups is a little-known company with mysterious origins – the Instagram-powered rocketship that reads market trends in minutes produces in days and delivers in a week – making traditional fast fashion like Zara and modern retailers like Fashion Nova seem like ancient dinosaurs. Most importantly, Shein brands are just good enough and as cheap as possible to induce Shein hauls from influencers. Yet troubling questions remain regarding the anonymous factories that are subcontracted these orders and the shockingly high carbon impact of the fashion industry in general.
Source: Not Boring
Disclaimer: The information provided here is obtained solely from the third parties mentioned above. Youth Policy Forum (YPF) is not responsible for any misinformation or misrepresentation.