Fires scorched almost two million acres of territory in Brazil in November, according to data released by an NGO group Wednesday, nearly 90 percent more than in the same month last year.. Together with November's numbers, the area burned in the first 11 months of 2022 totaled about 40 million acres, or just under the size of Uruguay, according to MapBiomas, a 13 percent increase over the same period in 2021.
After years of benefitting from the enormous contributions of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried -- accused of massive financial fraud -- America's political elite are now skittering away, eager to put distance between themselves and the disgraced cryptocurrency darling.. But Bankman-Fried, who made several media appearances and statements over the last several months as FTX took on water, insisted during a November interview with cryptocurrency expert Tiffany Fong that he had "donated about the same amount to both parties."
Emphasizing the need to protect small investors, US securities regulators Wednesday proposed new rules to ensure competition in the execution of stock market trades.. The Securities and Exchange Commission proposal aims to replace the current system in which retail brokers route more than 90 percent of trades by individual investors to wholesalers -- financial middlemen who provide liquidity.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday backed the creation of a new natural gas pipeline that could ease Europe's dependence on Russia by linking up with energy-rich Turkmenistan.. But he also lent his support on Wednesday to a new project that could link Turkmenistan with an existing pipeline running from Turkey to Azerbaijan.
A VA loan is a mortgage option with no down payment provided by private lenders and partially guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
The head of South Africa's beleaguered state-owned power utility Eskom, Andre de Ruyter, has resigned, the company said on Wednesday, as the country suffers from a worsening energy crisis. . De Ruyter had come under pressure from some government ministers that accused the company of not properly attending to the crisis, which analysts say is the result of years of mismanagement, disrepair and corruption.
The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross warned Wednesday "an enormous level of suffering" awaits the world in 2023 with famine spreading.. Mirjana Spoljaric, who took over at the ICRC in October, told a Geneva press conference: "We expect an enormous level of suffering.
Germany on Wednesday signed a deal to buy dozens of US-made F-35 fighter jets, US officials said, part of the country's military overhaul following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. . The cost of the jets is to come from a planned 100 billion euro investment in the armed forces, unveiled following the outbreak of the Ukraine war in a bid to overhaul Germany's underfunded military. sr/bp
A Twitter account that tracked flights of Elon Musk's private jet put out word Wednesday that it was suspended by the platform despite the billionaire's talk of free speech.. Musk's jet "flew from LA to Austin last night after my account was suspended on Twitter," he said in an Instagram post Wednesday.
French prosecutors said Wednesday that they had searched the headquarters of President Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party in their investigation into the use of consulting firms by the government since 2017.. The use of consultants by Macron's governments came under the spotlight in March after a French Senate inquiry concluded that public spending on them had more than doubled from 2018 to 2021, during Macron's first term.
